tomo,
I'm certainly well out of touch with academia. It does seem a remarkable transformation. My recollections from '70s and '80s was of bookish places where nothing seemed to matter all that much. Research scientists were fascinated with their research and, while office politics might have had a role, there was no deep political ideology.

A guess at the transformation to the present situation:
Governments are bothered by youth unemployment figures.
If only young people would stay in education so the figures will look better.
How about making this or that qualification essential to employment?
People see opportunity for making money from this qualification lark.
Such people elbow out the previous dusty occupants of the chairs.
Universities are thus transformed from boffin storage facilities to ruthless money machines.

Skimmed the Tucker/Benz video. All sounds believable enough. As you say, TC is getting a bit on the loopy side. These interviews that last for hours: I know they're becoming popular, but I think people are confusing length with depth.

Today Jo has more DOGE discoveries. A quick scrut of the social security numbers finds about 2800 associated with people born over 200 years ago, but still being counted as alive. Presumably these could be looked up to see when they last (drew a pension| voted | ...).

It'd be nice to think our governments might take a leaf from their book. From the reaction to Vance's presentation in Munich, I'm guessing they won't feel that way inclined.

tomo,
Enjoyed the Christine Anderson link, but the Sabine Hossenfelder one was terrific. Gave my quite limber cynicism faculties a good stretching. The anonymous academic's attitude of Sure it's crap, but keep your head down and take the money isn't confined to academia. Could be used as the middle-level bureaucrat's creed.

Took the liberty of posting the link to Jo Nova's today. Give them something worth watching.

I kept another of your interesting links from back in the COVID days: Spurious Correlations. It tickled my funny bone back then and I've occasionally shared it with people when excessive reverence for statistical significance is evident. Revisiting today, somehow the site is less striking that I remember it, but there's one nice addition. Not only do they give you the lock-step relationship of (say) associate degrees in health and number of vending machine repairers in Mississippi, they also give you an AI-generated rationale for the relationship and a scientific paper similarly generated.

Makes the site even more valuable, now discouraging blind acceptance of both statistics and AI.

Guarantee you that the majority of lefties opposing peace in the Ukraine were also out there on the streets demanding PEACE NOW in Gaza.

How many Ukrainians have to keep dying to keep the war going?

Listening to European leaders on the news this morning you would think they are quite keen on making themselves irrelevant while Trump sorts peace out and brings the killing in the Ukraine to an end because without Uncle Sugar Daddy Sam's money Europe is in no place to demand the killing continues.

Musk talks DOGE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4LOoxK4j4A

tomo,
That article pretty much covers why solar doesn't work anywhere.

It comes down to the fact that energy isn't difficult, it's getting energy at the right time that is tricky. To that end, I've just had a brilliant idea. Winter too cold, summer too hot, all we need is to set up a summer mirror on the Earth's surface, and a corresponding mirror 3 light-months away which will timeshift the sunlight by six months. Basic physics at work.

Agree about the media. High time the squatters were moved off the fourth estate.