Read it.

Yeah, it cut costs by shifting them to the customers, many of whom don’t appreciate doing the work that the vendor ought to be doing.

According to an April survey from Toast, a point-of-sale and restaurant management platform, approximately 36 percent of 340 small and midsize retail operators said they used self-checkout lanes this year, down from 43 percent in 2025.

That decrease could be attributed to merchandise losses.

According to a report from ECR Retail Loss, grocery stores experienced an average 22 percent increase in merchandise losses in the year after installing self-checkout lanes. These losses included both theft and accidental errors, such as missed scans and incorrect product selections.

Gee, who could have foreseen that?

Read it.

The new school year is well underway, but federal officials are looking ahead to next year’s school calendar and a new federal school choice option. This week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released proposed and temporary guidance on the program to help state officials and families prepare.

As part of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” signed by the White House in July 2025, lawmakers included a federal tax credit program for K-12 students that will take effect next year. The federal initiative is modeled after state education choice opportunities that make individuals and/or corporations eligible for tax credits on donations made to private school scholarship organizations.

The organizations then use the contributions to award K-12 private school scholarships to eligible students. Arizona lawmakers adopted the first such program in 1997, and policymakers in states across the country have approved similar provisions.

The federal tax credit only applies to individual, not corporate, tax filers and is capped at $1,700 per individual ($3,400 for married couples filing jointly). A unique—and troubling—provision in the federal program is that scholarship organizations can raise money for public schools.

Parents and taxpayers should wonder why this provision was included in a law modeled after private school choice laws. Today, the average per student spending in traditional schools has climbed to more than $20,000 per child, even as reading and math scores in most grades have been on a steady decline since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, state private education choice options result in cost savings to taxpayers.

Not the Bee.

How many of these stories are we going to see before we stop the madness?

Still got a while yet, I suspect.

Read it.

My , what a surprise.

Trustees who identify as Democrats greatly outnumber those who identify as Republicans at the nation’s Ivy League schools and, as a result, Democrats receive far more money in political donations from members of these governing bodies than do Republicans, a study by the Buckley Institute reveals.

“The trustees have ultimate fiduciary responsibility for their respective universities, hire and fire the university president, and have oversight over the faculty, among other responsibilities,” Buckley Institute noted in a press release stressing the importance of the study’s findings.

The Telegraph (UK).

The Netherlands has dumped plans to tax unrealised gains on shares, bonds and cryptocurrency after warnings it could prompt an investor exodus.

Rob Jetten, the prime minister, a liberal who took office in February, will instead introduce a more conventional capital gains tax (CGT) on actual profits at a rate of 36pc.

The switch will cost the government €15bn (£13bn) over the next eight years. But Mr Jetten hopes to claw that back by cutting the tax-free allowance for capital gains, bringing more small-time investors into the net.

I guess not spending more than you’re taking in wasn’t an option. Of course, with government,  it never it.

The Telegraph (UK).

A domestic abuse victim is to flee to “the other side of the world” to escape her ex-husband because she has lost faith in the state to protect her and her two children when he is released early from prison.

Sounds like something Democrats would do.

Seven hundred prisoners, including violent offenders and domestic abusers, are the first to be released across the country this morning under Andy Burnham’s plans to ease overcrowding.

The Telegraph (UK).

Labour’s “one in, one out” deal with France is to end because too few Channel migrants have been deported under it, the Home Office has announced.

Saw that coming. France has been a bad-faith actor throughout the migrant crisis, just as Mexico has been with the U.S. illegal immigration problem. Britain ought to drag these ‘migrant’ boats back to France, sink them in the surf, and let the French deal with them as they ought to have done in the first place.

Read it.

Immigration activists say migrants are expecting a Democrat takeover of Congress in the midterms, and a shift toward more relaxed border enforcement.

And there’s the election in a nutshell.

Not the Bee.

Proglodyte paradise.

Not the Bee.

Smart fridges, dumb owners. Think of it as evolution in action.

The Telegraph (UK).

After being sued by homeowners, the socialist mayor must reimplement his pied-à-terre tax after its “botched” rollout.

The lawsuit argued that the city sent notices to about 17,000 New Yorkers telling them their homes might be subject to the tax before properly checking whether they were full-time residents.

“Homeowners are being substantially harmed and penalised needlessly” by the city’s “method of implementing the tax law”, Judge Wayne M Ozzi, sitting in Staten Island, ruled.

Read it.

In their defense, black people have always treated it like it’s theirs, so you can’t really blame them.

upcoming midterm elections during an appearance on Fox’s My View with Lara Trump, according to comments Fox News reported Sunday. Minaj, a supporter of President Donald Trump, also accused the Democratic Party of discouraging black voters from breaking with the party.

And the clue-by-four strikes.

The Telegraph (UK).

Berlin will be plunged into “huge chaos” under a hard-Left administration, German property developers have warned.

Elif Eralp, the Die Linke leader in Berlin who is trying to form a coalition to run the city and become mayor, has pledged to seize ownership of 200,000 apartments to address a housing crisis.

Her housing policy was a key vote-winner for liberal residents in Berlin in the state elections on Sept 20. The capital was once known for being “poor but sexy” yet has seen rents soar by nearly 70 per cent over the past decade.

Open borders will do that to you.

Read it.

Some trace much of our current hard times back to the rebellious sixties when we baby boomers came of age and took the arrogance of youth to new levels. Quoting Adam Smith after the horrible year of 1968 would have been an act of wisdom.

Tragically, those crazed baby boomers went on to infiltrate four critical pillars of our civic infrastructure — specifically, K-12 education, colleges, journalism, and entertainment media. For decades, all four of these pillars have been sources of problems, not sources of solutions. They have been causing ruin for over 50 years.

When over a third of our society is in favor of socialism, believes capitalism causes poverty, thinks society would be improved by closing jails and prisons, thinks open borders are beneficial, thinks giving sanctuary to violent criminals from foreign lands is noble and wise, and lack the wherewithal to recognize that Hamas, not Israel, is the aggressor in the Middle East, we are dangerously close to the limit of just how much ruin we can absorb.

New York Post.

And who could blame them?

New York Post.

A dozen teens were shot after gunfire broke out at a chaotic birthday party gone awry inside a Georgia park Saturday night, according to local authorities and reports.

The shots broke out around midnight at Carolyn Crayton Park in Macon, where a “large gathering” had congregated following a birthday party at a nearby Airbnb, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said.

Two of the victims –- a 17-year-old boy and an 18-year-old boy — were left in critical condition, while the other 10 were listed in stable condition.

Guess that ethnicity!

The Telegraph (UK).

British police are facilitating breaking the law.

The Other McCain.

More than two decades have elapsed since Deborah Frisch, Ph.D., lost her position as a psychology instructor at the University of Arizona because of her harassment of “Protein Wisdom” blogger Jeff Goldstein. Rather than move on with her life, instead Frisch became obsessed with Goldstein and harassed him so persistently that finally, in 2018, she was sentenced to prison in Colorado. Frisch was released from prison in July 2025 and we all waited to see how long it would take her to relapse into her criminal habits and earn herself a return trip to prison.

Call it a hunch, but I don’t think it will be much longer.

Read it.

In 1986, the federal government built a computer database called SAVE, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. The purpose was simple – when a noncitizen applies for public benefits the state govt can check whether the applicant was legally in the country. The SAVE system worked. Nobody talked about it for 39 years.

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order expanding SAVE’s use. The order told DHS to use the SAVE system to verify citizenship of registered voters and people registering to vote. The order instructed the Social Security Administration to share its records with DHS for that purpose.

Two months later, DHS launched the modified version. Two changes: (1) it now checks Social Security numbers against SSA databases. (2) it allows state and local authorities to run bulk searches; the entire voter roll at once.

The Narrative Media, of course, never mention this database without calling it ‘flawed’ or ‘incorrect’. (Remember: These are the people who are fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from getting information that would improve its accuracy and usefulness.)

ATQUE: Supreme Court clears way for Trump administration to use modified voter verification database (Amy Howe/SCOTUSblog)

ATQUE: The Supreme Court revives a controversial data system for citizenship checks (Jude Joffe-Block/NPR)

ATQUE: Supreme Court Lets Trump Use Beefed-Up Citizenship Verification System That Could Hurt Eligible Voters (Kate Riga/Talking Points Memo)

ATQUE: Supreme Court Ruling Could Have Limited Impact on Voter Screening in Midterms (New York Times)

Read it.

The organization tasked with accrediting the nation’s law schools will appear before a federal advisory panel later this month to defend its government-recognized status as an accreditor. This status gives the Council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar the power to determine which schools have access to federal student aid and, in most states, whether graduates may sit for the bar. In short, federal recognition gives the council extraordinary power over entry into the legal profession.

With results as you see them.

New York Post.

A group of masked Massachusetts teenagers stormed a McDonald’s restaurant and attacked an employee who was behind the counter during the chaotic invasion caught on camera.

Four teens were arrested for their roles in the violent takeover in Lynn — about 10 miles outside Boston — on Sept. 18 after a local football game let out, WHDH reported.

Distressing cellphone footage recorded from inside the McDonald’s shows the massive group descending into the fast-food joint before two of the teens are seen viciously attacking one of the workers.

Blue State Blues.

Not the Bee.

I’d ask “Which side are they on?” but it’s pretty obvious.

Worse on Purpose.

Over the past two months, six readers have written in about sewing machines. I have never once mentioned sewing machines in this newsletter. All the complaints arrived independently, through the tip line.

I must admit that I am not a sewist. The extent of my capability is limited to ugly patches and button repairs, so I was hesitant to investigate the category at all. But given the sheer number and conformity of the reader messages, I knew there must be an interesting story here.

The general shape of all of the complaints is that Singer is riding on a reputation it earned a long time ago. Readers describe machines that are now plastic, sealed, and generally not worth repairing.

Several found that brands they assumed were competitors turn out to have the same owner. One reader bought a new Singer that broke in under a year. They also bought a Singer from the ‘50s, for a fraction of the price, that still runs.

The pattern is one we’ve covered many times before. A market that most buyers cannot navigate, where reputations carry little meaning and honest information is hard to come by.

What makes this investigation worth your time, whether or not you sew, is how effectively it demonstrates what happens when a reputation stops being something a company protects and instead becomes something it extracts.

What follows is the story of a once-great American company. I’ll also cover who actually makes the machines you see for sale, and what I’m planning on buying.

My grandmother had a pedal-powered Singer sewing machine with which she made all of the clothes her seven children wore through the Depression until they graduated from high school. My cousin inherited it from her when she died in ’98 and says it’s still going strong.

My wife has a Brother machine that is never used; I don’t recall ever having seen her machine-sew anything (knitting is her thing). I do any sewing that needs to be done and I sew by hand, as I have since I was first taught how to sew (by my grandmother) at age six. This proved lucrative when I was in the Navy.

‘He is kryptonite’: Republicans start breaking with Trump (Politico)

NYT: Al Gore Is Still Sounding the Climate Alarm & the ‘Moral Case’ of Fighting It – Warns of ‘the Immorality of Inaction’ & Concedes Trump has Ushered in ‘Dark Times’ for activists

Wave of Setbacks Leaves Trump Frustrated and Looking for Credit (Wall Street Journal)  The mind-readers at the WSJ compose the latest Narrative.

CNN Defends Nebraska Candidate Mocking Stupid Hicks Waving Trump Flags  The Cool Kids don’t vote for Trump.

Leftists Rally To Stop Trump’s Renovations To Crumbling Kennedy Center  They’d rather have in crumble than have Trump fix it.

Vance Has a Twisted Idea of What It Means to Be American (David French/New York Times)  As if David French were the expert.

Media Outlets Sue White House for Revoking Credentials  Of course. That’s the world we live in. If somebody does something you don’t like, you sue, even if it’s none of your business.

Democrats have stumbled onto a new impeachment strategy (Kevin Frey/MS NOW)  They’re going to not impeach Trump but claim they did. Who are you going to believe, the Narrative or your lying eyes?

Trump’s Taiwan retreat tests his chief China hawk’s influence (Phelim Kine/Politico)  Trump is neither a hawk nor a dove; he’s a pragmatist, and will do whatever promises to work.

Behind the Curtain: Trump’s future foretold (Axios)  The mind-readers at Axios get out the crystal ball.

Trump’s Attacks on the Media Are Self-Defeating (Jonathan Chait/The Atlantic)

Trump thumbs his nose at the American voter (Mike Zapler/Axios)

Trump’s Monumental Obsession (Tom Nichols/The Atlantic)

Dems bring Russiagate back from the dead to haunt the midterms and former Trump staffer Michael Caputo (Miranda Devine/New York Post)

How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation (Washington Post)

Trump Is Lashing Out at the Media to Distract From His Failures (New York Times)  Failures like … the new deal with Denmark over Greenland? (Denmark Confirms Trump-Greenland Deal Would Boost Arctic Security)  Those failures?

CNN Sues Trump For Violating Its First Amendment Right To Fabricate News (Babylon Bee)

Homan Stumps for Georgia GOPers by Promoting ICE Brutality in Speech to Evangelicals (Sarah Posner/Talking Points Memo)

Read it.

A parental rights group is accusing the nation’s largest school counselors association of repackaging critical race theory and queer theory under the banner of “neurodiversity” and “neuro-affirming counseling.”

The parental rights group Courage Is a Habit warns in a new report that the American School Counselor Association‘s neurodiversity framework effectively turns counselors into left-wing activists intent on changing an “oppressive” status quo.

“‘Neuro-affirming counseling’ is a dishonest rebranding designed to capture every student under an unchallengeable, non-medical umbrella,” Courage Is a Habit President Alvin Lui told the Daily Signal. “It’s the new operational vehicle for critical race theory and queer theory in K-12 schools.”

Lui warned that “‘neuro-affirming’ frameworks bypass parents to initiate social-emotional interventions without explicit, written consent.”

Apparently so.

Read it.

“J” from Men In Black is a font of wisdom. But for the Middle East in general and Gaza in particular: “Don’t start nothin’ won’t be nothin’” seems particularly apt. Maybe Ed Sheeran and Macklemore should take a lesson too.

On multiple occasions since the late 1940’s the option to have their own State had been on the table. All the potential Palestinians had to do was sit down, shut up, and play nice with their neighbors. But at each opportunity they have chosen violence instead. Not satisfied with half a loaf, they repeatedly risked everything to try to get it all. Their success would mean destruction of Israel and the Jews therein. And they failed each time. They should consider themselves fortunate to have what they have.

The Telegraph (UK).

Balaclava-clad children as young as five have been filmed shoplifting in a brazen raid.

Erdogan Yigitoglu, who runs the corner shop targeted by the youths in Charminster, Dorset, claimed that the children’s parents had stood nearby and congratulated their offspring afterwards.

Security footage showed two children approaching stalls where fruit and vegetables were displayed, before hurriedly helping themselves to a slice of watermelon.

dThe Telegraph (UK).

Thousands of migrants charged through the streets of Ceuta on Friday as police attempted to move them to a new camp.

The migrants, the majority of whom had travelled to the Spanish territory from Morocco, had been sleeping rough on beaches for weeks, waiting to be relocated to an official camp in the port area.

The crowds reportedly became impatient when only a few officials arrived to facilitate the move, and began running towards the new camp just before 7am on Friday.

Footage taken from above showed people stampeding along the Ceuta seafront, cheering and shouting as they ran.

Read it.

Looks as if we’ll need a wall in the North as well as the South. You know that those ‘European migrants’ are going to be the non-white troublemakers that have been destroying the EU from the inside.

The Antiplanner.

“I’ve got mine; screw you!” is the rallying cry of those who seek to increase the density of urban areas by building multi-story apartment buildings. Actually, the rallying cry is “Yes in my backyard,” but most prominent YIMBYs live in single-family homes and I haven’t heard of a single one of them inviting developers to put apartments in their backyards. Instead, their attitude is “now that I have a single-family home, anyone else moving to this urban area should live in an apartment.”

Democrat Al Green to force House-wide vote on impeaching Trump (Fox News)  Some light entertainment for the mid-terms.

Jeffries Keeps Third Trump Impeachment on the Table  One-trick party.

60 Minutes Premiere Continues Liberal Framing in Iran Pilot Rescue, Presidential Pardon Stories  As they do.

Russian Businessman Paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s Lavish Wedding After-Party (Ben Protess/New York Times) “The payments, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, represented an extraordinary flouting of ethical norms for an American president’s family member.” Two words: Hunter Biden.

Darcy Deputy Invokes ‘Equal Time’ Over Cruz’s ESPN Hit (Even Though It Doesn’t Apply)

Trump approval up from record low, but outlook sours for Republicans, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds (Jason Lange/Reuters)

House Republicans must decide whether they want to pass Trump’s AI loyalty test (Mia McCarthy/Politico)

Democrats Gain Edge as Trump Drags Down G.O.P., New Poll Finds (New York Times)  When in trouble, fake a poll. (Trump Approval Ticks Up in Reuters/Ipsos Poll)

Noncitizens Accused of Illegal US Voting Challenge Trump’s Authority to Prosecute Them

JD Vance will never escape the albatross of the Iran War (Paul Waldman/Public Notice)  I doubt that he worries about it.

Trump’s postings may still move the needle (Matt Phillips/Axios)

Trump lashes out at US Supreme Court justices after ballot ruling (Reuters)  Lashes!

CNN Conspiracy Theorizes About GOP ‘Preparing To Steal’ Midterms  Proglodyte projection!

Trump Slams Supreme Court Over Mail Ballot Ruling (Tyler Pager/New York Times)  Slams!

CNN’s Bash Feels ‘Blessed’ After Bulwark’s Longwell Rants on GOP ‘Triangle Of Doom’

Scoop: Top House Democrat probes Don Jr.’s wedding party (Andrew Solender/Axios)  Scoop?

Trump slams his own Supreme Court appointees over mail ballot ruling (Isaac Arnsdorf/Washington Post) Slams again!

Massie Moves to Impeach Hegseth, Citing ‘Illegal’ Military Operations  RINOs gotta RINO.

Trump Is Ready to Close the Kennedy Center Because He Can’t Put His Name on It (Nikki McCann Ramirez/Rolling Stone)  Proglodyte Pravda and its mind-readers are telling fairy tales again.

Latest approval poll shows Trump underwater in Tennessee for first time (Jordan Green/The Commercial Appeal)  When you’re in trouble, fake a poll.

Fox News all but ignores report that a Russian oligarch bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding (Matt Gertz/Media Matters for America)  Those who pretend that a molehill is a mountain have practice in admiring the Emperor’s new clothes.

Trump considered dangerous, corrupt by majority in new poll (Avery Lotz/Axios)

Trump Goes Postal On Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett (Josh Blackman/Reason)  The Useful Idiots at tReason magazine stick their heads out of their hole.

The Supreme Court has finally had it with Trump’s plan to steal the midterms (Ian Millhiser/Vox)  More Narrative Media mind-reading. Next they’ll be casting horoscopes.

Trump’s AI ignorance is ‘truly embarrassing,’ Bernie Sanders says (Gabby Miller/Politico)  Coming from a guy whose ignorance of economics, politics, and human nature is equally embarrassing….

The Census Bureau Is Overrun With Staffers From a MAGA Think Tank (Vittoria Elliott/Wired) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

Watch it.

When my parents went to high school, the boys were taught a useful skill that would get them a job and the girls were taught what they would need to know to run a household as wives and mothers.

Now it is assumed that everyone is going to college, whether or not they’ve got the smarts for it, and nobody gives a shit if you don’t fit that pattern.

Lamentations 5:1-2:

Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

² Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

Read it.

I have to agree with him on the panoramic glass roofs. I’m sure it makes government satellite surveillance easier, but I can’t think of any other reason to have one.

Being relatively tall, my head is only a few centimeters away from the hot, burning glass radiating directly onto my middle aged balding scalp. In summer the interior side of the glass gets so hot that it hurts to touch.

Well, that’s what you get for being all hip & trendy.

Read it.

Just remember: John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett decided that everyone born in America has the automatic right to be an American, even the small armies of Chinese anchor babies being born to foreign billionaires!

On the other hand, if I were a Chinese billionaire, I’d probably do the same thing.

I can fill you in on the motive.

China wants to rule the world. The U.S. has a stupid “birthright citizenship” rule that allows anyone to magically get American citizenship if they are born here. This incentivizes birth tourism to get access to citizenship.

Chinese billionaires have lots of money. Thanks to surrogacy, they can sire hundreds of “American” kids that will then work to help China in the decades to come.

And California is leading the way in this Chinese baby-factory business.

Think of it as evolution in action. Reality has a bad tendency to stick around even when you say LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU….

Read it.

Statistics compiled by the Institute for Family Studies revealed that there were 30.4 million single men aged 18 to 39 in 2025 in the U.S., amounting to almost 10 million more bachelors than there were in 2000 (20.7 million). The Institute for Family Studies further estimated that there were 15 million more single men than husbands in this age group in 2025. In 2000, there was only a 2.6 million difference.

This rise in male singleness has translated to fewer married men. Over the last 25 years, the number of wedded men has plunged from 18.1 million to 15.4 million, a 15% drop.

Experts say the sinking numbers are extremely troubling for the future prospects of the country in a host of ways. Sociologists like Institute for Family Studies fellow Brad Wilcox point out that single men are “more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy,” adding that “it’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited and unhappy young men.” Data shows that unhappiness is rising among single men, from 16% in 1980 to 23% in 2020. Comparatively, the rate of unhappiness among married men has stayed steady, hovering between 8%-7% over the same time span.

Over 50% of American marriages end in divorce, and 80% of divorces are initiated by the wife.

Men don’t want to get married and face the prospect that the wife might dump them, take half their money and their kids, and pretty much destroy their lives.  An entirely rational decision.

Marriage is the only ‘contract’ where one party is paid to leave.

Read it.

I recently wrote about the wretched experience of trying to access a medical referral by using a medical portal that required various security gyrations, which in turn would grant me access to yet another portal with a fresh set of requirements before I could have a look at the actual referral.

Alas, the first portal’s requirements proved too much, and I had to abandon the effort because I can only spend so much time coming up with a password that requires 16 characters, an Egyptian hieroglyph, the maiden name of my third-grade teacher’s mother-in-law, an unpublished Hemingway manuscript, and one character not currently recognized by any code known to man, before going full Lizzie Borden on an iMac.

I have far too often had the same experience. I now invariably refuse to ‘check in online’ for doctor appointments; they’re doing it for their own convenience, not yours.

Read it.

The U.S. defense industrial base today faces a critical minerals challenge—one with serious national security implications.

On August 4, media reports indicated that a major U.S. defense contractor is, for the first time, planning to source germanium and scandium—critical minerals used to build high-end defense items—from American firms. Here’s the problem: the prospective supplier does not have an operational mine—and will not until at least 2028. To highlight the scope of this challenge, consider the fact that the United States has not mined scandium since the 1960s.

Critical minerals are vital elements used in numerous defense platforms: warships, stealth bombers, fighter jets, missiles, sensors, and radars. Today the United States is import-reliant when it comes to critical minerals. China accounts for 90 percent of worldwide refining and processing capacity and is the top global refiner for 19 of 20 strategic minerals especially relevant to defense production.

Task & Purpose.

Aerial refueling tankers are the backbone of U.S. airpower, but the tanker fleet is falling apart. Most of the jets are KC-135s, which are over 60 years old, and the jet that’s supposed to replace them, the KC-46, is plagued by development issues and is already running low on spare parts.

With no let-up in operational tempo, it’s becoming more difficult for the Air Force to maintain its tanker fleet. That’s the main takeaway from a Government Accountability Office report published earlier this year. The report said the tankers’ full mission capability rate — that is, their ability to carry out all of their assigned missions — has “decreased substantially” from 2019 through 2025.

Tankers are critical for the U.S. military, which relies on airpower. Most of the U.S. fighter fleet needs tankers to cross an ocean, and tankers provide a high degree of flexibility for everything else, from bombers to transports and spy planes.

Watch it.

Apparently her lawyer is a real piece of work.

Read it.

Hey, before you go off about how awful women are for supporting Lindsay Clancy, and how all the female jurors seemed to be charmed by the defense attorney, remember a couple of dudes voted “not guilty” as well.

Read it.

Concur.

Read it.

How about that government-provided ‘universal’ health care!

Read it.

In 2022, Merriam-Webster declared gaslighting its word of the year after searches for the term increased by more than 1,700%. “It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large. “It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year.”

There is a rapid rise in Americans framing ordinary life through the lens of therapeutic language. And as the categories of the therapeutic expand, ordinary life increasingly appears pathological. We now speak casually of toxic people, trauma, narcissists, emotional safety, triggers, boundaries, and gaslighting. Some of this cultural shift can work toward the good. Mental illness has become less stigmatized, and people who once might have suffered silently feel freer to seek help.

Yet every cultural correction invites overcorrection. While it’s a good thing that those who need therapy seek it, the unchecked spread of therapy-speak and the ease of self-diagnosis carry serious cultural and relational costs. A challenging friend or relative can be dismissed as toxic. If someone pushes back on my perspective, I can either engage in self-reflection or accuse that person of gaslighting me. Therapy-speak makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine psychological manipulation and ordinary human conflict. The ordinary frictions of life turn into catastrophes.

“Therapy” is a scam. Our knowledge of how people think and react to daily situations is about at the level of medieval knowledge of disease. We can see what people do, and there are a multiplicity of theories as to why, but we have no actual knowledge, because the human mind is a complex system, and (like all complex systems) involves so many components that they cannot be either understood or predicted with our current level of technology.

Sure, it can help some people, just as medieval chirurgeons helped some people get well, but that’s more a lucky coincidence than a ‘scientific’ practice. Going to therapy is about as accurate as casting your horoscope, and for the same reason—little of it has actual science behind it, but is rather extrapolation from the favorite theories of people whose problem isn’t what they know but what they know that ain’t so.

Read it.

Gee, some of us think that it was the whole point.

BBC, a Voice of the Crust.

Spanish intelligence services warned of social media calls for a mass migrant crossing into Ceuta the day before tens of thousands of people entered the territory, newly released government documents show.

The revelations emerged in documents declassified by the Spanish government amid accusations it failed to give the full story of the migrant influx.

On 29 July, Spain’s National Intelligence Service (CNI) told Moroccan and Ceuta authorities that social media groups were encouraging migrants to cross the following day.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has insisted that the events of 30 July were impossible to predict, but opposition parties say the documents show the government misled Spaniards.

As they do.