More right-wing stupidity:

«self-styled champions of free enterprise in Nebraska, Montana, Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Wyoming have all sought to stymy the manufacture and sale of cellular meat within their borders.»

Of course. Rights for me, but not for thee.

«what some Republicans seem to fear about lab-grown meat is precisely that it could render mass animal torture unnecessary, and therefore, verboten. As DeSantis explained when he announced his cellular meat ban last May, “Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.”

The idea here is that an international cabal of billionaire progressives wants to outlaw traditional meat and make Americans eat insects and poor simulacrums of beef instead (in arguing this, DeSantis was riffing on a popular right-wing conspiracy theory about the World Economic Forum’s tyrannical machinations).

Other Republican opponents of cellular meat express similar concerns. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, himself a major pork producer, described his state’s prohibition as an effort to “battle fringe ideas and groups to defend our way of life.”»

https://www.vox.com/future-of-meat/414735/lab-grown-meat-ban-nebraska-montana-republicans

«The only scenario in which lab-grown meats could fully displace farmed ones is if the former comprehensively outcompetes the latter in the marketplace. If cellular meat ever becomes both tastier and cheaper than conventional alternatives — across every cut and kind of animal protein — then it could plausibly drive factory farmers into ruin. And in a world where almost no one eats pork derived from tortured sows, it’s conceivable that the government could ban such torture. In so doing, however, it would only be ratifying the market’s verdict.»

«In February 2019, Hayden Williams set up a table at UC Berkeley, where he was helping recruit students to join Turning Point USA, a youth-outreach group founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk. A man taunted Williams and delivered a sucker punch. Neither the attacker, who was later arrested, nor Williams were students at the school. [Emphasis mine. – John.]»

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/trump-college-university-federal-funding-fight-91c2a274?st=3EaFFu&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink (gift)

«“If you’re here illegally, expect to be removed,” said one. “This is the consequence of being in a nation with laws,”»

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/missouri-immigrant-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Kk8.C8p9.XVar3NcOjTDV&smid=url-share (gift)

Due process? Hello?

More Reagan/Republican stupidity. “The free market is better!” Right.

«During the 1980s, however, Congress and Ronald Reagan abandoned the regulated-competition approach. Reaganites argued that the FMC, which at the time had a budget of just $11.8 million, had become a bloated bureaucracy, and reasoned that the U.S. could achieve economic efficiency and lower shipping prices if ocean carriers were not required to treat all shippers equally. To that end, Congress passed a series of bills during the Reagan and Clinton administrations that stripped the FMC’s ability to regulate ocean-carrier cartels.

The first-order effect was a return to the destructive competition and underhanded exploitation that had characterized the early-20th-century market. As the rise of containerization led to ever larger ships, fixed costs grew. This increased carriers’ incentives to fill empty space on ships, even at steep discounts, because at least they would lose less money than if the space were unsold. Still, profits fell, and carriers turned to waves of mergers made possible by the federal government’s simultaneous retreat from antitrust enforcement. In the seven years after President Ronald Reagan signed the Shipping Act of 1984, seven major carriers were snapped up by the competition, compared with just one during the entire period from 1966 to 1983.

American-flag carriers, which had higher costs than foreign counterparts, were particularly hurt by the rate wars, especially after the Reagan administration withdrew subsidies that had helped U.S. carriers defray the costs of paying crews livable wages. Foreign corporations acquired American President Lines and SeaLand, the two largest U.S. carriers at the time, in 1997 and 1999 respectively, leaving the United States with no globally competitive ocean carriers. Meanwhile, shipyards in Asia began to enjoy massive government subsidies.»

https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/05/american-shipbuilding-decline/682945/?gift=mBLCHcnsd_Gd3EecvWSKTVwpqpB6IRvFtR7_qkoEiiI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share (gift)

Re the whole Harvard thing and my contention that this is nothing more than a riot:

“Why do these people burn down stores in their own neighborhood? Don’t they have any sense?”

https://herereadthis.blog/2025/05/10/this-is-a-riot/

“The most successful Meccans of the seventh century were more than just traders: they were a class of busy merchants and investors—protocapitalists who knew how to exploit the opportunities geography and access to ready finance afforded them. But below them sat a disgruntled underclass, cut off from the profits of business and investment, who were increasingly conscious of a deepening gulf between rich and poor.” – Powers and Thrones (Dan Jones) https://bookshop.org/ebooks/quotes/09110e18-226c-4d6f-a3d1-4dcb9b4f4a07

Foreshadowing? I dunno (yet), but it seems to me that societies with “deepening gulfs” don’t do too well.

I think this is what’s happening with Harvard.

«Max Eden, then a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an outline that presaged what was to come in the new Trump administration. He singled out Columbia as the top target.

“To scare universities straight,” Eden wrote in the Washington Examiner, Education Secretary Linda McMahon “should start by taking a prize scalp. She should simply destroy Columbia University.”»

https://wapo.st/44WMFAS (gift)

I’m listening to “She Keeps Me Warm” by Mary Lambert on Pandora. https://pandora.app.link/RNeTS96fHTb

“What’s your middle name?”

btw, world at large, I just threw these folks some coin. I invite you to do the same.

https://support.eji.org/give/268781/#!/donation/checkout