Tech watch: Apple’s Self-Damning iPad Ad
The “horrible” Apple ad for a new iPad, which “shows an industrial press slowly crushing an eclectic assortment of old musical instruments, paint and art supplies, and Gen X-era toys and tchotchkes” packs a major on-the-nose punch, observes the Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson. “This thin digital tablet is supposed to replace — and supersede — all these clunky, analog, obsolete things.” But those things are precisely the “stuff that makes life fun.” In reaction, “Hugh Grant succinctly put it on X like this: ‘The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley.’ ” Indeed, “it’s hard to imagine a better visual depiction of the way Big Tech flattens and destroys art and creativity, replacing our very natural, human experience of the physical world with a shiny digital simulacrum of it.”
Climate war: The West’s Doomed Project
The West’s “preoccupation” with climate change began after the Soviet Union fell, when it seemed “all that remained” to be fixed, recalls Bjorn Lomborg at The Wall Street Journal. But a “rapid global transition from fossil fuels is, and always has been, impossible.” And tackling global temps “a century out has never ranked high among the priorities of developing countries’ voters — and without their cooperation, the project is doomed.” Plus, the “economics have always been deficient.” As Britain’s Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho admits, “You cannot heap costs onto struggling families to meet climate targets.” Lomborg’s advice? Rather than “cut ourselves off from fossil fuels prematurely . . . ramp up investments in green innovation” and drive “the cost of clean energy below that of fossil fuels.”
Liberal: Bridging the Partisan Gap on Energy
“Few issues divide Democratic and Republican voters more than climate change and the clean energy transition,” reports John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot. But a centrist approach isn’t divisive. Some 48% of voters asked about energy policy say, “We need an ‘all-of-the above’ strategy that provides abundant and cheap energy from multiple sources including oil and gas to renewables to advanced nuclear power,” including 57% of independents, 49% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans. “Attitudes about the importance of climate change and policies to address it have clearly hardened on both sides of the partisan divide. If government leaders want to bridge the gap,” they should opt for “policies that deploy a mix of options and more pragmatic approaches to energy and climate.”
Media desk: NPR’s Deadly Left Swerve
When NPR CEO Katherine Maher “was summoned by Congress to give testimony about whether NPR’s news reporting was ‘fair and objective,’ she was a no-show,” notes Eli Lake at The Free Press — instead submitting “written testimony drafted in the prose style of brand management consultants.” In it, she “gushed about ‘the Constitution’s promise of a free and independent press,’ ” but in 2021 she “claimed the First Amendment was the ‘number one challenge’ in the fight against disinformation.” While whistleblower Uri Berliner “does not advocate the defunding of NPR, he is sticking to his argument that the network must reform in order to survive” — especially since “NPR’s weekly audience has dropped from an estimated 60 million in 2020 to about 42 million today.”
Campus beat: Columbia’s Foolish Graduation Nix
USA Today’s Sara Pequeño laments Columbia’s move to “cancel its main graduation ceremony due to security concerns related to weeks of protests on its campus.” Huh? “Columbia still managed to have its 1968 spring graduation at a new location despite antiwar and civil rights protests.” Yes, punish protesters who broke into Hamilton Hall, but “it does not make sense for the entire 2024 class to lose out on college graduation.” Such overreaction to the protests “will follow” university officials “for years and create strained relationships with their alums.” Yet Gen Z protesters will “remember some victories, like the universities’ commitment to meeting with students to discuss divesting funds from Israel.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board