Who has better crazies? Last night, California law enforcement moved in to start clearing the pro-Palestine encampment of protesters at UCLA.

Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers over at Columbia, which had its own night of arrests just a day prior, the college students at UCLA sprayed cops with fire extinguishers and barricaded themselves with plywood. (They literally built a wall and instituted checkpoints, the irony of which does not seem to register.)

Counter-protesters tried to pull the plywood down. They shot fireworks into the encampment. They reportedly sprayed mace. Violence on both sides ensued:

Dueling groups of pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters clashed Wednesday at UCLA, breaking out in fistfights, tearing down encampment barricades and using objects to beat one another. https://t.co/eLTOkdLARP pic.twitter.com/rlM40wLHDx

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 2, 2024

So last night, the school sent law enforcement in to attempt to stop the violence and clear the tent city. Video emerged of police using stun grenades. A little before publication time, at least one California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer shot something toward the protesters in the encampment, which was met with shouts of "Don't shoot!" and "We're just students!" (The CHP said officers are loaded with nonlethal tools like flash-bang devices. The officers also held off for roughly six hours after issuing orders for protesters to disband; they have only just recently begun moving in and attempting arrests.)

"More than 1,300 protesters have been taken into custody on U.S. campuses over the past two weeks," reported The New York Times. "Arrests were made on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Tulane University in New Orleans, among other places."

The questions of what type of speech ought to be permitted are fairly thorny here. Restrictions on speech should, of course, be content-neutral. Public and private universities have different obligations. Protests surely run afoul of university policies when they disrupt university operations:

Campus operations will be limited tomorrow and Friday. Please continue to avoid campus and the Royce Quad area. Per Academic Senate guidance on instruction, all in-person classes are authorized and required to pivot to remote tomorrow and Friday. https://t.co/MNiqJ7bu67

— UCLA (@UCLA) May 2, 2024

And protests that devolve into vandalism and violence—as many have—ought to be treated differently than mere speech. One could make the case that encampments, housing peaceful protesters, are civil disobedience, but part of what makes civil disobedience work is being willing to stoically incur harsh consequences for your actions. Universities are well within their rights to clear tent cities from their campuses, but perhaps protesters who believe in their cause would be better served by simply taking the arrest and proving to the interested public that they are willing to sacrifice for this cause.

Absent that, the UCLA protesters—who have likened the waving of bananas near their encampment (since someone has an allergy) to Israeli settlers waving machine guns, and prevented students from attending class—deserve little respect.

Relevance allergies: Yesterday, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) announced a huge convention get: Former President Donald Trump will be speaking, and you can even buy merch in preparation for the big event (never mind the fact that the man already had four years during which he could have pardoned Julian Assange or Ross Ulbricht, yet chose not to). It says it also invited President Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak, but to my mind it's not exactly shocking that Biden ignored the invite.

The Libertarian Party is selling Trump-themed merch ahead of a speech by Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, at the Libertarian National Convention. https://t.co/S0zelJMszJ https://t.co/msMmma51o2 pic.twitter.com/vN9T0napjF

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) May 1, 2024

"I know there are some libertarians who have a severe allergy to relevance, but it is an undeniably great thing that Trump is speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention," wrote comedian Dave Smith on X. "It will generate more attention on our party and the issues that we care about, than we've ever had."

Perhaps you're sitting there wondering why the L.P.—which, at this convention, will be nominating its own presidential candidate (contenders include Chase Oliver, Mike ter Maat, and Michael Rectenwald)—would want to host the former president and presumptive nominee for another party. To answer these questions, I called up L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams.

All publicity = good publicity? The media attention "is going to be more than we have ever experienced," says McWilliams. "Do you think libertarians will be happy about it?" I asked, to a firm yes from him: "This gives us an opportunity to get Donald Trump up there, to make him answer questions from our philosophical base." When I asked who would be moderating—who will be doing the pushing back, and making sure Trump doesn't turn this into a bloviating stump speech—he said he did not yet know, but possibly the L.P. chair, Angela McArdle.

"RFK [Jr.] was flirting with [the L.P.] because we are a growing bloc. Trump's seeing that," says McWilliams. "Growing bloc via what metric?" I asked. "I think we now are getting to a point where we're representing more Americans," he continued, to which I pressed: "Do we have data that reflects that?"

"We don't have data that reflects that as far as party registration or affiliation," responded McWilliams. "I'm basically speaking from the point of what we're seeing from a cultural perspective." Following the Reno Reset in 2022, at which point the Mises Caucus—essentially, mostly anarcho-capitalist edgelords who spend a lot of time online—took over the party, libertarians have widely criticized the nouveau L.P. for its dropping membership and struggles with fundraising.

As for the merch, McWilliams says "it was basically an internal miscommunication as far as timing…some version of merch might be made available, I can't say if it's going to be that exact variety." And, there's still "a question of whether or not we want to be selling merch for Donald Trump that's affiliated with the Libertarian Party or not."

"This was something that somebody clearly spent time and resources on," I noted, to which he admitted that "without a doubt there was internal thought given to creating the merchandise, you know, that there's no denying that….[But] this was not something that I wanted to go out the same exact day the same exact time." All of this struck me as wishy-washy, like they were caught in something that looked bad, and want to save face.

Awfully close? McArdle released a meandering 17-minute video chalking up a lot of the rollout awkwardness to internal incompetence.

"The founders of this party were hardcore radicals. They were anarchists. They hated the government. Many of our members are anarchists; we want total abolition of the federal government. And when we see someone else [Donald Trump] get potentially kicked off the ballot for, you know, not agreeing with the election results, complaining about the federal government, and so on and so forth, that looks awfully close to some of the views we have about the legitimacy of the federal government."

Well then! So maybe this isn't an L.P. endorsement of Trump, but boy could you be forgiven for thinking they fancy him and are willing to excuse some of his more election-subverting actions.

Scenes from New York: It's now confirmed, both by Columbia's president and by Mayor Eric Adams, that "individuals not affiliated with the university" were the ones leading the Hamilton Hall break-in and barricade that got shut down by NYPD yesterday. "Approximately 300 people were arrested," and they do not know the breakdown yet of outside agitators vs. students.

QUICK HITS

• Bill Ackman, a major Harvard donor who was one of the top voices calling for former President Claudine Gay to step down following her insufficient handling of antisemitism on campus, has seemingly decided to take his dollars elsewhere:

William. pic.twitter.com/tdkHbzSIfK

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) May 1, 2024

• "NO bagels" needed at the UCLA pro-Palestine encampment. (Too Jewish-coded? Are they coming for lox next? SMH, I knew I didn't like these kids.)
• "Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell kept hopes alive for an interest-rate cut this year while acknowledging that a burst of inflation has reduced policymakers' confidence that price pressures are ebbing," reported Bloomberg. Jerome, you big tease!
• Everything you ever wanted to know about regional skating cultures and the Atlanta scene.
• "Lack of ammunition is forcing the outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers to pull back, one village after another, including three surrendered Sunday, as intense fighting roils the countryside surrounding Avdiivka nearly three months after the strategic city fell to Russia," reported the Associated Press. "Facing an outcry after Avdiivka's fall, Ukraine is rushing to build concrete-fortified trenches, foxholes, firing positions and other barricades on the front lines. But relentless Russian shelling, lack of equipment and crippling bureaucracy plague construction across the vast 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, even as a new Russian offensive looms."
• How to stay fit on the moon.

The post L.A. Beats NYC? appeared first on Reason.com.

Data center developers in Northern Virginia are asking utility Dominion Energy Inc. for as much power as several nuclear reactors can generate, in the latest sign of how artificial intelligence is helping drive up electricity demand.

Dominion regularly fields requests from developers whose planned data center campuses need as much as “several gigawatts” of electricity, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue said Thursday during the company’s first-quarter earnings call. A gigawatt is roughly the output of a nuclear reactor and can power 750,000 homes.

Electric utilities are facing the biggest demand jump in a generation. Along with data centers to run AI computing, America’s grid is being strained by new factories and the electrification of everything from cars to home heating.

Here is more from Josh Saul from Bloomberg.  As I have been telling people, be long power generation…

The post Northern Virginia fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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• In reply to rayward. I always suspected that local executives ... by rayward
• In reply to Adam. Yes , but we use more electronics. Isn’t ... by mento
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There's a new proposal on Capitol Hill to improve air travel. On the one hand, it will slow down passenger screening and lengthen checkpoint lines.  On the other hand, it will make you a little less safe.

Remarkably, the idea of combining slower TSA wait times with weaker security has bipartisan support from fourteen Senators, led by Sen. Merkley (D-OR) and Sen. Kennedy (R-LA). Naturally, they're not selling their proposal that way. Instead, they claim to be saving air travelers from themselves—and from Big Brother.

They're wrong on all counts.

The Merkley-Kennedy amendment to FAA reauthorization will be offered in the next few days. If passed, it would prevent TSA from expanding its use of face recognition technology in place of ID checks.

This is remarkable. We've all gone through TSA checkpoints juggling a carry-on in one hand and a briefcase or purse in the other while using any leftover hands to hold wallets and present IDs to the TSA officer. Lacking four hands, each passenger spends time fumbling with these items at the checkpoint, guaranteeing an extra couple of minutes' delay; at a busy airport, that all adds up to much longer wait times for everyone

TSA's pilot project, Touchless ID, is far more efficient.  I saw it in action at Atlanta's airport as a member of the Commission on Seamless and Secure Travel. Passengers walk up, stand on a circle, look at the camera, and are cleared in seconds. Even when the neighboring PreCheck line was backed up, the lane for Touchless ID never had more than one or two people in it. I've never seen happier people at a TSA checkpoint.

Maybe that's what worries politicians and groups like the ACLU, who have campaigned relentlessly against facial recognition. They're afraid they'll lose if they let ordinary travelers make up their own minds about TSA and facial recognition.

It sure looks like that's what Senators Merkley and Kennedy have in mind. Their amendment would flat-out prohibit TSA from expanding face recognition at its checkpoints—in Atlanta or at an airport near you.

What justifies this ban? Well, advocacy groups claim that face recognition invades privacy and discriminates based on travelers' race. But neither charge is true.

Privacy fears are particularly overdone; the system I saw compared a picture the government already had (a passport photo) to a picture taken at the checkpoint and then discarded. And everyone who got in that lane knew what they were doing; the whole process is built on consent

Claims of bias based on skin tone or race, meanwhile, are years out of date. According to recent studies by TSA and CBP and by NIST, facial recognition systems demonstrate a negligible difference in accuracy when identifying members of different groups, as long as the systems use good algorithms, good lighting, and good cameras. TSA's sister agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), uses such a system already, and in daily use, it shows no significant demographic disparities, operating at an accuracy rate that consistently exceeds 98 percent.

What about security? It turns out that human beings are nowhere near 98 percent accuracy when they check ID. The technology is far better at matching faces than even experienced passport examiners. As for bias, it's worth remembering that handing decisions to human being doesn't eliminate that risk. If you want to be safer, and run less risk of bias, algorithmic face recognition is the better choice.

That leaves just one question for supporters of the Kennedy-Merkley amendment.

Why are you afraid to let travelers make their own decisions about face recognition?

The post The Senate's "Longer Lines, Less Security" Caucus appeared first on Reason.com.

Enlarge / An iPhone in Standby mode, charging wirelessly on a desk. (credit: Apple)

If your iPhone's alarm hasn't woken you lately, it seems you're not alone: Apple has confirmed to Today that a software bug is to blame, following user complaints on TikTok and other social platforms.

Apple is "aware of an issue causing some iPhone alarms to not play the expected sound," according to the report and "is working on a fix." The company's official statement didn't go into more detail on what caused the bug or why it seems to affect some users but not others.

These sorts of bugs usually relate to some kind of time change; one circa 2010 iOS alarm bug was caused by Daylight Saving Time, and another cropped up in the first two days of 2011 when alarms suddenly stopped working for the first two days of the year (for whatever reason. they began working properly again on January 3 without any kind of software update). Daylight Saving Time in 2024 kicked in all the way back in mid-March, so it's hard to say whether the problem is related to the change this time around.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

By Riazat Butt | Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan — Around 30 men are crammed into a Kabul classroom, part of the debut student cohort at a Taliban-run institute training tourism and hospitality professionals.

It’s a motley crew. One student is a model. Another is 17 and has no job history.

The students vary in age, education level and professional experience. They’re all men — Afghan women are banned from studying beyond sixth grade — and they don’t know anything about tourism or hospitality. But they are all eager to promote a different side of Afghanistan. And the Taliban are happy to help.

Afghanistan’s rulers are pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls. The economy is struggling, infrastructure is poor, and poverty is rife.

And yet, foreigners are visiting the country, encouraged by the sharp drop in violence, increased flight connections with hubs like Dubai, and the bragging rights that come with vacationing in an unusual destination. The numbers aren’t huge — they never were — but there’s a buzz around Afghan tourism.

In 2021, there were 691 foreign tourists. In 2022, that figure rose to 2,300. Last year, there were 7,000.

Mohammad Saeed, the head of the Tourism Directorate in Kabul, said the biggest foreign visitor market is China because of its proximity and large population. Afghanistan also has advantages over some of its neighbors.

“They’ve told me they don’t want to go to Pakistan because it’s dangerous and they get attacked. The Japanese have said this to me also,” Saeed said. “This is good for us.”But there are disadvantages, too.

Visas are difficult and expensive to access. Many countries severed ties with Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power, and no country recognizes them as the legitimate rulers of the country.

Afghan embassies either closed or suspended their operations. There’s an ongoing power struggle between Afghanistan’s embassies and consulates staffed by people from the former Western-backed administration, and those under the Taliban administration’s full control.

Saeed concedes there are obstacles for Afghan tourism to develop but said he was working with ministries to overcome them.

His ultimate aim is to have a visa on arrival for tourists, but that could be years away. There are problems with the road network, which is half-paved or non-existent in some parts of the country, and airlines largely avoid Afghan airspace.

The capital Kabul has the most international flights, but no Afghan airport has direct routes with major tourist markets like China, Europe, or India.

Despite the challenges, Saeed wants Afghanistan to become a tourism powerhouse, an ambition that appears to be backed by the Taliban’s top leaders.

“I have been sent to this department on the instructions of the elders (ministers). They must trust me because they’ve sent me to this important place.”

The students also have aspirations. The model, Ahmed Massoud Talash, wants to learn about Afghanistan’s picturesque spots for Instagram posts and its history for media appearances.

Business school graduate Samir Ahmadzai wants to open a hotel but thinks he should know more about tourism and hospitality first.

“They hear that Afghanistan is backwards, poverty and all about war,” said Ahmadzai. “We have 5,000 years of history. There should be a new page of Afghanistan.”

Classes include Afghan handicrafts and anthropology basics.

An unofficial subject is how to interact with foreign women and how their behavior or habits could clash with local customs and edicts. Examples might be women smoking or eating in public, to mixing freely with men who are not related to them by blood or marriage.

The Taliban have imposed a dress code for women and requirements for them to have a male guardian, or mahram, when they travel. Dining alone, traveling alone, and socializing with other women in public have become harder. With gyms closed to women and beauty salons banned, there are fewer places where they can meet outside the home.

In a sign that the country is preparing for more overseas visitors, the country’s only five-star hotel, the Serena, has reopened its women’s spa and salon for foreign females after a monthslong closure.

Foreigners must show their passport to access services. Women with “born in Afghanistan” on their ID are barred.

Shane Horan, the founder of Rocky Road Travel, said visiting Afghanistan should not be seen as an endorsement of any particular government or political regime.

“Ultimately, the goal should be to support responsible tourism practices that contribute positively to the local economy and foster mutual respect and understanding, while also remaining cognizant of the broader political context in Afghanistan.”

He said there was no input from authorities about what tour groups saw or did, and that the company worked closely with a women’s rights organization in Afghanistan. A percentage of the tour cost went into supporting this organization’s programs, Horan added.

There are no women at the Institute of Tourism & Hotel Management. The students don’t mention it. But an official at the Tourism Directorate does.

“It’s a heartbreaking situation,” said the official, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “Even female family members ask if they can study here. But there was a change in policy with the change in government. The women who were studying before (the takeover) never came back. They never graduated.”

Japan has 140 businesses that are at least 500 years old. A few claim to have been operating continuously for more than 1,000 years.

It’s astounding to think what these businesses have endured – dozens of wars, emperors, catastrophic earthquakes, tsunamis, depressions, on and on, endlessly. And yet they keep selling, generation after generation.

These ultra-durable businesses are called “shinise,” and studies of them show they tend to share a common characteristic: they hold tons of cash, and no debt. That’s part of how they endure centuries of constant calamities.

I love the quote from author Kent Nerburn that, “Debt defines your future, and when your future is defined, hope begins to die.”

Not only does hope begin to die, but the number of outcomes you can endure does, too.

Let’s say this represents volatility over your life. Not just market volatility, but life world and life volatility: recessions, wars, divorces, illness, moves, floods, changes of heart, etc.

With no debt, the number of volatile events you can withstand throughout life might fall within a range that looks like this:

A few extreme events might do you in, but you’re pretty durable.

With more debt, the range of what you can endure shrinks:

And with tons of debt, it tightens even more:

I think this is the most practical way to think about debt: As debt increases, you narrow the range of outcomes you can endure in life.

That’s so simple. But it’s different from how debt is typically viewed, which is a tool to pull forward demand and leverage assets, where the only downside is the cost of capital (the interest rate).

Two things are important when you view debt as a narrowing of endurable outcomes.

One is you start to ponder how common volatility is.

I hope to be around for another 50 years. What are the odds that during those 50 years I will experience one or more of the following: Wars, recessions, terrorist attacks, pandemics, bad political decisions, family emergencies, unforeseen health crises, career transitions, wayward children, and other mishaps?

One-hundred percent. The odds are 100%.

When you think of it like that, you take debt’s narrowing of survivable outcomes seriously.

The other is you think about the kinds of volatile events that could do you in.

Financial volatility is an obvious one – you find yourself unable to make your debt payments. But there’s also psychological volatility, where for whatever reason you can’t mentally endure your job any longer. There’s family volatility, which can be anything from divorce to caring for a relative. There’s child volatility, which could fill a book. Health volatility, political volatility, on and on. The world’s a wild place.

I’m not an anti-debt zealot. There’s a time and place, and used responsibly it’s a wonderful tool.

But once you view debt as narrowing what you can endure in a volatile world, you start to see it as a constraint on the asset that matters most: having options and flexibility.