Read it.

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?

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.”

Read it.

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

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

In 1831, President Andrew Jackson dispatched the USS Lexington to the Falkland Islands to respond to attacks on American fishing vessels in the area. The Lexington rescued the American vessels and American citizens, and took some of the locals, loosely aligned with British and other local authorities, prisoner as punishment for seizing the American ships.

Jackson did not pursue a declaration of war which, in any case, would have involved a fairly nebulous authority in Buenos Aires, or more dangerously, with London, although after having already dispatched the USS Lexington, he suggested to Congress that “they may clothe the Executive with such authority and means as they may deem necessary for providing a force adequate to the complete protection of our fellow citizens fishing and trading in those seas.”

The Falklands Incident, as it was known, 194 years ago, was one of many interventions by American forces against, as Jackson put it, “bands” linked to governments, without being part of them that were attacking, looting, smuggling (including carrying slaves) or otherwise causing injury to our national interests. President Trump’s attacks on drug trafficker boats follows almost two centuries of military interventions against non-state forces beginning with President Thomas Jefferson’s war against the Barbary pirates who attacked American ships in the name of Islam.

TimesNow.

A recent surprising discovery has revealed that eating Oreo cookies may be twice as effective at reducing LDL or bad cholesterol compared to high-intensity statin therapy. The ground-breaking experiment, conducted by Oxford University, aimed at testing the Lipid Energy Model – a potentially revolutionary theory that can make experts understand the metabolism of lipids better.

The innovative experiment, held by Nicholas Norwitz – a Harvard medical student with a doctorate in metabolism and nutrition from the University of Oxford – focused on observing the diverse effects of Oreo cookies and statins on cholesterol levels in a unique group known as Lean Mass Hyper-Responders.

Nick Norwitz was valedictorian of his class at Dartmouth, then went to Oxford and got a PhD in metabolism, then returned to Harvard Med School for an MD. He is both smarter and more educated than you or me. I trust what he has to say about metabolism. His YouTube channel is one of the most entertaining on my playlist.

Read it.

Welcome immigrants. Many, but not too many. Mostly educated and skilled. Always legal.

That is the answer. Or at least a short version of an answer. What’s the question? I’m coming to that.

For decades, Canada enjoyed all-party, across-the-spectrum support for immigration. The arrival of new people at consistently higher rates than in Western Europe or the United States did not drive political polarization. This country took in far more immigrants than America relative to the size of its population, and had been doing so for decades, without signs of backlash. Instead of a Left-Right clash on immigration, there was a boring all-party consensus.

When Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency for the first time, visceral anger over immigration was central to his campaign. Perhaps his success with so many voters should not have surprised. By 2016, the share of the American population born outside the country was 13.5 percent, the highest level in more than a century. Maybe a backlash was inevitable.

In Canada, however, it has been well over a century since immigrants were that low a share of the population. In 2016, immigrants were 22 percent of Canadians and rising. That was higher than the U.S. at any time since the Civil War.

Read it.

Scott Adams, the 67-year-old Dilbert creator, will publicly ask President Donald Trump on Monday to intervene and save his life. In a post on X, Adams said he is “declining fast” from metastasized prostate cancer and needs Trump, who once offered help, to force Kaiser Permanente of Northern California to schedule a critical treatment immediately.

Kaiser has approved Adams for Pluvicto, a newly FDA-approved radioligand therapy that targets advanced prostate cancer cells, but has failed to book the brief IV infusion, according to Adams.

I subscribe to Coffee With Scott Adams. Today there was a note saying “No show today. At ER.”

NBER.

(Remember: If you can’t measure it. it’s not Science.)

We characterize the distribution of suburban homeowners’ preferences for housing unit density. To measure welfare changes under counterfactual increases in density, we first construct a novel house-level measure of exposure to density and identify its price effects in a boundary discontinuity design. On the borders of municipalities with larger minimum lot sizes, lots are 3,000 ft² larger and houses are $40,000 costlier. We exploit the systematic variation in density exposure induced by these discontinuities to estimate price effects. We then connect these estimates to a structural hedonic model of housing choice to retrieve individuals’ preferences for density. Overall, we find an average welfare loss among incumbent homeowners from a 1/2 unit per acre increase in density (which is equivalent to a 0.3 standard deviation in density) of about $9,500, with significantly larger losses under counterfactual increases solely from rental units. There is other noteworthy heterogeneity in these preferences, too. Most households have only a moderate preference over density. The median welfare loss is only 55% of the average, implying a long, left tail of those with more extreme aversions to density. This tail disproportionately contains households in affluent, low density neighborhoods. In sum, our results document an important foundation of the demand for density regulation across U.S. suburbs that we hope serves as a valuable input into future research into the considerable costs of that policy.

Read it.

When I read biographies, early lives leap out the most. Leonardo da Vinci was a studio apprentice to Verrocchio at 14 years old. Walt Disney took on a number of jobs, chiefly delivering papers, by 11. Vladimir Nabokov published his first poetry collection at 16, while still in school. Andrew Carnegie finished schooling at 12 and was 13 when he began his second job as a telegraph office boy, where he convinced his superiors to teach him the telegraph machine itself. By 16, he was the family’s mainstay of income.

Readers (and some biographers) tend to fixate on the celebrity itself, the inflection point when people achieved fame. But their early lives often contain something more revealing than their successes. Before you grasp, you have to reach. How did they learn to reach?

In my examples, the individuals were all doing from a young age as opposed to merely attending school. And while they may not have wanted to work, the work was nonetheless something that they, their families, and society felt was useful, purposeful, and appreciated. In a sense, they had useful childhoods.

Do children today have useful childhoods?

PNAS.

Using a dataset linking administrative government data to the online behavior of Danish Twitter users, this study estimates the associations between hostility in social media interactions and offline individual-level dispositions and childhood environments. The study shows that users with many more criminal verdicts, more time spent in foster care, better primary school grades, and higher childhood socioeconomic status are more hostile on social media, in part, because such factors predict online engagement in political discussions, which is a major correlate of hostility. This research not only broadens our understanding of the drivers behind social media aggression but also suggests that interventions to reduce online hostility must consider the complex interplay of online and offline lives.

Check it out.

I doubt that most college graduates (especially Grievance Studies majors) today could pass it.

Read it.

“Cadillac Desert” (1986) by Marc Reisner correctly pointed out that within the limits of natural precipitation, we’ve expanded habitation in the West close to its maximal extent. Nearly 40 years after he wrote, however, the answer to shrinking flows of the Colorado and ever more demand for living space is not to stage some kind of retreat from land otherwise blessed with climate, solar power potential, mineral and human capital wealth. The answer is to flex our industrial might and finish what the irrigators began a century ago, and bring water in vast quantities to the high desert, to terraform a few select valleys in Nevada, and build a 21st century aesthetic vision.

 

Read it.

Generative AI commodifies the manipulation of digital information. It may take half a century, but I believe it will eventually lead to the extinction of office and administrative support jobs like administrative assistants and financial clerks. The entire purpose of these jobs is to lower the cost of transmitting and storing information. In the long-run, AI will drive the cost of “routine” information processing down to nearly zero, eventually eliminating the need for most human labor in those jobs (although we will need a lot more energy efficiency to get there!)

There is a clear analogy here to the impact of mechanization on farm labor. For most of human history, the bottleneck to increasing food production was physical power. Steam and electricity eventually relaxed that constraint, and farm work mostly disappeared because we only need so much food.

Similarly, the key bottleneck in business decision-making for most of modern history was a lack of information. Advances in information collection, storage and retrieval eventually relaxed that constraint, and now we are awash in data. Routine office jobs were created in a time of information scarcity, and they may no longer be needed.

Read it.

I wish people wouldn’t use the term ‘capitalism’ in the sense of ‘anything that isn’t socialism’.

Critics of Big Tech often describe ‘surveillance capitalism’ in grim terms, blaming it for all kinds of political and social ills. This article counters this pessimistic narrative, offering a more favorable take on companies like Google, YouTube, and Twitter/X. It argues that the downsides of surveillance capitalism are overstated, while the benefits are largely overlooked. Specifically, the article examines six critical areas: i) targeted advertising, ii) the influence of surveillance capitalism on politics, iii) its impact on mental health, iv) its connection with government surveillance, v) its effects on the rule of law and social trust, and vi) privacy concerns. For each area, it will be argued that concerns about surveillance capitalism are unfounded or exaggerated. The article also explores some benefits of the services provided by these technology companies and concludes with a discussion of the practical implications. Throughout, the article draws on empirical evidence relating to the societal and political impact of digital technologies.

Read it.

The 2024 election season featured an unprecedented number of Asian Americans, from Vivek Ramaswamy’s rise in the Republican primary to soon-to-be second lady Usha Vance, to the Democratic candidate herself, Kamala Harris. Just a few years ago, this would have been a cause for celebration on the political left: Asian Americans have reliably voted for Democrats for decades. But the election results revealed that racial and ethnic minorities are not as loyal to the Democratic Party as previously believed. Much like Hispanics, Asian American voters made a major shift to the right.

Asians are denigrated as honorary white people rather than as fellow fashionable minorities by the Left.

Nationally, 2020 and 2024 exit polls from the Washington Post show a 9-point shift to the Republicans in the presidential race among Asian American voters relative to 2020. In some states, such as Nevada and Texas, the polls suggest that Trump won the Asian American vote outright. The NBC News exit poll found a 5-point shift to the right nationally among Asian Americans relative to 2020. And in their survey of Asian American voters prior to the election, Asian Americans Advancing Justice saw a 7-point shift away from the Democrats relative to 2020.

Read it.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose says he’s found 1,084 alleged cases of noncitizens who appear registered to vote and is referring them to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) after county prosecutors failed to act.

LaRose said his office has also uncovered instances of 167 people who have allegedly voted in a federal election as far back as 2018.

“In these cases, the county prosecutor has decided for whatever reason not to take them up. In some cases they’ve been referred to the attorney general as well, and we’re sending them along to the federal government to see if they want to prosecute these cases,” LaRose said.

LaRose had asked county prosecutors to act on 633 cases of suspected voter fraud last year but prosecutors took up just 12 of them, saying the others lacked evidence to pursue indictments.

The number of election fraud allegations in Ohio are a direct challenge to Democrat claims that noncitizens registering to vote in U.S. elections never happens.

Read it.

A new report by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT) alleges that billions in foreign funds have flowed into U.S. organizations engaged in policy and advocacy work, blurring the lines of political influence.

The 31-page report, which includes financial records and receipts, traces nearly $2 billion from foreign-based charities to American groups active in what APT describes as “politically charged” initiatives. While foreign entities cannot contribute directly to U.S. political candidates, APT says their money is reaching election-related efforts such as voter mobilization campaigns, lobbying, research, and issue advertising.

“There’s not a question about where it’s going and where it is coming from,” said APT executive director Caitlin Sutherland. “We know that it’s foreign money coming into our U.S. policy fights, climate litigation, research, protests, lobbying, you name it. Foreign money is coming in, and it’s trying to erode our democracy.”

Read it.

Walmart has denied claims circulating online that it plans to close stores in response to potential looting tied to the federal government shutdown and a possible pause in federal food benefits.

Breitbart reported that a Walmart spokesperson told Fox News the rumors were “false,” and that stores “will continue to be open for business.”

The rumors stemmed from social media posts alleging that Walmart locations might shutter ahead of expected disruptions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food assistance to roughly 42 million Americans.

RELATED: SNAP beneficiaries threaten to ransack stores over government shutdown (Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi/Fox News)

Read it.

He didn’t get the message in 2016. He had come out of the tea party imbroglio, the big midterm defeat of 2010. He had that reelection in 2012, but people didn’t like his border policies, they didn’t like Obamacare, and he was polling where [President Donald] Trump is, or even a little bit lower.

And then a big, bright light bulb went off in his head once Hillary [Clinton] started to square off against Trump, and it said, “You know, people don’t like me. I am a phony. They’re sick of me. But Donald Trump and Hillary are polarizing people. So, my last year in office, I’m just going to phone it in. Like I once said that I wanted a third term if I could just phone it in from the basement. So, I’m just gonna do that. I’m gonna go play golf. You’re not gonna see me, you’re not gonna hear me.”

And the more people do not see or hear Barack Obama, the more they’d like him. They like the idea of a suave, charismatic, first African American president. But they don’t like to be lectured, hectored, sermonized by him, and they’re sick of his stupid voice, his modulating it. When he talks to an African American class, “Oh, what you be doing?”

So what should we make of this week’s sudden explosion of Internet interest in penny auctions and the minatory noose?

First of all, the frequently-repeated text was almost certainly deliberately planted on social media. I’m not skilled enough to be able to track down the first instance of the duplicated post. Maybe some of the Internet sleuths among my readers can figure out where it came from — if so, please leave your conclusions in the comments.

Most of those who posted it, if they evidenced any political bias, passed it on for Progressive reasons. But not all of them — I saw of couple of instances of it on alt-Right or nativist paleocon sites.

My guess is that it is being thrown into the current political churn surrounding the Great Shutdown and the immigration madness to serve a leftist agenda. Somehow, everything that the Evil Orange Man is doing right now is like those evil rapacious bankers who screwed over all those virtuous Midwest farmers in the 1930s. The angry penny-auction farmers with their nooses should be seen as righteous dudes who were sticking it to the Man, part of the Resistance. They are the Depression-era equivalent of Antifa.

Or something of that nature.

Anyway, that’s my take on the matter. We right-wing curmudgeons have the misfortune of seeing the venerable Chinese curse fulfilled: we live in interesting times.

James Sexton.

“It’s really hard to define intelligence, but you can recognize stupid from a mile away.”

Watch it.

Dr Jones is a linguist and has an interesting idea.

Black American speech is already as incomprehensible as Chinese, so why not? After all, the Chinese were oppressed by “wypipo” as well.

The Foundry.

Over the past several weeks, President Donald Trump’s counternarcotics strikes in the Caribbean and now the Pacific have marked a turning point for Washington, directing the U.S. security apparatus to confront the deadly narco-terrorist threats in our hemisphere.

The outcome has been undeniably positive, effectively collapsing narcotics trafficking across the Caribbean and sending a clear message to both friends and foes. But that hasn’t stopped critics from making outlandish claims about the dangers of the U.S. military’s highly targeted strikes against narco-traffickers.

One of the more prominent talking points from far-left critics is that the U.S. military is actually mistakenly striking fishing boats instead of narcos. Despite its absurdity, this claim continues to be parroted by the media and the far left, who suggest that the military lacks the capacity to differentiate between fishermen and narco-boats.

In reality, there are several ways that the military, and even the casual observer, can identify a narco-boat. Unlike humble fishing boats, narco-trafficking vessels are typically specially outfitted and customized with expensive equipment that makes them ideal for drug running. This includes multiple top-level engines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as expensive customized structures or hulls ideal for avoiding detection and carrying large quantities of narcotics.