Power Line.

A video clip of U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins at a recent cabinet meeting shows her making the following statement,

Even at the U.S. Department of Agriculture we’ve cancelled a $300,000 contract educating on food justice for queer and transgender farmers in San Francisco and a similar contract we cancelled in New York, again, educating queer and transgender farmers on food justice and food equality.

I’m not even sure what that means.

I’m with her. Over the years, I have traveled extensively throughout the 49 square miles of the City-County of San Francisco, I have never seen a plot of land that resembles a working farm.

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That seems to be the case as social media has been abuzz in recent days over the university’s choice to offer a new Math course, called MA5, heading into the new year. The Harvard Crimson first wrote about the introduction of the new course back in September of last year, but discussion over the course has caught fire on X in recent days.

The course is called Math MA5, and it is an introductory course addressing gaps in students’ algebra skills, according to Brendan A. Kelly, Director of Introductory Math.

Which begs the question: why are students getting into Harvard incapable of doing algebra, which generally starts in junior high or high school?

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Well, what did she expect? Flowers and a box of candy?

Gothamist.

Marketing experts aren’t surprised. The surprise saturation, they say, has been building for years alongside another growing trend: the algorithm-based predictability of online shopping. And they say that New Yorkers are increasingly drawn to the unknown, and even paying more for it, because they’re exhausted by all the choices and control available to them in other areas of life, particularly online. Some predict that this trend is only beginning.

“?Surprise is an emotion intensifier. It’s a way to just kind of turn up the volume on the vibrancy of life,” said psychology researcher and “surprisologist” Tania Luna, who co-authored the 2015 book “Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected.”

“We’re living an increasingly algorithm-driven existence that really is catering to comfort, predictability, ease, convenience,” she said, noting that many of us experience a “numbness” from spending so much time scrolling and looking at screens. Surprise can function as a balm, she said.

Since, as Democrat voters, they have no idea what their tax dollars are paying for (or into whose pockets they’re landing), they ought to be used to it by now.

Q: Where is Bruce Wayne when you really need him?
A. He moved to Florida with the other billionaires to escape high taxes and ungrateful Underclass scumbags.

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A professor of physics and gender studies who has argued that “white empiricism” undermines Einstein’s theory of general relativity now sits on a top physics advisory panel within the Department of Energy, raising questions from fellow scientists about the panel’s integrity and providing a potential target for the Trump administration as it seeks to stamp out DEI within the federal government.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who has suggested that string theory “failed to succeed” because the field has too many white men, was appointed to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) under the Biden administration in 2024. The panel advises the Energy Department on research and funding priorities for particle physics, giving it significant say over which projects receive federal support.

Prescod-Weinstein will remain on HEPAP until 2027 unless the Trump administration takes action to remove her. Her role at the Energy Department has rankled some scientists, who say that an institution tasked with directing federal research should not be advised by a woman who, in one 2020 paper, wrote that “Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics.”

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Humans have made the world less hospitable for birds in many ways. One obvious and intentional example of this can be found in towns and cities worldwide: anti-bird spikes. The pointy wires you might see attached to roofs, ledges, and light poles are meant to deter urban species like pigeons from landing, pooping, and even nesting where people don’t want them to. But in an avian act of poetic justice, a handful of European birds have struck back.

Apparently Carrion Crows and Eurasian Magpies are stealing and repurposing the spikes as a nest-building material. Nests featuring the deterrent were documented in a study published Tuesday in the Dutch journal Deinsea, an online periodical from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.

Many birds are known to use human-made elements in their nests. In fact, 176 different species have been documented nest building with synthetic materials, according to another study published this week in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Yet the birds in the Dutch study are exceptional for having taken something so purposefully built to minimize their presence and using it to rear the next generation.

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Is this a great country or what?

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You can’t make it up: There are few things climate activists love more than holding conferences to congratulate themselves on saving the world. This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Belém, Brazil. To accommodate the more than 50,000 attendees—along with their private jets and SUV motorcades—local officials are bulldozing tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest to make way for a new four-lane highway called “Freedom Avenue.”

OffGuardian.

In December 2024, a Romanian court cancelled the second round of the planned Presidential election and annulled the completed first round, citing (totally theoretical) “Russian interference”.

This caused massive protests in Romania, as you can imagine. The first round had been won by right winger C?lin Georgescu following a social media-based campaign, and he was predicted to quite easily win the second round as well.

The Romanian opposition – denied a likely victory – took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Then, earlier today, the ECHR threw the case out without even hearing it. Apparently, the Romanian courts were perfectly within their rights to simply indefinitely postpone their election on the basis of unproven allegations, and all those people who already voted and wanted to vote again can just go to hell.

This is the ECHR, which lectures the world on rights and democratic norms on the regular.
And everyone is apparently just fine with it. It’s crazy.

REVEALED: The enormous amount of money you now have to earn to be considered middle class (UK Daily Mail)

What does it take to be middle class in 2025? New study explains (The Hill)

This is what it takes to be a middle class earner in Houston in 2025 (CultureMap Houston)

How much you need to earn to be middle class in Columbus and Ohio (NBC4 Columbus)

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As a prospective Senate candidate, Pete Buttigieg is denouncing the diversity trainings that have become synonymous with the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, saying they look “like something straight out of Portlandia.” As mayor of South Bend, Ind., he championed such training, with his administration implementing a series of diversity sessions that lectured cops on “sizeism” and “languageism” amid a surge in violent crime.

Buttigieg, speaking Tuesday at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics panel on the “Future of the Democratic Party,” addressed the party’s focus on “diversity.” He said he would “always fight” to care “for people’s different experiences.” He also took aim at diversity training, saying Americans shouldn’t be made to “sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced, and it is how Trump Republicans are made.”

Cops in South Bend had a similar experience when Buttigieg served as mayor.

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Yes, really.

Because it begins with ‘man’ it is somehow holding back women from going into the manufacturing industry.

Schakowsky, the ranking Democrat member on the House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, for some unfathomable reason, posited that only around 13 percent of people in manufacturing are female because the word itself just “sounds like a guy.”

I guess Biden isn’t the only Democrat with brain-rot.

Your tax dollars at work.

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The dangerously spiralling mental health crisis in America was on full show Tuesday as the City Council in Worcester Massachusetts voted in favour of becoming a “sanctuary city for the transgender community.”

City officials voted to enshrine a commitment to transgender rights, and not to prevent people seeking so called ‘gender-affirming care.’

The measure will also prevent information on transgender identifying and ‘gender diverse’ individuals being shared with out-of-state agencies.

The vote was brought after Councilor-at-Large Thu Nguyen, a non-binary identifying member of the board, alleged that ‘they’ had been harassed and misgendered by other city officials.

A parade of individuals spoke for hours in public comments about how unsafe they feel since President Trump’s signed an executive order outlining that the federal government recognizes only “two sexes, male and female.”

Practically every person who spoke at the hearing appeared and sounded completely unhinged, again underscoring that this is a mental health problem that shouldn’t be normalised.

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Officials in the Brdy region of the Czech Republic were at an impasse.

Despite securing more than one million dollars’ worth of funding for a new dam to address water issues, the project had stalled after seven years of planning because the necessary building permits for such a structure couldn’t be acquired.

But then, everyone woke up one morning in January to find that the job had been completed—by eight beavers. For free.

Sometimes the old ways are best. Come, follow the Way of the Beaver.

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Believing that Trump (ironically, one of the two most pro-gay presidents in American history) wants to kill or imprison homosexual couples gives meaning to their lives. A perverse meaning, to be sure, but meaning nonetheless. Strangely, this desire to be oppressed only happens in a decent and tolerant society.

If this were the 1950s America or a Muslim country today, this lesbian couple couldn’t afford their beliefs. In a similar fashion, children of super-rich people who are secular tend to be Marxists because they can afford nonsense beliefs that spiritually fulfill them.

Now, modern Marxism (Wokism) doesn’t make people very happy. Wokists are similar to the most miserable type of Christian imaginable, one constantly hating this or that group of people. I recall in Angela’s Ashes a Catholic in Ireland watched a lovely Protestant family enjoying Christmas Eve through a window as he was working as a mailman. Watching a happy Protestant family celebrating Christmas day, he thought to himself, “How can these Protestants be so happy? Don’t they know they are going to hell?”

Bloomberg, a Voice of the Crust.

Former President Joe Biden re-signed with Creative Artists Agency, returning to the talent representatives who managed him after eight years as vice president.

While a CAA client, Biden published his memoir Promise Me, Dad, launched the 42-date American Promise tour, selling more than 85,000 tickets nationwide, and headlined numerous speaking engagements, CAA said Monday in a statement.

Creative Artists is one of the top talent agencies in the world, with clients that include personalities in film and entertainment, sports and music.

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The monetary black hole that is the MTA apparently hasn’t figured out a way to secure its property, despite what appears to be an incessant, neverending need for additional cash.

That’s because the NYPD is now searching for six suspects who allegedly stole an R train from a Brooklyn storage yard and took it for a joyride, traveling down the tracks.

The incident occurred around 10 p.m. Saturday near the 71st Avenue station in Forest Hills, Queens, according to Fox 5.

Fox reported that the suspects operated the train and vandalized its camera by marking the glass panels. No arrests or injuries have been reported. Their identities and whereabouts after leaving the train remain unknown.

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Cue ‘Sheep Will Safely Graze’ from Handel’s Messiah.

Sheepherder JR Howard accidentally found himself in the middle of Texas’ burgeoning clean energy transition. In 2021, he and his family began contracting with solar farms — sites with hundreds of thousands of solar modules — to use his sheep to eat the grass.

What was once a small business has turned into a full-scale operation with more than 8,000 sheep and 26 employees.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

Proglodytes are always looking for ways to stop people they don’t like from doing things they don’t like.

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You can’t make this stuff up.

Residents of Worcester, Massachusetts are spending taxpayer dollars so their “non-binary” town councilor can take a month-long “mental health” leave of absence. Why? Because “they” were “misgendered,” of course!

“Mr. Chairman, under your leadership, I have felt unsafe around this council body,” announced Thu Ngyuen, a Keffiyeh-wearing council member over a Zoom call on Tuesday.

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It’s not proglodyte incompetence, it s CLIMATE CHANGE that’s to blame!

UPDATE: Three Hard Truths About California’s Fire Crisis

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Everyone knows National “Public” Radio hates half the public, the half that voted for Donald Trump. On Wednesday’s terribly named All Things Considered, an eight-minute story on NPR promoted “Sequeerity,” an LGBT security force in Minneapolis protecting their own from the allegedly violent hatred of the Trump-loving right-wing extremists.

The reporter was their “domestic extremism” reporter Odette Yousef, who doesn’t report on any LGBT extremism — they don’t acknowledge that exists. that can’t be identified. The sympathetic headline was “Neighbors protecting neighbors: Worried marginalized communities prep for Trump term.”

Newsbusters.

No play or musical is safe, at this point, from being re-written into a woke cliche.

But if you didn’t think a classic could be done any more injustice than by turning Oz gay, Broadway just employed our Supreme Court’s DEI judge to ruin Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet!

…

The tortured take, which recycles overplayed pop songs as their official score, decides Juliet doesn’t “need no man” because she’s a strong independent woman, of course! So they thought… What better way to promote that message than by rewarding Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who doesn’t know what a woman is, with a cameo?

In a performance riddled with second-hand embarrassment, Jackson marched out on stage, Saturday night, wearing a pants-dress getup.

UPDATE: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a longtime theater lover, makes her Broadway debut (Rachel Treisman/NPR)

UPDATE: ‘HISTORIC’: CBS’s Norah O’Donnell Gushes Over Justice Theater Kid’s Broadway Cameo

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When the dust of history settles, some episodes are destined for the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” department. Case in point: Climate Defiance, a climate activism group, recently made headlines by “shutting down” the Department of Energy. Or so they claimed. In reality, they staged a protest blocking the entrance to an unused parking garage, which is as effective as barricading a revolving door with a sticky note. Their social media triumphalism was rich: “Revolution in the air!” they proclaimed, while senior DOE officials apparently remained blissfully unaware of this Earth-shaking inconvenience.

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The New York Times added menstrual products to its Manhattan office’s men’s bathrooms over the summer, according to internal communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The paper’s decision was announced by the vice president for global real estate and facilities, Victor Liu, in a company-wide Slack message. From July 26 to July 29, Liu said, the company would begin “adding menstrual products and sanitary baskets” to the office’s men’s restrooms “to support transgender and non-binary colleagues.” The company also announced that it was “removing gendered imagery and adding language that colleagues are welcome to use the restroom in which they feel most comfortable.”

The move highlights the growing cultural and political rift between legacy media companies and the general public. Polls show that Americans generally support policies that require individuals who identify as transgender to use bathrooms that match their biological sex. President-elect Donald Trump hammered the transgender issue in his successful campaign last fall, which surveys show was one of his most impactful talking points.

The Times declined to comment.

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The White House ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal regulatory agency, to expand its use of “Indigenous Knowledge” on Monday, as part of a last-minute push in the federal government to embrace what scientists call pseudoscience.

The agency, according to a press release, signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium to “advance Indigenous Knowledge” and “achieve strong climate resilience for our tribal nations.” The agreement will impact at least 35 accredited universities and “empower our tribal colleges and universities to be leaders in the ongoing response to climate change.”

“Indigenous Knowledge” is a discredited belief system posting that native-born peoples possess an innate understanding of how the universe works. While scientists have referred to its ideas as “dangerous” and a rejection of the scientific method, those criticisms have not stopped the Biden administration from ordering the federal government to consider “Indigenous Knowledge” when implementing rules and regulations.

Marginal Revolution.

The latest sought-after home amenity? Personal fire hydrants. The logic is that when there’s a major disaster there may not be enough fire engines to protect every house in an area. If homeowners have their own hydrant ready to go—along with hoses, nozzles and adapters—and are trained to use it all, that could help reduce the number of homes destroyed.

…

Victoria Waldorf is the listing agent for a five-bedroom, three-bathroom, 4,691-square-foot house that is for sale for $1.775 million in Agua Dulce, Calif. She says she points out the personal fire hydrant to everyone who comes through for a viewing. “There’s relief in people’s faces,” she says.

My house is only about fifty feet from a city hydrant, so I think I’m good.

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The Canadian government announced on Thursday that it was prohibiting its citizens from owning another 324 types of firearms and is working to send them to Ukraine.

“As part of its comprehensive approach, on December 5, 2024, the Government announced the prohibition of more military-style assault-style firearms,” Canada’s Public Safety Department said in a press release.

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It appears no liberal Christmas is complete without the ultimate stocking stuffer: an actual stocking to wear over your face while rioting. While not yet selling face coverings for anonymous violence, Crooked Media, co-founded by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, is selling a line of Antifa items for liberals wanting to make a statement against any “Peace on Earth.” (As of this posting, Antifa items were still being sold on the “Crooked Store” site). You can now proudly wear your “Antifa Dad” hat to signal your support for political violence and deplatforming. It is the ultimate naughty gift list for putting the slay back into your Sleigh Bells.

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Hey, it worked for Bloomberg. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

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Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

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The “social justice” keyboard warriors are waging war on their latest target: A forthcoming biblical drama.

Why? Because its Jewish main character is being played by… a Jew. Shocker!

Netflix just released its trailer for the new series, “Mary,” depicting the Virgin Mary’s “journey to give birth to Jesus.” This has set off the Jew-hating Left, which is campaigning to “cancel” the show because the mother of Jesus is being played by an Israeli actress, Noa Cohen.

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The Welsh government has been advised to create dog free spaces in outdoor public areas after an ‘anti-racist’ group asserted it is making black Africans ‘feel unsafe’.

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Jamal Simmons, a former aide to Vice President Harris, called for President Biden to resign so that the vice president can have his role for a short amount of time.

“Joe Biden’s been a phenomenal president, he’s lived up to so many of the promises he’s made. There’s one promise left that he could fulfill, being a transitional figure,” Simmons said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on a panel featuring anchor Dana Bash, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.

“He could resign the presidency in the next 30 days, make Kamala Harris president of the United States,” he continued, drawing shocked reactions from others.

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Young white liberal women, plagued with the ‘woke mind virus,’ have swung so far off the deep end that some are now threatening to align themselves with pro-Christian values. They are advocating for abstaining from sex, dating, marriage, and even children over the outcome of the 2024 presidential election because males voted for the ‘Orange Man’…

Far-left corporate media outlets like CBS News and the Washington Post have pushed out stories about South Korea’s “4B Movement” gaining traction among feminists in the United States shortly after Trump won.

The 4B movement is comprised of four “no’s”—no sex, no dating or marriage with men, and no having children. Some young feminists have adopted it on various social media platforms in the US to show young men voting for Republicans has consequences.

And I would encourage them to do so. Let’s clean out the gene pool thoroughly.

Gothamist.

Raccoons live among us, and Port Authority officials want to keep them out of the ceilings at LaGuardia Airport.

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She dropped out of all her studies without a degree. Moreover, she’s an anti-car activist who travels by bicycle. She has neither industrial management experience, financial expertise nor an inkling of automotive engineering. That folks, is one of the top executives at VW. No joke!

Axios.

Half of Gen Z voters — and 1 in 4 U.S. voters overall — have lied to people close to them about who they’re voting for, according to the latest Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.

Ever wonder why polls seem wrong more often than not? This could be it.

(Savor the irony of depending on a polling organization to find out why most polls suck.)

Gates of Vienna.

The municipal authorities put in a bike path that ended up being in violation of the fire regulations, so the solution was to compel residents to move out of adjacent apartment buildings.

Makes sense, right?

Right?

Well, I guess it does if you’re German.

Read it.

A leading UK university has been strongly criticised for putting a trigger warning on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales advising students that the work contains “expressions of Christian faith.”

Critics say the University of Nottingham is “demeaning education” for warning students that the Medieval collection of stories of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral may contain Christianity.

The Mail on Sunday obtained details of the “content notice” through a request made under Freedom of Information laws. The warning, which applies to a modular course called “Chaucer and His Contemporaries,” advises students of violence, mental illness, and “expressions of Christian faith” in the works of Chaucer, along with William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve—all of whom lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

And CrimeThink patters in on little Woke feet….

Antigone.

“Does anyone still believe in the Roman gods?” asked my classmate in our school Latin lesson. It was an odd thing to ask. He was probably just bored of pluperfect verbs and thought that it was worth trying for a digression. Our teacher clearly didn’t know the answer, and ducked the question by asking one of his own: “Did the Romans believe in their gods?” (Answer: Probably, in most cases, although belief wasn’t as big a deal for them as it is for Christians.)

I didn’t know it at the time, but the right answer to the question that my classmate asked in that suburban British classroom 30 years ago was “Yes”. There are large numbers of people today in formerly Christian countries who practise paganism, defined broadly as beliefs and practices that seek to revive the deities, rituals, symbols and religious philosophies of ancient pre-Christian Europe. In England, for example, around 90,000 pagans showed up in the 2021 census, which is generally regarded as an undercount. The total number of modern pagans across the Western world must be in the hundreds of thousands, if not over a million. Most people would regard this as somewhat surprising. How we got to this point is a puzzle which scholars in the small but fascinating field of Pagan Studies have spent the past 20-30 years trying to solve.

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Hey, it’s hard out there for a pimp….

Michigan Daily.

I think that’s an accurate statement.

The Register.

With less than a month to go before the Nobel Prizes are handed out for the most worthy scientific discoveries of the preceding year, it would be remiss of The Register not to observe the honors conferred by the gong’s bratty little brother, the Ig Nobel Prize.

The satirical ceremony has been run annually since 1991 by the scientific humor mag Annals of Improbable Research, which serves the laudable goal of highlighting “research that makes people laugh… then think.” In other words, the quirky, trivial, inane, and insane.

It’s just a bit of absurdist fun – winners are awarded tacky trophies, this time a piece of paper saying they’ve won an Ig Nobel Prize, and the traditional 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars (a deprecated currency that had a penchant for hyperinflation), but actual Nobel laureates perform the prize-giving, and they looked thrilled to be there.

Next to the Darwin Awards, the best thing going.

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Irony–it’s not just for the Babylon Bee any more.

OffGuardian.

Sometimes it feels like writing for OffG has fallen into a recognizable pattern the last two years, one that could be best summed up “as ignoring the (mostly) fake stuff on the front pages and collating the real stuff on the back”.

Regular reminders that no matter who you vote for, or which side wins what war, the overarching agenda is still out there, eating and growing. Like the Blob or the Thing.

Censorship? We all know that’s on the elite’s shopping list.
Digital currencies? They’re still going.
Digital ID? Absolutely on the cards.

And we’ll be returning to talk about all of them no doubt until they eats any more or we’re finally shut down (whichever happens first)

But today we’re talking about eating the bugs.

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In the early morning hours of Friday, September 6th, a man with a machete stormed a police station in Linz am Rhein (Rhineland-Palatinate). The 29-year-old Albanian man entered the police station, swinging a machete. Police spokesman Jürgen Fachinger said: “He threatened to kill [everyone] at the police station.”

The police were able to lock the man between the outside door and the secured door that leads to the officers, protecting themselves from the attack.

The officers tried to explain to the man over the intercom that he was trapped—but the man would not calm down. A special task force from Koblenz finally overpowered the machete attacker with a taser. Police spokesman Fachinger said, “After using a taser in the lock, the person was restrained and arrested by special forces. He was slightly injured.”

The man is in custody and his motives have not been reported. The public prosecutor’s office will decide later today whether to apply for an arrest warrant.

In Texas, he would have been stone-cold dead within 30 seconds. (How does a single person, without even a firearm, ‘storm’ a police station?)

This tells you everything you need to know about Europe in general and Germany in particular.

Read it.

But wait–there’s more:

And it turns out that good decision-making and its fruits is not merely a matter of luck, but strongly tied to white privilege.

People of Color, of course, don’t actually make decisions, but just wait for whatever the great Ju-Ju drops upon them.