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Several great articles related to problems in education

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/the-tragedy-of-nikole-hannah-jones.html

The Free Press

Coleman Hughes: Lessons from Nikole Hannah-Jones’ School Experiment

It is a sad reality of the modern era that when an ideological opponent admits they made a terrible mistake, most people are tempted to kick them while they’re down. This exact situation has arisen with Nikole Hannah-Jones’ latest essay in The New York Times Magazine…

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8 days ago · 195 likes · 342 comments · Coleman Hughes

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

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https://www.city-journal.org/article/nikole-hannah-jones-essay-daughter-school#disqus_thread

AI is a developing technology that will transform the world. It has enormous benefits. It will displace some jobs and create others. The world is racing to develop it.

Right now, there are large companies that are claiming the risks are so large the government. I am very skeptical. It is much more likely that these large companies want the government to regulate it so that they can spend their money on lobbyist to protect their business businesses and stop others competing with them.

And there are people living in a dreamworld that believe you could trust China to stop their development.

Below is a great article discussing the issue.

The Free Press

Tyler Cowen: A Doomsday Scenario for American AI

There’s a good chance you’ve thought a lot about p(doom) recently, whether or not you knew it. It took less than a month for that term, which represents the probability that AI will wipe out humanity, to grow from an airy debate topic among Bay Area insiders into the most urgent question in public life. But there’s an opposite and almost equal question that’s being overlooked: Is American AI doomed…

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9 days ago · 61 likes · 56 comments · Tyler Cowen

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Trump has bungled his management of forcing Iran to give up their nuclear weapons program. But Iran had continued to obfuscate, lie and cheat before, DURING and after the JCPOA and Iran is evil vowing to destroy America and Israel and killing Americans and Israelis directly and through its proxies and needed to be stopped.

Unfortunately there is no hope that the feckless UN could be the answer.

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Systemic Racism or Culture?

The CDC has finalized their WONDER database with 2024 data providing details for all causes of death. Once again we see that the highest cause of death for young black males is homicide and the rate is almost ten times the homicide rate for whites. It is true that for 2024 the homicide for this group dropped in 2024, but the level still remains above the level before 2020.

We also see that blacks continue to commit crimes at a much higher rate than whites.

And though there is a slight trend down in the percent of black children in fatherless homes, the level is still more than three times the levels seen with white children.

Despite the left’s claim that black lives matter, the data shows that not much is changing and the claims that systemic racism are the key problem for blacks seems to ignore the reality that the biggest problem is the culture and home environment.

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Jennifer Sey has a great article that highlights the hypocrisy of the Left. The Left is outraged that Sidney Sweeney posed suggestively, nude with various sporting equipment covering her privates, in an ad for the sports betting company she has part ownership in. The problem isn’t what she did. It is who she is. The Left hates Sweeney because she refuses to play a part in partisan politics.

Sey Everything

Your Hypocrisy Is Showing

Sydney Sweeney is doing what Sydney Sweeney does. She is hot. She has big boobs. She knows she’s hot. She is using her hotness to sell something. The something happens to be Novig, a sports prediction app (aka betting). She is holding footballs. She is not pretending to be an athlete. She is being a woman who men like to look at, which is the entire poi…

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14 days ago · 93 likes · 20 comments · Jennifer Sey

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GROK’s summary of current AfD platform

1. Return to social-market-economy basics: SMEs, entrepreneurship, innovation; work must pay.

2. Asylum/migration U-turn: border controls, reject illegal entrants, remigration of people without a right to stay; process asylum claims outside Germany; leave the UN Migration and Refugee Compacts.

3. Fight crime: more/better-paid police, harder sentences, more investigations, asset forfeiture vs terrorism, extremism, clan and gang crime.

4. Peace in Europe via interest-based foreign policy: neutral Ukraine outside NATO and the EU; restore undisturbed trade with Russia.

5. Defend free speech; slim, “neutral” public broadcasting instead of the current fee-funded system.

6. Cheap, secure energy: return to nuclear, expand coal, abolish the CO₂ levy and renewable subsidies, cut energy taxes.

7. Family/demographics: childcare allowance to age 3, family income-splitting, relief on childcare costs, promote births.

8. EU: leave the centralized EU path; found a new European economic/interest community of sovereign states (common market, external-border protection, strategic autonomy, cultural identity). Exit the Green Deal, euro transfer union, digital euro, and EU bureaucracy as currently built.

9. Cut bureaucracy and taxes; abolish the solidarity surcharge (Soli).

10. Housing: scrap property-transfer tax for owner-occupiers; simplify building law; help tenants become owners.

11. Swiss-style national referenda plus a citizen initiative right.

12. Keep cash; reject a digital euro and central surveillance of payments.

13. Fix roads, bridges, rail; speed planning; catch up on digital infrastructure.

14. Raise the pension level step by step; more contributors; flexible retirement; incentives to work longer.

15. Health: less bureaucracy, better rural care, better pay for medical staff.

16. Rebuild the Bundeswehr; restore conscription including alternative civilian service.

17. Transport technology-neutrality: end EV preference; keep the combustion engine.

18. Replace Bürgergeld with an “activating basic income.”

19. Rural areas and farming: less EU red tape, regional circuits, animal welfare without over-regulation.

20. Keep the debt brake.

Economy, welfare, pensions, health

• Shrink state market intervention to a minimum.

• Work must leave people clearly better off than benefits.

• Do not fund a self-chosen life on the public purse.

• Extend coal-plant runtimes; restart nuclear; repair/restart Nord Stream; lift the ban on gas/oil heating.

• Abolish the CO₂ levy; cut energy and electricity taxes to the legal minimum; stop wind expansion that drives grid fees.

• Abolish the Supply Chain Act and the EU supply-chain directive.

• Abolish the Packaging Act; cut sustainability reporting; simplify GDPR and procurement law.

• Slash reporting duties for SMEs and farmers.

• Lift the combustion-engine ban and unreachable fleet CO₂ limits.

• Restore the 7% VAT rate for restaurants.

• End “economically harmful” sanctions; scrap the CO₂ border-adjustment mechanism.

• Cut income tax via a much higher basic allowance (flyer/campaign also cites €14,000).

• Cut corporate tax to an internationally competitive level.

• Abolish the solidarity surcharge for everyone.

• Extra tax-free allowance so pensioners keep working.

• Stop skilled-German emigration and try to lure emigrants back.

• Stop charging social-insurance funds for non-insurance tasks (finance those from the federal budget).

• Raise the pension level; use capital markets; create a “junior savings depot” for children.

• Stabilise pensions by more contributors (including via family/birth policy).

• Reform unemployment insurance toward contribution fairness.

• Future-proof health and long-term-care insurance; strengthen home care.

• Bürgergeld: replace with “activating basic security”; push work-capable recipients back into jobs; cut benefits if job offers/community work are refused.

• Keep hospitals viable; improve outpatient and rural care; secure drug supply.

• Review COVID policy; WHO: reform or leave.

• Organ donation, assisted suicide, cannabis: keep/restore tighter, non-ideological rules as stated in the chapter.

• No COVID-style vaccine mandate.

• Keep Heilpraktiker.

• Resist state patient-data/telematics overreach.

• Foreign medical staff only if they meet German standards.

• Cut health bureaucracy.

Housing, infrastructure, energy, transport, digital

• Become “a nation of owners.”

• Cut housing and construction side-costs; keep building law national.

• Protect existing buildings from retrofit mandates.

• Help tenants become owners (equity-substitute models, tax incentives).

• Prefer locals under an Einheimischenmodell.

• More housing benefit instead of social-housing construction.

• No rent brake / rent cap.

• Repair roads, rail, bridges; speed replacement builds (drop environmental review for like-for-like replacements).

• Roll building/planning law for big energy plants back to pre-2021 rules.

• Stop large-scale wind and field/forest solar; no agro-PV on farmland.

• Energy triad: security, cost, environment — not the Energiewende model.

• Renewables must compete without priority feed-in or new subsidies (existing contracts kept).

• Restart intact Nord Stream 2 string B; repair damaged strings; pursue saboteurs for damages.

• No lignite phase-out; expand coal in the short term; rebuild German nuclear know-how and restart existing plants.

• Hydrogen is not treated as competitive; no need for costly battery/H₂ systems to keep the lights on.

• No general Autobahn speed limit.

• Protect car use; reject diesel bans and blanket Tempo 30 on main roads; keep urban lanes and parking.

• Accompanied driving from age 16.

• Stop public funding of EV charging; treat e-fuels like EVs for tax if CO₂ rules stay.

• Shift heavy transit to rail/water; more truck parking; enforce cabotage rules; roll back the CO₂ truck toll hike.

• Reliable rail; strengthen aviation as an economic factor; protect German seaports.

• Right to an analogue life; no state social scoring.

• Oppose state “disinformation” crackdowns as censorship.

• Digital sovereignty; cautious AI policy; simplify GDPR.

Taxes, budget, currency

• Consolidate the federal budget; stop tax waste; keep the debt brake.

• Enforce Konnexität (who orders, pays).

• Cut grants to NGOs.

• Publish the true fiscal cost of asylum policy.

• Slash government PR funded by taxpayers.

• Radical tax simplification.

• Abolish all CO₂ levies.

• Relieve low-wage workers and the middle class.

• Abolish property tax (Grundsteuer) and offset the revenue loss.

• Introduce family income-splitting.

• No EU taxing power.

• Abolish wealth and inheritance tax.

• Raise the saver’s allowance.

• Exit the euro system; return to a national currency if the euro cannot be ended in an orderly way.

• Reform the money system; bring state gold home.

• End EU “planned-economy” policy.

• No EU borrowing; credit only at national level.

• No German liability for foreign banks.

• End TARGET2 risk (regular settlement).

• Cash as legal tender forever; no wealth register; no digital euro.

• Keep Bitcoin “state-distant.”

Agriculture, environment, climate

• Decide farm policy in Germany, not Brussels.

• Protect family farms and rural areas.

• Consumer information without lifestyle nannying.

• Pragmatic fertilizer, plant-protection, and GMO rules.

• Animal welfare without shutting farms.

• Reject the “climate catastrophe / Great Transformation / Great Reset” framing; leave the Paris Agreement.

• Environment protection instead of more wind/solar industrialisation.

• Hunt as nature conservation; regulate wolves (wolf-free zones, Nordic-style caps).

• Fight invasive species; keep commercial and hobby fishing viable.

• Manage forests; no more forest-clearing for turbines.

• Keep water supply public/municipal; no extra water-withdrawal taxes; no EU water-market liberalisation.

Foreign and defence policy

• Realpolitik in the German interest, not “values-based” foreign policy.

• Europe of fatherlands; reject a centralized EU foreign/defence service.

• No interference in other states’ internal affairs (Helsinki spirit).

• Foreign NGOs in Germany must disclose funding.

• No further EU/NATO eastward enlargement.

• Multipolar world; interest-based ties with the US, China, and Russia.

• Strategic European autonomy; stay in NATO and the OSCE until a capable European military arrangement exists.

• Neutral Ukraine outside NATO and the EU; restore trade with Russia; lift Russia sanctions / restart pipeline gas (as in the program’s peace/energy chapters).

• Stop sending Bundeswehr stocks to Ukraine; stop the training burden that the program says hollowed out German forces.

• Restore conscription plus alternative service.

• Armed forces for German citizens only.

• Rebuild a German defence industry; add offensive cyber capability.

• Restore military tradition, Korpsgeist, and “German values” in the Bundeswehr.

• Rebuild civil defence and shelters.

Asylum and migration

• Label current policy “state failure”; answer is Remigration.

• Deport everyone with a final removal order; end Bürgergeld, remaining-right loopholes, and turbo-naturalisation as pull factors.

• Expand voluntary-return incentives.

• When the reason for flight ends (Syria is the worked example), start revocation procedures and talks with origin states.

• Priority removal of foreign Gefährder, extremists, and serious criminals.

• Easier expulsion for violent, drug, sex, organised, and clan crime.

• Treat imported conflicts, caliphate calls, and “Muslim antisemitism” as removal grounds.

• National control of immigration again; Germany should opt out of EU asylum policy (Danish-style).

• Federal police as a border force; turnbacks at the border; detention centres at the border.

• Leave the UN Migration and Refugee Compacts.

• Push reform of the Geneva Refugee Convention and the ECHR.

• Turn the individual constitutional asylum right into an institutional guarantee or ordinary statute; restrict it to people under immediate, concrete threat.

• Process asylum and subsidiary-protection claims outside Germany.

• Claims only with proven identity/nationality.

• No relocation quotas.

• End voluntary Afghan admission; investigate the “local staff” episode.

• Stop funding civilian Mediterranean “rescue”; disembark at the nearest port; Maghreb return deals.

• Lose asylum status for identity fraud or travel home.

• Expand safe-country lists; tighten visas.

• No family reunion as a default for subsidiary protection.

• Yearly review of protection grounds.

• Stop state funding of asylum-advice NGOs.

• No open labour-market access for applicants/rejected claimants except mandatory community work.

• Stay in central reception centres for the whole procedure.

• Benefits in kind or a payment card; cut support for people required to leave; no instant full welfare after recognition.

• Abolish remaining-right schemes, training/work Duldung, and Chancen-Aufenthalt.

• Replace Duldung with a departure-obligation certificate.

• Pressure origin states: aid cuts, visa leverage, sanctions.

• Punish NGO obstruction of removals.

• More detention near borders and airports.

• End church asylum / the BAMF-church deal.

• Integration only if the migrant can and will adapt and the host society can absorb them; language + acceptance of German law as conditions.

• Stop “giving away” citizenship; no automatic path from asylum to passport.

• Link migration to the housing shortage.

• Only limited, selected skilled immigration.

Internal security

• Tougher crime-fighting overall.

• Stricter juvenile criminal law.

• More police, better kit, nationwide pay.

• Faster courts and harsher execution of sentences.

• Revise firearms law (no further tightening in the 2017 sense; 2025 chapter is “overhaul,” still against using guns as the scapegoat).

• Treat Islamist terror as a central threat; criminalise calling for a caliphate.

• Break up no-go areas and parallel societies.

• “Oppose further spread of Islam.”

• Ban polygamy, forced marriage, child marriage.

• Restrict full-body/face covering.

• Equip the federal police for national border protection.

Democracy, parties, EU

• The people are the sovereign; secure civil rights.

• Supranational bodies must not hollow out German sovereignty.

• Swiss-style referenda on laws, constitutional change, and major treaties; citizen initiatives.

• No censorship of public debate; reject state pressure on social media.

• Restore a liberal legal order.

• Separation of powers; reform parliamentary law.

• Free list voting and a free mandate.

• End party self-service and Parteibuchwirtschaft.

• Term limits for professional politicians.

• Control lobbying.

• Depoliticise the judiciary.

• Fundamentally reform the domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz).

• Protect whistleblowers.

• Replace the EU with a “League of European Nations”: common market, external borders, security autonomy, cultural identity.

Family and demography

• Strong families as the core of society.

• Raise the birth rate rather than use mass immigration as the demographic fix.

• “Welcome culture for children.”

• Two biological sexes as fact; reject gender ideology in law and schools.

• Responsible childcare; childcare allowance.

• Reduce harm from family breakup.

• Uniform, family-protective rules on taking children into care.

Education, science, technology

• Performance culture.

• Keep the tracked school system.

• Turn Schulpflicht into a duty to be educated (opens homeschooling space).

• Bring back preschool classes.

• Keep special-needs schools.

• Viewpoint diversity instead of one ideology.

• Sensible digitalisation, not gadget-first schooling.

• Stronger teacher disciplinary powers.

• Vocational training: “more Meister than Master.”

• Stop political Islam in schools.

• Bologna failed: bring back Diplom and Magister.

• University autonomy; freedom of research and teaching (including ending gender-studies steering).

• Technology-open industrial policy; nuclear engineering; raw-material and circular economy; cautious GMO; space.

Culture and media

• German Leitkultur instead of multiculturalism.

• Protect customs and a “balanced” culture of remembrance.

• Protect the German language (no gender language).

• Limit federal culture policy; culture is a Land competence.

• No VAT on musicians, artists, freelance teachers.

• Replace the broadcasting fee with a slim “Grundfunk.”

• Reform film subsidies.

https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AfD_Bundestagswahlprogramm2025_web.pdf

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The recent IPCC scenarios continue to mislead the public. Their CMIP7 High scenario is supposed to represent the highest plausible forecast. However, similar to the previous RCP 8.5 which only recently was dismissed as implausible by the climate community despite being criticized by “outsiders” for years, CMIP7 is based on a series of implausible assumptions that make it a meaningless scenario. No doubt we will hear for the next decade or so by leftist Democrats how the faulty IPCC Scenario justifies all of their economy stifling policies.

The Honest Broker

Is the New HIGH Climate Scenario Plausible?

Note: At the bottom of this post, paid subscribers can find a methods PDF and an Excel spreadsheet with all data presented in the analysis. It is work in progress — Caveat lector…

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23 days ago · 71 likes · 16 comments · Roger Pielke Jr.

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https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/31/supreme-court-allows-white-house-ballroom-construction-to-go-forward-at-least-for-now/

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/31/strictly-ballroom-justice-kavanaugh-defeats-chief-justice-roberts/?utm_source=Reason%2BMagazine&utm_campaign=b95bf7b16b-reason_brand%7Cvolokh%7Cdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_31d7ef7f57-b95bf7b16b-589055670&mc_cid=b95bf7b16b&mc_eid=e286b59cdc

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/31/making-sense-of-the-chief-justices-tango-in-the-ballroom-case/

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jason-arday-and-whats-wrong-with-dei-9b68cc8e?st=6T1Npv&reflink=article_copyURL_share

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http://www.nber.org/papers/w35628

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https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/24/how-long-did-justice-jacksons-kafkaesque-nightmare-dissent-hold-up-trump-v-california/

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Jason Arday (a former Cambridge University professor of education, appointed around 2023 as the youngest Black professor in the university’s history) faced extensive scrutiny in mid-to-late 2026 over claims about his personal history, academic record, athletic achievements, and charity work. Many of these were challenged as fabrications, exaggerations, or inconsistencies by investigations from outlets including The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Times, and others. Arday denied being a “liar” or “fantasist,” attributed some issues (especially in academic work) to autism and inadequate supervision, and resigned amid the controversy. He died shortly afterward.

Key disputed claims about his past included:

• Childhood disability and education: He repeatedly claimed severe autism/global developmental delay diagnosed at age 3, that he was nonverbal/mute until age 11 (communicating only via sign language or gestures), and illiterate (unable to read or write) until age 18. Cambridge materials and his accounts highlighted this as part of an overcoming-adversity narrative, including a PhD by age 30. Schoolmates and others contradicted this, describing him as verbal, a “class clown” who joked, sang, and imitated voices; he left secondary school at 16 with GCSEs (which require literacy). No clear independent medical evidence was publicly substantiated for the most extreme claims.

• Medical conditions: Claims included autism, epilepsy, locked-in syndrome, a benign brain tumor (or two in some accounts), and (in a book proposal) testicular cancer. Details varied between his memoir proposal, interviews, and the published memoir Great and Unfortunate Things. A claimed childhood car accident leading to months in a coma (requiring relearning to walk and talk) appeared in the proposal but was omitted from the book.

• Athletic feats and charity fundraising: He claimed world-class endurance running, including 30 marathons in 35 days (sometimes with a hairline fracture), 300 miles in 3 days, and 600 miles in 6 days (later revised to 12 days with rests). He said these helped him raise £5–5.5 million (or more) for dozens of charities over years, sometimes presenting it as largely individual achievement. Records and scrutiny showed far smaller verified amounts (e.g., a few thousand pounds on JustGiving pages); he later said he was part of an unnamed “syndicate” or collective of ~100 people bound by NDAs. Claims of installing water points in South America and West Africa for organizations like WaterAid were denied by the charities. Semi-professional football claims were also questioned relative to available records.

• Media and early life appearances: He claimed involvement in the BBC’s Seven Up (or related) documentary series. The original began in 1964 (decades before his 1985 birth); a later generation series was also ruled out by the BBC, which stated he had nothing to do with the films.

• Academic and professional credentials: Beyond separate plagiarism allegations in his PhD thesis (extensive passages matching earlier work by another researcher) and papers (including reused or mismatched interview quotes and data issues), he claimed visiting/honorary professorships or roles at places including Ohio State University, University of Glasgow, Nelson Mandela University, and Durham University. Several institutions denied these or clarified more limited/temporary status. A claimed published book (Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse) was not published (a proposal existed but was not completed by the publisher). Other CV details and research claims faced challenges for inaccuracies or fabrication.

• Other personal claims: Alleged racist threats after the Cambridge appointment, including a severed pig’s head delivered to his family home and bananas/bullets in the post, lacked supporting evidence when checked with police and local businesses (police stated no such investigation occurred matching his description). Inconsistencies appeared between his book proposal and the final memoir on details like assault ages, suicide attempt timing, and medical history.

Professor Hilary Cremin, head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge, said hiring Arday was proof of the university’s commitment to tackling existing inequalities.

She told The Times: “Not only is Jason Arday a world-class scholar, he also brings a wealth of experience that can help us to take forward our efforts to widen participation at all levels.

“Hopefully it is becoming increasingly clear that with concerted effort and a genuine commitment to change, those barriers that still exist either to working or studying at top universities can be overcome.

“To any students or prospective colleagues who are wondering if Cambridge is a place where they can belong, the answer is, emphatically, yes.”

“[He is] the best in the world in terms of the research that [he does]”

https://thedispatch.com/article/jason-arday-cambridge-journalism-media/

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