Everett Wells

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman:

“Don’t look at what the proponents of one system or another say are their intentions. Look at what the actual results are.”

“Socialism, which means government ownership and operation of means of production, has appealed to high-minded, fine people, people of idealistic views, because of the supposed objectives of socialism.”

“But you have to ask the question: does the system, no matter what its proponents say, produce those results? Once you look at the results, it’s crystal clear that they do not. Social injustice is clearly greatest where you have central control.”

[Electroverse @Electroversenet]

Dr Mototaka Nakamura has called climate models mere "toys."

They're tuned with guesswork, he says, ignore key drivers like clouds, oceans and the sun, and cannot predict climate.

Dr Nakamura is far from fringe.

He earned his doctorate at MIT, worked with NASA and Caltech, and spent 25 years studying climate dynamics.

"Climate models are Mickey-Mouse mockeries of the real world," he says. And he argues scientists have falsified records to exaggerate recent warming, exaggerations that underpin trillion-dollar policies.

Nakamura says meaningful climate forecasting is an impossibility, and that CO2 isn't the control knob.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

The V-Shaped Perception Gap: The stronger people’s political commitments, the less accurate their understanding of what the other side thinks. The politically disengaged have the most accurate picture of their fellow citizens’ views.

https://t.co/yHPuTwBS7T

[Jota @jota_snchez]

En 1979, un presentador de TV le preguntó a Milton Friedman si no le daba vergüenza defender un sistema basado en la codicia.

La respuesta se estudia hasta hoy:

«—Cuando ves la mala distribución de la riqueza, tan pocos que tienen tanto y tantos que no tienen nada… ¿nunca has dudado del capitalismo, de si la codicia es una buena idea?

—Primero dime: ¿conoces alguna sociedad que NO funcione con codicia? ¿Crees que Rusia no funciona con codicia? ¿Que China no?

¿Y qué es la codicia? Ninguno de nosotros es codicioso, claro. El codicioso siempre es el otro.

Los grandes logros de la civilización no salieron de despachos del gobierno. Einstein no construyó su teoría por orden de un burócrata. Ford no revolucionó el automóvil así.

Los únicos casos en la historia en los que las masas escaparon de la pobreza son aquellos donde hubo capitalismo y libre comercio.

—Pero parece premiar la habilidad de manipular el sistema, no la virtud.

—¿Y qué premia la virtud? ¿Crees que un comisario comunista premia la virtud? ¿Un Hitler? ¿Crees que los presidentes americanos eligen sus cargos por virtud… o por peso político?

Dime: ¿dónde están esos ángeles que van a organizar la sociedad por nosotros?

Yo ni siquiera confío en ti para hacerlo.»

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

Islamic scholar in California says the quiet part out loud:

“Islam is not just a religion. It is a complete political, social, and economic system.

Anything that is not Sharia, we will not obey. We are superior to everyone else, and we will dominate the entire world!”

[Noa Tishby @noatishby]

“Mayor Mamdani, I’m an Arab Muslim Israeli, and let me tell you why you’re wrong.” Lourd Atia debunks all of Zohran Mamdani’s lies and shares the truth about what life is really like for her in Israel.

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

When I was in academia, one of my colleagues was obsessed with therapy and was shocked to learn that I had never been.

Part of her sales pitch for going was that therapy would “reveal all the ways your parents f*cked you up.”

I have the best relationship imaginable with my parents. Why would I pay a stranger to play the role of a quack reverse fortune-teller whose goal is to sow resentment and strain my relationship with my family?

How would that make my life better?

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

Hi Senator Hickenlooper.

You have opinions. But I have evidence. All science is numbers; let's look at them.

The link between climate change (in an anthropogenic sense) and droughts is actually not so crystal clear.

Globally, there has been no statistically significant change in the amount of land area experiencing meteorological drought since the early 1980s, when reliable monitoring began (p-value = 0.195). Trends in exceptional drought are even less significant (p = 0.263)

🔗https://t.co/9dNRQEItaH

Chapter 11 of IPCC AR6 WG1 affirms this, stating in Section 6.4.5,

💬 “𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒐𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠. . . 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝒎𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒖𝒎 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛-𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝒂𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒍 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔, 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎. 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛-𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑙𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑙-𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝒉𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅-𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔.”

🔗https://t.co/eBo6M72r2l

Vicente-Serrano et al. (2022) investigated changes in various drought types, concluding similarly that,

💬 “𝑨 𝒈𝒍𝒐𝒃𝒂𝒍 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒐𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝑏𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑠, 𝑎𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑎 𝑓𝑒𝑤 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑜𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠.”

What's more, the authors found that the observed regional increases in hydrological droughts were largely related to other man-made influences such as land use change, not a from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

💬 “𝑰𝒏𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝒉𝒚𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑠 𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒍 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 (𝑒.𝑔., 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎, 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐵𝑟𝑎𝑧𝑖𝑙).”

🔗https://t.co/v3KzYc1tp4

In the U.S., there has been no increase in either the amount of abnormally dry land area or magnitude of droughts since at least 1895. The worst droughts on record occurred during the 1930s and 1950s.

🔗https://t.co/NEp0TaQ9oh

As for the western U.S., while much of the region has indeed been in drought for the last 25 years, it is not at all unprecedented in geological scope, though it is in terms of its socioeconomic impacts simply because of the tens of millions of people who live there and rely on the water. That said, meteorologically speaking, the region has experienced many droughts eclipsing the current, the most recent of which lasted ~400 years from 900–1300 AD during the Medieval Warm Period (Cook et al., 2004).

🔗https://t.co/cDYishn7Rh

Morgan & Pomerleau (2012) further support the idea of a Medieval Megadrought with a study on Cliff Lake in the Sierra Nevada. They concluded that waters in Cliff Lake were ~5 meters lower than present levels for a period of ~50 years more than 600 years ago. They were able to determine this by radiocarbon dating the wood and noting where the stump is submerged.

🔗https://t.co/YpRV5e2JOu

While drought increasing in certain regions (e.g., the Western U.S.) would potentially be consistent with anthropogenic global warming, it's also consistent with natural global warming or some combination of both. The fact is that GHGs had nothing to do with the Medieval Megadrought, so it becomes quite challenging attributing the ongoing [and less severe drought] to GHG forcing.

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

Approximately 85% of the world’s refugees are Muslims. But for some reason they don’t seek asylum in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, or any of the other 50 Muslim countries.

They only want to go to Western and Christian countries. Why do you think this is?

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

Postmodern views are linked to authoritarianism.

https://t.co/yHPuTwCpXr

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Someone explain this to me slowly, because I'm clearly the idiot here.

We plant a Mediterranean nut in a Californian desert. It doesn't rain there, so we drain a ten-thousand-year-old aquifer until the ground itself sinks a foot a year and whole towns get shorter. The trees can't fight off fungus, so we spray the lot. They can't pollinate themselves, so every February we truck thirty billion bees across a continent and let a fair share of them die in the crush. Then we chill the harvest and sail it six thousand miles to Britain, where it rains constantly and always has, to be blitzed with water and gums and sold to you at £2.40 a carton with a green leaf on the side.

That is the environmentally friendly option.

Twelve miles down the road there's a bloke with cattle in a field. Rain falls on the hill. Grass drinks it. Cow eats grass. Nothing pumped, sprayed, chilled or shipped. No bees died. Her entire supply chain is weather.

That is the planetary emergency.

And it'll be explained to you by someone holding a carton of desert water, wearing a fleece made of crude oil.

Asking for the cow. She's been very patient about it.

[Ayaan Hirsi Ali @Ayaan]

It's time to teach our children to love reading

[Eli Steele @Hebro_Steele]

This is not moral leadership of any sort but the use of the mayoral office to sanitize the lies about Israel and Hamas. This is the most corrupted form of identity politics where truth is buried for the power that comes from the lies of the “oppressed.” The real oppressor here is @ZohranKMamdani.

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

Hi Letitia,

I am a meteorologist. Maybe I can be of some help here.

The wildfire smoke we have seen recently blanketing the skies across the central / eastern U.S. came from Canada. I attached an animation below on the left for your viewing pleasure.

Suing the Trump EPA is not going to stop forest fires any more than President Trump threatening to levy tariffs on Canada will stop them. In your case, the fires aren't our nation's problem, and in Trump's case, over 50% of fires in Canada are caused by lightning and because the majority of Canada's boreal forests are in remote locations that are difficult to access, proper forest management isn't easily feasible.

As for exceedingly high temperatures, what you are describing there is, well, summer. This your first year on Earth, lady? Summers are hot. They always have been. They always will be. And, in the case of unusual heat, the average number of heatwave events per year—defined as three or more consecutive days with daily maximum temperatures ≥90th percentile relative to 1991−2020 climatology (TX90p)—have decreased by 20.2% since the beginning of the 20th century (1994−2025 average minus 1901−30).

I am interested in scientific facts, not fairytales, and your frivolous suit should be dismissed in court no sooner than it is brought forward.

cc: @NewYorkStateAG

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Nobody has ever made the dark feel as real as old Disney did.

In these films the night isn't an absence of light. It's a color, and someone mixed it by hand…

Disney had its own paint laboratory, built by a woman named Mary Weiser, the first of its kind in animation. Its job was to invent shades that did not exist yet. In the early thirties, when the studio was still making shorts, there were around eighty shades on the shelves. By the time they finished Snow White there were fifteen hundred.

Every one of them went on by hand, cel by cel, and each cel needed hours to dry before it could be photographed.

The Ink and Paint department was almost entirely women. According to the Walt Disney Family Museum, the paints were sometimes named after them, and to have a color carry your name was considered an honour.

So the dark of Bambi's forest, the lamplight in Geppetto's workshop, the blue at Cinderella's attic window: none of it is a filter or a setting or a dimmer turned down. Each is a specific colour that a specific person mixed in a jar, and some of those jars had her name on the label.

That is why these scenes still feel more alive than anything made since. We went from hands, to computers, to AI, and at every step there is a little less of the person left in it…

The author Joanna Maciejewska said it better than anyone: "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

Why don’t history books refer to Muslims as colonizers, oppressors, genociders, slave traders, and imperialists?

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

Hi Congressman.

You have opinions. But I have data.

Let's look at it.

1⃣ Wildfires occur every year all over the world. That's true this year, just like it was last year and 5,000 years ago. But as it turns out, worldwide fire burn area is at a record low year-to-date.

🔗https://t.co/vSoivt7c80

2⃣ Globally, there has been no statistically significant increase in the amount of land area in droughts across all Drought Monitor categories since reliable satellite monitoring began in 1980. These include severe and exceptional droughts.

🔗https://t.co/9dNRQEItaH

3⃣ Heatwaves have increased in many regions around the globe since 1950, sure, but in areas that have good data coverage before then, long-term trends are more nuanced. For example, here in the U.S., the number of heatwaves (defined as three or more consecutive days with daily maximum temperatures ≥90th percentile relative to 1991−2020 climatology) have decreased by 20.2% since the start of the 20th century (1994−2025 average minus 1901−30 average).

🔗https://t.co/SA3xRrMzje

Will you correct the record, Congressman, or will you continue to espouse misinformation?

cc: @RepJasonCrow

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Every person living in a western nation needs to listen to every word of this

Katherine Berbalsingh went to the University of Oxford and is Headmaster at Michaela Community School in London, UK

She PERFECTLY explains the mass indoctrination into the narrative of oppressor and oppressed, and of hating White People

I will write only some of this out because it’s very important, however you should listen to it so you can hear the passion:

“The culture shift comes from what children learn at school and online. Ask any young person what history they learned at school, and they’ll tell you, Hitler. Ask them what else? Slavery. Ask them what else? American civil rights.

In fact, what little they know of history will be all about Black and brown people fighting for equality against the white man, women fighting men for the vote, gay and trans people fighting for various rights. Our young people have been taught that history is simply one long story about various groups struggling under the oppressive dead white man.

— History is taught through an oppressor lens. The triangular slave trade, white men held the power. What about Britain ending the slave trade? More than a quick mention, if at all? Mm, no.

What of the Arab slave trade that lasted 3 times as long as the triangular slave trade? Mm, no.

Okay, so GCSE history in Britain is often taught as migration through time, so the idea that Britain has always been a land of immigrants is embedded in our children’s heads. Most schools would prefer to concentrate learning about the tiny number of Black people who existed in Tudor England over a thorough analysis of England’s break from Rome.

— Not to mention weeks on King Mansa Musa of Mali because he was a Black Muslim. His bearing on British institutions, laws, and faith is nonexistent. And the fact that he is said to have been the richest man in history, thanks in part to his massive slave-owning society, is a detail somehow that teachers rarely ever teach.

But it isn’t just our schools. It’s our general culture too. Take your kids to a museum or an art gallery in any Western country, and you’ll find the same narrative.

As an example, when learning about aviation in London’s Science Museum and the extraordinary feat that is man making massive machines move in the sky, a write-up on the wall explains that women and Black people were historically barred from aviation schools and the military. Similarly, James Watt, the man who invented the steam engine and is considered the founder of the Industrial Revolution, has a write-up on the wall explaining that his early career involved slave trafficking, with a bonus analysis of the whole of Britain’s complicity in the slave trade.

They flatten the entire human story and all of its complexities into the narrative of oppressor and oppressed, leaving young people unable to see the world in any other terms.”

We have to end the mass indoctrination

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Some usual suspects who like to pretend things aren't that bad on campus saw the data—showing that roughly 70% of students think professors should be reported for saying "offensive" things—and immediately countered with, "Oh, they're only saying that about when professors sexually harass them!"

No, they aren't. The students mean forbidden opinions even if they are, in fact, correct.

I featured the NDSU data a while back but thanks to Stu for sharing it more broadly.

[NGO Monitor @NGOmonitor]

“Throw Amnesty’s genocide report in the garbage.”
NGO Monitor Legal Advisor @AnneHerzberg14 explains why: the very first line of @Amnesty’s report reads, “On October 7th, Israel launched an offensive on the Gaza Strip.”