"The solution to our Nation’s racial problems thus cannot come from policies grounded in affirmative action or some other conception of equity," Thomas writes. "Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism. Instead, the solution announced in the second founding is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race," he adds. "Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors."

Elsewhere in his concurring opinion, Thomas lays bare the left's flawed — and quite racist — beliefs about different races.

"In fact, all racial categories are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities. Of course, that is false," Thomas notes. "Members of the same race do not all share the exact same experiences and viewpoints; far from it," he explains. "A black person from rural Alabama surely has different experiences than a black person from Manhattan or a black first-generation immigrant from Nigeria, in the same way that a white person from rural Vermont has a different perspective than a white person from Houston, Texas."

Despite this obvious reality, Thomas reminds that "universities’ racial policies suggest that racial identity 'alone constitutes the being of the race or the man.'"

"That is the same naked racism upon which segregation itself was built," Thomas rightly concludes. "Small wonder, then, that these policies are leading to increasing racial polarization and friction." //

Justice Jackson uses her broad observations about statistical relationships between race and select measures of health, wealth, and well-being to label all blacks as victims. Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me. I cannot deny the great accomplishments of black Americans, including those who succeeded despite long odds.

Nor do Justice Jackson's statistics regarding a correlation between levels of health, wealth, and well-being between selected racial groups prove anything. Of course, none of those statistics are capable of drawing a direct causal link between race—rather than socioeconomic status or any other factor—and individual outcomes. So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.

"Justice Jackson’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step," Thomas declares. "Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them," he notes. "And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism," Thomas adds. //

The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements are superior to the Constitution.

The Court’s opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled. And, it sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes. Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our Nation’s equality ideal. In short, they are plainly—and boldly—unconstitutional. See Brown II, 349 U. S., at 298 (noting that the Brown case one year earlier had “declare[d] the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional”).

While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.

Some listeners prefer to listen to our live streams using their PC or Macbook-based players or on internet radios (iTunes, VLC, Sonos, etc). Check out our secure MP3 and AAC direct stream links for our six live stream channels.

What you need to do is create a shortcut. Right-click a blank area on the desktop and go to New > Shortcut.

In the wizard that opens, click in the box underneath Type the location of the item, and enter the following:

Shutdown /r /fw /t 1

If you’re not familiar with these commands, /r means restart, /fw means boot to firmware (aka the BIOS) and /t introduces a delay in seconds before the restart begins. In our example above, that’s one second.

Call this new shortcut Restart to BIOS. Right-click your new shortcut on the desktop and select Properties. Click the Advanced button.

In the Properties box, tick the Run as administrator box and click on OK a couple of times to close the windows.

Forward calls only when busy or on another line

1. On your phone's dial pad, enter *71
2. Enter the phone number (including area code) where you want your calls to be forwarded to
   (e.g., *71-908-123-4567)
3. Tap the Call button and wait for confirmation. You should hear a confirmation tone or message
4. End your call

Cancel Call Forwarding

1. On your phone's dial pad, enter *73
2. Tap the Call button and wait for confirmation. You should hear a confirmation tone or message
3. End your call

https://instapundit.substack.com/p/run-silent-run-very-very-deep

Most cutting edge technology starts out as a rich man’s toy. Automobiles, passenger airplanes, VCRs, etc. all started out that way. Letting rich people buy the tech drives the technology and pushes prices down over time so that ordinary people can afford it.

I don’t think ordinary people will ever be interested in doing miles-deep dives, but improved subsea technology is a very big deal. We often hear about how unexplored the deep ocean depths are, and there’s a reason for that – we aren’t very good at it yet. We get better at it by doing it. We can do it more if people are willing and able to pay for it.

The same is true with the various space tourism efforts. Sure, it’s mostly rich people buying a thrill. But by doing so they open up the technology for the rest of us. Unlike the test pilots, they aren’t doing it for a living; they’re doing it out of love, and even paying for the privilege. That seems commendable to me. //

Cleetus | June 29, 2023 at 7:37 am
There is a disease of arrogance that seems to infect virtually everything today. Everybody is an expert while true experts and experience are treated with disdain. People claim expertise based simply on their race or gender when, in reality, they know little. Rigor in education and training is longer valued lest we hurt people’s feelings.. In this case, people with this attitude were rewarded with death. This should be a wake up call. How much longer are we going to allow this disrespect for reality interfere with just about every aspect of our lives?

There are an awful lot of people who feel that simply because this is Linux, they have some kind of right to get it for free. Unfortunately, they don't.

That is not what the "free" in Free Software means, and it never was. Red Hat puts an enormous amount of work into developing Free Software, into making sure its code makes its way back upstream, and into producing safe, secure, and long-term stable supported versions of inherently rapidly changing FOSS software, aimed primarily at large enterprise customers. //

And perhaps the clearest sign that it's not really interested in dealing with small users and small customers is that it continues to make the product available free of charge for those who only want up to 16 servers. //

There are a host – pun intended – of other distros out there if you don't want to pay for your Linux. If you are happy to pay but you feel aggrieved with IBM or Red Hat, both Canonical and SUSE will be happy to take your money and provide you with enterprise-level support, and both of them let you get and use a version of their enterprise OS entirely free of charge.

Use Google Voice voicemail instead of your phone's voicemail

Most mobile phone carriers provide a feature called Conditional Call Forwarding (CCF) or No answer/busy transfer. To send busy or unanswered calls to your Google Voice voicemail, set up this feature on your mobile number.

Each mobile phone carrier uses a set of star (*) commands to turn conditional call forwarding on or off. These commands may vary by carrier. For the most accurate information, contact your mobile carrier and ask for their conditional call forwarding commands.

Conditional Call Forwarding (CCF)

Verizon Wireless has 2 methods to control conditional call forwarding: star (*) commands, or a menu on their customer website. You can use either method.

To turn on conditional call forwarding, enter *711234567890 on your phone’s keypad, wait for the confirmation stutter tone, then hang up.

To turn off conditional call forwarding, enter *73 on your phone’s keypad, wait for the confirmation stutter tone, then hang up.

Rickover was an absolute beast about safety, yet took military necessity into account when necessary, in ways that I can’t discuss but that are a major reason why the U.S. Navy’s submarine force is such a force to be reckoned with. As Wikipedia says about the Cold War, “U.S. submarines far outperformed the Soviet ones in the crucial area of stealth, and Rickover’s obsessive fixation on safety and quality control gave the U.S. nuclear Navy a vastly superior safety record to the Soviet one.” Of note: Rickover had seven rules that seem mostly applicable to OceanGate. They are:

Rule 1: You must have a rising standard of quality over time, and well beyond what is required by any minimum standard.

Rule 2: People running complex systems should be highly capable.

Rule 3: Supervisors have to face bad news when it comes and take problems to a level high enough to fix those problems.

Rule 4: You must have a healthy respect for the dangers and risks of your particular job.

Rule 5: Training must be constant and rigorous.

Rule 6: All the functions of repair, quality control, and technical support must fit together.

Rule 7: The organization and members thereof must have the ability and willingness to learn from mistakes of the past. //

During my time, which was mostly after Rickover’s passing, another feature that became embedded in submarine culture was the concept of “forceful backup,” meaning that junior members of a watch team were empowered, encouraged, and required to speak up when something didn’t seem right, even if they were the newest person on the ship and the action being taken was the Captain’s. //

Reading the dozens of stories about the OceanGate disaster, the things that stand out to me are that Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, employed personnel not based on merit, refused to have the Titan inspected by a third-party, and did not like to hear bad news. None of those are good. //

A submarine pilot hired to assess the now-missing Titanic submersible warned in 2018 that its hull monitoring system would only detect failure “often milliseconds before an implosion.”

David Lochridge, a submarine pilot and inspector from Scotland, said in court filings that he was fired after expressing concerns about the safety of the Titan — a 22-foot submersible that disappeared on Sunday while carrying five people to see the wreck of the Titanic.