Read it.

• Introduction
• How did the term come about & become a tool for defamation?
• A German journalist spills the beans
• Same Playbook, Different War
• The Council on Foreign Relations conspiracy
• Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be true
• Notable Unresolved Conspiracies
• Conspiracies to Watch
• Mini-Guide to Investigating Conspiracies
• Conclusion

I am willing to use my own shoe on such people pro bono publico.

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People typically think of food as calories, energy and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to our genome, which is the genetic blueprint that directs the way the body functions down to the cellular level.

This communication between food and genes may affect your health, physiology and longevity. The idea that food delivers important messages to an animal’s genome is the focus of a field known as nutrigenomics. This is a discipline still in its infancy, and many questions remain cloaked in mystery. Yet already, we researchers have learned a great deal about how food components affect the genome.

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Critically, the language one speaks or signs can have downstream effects on ostensibly nonlinguistic cognitive domains, ranging from memory, to social cognition, perception, decision-making, and more.

The over-reliance on English in the cognitive sciences has led to an underestimation of the centrality of language to cognition at large.

ZMan does some dusting.

Last month Paul Gottfried wrote a brief note in Chronicles about an event hosted by The Philadelphia Society. The event was a virtual debate between Christopher Owen and Glenn Ellmers on the topic of which is the more important founding document, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Presumably, this is some sort of old person role playing game where the two men reenact the debates between Harry Jaffa and Willmoore Kendall from half a century ago.

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Thank you, minimum wage.

Thank you, Union label.

Thank you, National Labor Relations Board.

Thank you, Department of Labor.

Thank you, Democrat Party.

We couldn’t have done it without you.

Check it out.

The oldest known writing systems first emerged in Mesopotamia, between 3400 and 3100 BC, and Egypt, around 3250 BC. The Latin alphabet, which I’m using to write this post and you’re using to read it, gradually took the shape we know between the seventh century BC and the Middle Ages. Over the eras since, it has spread outward from Europe to become the most widely used script in the world. These are important developments in the history of writing, but hardly the only ones. It is with all known writing systems that historical map animator Ollie Bye deals in the video above: not just those used today, but over the whole of the past five millennia.

David Cole.

German atonement provides useful lessons for American whites.

If they pay attention.

“The reason for feeling good is to make other people feel bad. Never lose sight of that.”

— Scott Adams, Coffee With Scott Adams, 31 January 2023.

Quilette.

What does it mean to be “woke”? If you ask talk show host Joe Walsh, a former Republican politician who’s migrated leftward and now regularly denounces the GOP, being woke “just means being empathetic. And tolerant. And willing to listen. And open to learning.” On the other hand, if you ask writer Wesley Yang—a public intellectual whose politics are decidedly “anti-woke”—the word means “active discrimination to obtain equal outcomes across identity groups, dismantling law enforcement while policing speech and thought, and sterilizing gay, autistic, and gender-nonconforming children.”

The Guardian.

There’s a reason Bradley Johnston watches “literally everything” with subtitles on. It’s not an accessibility issue – the 25-year-old is a native English speaker and isn’t hard of hearing. He is “the kind of TV viewer that just doesn’t want to work for it”.

“Like, if there’s a subtle moment some people might miss that’s integral to the plot, let me know about it,” he says.

Take, for example, the recent season of HBO hit The White Lotus. “There is so much going on in that show … I know there’s something being shown to me that I need to pick up on, so just tell me what it is.” Or the horror movie Barbarian, which Johnston saw first at the cinema and then watched again at home with a closer eye. “I honestly reckon it was a better watch the second time around because of the subtitles,” he says.

Lazy listeners it is, then.

The Hill.

What if they offered public education and no one came?

…

This month, Florida is moving to allow all residents the choice to go to private or public schools. Other states like Utah are moving toward a similar alternative with school vouchers. I oppose such moves away from public schools, but I have lost faith in the willingness of most schools to restore educational priorities and standards.

Faced with school boards and teacher unions resisting parental objections to school policies over curriculum and social issues, states are on the brink of a transformative change. For years, boards and teacher unions have treated parents as unwelcome interlopers in their children’s education.

That view was captured this week in the comment of Iowa school board member Rachel Wall, who said: “The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community.”

CNN.

If you drive down a busy suburban strip mall or walk down a street in a major city, chances are you won’t go long without spotting a Concentra, MedExpress, CityMD or another urgent care center.

Demand at urgent care sites surged during the Covid-19 pandemic as people searched for tests and treatments. Patient volume has jumped 60% since 2019, according to the Urgent Care Association, an industry trade group.

That has fueled growth for new urgent care centers. A record 11,150 urgent care centers have popped up around the United States and they are growing at 7% a year, the trade group says. (This does not include clinics inside retail stores like CVS’ MinuteClinic or freestanding emergency departments.)

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Henrich advances the argument that brain-power alone is not enough to explain why humans are such a successful species. Humans, he argues, are not nearly as intelligent as we think they are. Remove them from the culture and environment they have learned to operate in and they fail quickly. His favorite example of this are European explorers who die in the middle of deserts, jungles, or arctic wastes even though thousands of generations of hunter-gatherers were able to survive and thrive in these same environments. If human success was due to our ability to problem solve, analyze, and rationally develop novel solutions to novel challenges, the explorers should have been fine. Their ghastly fates suggest that rationality may not be the key to human survival.

If rational thought is not the key to our success, what is?

To answer that, Henrich says, we should look at the cassava plant. Cassava, or manioc, is one of the most popular staple foods in the world. But there is a catch: if not prepared correctly, cassava will slowly poison you. Yet some populations eat it without a problem. How does this work?

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The online dating app Tinder was launched more than a decade ago. Just hearing that makes some of us feel old. But over a decade of people swiping their way to love and sex — there have been horror stories along the way. One poll found an increasing number of people are running background checks on their dates.

Welcome to 2023, and dating has never been easier as Tinder’s algorithm, or any other dating app, supplies the user with compatible matches based on profile and geographical area. The app allows users to instantly communicate and coordinate a first date at a restaurant, bar, and or event, though horror stories have emerged over the years of some users getting scammed, sexually assaulted, and/or having their life threatened.

I would certainly seriously consider it.

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Walls work, if enforced. Just as Israel.

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A middle-age software developer worth nine figures says he spends around $2 million each year to bio-hack his body into regaining its youth.

Bryan Johnson, 45, who made his fortune in his 30s when he sold his payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions to EBay for $800 million in cash, is touting a daily routine that he says has given him the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old.

Johnson has a team of 30 doctors and regenerative health experts overseeing his regimen, he told Bloomberg News.

His goal is to eventually have all of his major organs — including his brain, liver, kidneys, teeth, skin, hair, penis and rectum — functioning as they were in his late teens, Johnson said.

I’m not sure I buy that. Telomeres don’t respond to exercise.

The initiative, known as Project Blueprint, requires Johnson to abide by a strict vegan diet amounting to 1,977 calories per day, a daily exercise regimen that lasts an hour, high-intensity exercise three times a week, and going to bed every night at the same time.

I think I’d rather get old.

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In general, the war in Ukraine is being approached by Western public opinion from a humanitarian perspective that sympathizes with the enormous suffering of the Ukrainian people while at the same time morally denouncing the aggressor: Putin. All this, though undoubtedly a just analysis that gives an accurate account of the culprits and victims, nevertheless brings with it at least two problems.

Firstly, the humanitarian focus gets in the way of hard geopolitical analysis, which is more important than the former both because of what is at stake and because statecraft, as opposed to humane sympathy, acts as the driving force on the global chessboard. But not only does a purely humanitarian focus conceal such important considerations; worst still, those who dare to engage in unsentimental geopolitical discourse outside of military and intelligence circles are automatically condemned by the media and the political class, and then ostracized. Geopolitics, it seems, is a mode of analysis not sanctioned by the court of political correctness.

Secondly, the humanitarian perspective with which the war in Ukraine is being judged greatly simplifies the complexity of actors and interests, attributing quasi-messianic qualities to Zelensky with which to confront his nemesis, Putin, and reducing to one dimension a conflict that in fact comprises many, both complementary and at odds with each other.

One of the most relevant of these aspects is the role that BlackRock—the world’s leading hedge-fund, boasting assets valued at more than $10 trillion—is playing in the Ukrainian war.

New York Times.

In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.

How about that government-provided ‘free’ health care? Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.? (We do–it’s called the V.A. Ask veterans how that works out for them.)

“In general terms, I am a friend to all the creatures of the earth, when I am not busy eating them or wearing them.”

— John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

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The wrongful death suit claims that Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) evidence has “emerged proving that TWA 800’s explosion was not caused by any defect in the airplane, but instead by an errant United States missile fired at aerial target drones flying nearby. “

The suit, brought by the survivors of those onboard, explains that TWA 800 took off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport at around 8:20 p.m. on July 17, 1996 bound for Paris. “Within twelve minutes of takeoff, the plane exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York,” the suit says.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

ZMan isn’t buying it.

One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines is from Henry VI. The pretenders to the throne are plotting and a character named Dick the Butcher says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. The line has been interpreted many ways within the context of the play, but most people remember it at face value. In order to get anything done, you must first get rid of the hairsplitters, gainsayers and schemers that have always defined the legal profession. It is a lovely thought.

Like all humor, it is funny because it contains a kernel of truth. Lawyers, given enough time, can fashion an argument for or against anything. You see this in the recurring debate about the trillion dollar coin. This is the claim that the executive can get around Congressional spending and borrowing limits by minting a trillion dollar coin. The mint would strike a coin whose value would result in one trillion in seigniorage . This is the difference between the value of the coin and its cost.

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The latest Congressional Budget Office report released earlier this month calculated that the federal government collected $4.9 trillion of federal revenue last year. This was up — ready for this? — almost $1.5 trillion since 2017, the year before the tax cuts became law.

In other words, revenues were up 40% in five years. The evidence through the first three years of the tax cut finds that the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% rose as well. So much for this being a tax giveaway for the rich.

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Setting aside how credible any data released by the BLS now is – considering that not just this website but even the Philly Fed has challenged the accuracy of the Payroll reports’ Establishment survey, while Goldman recent found that actual layoffs as indicated by state WARN notices are far higher than those seasonally adjusted by the Department of Labor, there was one data point that prompted quite a few commentators to scratch their heads. Recall that one of the reasons stocks were pleasantly surprised by the jobs report is that not only did payrolls dip again (if printing as usual above average), but average hourly earnings slumped. But there was more: alongside the decline in wages, average hours worked also declined (which had a material impact on the average wages, and had hours been flat, the decline in average wages would have been even more pronounced).

San Francisco Chronicle.

A New York consultant who reportedly published false news articles about political figures has created a website called the San Francisco Inquirer, which is designed as a local news site but appears to be an effort to pressure federal lawmakers into supporting the consultant’s client, a Bay Area-based tribe.

The website has so riled California lawmakers that it was recently the subject of a tense meeting in Washington, D.C., between the tribe’s chair and five members of Congress, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Chronicle.

Apparently Democrats don’t like being treated the way they usually treat Republicans.

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New scans revealed unprecedented details about the internal structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The so-called Big Void inside the Pyramid is now measured at 40 meters in length. Its contents remain a profound mystery.

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Unmarried women without children have been moving toward the Democratic Party for several years, but the 2022 midterms may have been their electoral coming out party as they proved the chief break on the predicted Republican wave. While married men and women as well as unmarried men broke for the GOP, CNN exit polls found that 68% of unmarried women voted for Democrats.

The Supreme Court’s August decision overturning Roe v. Wade was certainly a special factor in the midterms, but longerterm trends show that single, childless women are joining African Americans as the Democrats’ most reliable supporters.

Their power is growing thanks to the demographic winds. The number of never married women has grown from about 20% in 1950 to over 30% in 2022, while the percentage of married women has declined from almost 70% in 1950 to under 50% today. Overall, the percentage of married households with children has declined from 37% in 1976 to 21% today.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Ten years ago, if you asked people if the government was involved in manipulating public opinion or leaning on social media companies or spying on presidential candidates, very few people would have agreed. Those who did think this was the case were branded conspiracy theorists. Today, most people just seem to accept that this is now the way things are done in our democracy.

It is hard to know if this is really the case, but the lack of public outrage over the stream of revelations about government pressure on social media companies suggests people are not surprised by it. Maybe most people are still processing it, as no one was raised to think they lived in a police state. Possibly the lack of mainstream coverage lets the public ignore what they would prefer not to face.

Thomas Sowell.

The rhetoric of the political left often invokes the name of the common man, but their interest in ordinary people is at best like the ASPCA’s interest in dogs and cats. No one at the ASPCA has ever suggested putting cats and dogs on their board of directors. Running left-wing movements has always been the prerogative of spoiled rich kids.

 

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Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said on Thursday that the World Economic Forum at Davos is an “echo chamber,” telling Bloomberg “…this echo chamber we live in here in Davos where everybody’s basically repeating back to each other what they’ve heard from the last person. Let’s be honest.

Well, yeah. They pick whom to invite, and they only invite members of the clerisy who are guaranteed to agree with the trans-globalist Crust.

The Carl Gustaf Recoilless Rife Confiscated By TSA Was All Legal

Ukraine Situation Report: Germany And US Play Chicken Over Tanks For Kyiv

Russia is planning a major offensive. Here’s what that might look like (The Hill)

Putin could be ready to announce a second mobilization drive (CNBC)

How the war in Ukraine could end sooner than expected (The Hill)

Russia’s war in Ukraine reaches a critical moment (CNN)

Putin: Victory In Ukraine Is “Unavoidable” & Invasion Was Effort To “Stop This War” In Donbas

Serbia’s Vucic: We Won’t Back Putin’s War

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Urges West to Send Tank Supplies Faster

Germany Says US Must Lead Way On Tanks For Ukraine, As GOP Also Piles On Pressure

Visualizing The World’s Top 25 Fleets Of Combat Tanks

Dozens Of WikiLeaks Cables Show US Knew NATO Expansion Was Russia’s Bright Red Line

SUPPORT: NATO Training Support

PARAMILITARY: No Substitute For Military Mammals

DARPA’s New X-Plane Aims To Maneuver With Nothing But Bursts Of Air

Losing Taiwan Means Losing Japan

Ukraine-Russia War Lessons – Cyber