I'm not grading your papers, you are. What that says about either of us, I leave to the reader.

That would make school a lot easier.

Grading your own papers?

As the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians, he's a good bit more than "a pretty wise guy." If you believe in him at all.

We figured then. and know now, that Zuckerberg was classified in the wrong phylum. He does not belong among the chordates.

It does if you think there is a "first speaker" privilege. Having grown up in a place where my views were not popular, I learned early on that free speech is a two-way street, and that its exercise takes a certain genital endowment. Spare me the lament of bubble-wrapped sophomores who claim to feel inhibited in expressing thoughts they think they think and might even believe they stand for.
What's going on now is a different thing, though it has been done before, during WWI and its aftermath, and during the height of the Cold War. Because, all too often, it works.

Government agencies formed to do specific tasks should stay in their lane.

That's how it's done.

The stuff people have been talking about since, oh, 2020.

Where, and how long ago, had we heard all this before?

"Like"?

"Shut down" is doing a lot of work here. Especially for something that has been out in public and widely discussed for years.

You didn't answer my first question, so I'm not surprised that you didn't answer the second. But why, after all this time, would you think I'm pretending about not understanding you? It's the normal state of affairs around here.

"Better" for what?

I don't get a vote on who my neighbors are, and they don't get a vote on me. Is it different where you live?

Well, yes. But it works. And that's good enough for far too many people.

Really don't mind if I sit this one out.

Imagine having a President who would care about this information, read the document, and think about such things.

What schools might Obama's kids get into where they wouldn't if they were white?

If the claim is that people incorrectly call A, which they don't understand, B, which they also don't understand, then I don't disagree with this. But since they would almost certainly call C, which they also don't understand, B, if they came to think they had thoughts about C or were told by some intellectual hustler that they were supposed to have certain thoughts about C, I think it more accurate to say that they don't mean anything rather than that they are making a discrete mistake.

Maybe there's a connection between that and our lack of anything like Russell's BBC talks on our mass media.

Loved the send-up.

My assumption is that people mean “critical theorist” when they say “Marxist” these days.

You assume people mean things. The basis for that assumption is shaky.

Optimist.

The agencies know where I am and can send the fashion models any time. I'll gladly spill my guts.

I go back to what I've said before. Intelligence services may, or may not, have resources that would give them insight into the sloppiness of Chinese lab practices, and they might have some insight into whether some mishap occurred in this case. And they may not be able to tell us just what they know or how they know it, for tradecraft reasons. But if they are relying on scientific evidence, like the scientific agencies, I don't see why they are more credible than actual scientific agencies.

At minimum I would say there is no reason to believe the political left in this country cares about freedom of speech.

And the political right never has cared, and has, historically, been more effective in stomping on it.