ZMan peers behind the curtain.

Starting somewhere in the middle of the last century, American corporations decided that they needed to invest in developing their managers. Historically, American business relied on nature and the tools of society to cultivate their workforce. The workers would get a basic education in the public schools. Natural talent and upbringing would sort the workforce the rest of the way. The best and brightest would naturally rise through the ranks to populate the management layer.

This was slowly replaced in the 20th century with a new model where senior management implemented programs to train their people, but also cultivate the sorts of people who would become managers. In the back quarter of the 20th century leadership training became popular in corporate America. Managers would receive the same sorts of leadership training officers in the military receive. Developing the next generation of corporate leaders is now a hundred billion dollar industry.

Because it has been normalized over several generations, no one notices the contradiction in these programs. All of the people subject to this training are in positions where no one would want leadership. These are administrative jobs filled with people tasked with following the rules. They may be required to supervise others who are also tasked with following rules. These are not positions that demand leadership, but rather roles that demand obedience.

Read it.

The Wuhan Coronavirus is the most dangerous and deadly disease in history — until it isn’t. When it becomes politically expedient for COVID-19 to disappear, then suddenly it is no longer mentioned.

Read it.

The longer that the vote-counting process goes on, the higher the probability that the Democrat wins the seat. Change my mind.

Read it.

When not accusing their fellow citizens of being fascists, American progressives enjoy cooking up impractical schemes for what they call global governance. The Left-liberal vision of U.S. foreign policy cherished by progressives is more impatient with, and even openly disdainful of, the national interest than it used to be, but no major conservative political figure has refuted the Left’s vision at book length since the Cold War. Until now, when Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton takes up the case in his impressive new book, Only the Strong.

Read it.

A “Swede” who allegedly committed a murder in Sweden four years ago absconded to Iraq, and has now been arrested by Iraqi police. A Swedish prosecutor wants to make sure the misguided youngster isn’t tried in Iraq, because he might be executed. And also prevented from drawing his social benefits.

OK, so I made that last part up. But still…

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

Read it.

Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has ordered Afghan judges to impose punishments for certain crimes that may include public amputations and stoning.

The Narrative Media are obsessed with ‘Christian nationalism’ but seem curiously uninterested in Muslim theocracy.

Read it.

How appropriate.

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Perhaps it’s time to do a John Galt.

Read it.

No, you don’t get to pick which 30.

A potent, broadly protective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (Nature)

COVID-19 Mortality In England “Extremely Rare” Among Under-20s: Official Study

White House to seek more covid funding in lame-duck session (Washington Post)

Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on possible long-term risks begins

Germany warns its delegation of Egyptian spies at COP27 (Reuters)

COP27: Fears of compromise on key 1.5C global temperature issue (BBC)

Degrowth: A dangerous idea or the answer to the world’s biggest crisis? (CNN) The world’s biggest crisis is socialism. ‘Degrowth’ won’t do anything to solve that.

Why Big Tech Is Throwing $1 Billion at Sucking CO2 From the Air (CNET)

The great climate migration has started. Are Bay State communities ready? (Boston Globe)

Mexico’s Pemex to work with EPA to bring down methane emissions (Reuters)

Germany to pull out of fossil fuel treaty (DW)

GMO skeptics still distrust big agriculture’s climate pitch (FRANCE 24)

Al Gore helped launch a global emissions tracker that keeps big polluters honest (NPR)

Australia risks being a ‘state sponsoring greenwashing’ if it relies on carbon offsets, expert warns (The Guardian)

How to slash carbon emissions while growing the economy, in one chart (Vox)

The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous (The Guardian)

‘Vaccination-style’ intervention needed to solve energy crisis, UK energy boss says (CNBC) More totalitarianism!

How human composting could reduce death’s carbon footprint (CNN) And, more importantly, erase the memory of those who have gone before.

Carbon offsets are making a comeback at COP27 (Quartz)

Climate Religion: Egypt’s Mount Sinai to receive ‘Climate Justice Ten Commandments’ during UN summit – Interfaith ‘Climate Repentance Ceremonies’

Why Climate Models Don’t Work

The BBC Defends Special People Flying Private Jets to COP27

Bezos Will Reportedly Spend Bulk of $124 Billion Net Worth Fighting ‘Climate Change’  Good luck with that.

The culture wars are pushing some teachers to leave the classroom (NPR) Especially the Woke ones, I hope.

US midterm results: Why Democrats winning control of Senate matters (BBC)

All Our Institutions Are Controlled by Democrats

The Power Dynamic Behind the 2024 Narrative

NYT: Police Defunding and Homeless Meth Addicts Fuel a Bike Theft Crime Wave in Liberal Burlington, VT,

CNN’s Bash Asks Pelosi if ‘Political Violence’ Had Impact on Midterms

Biden Adviser Anita Dunn: ‘Congress Needs to Codify Roe V. Wade’  Unfortunately, that would be unconstitutional.

“Please Tell Me What I’m Missing Here”: Swalwell Appears To Embrace Medical & Legal Malpractice Over Parental Rights

CENSORSHIP BUDDIES: Bush And Obama Hold ‘Disinformation’ Conferences

Self-Described Sex Symbol AOC Is “Absolutely” Afraid For Her Life

Journalism Tops List Of ‘Most Regretted’ College Majors

“Lack Of Humanity” – France Threatens Italy With “Consequences” Over “Stubborn Refusal” To Accept Migrants

“Hotel Britain” Must End To Deter “Asylum Shopping”, UK Immigration Minister Says

Get Woke, Go Broke: Disney Edition

Tens of Thousands Protest Mexico President’s Left-Wing Election Overhaul

STUDY: 47 Liberals, ZERO Conservatives on Late Night During Fall Campaign  My, what a surprise.

Rasmussen Reports: Most Voters Say Cheating Will Affect Election Results  Pretty obvious, really.

Gettysburg College Halts ‘Tired of White Cis Men?’ Event

The tech CEO spending millions to stop Elon Musk (Washington Post) Stop what?

Alabama’ capital removes Confederate names from 2 schools (ABC)

2 Alabama schools to strip Confederate namesakes (Axios)

World Cup Boycott Fails To Attract The Masses

Extremists in Uniform Put the Nation at Risk (N.Y. Times) But not as much as Woke politicians in the government.

CNN Professor Sneers at GOP: Don’t Expect DeSantis to Save You!

May Dan Snyder’s horrible tenure as an NFL owner end soon (MSNBC)

MSNBC: ‘White Christian Nationalist’ DeSantis Believes God Chose Him  Maybe He did.

Forget Trump, Ted Cruz May Be the Biggest Loser of the Midterm Elections (Daily Beast)

Pants on Fire: CNN Tries to Tie Slavery to the Georgia Senate Runoff

Twitter is suffering from mad bro disease. Open thinking can build it back better

Democrats, Voter Fraud, and Harpo Marx

The View Spews BIG LIES About Midterms, GOP Raising Voting Age

The Fox Butterfield Fallacy Is Back

Advanced Placement Test Data by Race Has Been Memoryholed

Stanford Racial Discrimination: ‘Wakanda Forever’ Tickets, Bus-Seats Reserved For Black Students

CNN Race Cops Lecture the Lottery Is More Proof of ‘Systemic Racism’

CNN Accuses Lottery System Of Racism After Record Powerball Payout

Manhunt Underway for Former University of Virginia Football Player Who Shot Ex-Teammates

Broadway’s ‘The Lion King’ Fires Workers Over Skin Color

Congress seeks to arm Taiwan quickly as China threat grows (Washington Post)

In Solidarity With NATO, Giorgia Meloni Affirms Italian Support for Ukraine

Russian Tech Drain Increases Amid Draft, Economic Woes

Russians on Moscow Streets Calling for Nuke Strike on DC

The U.S. Navy to Send 40 More Boats to Ukraine

Iran and China Use Private Detectives to Spy on Dissidents in America (N.Y. Times)

Zelenskyy: Russian Troops Committed 400 War Crimes in Kherson

The Russian Empire Must Die (Atlantic)

WEAPONS: Another First Hits The Russian Fleet

US Army iOS app among thousands that unknowingly used Russian code

Putin’s Private Army Goes Full ISIS With Sledgehammer Execution Video  Putin is the New … Mohammed?

UN General Assembly Calls for Russian Reparations to Ukraine  Good luck with that.

Read it.

Hypothetically speaking (not purely, I had anecdotal awareness of at least one occurrence a few election cycles ago), one can use ballots sent to addresses in multiple states to vote more than once in an election.

Who would know?

So, what is to prevent some wiseguy from registering in every state that automatically pushes ballots to addresses, unless removal is explicitly requested by the voter? (I supported one such case last Tuesday as an election officer here in the Old Dominion).

As far as I can tell this is Moral Hazard writ large. If there is no substantial means of detecting such fraud, and the Demsheviks can’t be arsed to enforce laws on non-conservative perpetrators anyway, then we can be relatively confident that ballot boxes will be stuffed, stuffed, and stuffed.

Read it.

An unsavory second-generation culture-enricher in Italy joined Islamic Jihad, and later the Islamic State. He made the pilgrimage to Syria so that he could realize his dream of being a jihad fighter and torturer. After being captured by the Kurds, he was eventually returned to Italy, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. He is now serving a four-year term, which is a pretty stiff sentence by European standards.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

Tom Veal.

The midterms defied expectations and, contrary to my prediction, are sure to strangle the Democratic “push Joe out” campaign in its cradle, especially if, as is not at all improbable, the Georgia runoff leads to another 50-50 Senate split. If that happens, the Democrats will need a Vice President to break ties, and Kackling Kamala is the only Veep they’ve got or will be able to get.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on possible long-term risks underway (NBC)

The comparative risk of myocarditis, pericarditis, and myopericarditis between BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 second doses (News-Medical)

University of Missouri scientists find viral mutations that help monkeypox spread (NPR)

New COVID variants are sending immunocompromised people like me back to solitary confinement (S.F. Chronicle)

NY Gov. Kathy Hochul blasted on Twitter for dancing maskless around masked school kids (N.Y. Post) Rules are for thee but not for me.

Variant-specific symptoms of COVID-19 in a study of 1,542,510 adults in England (Nature)

Protection From 4th Dose Of COVID Vaccine Wanes Completely Within Months: Study  Fine ‘vaccine’ ya got there, bubba.

Let’s You and Him Fight

Never again Trumpers: Republicans say disappointing midterm elections poor reflection on Donald  The scapegoating continues.

Will the Trump-Deranged Ruling-Class Media Stumble Into Re-Electing Trump?  Not now that the Democrats have got vote fraud down to a science.

In election 2022, the party of Trump pays for being the party of Trump (Washington Post) More handwavium to distract from obvious Democrat vote fraud. “Oh, look! Trump” is the new “Oh, look! Squirrel!”

Some countries have resisted 1.5°C goal in COP27 text, US says (Reuters)

UN climate talks reach halftime with key issues unresolved (Associated Press)

To save the Congo basin rainforest, end the conflict in the DRC (Al-Jezeera) Easy to say; hard to do.

Canada, Nigeria target oil and gas methane emissions with new laws (Reuters) Oh, well, passing a law will certainly fix things.

Barcelona students to take mandatory climate crisis module from 2024 (The Guardian)

Report: Greenland ice sheet shows extensive inland thinning, faster sea level rise (AccuWeather)

India seeks COP27 deal to ‘phase down’ all fossil fuels (Reuters)

What is the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty? (The Guardian)

The biggest wild card in the climate crisis (CNN)

COP27: UAE and Egypt agree to build one of world’s biggest wind farms (Reuters) A great opportunity for graft.

To Raise Breast Cancer Awareness, Rainn Wilson Legally Changes Name To ‘Booby McBoobface’ (Babylon Bee)

Four HUNDRED Private Jets Attended the COP27 Climate Conference Rules are for thee but not for me.

Pakistan “Has No Option But To Ration” Nat Gas Supply This Winter

Ukraine Situation Report: Russia’s Demolition Of Roadway Over Dam Seen In Incredible Video

Jersey Police Apologize For Raid On Roman Abramovich, Agree To Pay Damages

A Cold Winter For Europe: Blame Strategic Blindness

ABC Gushes Over Michelle Obama’s New Book, ‘Rallying Cry’  Affirmative-action admit to Princeton, married to the Magic Negro, recipient of a six-figure pretend job while said Magic Negro was (briefly) a legislator: She’s so oppressed….

The Christian nationalist dream met some American reality Tuesday (MSNBC)

Were the 2022 midterm results a rejection of white Christian Nationalism? (Pennsylvanit Capital-Star)

Conan Sidekick Andy Richter Is Totally Team Cancel Culture (Daily Beast)

New York Times columnist triggers AOC by calling her Green New Deal ‘cotton candy media concoction’

MSNBC Warns of DeSantis Implementing GOP, Fox’s ‘Autocratic System’ Goal By the Law of Liberal Projection, this must mean they are planning to do the same thing.

Court Case Could Make It a Crime to Be a Journalist in Texas  (tReason Magazine) For certain libertarian-skewed values of ‘journalist’.

Ron DeSantis has a messiah complex. Will it do him in? (NBC) It is a popular Narrative Media technique to make something up out of Left-Wing Fantasyland and then discuss it in serious tones as if it were an actual fact.

“Your Words Are Violence!”: Coulter Cancelled At Cornell  Actually, Ann Coulter is one of the very few people whose words I would believe constitute violence.

Sharpton: DeSantis Is As Bad As Trump, Banning Books and CRT and ‘Anti-LGBTQ’

U.S. judge rejects Biden administration’s LGBT health protections (Reuters)

Fed-up US farmers tell why government will put them out of business (N.Y. Post)

Philadelphia preparing for possible arrival of migrants from Texas (WPVI)

Yellen says U.S. debt ceiling hike by lame-duck Congress would be ‘great’ (Reuters) Congress has never failed to raise the so-called debt ceiling when government spending approached it.

Biden Thanks ‘Columbia’ Instead of Cambodia at ASEAN Summit Imagine if Trump had said that.

The Economist.

Since, in the Narrative Media, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’, I have to agree.

Read it.

Bernie Sanders fits right in.

Read it. 

Considering the penchant of American Inner Party administrations to stick there nose in other people’s business around the world, can you blame them? I’d do the same.

Read it.

Briefly, for the uninitiated: In D&D a group of players collaboratively play out a story in a world created by a Dungeon Master or pre-written source material, rolling dice to simulate chance as their characters travel through the game and encounter various challenges—like the aforementioned wyverns. Characters are assigned specific abilities, and a complex set of rules, arbitrated and enforced by the Dungeon Master, standardize the game. Typically the DM spot would be determined by seniority of experience with D&D or other role-playing games—the person who’d played the longest would run the game. Alternately, it would be the person in the friend group who is the best with logistics and plan-wrangling. Back in the day, game shops would have physical bulletin boards featuring players or DMs looking to pair up.

…

Playing the role of Dungeon Master can be a rewarding job but it is sometimes thankless, and always taxing. D&D can be overwhelming to any new player; this is especially true for a DM, who needs to know all the rules, adjudicate them, create or manage the story, plan logistics for their group, and cater the experience to what each player wants. The amount of effort involved makes it inaccessible for new players and difficult for experienced ones to sustain long-term.

All of which has conspired to make it harder to find people to actually run the spiking number of campaigns. “I think a lot of DMs just want to sit back and let other people run a game,” one Dungeon Master on hiatus from running campaigns told me. “There’s a DM shortage in the tabletop community like there’s a top shortage in the LGBTQ community.”

To quote Stacy McCain: Nobody ever lived as a knight and role-played being a marketing consultant.

Read it.

What have we forgotten? It’s a good question to ask ourselves this Remembrance Sunday. Forgetting is not just a question of missing friends’ birthdays or failing to send Christmas cards to second cousins. There’s a deeper, almost metaphysical form of forgetting, when we forget the inward meaning of an outward sign.

The tragedies of everyday life are made up of such forgettings. One day a woman looks up and forgets to see the man she loves in the face of her husband. A man breaks a window and rifles through a cash register. He has forgotten what it was to be a child who felt a fearful awe at the fault of breaking the law, innocence is the easiest thing to forget. A student sits alone in his room, staring at a screen, he has forgotten the joy of leaving the house in the morning, the smell of the air, the wave of sound and light that carries you from your doorstep into the world.

Tradition, made much of on the Right, decried on the Left, is in its true sense nothing more or less than remembering. We cannot and should not seek to arrest movement and change, which is the nature of life, and those who forget the past are as guilty of this as those who cling to it. Tradition looks Janus-faced to past and future in the same gesture.

Progressives, on the other hand, are like sociopath Scarlett O’Hara: “Tomorrow is another day.” This is what made Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow the perfect song for Bill Clinton and indeed for the modern Democratic Party in genereral: Yesterday’s gone. Yesterday’s gone.

Read it.

“Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together,” Barney Frank once said. The sleazy former congressman was echoing Rousseau’s idea of the General Will.

To leftists, the state was the central unifying principle and the thing that brought us together.

…

America didn’t just become a world power by economic and military power, but culture. And when we were done, much of the world wanted to be an American, as it had once wanted to be Greek or English. We conquered the world without intending to or even realizing it.

That culture is mostly dead now except as a bunch of corporate properties being beaten to death. The machinery of mass culture is still there, but it has no soul. The $500 million comic book spectacles and the oversaturated autotuned payola music makes money, but much of it performs better around the world than it does in America. The days when it brought us together are long gone. Mass culture now reminds us of how little we have in common.

Read it.

AZCentral.com columnist Jon Gabriel wrote: “Friends in Hungary and Brazil asked how their entire nations can count votes in a few hours, while it takes Arizona a week or longer.”

As of early Friday afternoon, America’s voting system has devolved from a global beacon of democracy to an international punchline. A bright neon sign warns: “Don’t try this at home.”

Mechanical breakdowns, baffling “ballot dumps,” and inexplicable pauses in tabulation have buried the Arizona and Nevada senatorial and gubernatorial results in sand.

People keep asking why the ‘red wave’ didn’t happen as expected.

The obvious answer is that the Democrats managed to steal it once again. But, like the puppy who pees on the rug during mommy’s cocktail party, everybody has agreed not to notice. (Guess how many elections where the ballot counting was ‘delayed’ went supposedly for Democrats. Take your shoes off if necessary. We’ll wait.)

How long will normie people put up with it before the smell gets so bad that they have to say something? I guess we’ll find out….

Charles C.W. Cooke takes on the “shit happens” Narrative.

Even now, the day before the midterms, the New York Times cannot help but cast Joe Biden as an unfortunate bystander to his own presidency.

This is endemic in the Narrative Media. Nothing bad that happens to the Fashionable People happens because of something they did; it all just descends on them like rain out of heaven. AIDS ‘just happens’ to homosexuals; it’s not the result of self-indulgent irresponsible behavior on their part. Monkey pox? They were just, like, standing there when it hit them. Michael Brown? Just walking down the street, minding his own business, when he was viciously attacked by racist police. George Floyd? Just walking down the street, minding his own business, when he was viciously attacked by racist police. In the proglodyte world, nobody has agency–everything happens to you, nothing you can or could do would affect how you are treated by The System, SOCIETY IS TO BLAME under the influence of Republicans and other minions of Sauron Donald Trump.

This is the basis of Affirmative Action, especially in education. Grades aren’t something that is achieved; they are assigned to you by a (manifestly racist) system; nothing to do with you and everything to do with The Man; and so you are entitled to the same benefits as a white or Asian (honorary white) student who busted his or her ass to achieve that 3.95 average.

This is the basis of the proglodyte affection for abortion: This poor girl was just walking down the street when a fetus entered her body, like being struck by a meteorite; no action (or inaction) on her part would have affected this unfortunate stroke of ill luck. Like getting food poisoning or tetanus, we must save her from this bad turn of the wheel.

The Biology Deniers use this to push transgenderism: These poor kids just happened to be assigned the wrong sex at birth, and we must therefore exert every effort to compensate for this nasty trick that fate (and Republicans) have inflicted upon them.

Read it.

Humans eat sweet corn. And only a sliver of Minnesota’s harvest lands for sale on the back of a Ford Econoline or buttered at a summer barbecue. Specifically, just over 1% of the 8 million acres harvested for field corn in 2021 is dedicated to the cash crop’s sweeter cousin.

A lion’s share of what’s grown in the state — roughly two-thirds of those 8 million acres — is for grain that is either devoured by livestock or transported to ethanol facilities.

The market for ethanol is driven by politics, requirements for blending it into gasoline in the name of the ‘climate crisis’. And, of course, once there is profit in making ethanol, there arises a powerful lobbying effort to keep the gravy train on track.

This Republican senator just dropped a truth bomb on his party (CNN) Chris Cillizza pushes the Narrative.

Dubbed torture, ID policies leave transgender people sterile (Associated Press)

A woman who could ‘barely walk’ after years of feeling extremely tired was diagnosed with vitamin B12 deficiency (Insider) Food fads tend to bring their own punishment.

Inadequate US state unemployment systems leave millions vulnerable (The Guardian)

Michigan Town Cuts Library Funding Over LGBTQ-Themed Books

2 More Oregon Counties Vote to Join Idaho

“Anti-Democratic” Just Means “Something The Regime Doesn’t Like”

An Important Victory for U.S. Democracy—and a Warning (The New Yorker) In the Narrative Media, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.

LA Turns To A “Mansion Tax” To Try And Solve Its Homelessness Problem  ‘We’ve got a problem!’ ‘Quick, let’s pass a tax!’

Crazy People Are Dangerous: ‘Transgender Influencer’ Arrested After Getting Naked, Causing Disturbance at Miami Hotel

Washington Post: Complaining About Maricopa Vote Delays Is Disinformation

PBS Hails Election As Win For Abortion, Defeat Of Putin, Xi, And Trump

sCorporate America Bombards Black People With Junk Food Ads  Corporate America bombards everyone with ‘junk food’ ads. Black people can’t be bothered to cook for themselves, so they regularly rely on ‘junk food’, which is convenient and inexpensive.

‘Like Vegas, but worse’: Sharm el-Sheikh fails to charm Cop27 delegates (The Guardian) GIVE US MONEY!

Egypt’s human rights abuses overshadow COP27 conferenc (DW News)

Nineteen years after the ‘fart tax’, New Zealand’s farmers are fighting emissions (The Guardian)

Greenwashing COP27: Coke Is It (The Nation)

Is China doing enough to combat the climate crisis? (The Guardian)

What role does nuclear power play in the U.S. effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions? (NPR)

Rivers are drying up, but it’s not too late to help. Here’s where to start (CNN)

Hurricane Nicole a ‘warning shot’ over sea level rise, expert says (WPLG)

There’s one big subject our leaders at Cop27 won’t touch: livestock farming (The Guadian) George Monbiot pushes the Narrative.

In Egypt, host of COP27, a small step toward green energy (Associated Press)

Republicans tout benefits of fossil fuels at climate talks (Associated Press)

Greenhouse gas emissions could be ‘three times higher’ than oil and gas producers claim (EuroNews)

Sotomayor rejects plea from NYC workers who lost their jobs due to COVID vaccine mandate (Fox) The ‘wise Latina’ is just another proglodyte statist.

Future Sea-Level Rise May Be Much Higher Than Thought – Ice Loss in Greenland “Vastly Underestimated” (SciTech Daily)

THE CURSE OF COP27

EU Needs $460 Billion Investment To Maintain Nuclear Power Capacity

How Tennessee Disenfranchised 21% of Its Black Citizens (ProPublica) The correct term is ‘disfrachised’. (I blame the schools.) Well, when 21% of your ‘black citizens’ are convicted felons….

Lauren Boebert’s unexpectedly tight race shows the waning power of the MAGA brand (CNN)

Why Rick Scott reportedly reversed course on challenging McConnell (MSNBC) As if anybody at MSNBC would have a clue.

Rep. Boebert is locked in an unexpectedly close race. Some constituents say they’re tired of a ‘mini Trump.’ (NBC)

NPR Analyzes GOP with Author Asserting ‘The Republican Party Lost Its Mind’

U.S. COVID public health emergency to stay in place (Reuters)

Ancient Viruses Trapped in Permafrost for Thousands of Years Are Waking Up (Newsweek) Time to PANIC!

The Real Story Behind RSV & The So-Called “Tripledemic”

Read it.

The Mexican government is using video of homeless people and open-air drug users in Philadelphia’s troubled Kensington neighborhood in a national ad campaign to try to scare young people away from drugs.

Jesús Ramírez, the spokesman for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, proudly presented the ad series Tuesday, saying the campaign ‘seeks to inform young people of the damage caused to health by the consumption of chemical drugs.’

Ramírez did not respond to repeated requests for comment as to where the government got the Philadelphia videos or why they used them in ads aimed at a Mexican audience.

Read it.

All across the Academy, schools are requiring “Diversity Statements” as a condition for new hires. Everyone has to submit a statement explaining how they are going to contribute to “diversity”. What you’re supposed to do in these, and what everyone damn well knows you’re supposed to do, is (i) talk about your race, gender, and other “identity group” traits that it would be illegal for the university to explicitly ask you about, and (ii) talk about your activism on behalf of left-wing identity politics. Note: If you write a statement merely explaining how you will scrupulously avoid discriminating, or explaining how you will contribute to intellectual diversity, your application will be tossed in the trash. No university will say this out loud (yet?), but, again, everyone knows that.

These Diversity Statements, as a recent commentator notes, are the secular version of the Statements of Faith long used by religious schools.

Read it.

Ask any young lady today what her idea of the “traditional” American woman is, and she will bring up, twisting her face in disdain, the midcentury suburban housewife.

It’s hard to say whether the woman in our heads was ever even real, let alone representative of some majority. Influentially documented (or perhaps, drawn up) by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, the American housewife has become a stock character for Hollywood mythmakers: isolated, vain, bored; drowning her resentment of her 2.5 kids and their cheating Don Draper of a father in wine and pills. Whatever the reality, this meme overpowered it.

Every meme doubles as a consumer identity and triples as an easily digestible political motif. The “repressed housewife” became a Girardian scapegoat around which the new liberal feminist order coalesced. By the ’70s, more than half of American women were working alongside men outside of the home. The “housewife” was as passée as the dresses she would have worn, the threat she posed now far more imaginary than real. But still, she was routinely resurrected on television and in movies, the ambivalent icon of women’s history in America for decades to follow—the superficial image of what not to be, of a regressive past always threatening to re-impose itself. She was to be relentlessly guarded against, her image in our world and in our own hearts stamped out, replaced instead by the sexually and economically “liberated” girlboss feminist.

Read it.

Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes that would use less energy and lower emissions. But will passengers be willing to board them?

Read it.

I want to start with a page out of history — the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, taken from one of his notebooks on religion. The words on this page belongs to a long and fruitful tradition that peaked in Enlightenment-era Europe and America, particularly in England: the practice of maintaining a “commonplace” book.

This blog has a page where I keep my commonplace book.

Read it.

It’s my contention that pushing Senator-elect John Fetterman across the finish line in Pennsylvania was the most important goal the Deep State set for itself in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

A Fetterman victory, even more so than the “election” of Joe Biden in 2020, would demoralize what remains of conservative opposition to the progressive ascendancy in the USA.

Those who accept Mr. Fetterman’s win at face value — which seems to mean a large majority of voters — are forced into the realization that most of their compatriots are brainwashed zombies who would vote for a slime mold if it was running as a Democrat. It’s therefore no longer possible for them to view the electorate en masse as a repository of civic virtue.

‘Biden-Fetterman 2024: It’s a No-Brainer!’