Tesla Camera Did its Job Well

Last week I was in an accident while driving my 2025 Tesla Model 3 with FSD (supervised self-driving). I was in a right-side left-turn lane at an intersection when a big Chevy pickup in the mandatory left turn lane to my left went straight. He came into my path. My car saw him and tried to avoid the collision by swerving right, but he scraped up my side, ripping off my driver-side mirror. Then the other driver fled the scene.

I had configured the Tesla to save footage whenever I honk, which I did immediately. I reviewed the video, got the truck’s license plate, and reported it to the police. I also gave the footage to my insurance company. They identified the other driver and his insurer, and his company is now paying for all of my damage — approaching $9,000.

That wasn’t the only incident that the Tesla helped me with. About eight months ago, the same car saved me from being in an accident. A vehicle coming from behind on the left started entering my lane. The Tesla swerved right onto the shoulder and avoided what would certainly have been a sideswipe crash. Its cameras instantly saw that car coming from behind and to my left.

I bought my Model 3 last year for $36,000. It has eight cameras, so it can see dangerous things surrounding the car, including behind and to both sides, while a human can only look in one direction at a time. Statistics currently show that FSD is nine times safer than human drivers, and you can see why after just a little time in the car. It’s also loaded with dozens of other useful high-tech and safety features.

It’s also economical. One day last week I drove 139 miles and it cost only $4 for the electricity. Gasoline would have been about $19.One last thing: I asked Grok how many hit-and-run accidents there are in the city of St. Louis each year. Out of 12,000 car collisions in St. Louis city each year, 5,000 of them are hit-and-runs.

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Data-Driven Portrait of Wokeness

I've followed psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams for years and really enjoy his rigorous scientific analysis of many aspects of the world. He recently posted: "12 Things Everyone Should Know About Wokeness: A data-driven look at the rise, effects, and psychology of one of the major cultural movements of our time." Many of his conclusions about wokeness, but not all, seem to be true to those of us who simply are watching what's going on around us. You've got the link to his article now and I would highly recommend reading the details, but I will give you the titles to though sections of his article on wokeness:

1. The woke worldview is associated with depression and anxiety

2. Women are more woke than men

3. Younger people are more woke than older ones

4. Many people pretend to be more woke than they are

5. Safe-space culture may function as reverse CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)

6. Many woke views are inaccurate

7. Woke people underestimate minority success

8. Woke ideas may foster dislike of majorities rather than concern for minorities

9. The woke may secretly look down on those they see as oppressed

10. Many interventions favored by the woke don’t work

11. Wokeness took off in the 2010s

12. We may have hit “peak woke” - or maybe not

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Freedom of Speech is Designed to Protect Political Minorities.

The first amendment is not a weapon wielded by the rich and powerful. Many of these people of influence are apprehensive of the protections offered by the First Amendment, because the First Amendment is a limitation on their ability to shut the rest of us up. Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) explains why the First Amendment is especially important for political minorities and those who are victims of political opression:

You only need a special protection for freedom of speech, like the First Amendment, for people who are either unpopular with power or unpopular with the majority. This is why revolutionary figures like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela all championed freedom of speech. It's why John Lewis, someone I was, I got to meet actually because he was in my neighborhood a lot. The great John Lewis, civil rights icon, he would argue. He would often say that without freedom of speech, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings. They understood that free speech was not the weapon of the powerful. It is the best check on power ever invented.

Consider visiting the website of FIRE, a completely non-partisan nonprofit organization, dedicated to free speech for all. You can spend days at the FIRE site reading about the most important free speech cases in the United States, as well as warning about the many people from across the political spectrum that FIRE has represented.

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Dusting Off the Covid Playbook for Measles

I follow Sayer Ji on X because he has been especially good at connecting the dots on the purported measles "emergency" closely. He has also drawn close comparisons to the government actions surrounding the COVID pandemic.

Are these government interventions really about disease? At first glance, that claim seems plausible. COVID and measles are really diseases, but the risks of these diseases are minuscule compared to many other pressing national priorities. Should society be worrying about two flu deaths, even if they were real deaths (especially one under the Biden administration 10 million or more bedded immigrants poured over the borders without regard to their vaccination, history or disease history). Even Anthony Fauci admitted that Covid was essentially as dangerous as the flu:

As he was going on comedy shows and testifying to Congress early on that Covid was “ten times deadlier than flu,” he actually co-published a scientific paper stating the opposite: Covid was about like a bad flu season."

What are these medical emergencies really about? The government is acting as a hyper-aggressive sales rep for the pharmaceutical industry. They want to force you to put vaccines in your arm, even if Pfizer only followed the participants of the clinical trials for two months before declaring the experimental vaccines to be safe and effective.  That problem, of course, pertains to Covid, but it is highly relevant given that it is an indication of the lack of credibility of Pharma.

Some people will question this, asking why one would question whether measles vaccines are critically necessary for all Americans. Of course, we are dealing with the average American, who has an extremely short attention span resulting from the lack of a rigorous education. As a nation, we have been proven incapable of running cost-benefit analyses. Consider first, that vaccines virtually nothing to do with the enormous decrease in measles death from 1900 to the present day:

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