Read it.

In French, the word for potato is pomme de terre. This literally translates to apple of the earth. By this logic, potatoes are the lowest-hanging fruit of all.

More seriously: We keep getting more and more interested in the all-potato diet. This is a diet where you eat nothing but potatoes (and sometimes a bit of seasoning) for a few weeks to a few months. It sounds like a dumb gimmick that could never work, but there are a surprising number of people out there saying that they tried it, it worked for them, and they kept the weight off for months or even years after.

Two million (dead) Irishmen can’t be wrong. (Just kidding….)

Dead cow and spuds are the basis of all true civilization. I believe that.

Read it.

A totaled Tesla Model S burst into flames in a Sacramento junkyard earlier this month, causing a fire that took “a significant amount of time, water, and thinking outside the box to extinguish,” firefighters said.

The vehicle was involved in a comparably unexplosive accident that sent it to the junkyard three weeks ago – it’s unclear what caused the Tesla to explode nearly a month after being taken off the road. Like other electric vehicle fires, it was very difficult to extinguish.

Read it.

My trauma research team quickly trained health professionals to evaluate and, if needed, treat the women. We monitored them through their pregnancies and beyond. When the babies were born, they were smaller than usual—the first sign that the trauma of the World Trade Center attack had reached the womb. Nine months later we examined 38 women and their infants when they came in for a wellness visit. Psychological evaluations revealed that many of the mothers had developed PTSD. And those with PTSD had unusually low levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol, a feature that researchers were coming to associate with the disorder.

Surprisingly and disturbingly, the saliva of the nine-month-old babies of the women with PTSD also showed low cortisol. The effect was most prominent in babies whose mothers had been in their third trimester on that fateful day. Just a year earlier a team I led had reported low cortisol levels in adult children of Holocaust survivors, but we’d assumed that it had something to do with being raised by parents who were suffering from the long-term emotional consequences of severe trauma. Now it looked like trauma leaves a trace in offspring even before they are born.

When I was young, a common schoolyard threat was ‘I’m going to beat you so bad your grandchildren will have bruises’. So maybe that actually might happen.

Read it.

Minneapolis has fallen into a deep, deep hole with an undermanned and demoralized police department, an empowered criminal class, and an ineffectual judicial system. Over the past two years, the Minneapolis Police Department has lost almost 300 officers. Any sentient fool can see why, although the local press does not pass that test. Kyle’s story quotes Sergeant Andrew Schroeder, the officer with whom he rode. “There’s days where north Minneapolis [high crime precinct] has four cops,” he said, explaining how this “staffing crisis” has caused specialized units to be cut.

There is nothing like reading about the experiences of people who do ‘ride-alongs’ with police to appreciate the sort of total scum that they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Check it out.

“Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.”
? Sam Ewing

Joel Kotkin.

America is suffering from a worker shortage, but a more persistent and perhaps even urgent problem is the profound lack of skills among younger Americans. American elite universities may still be still regarded as the world’s best, but for most young people, the educational system—from grade school to graduate school—is something of a failure, a critical engine of persistent inequality and diminished competition on the international stage.

This crisis in competence predates the pandemic. So does the very related labor shortage. The percentage of firms reporting shortages of labor more than doubled between 2015 and 2020, to 70 percent. Low birthrates among millennials has created what the forecasting firm EMSI describes as a “demographic drought,” as U.S. population growth between 16 and 64 has dropped from 20 percent in the eighties to less than 5 percent last decade. By 2028, Korn Ferry projects there will be a deficit of at least six million workers.

But the bigger problem is not just numbers; consider that our competitors, notably China, face even more challenging demographics. The big issue is the lack of skills throughout the workforce. From grade to graduate schools, our education is deteriorating.

It used to be that this country was composed mainly of Doers, with a thin layer of Talkers on top.

‘Liberal Arts’ colleges are geared toward producing more and more Talkers; as a result, there is a glut of Talkers and not enough Doers.

Our education system, with its hyper-focus on four-year colleges, has failed its students. This about one staggering statistic: Over the past 20 years, we have created twice as many bachelor’s degrees as jobs to employ those who have earned them. Over 40 percent of recent graduates are underemployed, meaning that they’re working in jobs that don’t require their degree. Many graduate programs produce fancy degrees that never return the investment for an estimated 40 percent of master’s students, particularly those earning degrees outside the sciences, business, medicine and education

Politician: Talker. Lawyer: Talker. Journalist: Talker. Professor: Talker. Author: Talker. Poet: Talker. Grievance Studies Major: Talker. Art History Major: Talker. Investment Banker: Talker. Teacher: Talker.

Joel Kotkin.

Nothing so illustrates the mindset of green politics, particularly in California, as the word “natural,” which is taken to mean unspoiled, pure, and better than the workings of man. Yet few places are as fundamentally artificial, if measured by its dependency on human intervention, as California.

So why do California’s progressives, and so many others, yearn for what the historian Leo Marx dubbed the “pastoral ideal”?Much has to do with the state’s rapid population growth from 1.5 million in 1900 to nearly 40 million today, which resulted in a regime of environmental rapine that many still living experienced.

Read it.

The abstract is this: the Blue Church is a kind of narrative / ideology control structure that is a natural result of mass media. It is an evolved (rather than designed) function that has come over the past half-century to be deeply connected with the Democratic political “Establishment” and lightly connected with the “Deep State” to form an effective political and dominant cultural force in the United States.

We can trace its roots at least as far back as the beginning of the 20th Century where it emerged in response to the new capabilities of mass media for social control. By mid-century it began to play an increasingly meaningful role in forming and shaping American culture-producing institutions; became pervasive through the last half of the 20th and seems to have peaked in its influence somewhere in the first decade of the 21st Century.

It is now beginning to unravel.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

It is very likely the case that the next major war has started. No—I don’t mean the Russia-Ukraine War, which could yet spread to the rest of Europe if we’re unlucky. I mean the Israel-Iran War.

It has been said that Israel and Iran have been at open war for some time now. (Actually, Iran and the U.S. have likewise been at war since 1979, though don’t tell John Kerry.) As is well known, Israel has carried out audacious raids on Iran over the last few years. It has assassinated key figures in Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the streets of Tehran, successfully extracted an intelligence cache on the nuclear program, and in recent months assassinated senior Iranian military figures beyond the nuclear arms circle. For their part, we know Iran is supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere with enormous amounts of munitions to use against Israel.

Leaders pledge arms and EU path for Ukraine in Kyiv visit (Associated Press)

Chipmakers brace for more trouble as Russia limits exports of rare gases (CNN)

Ukraine shows when democracies unite, it’s a game-changer (The Hill)

When The Lies Come Home

Russian Missiles Destroy Fuel Depot in East Ukraine Town, Injure 11: Official

Russia Continues Attacks After EU Boost for Ukraine

Luongo: Russia’s New Rules

Taiwanese Military Expert Sheds Light on Why Japan Treats Taiwan Emergency as Its Own

Western Populations Must Do More For Ukraine Even If “Costs Of Food & Fuel Are High”: NATO Chief

Ukraine Says “Prepare For The Worst” In Donbas; Kharkiv Will Likely Be Next “Frontline City”

Israel’s IAI unveils newest Othello gunfire detection system to geo-locate threats

Russia Attacks US-Backed Fighters In Syria At American Outpost

Tell the truth: Most people are eminently forgettable.

I’ll bet.

For Ukrainian troops, a need arises: Javelin customer service (Washington Post)

Russia aims to boot former Soviet nations from NATO by relinquishing sovereign recognition: lawmaker

The Military Situation –Part I: Destined to Fail

Facts Matter (June 15): U.S. Spy Chief Admits ‘No Idea’ What Ukraine Is Doing With $40B Weapons; Europol Warns: Might Be Used By ‘Criminal Groups’

These Are The Ports Still Receiving The Most Russian Fossil-Fuel Shipments

Mariupol Deja Vu: Ukraine Fighters & Civilians Trapped In Besieged Severodonetsk Chemical Plant

INFORMATION WARFARE: Coping With The VPN Threat

Leaders Of France, Germany, Italy Make Highest Profile Visit To Kiev Since War Began

Turkey & Russia Say 3 Ukrainian Ports Can Now Be Accessed By Grain Ships

EU Leaders Visit Ukraine in Show of Support After Criticism

Germany is not really with the Western alliance

Russian Gas Flows to Europe Fall, Hindering Bid to Refill Stores

Panel Warns of ‘Chinese Subversion’ of US Economy

Kyiv’s war for independence

177 Ukrainian Refugees Land in Newfoundland on Second Provincially-Chartered Flight

Pope Doubles Down On NATO-Ukraine Comments: Russian Invasion Was “Provoked”

Russians Control 80 Percent of Key Ukraine City, Cut Escape Routes: Ukrainian Official

Ukrainian Troops Have Nobody To Call To Troubleshoot Their Javelin Missiles  Scott Adams had a bit on his podcast yesterday about how Ukrainians can’t use their Javelin missiles because they require batteries that the Ukrainians don’t have and can’t get.

Ukraine Situation Report: More HIMARS On The Way Once Ukraine Shows It Can Use Them In Combat

Russia is ‘hemorrhaging’ millionaires (CNN)

More than 15,000 millionaires expected to leave Russia in 2022 (The Guardian)

Putin’s Former PM Warns: If Ukraine Falls, Baltics Are Next (Newsweek)

Russian Oligarchs’ Jets Flying Over Europe Despite Sanctions: Report (Newsweek)

WEAPONS: Sweden’s Most Wanted

Russia Bans 49 British Journalists, Defence Officials From Entering  As if they would ever want to. Russia? Ew!

Biden To Announce Nearly $1BN More In Arms For Ukraine, Including Anti-Ship Missiles  Apparently the U.S. Navy wants to get in on the live-fire training and stock replenishment action.

Ukraine Defies Russia’s Sievierodonetsk Ultimatum

NATO Should Better Coordinate Its Economic Power Against Russia and China  Don’t hold your breath.

Senior Military Officer Who Retired, Went to Ukraine, Now Charged With Sexual Assault

Read it.

Walk down the aisle of any any woke supermarket whose patrons drive electric SUVs with Bernie stickers and you’ll find shortages of everything except “plant-based substitutes” for real food. Don’t bother looking for rotisserie chicken, there’s a shortage. Forget the eggs, they’re not only cage-free and going at the rate of three for a dollar, they’re also more absent than Biden.

Milk can be had in every possible variety except the kind that comes from a cow. The stock of ‘ersatz’ alternatives to milk testify to the green gold rush touched off by the urgent need to save the planet. Cows, despite roaming the plains for thousands of years before Al Gore, Greta Thunberg and Teslas, are bad for the earth. But so it turns out is absolutely everything else.

Read it.

Uh, no thanks.

Read it.

New York’s Jewish House members have disappeared because there are no longer Jewish Democrat communities. Instead there are Republican Jewish communities who are being gerrymandered and people with Jewish last names who belong to no community, who are generally agnostic when it comes to religion, and whose only culture is pop culture.

Jewish Democrats helped destroy their own electorate. And are eliminating themselves.

Read it.

What happens when the workforce no longer wants to work? We’re about to find out. As with all cultural sea changes, macro statistics don’t tell the full story. The sea change is better illuminated by anecdotal evidence: workers constantly quitting to take better jobs; zero loyalty to corporate employers; workers cutting hours from full-time to part-time; workers going out for lunch and never coming back; workers giving up on selling sugar-water for the rest of their lives (echoing Steve Jobs’ famous challenge to John Scully: “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?”) and giving up on owning an insanely over-valued house.

Workers may sell sugar-water but their hearts are no longer in it. Some are interested in changing the world, and others are interested in changing their own lives as the means to change the world.

I, on the other hand, are looking for the cheat codes.

Read it.

People don’t go to MacDonald’s for healthy food.

Russia Says It Destroyed Depot With Western Weapons in Ukraine

Rafael unveils new Spike NLOS missile version with in-flight control transfer

I guess the war is wearing out its welcome.

Read it.

Less and less as time goes one.

Read it.

I use Harry’s products because I like them and they’re very cost-effective compared to Big Razor companies like Gillette and Schick. I also resist any urge that I might have – and, if it exists, it’s a small one – to buy stuff based on the politics of the people who make it. (Except Ben & Jerry’s; they deserve to die in penury.)

But I find this whole notion of ‘They won’t advertise with us because of our politics, so we’ll do what they do and do it better nyah nyah nyah’ to be strangely attractive and (dare I say it?) typically American.

My hesitation is due to the fact that ‘Jeremy’s razors’ sounds rather … metrosexual.

“When will my side learn not to give in to lefty scum?”

— Taki

Read it.

Threat to democracy: When Republicans win an election.

Read it.

The budget proposal from the Republican Study Committee would reduce mandatory spending by $11.86 trillion over 10 years while lowering nondefense discretionary spending by $3.64 trillion.

The U.S. government faces a budget deficit of $3.1 trillion. The accumulated national debt stands at $30 trillion.

But time and fortune happen to them all….

Read it.

From the very outset of this pandemic, the topic of natural infection has been a taboo. To suggest that anyone might have been better off risking infection and thereby gaining immunity from a respiratorial virus rather than hiding under the sofa for two years was seen as outrageous and irresponsible.

My theory is that the reason has always been political. And that’s tragic.

Generations have gone by that have understood it. A life strategy to flee all pathogens is deeply dangerous. The immune system, in order to be trained to protect against severe disease, needs exposure. Not to all things, of course, but to many pathogens that are not finally debilitating or fatal. We’ve evolved with pathogens in what Sunetra Gupta calls a “dangerous dance.” This dance is unavoidable, especially for fast-mutating viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

And yet from the beginning, this knowledge seemed to be lost. This is gravely embarrassing since it’s been known for 2,500 years. It was worse than just lost. As a person who wrote almost daily during the pandemic, I too was careful not to discuss this topic with too much bluntness. We all felt the political pressure to say silent or at least cloud our prose with euphemisms.

Read it.

All we know thus far is that the 59-year-old Middleton – who admitted Jeffrey Epstein to the White House seven out of at least 17 times – was discovered on May 7 hanging from a tree at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville by an electrical cord, with a shotgun blast to his chest. The ranch, located 30 miles from Middleton’s home, is owned by an anti-poverty nonprofit called Heifer International.

Read it.

A homeschool portfolio is a visual record chronicling a child’s entire homeschool year. There are basically two types of portfolios. The first, an academic-focused portfolio, serves as part of an annual assessment per your state homeschool law, and its primary purpose is to show that academic progress has been achieved. The second is meant to be a personal keepsake.

There are several benefits to creating homeschool portfolios. They can be powerful motivators and self-esteem boosters for your child. The simple act of seeing how far he or she has come in a single year can encourage your child to persevere, work harder, or consider setting more challenging goals next year. Invite your kids to join you in the assembly process and have fun reminiscing together as you look back over the school year.

Read it.

It is only with the greatest reluctance that I reach the conclusion that the modern theory of multivalued logic is illogical, in that it is elliptical and superfluous to restate in confusing jargon what Medieval Schoolmen stated clearly, and in Latin.

Read it.

I find it difficult to find anyone who uses more than Excel and eighth grade level mathematics (=arithmetic, and a little bit of algebra, statistics and programming). In the summer of 2007 I taught an advanced geometry course and had two students in the class who had been engineers and one who had been an actuary. They claimed never to have used anything beyond Excel and eighth grade level mathematics; never a trig function or even a log or exponential function! There is in fact a deskilling going on in our economy, where even the ability to make change is about to disappear as an important skill.

Read it.

Jews, like Chinese, breed for intelligence.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Sometime in the next couple days I’m going to formalize a new regular feature, Power Line’s Political Lexicon, which we’ll update regularly (especially with reader help). For now, I’ll offer the newest entry:

Expert (noun): People who are wrong about everything. Usually collaborators in Groupthink, and employed by government agencies or a university.

Steve Sailer.

Despite each killing at least three, none of these mass shootings would make the Mother Jones magazine list of Real Mass Shootings. They leave out all felony-related massacres, all ones vaguely attributable to “gangs” (i.e., black lowlifes who are peeved at each other), and ones that haven’t been cleared by the cops.

Read it.

For years, proponents have hailed indoor growing techniques like hydroponics (growing plants in nutrient-rich water rather than soil) and vertical farming (packing rows of plants beneath grow lamps inside of a warehouse, basement, or retrofitted shipping container) as ways to “democratize farming” for anyone who wants to give growing a go, regardless of whether they own any fertile land. And the indoor farming business is booming. In January, the commercial farming company Square Roots opened its fourth facility of shipping container farms in Wisconsin. The company says the collection of containers are capable of producing a couple million packages of plants—leafy greens like lettuce and herbs—per year. Walmart got in the indoor farming game in January when it invested in Plenty, another commercial vertical farming company. Some companies have even positioned themselves as one-stop shops for farm production, all packed into a single unit.

All they’ve managed so far is trendy low-rise crops like kale and lettuce, maybe some potatoes and strawberries. I’m waiting for them to do something significant with bulk row crops like wheat, oats, barley, rye, and maize, or pole crops like beans and tomatoes.

(And don’t get me started on tree fruits like apples, pears, lemons, oranges, peaches….)

0Sanctioned Russian oligarch’s megayacht found in UAE creek  It’s all about the oligarchs.

Saudi Arabia ready to pump more oil if Russian output sinks under ban (Financial Times)

Here’s a way to make Russia pay for Putin’s ruthless war in Ukraine (CNN)

Kremlin TV Names the Country Putin Will Invade Next (Daily Beast) Well, not really.

Putin’s state TV propagandist Olga Skabeyeva says ‘World War III has already begun’

More Seek Gun Training in Taiwan as Ukraine War Drives Home China Threat

EU Slowly Weaning Off Russian Crude Gives Moscow Time To Divert Flows To Asia 

Milley Says Using Military To Open Ukrainian Ports Would Be “High Risk”

Saab’s anti-tank systems could find new life thanks to Ukraine conflict, updated capabilities

Russia Uses Chinese Ships And Indian Refiners To Stay Ahead of Oil Sanctions  What’s ‘Nyah nyah!’ in Russian?

Ukrainians Who’ve Fled to Canada Can Now Apply for Government Income Support

Communist China’s Global Plan Emerges