‘Drastic’ rise in high Arctic lightning has scientists worried (The Guardian)

There Was Way Too Much Lightning in the Arctic Last Year (Gizmodo) Sounds like a theme.

Pufferfish-inspired houses could help lake village cope with sea level rise  Have you noticed that ‘sea level rise’ only appears ‘threatening’ in the Turd World?

Feds deny Oklo’s application to build an advanced nuclear reactor in Idaho This is why we can never have nice things.

Indie City-Building Games Finally Reckon With Climate Change (Wired)

‘There’s nothing here’: Oregon’s southernmost glacier has completely melted  And archeologists are salivating.

This Gas-Burning Power Plant Near Galveston Bay Could Change the Future of Clean Energy  Not if the Crust has anything to say about it.

Disaster survivors plead with government for insurance against ferocious storms and rising sea (The Hill) Call me when real estate values in Malibu and Martha’s Vineyard start going down.

‘Everything is at risk’: flood survivors urge Congress to change inadequate insurance (The Guardian)

Climate change: For 25th year in a row, Greenland ice sheet shrinks (UN News) You’d think it would be gone by now.

Banks risk becoming new fossil fuel villains in 2022  Better Get In Line….

For Farmers Across America, Solar Power May Spell Trouble

Climate Change Weekly #421: Alarmists Embrace Authoritarianism, Ignore Lessons of History

Why Greta’s Climate Panic Failed

Texas: Wind Fails, Media Blames Natural Gas… Again

Inside the lab inventing “coffee” without beans to save the planet  Nothing pleases Gaia more than fake food.

VP Harris’ new comms director suggested Biden ‘Dazed and confused,’ slammed Trump for ‘janky science vaccine’  If this is here ‘communications director’, I can see why she’s having problems.

Harris’ new communications director apologizes for tweets on ‘undocumented folks’

Did Biden just declare a civil war on Americans? Sure sounded like it to me.

Congressmen Say Biden Withholding Deportations Report To Cover Up Extent of Border Crisis

Read it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has graced the lower House chamber since 1987 and as its leading Democratic official since 2003, will turn 82 on March 26th. And during a solemn January 6th commemorative event in the Capitol, she said the quiet part about the festivities out loud.

“It is essential that we preserve the narrative of January 6th.”

And she said it five times. At the same event. As reported by her office in the same press release.

Read it.

Yesterday morning I listened to the oral arguments in the case of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates as enforced by OSHA. It was a demoralizing experience.

I heard some crazy things, such as a claim that “750 million” Americans just got Covid yesterday, and that 100,000 kids with Covid are in the hospital, many on ventilators. The correct number is 3,300 with positive tests, but not necessarily suffering from Covid. I further heard strong claims that the vaccines block disease spread, despite every bit of evidence to the contrary.

It was my first time hearing oral arguments in the Supreme Court. I might have thought that facts on the ground would actually matter to people who are holding the fate of human liberty in their hands. I might have thought that they would be getting their information from somewhere other than their political intuition, mixed with wildly inaccurate claims from bloggers and media pundits.

I have consistently been dismayed by how deeply ignorant people with impressive degrees and glowing résumés can be. Justice Kagan, for example, although having been Dean of the Harvard Law School, has come out with statements that would disgrace a high-school sophomore.

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

Two of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates came before the Supreme Court for oral argument yesterday, one arising under OSHA and the other arising under the auspices of HHS. I thought the first of these cases raised the question of administrative law regarding the lawful scope of agency authority in an unusually pure form. Listening to the oral argument in NFIB v. OSHA, however, I have been disabused of the notion.

…

The case is apparently a vehicle for low-definition yammering of the kind to which we have grown accustomed on cable news. Indeed, three of the justices appear to get their understanding of related facts from cable news. If there is a question of principle in the case, it has been lost somewhere in the allegedly thinning layer of ozone.

Matt Taibbi.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney visited the House of Representatives yesterday. He and his daughter Liz were the only two Republicans present at a moment of silence commemorating the events of last January 6th. It was a touching scene, which perfectly described why the surviving anti-Trump Uniparty of the political mainstream is at least as much of a threat to democracy as the “insurrectionists” they never stop wailing about.

In a story entitled “Dick Cheney returns to the House and receives a warm welcome .?.?. from Democrats,” the Washington Post wrote that “Democrats put aside their fierce and lasting policy divides with the Cheneys to thank them for condemning the attack and Trump’s continued effort to undermine the 2020 presidential election results with his false claims of fraud.”

The Cheneys now qualify for the proglodyte Strange New Respect award.

(News writing has become a pre-fab profession, like assembling IKEA furniture. All you need is an Allen wrench and a list of the latest clichés. “Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election” has replaced “Trump’s efforts to coordinate with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “Trump’s false claims of fraud” has replaced “Trump’s false claims of ‘fake news.’” Part of the significance of January 6th is that it updated popular propaganda stock, which had grown stale.)

True dat.

Check it out.

..aboard the legendary RMS Titanic recreated with unprecedented historical accuracy. From the lavish balustrades of the Grand Staircase to the coal dusted air of the boiler rooms, Titanic is yours to explore and her many stories are yours to discover.

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President Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. In response, radical Democrats gathered in Washington to riot. The riot was ugly and violent.

…

A number of police officers were injured, and the radical Democrats assaulted random passers-by. The 2017 riot was, what? 1,000 times as destructive as the January 6, 2021 riot? 10,000 times as destructive? And yet none of the rioters sat in jail for a year awaiting trial.

Read it.

What does it mean when President Biden declares an event in which four people died, all of them Trump supporters and only one by violence, the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” and The New York Times marks the anniversary by proclaiming that “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now”? The implication is politics as permanent crisis, which sounds strikingly like a definition of war.

Read it.

It’s not often you hear the words “John Deere” and “controversy” together, but that’s exactly what is coming to pass as the agricultural staple looks to debut its first fully autonomous tractor.

Equipped with six pairs of stereo cameras and AI, John Deere’s new 8R tractor can both perceive its environment and navigate, according to a new writeup by Wired. It relies on neural network algorithms analyzing data streaming into its cameras.

In fact, it can even “find its way to a field on its own when given a route and coordinates, then plow the soil or sow seeds without instructions, avoiding obstacles as it goes,” the report says.

Read it.

Yet another reason not to fly.

Read it.

I’ll vote for him if he runs.

Read it.

Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooks Nader was tracked for five hours while bar hopping on Wednesday night after a stranger apparently slipped an Apple AirTag into her coat pocket.

Bar-hopping. Uh-huh.

I have a suggestion….

Can you get the omicron variant twice? (Deseret News) Maybe not if you PANIC!

Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid? (The Guardian) Anyway, better PANIC!

These Supreme Court arguments are about far more than vaccine mandates (CNN)

Supreme Court is set to review Biden’s vaccine rules for businesses, health-care workers. Here’s what to know. (Washington Post) The WaPo is all about telling you what to know … and think.

Big push for Californians to switch to N95 or KN95 masks as Omicron surge worsens KA-CHING!

COVID live updates: Oakland teachers plan sickout for Friday (S.F. Chronicle) Look for … the Union label….

Navy discharges first sailors for declining COVID-19 vaccine

How vaccine mandates became a political weapon

Judge Rejects FDA’s 75 Year Delay On Vax Data, Cuts To Just 8 Months

Unvaxxed Aussies Told They Won’t Be Allowed To Exercise Or Go To Work

Chicago Cancels School For Third Straight Day Amid Standoff With Teachers Union

Czech Tennis Pro Voracova Joins Djokovic In Australian Immigration Detention, Leaves Country

Mayo Clinic Fires 700 Unvaccinated Employees Weeks After Nurses’ Warning  Apparently virtue-signaling has a higher priority than patient care. Good to know.

Malone Maligned: Big Tech Censors mRNA Pioneer Over Vaccine Safety

South African Researchers Say Omicron Might Mark The End Of COVID Pandemic  Not if Democrats have anything to say about it.

Top White House environmental justice official to depart post (CNN) Just what is ‘environmental justice’, anyway?

The missing elements in our battle against the climate crisis (The Guardian) Well, science for one.

Thwaites, Antarctica’s ‘doomsday’ glacier, is breaking up – and scientists are racing to get a closer look

There’s a Way to End Energy Poverty—And It Has the Side Effect of Making Fossil Fuels Obsolete (TIME) Cancelling the Industrial Revolution ought to do it.

Cambridge peer-reviewed study suggests ‘authoritarianism’ might be necessary to fight climate change

Climate Council: Global Warming Now Causes MORE Rainfall

Brussels Airlines Flew 3,000 Empty Flights This Winter, All To Maintain Spots At Major Airports

A year after U.S. Capitol siege, Biden blasts Trump’s ‘web of lies’ (Reuters) Being called a liar by Creepy Joe is like being called ugly by a frog.

Hannity, Fox face ethical issues over Trump text revelations (Associated Press) Only to the delusional.

This US state is home to the most hate groups (The Hill) In the Narrative Media, a ‘hate group’ is anybody to the right of Stalin.

Trump’s Favorite Part of Jan. 6 Is Laughing at the Trauma (Daily Beast) All Trump! All the time! (I’d laugh at those special snowflakes, too.)

Ex-Trumpers set to plot how to try and take down Trump (Politico) Or at least seem to do so while they cash in.

CBS News buries poll result showing strong bipartisan agreement Jan. 6 was ‘a protest that went too far’

A haunting, Hollywood-style vision of Jan. 6 as a product of the Trump propaganda machine (Washington Post) All Trump! All the time!

Does John Katko Have the Secret to Thwarting Trump? (Politico) All Trump! All the time!

Destroying A Democracy To Save it: Democrats Call For The Disqualification Of Dozens Of Republican Members

The J6 Hyperbole Olympics Off to a Good Start

Seattle Police Officers Falsified Reports About Proud Boys Moving Toward ‘CHOP’: Watchdog

CNN’s 1/6 Special: Fox News ‘Relishing the Idea’ of a Civil War

Girls’ Basketball Team Wins 92-4, Gets Coach Suspended For Lopsided Win

Blacks to slaughter

Food and Drug Administration Guidance Drives Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs

Lebron James again shows his bad faith and stupidity

Too Much Sense? Reuters FIRED Chief Data Scientist for Internal Memo on Pro-BLM Bias

Academia’s Real Race Problem

Read it.

Illicit Iranian oil shipments jumped by 40 percent in 2021, with China and Syria the top importers of this heavily sanctioned crude, according to figures published by a watchdog group that highlight the Biden administration’s lax enforcement of U.S. sanctions.

From 2020 to 2021—when the Biden administration began negotiations with Iran surrounding a revamped nuclear deal and began to unwind sanctions on the hardline regime—Iranian oil exports increased by 123 million barrels, or 40 percent, according to United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which closely tracks Tehran’s armada of illegal oil tankers.

The major difference between Iran and China is the language they speak and the religion they follow.

Read it.

Harry Reid was one of the most corrupt, hyper-partisan, mendacious, and dishonest people ever to disgrace the United States Senate – a Senate that contained, remember, Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd.

Steve is delightfully dyspeptic today.

It’s sort of remarkable that the human race didn’t start using plastic as its default material for trash bags until I was out of diapers. In patent law, one of the requirements for a new patent is that the invention must be “nonobvious,” and that means it’s not obvious to “one skilled in the art.” The use of plastic for trash bags should have been obvious to everyone, not just bag manufacturers. Plastic bags already existed. For some reason, the little wires in people’s heads didn’t touch, and we were deprived of a great boon for a disgracefully long time.

Read it.

A federal district court judge granted the Biden administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by more than 20 Republican attorneys general challenging the Keystone XL pipeline’s permit revocation.

Judge Jeffrey Brown, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, ruled that he couldn’t determine the constitutionality of President Joe Biden’s action because TC Energy, the pipeline’s developer, had abandoned the project. On June 9, TC Energy announced its intention to permanently halt construction of the pipeline, saying it would focus on other projects.

This is bullshit. Of course it abandoned the project — THE PIPELINE PERMIT WAS CANCELLED. What were they supposed to do, hang around and hope?

Read it.

Perhaps the Governor of Illinois can expect something a little more morbid than empty cash registers dumped on his lawn in the near future.

Read it.

An adventurous seal pup made its way from Scotland to the front door of a pub near Bristol.

The lone pup made the 300-mile journey and turned up at The Old Lock and Weir in Hanham on Sunday.

British Divers Marine Life Rescue Service attended to safely rescue the animal and said it had been tagged over the border on 21 June.

Landlord Daniel Rawlins said: “He was like a mini-celebrity. He was quite friendly and cute.”

Presumably he was eventually arrested for being unvaccinated and not wearing a mask.

Read it.

The city of Hamburg is planning to house “refugees” in a wing of an old folks’ home. Long-time readers will no doubt remember the news stories about culture-enrichers in Germany who rape octogenarians and nonagenarians of both sexes. This is like letting kids live in a candy store.

Read it.

A video has gone viral on Reddit of the Las Vegas Loop, an underground express transportation tunnel designed and built by Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to help alleviate traffic congestion on convention streets, showing everything the tunnel promised not to do: cause traffic jams. 

Hammer tech.

Read it.

Chicago police have confirmed that a high-end Burberry store on the city’s central Michigan Ave. was robbed no less than two times this week, with the second break-in coming early Thursday morning. The first instance was Tuesday morning, with the burglaries being especially brazen given they took place in daylight hours, or just before dawn. The Tuesday incident involved five men in a White SUV, but apparently with no other leads or identifiers. So naturally they hit the same site again, plus others.

But as CWB Chicago details of the second break-in, it appears the criminals are positively boasting about the ease of mass theft in a seemingly “lawless” windy city: “A group of armed burglars broke into two Lakeview convenience stores, dumped their stolen cash registers in front of Gov. JB Pritzker’s home, and then burglarized the Burberry store on Michigan Avenue early Thursday.”

Finally, Bloomberg Admits Renewables Mania Caused Energy Shortages

‘Don’t Look Up’: Hollywood’s primer on climate denial illustrates 5 myths that fuel rejection of science (The Conversation)

Separate climate bill not being seriously considered in Senate, despite Manchin’s support of the measures (CNN) All Trump! All the time!

Could Being Cold Actually Be Good for You? (Wired)

How researchers can help fight climate change in 2022 and beyond (Nature) Just make sure that The Science follows The Narrative.

Scientists explore Thwaites, Antarctica’s ‘doomsday’ glacier (AP)

In coastal areas, rising seas can also mean failing septic tanks (NPR) Call me when real estate prices in Malibu and Martha’s Vinyard start falling.

Europe Sleepwalked Into An Energy Crisis That Could Last Years

Austrian Climate Researchers Excited About Manipulating the Minds of Children

How Explosives, a Robot, and a Sled Expose a Doomsday Glacier  (Wired ‘Science’)

Cambridge University is Pushing for Tyranny in the Name of Climate Change

The Defenestration Of Dr. Robert Malone

COVID Vax: What Should Have Been Obvious

Why omicron variant symptoms are more dangerous compared to previous COVID-19 strains (Deseret News ) Don’t forget to PANIC!

Marjorie Taylor Greene Keeps Getting Mask-Wearing Fines, But Could Avoid Paying Almost All (Newsweek)

What is ‘flurona’? Coronavirus and influenza co-infections reported as omicron surges. (Washington Post) Just another reason for you to PANIC!

Yale tells students not to dine at restaurants, even outdoors, due to rising Covid cases

Quebec Under Curfew, Unvaxx’d Banned From Buying Booze, Marijuana

Britain Temporarily Suspends PCR Test For Asymptomatic COVID Cases

Omicron Spreads Faster Than Delta Within Vaccinated Individuals: Danish Study

As UK Takes Foot Off Throat, European Authoritarians Escalate Attacks On Unvaxx’d

India Won’t Add Merck’s COVID-19 Pill To National Treatment Protocol, Citing Safety Concerns

Chicago In Chaos As Teachers’ Union Shutters Schools

Watch: CNN Medical Ethics ‘Expert’ Calls For Denying Health Insurance To Unvaccinated “Jerks”

MSNBC ‘Historian’ Equates Jan. 6 to the ‘Holocaust’ and Video of the Camps

Man whose arrest led to ‘separate but equal’ is pardoned (AP) Rewriting history is what Democrats do best.

NPR is losing some of its Black and Latino hosts. Colleagues see a larger crisis. (Washington Post)

Airbnb to limit use of travelers’ names as an anti-racism experiment in Oregon (NBC) Perhaps if black parents didn’t give their kids names that shout ‘HEY! I’M BLACK!’ it wouldn’t be such a problem.

NFL’s Wonderlic IQ Test, RIP

New NFL Rules Forbid Asking College Players if Moms Are Prostitutes

UCLA Professor Claims Rittenhouse Shot ‘2 Black Men’ in Recent Book, Says She Got ‘Tiny Detail’ Wrong

NY Times Makes Hay of January 6 Anniversary, Shuns Comparison to BLM Riots

ABC’s ‘black-ish’ Fangirls Hard Over Michelle Obama

Reuters Data Scientist Fired After Nuking BLM Narrative, Exposing ‘Significant Left-Wing Bias’ In Reporting

Read it.

This is the one year anniversary of the disgraceful rioting in the Capitol building. The scenes of that day are seared in the memory of many of us. I publicly condemned Trump’s speech while it was being given and I called for a bipartisan vote of censure over his responsibility in the riots. However, I have long maintained that there was no evidence to support a criminal charge against Trump for incitement.

Yet, a year ago, various legal experts declared that Trump should be charged based on his speech and his delay in calling for protesters to leave Capitol Hill. District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine announced that he was considering arresting Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks with inciting the violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol. So, a year later, what ever happened to the prosecution of Donald Trump?

Read it.

India has just become the first nation to authorize a new COVID-19 vaccine called Corbevax, which is being called “the world’s COVID-19 vaccine” due to its low cost and ease of production.

“If you’re talking about a serious effort to vaccinate the world and prevent new variants from emerging, we think we’re now going to make a very important contribution to this,” Peter Hotez, who co-developed the shot at Texas Children’s Hospital, told CBS Austin.

Read it.

The heart of the module is the photovoltaic system, which is combined with a heat pump as a heat and cold generator and a decentralized ventilation device with heat recovery. All the necessary components for the system technology are housed in the facade element, which implies a high degree of prefabrication that is claimed to be minimally invasive.

“We’re not renovating the entire building, just the facade,” explained Jan Kaier, project manager and scientist at Fraunhofer IEE. “In the future, the old facade will be replaced by new, industrially prefabricated modules with integrated system technology, which makes it multi-functional and adapts it to the new energy standards.”

Read it.

The first rule of politics is to blame your enemies for anything bad that happens in the world. So when Interstate 95 was locked in a weather-related traffic jam for 15 hours, progressives were quick to blame it on newly elected governor Glenn Youngkin.

…

Certainly, the traffic could not have been the fault of Youngkin’s Democratic predecessors, who spent billions of dollars on transit projects while neglecting Virginia’s highway system (except where they could charge tolls to help pay for transit). It has to be Youngkin’s fault for not doing something about the roads during all the time he has been in the governor’s office so far.

What’s that you say? He isn’t in the governor’s office? He won’t be inaugurated until January 15? Well, it still has to be his fault somehow.

Read it.

Wind and solar energy are notoriously unreliable sources of electricity, with the best wind turbines producing electricity a little over 40 percent of the time, and solar panels faring even worse. Where I live, solar panels work around 18 percent of the time, and the electricity they produce is so faint that when they are covered by snow in the winter–I know, it’s a shock, but that happens in Minnesota and other northern states–they aren’t worth shoveling off.

Can anything save wind and solar energy from irrelevance? If you ask a liberal that question, his answer will be: batteries! Batteries that will store electricity when wind turbines and solar panels actually work, and discharge that electricity the rest of the time. Do batteries approaching such a scale actually exist? Well, no. It’s a concept.

Read it.

American mythology promises upward mobility, and college can provide an important first step up the class ladder. With the rise of the “knowledge economy” and the decline of industrial jobs and unions, some insisted that education is the answer to economic displacement. If you can’t earn a stable, living wage as a steelworker, go to college and become a nurse or a computer programmer. And if you didn’t make that choice, it’s your own fault that you’re struggling. After all, college was affordable, accessible, and varied. You could commute to campus, take evening classes, cover tuition with loans and grants, and work part-time or even full-time while you completed the degree that would transform your life.

Of course, higher ed doesn’t quite live up to this vision, especially in recent decades. Rising tuition, largely due to drastic declines in public funding for higher education, has made college less affordable, while precarious employment and uncertain job hours make juggling work and school difficult. The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice has documented many of the economic obstacles students face today, especially food insecurity and homelessness.

The pandemic has exacerbated these challenges, as enrollment figures make clear.

Read it.

Real Clear Investigations has a handy article and chart that compares January 6th Insurrection™ that was worse than Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and the cancellation of “Firefly” combined, to the “mostly peaceful” riots by Democrat surrogates during the summer of 2020 that were “the voice of the unheard.”

Gun Homicides by Race by State  Unarmed black people have more to fear from young black men with guns than from police.

Manhattan’s Soros-Funded DA Lays Foundation For Next Crime Wave; Instructs DAs To Drop Prison Sentences

SHOTS FIRED: ‘1619 Project’ Author Slams Teachers’ Unions for Harming Kids

Risk democracy will come to an end in 2024: Election law expert shares huge concern (CNN) In the Narrative Media, ‘democrcy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.

Is US democracy in danger? (Washington Post) Sounds like a theme.

The bigger lie threatening US democracy (CNN) Sounds like a theme.

The ‘Big Lie’ Continues To Threaten Democracy (NPR) Sounds like a theme.

Chicago store robbed of $50K in merchandise 24 hours after appearing on local news profile  Bet they won’t do THAT again.

What the January 6 report means for the future of democracy (CNN) Sounds like a theme.

What does it mean to take a public health approach to reducing gun violence? (Philadelphia Enquirer) Twisting language in service to a political agenda for a start.

Hispanic figures reportedly push back on use of ‘Latinx’: Appeases ‘white rich progressives’

Transgender Activists Strategize to Overcome GOP Wins With ‘Race-Class-Gender Narrative’

Could the US be heading towards civil war?

MSNBC: Election Integrity Laws Are Causing A Jan 6th Every Single Day!

COVID Passport Microchip Developer Says Chipping Of Humans Happening “Whether We Like It Or Not”

Hammon Gives UP On NBA Head Job, Takes Her Whine to WokeNBA

Wall-to-Wall: Media Plan AVALANCHE of Jan. 6 Anniversary Coverage  Sounds like a theme.

ALERT: Hillary Clinton Is Spreading Lies on Social Media  Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Remember When Latino Media Revered Insurrectionists? We Do.

Read it.

According to Saudi Gazette, the Arab Coalition received a distress call from an oil tanker near Yemen after being subjected to “armed harassment.”

Read it.

I doubt that it would work, because in the modern world nobody believes in that level of commitment.

Trump would actually do it, so he could threaten to do it and people would believe him. But I doubt that it would work for the current government of Taiwan. (It would be different if they were Japanese, of course.)

Read it.

This year, the Biden administration joined many in the United States in criticizing the mass disqualification of 583 candidates in Iran by the Guardian Council. The Iranian elections (like elections in other countries like China and Venezuela) are democratic only in the most artificial sense: You can freely vote from a pre-selected list of candidates.

Electoral disqualification systems are generally anathema to democratic values, but some in the United States are now toying with the idea for the 2022 or 2024 elections. While more modest than the Iranian model, the Democratic calls for disqualification are just as dangerous. What is most maddening is that this anti-democratic effort is cloaked in democratic doublespeak.

Read it.

The World’s Best Rice comes in a sturdy, gold-embossed box containing six slender packages. Sold for ¥10,800 for 840 grams (that’s $95 for less than 2 pounds), it’s nearly 30 times more expensive than what you’d pay at a supermarket in Japan. The Guinness World Records named it the priciest rice on the planet in 2016. Japan’s rice milling and processing giant Toyo Rice Corporation, which sells the product mainly to well-to-do customers in Japan, the United States, and Singapore, commands the princely sum by blending several of the top-placed finalists chosen by judges in a blind tasting of the International Contest on Rice Taste Evaluation, the country’s most prestigious rice competition, which takes place each November. The winning batches are stored in temperature-controlled rooms for at least six months before the kernels are milled to remove the tawny outer bran—but never the ultrathin umami layer around the starchy core. The price is justified, Toyo Rice officials say, because you simply won’t find better-tasting short-grain white rice anywhere.

If that’s all you have to eat, you tend to focus on it.

Kevin Roche.

Love to see what the incandescent Marvin Gaye would make of these times. We are hitting a new fever pitch of tension and craziness. Schools are doing virtual or remote “learning”; parents are at their wit’s end on how they are supposed to cope with children at home and work. Children continue to be deprived of a real education, are being terrified for no reason, forced to hide their faces behind masks, being vaccinated against a virus which is a non-existent threat to them. People are getting tested for having cold symptoms and are isolating and quarantining pointlessly. We are pushing people past the breaking point.

So here is the question. How long are you going to take this crap? When are you going to tell the politicians and the public health experts and the teachers’ unions and all the others who won’t let go of their obsession with this epidemic that enough is enough. How many children have to literally go crazy or commit suicide or overdose on drugs? How many lives ruined is enough for the teachers’ union? It is clear these people have no principles, no shame, no courage, no convictions, only politics and self-interest.

Read it.

On the cusp of an absolute glut of liberal-media anniversary coverage of the January 6 riot, CNN media reporter Brian Stelter was cranky. “We live in a world where Donald Trump’s top supporters malign the media for being ‘obsessed’ with January 6.”

You don’t have to be a Trump supporter to see it. The media obsession with January 6 is easily quantifiable. Saying there’s not an obsession is like claiming the media didn’t do enough coverage of Princess Di’s car crash and funeral. The New York Times editorial board posted an article titled “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now,” and the daily media coverage reflects that mentality.

Sounds like a theme.

Read it.

The ruling Assad clan has been making visible, and some less public, moves to demonstrate their efforts to curb Iranian activity in Syria. There is a lot of that in Syria and not all of it has anything to do with the Assads. Iran does not, and never did, share details of all its operations in Syria with the Assad government. That was how the Iranians operated and the Assads were expected to accept that. The Assads are now attempting the difficult, and often fatal, act of leaving a partnership with Iran.

Read it.

The true agenda of what has become known as the “transgender movement” is to abolish sex, according to author and self-declared feminist Kara Dansky.

Dansky, author of the new book “The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls,” not only takes issue with the objective to destroy the concept of sex, but also with the use of the term “transgender.”

The term “transgender” was invented, but the “word has no coherent meaning whatsoever,” Dansky says, adding that “every single person on the face of the planet, all 8 billion of us, are either female or male, and that’s it.”

Read it.

China has “standardized” the names of 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state on the border with Bhutan and Burma that the Chinese regime has attempted to claim and aggressively intruded upon for the past few decades. However, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that assigning invented Chinese names to locations in the state won’t alter the fact that Arunachal Pradesh is and always will be an “integral part” of India.

Read it.

The Biden administration appears to be heading in the direction of waging a two-front Cold War over Ukraine in Eastern Europe and Taiwan in East Asia, both of which could turn “hot” any day. The imprudence of such an approach should be obvious, but the great danger is that such “crises” could get out of hand before the leaders involved step back from the brink.

The problem with Trump no longer being President is that the ‘invade the world, invite the world’ people are back in charge. If for no other reason, this inclines me to vote for him again (if he runs).