DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Read it.

Advocates for stricter gun laws are pushing for new legislation as Democrats are set to take control in Congress and several states after the midterm elections.

Groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety, Brady United Against Gun Violence, and Giffords hailed the Democratic wins, with Brady United vowing to “counter the Trump administration’s deadly ‘guns everywhere’ agenda, which has put millions of lives at risk.”

“The election of so many candidates who have made evidence-based gun violence prevention strategies a priority is an opportunity to make meaningful progress toward a safer country,” Brady president Kris Brown wrote in a Nov. 4 statement.

Read it.

Anthropological studies show that slavery in the Western Hemisphere existed in virtually all native tribes. In Canada, from coast to coast, indigenous people enslaved other indigenous people. Some of the best records of this tradition are those concerning Northwest Coast Indians in today’s British Columbia and Oregon. In Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (1997), anthropologist Leland Donald argued that slavery was essential to Northwest Coast culture.

Regarded as property, indigenous slaves were used in the labor-intensive work of coastal societies: building boats, houses, and weirs; preparing food; carrying water; collecting firewood; and nursing children.

The main source of slaves came from raiding parties, but some slaves were “bought and sold after the fashion of dogs and horses.” The transactions involved “money-shells”, blankets, food, or other property.

Cue call for ‘reparations’.

Power Line.

In a race that reflects the gravity of the GOP midterm debacle, Democrat LaKesha Womack defeated Republican incumbent Tim Moore in North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District by more than 6.000 votes. Womack’s victory celebration may have been crimped by a pending criminal case charging her with failing to return a rented 2019 Toyota 2019 Corolla worth $20,000 from a Budget Car Rental location in Charlotte.

Womack was served a felony summons three weeks before Election Day. The summons was originally issued in 2020 but was returned unserved before being reissued on October 11. The summons included an order for Womack to appear at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse yesterday at 9:00 a.m.

Read it.

Read it.

From northern Illinois to Nebraska, two farmers share why they’re turning to drones to seed cover crops into standing corn. Here’s what they’ve learned about timing the rain, beating compaction and making the math work.

Babylon Bee.

Customer service, that’s their motto.

Read it.

About 66 million years ago, the asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaurs paved the way for a spectacular expansion of new animal species. During this period, ants rose to ecological dominance. Today, they form the largest family of social insects with more than 15,000 species worldwide. New research now published in “Science Advances” shows that ants benefited from so-called transposable elements in their DNA, which are often referred to as “jumping genes”. The study was conducted by an international research team led by Dr Lukas Schrader from the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity (IEB) at the University of Münster.

Jumping genes are DNA sequences that can move and replicate within a genome. For a long time, they were regarded as “genomic parasites” that, similar to viruses, multiply in the genome without benefiting their host and, in the worst case, can even cause diseases. However, they are now increasingly recognised as engines of evolutionary innovation. The new study shows that those ant lineages carrying the most transposable elements in their genomes are also the most species-rich today. Even more striking, the researchers identified independent bursts of transposable element activity in the ancestors of the largest ant groups in the early Palaeogene (about 66 million years ago), shortly before these lineages diversified into the thousands of species living today. “The asteroid impact had dramatic consequences for the environment. We have now found the genomic mechanism that connects these ecological upheavals to the subsequent rapid diversification of the ants: transposable elements,” explains Lukas Schrader. Comparable patterns have been identified in other animal groups, with studies showing bursts of jumping gene activity during more recent phases of increased speciation, for example in primates and bats.

Newsbusters.

Now that the election is over, it’s time for Democrat voters to sit down and shut up and let their betters pursue their socialist agenda.

CNN, a Voice of the Crust.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth awarded the soldier who reprimanded him and members of his staff at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier a Joint Service Commendation Medal on Thursday.

“We love soldiers. We love standards. Well done, Specialist,” Hegseth said in a post on social media. “Carry on Patriots.”

A Pentagon official confirmed that Hegseth welcomed the 3rd Infantry Regiment, known as The Old Guard, to the Pentagon “where he proudly awarded Specialist Iglesias the Joint Service Commendation Medal for the execution of his duties at the Tomb of the unknown Soldier on November 11, 2026.”

Try—just try—to imagine a Democrat doing that. I can’t. Democrats want Hegseth impeached.

Hegseth, his wife, chief of staff Ricky Buria, deputy chief of staff Patrick Weaver and senior adviser and deputy assistant Tami Radabaugh were taking photos in front of the tomb after a Veterans Day ceremony on Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery when some in the group were heard laughing and chatting after the photos were taken. The soldier patrolling in front of the tomb, Spc. Thomas Iglesias, stopped walking and faced the group.

“All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times,” Iglesias called out.

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell later said of the incident that the soldier “correctly and respectfully reminded everyone to maintain decorum.”

Well done, that man.

The New Neo.

First, just to clear something up: I don’t abhor the idea of conspiracy in voting fraud, although of course I abhor fraud if and when it occurs. I’ve written a huge number of posts on the subject of voting fraud and I believe several things about it. The first is that of course it sometimes occurs. The second is that it tends to occur in geographic areas dominated by blue cities offsetting redder rural areas. The third is that much of the supposed “statistical” evidence for it is weak. The fourth (and perhaps most important) is that if it’s done well it’s almost impossible to detect.

Even more important, perhaps, is something I’ve written many many times: when voting security is lax – and in particular with the use of computers rather than hand-counting of paper ballots, as well as universal or widespread mail-in ballots – trust in the integrity of the voting process becomes fatally flawed whether there is significant fraud or not. That’s happened in the US; trust is very much broken. Once that happens, each side tends to think an election where they lost was stolen by the other side.

Read it.

Construction Physics.

One of my ongoing research interests is understanding the nature of technological progress: How does new technology come into the world and improve over time? What sort of factors affect it? How, in general, should we think about it? I’ve come at this question from a few different angles: posts looking at the operations and legacy of Bell Labs, posts looking at how specific technologies improved over time, posts looking at how frequent multiple invention is and how long we wait for new inventions, and so on.

My current line of thinking is that creating some new technology is best thought of as a search process. A given technology can be thought of as a point in some high-dimensional “design space” or “technology space,” which contains every possible technology: every conceivable arrangement of parts, materials, natural phenomena, and so on. The job of the would-be inventor is to navigate this space, sifting through the arrangements of elements that don’t work to find the ones that will.

This search process is made difficult by the fact that, as with any situation where you’re enumerating the possible combinations of a large number of elements, technology space is incomprehensibly vast. In “Are Technologies Inevitable?” economist Matt Clancy notes that Wikipedia listed 272 “named equations” that describe various regularities in the world, ranging from the Navier-Stokes equations (which describe the motion of fluids) to the Arrhenius equation (which describes chemical reaction rates as a function of temperature) to the Exner equation (which describes how sediment gets deposited in a river). If we use this as a (very rough) estimate as to the number of different phenomena that a technology can leverage, it implies an enormous number of possible technologies that could be created.

Read it.

In 1960 Science published a curve fit that sent world population to infinity on Friday, 13 November 2026. The date has arrived, the population is about 8.2 billion and slowing, and the method lives on in Ehrlich, the Club of Rome and RCP8.5.

Newsbusters.

On Tuesday, shocking news broke about a Monday night United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to New Orleans, Louisiana, in which a twice-deported illegal immigrant from Honduras — who claimed to be transgender — attempted to hijack the plane.

Normally, the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC obsessively cover every clipping of plane tails, near-collisions on the tarmac, or unruly passengers. But when it came to this story, they had no interest in telling their viewers about it.

ABC’s World News Tonight came the closest on Tuesday with a 70-second story, but said nothing about the suspect’s origins or criminal record. Never one to completely skip airline headlines, anchor David Muir even teased three times in less than three minutes about “a possible hijacking alert” of a man who “tried to storm the cockpit.”

My, what a surprise.

Sometimes it’s hard to say….

The American Mind.

Federal investigators have raided Representative Ilhan Omar’s house and reportedly seized her devices, pursued a dozen subpoenas, including those issued to her family members, and allegedly scrutinized everything from her arrival as a refugee to DNA samples and what appears to be a sham marriage. Given that authorities have called her very name into question, is Omar, aka Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, finally poised to face justice?

Having literally written the book on the embattled congresswoman, American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party, and reviewed the facts and reporting concerning the multiple emerging probes, I believe that Ilhan (I will refer to her by her first name given her disputed surname) likely engaged in several criminal acts and could be liable for civil denaturalization.

Even if federal authorities amass incontrovertible evidence supporting the apparent offenses long hiding in plain sight, securing justice will hinge on a set of thorny and perilous questions: First, will prosecutors successfully navigate relevant statutes of limitation and potentially novel issues created by Ilhan’s father’s death? Second, and perhaps most importantly, can prosecutors prevail in the likely event they litigate in the hostile venue of Minnesota, irrespective of the strength of their case or whether they pursue criminal charges subject to a statute of limitations or civil proceedings that are not?

Read it.

An incoming Democrat congressman is exposing the ugly consequences that he says party insiders warned him he could face if he refuses to fall in line behind House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

Rep.-elect Don Leonard (D-OH) said on Wednesday that senior Democrats warned him he could lose committee assignments, see his legislative agenda blocked and face serious obstacles to reelection if he withholds support for Jeffries’ bid to become House speaker.

“It was actually a dinner with senior elected officials, and I let them know where my position was on the speaker, and they were offering very friendly advice with very stark consequences,” Leonard told TMZ DC. “It wasn’t in leadership. It wasn’t their position to do it. It was just friendly advice from future colleagues.”

Read it.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced that she and the city would back the Seattle School Board’s unanimous vote to begin legal action to block enforcement of Initiative 638, which requires separating boys and girls in K-12 sports in Washington state.

Voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative in 36 of the state’s 39 counties. Critics have charged that Wilson and other Seattle Democrats are seeking to negate the popular vote after campaigning on “saving democracy.” The greater challenge, however, is the legal basis for such an action in light of recent Supreme Court rulings.

Wilson issued a statement that she would back the School Board in refusing to accept the result of the election in order to maintain “a Seattle where every person is welcomed, supported, and valued, and where all young people can thrive as their authentic selves.”

Read it.

Five people were shot, one fatally, on Thursday in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood within walking distance of the White House, police said, and the suspected gunman later shot and killed himself as a swarm of officers responded to a nearby apartment building where he was barricaded.

One victim died in the initial shooting, said Jeffery Carroll, interim chief with the Metropolitan Police Department.

Carroll said the suspect then shot himself while barricaded inside an apartment. He added that the man apparently had a dispute with the building’s homeowners association.

I can understand that. Everything I have read or heard about homeowners’ associations resembles tales from the old Soviet Union.

The Other McCain.

Leniency toward career criminals is a bad idea, yet this is the prevalent practice in nearly every major American city. Why? Because these cities are governed by Democrats, who are elected by the same criminal scum who terrorize any innocent citizens foolish enough to live in places like Chicago. And the moral of the story is that no one in America is ever really safe, not even 200 miles away from Chicago in rural Linn County, Iowa.

Got that one down….

Babylon Bee.

A close call.

Read it.

Hoax bomb threats emailed to thousands of schools forced evacuations across Italy on Wednesday, and the same kind of message landed in schools in Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland, a week after a wave of bomb threats diverted flights across Europe. Italy’s Education Ministry said the email reached about 6,000 schools, and at least 300 were evacuated, ANSA reported.

Read it.

In 2025, foreign beneficiaries of social welfare in households with minor children received a total of €12.2 billion in benefits, representing 59.4 percent of the total €20.54 billion paid out in this budget group, according to data obtained by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) from the federal government.

Ukrainian nationals made up the largest share among foreign recipients, accounting for €3.44 billion. They were followed by Syrians with €2.2 billion and Afghans with around €1 billion. Together, these three groups received roughly €6.7 billion, amounting to 55 percent of the benefits paid to foreigners in households with minor children.

These figures for welfare, also called citizens’ money, cover both single parents and couples with children. The money covers accommodation, heating, and social security contributions.

Read it.

For several weeks, we’ve tracked the third-worlder caravan heading north towards the US southern border, made up largely of migrants from Honduras, and now tracking through southern Mexico.

…

The migrants’ departure coincided with last week’s Democratic victory in the US midterms and hopes that a more left-leaning Congress will allow them to flood the US – just like the open-border days under the Biden administration. Also, many of these migrants probably have hopes of blue states welcoming them in and showering them with free money.

New York Post.

Bizarre video shows a cane-wielding wannabe wizard ripping down an American flag before unleashing a frenzied attack at a Turning Point USA event at a Texas university.

The unidentified loon, who was wearing a cape and a wizard-like hat, grabbed the Stars and Stripes from a stand before attacking a TPUSA rep and two University of Texas students on Tuesday, according to the conservative group’s boots-on-the-ground journalism wing, TPUSA Frontlines.

The bespectacled nutjob hurled expletives at activists hosting the Pick Up the Mic event — an open dialogue initiative created in honor of assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

The video is pretty wild.

Newsbusters.

Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan were gasping for air following reaction to their disturbingly crude joke made about desecrating Charlie Kirk’s body on their podcast “I’ve Had It.”

With at least ten advertisers dropping their sponsorships and taking their money with them, the pair were adamant that Turning Point USA was the root of the controversy as they begged their fans to keep them afloat.

Co-host Welch began Monday’s podcast episode with a cheeky reminder that they were “completely independently funded media, so please subscribe just by subscribing, that’s free,” before outright begging for cash: “If you have some extra money, please join and become a member to both I’ve Had It and IHip News on YouTube.”

Read it.

President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC for defamation just received a green light from a federal judge to go forward to trial. Judge Jeffrey Kuntz (S.D. Fla.) ruled in Trump v. BBC that the media outlet must stand trial for splicing together lines from Trump’s January 6th speech to make it seem more violence-inducing before the riot at the Capitol. Judge Kuntz, however, rejected a claim under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The biggest challenge for the court may be whether it can seat jurors who can overcome the case’s underlying political elements.

Read it.

Just a week after a blue wave hit the Lone Star State, a Muslim state representative has filed multiple bills ahead of the 90th legislative session that would implement Islamic practices and holidays.

Democrat state Rep. Suleman Lalani, an immigrant from Pakistan who represents Texas House District 76, which encompasses Fort Bend and Harris counties, filed several bills ranging from establishing a “Muslim Heritage Day” to ensuring halal food is provided in schools.

The Foundry.

The Foundry.

The American Mind.

On October 31, as Paris was still dealing with violent demonstrations and unrest, the French government made an extraordinary decision: it prohibited a peaceful political conference on remigration. The contrast was difficult to miss. While protesters were throwing Molotov cocktails at police, an international gathering of politicians, writers, and activists seeking to debate European immigration policy was deemed too dangerous to take place. I was among those scheduled to speak at the conference, which was ironically titled “Remigration: Let’s Open the Debate!”

Organized by Polémia, the event was intended to bring together approximately 800 participants from Europe and the United States to discuss remigration—a term increasingly used to describe the return or deportation of foreign nationals, whether voluntary or compulsory.

Two days before the scheduled gathering, organizers received an official decree prohibiting it. French interior ministry authorities invoked the possibility of public disorder and characterized remigration as a xenophobic and racist ideology. An administrative court subsequently rejected an emergency appeal, forcing the organizers to move the conference online, where it was broadcast on X and YouTube.

Unfortunately, that particular prohibition was only the beginning. Austrian remigration activist Martin Sellner, scheduled to speak at the conference, was denied entry into France upon arriving at Paris–Beauvais Airport. He was detained, held in a cell all night without his phone, and subsequently deported to Austria. Sellner was also prevented from holding a book event and attending a rally in support of the Save Europe Act, a European citizens’ initiative advocating remigration. After French authorities prevented the rally from taking place, several hundred peaceful activists gathered at a restaurant outside central Paris. Within hours, police told everyone to leave the premises.

Three interventions in the space of a few days effectively dismantled an entire program of peaceful political activity.

The Foundry.

In a surprise victory, Democrats swept the state. Led by Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa and Sen.-elect James Talarico, Democrats also seized the state House. Their campaigns appealed to moderates, promising affordability for working families. But now, they are already showing their cards by introducing 23 gun-related bills in the state Legislature since Nov. 9, the first day of pre-filing.

Of these, 22 anti-gun bills have been introduced in the state House, and one has been introduced in the state Senate, where Republicans maintain a slim majority—the last bastion against total Democrat domination.

One of these bills, HB 218, would effectively create “red flag” laws, allowing officials to seize Texans’ guns for up to a year for unproven allegations of dangerous mental illness. Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt said this would create a statewide gun-confiscation scheme allowing a judge to order Texans’ guns taken without due process.

Another, HB 173, would make it a state jail felony to transfer semiautomatic rifles to anyone younger than 21, with narrow exceptions for law enforcement, military personnel, and temporary sporting use.

Meanwhile, HB 613 would require background checks for private gun sales and transfers, making it a crime to transfer firearms without one.

HB 659 would go a step further, creating a state gun registry—collecting the IDs of buyers who purchase multiple guns or magazines in a week and sending them to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the local sheriff’s office. This could be a precursor to the state seizing Texans’ guns, much like California started using its registry in 2006 to take guns.

Read it.

Watch it.

No, we are not a family. It’s just a job.

Watch it.

Women are discovering what men always knew. The corporate rat-race is a shitty life.

It is fun listening to Greg Owen even when he’s making the same mistake as everyone else, of thinking that what he wants out of life is therefore what everybody ought to want out of life. Don’t be cruel. He means well.

Not the Bee.

There is one power in America before which all others must bow.

Only one that can command the fate of nations.

The obese black woman.

Not the Bee.

They’re now literally getting away with murder in New York.

So he was determined to be a psycho by the Marines and the NYPD, but he was allowed to go back to work WITH SCHOOLCHILDREN?

Pro tip: Stay out of New York.

Not the Bee.

They’re calling this the most “Detroit” thing to ever happen.

Following that 2020 suspension, Davis made headlines again in 2022 when the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission found her unfit to serve. She purposely unplugged courtroom recording equipment, threatened coworkers (even using Bible verses to do so!), used a fake handicap placard so she could park closer to buildings, lied under oath, and abused other court powers.

The evidence of abuse was so rampant that their recommendation was to remove her from the bench entirely, but the Michigan Supreme Court (now run almost entirely by Democrats) slapped her on the wrist again, handing her an additional 6-year suspension in 2023.

The problem with democracy is that it allows 51% of the population to pee in the soup of the other 39% whenever they want to.

Read it.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Paris where he told a meeting of G7 ministers on Tuesday that the United States is “open to diplomacy” to end the conflict with Iran but that “the Iranian demands are totally unrealistic.”

Tehran is not backing off its seven conditions, which include things like the removal of sanctions and the payment of war reparations. Rubio stated, “We expect that could change – and if it does, we’re prepared for diplomacy.”

There was one big line in particular from the US top diplomat that is grabbing headlines. Rubio declared there is “no need” for renewed major combat operations against the Islamic Republic.

He signaled that the ecomomic war, however, will keep going and even be intensified: “The economic campaign (against Iran) is so devastating that right now there is no need for major combat operations,” Rubio described after the G7 foreign ministers met. “That’s what I told our allies here today.”

I wish I could believe that. Unfortunately, we’ve all spent lives listening to government employees lie and we just don’t believe them any more.

Read it.

Democrat Abdi Daisane, a Somali-born daycare owner, has won a Minnesota House seat in a longtime Republican district, the Washington Examiner reported on Tuesday.

His victory comes despite scrutiny of his daycare center, which has received millions in government subsidies and faced questions over its operations.

Daisane captured 51.6% of the vote in last week’s election, defeating Republican Mike Conway, president of the St. Cloud City Council, to flip a Minnesota House district Republicans had held for about two decades. He will become the first Somali-born member of the Minnesota Legislature.

Life in Minnesotastan.

The Antiplanner.

I’ve previously argued that Brightline’s proximity to southern Florida’s cruise ship ports made it the only private intercity rail line in the country that had any chance of success. The lesson for investors is that no private rail line in the U.S. will pay off. The lesson for rail advocates is that they need to lie like dogs to persuade investors to put up the funds for new passenger rail projects. As advocates of Colorado’s Front Range rail project proved last week, they are very good at doing that.

Read it.

The Shroud of Turin, one of history’s most mysterious religious artifacts, is yielding surprising new clues through DNA analysis. Scientists have uncovered a complex mixture of biological traces that may reveal more about the cloth’s past and the environments it encountered. The findings offer a fresh scientific perspective on a centuries-old mystery that continues to spark fascination and debate.

Read it.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop! The sonic slogan of Rice Krispies is now becoming an anachronism.

The classic puffed rice foodstuff now no longer contain actual rice grains, at least in UK and European markets, the manufacturer Kellogg’s recently admitted. It will now use rice flour and corn flour, which aside from gustatory concerns, will result in it being noticeably quieter than it used to be. Kellogg’s, in the face of complaints online, insists that retaining the original sound was a “huge focus.”

It’s yet another example of the corporate cost-cutting putrefaction we’ve come to expect — and the reason for it is grim: climate change.

A spokesperson told media outlets that the reformulation will help “maintain consistent quality at a time when changing weather conditions are affecting the quality and availability of some of the rice and grains used in our cereals.”

The company didn’t get into specifics, but the recipe change comes as a powerful “super El Niño” climate phenomenon has devastated agriculture in South and Southeast Asia, where more than half the world’s rice is grown.

Once again, ‘climate change’ is used as an excuse for bad weather, and as an enabler of shitification.

Read it.

An incident late last month at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, has garnered attention on social media as a student faces a felony charge for allegedly threatening pro-life students with a reference to the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September of last year.

Screenshots of the Miami Ohio page on the Yik Yak social media site, along with reporting from WLWT, show a comment targeting the Students for Life of America table at the university. “How many dining dollars to kirk the anti abortion table in Armstrong,” the Oct. 28 post read.

Read it.

The American Mind.

The administration’s actions in South Africa are hugely significant because defending the rights of white South Africans is the linchpin of pushing back against anti-white policies worldwide. No group of whites in the world has received less sympathy—and arguably, since they voluntarily relinquished political power to the black majority in 1994, no group of whites has suffered as severely.

After 32 years of ANC governance, South Africa today features rolling blackouts in some of its largest cities. The ANC inherited Eskom, which was one of the world’s best power companies, and proceeded to loot it. When I visited the country’s largest bookstore in Johannesburg, only a humming generator kept the flickering lights on. South Africa’s water supply has also become inconsistent. Cape Town, South Africa’s tourist capital, almost became the first major world city to run out of water a few years back. Johannesburg, once the most advanced city on the African continent, saw its water delivery almost completely collapse just days before the elections.

South Africa also suffers from sky-high crime. Several South African cities are regularly ranked among the world’s most dangerous, and anyone with anything worth protecting relies on a substantial private security force that dwarfs the combined numbers of army and police personnel. Corruption is rampant, as is the looting of companies by the politically connected. So-called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), which is designed in theory to spread more of South Africa’s wealth broadly, has unsurprisingly benefited only those who are allied with the regime. And the country’s borders are wide open to illegal immigration, which has become an increasingly potent issue in South African domestic politics.

The Foundry.

I get it. All this talk of the “blue wave” makes you want to kick the nearest Smurf.

Many midterm victors seem to believe that killers are better than cops, men in women’s sports are better than women in women’s sports, toilet paper is better than the U.S. Constitution, and the Lord is not the Great I AM, but singing “I Am What I Am” in a West Hollywood production of “La Cage aux Folles.”

As easy as it is to sink into despair and defriend anybody who has a D in their name, let alone next to their name, I’m here to let you in on a little secret. If you think God has forsaken this nation, you haven’t been paying attention. We’ve been here before, and not too far in the past.