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Using cannabis may cause changes in the human body’s epigenome, a study of over 1,000 adults suggests. The epigenome functions like a set of switches, activating or deactivating genes to change how our bodies function.

“We observed associations between cumulative marijuana use and multiple epigenetic markers across time,” explained epidemiologist Lifang Hou from Northwestern University when the research was published in 2023.

Cannabis is a commonly used substance in the United States, with 49 percent of people trying it at least once, Hou and a team of US researchers report in their published paper.

Some US states and other countries have made cannabis legal, but we still don’t fully understand its effects on our health.

Even if we did, history demonstrates that the self-indulgent chemically-inclined would ignore it. How many people still smoke tobacco? But evolution has a way of taking care of such things.

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Viewers of MSNBC and CNN have recently noticed more frequent appearances by Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). With the Democratic Party lacking clear leadership in a rudderless motion—still confused about how many genders—its strategists are testing the waters to determine which unhinged and crazed progressive lawmaker will be the party’s new face.

“I have heard from Democratic operatives is that Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez are trying to fill the vacuum created by Harris’s loss, the absence of a clear 2028 frontrunner and a coherent agenda,” Douglas MacKinnon, a former White House and Pentagon official, recently penned in an op-ed featured in The Hill.

Crockett’s latest appearance on far-left conspiracy network MSNBC resulted in a Community Note on X after she claimed: “It is not a criminal violation to enter the country illegally… it’s not a crime.”

I’ll bet it did….

Associated Press, a Voice of the Crust.

New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the United Kingdom has lost his job over remarks he made about U.S. President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand ‘s foreign minister said Thursday.

Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the U.K., made the comments at an event held by the international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday.

Actions have consequences. You’d think that a career diplomat would know enough to be more, how shall I say it, diplomatic.

Read it.

China may be a serious threat. North Korea is not. They are always long on threats and short on action.

The Wall Street Journal, unfortunately these days a Voice of the Crust.

The U.S. imported $1.2 trillion more in goods in 2024 than it exported, a record annual deficit and a major economic irritant for President Trump. On Feb. 13, the president announced that his administration would evaluate tariffs and other trade barriers imposed on U.S. exports by other nations and match them with “reciprocal” tariffs. The president said last week that 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go into effect Tuesday.

This is utter horseshit, and a good indicator of how far reporting in the WSJ has degenerated.

There is no such thing as a ‘trade deficit’, any more than there is a ‘car deficit’ if you buy three cars and only trade in two.

All trade is balanced. Nobody ships good to the U.S. gratis. If the U.S. imports X amount of goods and only exports X-Y goods in return, the difference is in the form of actual money … i.e. pieces of paper (or electronic bits) that are worth no more than what the government says they are. If we are receiving goods and sending bits of paper in return, who is on the short end of that stick?

The Antiplanner.

The residents of Maumee are so thrilled with the street’s reconstruction that they have submitted more than 10,000 signatures to the election board seeking to recall the mayor and six members of the city council. Their real goal is to fire the city administrator, who they believe has run roughshod (with the support of the city council) over citizen interests. Among other things, they are upset that the administrator “was the mastermind that created the stricture reducing Conant Street traffic flow to unbearable levels during peak driving times.”

“Our main uptown area has become a headache to navigate,” reports a resident on Strong Towns’ Facebook page. “The Strong Towns experiment has resulted in traffic cutting through neighborhoods where children play because drivers grow tired of waiting for traffic lights and traffic backs up. In an attempt to promote walking, the city placed a concrete island in the middle of the road. That island has been hit by cars at least four times if not more in the last year resulting in thousands of dollars in damages. The transition to the Strong Towns initiative has also resulted in the closing of some businesses in our uptown region. Our current leaders may think they did a great thing by sending a bunch of our tax dollars to Strong Towns, but talk to most citizens and they will tell you the truth of the negative impact this ponzi scheme has had on a once enjoyable town to live in.”

Read it.

After nasty clashes involving character assassinations and a mass resignation, a showdown is drawing closer in Chicago between the most powerful local teachers’ union in the country and the most financially distressed school district.

The growing possibility of a teachers’ strike in a city with a long history of labor upheavals highlights the troubles rocking public schools nationwide. First came drops in academic performance and enrollment from lower birth rates and the pull of charter and home schools promising a better education and sometimes delivering it. Enrollment has plunged 20% in Chicago since 2012, a bigger decline than in many large cities.

After the pandemic hit, a windfall of $190 billion in federal emergency funding helped districts like Chicago paper over years of deficit spending and significantly expand the ranks of teachers, social workers, and counselors. Now that the federal aid has ended, students have only partly recovered from their devastating learning loss while budget deficits have ballooned, prompting widespread education cuts in Houston and upcoming reductions in San Francisco, to name just a few districts facing fiscal woes.

Read it.

Hey, they don’t call it Brown University for nothing.

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Today in “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” news…

Two Oregon men searching for the mythical Sasquatch tragically died after going missing in the wilderness on Christmas Eve, according to the NY Post.

The Skamania County Sheriff’s Office reported that the bodies of the men, aged 37 and 59, were discovered in a remote, forested area of Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Authorities believe the pair succumbed to exposure due to severe weather conditions and inadequate preparation for the harsh environment.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

For the better part of a century, Cuba has been under the control of communists and their ideologies, and the previously inconceivable has finally happened – they’ve run out of sugar.

How is this even possible? Do you really even have to do anything to get a tropical crop to grow on an island nation with a literal year-round growing season?

According to a new report from CiberCuba, the communists are now importing sugar at about $25 a pound, and have stopped exporting entirely, after a number of “failures” over the years.

NEWS FLASH: Communism never works, and it is always a failure.

Read it.

*sigh* Buy ’em books, send ’em to school, and they still can’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel.

Read it.

David French has offered a deeply pathetic NeverTrump manifesto just in time for the election. It rehashes French’s ongoing themes of (a) his morality superiority (b) the irrelevance or nonexistence of perfidy on the left and (c) the betrayal of all Republicans and evangelicals who do not think exactly as he does. Nothing you did not already know about the Gospel of St. David. I read it so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

 

Read it.

Emergency services had to move a boulder to get her out

If you’re out and about in nature and drop your phone down a three-meter crevice between some boulders, maybe don’t try to retrieve it.

Read it.

Many have discovered an argument hack. They don’t need to argue that something is false. They just need to show that it’s associated with low status. The converse is also true: You don’t need to argue that something is true. You just need to show that it’s associated with high status. And when low status people express the truth, it sometimes becomes high status to lie.

In the 1980s, the psychologists Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo developed the “Elaboration Likelihood Model” to describe how persuasion works. “Elaboration” here means the extent to which a person carefully thinks about the information. When people’s motivation and ability to engage in careful thinking is present, the “elaboration likelihood” is high. This means people are likely to pay attention to the relevant information and draw conclusions based on the merits of the arguments or the message. When elaboration likelihood is high, a person is willing to expend their cognitive resources to update their views.

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New for Playstation and the PC.

ZMan is not impressed with Joe Biden … or his handlers.

Since the Thursday night debate at which Joe Biden looked like a hospice patient, there have been competing theories about whether it was a setup in order to push Biden out of the way or whether it was just another screwup. Basically, we have two competing theories of the crime. One says it is the work of those mysterious people in the hollowed-out volcano who control the world and the other theory says it is the work of people who are too stupid to run the machine they inherited.

The hollowed-out volcano theory side had the momentum on Thursday night as regime media started bellowing for Biden to step aside. It had the feel of that first weekend of the Ukraine war when every talking hairdo on television had a Ukraine flag lapel pin and was spasmodically saying “keev” at one another. The same people who were telling one another that Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack were suddenly competing with one another to condemn his family for rolling him out on stage.

Read it.

You gotta be a special kind of stupid to buy a Tesla.

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Thank you, Gavin Newsom.

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They wanted combustion engine cars out but forgot that these cars bring in billions in tax income. They wanted a fully electrified transport but forgot it wouldn’t bring in money unless they make it more expensive. They wanted a revolution but forgot rule #1 for revolutions: the successful ones never start from the top. They start from the bottom.

House of Eratosthenes.

Internet phenomena are rather like campfire fuel: Some are like wet logs, you can sit there until your butt gets tired trying magnifying glasses, matches, Bic lighters, whatever have you, putting unlimited effort into it — and some people do! Nothing happens. They end up embarrassing themselves and tiring out their butts. Other things are like gasoline, the white variety, burning so fast that there’s no time for the flame to take to the wood and the accelerant can’t do anything but forcefully explode.

Most are in between the two extremes. This dumb bear thing is more like the latter. Match, toss, kaboom. I think it can be truthfully said, in all my Internet years, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

I wish that every female who would rather meet a bear than a man in the woods would to ahead and do that. Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

I like it that the girl in the picture is wearing a nose-ring, apparently signaling her willingness to be let around like livestock.

Read it.

Heavy equipment businesses have filed a suit against California over the state’s rule that truck and van fleets must electrify their vehicles—a mandate that will likely apply to almost as many out-of-state companies as in-state companies—alleging that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s protections for interstate commerce and other federal laws.

“The rule is extraterritorial, burdensome, and impractical. It is riddled with exemptions that allow [California’s air regulatory agency] to micro-manage fleets and play favorites, one vehicle at a time,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit, from Illinois-based trade association Associated Equipment Dealers and the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, a conservative group chaired by former Iowa governor Terry Branstad (R.), targets a state regulation stating that any company with 50 or more vehicles anywhere in the world, or $50 million in gross yearly revenues, must start replacing their vans, trucks, yard tractors, package delivery vehicles, and buses with electric models starting next year. Fleets must be fully electric within 10 to 18 years, depending on their category.

Read it.

This result shouldn’t surprise anyone. Inflation has driven up operational costs for businesses across the US and shrunk profit margins for major food chains in the past few years. This has led to higher menu prices (like the “$18 Big Mac”) and slowing sales for every major fast food company. Another anchor dragging on the restaurant business in many regions was at least two years of covid stimulus coupled with rent moratoriums, creating aggressive labor shortages and raising wages in upwards of $16 per hour for brand new no-skill employees.

…

Mass layoffs are now a guarantee with many restaurants already firing thousands of workers as well as some chains closing multiple locations because the cost of operation will be higher than the benefits.

…

The “digital options” that many fast food franchises are referring to are automated ordering systems as well as robot workers which are slowly but surely becoming more cost effective than human laborers. At least one fast food location in California is testing a fully robotic restaurant with no human workers.

New York Times.

Paul Krugman is living proof that even a moron can win a Nobel prize.

Vanity Fair.

Why anyone would be interested in Monica Lewinsky’s opinion on anything under the sun is beyond me, other than the fact that Narrative media publications need eyeballs desperately and her name will inevitably attract them.

The article itself is merely a vapid regurgitation of every liberal talking point you’ve ever heard from a political class smarting from not being allowed to do what they want do, all within a Clever Plastic Disguise called ‘democracy’.

For all of her alleged vast ‘research’, it’s obvious that The Mouth That Roared learned absolutely nothing. The reason there aren’t any anti-insurrection provisions in the Constitution is because the Founders knew that people wouldn’t vote for a insurrectionist. The relevant provision in the 14th Amendment was put there because Congress realized that, in the South, that traditional logic would no longer apply, so it had to be stated. Everybody (except fever-dreamers for the Narrative media knows that the President can’t pardon himself, which is why no President has ever attempted to do so–and if he did his ass would be impeached so fast you’d think that the Concorde had come back from the dead.

I would encourage you to pinch your nose and read the article, just to see how stupid and venal our Narrative media can be. It is not a pretty sight.

Steve Sailer.

Science used to be about making more accurate predictions, but now it’s about affirming dogmas even at the cost of more dead bodies. As we all know, Race Does NOT Exist Biologically. It just doesn’t. So therefore, doctors will no longer be allowed to use race in an algorithm predicting risk of heart attack or stroke, even though including race makes more accurate predictions.

NewsMax.

A sheriff in Florida blasted beachgoers for ignoring deadly rip-current warnings and harassing first responders after nearly a dozen people, including former NFL quarterback Ryan Mallett, drowned in the past two weeks.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Time to cull the herd,.

Read it.

Lightfoot spent the end of her term managing the migrant crisis and criticizing Republicans who sent migrants to her city, which she advertised as a “sanctuary city.”

She also saw the homicide rate skyrocket nearly 40 percent since entering office in 2019, watchdog Wirepoints reported.

“I’ll share specifics about the way we managed the COVID-19 public health crisis,” Lightfoot said of her Harvard course. She faced immense criticism as mayor for her lockdowns and treatment of the pandemic.

ZMan looks at electric cars.

Recently, whoever owns the Dodge car brand announced that the brand would stop making sports cars in the near future. They will discontinue their line of muscle cars in favor of electric cars. Many other car makers have promised that they will soon cease making cars with internal combustion engines. Reminiscent of the Soviet five year plans, they are promising to be right with Gaia in five years. Like those five year plans this is unlikely to happen, barring societal collapse.

The main reason this will never happen is that electric cars are and always have been a stupid lie against practical reality. The stupidity lies in the fact that at the end of every green scheme lies a smokestack. There is no such thing as renewable energy so that leaves the only way we know to get usable energy, breaking atoms. The lie is that these new cars are better in some way. They are not. In fact, electric cars are inferior at all of the things that make normal cars useful.

This short post summarizes the more obvious problems with eclectic vehicles, but you could write a book on the topic. The cost of ownership is significantly higher to the user and even higher for society, if one thinks mountains of old batteries is a problem that society should mitigate against. Then there is the fact that they will forever be impractical for most people. The biggest problem is they will require trillions in infrastructure changes that will never happen.

Read it.

Minnesota Democrats are pressing on offense since Governor Walz won reelection and they took charge of the legislature last month. “Let’s go crazy” seems to be their motto.

Last month five contributors signed off on an op-ed column to the Star Tribune supporting their push for menstrual equity. Two of the five are DFL legislators — Senator Steve Cwodzinski and Rep. Sandra Feist. They were joined by “menstrual educator” Carolyn Handke, National Council of Jewish Women Minnesota executive director Erica Solomon, and Hopkins High School Student Elif Ozturk.

They support passage of the Menstrual Equity Bill (HF44/SF50). According to the column: “This bill will require all Minnesota district and charter schools to provide free menstrual products in all bathrooms, grades four through 12, ensuring access for all students who menstruate.” Their column concluded on this appropriately insane note: “In 2023 we must show our commitment to our women, girls and all menstruators in Minnesota schools….” All menstruators are created equal, or something.

Read it.

Oh, yeah,  the Russians will really be impressed by that.

Do ‘activists’ have any idea how much they are undercutting their own cause by acting like spoiled children in public, inconveniencing the people they ought to be trying to persuade, and just generally acting like assholes? I guess not.

The Other McCain has a Darwin Award nominee.

Say hello to Steven Joaquin “Zhoie” Perez (a/k/a “Furry Potato”), a transgender YouTuber who specializes in “First Amendment audits.”

You may not have heard of this phenomenon: People who record videos in public places — post offices, municipal buildings, etc. — in order to test {“audit,” as they say) the police response. These self-declared are deliberately non-cooperative when confronted by law enforcement, refusing to identify themselves and sometimes insulting the officers who usually show up in response to reports of “suspicious behavior.”

Read it.

This is really quite a remarkable video wherein Joe Scarborough says the Gospel of Jesus Christ is pro-abortion. How did we ever become this stupid? Mika looks on in awe thinking that Joe just destroyed the pro-life movement. It boggles the mind.

You want inflation? I got yer inflation, right here.

Read it.

A woman tells the cop who stopped her in a carpool lane she’s allowed to drive there because her pronouns are “they” and “them.”

ZMan does some anthropology.

Whether it is getting the gang symbols tattooed on your face, wearing an unofficial uniform or committing yourself to a way of life, every cause requires something from the members as a payment. This sacrifice is not only a signal to the other members, showing their shared commitment to the cause, it is also a form of advertising to potential members of the cause. More important, it adds a sense of value to membership in the cause. The members feel committed.

The people displaying their pronouns in their e-mail signature and social media profile are signaling their commitment by sacrificing some portion of their dignity. There is a noticeable discomfort in these people then they say “I go by they/them” because they know what they are doing is foolish. It is as ridiculous as wearing a flowerpot on their head, but that is the point of the ritual. They are making a fool of themselves in public as a way to show their commitment to this cause.

The same thing is at play when white people take to the stage and begin hectoring their fellow white people about racism. It is patently absurd for a white person to stand up and condemn their ancestors for being white or for the crime of having created a culture that is now called white supremacy. Some of what drives this is mental illness, for sure, and some is the “my fellow white people” act. Much of it, however, is the need for the adherent to show their faith by committing an act of lunacy.

Wokery As A Cult does make a certain degree of sense.

Read it.

Russians attempting to use Apple Pay and Google Pay found that their access had been blocked, causing chaos in the Moscow Metro system.

Oops.

Read it.

And why not? As long as people are willing to give him money, he’s got a profitable occupation, win or lose. And as long as you make the right Woke noises, there will be stupid people willing to give you money.

Read it.

I didn’t tell him that according to the latest data from the NHS in the UK, the percentage of those who die from the WuFlu after being “vaccinated” is roughly the same as it is for the unvaxed. And I especially didn’t tell what the experts say all those boosters will eventually do to him after he’s had enough of them. I don’t tell any of my vaxed friends about those things — since they can’t do anything about it once they’re vaxed, why would I want to ruin their day?

I refer to my friend’s syndrome as “Corona Psychosis”. It’s completely irrational, recognizes no evidence that might contradict it, and is clung to with a ferocity reminiscent of a religious mania.

It should have its own entry in the DSM-5.

Read it.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

A Florida man who is accused of shooting down a federal drone that was being used to search for a burglar has been indicted on charges of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and destruction of aircraft.

Wendell Doyle Goney was formally charged after admitting to authorities that he had used a .22 caliber rifle to shoot down the Lake County Sheriff’s Office drone, which he said was “harassing” him, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

The incident took place on July 11. Deputies from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office were alerted to a burglary at a 10-acre business property. A law enforcement drone was deployed to assist with the outdoor search but it was soon shot down from the sky by Goney, who resides at a neighboring property, according to the release.

Boy, he sure showed them!

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A blonde lady Caltech forestry grad named Alexandra Souverneva, age 30 of Palo Alto, set the recent Fawn Fire that threatened to burn down the Northern California city of Redding because people told her to get off their land that she needed to walk across to get to Canada.

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of your average citizen more than those it’s likely to be Extinction Rebellion. Utter these words to your average working-class Londoner and don’t be surprised if they start grinding their teeth or begin to show signs of a florid complexion.

Since the group re-emerged after a long hiatus in the wilderness — probably busy making hair shirts or shouting at petrol — they have tried every means at their disposal to raise awareness that we are living in a supposed climate emergency. Their hapless Dad’s Army approach to environmental activism managed to enrage and frustrate just about every sector of British society. From a blockade that obstructed newspaper printing presses to disrupting the travel plans of millions of fed up commuters, the group managed to alienate just about anyone who may have been receptive to their cause. Hyperbolic statements didn’t help either. Founding member Roger Hallam claimed “billions” will die if we fail to take immediate action. Rather than bring people with them, these ridiculous stunts and statements have had the opposite effect.

Read it.

A Swedish family went on a vacation trip to Afghanistan just before the fall of Kabul, and now they are stuck there.

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Twenty-two of the Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C, to prevent a quorum in the state House have filed a lawsuit in federal court against Gov. Greg Abbott.

The lawsuit, which two of the twenty-two Democrats are disputing they signed onto, is embarrassingly bad.

The complaint does not include the usual section for “claims” or “causes of action,” so we have to sift through its pell-mell paragraphs to figure out just what the Texas Democrats are alleging.

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The Bison Bridge proposes to repurpose the old bridge, which is slated for demolition, and turn it into a wildlife crossing so herds can roam freely between Iowa and Illinois.

Why? Why do we need to spend taxpayers’ money in a state that has millions of dollars in public pension liabilities to help fucking bison cross a fucking river? What did they do back when they had to depend on the Indians?

Read it.

A 10-year-old boy’s father allegedly took him on a fake drive-by shooting using a paintball gun, and was shot by a real bullet when a homeowner returned fire, the Miami Herald reported.