Read it.

A majority of Americans believe China uses TikTok to shape U.S. public opinion, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted as Washington moves closer to potentially banning the Chinese-owned short-video app.

Read it.

Canada’s drug regulator asked Pfizer to provide data on the size of DNA fragments in its COVID-19 vaccine, due to genomic integration concerns, shortly after learning the pharma giant withheld information on DNA sequences contained in its product.

“Concerning the residual plasmid DNA in the drug substance, provide data/information characterizing […] the size distribution of the residual DNA fragments [and] residual intact circular plasmid,” says a request for clarification Health Canada issued to Pfizer on Aug. 4, 2023.

Read it.

Walmart executives must be paying attention to Gen Z consumers bitching on TikTok and X about the failures of Bidenomics, as many of them have to work multiple jobs and still can’t afford to put food on the table, pay shelter costs, and buy gasoline at the pump. That’s why America’s largest retailer is launching a new line of cheap store-brand groceries for consumers, more importantly, targeting lost and hopeless youngsters.

Read it.

It is by now a common experience for us Budapesters to host visitors from Western Europe and to hear them utter a version of this sentiment: “I love this city—it feels like I’m living in Europe again.” What they mean is plain: because Hungary does not suffer from uncontrolled mass migration; its low-crime capital reminds them of what they have lost back home.

Fortune.

An employer has sparked fierce debate after being so shocked a Gen Z job seeker refused to spend 90 minutes on a hiring test because it “looked like a lot of work” that he vented about the situation on X, formerly known as Twitter.

People who’ve job-hunted recently have probably quickly found out that getting hired is no longer as simple as submitting a résumé followed by an in-person interview or two.

Job seekers today are often expected to prove they’re the perfect fit for the role through seemingly endless rounds of interviews, aptitude tests, and presentations.

It amounts to hours of prep and work without the guarantee of a job at the end of it—and for those unemployed and interviewing with multiple companies, it can feel like a full-time job.

But, as this Gen Z applicant will have learned the hard way, pushing back on such tasks could cost you the job.

Well, at least the company determined that the applicant was not interested in hard work, and in that sense they probably dodged a bullet.

On the other hand, why should the applicant work for free? Nobody else does.

On the gripping hand, it’s not as if the applicant has anything more valuable to do than getting a job (although the prevalence of government benefits for not working might be a strong factor).

Read it.

Scotland’s leader Humza Yousaf resigned on Monday, quitting as head of the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) after scrapping a coalition agreement with Scotland’s Greens. He then failed to secure enough support to survive votes of no confidence against him expected later this week.

Apparently they couldn’t find an actual, you know, Scottish person to lead their party, so they outsourced it to a Pakistani.

Perhaps the GOP ought to recruit a Mexican to replace Mitch McConnell.

Read it.

Gen. Whiting was on his first Indo-Pacific trip after becoming the head of U.S. Space Command in January, succeeding Army Gen. James Dickinson. During his trip, he met with top military leaders from South Korea and Japan, including Adm. Kim Myung-Soo, chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara.

Read it.

Higher state minimum wage went into effect April 1; chains say burritos and burgers are getting more expensive in response.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

I guess ‘vaccine’ is just too un-hip a word.

The Foundry.

Chinese nationals are crossing America’s southern border at a rapid rate. On Wednesday alone, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered 206 Chinese nationals crossing into the San Diego sector, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported.

But the illegal entry of Chinese nationals into America through the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector isn’t new. Chinese individuals long have worked with criminal cartels to get into the U.S., former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott says, but the numbers have shot up.

In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported over 3,700 encounters with Chinese nationals on the southern border, nearly all in the San Diego sector.

Read it.

A Home Depot in New York has hired armed security guards and K-9 units to protect shoppers from aggressive migrants and thieves in the parking lots, the NY Post reports.

According to City COuncilwoman Kristy Marmorato, “Everybody is well aware of the culture here at Home Depot, that we have day laborers just trying to make an honest living, and they just started to feel like it just started to become a little more aggressive.”

“Where people are walking from the store with stuff in their cart, individuals were coming up to them and literally taking stuff out of their carts to help them and they just felt very concerned, very unsafe.”

Watch it.

Hint: Bags. Money. Monkey boys (and girls).

Read it.

That little button, the one saying ‘follow’? It’s lying to you.

The follow lie is a classic tale of enshittification that’s occurred on nearly every social media platform. It’s pretty simple:

You join a social media platform and find some people who interest you. You tap follow (or ‘Add friend’, ‘Like page’, ‘Subscribe’), because you want to see their content. For a while, everything works just fine. You see your best friend’s wedding photos, your favourite blogger’s posts.

Soon though, the follow lie kicks in. Something happens. You start seeing a lot less of people you follow, and a lot more of people you don’t follow. But you’re still stuck on the platform, because of all that time you’ve invested in following people there (after all, you still see some of their content) — and a lot of the new stuff you get shown, from people you don’t follow, is addictive. It keeps you scrolling to see what’s up next. The platform benefits by slipping in more and more ads around the content.

Read it.

This is not an ‘organic protest’ by students, but rather a carefully crafted movement by activists and agitators in pursuit of a political agenda.

Read it.

First, the feminists claimed that they “don’t need no man” and promoted a culture of “strong independent women,” the idea being that men were holding women back from their true potential. The “patriarchy” conspiracy was an all prevailing issue for woke activists for years, and their answer was to attack and sabotage men and masculinity with a terroristic fervor. Masculinity, they argued, is the root of all historic evils.

However, as feminists gained the backing of governments and massive corporate financiers the idea of women being “oppressed” in western countries seemed even less probable than it did before. What rights under the law do men have that women don’t have? Ask a feminist this question and she’ll have no idea how to answer. Feminism and woke movements in general rely on the image of being the underdog; a heroic revolutionary effort by people who are fighting to gain a voice. But woke activists aren’t fighting “the man”, they are “the man.” You can’t be a revolutionary when you’re the oppressor.

In response, men started giving feminists exactly what they said they wanted: Equal treatment. The old days of chivalry and the expectations for men to support women financially quickly faded, and suddenly feminists discovered that men were no longer spending their cash as freely as they used to. Everything is half-and-half today, and feminists don’t like that.

Read it.

Not only wouldn’t you want to live there, but it’s no longer even a great place to visit.

Read it.

The FDIC just seized the troubled Philadelphia bank, Republic First Bancorp and and struck an agreement for the lender’s deposits and the majority of its assets to be bought by Fulton Bank.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

George Soros and his far-left movement is paying student agitators to co-opt and amplify anti-Israel protests at colleges across the country, the NY Post reports.

The protests, which began at Columbia University, have expanded nationwide – with copycat tent cities erected at colleges including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley in California, the Ohio State University and Emory in Georgia, with organized branches of the Soros-funded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) having organized them.

Read it.

A pretty big claim.

The team shared their findings after studying DNA, but other researchers have cast doubts.

Oh, yes, we have doubts.

Professor Vanessa Hayes, a geneticist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, and her team analysed 1,217 samples of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mother to child.

The DNA came from people living in southern Africa, with Hayes noting that ‘we have known for a long time that modern humans originated in Africa and roughly 200,000 years ago’.

‘Known’? No. We’ve supposed that modern humans originated in Africa, and the evidence we have certainly points that way, but only ‘journalists’ assert that we ‘know’ something like that.

Read it.

With graduations looming, student protesters doubled down early Thursday on their discontent of the Israel-Hamas war on campuses across the country as universities, including ones in California and Texas, have become quick to call in the police to end the unrest.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Colleges have been spineless surrender-monkeys toward left wing riot-protesters since the late 1960s. As a result, ‘activists’ have continued to push the envelope on what they can get away with, resulting in the BLM/AntiFa insurrections we all saw in recent years. Has the limit been reached? Is the envelope going to start pushing back? Could be….

Watch it.

1. Marry a rich guy.
2. Divorce him and take half of his stuff.
3. Rinse and repeat.

Shout out to Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, the poster children for the Get A Prenup movement.

The Foundry.

The Biden administration’s expanded mass parole program for illegal immigrants could threaten lawful voter registration, election law and border experts contend.

Under President Joe Biden’s parole system—which targets illegal aliens from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—up to 30,000 migrants per month who wouldn’t normally qualify for a visa may use a U.S. government app on their cellphones to gain parole and either cross the border or fly into the United States.

“That means they are eligible to work and eligible to get a Social Security number. It just massively increases the number of Social Security numbers for people who are not here legally,” Cleta Mitchell, chairwoman of the Election Integrity Network, told The Daily Signal.

Read it.

A pack of illegal aliens viciously fought each other with sticks, belts, and whatever they could get their hands on outside a migrant hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

Footage of the fight was uploaded on X on Sunday. The scenes show parts of Manhattan transformed into what appears to be third-world-esque as law and order lapses under a city controlled by rogue Democrats.

Read it.

recent study seem to indicate that they are, especially for their daughters. But there’s a better explanation, one articulated millennia ago by God’s Word.

According to a 2023 poll by the Survey Center on American Life, 62% of U.S. adults raised by Democratic parents were Democrat, while 57% of U.S. adults raised by Republican parents were Republican. The overall partisan gap is substantial, but not huge; however, it grows much larger among women aged 18 to 29.

Among the youngest group of U.S. adults, 69% of men and 73% of women raised by Democrats are Democrats, while 67% of men and only 44% of women raised by Republicans are Republicans.

Read it.

school to bring police to campus to ensure their safety because the presence of law enforcement “makes students of color feel unsafe,” screenshots obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.

In one message, second-year law student Aya Hashem admonished her Jewish counterparts for advocating for police presence on campus, saying it “makes students of color feel unsafe and feel as though we’ve learned nothing since George Floyd.”

“No single group’s safety is more important than another’s lol,” Hashem wrote in a message on Monday to a GroupMe chat group that includes all members of Columbia Law School’s class of 2025.

ZMan is not happy.

The mostly online wars over what has come to be called “woke culture” obscures a reality that lies behind the fads and programs. That reality is an ideology that evolved in the last century and now defines the ruling class of America in a way that the people in the ruling class do not understand. It is just an assumed part of the culture they were selected into and conditioned to accept. They believe what they believe because everyone they know believes it.

 

Read it.

The Usual Suspects are well represented.

Hawaii is the #1 worst state for gun owners due to strict purchasing and carry laws, as well as defying the Supreme Court on the individual’s right to carry.

California is the #2 worst state for gun owners due to its permit-to-purchase and reciprocity laws.

New York, Illinois, and New Jersey take the #3, #4, and #5 spot in our list of worst states for gun ownership due to strict purchasing and carrying requirements.

Read it.

This is news?

Read it.

In 2024, virtually all major U.S. cities have certain things in common. First of all, if you visit the downtown area of one of our major cities you are likely to see garbage, human excrement and graffiti all over the place. As you will see below, some of our core urban areas literally look like they belong in a third world country. Most of our politicians don’t seem too concerned about doing anything to clean up all the filth, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that rat populations are absolutely exploding all over the country. In some of our largest cities, the total rat population is numbered in the millions. Meanwhile, rampant theft, out of control violence, endless migration, predatory gangs and the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation have combined to create a “perfect storm” of social decay that is unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before. Millions of law-abiding citizens and countless businesses have been fleeing America’s largest cities, and property values in our core urban areas have been absolutely crashing. We really are in the early stages of a full-blown societal “collapse”, and things just keep getting worse with each passing day.

Read it.

In a fit of self-loathing, the European Union has begun to destroy the economic engine that pays its bills. Some of this is well known, but some is not, and it will astonish you.

Read it.

BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink’s efforts to push ‘wokesim’ or environmental, social, and governance policies across corporate America have been in reverse in recent years amid the backlash from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and 19 state attorneys general in conservative states, including Arizona and Texas, who have been fed up with ESG-related policies hurting the economy.

Supposedly, the backlash by anti-woke activists has forced BlackRock to triple Fink’s home security spending. Financial Times says the CEO has become “a target for anti-woke activists and conspiracy theorists.”

According to FT’s numbers, the $10.5 trillion money manager spent $563,513 to “upgrade the home security systems” at Fink’s residences during 2023, on top of $216,837 for bodyguards.

Read it.

From coast to coast, radical prosecutors and progressive politicians have been pushing illogical criminal justice policies that not only have backfired but transformed many once-safe Democrat-controlled cities into crime-ridden hellholes.

Go down the list of cities. Whether it’s New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Chicago, or San Francisco, and the list goes on and on – these metros are plagued with violent crime, out-of-control youth, carjackings, murders, drug crises, the homelessness crisis, theft waves, and unvetted migrants.

Read it.

Abortions conducted by Planned Parenthood are a leading cause of death in the United States, with the organization recommending the procedure to pregnant clients 97 percent of the time, according to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group.

NPR.

Sy Kirby dreaded the thought of going to college after graduating from high school. He says a four-year degree just wasn’t in the cards for him or his bank account.

“I was facing a lot of pressure for a guy that knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to college,” Kirby says. “I knew I wasn’t going to sit in a classroom, especially since I knew I wasn’t going to pay for it.”

Instead, at the age of 19, Kirby took a job at a local water department in southern Arkansas. He said the position helped him to develop the skills that helped him start his own construction company.

Washington Free Beacon.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on Monday said he will no longer donate to his alma mater Columbia University due to the “virulent hate” on campus against Jewish people amid widespread anti-Israel protests.

“The school I love so much—the one that welcomed me and provided me with so much opportunity—is no longer an institution I recognize,” the NFL team’s billionaire owner said in a Monday statement, noting he is “deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country.”

“I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken,” Kraft added.

Read it.

While pro-Hamas demonstrations continued on campus, Columbia University on Monday barred a Jewish professor who had demanded New York City Mayor Eric Adams “do something” to quell the antisemitism that has erupted at the school.

UnHerd.

Women to the Left, men to the Right. And heaven forbid there is any crossover. These days, young people are floundering in their sex-based political silos wanting different things: girls are still seeking equality and boys miss being the good guys. This isn’t a battle of the sexes — we’re too far apart to fight.

To find the roots of this catastrophic division, let’s take a look at what it’s like to be a young woman looking for men on a dating app. Dive in and you will there find that the feminisation of the public cultural sphere — a response to the cult of toxic masculinity — has divided many men in to defiant and defensive conservatives (bad) and a privileged club of sympathetic male faux-feminists (also bad). Apps have given women the power to shun those who hold the wrong views: “Never kissed a Tory” is a mainstay of girls’ Hinge profiles; “conservative” rarely is.

Read it.

Coeur d’Alene, an Idaho city with a population of over 50,000, had too many churches. Alexander Scott Mercurio, a new teen convert to Islam, had a plan to “fix that real soon.”

Ramadan was almost over and Mercurio was unhappy because he believed that he was a bad Muslim who hadn’t even assaulted, let alone killed any Christians, and would go to hell.

“I am a hypocrite who has not even spat in the face of a kafir (non-Muslim),” he complained in online chats. “Let alone spilled their blood and induced terror into their hearts and minds.”

Read it.

Mammas, don’t let your children grow up to be Yalies.

New York Post.

Thank you, Joe Biden.

These days, why would they be bothered by the cops showing up? Said cops were probably instructed to make sure that no vulgar ordinary citizens disturbed the privileged ‘migrants’.

UPDATE: NYC High School Soccer Game Cancelled After Migrants Refuse To Leave The Field

BBC.

The reclining armchairs and plush leather sofas coming off the production line at Man Wah Furniture’s factory in Monterrey are 100% “Made in Mexico”.

They’re destined for large retailers in the US, like Costco and Walmart. But the company is from China, its Mexican manufacturing plant built with Chinese capital.

The triangular relationship between the US, China and Mexico is behind the buzzword in Mexican business: nearshoring.

Read it.

Insulted as “scum” and “Nazi” by pro-Palestinian protesters at a rally in London, a Jewish activist — who wasn’t part of the demonstration – is accusing police of treating him like a criminal, and calling for the city’s top cop to be fired.

UPDATE: “You Are Quite Openly Jewish”: London Police Under Fire For Confrontation With Man Near Anti-Israeli March

The Atlantic.

Moments after receiving my lunch order, the robots whirred to life. A clawlike contraption lurched forward, like a bird pecking at feed, to snatch dishes holding a faux-chicken cutlet and potatoes, then inserted them onto a metal track that snakes through a 650-degree-Fahrenheit oven. Seven minutes, some automatic food dispensers, and two conveyor belts later (with a healthy assist from human hands), my meal was sitting on a shelf of mint-green cubbies. It was a vegan fried-chicken sandwich, a cucumber salad, crispy potatoes, and a smattering of other sides.

This is Kernel, a fast-casual venture that opened its first store, in Manhattan, this February. Its founder, Steve Ells, kicked off the lunch-bowl boom when he started Chipotle in 1993. Now, he told me during my visit, he is betting that machines will trigger a “reinvention of how a fast-food or fast-casual restaurant can run.” Robots, he prophesied, will bring faster and more accurate service at lower overhead costs. Plenty of chains have tested out semi-automated cooking, with mixed success—including deep-frying robots at Jack in the Box and robotic bowl assembly at Sweetgreen and Chipotle. But Kernel has been built from the ground up for robots. Just three employees are needed in the restaurant at any time, compared with the dozen required for a typical fast-casual restaurant. Soon many more people may be eating robot-prepared vegan chicken: Ells has raised $36 million and hopes to expand quickly, starting with several more locations throughout New York City this year.

Read it.

Apparently they don’t love Big Brother.

(One of the benefits of government-provided health care is that it’s easier to do this kind of thing.)

Newsweek.

About 7 million New Yorkers plan to leave the state, a new survey revealed this month.

In a new Marist poll, 37 percent of New Yorkers—roughly 7 million people—said they plan to move away. The number was slightly more concentrated among Republicans, as 46 percent said they plan to leave the state compared to just 29 percent of Democrats.

Read it.

Memphis Police are responding to reports of multiple people shot in Orange Mound.

Viewer videos from the scene showed dozens of gunshots fired as a crowd gathered at the Orange Mound Community Center. People could be seen running for cover.

Sailr’s Law of Mass Shootings instructs us that if the number of wounded is greater then the number of fatalities, then the shooter(s) were probably non-white.

Coulter’s Law of Media instructs us that the longer the new media take to mention the race of the suspects, the greater the probability that the perps were non-white.

Follow along with the home game….

UPDATE: 2 Killed and 6 Injured in Shooting at Memphis Park Party, Police Say

The American Mind.

After the first day of his show trial, Donald Trump cheered himself up by taking a trip uptown to a Harlem bodega. The Sanaa Convenient Store, on Broadway at 139th Street, was the site of a notorious robbery in 2022, during which the 61-year old clerk—while being beaten up by an angry patron—stabbed and killed his assailant. Jose Alba, the clerk, was hailed as a hero by most New Yorkers, except the one who decided to arrest and charge him with murder: District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the same man currently prosecuting Trump for allegedly falsifying business records.

Though Bragg—ever amenable to pressure—dropped the charges against Alba, the case resonated as an example of the anarcho-tyranny that governs many large American cities . Crime in Manhattan, according to Bragg and his champions, is “down,” but the lived experience of the average subway rider or shopper or pedestrian says otherwise. There may be fewer arrests, but public safety remains dicey.