Jason Arday, Cambridge professor: too good to fact-check

The New Neo Posted on by

Jason Arday’s story was always unbelievable. But if you want to believe, you better not look too deeply into it, because you might be sorely disappointed.

Arday became the youngest black professor at Cambridge. But he seems to not only have been guilty of plagiarism but also of a series of lies that sound preposterous:

We have a fantasist in an environment where, for political and social status reasons, everyone takes his claims at face value, or pretends that they do because to express doubt would be to invite unwanted attention. In such fertile ground the fantasist’s claims (which he continues to deny fabricating) inevitably become increasingly outlandish – epic marathon runs, prophetic blessings, an appearance in a television programme that began 20 years before he was born – because he is increasingly secure that they will never be questioned. This is what inevitably occurs when a fantasist encounters people who want, for whatever reason, to believe his fantasies. …

Such scandals can often be mistaken optimistically for an end to the whole shebang of progressive nonsense – for who could ever take them seriously again? But the roots of progressivism are too deeply embedded in the soil of public life. These hilarious exposures – see also Jussie Smollett – are not strong enough to dislodge them. The daring young man on the flying trapeze may fall to the ground with a splat, but the progressive circus is so big that it just moves on.

You can read some of Arday’s claims in this article from 2023. And you can find some of his debunked statements here. I think, however, that if checked, a great many other “facts” in his biography might be unsubstantiated as well.

Will Arday lose his position? Or will the wagons circle until the furor dies down, and will he remain?

AI narration

The New Neo Posted on by

AI narration has started to really really bother me.

So many AI-narrated videos feature fake British accents – why?

The tone is posh and often supercilious – why?

There’s monotony.

Many mispronunciations, like “desert” for “dessert” or vice versa. Or like “read” present tense for “read” past tense.

There’s the pause at the end of a line of text even if it’s in mid-sentence.

Some feature a little exhaled sigh – “ah” – in an effort to make the voice seem human. It’s an effort that fails utterly.

But most annoying of all is when AI narration uses the first person. Who is this “I” of whom you speak, kimosabe?

Is AOC far enough to the left to be the DSA’s pick in 2028?

The New Neo Posted on by

And does she hate Israel enough? Apparently there is doubt as to the leftist bona fides of the Grand Old Lady of DSA:

The DSA is riding high after the high-profile win of socialist Mamdani in 2025, capped off by a string of primary victories this year that have emboldened its more than 120,000 rank and file members nationwide.

But some DSA leaders are not yet on board the AOC train, and urged caution against getting ahead of the base while still hashing out the big questions regarding their platform, direction and whether her previous stance on Israel should be disqualifying.

The congresswoman previously supported sending defensive aid to Israel, but at a private NYC-DSA forum in April, she vowed to vote against sending any further military aid to the country, including defensive supplies, according to City & State NY.

Can’t have anyone who ever supported Israel, however tepidly. AOC hasn’t moved fast enough for some DSA members.

She’s now thirty-six years old – my, how time flies – and in November of 2028 she’ll be thirty-nine years old. The fresh young thing is being replaced by even fresher and even-more-leftist young things – Mamdani, for example, at 34, although he’s ineligible for the presidency (fortunately) as a non-native-born citizen.

Hard to keep up, things are moving so fast.

The fraud total is up to $230 billion

The New Neo Posted on by

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

An announcement by Vance – just the tip of the fraud iceberg?:

“Just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president’s leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that,” Vance told the gathered Cabinet, according to multiple accounts of the meeting.

President Trump, who presided over the meeting, wasted no time tying the findings to his predecessor’s administration, telling those in attendance that the level of corruption and fraud uncovered [from] the Biden years was unprecedented.

Once the payments go out, though, for the most part the money can’t be clawed back. An ounce of prevention is worth a tremendous amount.

More:

The scope of the $230 billion figure is broad, encompassing improper payments, systemic waste, and alleged criminal fraud spanning multiple federal agencies. According to reporting on the matter, the total includes tens of billions of dollars tied to fraudulent or delinquent pandemic-era small business loans, improper Medicaid and Medicare billing claims, unauthorized government contracts, and improper disbursements across state-administered welfare programs.

Of course – and especially if the money is gone for good – prosecutions must follow, as well as convictions, or this will continue. It will most certainly continue anyway if Democrats come to power.

It’s not as though we didn’t already know that government programs invite fraud. But the scope of it is absolutely massive, and we probably are uncovering only a small amount of it. Quite the swamp worthy of drainage.

[NOTE: Here’s an article appearing in the NY Post that focuses on the adult day care industry in New York’s Asian community. It is alleged to be rife with fraud. From the piece:

An investigation by The Post found seniors in a typical scheme get $500-$1000 a month in daycare kickbacks while the facility pockets upwards of $3,000 a month per patient.

According to city and federal data, Flushing’s SADCs billed a total of $733M from 2018-2024, the latest year for which spending figures are available.

From Dr. Mehmet Oz:

“Due to a lack of proper state oversight, these centers have become cash cows for criminal syndicates, who use kickbacks and other illegal practices to steal millions from Medicaid. When Flushing, Queens, alone accounts for roughly 14% of all social adult daycare spending in New York state, it’s pretty obvious that these centers aren’t popping up solely to fulfill a legitimate need in the community,” he told The Post.

There’s much much more at the link.]

The art of the self-deportation deal

The New Neo Posted on by

On incentives for self-deportation:

Offers of up to $3,000 per person have helped spur more than 200,000 migrants to “self-deport” from the U.S. — but about half made the move while locked up in detention centers, according to a report Tuesday.

The voluntary mass exodus started slowly, with only about 24,000 people signing up during the six months after the Department of Homeland Security launched the widely advertised program in May 2025, Axios said, citing internal agency data.

But White House officials — including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — pressured DHS to ramp up the operation, called Project Homecoming, an unidentified source told Axios.

“They wanted like thousands pushed through on a daily basis, and we were putting through like dozens,” the source said.

Self-deportation actually wasn’t uncommon in the much more distant past – a past that included a lack of government-funded welfare for immigrants. It was sink or swim, except for voluntary charities which included help from religious and/or ethnic communities.

Later, there were requirements that to come here legally through the family-based program, an immigrant’s relatives (or other sponsors in certain cases) who were already here legally were required to document that they have the funds to help support the immigrant if need be. This still occurs for those particular programs for legal immigrants, but if you look at the link you’ll see there are many circumstances where the immigrants are nevertheless eligible for government aid.

And today, apparently 61% of households in the US headed by an illegal immigrant receive means-tested government aid of some type. Here are some figures:

Roughly half of all immigrant-headed households in the U.S. use welfare — and among illegal immigrant homes in particular, it’s even higher, at 61%, according to a new study Wednesday that argues that’s another reason to enforce immigration laws.

By comparison, just 37% of U.S.-born households use welfare, the Center for Immigration Studies calculated, based on 2024 Census Bureau data.

The numbers challenge the notion that illegal immigrants can’t get assistance.

Do you remember back in 2012 when Mitt Romney talked about self-deportation of illegal aliens, and he was criticized for it?:

Governor Romney: “Well the answer is self-deportation, which is people decide that they could do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

Will this work? Unlikely. Lessons from Mexican migrants, which comprise more than half of the unauthorized population and, the country closest and presumably the least costly for “self-deportation,” suggest otherwise. Studies show that during the 1970s and early 1980s, roughly one of every two migrants returned home within a year – and seventy-five percent left within two years – meaning most did in fact “self-deport.” The vast majority of Mexicans came not to settle, but to earn enough money to better their and their families’ lives at home. But this pattern – called circular migration by scholars – starting changing in the late 1980s (also when the United States began hardening its southern border). Today, fewer than one in ten immigrants return each year to Mexico. Thirty odd years ago Romney’s policy of self-deportation occurred regularly, today it does not.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the phenomenon of self-deportation was called “return migration” and the numbers were significant. Here’s some data (the article was written in 2017):

Thirty million migrants moved from Europe to the United States during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1913). Yet one in three of these arrivals eventually returned to Europe, a rate of return migration that is even higher than today.

[A personal note: one of my relatives who came here in the first years of the 20th century had trouble making it in the US and was unhappy here. He had come from Russia prior to the revolution and was so hopeful about the possibilities of life under Communism that he returned to the USSR some time during the 1920s. A bad bet, it turns out. He was still alive when I was a child, and my (Communist) uncle, who lived near us, used to periodically visit the USSR, bringing back a ton of boring slides that we were forced to politely watch. My uncle’s trips to the USSR included visiting this self-deported cousin or whatever he was. My uncle bought him many things to make his life easier, because he was living a subsistence existence, whereas my uncle had amassed quite a cozy nest egg living under evil capitalism.]

Venezuela post-Maduro

The New Neo Posted on by

Rubio address the situation in Venezuela:

Speaking in an interview that aired Saturday on Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump, Rubio said the United States never viewed Maduro’s capture as the end of Venezuela’s transition but rather as the beginning of a lengthy rebuilding process after more than a quarter century of authoritarian rule.

“A system that’s been in place for over a quarter century… those are deep roots that you have to deal with,” Rubio said. “We’ve always talked about phase one, where our priority was stabilization. We didn’t want the country devolving into civil war, mass migration, civil unrest and so forth.” Rubio said the administration believes Venezuela has now entered the second stage of that strategy, focused on economic recovery, although he acknowledged that the devastating June 24 earthquakes have complicated the effort.

Only after those objectives are met, Rubio said, should Venezuela move toward democratic elections. “Ultimately, you have to have transition,” he said. “At some point in time, there has to be legitimate elections at every level so that people know that the government that’s there is a legitimate government chosen by their people.” Rubio added that national reconciliation would be the first prerequisite for that transition, arguing that Venezuelans have remained politically divided for decades and suggesting that post-communist transitions in Eastern Europe offer useful models.

That all sounds quite reasonable to me.

Venezuela has dropped out of the headlines, though. The long hard task of rebuilding a country isn’t the sort of thing that makes sound bites.

The death toll in the earthquake now stands at about 5.5 thousand, according to this article from about a week ago. I’ve tried to find the best figures on the number still missing, and I’ve seen estimates that range from 1,000 to 30,000. That’s quite a gap.

And then there’s the Michigan race for the Senate

The New Neo Posted on by

The red-green alliance seems to have taken over the Michigan Democrat Party and is poised for primary victory:

Leftists are now giddy with the latest poll results coming out of Michigan, which indicate that another Muslim socialist appears to be running away with the Democrat nomination for U.S. Senate.

Slate’s senior politics editor, Jim Newell, in his newsletter to readers, said:

“The most-watched Senate primary in the country finally concludes this coming Tuesday, as Michigan Democrats choose between progressive insurgent Adbul El-Sayed and moderate Rep. Haley Stevens to go against GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers this fall… If El-Sayed wins, it would be a shocking change in Democratic politics, with typically cautious Democratic voters nominating a leftist in a critical purple-state Senate race. And then we would just have to see how that would go in November! If he were to win the general, it would prompt more risk-taking from Democratic primary voters down the road. If he were to lose, Democratic voters would quickly revert to nominating cyborg ex-Marine prosecutors selected by Chuck Schumer.

Yes, this is a test case to see whether a far-leftist Israel-hating Muslim can win statewide in a state that’s somewhat blue but not entirely so. As such, Michigan is perfectly positioned for the test, and El-Sayed is the perfect candidate as well. Michigan Democrats who support El-Sayed have two big things going for them in this sort of contest: it is the state with the highest Muslim percentage of residents of a state that isn’t already deep deep blue (see this list), and the GOP is organizationally weak there and the Democrats have control of the voting apparatus in large cities.

I offer this recent poll with the caveat that it might be designed and manipulated to motivate Stevens voters (Stevens is El-Sayed’s Democrat opponent in the primary) to vote tomorrow. But it indicates that Stevens has a better chance than El-Sayed to beat Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate:

In the EPIC-MRA poll, 44 percent of respondents said they would cast their ballot for Stevens or would consider doing so if the election happened that day, and 42 percent said the same of Rogers. Fourteen percent were not sure about their preferred candidate or did not give a response.

In contrast, 46 percent of respondents said they would back or were considering backing Rogers, while 43 percent said the same of El-Sayed.

The margin of error for the poll is 4 percentage points, so the results for both Democratic candidates against Rogers are within that margin.

Sort of a garbage poll, but there it is. Note also the large number of “undecideds.” How anyone can be undecided at this point is beyond me. The contrasts could not be more stark.

Dearborn is, as you probably know, the epicenter of the red-green movement in Michigan – the first Arab-majority city in the US.

The anti-Trump crew on the “right” plan to go third party

The New Neo Posted on by

This isn’t exactly news – I wrote about it in this previous post about Tucker Carlson, for example – but it’s a little more official now, or as Ace writes: “Tuq’r Qarlson, Marjorie Trailer-Queen, Thomas Massie, and Joe Kent Meet and Announce New Party for Nazis and Lunatic Conspiracy Theorists.”

From this:

Former Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene posted a photo this past weekend of herself, Tucker Carlson and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., along with the statement that “the movement has come.”

Last month, Carlson said he was planning to create a new political party, the Columbia Journalism Review reported.

Greene’s photo, posted on X on Saturday, featured the three, who have been sidelined over their opposition to President Trump’s agenda and suggests discussions on a third party are continuing.

Greene in particular, but Massie as well, are personally aggrieved at Trump. I’ve dealt with Kent in this previous post. How did Kent get in there? It has to do with this photo at Carlson’s home; they’re all sitting around a dining table, beaming. You can see the photo here if you have X:

Someone in the responses there posted an AI version:

This group does have followers, but how many are US voters and how many of those were ever going to vote Republican anyway is completely unknown. I see the Carlson crew as motivated by revenge and power – people who find it more fun to destroy than to be powerless. It’s easier to destroy, too; you can be a spoiler with far fewer supporters when a political race is otherwise very close. Their goals short-term are similar to the goals of the NeverTrumpers in previous elections, such as the members of The Bulwark, although their positions are not identical.

Long-term, the Carlson wing probably does want to be more than spoilers. Long-term, they have more grandiose visions.

On cousin marriage

The New Neo Posted on by

Now the news is out that Graham Platner’s replacement, Troy Jackson, has a significant other (they’re not married) who is his second cousin and the mother of his two children:

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson is in a long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart — who is also his second cousin, according to a new report.

Jackson, 58, and Lana Pelletier share two adult sons and the same great-grandparents, according to Thursday’s report by independent journalist Steve Robinson, who notes that such relationships are both legal under state law and not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.

While Jackson, a onetime logger and the former president of the Maine State Senate, has described Pelletier as his wife in the past, locals tell Robinson the couple has never been legally married.

Where to begin?

It used to be that people living in what used to quaintly be called “sin” – that is, in quasi-marriage outside of wedlock – were not especially politically viable. Those days are long gone, so that’s not the issue here. The issue is what I’d call the “ick factor” of being sexually involved with one’s second cousin.

But it’s not illegal anywhere in the US, nor is there much evidence that it’s harmful in the genetic sense unless there’s a known specific hereditary disease carried by both cousins. Here’s why:

he chance that a baby is born with a birth defect or disability is between 2-3%. So, if a hundred people have babies, we would expect that 2 or 3 to be born with some sort of problem. Which of course means that 97 or 98 are fine.

At 3.5%, the risk is slightly higher for second cousins. Still, 96 or 97 out of a hundred babies are born without any major problems.What this all means is that while there is increased risk, it doesn’t really qualify as a “high chance.” Even first cousins at 5% aren’t that big of a risk.

Keep in mind though that these are average numbers. Like people who are not related, your actual risk depends on the genes you and your spouse have.

Note that the article about Jackson mentions that such marriages are “not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.” Well, it’s confession time: not only are such marriages “not uncommon” on the paternal side of my own family, but first cousin marriages were also “not uncommon” among that crew. In fact, they were very common.

And they didn’t live anywhere near the north of Maine, either. They lived in Belarus.

I didn’t know very much about my own heritage until I did some genealogical research on my family about seven years ago. I found out a great many fascinating things (see this for a previous post of mine on finding a long-lost maternal relation). One of those things was that my father’s family, even at the level of my grandfather’s generation – not one of whom I ever met, including my grandfather – tended to marry their first cousins. In fact, I found that the same three surnames occurred over and over and over, so much so that the families were intertwined in a way that made it difficult for my newly-found second cousins and I to determine just how closely we were related. Were we second cousins? Double second cousins? Double first-cousins once-removed?

We finally gave up on figuring it out, but got a great many chuckles about all of us being the product of some sort of vast network of first-cousin marriage. I finally figured out something about that, though: since the families were also very large (my paternal grandfather was one of between ten and sixteen children, the first born in the 1840s and my grandfather born in the late 1860s), and this was a typical family size back then, they probably had something like over a hundred first cousins.

That’s a mighty big pool from which to choose. If they lived in the same or neighboring villages and cities, it would be a pretty convenient pool, too. Why not marry a cousin and keep it in the family?

There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of insanity or any especially dramatic genetic diseases, as far as I can tell. Oddness yes, and eccentricity. But I’m not sure that wouldn’t have been the case even without the cousin marriage. There’s a marked tendency to be good at math, and that’s about it. We don’t look like each other, either. And below the level of my grandparents, I knew very few of these relatives, but found a whole host of them – really nice people, by the way – through genetic testing. We tried to piece together what had estranged the families, and decided it had to do with a business they were in together that precipitated a falling-out.

In recent years, there’s not been a whiff of cousin marriage or even second-cousin marriage in the group. But I guess that what I think of Jackson’s arrangement – I’m basically indifferent to it and certainly not especially shocked by it – has at least something to do with this family history of mine.

However, I can’t stand Jackson’s politics. But that’s a separate issue.