Read it.

A week before Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz as her running mate, I facetiously urged her to “Take My Governor—Please.” Walz has compiled an uber-woke record as Minnesota governor. When he was elected to a second term in November 2022, the DFL won majorities in both houses of the Minnesota legislature. With the DFL in control, the legislature spent an $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, “education,” and entitlements.

We have become the land of 10,000 entitlements. The legislature raised taxes and adopted the law that earned Walz the moniker of Tampon Tim. They enacted an extreme pro-abortion and “trans refuge” law. The details were so embarrassing that Walz chose to lie about them once Harris heard my plea and chose Walz as her vice presidential running mate.

Harris’s loss to former president Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election returns Walz to sender. Back home in Minnesota, the local press now contemplates the prospect of Walz as a 2028 presidential candidate. Much like the New York Times on the national scene, Minnesota’s local press is out of touch with reality in a way that would warrant the commitment of your average working stiff.

I would love to see Walz run against J.D. Vance in 2028. That would be SO entertaining….

Read it.

BROKEN BEAR has purple and tan fur, a placid smile, and patched up circles on his belly: one, he tells me, covers a scar from a broken heart. The avatar of an AI chatbot designed to “love your broken self,” Broken Bear stands slightly slumped, with his paws by his sides. Even though he looks lonely, he’s not the only AI therapist currently on offer. There’s also Elomia, “the artificial intelligence that works like a therapist,” and Meomind, “the world’s first on-demand alternative to therapy.” There’s Wysa, PsyScribe, Lotus, and Youper. There’s Pi AI, “the first emotionally intelligent AI”; Suno, “an attentive, supportive friend always ready to listen”; and Xaia, which stands for “eXtended-reality Artificially Intelligent Ally.”

Alex Tabarrok.

The economy is strong and Trump has a significant opportunity to simply take credit for that if he avoids major disruptions. While he must fulfill some of his campaign promises, people voted for Trump not for his policies per se. Trump has leeway. No one will accuse him of flip-flopping. While these are not my first-best policies, Trump won against astounding media and elite opposition and an attempted assassination. The people have spoken, so here’s a best-case outline for following through on Trump’s policies without cratering the economy:

Newsbusters.

On today’s Morning Joe, NBC reporter Peter Alexander described the mood at a Kamala donor party in DC last night as being like “a funeral.”

And Mika Brzezinski certainly dressed for the occasion today, draped, as you see, in all black.

Claire McCaskill was near tears as she acknowledged that Trump understood the electorate better than Dems: that “fear and anger” work, and that our “better angels” have fled.

Al Sharpton predictably blamed racial and gender,”bias” and “misogyny” among black and Hispanic men for Kamala’s poor showing with them.

Joe Scarborough, for the moment, put aside his Kamala-toady persona and told things like they are, speaking of Dems being “wiped out,” and Trump scoring an incredible red wave equalling anything going back to Reagan’s 1984 landslide, even winning the popular vote for only the second time by any Republican in 36 years.

Dr Orion Taraban:

Our living environment is a reflection of our consciousness. Disorder without is very often an indication of disorder within. However, the relationship here is bidirectional. And this is fortunate, as a little clutter is much easier to sort through than the detritus of our pasts. If you’re feeling stuck or out of sorts, one of the easiest ways to bring a little more clarity into your thinking is to clean and organize your living space.

I’ve found this is especially true if you’re struggling with depression. In this state, even the most basic tasks can seem overwhelming – which can keep people immobilized in despair. It’s important to combat this feeling by chaining sequences of small wins. Start with what is immediately on hand and acknowledge your effort. Laundry is great for this: there are always clothes to be cleaned. And I’ve found that – even if I do nothing else all day – I somehow feel accomplished if I’m able to finish a load.

Washington Examiner.

If Trump really were Hitler, he would be better at giving speeches. He ought to stick to standup.

On the other hand, it’s obvious that this was spontaneous, not scripted as would be usual for a Real Politician, so that’s something.

Read it.

This year, in the state of Pennsylvania, Trump picked up more Latino votes than in 2020, according to an exit poll conducted by NBC. Four in 10 Hispanics from the state voted for Trump versus three in 10 four years ago.

NBC’s exit polls also showed Trump getting 45% of the Hispanic vote. In 2020, Trump only got 36% of the Hispanic vote, according to Pew Research Center.

“Latino men are breaking for Trump by a 10-point margin, 54% to 44%, in a major reversal from four years ago, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. In 2020, Latino men backed [Joe] Biden over Trump by a 23-point margin, 59% to 36%,” reports NBC News.

Men are just tired of the chickification of American society.

Read it.

Two companies affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party have deals to build battery plants for electric vehicles in Michigan, a battleground state in Tuesday’s presidential election.

The objective of Chinese communists, some political leaders say, is to shatter the U.S. automobile industry.

“Make no mistake, China is seeking to undermine our nation’s economic and national security,” Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate in Michigan’s race for U.S. Senate, said in September in a written statement to The Daily Signal.

$2.60 Gas in Texas–No One Cares

Gas Is $4.50 in California, a Major Consumer Burden

Navy Matters.

You’ve probably noticed that several of ComNavOps’ fictional stories revolve around the Philippines. This is not by random chance. The strategic value of the Philippines cannot be overstated. The country, along with Taiwan, forms two gigantic ‘forts’ that China must deal with in any war.

From China’s perspective, those two countries act as forward enemy bases that dominate the surrounding seas and impact any operations the Chinese would attempt. Their removal from the strategic equations is imperative. Ideally, China would turn the tables by seizing both countries and using them as forts against any American response.

Taiwan’s seizure (or ‘reunification’ as the Chinese would euphemistically put it) is absolutely mandatory for both strategic and cultural reasons. Wisely or foolishly, China’s leadership has linked themselves to the seizure of Taiwan as a national and cultural imperative. For those reasons, Taiwan will be the first operation in any war.

Read it.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency reportedly has at least one mysterious system capable of “covertly (and nonviolently)” disabling ships, including very large ones. The secret system is said to have been considered for use against fuel tankers sailing between Venezuela and Cuba during President Donald Trump’s term in office.

A mention of the CIA ship-disabling system is included in a detailed exposé about the Trump administration’s unsuccessful efforts to overthrow dictatorial Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that Wired published on October 31 and is worth reading in full. The report describes a host of efforts that the U.S. government and foreign partners undertook to try to unseat Maduro between 2018 and 2020. This includes a cyber attack on the payroll system for Venzeuzla’s armed forces, sabotage raids by Colombian operatives targeting the Venezuelan Air Force’s Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 fighters, and support for opposition leader Juan Guaido’s attempt to overthrow Maduro’s government.

Read it.

The extremely profitable inner workings of digital addiction are complex, but the business model is simple: collect user data and sell it to advertisers. The more users you addict, oops I mean attract, and the more time they spend on your platform, the more money you make.

The raison d’etre of social media / search (SM/S) is to collect user data to sell to the highest bidder. To maximize profits, the SM/S platforms stimulate users to post more content and spend more time “engaging” (i.e. creating user data) on their platform.

Taken from a random short video on YouTube:

“Gabby, what is your problem? All the girls in my class dress like this.”
“That’s why your school nurse is an obstetrician.”

New York Post.

One of the United States’ foremost white supremacists is urging his followers to support Vice President Harris in the presidential election next week.

Richard Spencer, an avowed racist, antisemite and admirer of Nazism who coined the term “alt-right” and was a featured speaker when he took part in the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., called Harris the “best manager of the American empire.”

Spencer — who also gained international recognition after yelling “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” and being greeted with Nazi salutes during a white nationalist event in November 2016 — also condemned former President Trump’s strong support of Israel.

Betcha didn’t see that coming.

Read it.

EPFL researchers have combined virtual reality, non-invasive brain stimulation and advanced brain imaging techniques to improve spatial navigation in healthy participants. The study is a first step in addressing dementia in an aging population without medication or surgery.

ZMan: “Most of our interactions with the media are to first figure out the angle and then the lie and finally the truth.”

Nate Silver: “The people who respond to polls are weird.”

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Every four years the media tells us that this is the most important election in our lifetimes, maybe in the history of the world. It is always nonsense, of course, but even if it does turn out to be important, few people realize it. Hardly anyone realized that the 1992 election, for example, would be an inflection point. The Cold War was over, and it felt like politics was not all the important.

This time may be different. Trump is a unique figure and has come to define the first quarter of the 21st century. To understand him and his time on the stage, you must start with the election of the execrable George Bush and then follow the chain of events that flowed from that moment. Trump was the delayed response to the hollowing out of conservatism and the Republican Party by the neoconservatives.

What the Trump era has come to be about is who is going to run the country, Americans or a collection of alien weirdos? For their part, the alien weirdos have made it clear since Trump came down that escalator that they would rather blow up the world than allow normal Americans to rule themselves again. The election next Tuesday is the last battle in the fight between Trump and the alien weirdos.

Matthew Continetti.

The images are indelible: Donald Trump’s mugshot. His visit to a New York City bodega. His bloody ear and face and raised fist after being shot. Standing before his name in lights at the RNC. Joining forces with RFK Jr. beneath sparkling fireworks. Praying at the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Serving French fries at McDonald’s. Selling out Madison Square Garden. And then, this week, donning a safety vest and riding in a garbage truck.

If Donald Trump is elected president for a second time on Tuesday, such moments will have been signposts on the road to an extraordinary comeback. Trump’s willingness to take risks, his boldness in appearing in places and situations where the old Republican Party feared to tread, his knack for the memorable photo and cutting riposte have defined his political career and the 2024 campaign.

This campaign is notable, moreover, for Trump’s confidence in his team, and his team’s confidence in their candidate and strategy. McDonald’s, MSG, and the garbage truck are examples of a former president flexing his power to command attention, thrill supporters, and expose opponents as aloof and condescending. Such confidence has both strengths and weaknesses. It imbues a campaign with the élan of victory and the determination to succeed. But it may also blind a candidate to realities that limit his appeal.

Read it.

My visit to Iraq in 2016, right before the U.S. election which produced a Trump victory, was an enlightening experience. ISIS had driven out the Christian population of the region of the Nineveh Plain, where Jonah had preached, into Iraqi Kurdistan in 2014. The refugees were still in camps when I visited, as ISIS had not been defeated. The Christians in Nineveh—mainly Catholic and Orthodox Chaldeans and Syriacs—had lived there for 2,000 years, since disciples of Christ first brought the Christian faith to that land. These people were eager to return to their ancient home, even though it was later discovered that the radical Islamists had destroyed much of their specific culture, especially their churches and Christian imagery. Because of these catastrophes, the U.S. election was on everyone’s mind, even as they struggled to survive.

For the Christians in Iraq and Syria, there was one man they hoped would win: Donald Trump. I still remember a priest from Mosul in one of the camps. ISIS had used his Church as a torture centre: he repeated three times to me, “I love Drump.” They felt abandoned by the Obama administration, and believed that Trump would help them. Every time we asked who they prayed would be the next president, the answer was the same, and it was never Obama.

Watch it.

Something you won’t find through the search engine on YouTube.

That’s all they can do, since Rogan is already ‘demonetized’ for not being Woke enough.

Babylon Bee.

Satire — read quickly before it comes true.

Off-Guardian.

Are you an aspiring oligarch, dictator or autocrat? Do you want to wield power whilst maintaining a façade of popular support and democratic mandate? Do you want to make your proles believe they have a choice?

Well then, welcome to the first of our “How to…” series. A selection of articles dedicated to teaching aspiring authoritarians how to hide tyranny behind a reassuring mask of freedom.

Here we’ll go into the finer points of how it’s possible to have “elections” that mean almost nothing.

Sounds like a plan.

Freeberg says the quiet part out loud.

Kamala Harris could still emerge victorious in this thing, but she’s not doing quite as well as she’d like, I think. There’s no one single misstep to point to for the bulk of the blame. I perceive that the American public is belatedly catching on to what’s long been obvious to just some of us: Liberalism is not about solving problems, or even about making anything better. It is rainbow-chasing and complaining. It is just like a rainbow in fact. Most coherent, definable and relatable when distant, losing any semblance of structure upon the observer’s approach.

Every single issue follows the same pattern. The liberal agitator states the case for reform, and it isn’t tiny-step reform, it requires societal overhaul: Oppressors are oppressing victims. The victim’s situation is this, and that, and this and that, and such and such and so and so. “And we think that’s wrong!!!” Stating this case, they capture all they want to capture. Hearts, minds, votes, emotions. And then there’s some kind of incursion, involving some combination of force and guile. The movement becomes an actual movement, with the good guys making good-guy movement into bad-guy territory. Like the Trojan horse into the city’s gates. Activists, and their sympathizers, go to where the problem is, where the slope-foreheads occupy, those undesirables who have yet to be enlightened.

And then…?

Confront the problem-people. And…?

Convert them? Isolate them? Banish them? Obliterate them? What are we doing now?

Read it.

Three billion years ago, life on Earth was simple. Single-celled organisms ruled, and there wasn’t much to them. They were what we now call prokaryotic cells, which include modern-day bacteria and archaea, essentially sacks of loose molecular parts. They swirled together in shallow, primordial brews or near deep-sea ocean vents, where they extracted energy from the environment and reproduced by dividing one cell into two daughter cells. Then, one day, that wilderness of simple cells cooked up something more complex: the ancestor of all plants, animals and fungi alive today, a cell type known to us as the eukaryote.

The eukaryote’s debut transformed the planet. Today, all complex multicellular life — indeed, all life that any of us regularly see — is made of eukaryotic cells. No one knows for sure how that first eukaryote arose, but biologists believe that it took at least a billion years of interactions between bacterial and archaeal cells for it to finally come into being.

“Eukaryotes are this bananas chimera of bacteria and archaea,” said Leigh Anne Riedman (opens a new tab), a paleontologist who studies early life at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “We are still trying to sort out exactly how it happened and who was involved.”

And God said, ‘Hey, I’m standing right here.”

The eukaryotes invented organization, if we use the literal definition of “organize”: to be furnished with organs. Inside a eukaryotic cell are self-contained, membrane-bound bundles that perform special functions, called organelles. All eukaryotic cells — animal, plant, fungus or protist — have a nucleus that encloses and protects DNA. Nearly all of them have mitochondria, which produce energy to fuel biochemical reactions. (Any eukaryotic lineages that lack mitochondria used to have them and then lost them sometime in evolutionary history.) And across the evolutionary tree, different eukaryotes have evolved or procured additional organelles that assemble proteins, store water, turn sunlight into energy, digest biomolecules, get rid of waste, and more. If prokaryotes are a loose pile of papers on the floor, eukaryotes are a sophisticated filing system that binds pages into packets and labels them.

And all of this just sort of happened, you know?

Orion Taraban:

The finish line you can see is not the real finish line. In the vast majority of cases, you will need to continue past this point for some time before bringing a project to completion. The reason for this is simple: most plans do not survive their own execution. Before starting out, you likely did not know to plan for certain circumstances that arose in the implementation of your vision. Unknown unknowns are an unavoidable feature of any endeavor.

Watch it.

ZMan discusses current politics in the “Coffee and a Mike” podcast.

Babylon Bee.

Satire — read quickly before it comes true.

Babylon Bee.

Satire — read quickly before it comes true.

ZMan is not afraid to raise the hard questions.

For over a century, since Woodrow Wilson, America has been on a mission to heal the world. The ruling class has asked, often demanded, that the people put aside their regional and local concerns for the good of one great cause after another. It has become so ingrained in ruling class thinking that they seem incapable to thinking about the state of the country.

Strip away the panic, the hysteria and the outlandish claims and the coming election is about whether we care more about the fate of Mongolian transgender lesbians or the fentanyl epidemic in Appalachia. Do we care more about the abstract concept of climate change or addressing the slow collapse of our infrastructure? What counts for more as an American? The health of your neighbors or the plight of migrants? Will we sacrifice everything in a vain attempt to save the world?

All these questions stem from a growing doubt in this sense of American identity that has been with us since Gettysburg. Americans are increasingly wondering not only if the cost of saving the world is worth the effort, but if it makes any sense at all for us to stand astride the world, balances in our hand. Maybe the people who demand we do this do not have the right to judge the world. Maybe these people lack the moral standing to stand in judgement over us as well.

It makes as much sense as any answer I’ve ever gotten from a teacher in school.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Why is there almost nothing on the left hand side of the USA? Water scarcity!

We’re missing 300 million Americans. We’re missing 30 global cities west of 100 degrees longitude. We should do something about it!

The western US is a parched opportunity to create millions of acres of prime land for the next billion Americans to live on. Only one ingredient is missing – water.

Read it.

The study results indicated that gait parameters were not significantly affected by age (p?0.12), while knee and grip strength, along with several balance parameters, showed a significant decline with age. All individuals were able to maintain their bipedal balance, but their center of pressure movement increased significantly by age (p?0.028). Z-scores were calculated to compare significant age parameters. Unipedal stance time was found to be the most affected by age compared to other contributing factors (p?0.001). The duration of unipedal balance showed the most significant change per decade (non-dominant: -0.62 SDs; dominant: -0.53 SDs), while strength measures exhibited the lowest amount of change per decade (grip strength: -0.34 SDs; knee strength: -0.26 SDs). Sex differences were observed exclusively in strength parameters, with no discernible impact on the decline in balance parameters.

Most scientific studies are of one of two types: (a) studies that actually discover and exemplify the causal links between two conditions, and (b) studies that identify strong correlations between two conditions and think that this proves a causal connection.

The former is actual science, while the latter passes for science these days. The latter underlie most hand-wringing political fashions, such as racism, sexism, ‘white privilege’, and ‘climate change’, depending for their authority on ‘scientific consensus’ rather than actual I-can-point-to-it proof of causation.

Read it.

I had to work at it, and I’m the most educated person I know.

Expectations were higher then.

Read it.

Former Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced her official move to the Republican Party because of Donald Trump, and now even Democratic National Convention delegates are joining a burgeoning D-exit movement.

UnHerd.

The meaning of the leaf is the leaf, as I once heard Roger Scruton say. Perhaps it was an original coinage from the Sage of Sundey Hill Farm, but it has the slight feel of a Zen koan: a seemingly inscrutable saying that can nonetheless help the listener achieve enlightenment. Scruton meant it as a reminder of the importance of focusing on the particular object or experience that you’re faced with at any given moment.

I had this aphorism in the back of my mind all through Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder, an argument for a more spiritually aware mode of living, and against the successful but ultimately incomplete materialism that dominates the modern world. “Enchantment” is the key word Dreher uses here. By this, he means preparing your mind to see beyond the everyday things presented to our eyes and ears, and to sense what Christians would regard as the underlying reality of existence: the grace and goodness of God, and the unity of creation.

Dreher is a devout and observant Orthodox Christian. This naturally gives him a certain appreciation of why modern life can feel so disenchanted. In his telling, the dovetailing of the everyday and the transcendent, so common in the high medieval imagination, was dealt successive blows. The first came from nominalism: the philosophical position which denied the existence of an underlying metaphysical unity behind the physical world. Then came the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution of the last few centuries.

OffGuardian.

As it is, I am not allowed to be proud of my heterosexuality. In truth, it is not something to be proud of. But for the same reason, there is nothing to be proud of in being homosexual, or bi or trans, or any variety of sexual preference or orientation or identity. Nothing.

Well, a person can be proud of the advancements an identified group has accomplished (particularly if you are a member of that group). Considering the trials and tribulations gay people have faced over the centuries, the fortitude, effort, and sacrifice they have made to socially be where they are today is certainly something a person could be proud of. But that isn’t being proud of being gay. That is being proud of character, resilience, resolve and fortitude. Being gay may have been the impetus for those admirable attributes, but gayness itself is not.

Pride is actually one of the Seven Cardinal Sins. And there is good reason for it to be. “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18) and all that. Of course, common sense would say that is not what gay pride is about. However, if we see that massive movement toward gay pride (or trans pride) as a product of the agenda, we can clearly see that it is intended to cause disruption. How so?

There is no justification for pride in a group to whose accomplishments one has made no contribution. This is why I have no interest in sportsball teams.

Keanu Reeves: ‘I want my shirts laundered the way they do it at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.’

Me, too.

Paul Graham.

I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write.

And their vote will count equally to yours.