Watch it.

Tim Poole does a deep dive.

Verbum sapienti sat est.

Richard Hanania.

Why not? Democrats certainly are.

As I’ve previously written, Groyperization on everything but the Jews has already occurred on the right. That leads to the question of what we do from here. We basically have a mainstream conservative movement that is motivated by implicit white nationalism, being challenged by an insurgency that is explicitly white nationalist. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that people who stress identitarian concerns will often be very flexible with economic arguments. Often, they end up agreeing with the left on economic issues, because that is the easiest way to make nativist arguments in a relatively non-offensive way.

One of the main things that differentiates pro-market and anti-market thinkers is the degree to which each side believes that market processes are zero-sum. Socialists tend to assume that there are fixed amounts of jobs and resources, and politics revolves around fighting over who gets what. Capitalism rests on the idea that trade generally makes both parties better off, and we can set things up so that everyone gets wealthier in the long run. The entire history of the progress of our species is one long advertisement for how the capitalists are right and the socialists are wrong.

People always feel the need to argue that their preferred policies will make others in society better off in tangible ways. Even postliberals who stress that things other than GDP matter will when they can argue that their preferred policies improve living standards. They get to have it both ways, making economic arguments when convenient and retreating to “we’re a nation, not an economy” when things go wrong.

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Your life is “affordable” based primarily on two numbers — your income, and your cost of housing.. Mayors don’t influence your income, and they shouldn’t try to influence what you pay for housing.

If government, at any level, wants to make your life more affordable, it should do the following:

• • • • Keep taxes low.
      • Keep inflation low.
      • Keep interest rates low (which you can’t do if inflation is high)
      • Keep immigration low.
        • • High immigration adds demand to the housing market and therefore housing prices go higher.
          • High immigration adds supply to the job market and therefore wages go lower.
      • Cut regulations on businesses. 
        • • Regulations add costs. Those costs are passed on to consumers.
          • Regulations make starting a business more difficult. Therefore there is less competition. Therefore prices are higher.
      • Don’t limit businesses. Let them grow. 
        • • Particularly energy companies. The more energy, the better.
          • Particularly homebuilders. The more building activity, the better.

It should be noted at this point that during all four years of the Biden administration, the federal government did the exact opposite regarding every item on the above list. It is not a coincidence that affordability is a hot political topic after four years of the federal government doing everything it could do to make life less affordable.

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There is a version of my life that could have existed, and for a long time it looked like the path I was on. I was a successful restaurateur, financially independent, living a neat and polished life that most people would label as accomplishment. I could have stayed that woman. A single woman with a couple of well-trained pets, a beautiful home in a gated golf-course community, and a thriving business. No obligations, no interruptions, and no sticky hands tugging my shirt while I tried to answer an email.

Society would have applauded that version of me and called it freedom.

The irony is that during that time, I was feeding thousands of people from-scratch food. I knew the value of real ingredients and traditional cooking techniques, yet I did not fully understand the deeper meaning of nourishment. Not just physical nourishment, but the cultural and generational work that happens when families cook and eat together. The work that forms identity.

Today my life looks very different. I have four children and a farm, and nothing about our life is quiet or controlled. Just yesterday my 10-year-old stood next to me making jam from blueberries and blackberries, and then we bottled homemade barbecue sauce. The younger kids ran barefoot around us, coming in and out of the kitchen like little barn swallows, leaving laughter, questions, and a trail of crumbs behind. It was chaotic, imperfect, and slow. Yet in the middle of the noise, I could feel something ancient. Something right.

Moments like that used to be normal. Today they are the exception, and that realization has been stirring something in me. It raises a difficult question that many people avoid because the answer is uncomfortable.

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The Paris Climate Agreement turns ten this month. But COP21’s outcome — in which 195 countries pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to achieve a global temperature outcome — is in serious peril. COP30, now in session, finds almost all signatories out of compliance with their “nationally determined contributions.” Major emitters such as the United States and Russia are not participating in the annual meeting either. How much longer can “Net Zero” and like UN global aspirations continue?

Specifically, only one of the 40 major reporting groups (accounting for 85% of global emissions) is on track, and most of the rest have not even submitted a target. “This lack of progress is deeply concerning,” Climate Action Tracker reported, citing a need to “step up mitigation efforts and avoid weakening targets by relying on offsets and sinks….”

The U.S. is rated “critically insufficient,” joining Russia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, and six others. Canada, China, India, Argentina, and three others are “highly insufficient,” and the trend is negative for virtually all countries with growing economies.

The climatistas won’t be happy until humanity goes extinct and quits being the source of all that’s wrong in the world.

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In a curious twist, voters typically aligned with Democrats are increasingly purchasing firearms, citing fear of the Trump administration and rising civil unrest as reasons for their newfound appreciation of the Second Amendment, NPR reported Saturday.

Several individuals, many requesting anonymity, said they fear the current administration has created a climate of hostility toward marginalized groups, prompting them to become gun buyers.

“What I’m talking about is protecting myself from a situation where there may be some kind of civil unrest,” said a man identified only as Charles, who is Black.

Welcome to our world. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Newsweek, a Voice of the Crust.

Human corpses move around significantly as they decompose, according to an Australian researcher who observed a dead body over a 17-month period.

Australian researcher Alyson Wilson, the lead author of the study, found that the dead body moved for more than a year after death—findings which could have significant implications for post-mortem investigations, AFP reported.

Wilson suggests that the process of decomposition could be responsible for the movements: as the body mummifies, the ligaments dry out, causing parts to move.

“What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body,” Wilson told ABC News.

Razib Khan, a very well-respected geneticist.

There is more in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in any human philosophy. This is why science is not philosophy. Those who map the skies, observe the patterns of a school of fish, or dissect molecular processes are well aware of this. We scientists wander dark and strange lands, and encounter startling landscapes and creatures beyond our wildest imaginations.

Only within the last few centuries have we come to realise that the great bowl of the dark night sky is filled with suns of a power and spectacle that we can’t even recreate in our mind’s eye. The ancient constellation of Orion contains bright blue Rigel and resplendent crimson Betelgeuse. In biology, microscopes have given our eyes access to a world previously unknown to us. The water bear, the tardigrade, is a beast of such profound strangeness that we perceive in its essence something deeply alien, as if it were from another realm altogether, and not just part of a world below our conventional acuity of perception.

And yet one hundred and fifty years ago Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution, which was predicated on the fact that all life on this planet shares a common descent: from fish to fowl, to the great beech tree and the lowliest pond scum. And, yes, humanity and the tardigrade as well.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

Google Maps can be unreliable at the best of times when you’re travelling in China, but in the southern megacity of Chongqing, a map of any kind turns out to be almost entirely useless. Built across a series of impossibly steep mountainsides and vertiginous valleys at the dramatic confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers, it is an astonishing urban phenomenon to behold – a vertically sprawling city that can only be understood in three dimensions.

It is a place where neighbourhoods cling to cliffs, connected by elevated roads 20 storeys up in the air. Metro lines emerge from tunnels through the mountains, only to plunge straight through the middle of residential skyscrapers, which themselves sprout improbably from the sheer slopes. Something that looks close by on the map can turn out to be tens of storeys above or below you. And getting there usually makes for an exhilarating journey.

In the Good Old Days, before education went to shit, we could be confident that everyone who graduated high school would get this jokd. Nowadays, we would be lucky if they recognize John Donne’s name.

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A bipartisan congressional report published on Nov. 12 revealed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) manipulates critical minerals markets to further its global ambitions.

Does this come as a surprise to anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

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Most of us now are aware of the ever-tightening grip of tyranny, and the erosion of our liberties, occasioned by ever more remote centralisation. To break it, we need a process which prevents power, both political and commercial, from continuing to rise to the top of a pyramid, from where our little lives are run by a few people who have no human connection with us. Here is my first blueprint.

I suggest a secession, whereby each of England’s 39 original, historic counties makes a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). They are: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire.

Greater London should disappear, its boroughs reverting entirely to their counties. Inner London, I suggest, would also be subsumed into its surrounding counties.

It’s fun to think about, and I’d love to read a SF story based on this premise, but it has about 0.1% chance of ever happening, given what we know about people and about people in politics. So read it for the entertainment value, but don’t get your hopes up.

Read it.

And just like that we’re free from climate hysteria and worried about a new “ice age”…Funny how that works, isn’t it?

A new study in Communications Earth & Environment warns that a key Atlantic current could near collapse within decades, potentially triggering an “ice age” scenario and major sea-level rise, according to the NY Post.

The research, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oceanology and UC San Diego, focuses on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the “conveyor belt of the ocean” that includes the Gulf Stream and helps keep Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. East Coast relatively mild.

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Languages with very simple sentence structure are, for the most part, oral languages. It’s the languages that have a culture of writing, developed over a long span of time, that display a fondness for stacking clauses onto one another to create towering sentences. This pattern raises the possibility that the invention of writing, a very recent innovation tagged on to the very last millennia of human evolution, can dramatically alter a language’s linguistic niche, spurring the development of elaborate sentence structure, and leading to the shedding of other features, on a timescale that cannot be achieved through biological evolution. If that’s so, then the languages that many of us have grown up with are very different from the languages that have been spoken throughout the vast majority of human existence.

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The tactical arguments for and against homeschooling all cancel each other out.

Pro-homeschooling: At school, you’re in danger of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

Anti-homeschooling: Statistically, you’re in greater danger of all those things at home. And the risk gets bigger if you eliminate outside influences that might notice when something’s wrong.

Pro-homeschooling: Kids learn faster one-on-one; Bloom’s 2-sigma problem is undefeated.

Anti-homeschooling: Kids with learning disabilities and neurodivergence can fall through the cracks without professional involvement. Also, it’s really hard to teach your kids everything they need to know, consistently, year after year, all by yourself. And really, really expensive.

Pro-homeschooling: We homeschooled a family of seven on one income of $25k.

Anti-homeschooling: Homeschoolers don’t get enough social interaction.2

Pro-homeschooling: Yes we do.

None of the arguments convince anyone. Homeschooling remains what it was in the creationism-and-spelling-bee days: an ideological choice.

So why’s it becoming so fashionable?

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President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on Nov. 7 announcing “Anti-Communism Week,” which will commemorate the approximately 100 million victims who lost their lives to communist political systems over the years.

“This week, our Nation observes Anti-Communism Week, a solemn remembrance of the devastation caused by one of history’s most destructive ideologies,” the proclamation, issued on the National Day for the Victims of Communism, reads.

The order highlights the “devastation” of communist rule in countries around the world since its inception in Russia in 1917 by Vladimir Lenin following the Bolshevik Revolution. The collectivist ideology stems from “The Communist Manifesto,” written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848.

The best way to ensure that you can work from home regularly is to start your own business.

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They all feel entitled to a luxury condo in Miami, of course.

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Argentinian President Javier Milei said he would “warmly welcome” New Yorkers escaping the “communist” rule of incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani , during a speech at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in Florida last week.

Milei warned that New York risks repeating Argentina’s past economic failures under socialist policies. “If things get tough, they’ll always be welcome in our land if they seek to prosper,” he said.

Mamdani, a Muslim Democratic Socialist, recently won New York’s mayoral election after pledging to freeze rents, raise taxes on the “wealthy” and make public transport and childcare free. Critics say his plans are unrealistic without state approval.

If you’re going to be homeless, I guess Hawaii is the best place to do it.

How far down the list do you need to go before you hit a colorably Red state?

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A Shift from Damage-Accumulation to Wave-Based Aging: Traditional aging models, such as the damage-accumulation theory, suggest that aging is a gradual process driven by oxidative stress, DNA mutations, and cellular dysfunction. In contrast, the quasi-programmed framework proposes that biological programs optimized for growth and reproduction become dysregulated later in life, leading to aging. Recent longitudinal research from Stanford University introduces a new perspective: a wave-based model of aging, identifying two critical stages of biological transitions around the mid-40s and early 60s. These waves reflect abrupt, systemic changes across metabolism, immune function, and the microbiome, redefining aging as a dynamic, stage-specific process rather than a linear decline.

Concur.

The Telegraph (UK).

Labour MPs have urged Shabana Mahmood to soften her plans for a Danish-style overhaul of the immigration and asylum system.

The Home Secretary is expected soon to announce new measures to crack down on migration, taking inspiration from Denmark’s system, seen as one of the toughest in Europe.

Ms Mahmood, who sent officials to Denmark to examine the system, is understood to be looking at tighter rules on family reunion and restricting certain refugees to a temporary stay in the UK.

The Times (UK).

Rachel Reeves will announce a stealth tax raid on retirement savings, a move experts said would reduce take-home pay and cut the size of pension pots.

The chancellor is expected to use the budget to limit a tax break on pension contributions for both employers and employees to raise up to £2 billion a year.

There are concerns that the crackdown will penalise people for “trying to do the right thing” and save for their retirement as well as being detrimental to company pension schemes.

It is often useful to look at what is going on it Britain as a clue to what is coming ahead for the U.S., since Britain is commonly about five years further along the road toward political degeration.

Because of the way British government works, the party in office has an easier job of getting their agenda into law than in the U.S., since the British government doesn’t have the built-in ‘checks and balances’ that are built into the U.S. Constitution. Imagine if a law could be passed with just a vote of the House of Representatives—the Senate could merely delay it for a while, and the President couldn’t veto anything or order anything to be done in the executive branch. That’s what it would be like.

The Labor party (in office) are usually  doing what Democrats would like to do but couldn’t get away with (at present), and the Conservative party are, like Republicans, always talking a good fight but (in office) will reliably do what RINOs in the U.S. can be depended upon to push for (i.e. what the Left wants but just slower and more ‘respomsibly’).

In this instance, the rabid desire of Democrats to spend money, coupled with the Left’s hatred of anybody who can afford to live without government assistance of some kind, makes the existing tax breaks for retirement savings a luscious apple hanging just out of reach. If you doubt that, take a look at any of the Leftist ‘journalism’ about Peter Thiel and his perfectly legal and very cunning use of the Roth IRA to hold startup stock that eventually turned out to be worth more than a billion dollars.

The Left is all about people having retirement savings so long as it doesn’t give anyone an income that would put them above the poverty line; that way, they get the talking point of helping out old people without much reducing the dependance on government assistance and therefore the incentive to vote for the Party of Free Stuff.

Wally is my hero.

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young women sporting “Hot Girls for Mamdani” T-shirts. In one viral video shared on social media following Mamdani’s election night victory to become the next mayor of the city, a young woman wearing the blue shirt joked, “Sharia law starts now,” seemingly poking fun at critics of Mamdani, who is a Muslim.

He’s more of a socialist than a Muslim,  when it comes right down to it.

Quillette.

Susan Sontag is a writer worth quoting, and “Fascinating Fascism” is one of her most deliciously sententious essays; an exhortation to share in her disdain for the justifiably reviled figure of Leni Riefenstahl. But beneath the rich supply of aphorism and wit, excoriation and outrage, we find a treacly moralism and naïve disengagement with historical precedent that reverses her earlier praise and defence of the director. It says as much about Sontag’s sensibility as it does about the aesthetic choices of her adversary.

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Since day one in office, President Donald Trump has taken Beijing on a roller coaster ride of tariffs and export controls. For a regime that is already struggling with a stagnant economy and an international market increasingly wary of Chinese dumping, Trump’s actions have added an extra layer of uncertainty.

They say that like it was a bad thing.

Both sides went through multiple rounds of escalation and de-escalation. Last month, they entered a tentative one-year truce.

Tariff levels are down—overall about 47 percent on Chinese goods and 33 percent on U.S. goods. China will pause its extensive rare earth export control, curb the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into the United States, and will also buy soybeans from American farmers. In return, the United States will suspend its port fees on Chinese ships and the 50 percent rule—barring exports to any companies owned 50 percent or more by entities on the restricted list.

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Build decision matrices! These are grids with a small set of proposed options or courses of action on one axis, and a comparably small set of criteria or goals on the other. Each cell is then filled with some quantity or adjective. If the latter, you – or your underlings – can discuss ‘em indefinitely. But even numbers can be debated. In the end, not that there’s much expectation of reaching one, you either tote up those numbers or just color-code the most positive descriptors and, uh, I don’t know, Go Green or something.

Not having worked anyplace with a strong affirmative-action impulse, I do not know if companies that do honor or obey such fashions do things this way. Anyway, I was motivated to look up what such graphical tools are called because I had, indeed have had several times over the years, a similar idea, that of drawing 2×2 grids and laying out all possible consequences – presumably 4. What has interested me is, there aren’t always even that many!

Which suggests that I make my own decisions just too darn complicated. Or, the decision to use this sort of tool was itself a bad one. Such appeared to be the case when, a few months ago, I planned my drive into Mexico with Big Bend as the target. There seemed to be two routes, one west, the other south and then northwest. Which to choose? Or could I choose both? If I got way out on one and then found it was impracticable, would I be willing to backtrack and then try the alternative? Here is the real art of the graphical solution: deciding what exactly is on each axis. I never did. I wound up simply going and looking!

The New York Times, the Paper of Record for the Crust.

The episode immediately raised questions about the president’s security, and set off conversations among women about their own experiences.

It also caused concern among many over the apparent lack of progress for women as a whole: Ms. Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, made ending violence against women a cornerstone of her campaign, but only a year after being elected, she was groped by a stranger in public.

Such harassment is not considered a crime at the federal level, Ms. Sheinbaum said Wednesday, nor is it a crime in all Mexican states — a point that Ms. Sheinbaum said she would ask officials to examine, so that all women could press charges as she had.

Can you imagine anyone groping Kamala Harris?

Neither can I.

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Elections this week that energized Democrats and drew a reaction from President Donald Trump have added uncertainty to efforts to end the record-breaking government shutdown, raising fresh doubts about the possibility of a breakthrough despite the ongoing toll of federal closures on the country.

Trump has urged Senate Republicans to resolve the shutdown — now at 37 days, the longest in U.S. history — calling it a “big factor, negative” in the GOP’s recent election outcomes across the country.

Democrats saw Trump’s comments as a reason to hold firm, believing his involvement in talks could lead to a deal on extending health care subsidies, a key sticking point to win their support.

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The Houston Police Officers’ Union made a recruiting pitch to New York Police Department cops in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory Tuesday night.

In posts to Facebook and X, the union appealed to New York City cops who might be “disgusted” with Mamdani.

“NYPD, are you disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani? Join Us! The Houston Police Department is Hiring Police Officers!” read the posts.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted an online survey late Tuesday evening asking residents of the Sunshine State how best to respond to New Yorkers fleeing the city following the election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani.

“Floridians – response to the Mamdani election in NYC should be to,” DeSantis wrote on X, attaching a poll with three options: “Build an FL border wall,” “Tariff all transplants,” and “Recruit new transplants.”

DeSantis was responding to a post from Republican Florida State Representative Peggy Gossett-Seidman, who wrote, “Florida should tariff everyone fleeing NYC, Gov @RonDeSantis.”

Florida has been dealing with ‘fleeing New Yorkers’ for over a century. This ought not to be a difficult question.

New York Post.

Lefty luminary Van Jones was among those raising alarm at Democratic socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s rage-filled victory speech, noting his instant “character switch” at winning power.

A roaring Mamdani wasted no time in claiming a mandate for his potentially budget-busting progressive agenda and taunting President Trump as he rallied his fired-up supporters soon after winning Tuesday night.

Jones was quick to note live on CNN that the 34-year-old’s triumphant demeanor was a far cry from the cool, calm and collected candidate seen on the campaign trail.

I know how he feels.

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Imagine reliving your entire life in the space of seconds. Like a flash of lightning, you are outside of your body, watching memorable moments you lived through. This process, known as “life recall,” can be similar to what it is like to have a near-death experience.

What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries.

However, a new study from Dr. Ajmal Zemmar of the University of Louisville and colleagues throughout the world, “Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain,” published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal.

When an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy, Dr. Raul Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia, and colleagues used continuous electroencephalography to detect the seizures and treat the patient. During these recordings, the patient had a heart attack and passed away.

This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever.

I imagine that it’s similar to what happens inside of a computer when you turn it off. It would be amusing on one’s deathbed to hide a slip of paper that would stick out on one’s tongue saying “Disk not ejected properly.”

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What happens when identical twins marry identical twins? Let’s find out.

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The republicans and democrats of the past no longer exist. They have been replaced by two entirely new parties. In the 20th century, the republicans were the party of classical liberalism, and the democrats were the party of social liberalism (the welfare state). These two parties no longer exist. This isn’t obvious because both new parties used the old names and infrastructures, which they infiltrated. This was easier than building something new, and allowed them inherit the resources and connections of the old parties. But they are not the same, because not only are the philosophies different, the new parties aren’t based on philosophies at all. The new parties represent communication technologies. The neo-democrats are the party of television. The neo-republicans are the party of the internet. This single relationship underlies all of their character and policies.

…

Make no mistake, the 2024 vote split broke into People Who Believe What Their TV Tells Them vs. People Who Look Shit Up On The Internet.

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I was one-shotted in my teens by the way Guns, Germs, and Steel explained everything? and I’ve been chasing that dragon ever since. At this point honestly half the books I’ve reviewed could probably be described as arguments against Jared Diamond. But that’s okay. I can stop any time. Just one more sweeping transdisciplinary exploration of global history. Just let me see a map of British coalfields next to a chart of GDP per capita and I promise I’ll go back to that book about esoteric writing. C’mon, bro, I won’t ever talk about the Hajnal Line again, I swear. Just let me have one more study of an under-appreciated causal factor for the differing trajectories of human societies and I’m done. I have this under control.