Required test to practice medicine in US.

I have a theory that the sharing economy got a big early boost from owners of homes and cars who did not know the word "depreciation" and that as the businesses matured, they figured it out this hidden subsidy has eroded. That plus regulation has made it much less profitable, though there's still a business there.

Wild animal vaccines are a thing. In 1978, Switzerland airdropped 4,000 vaccine-laden chicken heads from helicopters over the Alps. And it worked: fox rabies was eliminated. For most of history, our approach to sick wild animals was to treat it as not our problem. Turns out that was a bad idea, because roughly 60% of human infectious diseases come from wild animals. So scientists got creative. Rabies was spreading through raccoons, foxes and coyotes despite culling hundreds of thousands of them — which, besides being grim, didn't even work. The solution? Hide vaccines inside food and let the animals vaccinate themselves while having no idea they're participating in a public health program. Switzerland went first. Their method of choice was vaccine-stuffed chicken heads, which were thrown out of helicoters. This eliminated fox rabies from the entire country by 1999. The US followed with fishmeal blocks dropped near dumpsters to vaccinate raccoons. They now distribute up to 10 million baits a year. This is how Texas wiped out two rabies variants entirely. Vaccinating wild animals is cost effective: every dollar spent saved up to $13 in human treatment costs. Now we're going further. Australia approved a koala chlamydia vaccine in 2025 (yes, koalas have chlamydia). Researchers are also developing anti-fungal gels for bats. And we are moving on the "philosophical" dimension too.Disease isn’t bad solely because it threatens a species’s survival but because it causes suffering. Every koala or raccoon that contracts a fatal illness spends days or weeks vomiting, seizing, blind, feverish, or paralyzed. None can hope for treatment. Then, alone and in pain, they die. We can prevent this!

China once implemented a major innovation policy that rewarded regional governors for patents made in their area. This led to thousands of patents for things like spoons and bottle openers, diapers, and even instructions on how to fry various foods. Patents were corrupted.

Effective July 1st, the Panama canal will begin restricting the depth of transiting vessels as mitigation against the coming El Niño summer drought. For now this is not a huge deal but expect canal transits to be a major bottleneck later in the year.

Occasionally I will say that gay-affirming policies are anti-Christian and a bunch of people will say "no they aren't, they are anti-bigots, there are plenty of affirming Christians" But they are never defending Christians when people who support Pride Night have a fainting spell about the existence of the Bible

California is pressuring public utilities to award $633M in contracts to "LGBT-owned" firms. The state's official gay-certification program has issued this checklist of documents to prove your status. And a warning: you'll go to jail if you misrepresent your sexual identity.

Something not frequently mentioned about this case. She had a wildlife biologist appointment at the NPS. Placing my students in that equivalent position is one of the hardest and most competitive places to get your foot in the door. Especially when you have a very specific wildlife specialty like bats. Then this girl used her “disability” (god only knows what that would have been) to get a non-competitive hire to a more permanent, benefitted position that could have eventually become the equivalent of tenured. On top of all that, the switch to the better gig came with 2 years of probation, which she couldn’t even wait out without dropping the transgender flag over El Capitan with a gang of activist goofballs. If you work in a land or a wildlife agency, you’d have to be nuts to hire this woman. Between the made up illness to get perks and the poor impulse control, it’s unreal that she landed in the NPS when I can’t even get veterans placed there.

UC Riverside has managed to "significantly improve student outcomes" not by helping students perform better on their finals, but instead by making the finals count for less of the grade:

NATO militaries are obsolete, because they're not built around drones.

This is insane. But it makes some sense. One of these men is a fantastic storyteller and wizard of financial structures, while the other is a pioneer in the world of electric vehicles and reusable rocketry.

This reminds me of one of my favorite studies in healthcare. A clinical team simply had the coders round with them in the hospital. The profit per admission increased 42%. This was without changing a single part of their clinical care. Outcomes didn’t improve. They simply coded a higher intensity of care, leading to higher reimbursement. Our system rewards coding more than it rewards care. The institutions that master the coding game are the ones that do the best.

Now THIS is an explanation for homosexuality that I can live with: the same genes that increase your chances of being gay are genes that make you more attractive! I'd say the case is settled. ;p (From @SteveStuWill's book "A Billion Years of Sex Differences")

In einer grossen Studie wurde untersucht, wie sich die Leistung von über 26'000 Schülern in China während 30 Monaten veränderte, wenn sie anfingen, KI-Chatbots zu nutzen. Ihre Hausaufgaben wurden rund 20% besser. Sie benötigten für die Hausaufgaben rund 20% weniger Zeit. Das ist super. Aber: Bei Prüfungen (wo KI verboten ist) wurden sie rund 20% *schlechter*. Das ist eine massive Verschlechterung. KI kann Denkkompetenz aufbauen, wenn sie als eine Art Tutor eingesetzt wird. Dann spricht man von kognitivem Scaffolding. Die Realität ist aber, dass die Strategie des kognitiven Offloading der Weg des geringsten Widerstands ist: Denkarbeit an Chatbots auszulagern, ist instrumentell gesehen rational. Ein Fehlanreiz. Diese Entwicklung ruiniert Bildung. Und sie ist ein systemisches Risiko: Was passiert, wenn eine ganze Generation noch weniger als frühere Generationen lernt, eigenständig zu denken?

Stock market bubble in Korea is not going to end well (they already have a pretty high household debt to income ratio, and taking on debt to gamble on the stock market…)

Pretty easy to see how UC Compact is in the process of utterly destroying the UC’s reputation among employers. Admitting ‘equitable’ students and then guaranteeing their graduation is … an extremely quick way to destroy the value of the degree.

It's possible that progressive causes attract the mentally ill. It's also possible that progressivism causes mental illness. Either possibility is worrying, but they're worrying for different reasons.

One thing that cannot be overstated is the damage caused by inner city policy being set by white liberals who live in the suburbs and get their idea of the world from progressive journalists and nobody else. If you are a suburban white leftist, please indulge me in a little experiment. First, read how The Intercept describes this event, and picture it in your mind based off this description. Then, watch the videos of the event. Then extrapolate that to everything you read about, rather than see.

As I have reported several times and now acknowledged by the Governor of California...Gavin and his wife are under federal investigation... what he failed to tell you... This began during the Biden Admin. Kind of a big detail.

UC Berkeley computer science courses saw F’s jump 3x-11x from 2025 to 2026 b/c of AI cheating & math gaps “We caught them (cheating) & prosecuted them…in other cases, it’s students who are leaning on LLMs to do their work for them & then at exam time just really aren’t ready”