Twitter Kills Bee! Google Raises ACT Scores! Taibbi Raises Glass and Kills DNC!
I woke up to news that Twitter had suspended the Babylon Bee. It was going to be the final straw for any hope that the Big Tech will play halfway fair in the coming months. The Babylon Bee is funny and slashing in its satire, but it doesn't remotely promote violence, racism, or deadnaming (that most hideous sin). It doesn't dox. It's just conservative and funny and biting.
Twitter, however, says it merely made a mistake and reinstated the site less than an hour later. Due to the quick response by Twitter, I'm inclined to believe them that it was a tech glitch, but in the back of my head is the idea that it was the malicious act of a Twitter minion.
For the past few years, I've gauged a college's academic rigor by Googling the name of the college and average ACT. For example: "Notre Dame Average Act." Google provides an immediate answer. Over the past eight months, the responses provided by Google have climbed significantly. So, "University of Michigan Average ACT" is now 30-34. In the past, it was in the 27-31 range. While I was in Boston, I searched the various universities and was stunned to see a lot of them equal or higher than that. Harvard and MIT, of course, but also Boston College, Boston University, Tufts, and Northeastern(?!).
So I don't know if schools are raising their admission standards, or schools are somehow misreporting admission details, or Google has changed the way it measures average ACT.
BTW: "33-35" has always been the highest a school can get. A lot of schools fall in that range (Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, Chicago, etc.). This morning, for the first time, I saw "34-36." That distinction belongs to the nerds at MIT.
Everyone watching the DNC? Yeah, me neither. I can't stand conventions. Democratic, Republican. It don't make me no nevermind. I detest the orchestrated and phony platforming. Matt Taibbi, however, almost got me to watch. He proposes a great drinking game. If you don't like to drink, he provides a bingo board. Or you could do both.
I used to read Taibbi when he was with Rolling Stone. I remember thinking, "Man, this guy is great. I just wish he didn't have such a big-government liberal worldview." He appears to have veered more toward libertarian thinking lately, but I'm not sure. Either way, I'm pretty sure he's intellectually and factually honest.
