Overnight News: If you are actively quarrying for racists – you are the racist you’re looking for.

Every day, one or more someones searches this blog on the word “nigger”. That would be scavenging for grievances, much as copyright hustlers scrounge for photos to claim dominion over. Whatever. Seventy people have posting privileges here, but I’m pretty sure the one they’re scavenging for is me.

What do the searchers find? The introduction to Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus, for one amazing thing, a discourse on the mechanics of English literature by the man who knew it best: A Pole who learned English as an adult.

There is only one other hit, before today, Freeing Jefferson’s Slaves, a Willie story about people who weaponize words for political advantage.

Bad news, search bomber: The only racist here is you.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates drop below 3% again.

CNBC: Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and other firms are using free food to lure workers back to the office. If it’s not in your contract, it’s temporary.

Housing Wire: Low inventory stifles April’s pending home sales.

The Daily Mail: Post-pandemic New York City is laid bare as homelessness, mental illness and crime escalate and rattled locals and tourists alike believe the town ‘has lost its essence’ while city cheerleaders insist ‘the ship has turned’.

Daniel Greenfield: Great New Lefty Policy Idea: Let’s Destroy Highways.

Breitbart.com: Gov. Ron DeSantis: ‘Overwhelming’ Number of People Moving to Florida Registering As Republican. My contention all along: Ants are moving because they can. Grasshoppers are staying put because the rewards are better where they are. We are witnessing a national Ant migration – caused by the riots, blamed on the pandemic and made possible by the internet.

City Journal: Following the Politics, Not the Science: Scientists and journalists should reckon with their early dismissals of the lab-leak hypothesis.