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First, the story of the week concerns something called DeepSeek. It is the latest in artificial intelligence, Chinese style. The Free Press explained on Monday:
A small Chinese AI lab has released DeepSeek R1, a large language model it produced on a shoestring budget. The results have stunned the tech world. “Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” said Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. The model outperforms OpenAI on a number of AI benchmarks—in spite of U.S. sanctions on the sale of advanced chips to Chinese companies.
As it happens, more than a few detractors have stepped forward to explain that the Chinese have been cheating and that they did not tell the truth about the program.
In the meantime, the NASDAQ tanked on Monday, so some people have not dismissed the Chinese effort… at least not yet.
Second, Norway imposed a wealth tax. The result was, wealthy individuals fled the country. Their net worth-- $54 billion.
The result, lost tax revenues of: $594,000,000. The tax was supposed to bring in around $146,000,000.
The difference is not a rounding error.
Third, Aaron Sibarium reports from UCLA med school.
UCLA medical school hired a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, In 2020. Since then, the number of students failing their shelf exams—standardized tests taken after each clinical rotation—has exploded, rising as much as tenfold in some subjects.
Now that the Trump administration is hard at work undoing DEI programs, the UCLA example tells us that it’s not a minute too soon.
Fourth, back in the land of socialized medicine-- that would be Canada-- outcomes are not exactly encouraging:
Today, SecondStreet.org released government data showing an additional 15,474 patients in Canada died in 2023-24 before receiving various surgeries or diagnostic scans. However, that number is incomplete, as several governments provide either partial data, or simply do not track the problem.
SecondStreet.org collected the data by filing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests across Canada. When the data collected is extrapolated across jurisdictions which did not provide data, the number actually nearly doubles, to around 28,077. These figures cover everything from cancer treatment and heart operations to cataract surgery and MRI scans.
“Canadians pay really high taxes and yet our health care system is failing when compared to better-performing universal systems in Europe,” said Harrison Fleming, Legislative and Policy Director at SecondStreet.org. “Thousands of Canadians across the country find themselves on waitlists — in some cases for several years -— with too many tragically dying before ever getting treated, or even diagnosed.”
Fifth, we all thrill to the prospect of onshoring American manufacturing. Would that it were that simple.
David Goldman explains in the Asia Times that we are still seriously dependant on foreign manufacturing:
But the big picture is that America’s foreign dependence is rising fast. Overall industrial output has been virtually unchanged during the past ten years, while imports of capital goods have nearly doubled. It will take more to re-shore American industry than hot air from an economics blog.
The important point is that, investments notwithstanding, we are not exactly flush with people who are capable of doing the jobs. Goldman remarks:
Yes, the United States shortly will produce more computer chips onshore, thanks to Taiwan’s TSMC, which built a plant in Arizona – staffed mainly by workers and technicians imported from Taiwan, because TSMC couldn’t find enough skilled labor in the United States. That’s the kind of success that makes failure seem attractive by comparison.
Sixth, Donald Trump issued an executive order banning so-called gender affirming care. Newsmax has the story:
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday banning child gender transition care, which the order refers to as the "chemical and surgical mutilation" of children.
"Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions," the order reads. "This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation's history, and it must end.
"Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures," it states.
As for the damage already done, the Independent Women’s Forum has the numbers:
NO MORE: Over the last five years, 14,000 minors have undergone procedures, nearly 6,000 minors have had surgeries to remove and/or replace health body parts, more than 8,500 minors have received hormones and puberty blockers, and nearly 63,000 sex change prescriptions were written for minors.
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