The Joy of Six 1260

George Peretz on how governments can rein in Elon Musk: "There is an obvious thing that government could do now and that requires no legislation and costs no money: government could simply shift all the material it currently puts out on X to another platform or platforms ... That would in turn encourage all the users of X who currently use X to monitor government activity (journalists, businesses, many ordinary citizens) to open and use accounts on those competing platforms."

"Praising a recent Murray article, he said it was 'thoughtful, original, and generated more subscriptions than any other article we published this year'. There it is: hate sells. And since Murray’s opinions sell, sacking him would be bad for business. Those are the priorities." Brian Cathcart argues the Spectator can't defend Douglas Murray but can't afford to sack him either.

Phoebe Weston asks if we should intervene to accelerate the natural migration of tree species in the face of climate change.

"I was expecting to find that all graduates liberalise, but that those studying arts, humanities and social sciences ... become more socially liberal and less racially prejudiced than those studying more technical subjects (such as STEM subjects)." University graduates tend to be more socially liberal than the rest of the population - Ralph Scott summarises his research into why this is the case.

Dale Fox reports that more than half of UK school librarians have been asked to remove books from their shelves, with LGBTQ+ literature being disproportionately targeted: "One anonymous librarian, given the pseudonym Emma, described how she was instructed to remove all LGBTQ+ themed books following a single parent’s complaint about one title."

Carry On Spaceman. Carry On Robin [Hood]. Carry On Escaping. Retroboy is our guide to the 10 Carry On films that were planned but never made.