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Get ready to say goodbye to social media

Covid should have killed off digital freedom. Governments around the world used an overwhelmingly survivable virus to usher in a digital surveillance framework under the pretext of vaccination verification. Now, "child safety" is positioned to finish the job. Over the past few days, several Western governments have doubled down on requiring government ID to access social media platforms. All to protect the kids, who don't even have a government ID. Meaning that it's conveniently adults whose identities get matched to their online activity. We've already seen how quickly these systems ...

Academy’s mission is to fill workforce gap

Mike Rowe has been on a lonely mission. For two decades, he has been raising the alarm. Rowe has been warning anyone who would listen that our skills gap in the trades was widening to a chasm so large that the economic effect on U.S. manufacturing companies, in particular auto and steel industries but also defense, construction and energy sectors, was going to be nothing short of catastrophic. Few listened. Rowe appeared before Congress. Twice. He sent an open letter to then-President Barack Obama. Crickets. Nonetheless, Rowe persisted. His alarm bells were not hyperbole. In ...

Professors against academic freedom

Does academic freedom have a greater enemy than the American Association of University Professors? With millions of dollars in backing from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the AAUP recently set up a Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF) that's about as accurately named as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Instead of defending academic freedom, the director of the AAUP's center wants to stamp out some of the last vestiges of viewpoint diversity on today's campuses. In the face of overwhelming hostility from hiring committees – ...

Men don’t have to suffer in silence

While we have traditionally celebrated Father's Day in June, this month has also been set aside to highlight awareness of men's struggles with mental health and depression. The National Alliance on Mental Illness continues to advocate for breaking the cultural stigma that men have to "tough it out" on their own while wrestling with internal issues. Current statistics show what many mental health professionals are calling a "silent crisis." Many men do not like to talk about how they are weighed down emotionally, and this suppressed affliction often leads to anxiety, ...

Teen’s case should be considered on its merits

The system failed Karmelo Anthony – he stabbed someone to death and is going to jail for it. If this doesn't strike you as an injustice, you haven't been paying attention to the voices defending the 19-year-old who was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for murdering another teenager at a high school track meet in Texas two years ago. The case has garnered national attention entirely for its racial angle. Anthony is Black, and his victim, Austin Metcalf, was white. But there is no evidence that race played a role in the incident, and if both young men had been white or both ...

What lurks outside the frame

I consumed a lot of horror movies during my teen years. For a couple of my friends, my room became the hub where we watched the standard fare of slashers, munched on overly processed snacks, and critiqued the characters' decisions as they ran for their lives. We, of course, would make ...