new videos: the imminent death of corporate DEI

also: why soldiers miss war, the forgotten solution to the housing crunch

Squad —

Welcome to the new subs. Some deep cuts:

“The Broken Boys of Kenosha: Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the Lies We Still Live By”

“How Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Anti-Racism’ Would Ruin the NBA”

“School is Not Built for Boys”

“It Wasn’t Fauci: How the Deep State Really Played Trump ”

Now, the new fire:

Corporate DEI Is Now a Recipe for Lawsuit

In the Spring of 2018, a downtown Philadelphia Starbucks made national news when two black men were arrested and escorted out by police. They’d been sitting in the Starbucks but refused to make a purchase, which is technically a violation of the company’s rules. When they refused to leave, the store manager had them arrested.

The arrests set off national protests. Starbucks immediately apologized, with CEO Kevin Johnson announcing a nationwide closure of all stores for company-wide anti-bias training. The manager who made the call was fired, and so was her boss.

For the public, this is how the drama ended: two white employees fired for flagrant racism.

But that’s not the whole story.

One of those fired employees responded by suing Starbucks, claiming she was a public relations sacrifice, a white pawn offered up in order to “convince the community it had properly responded to the incident.” And she ultimately wins a massive, multi-million dollar decision in federal court.

This isn’t a one-off: it’s a glimpse into the future. A recent, landmark Supreme Court case has rendered the entirety of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” apparatus in corporate human resources — the hiring quotas, preferential treatment, and public relations sacrifices — unconstitutional. And companies that don’t adjust are running an enormous legal risk. The holdouts are going to get sued into oblivion:

The Forgotten Solution to the Housing Crunch

Across the country, city council meetings are being packed to capacity with angry residents. They’re screaming at each other, denouncing each other as enemies of the community and begging for government protection.

At issue: housing policy.

The cost of housing has shot up 46 percent over the last four years, greatly outpacing the rise in wages. And the policy debate seems perpetually stuck between two polar opposite positions: on one side, the YIMBYs, the people who want to build a lot more housing, chiefly large, dense apartment buildings; and on the other, the NIMBYs, people who only want single family homes, which are relatively inefficient uses of scarce urban real estate.

But what if there were a third way, a policy change that could dramatically expanded housing supply and bring down real estate prices without disrupting neighborhoods?

There is, and it’s being pioneered in Charlotte, North Carolina, which has one of the most punishing real estate markets in the county:

Why Soldiers Miss War

War reporter Sebastian Junger has spent years in some of the most violent places on earth, documenting up close the details of human conflict. His signature works are Restrepo and Korengal, feature documentaries about American soldiers serving at a remote military base in Afghanistan, an infamous outpost of nearly non-stop combat.

Junger followed those same soldiers once they came back home, and he noticed something strange: they missed the war.

Why would an American man, having returned home to a land of plenty, of safety, of the infinite stimulation and comforts of modern life, ever miss war? Junger says soldiers are longing for the tribal ties of combat -- that war, as horrible as it is, still feeds a natural human need for belonging:

-gkp