The Goalposts Move

I was definitely surprised by The Economist publicly taking aim at the current refugee rights system:

Western attitudes are hardening. In Europe the views of social democrats and right-wing populists are converging.

The system is not working. Designed for post-war Europe, it cannot cope with a world of proliferating conflict, cheap travel and huge wage disparities. Roughly 900m people would like to migrate permanently. Since it is almost impossible for a citizen of a poor country to move legally to a rich one, many move without permission. In the past two decades many have discovered that asylum offers a back door. Instead of crossing a border stealthily, as in the past, they walk up to a border guard and request asylum, knowing that the claim will take years to adjudicate and, in the meantime, they can melt into the shadows and find work.

Voters are right to think the system has been gamed. Most asylum claims in the European Union are now rejected outright. Fear of border chaos has fuelled the rise of populism, from Brexit to Donald Trump, and poisoned the debate about legal migration. To create a system that offers safety for those who need it but also a reasonable flow of labour migration, policymakers need to separate one from the other.

Around 123m people have been displaced by conflict, disaster or persecution, three times more than in 2010, partly because wars are lasting longer. All these people have a right to seek safety. But “safety” need not mean access to a rich country’s labour market.

It’s obvious why they are alarmed. In Britain, the two mainstream parties have been destroyed. And the convergence of SOCIALIST democrats and right-wing NATIONAL populists is always going to terrify a media controlled by a small group of people who were not historically very popular with socialist nationalists.

And then I saw this:

Mr Trump’s policy of mass deportation is both cruel and expensive. Far better to let those who have put down roots stay, while securing the border and changing the incentives for future arrivals. If liberals do not build a better system, populists will build a worse one.

After their policies fail, they always try to move the goalposts in order to prevent those failures from being adequately addressed. At this point, they’re just trying to lock in their gains.

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Did the Exit Begin?

Is it possible that the Learned Elders of Wye have decided that the long-anticipated time to vacate the USA has arrived, although the destination is no longer China:

New York Times: “The billionaire’s new roots in Argentina are said to be partly motivated by concerns about the future of the United States and shared beliefs with Argentina’s right-wing leader.”

Uh Oh.

Apparently, Mr. Thiel knows something about OUR country’s future that you and I don’t know – yet.

HMMMMMMMMMMMM. “Concerns about the future of the United States.” If he thought there was hope to turn it around, wouldn’t he have remained here? Or is it unavoidable now?

He didn’t just take a trip – he MOVED. Out. of the USA.

Those shared “beliefs” are probably far less relevant than a shared background. Time will tell if this is just one man’s preferences or if we soon see Miriam Adelson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ben Shapiro following Thiel’s example.

There are obviously things going on beneath the surface that we don’t know about, whether it’s related to the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, strategic shifts in Asia, or even the non-fiction version of Disclosure Day.

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Can’t Stop the Shine

The White House doesn’t forget:

Today, we remember a legend.

On this day in history, Harambe would have celebrated another birthday. An icon that became part of internet history, American culture, and an entire generation’s timeline.

Tomorrow marks 10 years since we lost him. Ten years since the moment the world stopped scrolling and collectively mourned something bigger than a meme.

He became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity, and the strange beauty of the internet bringing millions of people together for one cause: never forgetting Harambe.

Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. And somehow, a decade later, his legacy still lives on.

Gone, but never forgotten.
Rest easy to a true patriot.

In the immortal words of Infinite:

Dicks out for Harambe, chicks out for Harambe, bitch you ain’t a 10 you just a 6 to Harambe.

This is not a meme, it’s a lifestyle.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Bubble is Popping

ITEM: The American economy right now is running on a single, dangerously powerful engine — artificial intelligence. The latest macroeconomic data reveals a reality that should make investors deeply uncomfortable. While GDP figures look respectable on the surface, they mask a severe and spreading weakness underneath. The expansion of AI has been responsible for roughly half of total US GDP growth this year. That alone is staggering, but it becomes genuinely alarming when you strip out the frantic spending on data centers, information processing equipment, and software tied directly to the AI boom. Non-residential capital investment that has nothing to do with AI has contracted by about 3% over the past year.

ITEM: Uber’s operations chief, Andrew Macdonald, said it was becoming harder to justify AI costs within the company. He said that, based on talks with Uber’s senior engineering leaders, he realized higher token usage did not translate into a proportional increase in useful consumer features.

ITEM: Duolingo walked back its decision to include AI usage in performance reviews.

This is why I think many, if not most of the planned data centers will never be built. The massive investment into AI is the only thing presently propping up the US economy besides military spending, and the corpocracy’s demand for it has already peaked.

Now, I personally find AI to be incredibly useful and productivity-enhancing. But when I look at how the vast majority of the people I know are using it, to the extent that they’re using it at all, it’s little more than a search engine and a toy. It’s not the basis for a central economic engine upon which the stock markets have gambled.

Which is no doubt why the AI companies are beginning to alter the deal in preparation for a post-Bubble landscape.

On May 20, Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees, roughly 10 percent of its global workforce, with notifications beginning at 4 AM Singapore time and rolling westward through Europe and the Americas. The company simultaneously eliminated 6,000 open positions and reassigned another 7,000 employees into AI-focused divisions. These cuts arrived during Meta’s most profitable quarter on record: $26.8 billion in net income on $56.3 billion in revenue for Q1 2026, a 33 percent increase from the year before.

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Stabbings in Switzerland

In which the religion of peace comes peacefully to the Zurich train station:

Three people have been stabbed in Switzerland after a knife-wielding man unleashed a violent attack in a train station.

The incident at the Winterthur railway station on Thursday was confirmed by Zurich cantonal police, who said that the man, a 31-year-old Swiss national, was arrested at the scene after he wounded three people with a bladed weapon.

Footage from the scene showed the alleged knifeman running past a group of terrified young school children as their teacher tried to shield them.

One person was seriously injured, and two others sustained moderate injuries and were hospitalised, Blick reports. The injured are all Swiss citizens aged 28, 43, and 52.

The motive for the attack is currently unclear, and the police are investigating all possible leads.

Multiple witnesses claimed that the knifeman shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he unleashed his violent rampage, according to local media.

The thing about “nationals” these days is that it’s nothing more than a reference to paperwork now, as can be seen with the current makeup of the “national” teams at the World Cup. Of course, it could just be an unhinged convert, as far too many of the post-WWII Swiss have abandoned the Christianity of their ancestors.

Anyhow, it’s a timely reminder for the Swiss that unlike other peoples, they have the ability to vote to limit their population in the upcoming national referendum.

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Replacement Theory in Britain

Remember when they said a) mass immigration was good for the economy and b) without immigrants there wouldn’t be enough workers?

Mass immigration is directly fuelling the crisis for young people trying to find work, research reveals. A staggering 27 migrants from outside the EU aged under 25 are hired for every British youngster, according to the analysis.

And while the young British workforce has grown by less than 1 per cent since 2020, the number of non-EU youth on the UK payroll has increased by 355 per cent in that time, the research from The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found.

Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said last night that British workers are ‘being pushed to the back of the queue while mass immigration continues’. He added: ‘Young Brits should be first in line for jobs, training and opportunities in their own country, not forced to compete against record levels of imported labour.’

The CSJ think-tank’s research shows how young migrants are taking up roles at a much faster rate to young Britons, with them snapping up three times as many jobs as young Britons.

Between 2024 and 2025, the number of non-EU under-25s on payrolls increased by 33,200, while the number of UK-nationals of the same age fell by 32,200.

This is despite almost one million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK currently not currently in education, employment or training (NEET).

And the research shows that migrants are mostly taking entry-level positions despite Alan Milburn saying today that the first rung of the career ladder is ‘simply out of reach’ for young Britons after he was commissioned by the Government to review soaring levels of youth unemployment in Britain.

The fact that the man speaking for the British youth is named “Zia Yusuf” is not a confidence-inspiring sign that Reform UK is the answer, though.

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Kant vs Kant


From an appendix of a forthcoming Veriphysics book:

Immanuel Kant devoted an entire chapter to amphiboly. It is titled “On the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection” (Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe), and it ends the Transcendental Analytic of the first Critique at A260-292 / B316-349. In this chapter, Kant develops a technical diagnostic for a specific kind of philosophical error: the confusion that arises when a key concept operates in two distinguishable senses, with an unargued inference between them, thereby generating systematic distortion in the resulting metaphysics. He applies this diagnostic to Leibniz…

Leibniz, according to Kant, operated entirely within the domain of pure understanding. He treated the concepts of reflection as if they applied to things in themselves, considered through reason alone, and then transferred his conclusions to objects of experience without noticing that the conditions of application had changed. The result was the metaphysics of monads, pre-established harmony, and the identity of indiscernibles.

Take the example Kant develops most fully. Two drops of water, considered through pure understanding, are identical if their concepts contain the same determinations. Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles follows: if two objects are conceptually indiscernible, they are numerically the same object. But when the two drops are given in sensible intuition, in space, the difference of their spatial positions is sufficient for numerical difference regardless of conceptual identity. The principle holds for objects of pure understanding. It does not hold for objects of experience. Leibniz “took the appearances for things in themselves” (A264/B320) and applied a principle valid for the one to the other.

The same pattern repeats across all four concepts of reflection. Realities in pure understanding cannot oppose each other; realities in experience can (two forces pulling in opposite directions produce zero net motion). The inner in pure understanding is what has no relation to anything external; the inner in experience is always a matter of further relations. Matter precedes form in pure understanding; form precedes matter in sensible intuition. In every case, Leibniz’s error is the same: treating a conclusion valid within pure understanding as if it held for experience without performing the transcendental reflection that would have revealed the different conditions of application.

Kant summarizes the error in a single sentence at A271/B327: “Leibniz intellectualized the appearances, just as Locke totally sensitivized the concepts of understanding.” The diagnostic is that a key concept operating in two distinguishable domains has been applied across domains without acknowledgment that the conditions of application differ. The inference between domains is not argued for. It is performed by treating the concept as if it were univocal when it is not.

Kant appears to regard this diagnostic as one of his central contributions. It is not a minor appendix to the Analytic but the correction that clears the ground for the critical philosophy. The rationalist metaphysics of the seventeenth century rested, in Kant’s account, on a systematic amphiboly, and identifying the amphiboly was the first step in replacing the rationalist framework with the critical one. “For just this reason,” Kant writes at A270/B326, “the exposition of the deceptive cause of the amphiboly of these concepts, as the occasion of false principles, is of great utility in reliably determining and securing the boundaries of the understanding.”

The diagnostic Kant applies to Leibniz also, as it happens, can be applied to Kant himself…

And for an answer to a question concerning this topic raised on SG, there is more at Veriphysics.

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The Irony of the 8s

People who believe the earth was created 6000 years ago, when it’s actually 4.5 billion years old, should also believe the width of North America is 8 yards. That is the scale of the error.
—Richard Dawkins

And 8 yards has to be wrong, because an evolutionary biologist like Richard Dawkins believes that the width of North America is 8 and 1/4 inches. That is the scale of the error committed by someone who believes in the evolution of Man and thinks that there was time for the evolution of 205,000,000 base pairs in the time that was sufficient for, ironically, 8.

It’s more than a little amusing to see how evolutionists are observably worse at science than young-earth creationists.

Read the 2nd edition of Probability Zero, the number one bestseller in Biology, Evolution, and Genetic Science if you want to see how comprehensively and conclusively that statement is backed up. The hardcover and paperback editions will be available soon.

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An Existential Crisis

It’s a little hard to take seriously the warnings of those who proclaim an “existential crisis” due to declining fertility rates when they won’t even address the primary cause of those declining rates and are not aware of the primary cause in declining fertility. Even when the crisis is real.

The U.S. is facing a worsening fertility crisis, according to analysts.

While the nation’s fertility rate has been declining for decades, it dropped to a new record low in 2025. Experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that deregulation, improving fertility care and bringing down costs related to raising children could help boost the declining birth rate.

The U.S. general fertility rate was 53.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 2025, down from 53.8 in 2024, according to National Center for Health Statistics data published in April.

“While there are many factors contributing to the declining birth rate, three reasons stand out to me: First, there is the influence of smart phones and social media,” Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Emma Water told the DCNF. “Since the introduction of the iPhone, [every] country has seen a marked decline in births that doesn’t look like it is reversing any time soon, including the U.S. … we are seeing more men and women replace meaningful time with others with scrolling, screen addictions, or a sense that there is too much to be done.”

“Second, we cannot discount the role of abortion, birth control, and reproductive technologies,” Waters said. “While we can have a meaningful conversation about the morality of each separately, the statistics don’t lie: The last year that the birth rate was above replacement was 1972, and since the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade erroneously created a constitutional right to abortion in 1973, the birth rate has never recovered.”

Waters added that a drop in U.S. marriage rates is one of the “primary drivers of declining birth rates.”

The U.S. marriage rate dropped to a 140-year low in 2019 and has yet to fully bounce back, The New York Times reported. Less than half of American households were married couples in 2025, marking a significant decrease from 50 years earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Prioritizing infertility treatment and early diagnosis could help boost the U.S. fertility rate, according to Waters.

First, prioritizing infertility treatment will only make matters worse. Average female fertility has been dropping steadily since 1900 due to the frozen gene and the inability of natural selection to continue keeping the human genome free of deleterious mutations, so using technology to help the genetically deficient to reproduce is digging the hole deeper. This is a very serious scientific problem that concerns genetic degradation and most of the solutions appear to range from ghastly and politically impossible to unthinkable and inhuman.

Second, the problem with fertility rates is about female choices, not genetic degradation. The problem is that women like Emma Water are college-educated and Senior Policy Analysts at the Heritage Foundation instead of getting married at 20 and having 4-6 children.

This is not a mystery and this is not in doubt. The correlation between post-8th-grade female education and declining fertility is extremely high, and while correlation is not necessarily causation, a high degree of correlation does tend to point toward correct causality. And this causation is sufficiently well-known that overpopulation advocates specifically push for female education in order to reduce birth rates.

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We’re Number Two

Today is the last day of the Based Books Sale.

The Summer 2026 Based Book Sale has referred 449 Kindle Free E-books and 4014 Kindle Paid E-Books for a total of 4463 books in all… And We’re Not Done Yet! Today is your last chance to score some great Based Books all for $0.99 or free. The sale ends tonight at midnight (PDT).

Castalia House is participating in the Summer 2026 sale, so today will be your last day to buy each of these books for just 99 cents each:

These are excellent books with very good reviews and very high ratings, and there are a lot of quality books from other authors and publishers worth checking out.

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