DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

The War Zone.

Somali pirate attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden region are on the rise, according to the U.N., a naval task force and a joint naval communications operation. The spike comes amid ongoing tensions in the Persian Gulf between the U.S. and Iran, and one regional military task force tells us these Somali Pirate Action Groups (PAGs) may be taking advantage of that situation. Meanwhile, a think tank suggests that the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen are aiding these pirates in a form of so-called gray zone conflict.

Regardless, these incidents are posing increased security risks to a commercial shipping industry already roiled by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and its ongoing aftermath, which is starting to heat up again after about a week of calm.

The most recent pirate attack took place on Sunday.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

The War Zone.

Iran must think that Biden is still President or something. Or they’re incredibly delusional.

Read it.

When Kruschev predicted that “Your grandchildren will grow up under Commujnism”, he didn’t know the half of it.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The U.S. military announced that it had launched strikes against Iran Tuesday evening, marking the latest exchange of blows between the countries amid a fragile ceasefire.

In a post on X, U.S. Central Command announced that American forces had begun launching a “series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.

“The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” the post continued. “Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”

The latest round of violence could further imperil U.S. negotiations over fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz and reviving talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

You mess with the bull, you get the horns every time.

Babylon Bee.

Hey, at least he’s not a communist (that we know of).

Trump threatens America’s World Cup goodwill with one phone call (Herb Scribner/Axios) Trump’s superpower.

The View: White Supremacists on Train Is ‘Defining Image of Modern America’ No matter what happens, it’s Trump’s fault.

‘Excited but Shocked’: U.S. Soccer Fans Struggle With Trump’s FIFA Call (Billy Witz/New York Times) Because, as we all know, Trump is not allowed to use the phone without Narrative Media supervision.

He was Trump’s boyhood friend. Now he’s pushing Trump to declare a ‘national emergency’ and seize control of the midterms (CNN) Funny how Trumps is constantly being castigated for ‘seizing control’ but he never seems to wind up with control.

Trump Passports Debut, Delighting Some and Dismaying Others (Gabe Castro-Root/New York Times)

Trump’s call to Infantino and plot to ‘free’ Balogun that sparked a huge World Cup controversy (The Athletic)  Mostly among the chattering class.

The Joy of the World Cup Just Collided With Trump (Alex Shephard/New Republic)

Key Health Care Panel Is Again Blocked From Meeting (Maggie Astor/New York Times)  Because, as we all know, if a government body doesn’t do something, nothing ever gets done.

Trump’s Intervention in Balogun’s World Cup Suspension Adds to Conflict With Europe (New York Times)  Because, as we all know, without Trump there wouldn’t be any conflict with Europe.

FIFA Is a Cautionary Tale for Trump (David A. Graham/The Atlantic) Funny, it strikes me as a cautionary tale for FIFA.

Inside Trump’s Ideological Fight With the Smithsonian (New York Times)  Because, as we all know, it can’t possibly be the case that the Smithsonian has an ideological fight with America.

MS NOW Calls Trump a ‘Fascist,’ Denies There Are Communist DSA Candidates  If Trump actually were a fascist, they would all be in jail.

This Is What Trump’s Crazed Posts Are Really About: Political Guru (Vic Verbalaitis/The Daily Beast)  Because, as we all know, the mind-readers at the Daily Beast know more about what Trump is thinking than he does.

Trump’s Iran grudge hangs over NATO summit (Axios)  Because, as we all know, Iran is just minding its own business and would be perfectly fine if it weren’t for Trump’s Grudge.

Top Senate Democrats push Trump-affiliated companies for answers about IRS settlement (Jacob Rosen/CBS News

Iranian Strikes on Ships Test Cease-Fire and Threaten Energy Flows in Gulf (New York Times)  There’s that Trump Grudge again.

‘Trump management’: Everyone else has a plan to keep NATO summit on the rails (Politico)

Italy’s Meloni Refuses to Fuel Trump Feud

As NATO Summit Braces For Trump, Ambassador Warns Allies: ‘We’re Not Going Away, Just Doing Less’

Trump and the Fifa debacle (Edward Luce/Financial Times)

Trump’s Chief Design Officer Just Boosted the John Birch Society (Don Moynihan/Can We Still Govern?)

Trump vs. algae is the feud we deserve (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Trump’s attacks on Democrats as ‘communists’ only show he’s out of touch (Zeeshan Aleem/MS NOW)  But not as out-of-touch as writers for MS-NOW.

Haddish Claims Red Card Was First Time Trump ‘Defended a Black Person  I guess he’s never seen Trump and Justice Thomas.

The unpatriotic left won’t cheer for Team USA because Trump helped right a World Cup wrong (Isaac Schorr/New York Post)

Trump claims credit for Walmart price cuts, retailer silent on White House role (Scripps News)

Trump’s AG Pick Hit With Massive Revolt of DOJ Veterans (Leigh Kimmins/The Daily Beast)  When you’re getting flak, you know you’re over the target.

Trump’s Vile New Birthright Stance Is So Toxic, Even Fox Admits It (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

Trump renews Greenland threats at NATO summit, says U.S. could remove troops from Europe (CNBC)

Trump Administration Guts Efforts to Prevent Gun Violence, Suppressing Reports (Sheryl Gay Stolberg/New York Times)  And those reports had a lot of guts.

Not the Bee.

Geez. what is this country comin to?

No honor among Ebonics, I guess.

Read it.

On Monday evening, hundreds of people gathered to protest in front of a residential building in Kraków, Poland’s second-largest city, after it had been revealed that a “community center” in one of the rental apartments had actually been operating as an illegal mosque for some time, without the knowledge of other residents.

The main organizer of the demonstration was right-wing activist Micha? Kostrzy?ski, who led a months-long investigation into the alleged community center and documented his findings online. Kostrzy?ski learned that the space was actually a house of Muslim worship, run without proper authorization by the Al-Fajr Foundation, a self-described “Islamic and cultural foundation based in Kraków, established to serve, support, and empower the Muslim community in Kraków and across Poland.”

While the staff insisted that it was only a “community center” for cultural education and nothing more—the same thing they told residents—Kostrzy?ski found their fundraiser requests from last year, in which they were openly asking for donations for a third “house of prayer,” because the other two in the city were already at full capacity.

Not the Bee.

Is every single Democrat politician a violent sociopath??

This lady who represents Nevada in Congress is not a fan of Pete Hegseth.

Pay Per View, here we come.

Not the Bee.

There is a real American man named Jackson Hinkle who visited Iran this week to tell American patriots to “pay their respects” to the deceased Islamic theocrat who ruled Iran with an iron fist.

Born in 1999 in San Clemente, California, Hinkle got involved with the “Bernie Bros” out of high school and went full-bore into politics. He was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America during his 2019 bid for city council in San Clemente (which failed).

He launched a YouTube show in 2020 that reached 300,000 subscribers. A self-described “American conservative Marxist-Leninist,” he pivoted from climate activism to pro-Russia, anti-Israel propaganda, with more or less success than peers like Greta Thunberg.

In 2024, Hinkle co-founded the American Communist Party, breaking with the century-old Communist Party USA, which he saw as too weak.

In 2025, he went and lived in Russia (he’s a commie, so duh).

““Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”  Open and shut.

Not the bee.

Teach them a language that someone else understands, like Swahili.

Read it.

British policing has reached new depths of absurdity and authoritarianism. Officers are inventing pre-crimes, harassing citizens for lawful filming or standing in public, and deploying to pubs to warn people off tweeting about councillors.

Read it.

States across the country saw steep drops in the number of people covered by the Affordable Care Act over the past year, with Ohio and Oklahoma each losing nearly one-third of enrollees, according to new federal data that provides the first complete 50-state breakdown of sharp enrollment declines following the January expiration of enhanced subsidies.

The data, posted in late June by the Trump administration and first reported on by The Associated Press, reveals how changes in each state’s insured population led to around 2.6 million fewer Americans having Obamacare plans in February compared with the same time last year.

It captures not only how many people signed up for or were automatically reenrolled in plans in 2026, but how many paid their first monthly premiums to keep coverage, according to Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, who reviewed the dataset. She said it accounts for people who were retroactively removed from coverage after a nonpayment grace period ended

People are realizing what a shitty program Obamacare was, and is, without the back-door-socialism of whacking great Federal subsidies.

Read it.

A new Federal Reserve working paper adds hard data to a dire economic realities that tens of millions of hardworking Americans already face: being priced out of homeownership or trapped paying ungodly high rents.

For years, the housing affordability crisis was blamed almost entirely on low interest rates, pandemic-era demand, institutional buyers, and a shortage of new construction. However, one major point was largely and conveniently ignored by mainstream media: the Biden-Harris regime’s open border policies, which facilitated a massive illegal alien invasion.

Read it.

Democrats are at a crossroads as Democratic Socialists of America candidates win primaries, even unseating incumbents. Particularly vexed are well-off Democrat politicians as the DSA engages in its war against the wealthy.

Two prime examples: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and California Rep. Ro Khanna. Pritzker is a billionaire in a party that demonizes wealth. Khanna, who is also very wealthy, has been the face of going after the rich.

Read it.

A senior adviser in the far-left French party La France Insoumise (LFI) has spoken bluntly about the party’s desire to create a “New France,” a society reflecting the country’s demographic and cultural realities—a vision that the French right has described as a push for population replacement.

Imane El Hamzaoui, a senior national coordinator within LFI who oversees the party’s anti-racism campaign and youth mobilisation, delivered the speech to party members on Sunday, July 5th as part of a presentation on the concept of a “New France.”

Read it.

As more and more Muslims enter a country, they will more and more act as if it were a Muslim country.

You can imagine the reaction from the Usual Suspects if a Christian bus driver stopped to pray the Angelus.

Read it.

The American mainstream media have long been obsessed with the topic of homosexuality. They can’t stop writing about it, celebrating it, flaunting it, obsessing over it, and disapproving of any disapproval of it.

Except for the American conservative media. With them it’s a different cultural topic: air conditioning. They can’t stop writing about it, flaunting it, celebrating it, obsessing over it, and disapproving of any disapproval of it.

But what we don’t yet have is an Air Conditioning Pride month where we parade our air conditioners through the streets, put out posters to show our loyalty, put on Air Conditioning Pride sporting events, and bathe the exterior of the White House in streams of air conditioned air. But I expect that will come, too.

The Antiplanner.

As of June 23, 2026, Brightline trains had killed 214 people, an average of one every 13 days since the passenger trains began operating in 2017. Make that 215, as Brightline killed a pedestrian on July 2.

In August 2022, Brightline announced that it had received a $25 million federal grant to fence its lines and make them safer. The state of Florida also contributed $10 million and Brightline itself agreed to match that, providing a total of $45 million for safety.

Now, nearly four years later, Brightline says it is still “in the midst” of installing those safety measures. There is no explanation for why this is taking so long or why it is spending money on some measures, including “No Trespassing” signs and suicide prevention signs, that seem unlikely to do much.

Read it.

One of California’s wealthiest and safest cities descended into chaos over the Independence Day weekend after a social media-fueled “teen takeover” led to more than 400 arrests, an officer being struck by a mortar firework, and the looting of a grocery store.

According to Newport Beach city officials, thousands of unruly juveniles and young adults gathered near the Newport Pier on July 4. As the crowd grew, fireworks were launched into the crowd and at police officers. An officer was struck by a mortar, roadways were blocked, emergency vehicles were delayed, and a nearby grocery store was looted.

When Muslims profit from welfare and other fraud, they think of it as jizya. When Ebonics loot and destroy without being prosecuted, they think of it as ‘reparations’.

Read it.

Although the Supreme Court ruled in favor of birthright citizenship last week, the Trump administration and Congress could still take action to reduce the effect of the policy.

Vice President JD Vance endorsed a proposal to restrict birthright citizenship in the U.S. territories, citing Roger Severino, vice president of economic and domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. Vance asserted in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham that the Trump administration is reviewing ways to close the loopholes in the policy.

Read it.

There has never been any doubt in my mind that if Graham Platner starts looking like a loser, the Democrats will dump their “working class” nominee. His standing in polls has been steadily sinking – and who knows what’s going on in the internal polls, but it’s probably not good. They have until July 13th to replace him if he drops out, and if things are looking grim they’ll make sure he drops out by that time.

Now there is a new allegation about sexual assault in 2021, from a woman he used to date. In a way, I wish they’d held it back until after the 13th, but I think it came out now due to pressure from Democrats rather than Republicans. For the moment, Platner seems to be mulling it over. Maybe it’s a case of finding out what the Democrat powers-that-be will be offering him to leave the race.

I’m betting not. Democrats have taken the mask almost completely off in recent years, and no longer depend on the Clever Plastic Disguise much any more.

Read it.

The town of Woodbridge, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., was recently home to a public roadside march of Islamic supporters who chanted sayings in a foreign language, beat their chests, and flew flags written in Arabic.

The scene was captured in a video posted on X.

Amy Mek, founder of the Rise, Align, Ignite, Reclaim Foundation, described the march on social media as an organized event from the Mohammadia Center of Virginia, a group that describes itself as “a cornerstone for the Shia Muslim community in the Washington metropolitan area.”

The Mohammadia Center of Virginia did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The New Neo.

I’ve written many many posts on this topic over the years. I don’t know when the first one was published, but it was probably at least as far back as Obama’s campaign in 2008 (see this, for example). But right now it seems especially appropriate.

By 2018 and 2019 – the years AOC first became prominent – I was writing about the topic more often, and especially noting how popular socialism had become among the young.

It’s no surprise that young people are comfortable with socialism—they’ve lived under it all their lives. Mom & dad control all of the household property and money and the way you get something is by wheedling. Transferring this attitude to government feels natural.

Read it.

Early in my career, I managed money for a federal judge. She couldn’t hold a single stock. No individual securities, no sector bets, no company-specific exposure of any kind. Any ruling touching a publicly traded company had to be beyond reproach. The appearance of a conflict was enough. She accepted that as a condition of public service.

Members of Congress don’t.

They write laws governing entire industries, receive classified briefings about policy decisions before they’re public, and sit on committees with direct oversight authority over the sectors they’re trading. Most of them keep trading. This is a structural feature of an ethics framework designed by the people it was supposed to constrain.

You will no doubt have noticed, as I have, the campaign in the Narrative Media pointing out that Donald Trump has (clutch pearls) made money while in the White House—but nobody is looking into how Bernie and Fauxcohontas became millionaires.

Read it.

These early tests of quantitative hypotheses illustrate both the risks and merits of observational evidence. To be sure, as Arbuthnot showed, it’s easy enough to find that the data proves something you wanted to be true all along. Yet it is remarkable that both Arbuthnot and Laplace could obtain local records and start doing science right from their desks. In doing so, both correctly documented important phenomena without the need to invest much labor or capital to get the data.

The efficiency, simplicity, and beauty of this method of gaining knowledge has been underappreciated, especially in medicine and public health. Although it is considered ideal to obtain data in the form of a randomized control trial for an intervention like a drug, that form of data collection is not always possible in either field. Granted, the Paris versus London hypothesis Laplace was testing is relatively simple, but his sample size was over 1.93 million, more than the vast majority of interventional trials in the history of medicine. It is a rare randomized trial (studying a particular intervention with a sufficiently large and well-distributed sample population) that can detect an 0.3% difference in a binary random variable — but Laplace could, more than 200 years ago.

The advantages of the RCT have cemented it as the gold standard for interventional trials in medicine, and it remains what many laypeople think of as the one true way to do science. Yet once we understand where these advantages come from, how they interact with the economics of collecting samples, and the merits of the alternative, observational evidence emerges as the winner more often than one might think.

Read it.

The author discusses these objects in terms of erosion control but most of my crowd think of their presence of beaches as being tank traps and impediments to landing craft.

Read it.

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

I have now sequenced my own genome 5 times with an Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION. This means collecting them from a swab, prepping them for sequencing, running them through a sequencer, then doing analysis over them.

Cheek cells are easily accessible and replenish pretty quickly. They are not used for cancer diagnosis, inflammation, or what genes are being activated in other parts of the body (like if you have hives on your chest and want to test what genes are being expressed in the cells that are inflamed), since you would want to collect the cells having problems and compare them against other normal versions of those cells.

To sequence the cells, I bought lab materials and consumables to sequence my own genome at home. It took me about two months to get everything together to do a full end to end high quality run. Likewise, the costs are still out of reach for the average person but they are decreasing (exponentially!) and we will eventually have affordable technology, like a cell phone or AI, telling us about our DNA + RNA expression real-time.

Not quite as fun as building a mainframe, but still…

Read it.

The most important economic question of the next decade is how AI will affect jobs. Everyone wants to write that paper. Until now, no one has had the right dataset, so existing research has relied on a combination of guesses, surveys, AI exposure scores, and self-interested punditry. In fact, a recent paper from Stanford said the ideal dataset would use “business spend data” and cited Ramp data specifically.

Today, we published our first working paper: A New Look at AI’s Impact on Jobs. It uses firm-level spend data from Ramp joined with workforce data collected by Revelio Labs. In a sample covering more than 21,000 U.S. firms, we find that companies that invest heavily in AI grow headcount 10% over the two years following adoption. Entry-level headcount grows 12%.

Read the full paper and explore the data from Ramp Economics Lab here. The rest of this letter will outline our key findings, plans for future research, and some of my thoughts on what that means for our economy.

The Telegraph (UK).

The woman suspected of trying to blow up a Ukrainian tycoon in Monaco has been found shot dead near Kyiv.

Anastasiia Berezovska, 39, was named as the prime suspect in the attack on Vadym Iermolaiev, a Ukrainian property magnate, at the end of last month.

After an international manhunt, her body was found at around overnight near the Ukrainian capital, according to a report by Ukrainska Pravda, citing law enforcement sources.

The Telegraph (UK).

At least five county cricket clubs are in danger of having their funding cut because their boards are not diverse enough.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) threatened to withhold critical funding from first-class domestic cricket clubs that have not appointed an ethnically diverse director and achieved 40 per cent female representation on their boards.

The affirmative action has been described as an overreach on behalf of the national governing body, which critics say has become too powerful.

The Telegraph (UK).

Labour is considering emergency legislation to deport a Pakistan-born ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang.

Alex Norris, the Home Office minister, said “all options are on the table” when asked in the Commons whether the Government could fast-track legislation to pave the way for the removal of Shabir Ahmed.

Ahmed, 73, was released from prison last week after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 child rape offences. He cannot be returned to Pakistan despite being stripped of his UK citizenship.

Why is this guy still alive?

Not the Bee.

No joke, this is real California news. Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration has officially transferred 136 acres of beloved Mendocino County beachfront — including the scenic Blues Beach and its dramatic bluffs — to three Indigenous tribes.

The lucky recipients? A nonprofit called Kai Poma, representing the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Round Valley Indian Tribes, and Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians.

Yes, it’s another nonprofit!

Nothing to see here, folks!

I hope they build a casinol

Not the Bee.

We honor him for voluntarily subtracting himself from the gene pool.

They couldn’t bring the body down because transporting human remains down the most dangerous mountain in the world is a pretty easy way to risk killing yourself.

Toss him over the nearest cliff. Gravity will do the rest. (Ask me a hard one.)

Not the Bee.

Import a bunch of third-world military-age male migrants, they said.

It’ll be fine, they said.

Task & Purpose.

Two members of the Tennessee National Guard shot and killed an armed man early Sunday in Memphis, law enforcement said. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said today that Memphis police and National Guard soldiers who are in the city as part of a federal task force responded to reports of gunfire just before 4 a.m.

Memphis police officers were chasing a man armed with a hand gun. Tennessee National Guard soldiers joined the chase for the armed man, identified as 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson.

“For reasons under investigation, the situation escalated, resulting in two National Guard soldiers firing upon Johnson, striking and killing him,” the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in its statement.

Hmmm. “Tyrin Johnson” Let’s just take a guess about his ‘ethnicity’, shall we?

Imagine how low the crime rates would be if young black males were prohibited from possessing firearms.

“Real life is not a Sherlock Holmes story, and not everything is a clue.”

— Tim Dedopoulos and David Knowles Field Guide to Secret Symbols

Read it.

The Trump administration is dismantling more than three dozen federal firearms regulations, ending a zero-tolerance policy against wayward gun dealers, easing scrutiny of stabilizing braces, and clearing a path for some Americans with a history of mental illness to buy firearms, part of what officials call the broadest rewrite of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rules in the agency’s history.

The rollback, executed under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14206 on Second Amendment rights, was formally launched April 29, when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and newly confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada unveiled 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking.

Officials called it the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in ATF history. Cekada was confirmed by the Senate hours earlier and signed off on the changes within an hour of taking office.

Read it.

California’s richest residents are opening their checkbooks to kill a wealth tax before voters can weigh in, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone pouring $82 million into the opposition and a small circle of tech billionaires driving the total anti-tax haul past $118 million ahead of the Nov. 3 ballot.

The measure, a one-time tax of up to 5% on the net worth of California residents worth more than $1 billion, became eligible for the November ballot on June 17 after Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced its signature count had cleared the state’s random-sample threshold.

A last-minute offer from sponsor SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West to drop the initiative in exchange for a legislative 2% version was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and negotiations collapsed before the June 25 withdrawal deadline.

Under the initiative, 90% of revenue would flow to Medi-Cal and other healthcare programs, with 10% split between food assistance and public education. The tax would apply to anyone who was a California resident as of Jan. 1.

The Foundry.

continue to work. Some families in low-income neighborhoods turn to Head Start, a program whose very name suggests children should expect to finish their time at one of these centers better prepared for school. But today, after more than 60 years and over $240 billion in spending, the program has fallen well short of that goal.

A new Heritage Foundation report reveals a harsh reality: Head Start centers are overregulated, unsafe, expensive, and fail to deliver lasting results for children.

Head Start sits under a thick, strict set of rules. A recent analysis compared federal Head Start rules with state childcare rules. It found that nearly all Head Start settings are stricter than state settings.

Moreover, the program is also burdened with bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to help children and families. The second Trump administration is trying to help. In May 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services released a notice of proposed rulemaking to scrap burdensome wage and benefit rules from the Biden administration.

Read it.

Imagine if your jacket could talk back to Big Brother. The German startup Urban Privacy isn’t selling invisibility cloaks; they are selling digital disobedience. By weaponizing fashion, they are turning scarves, jackets, and phone cases into sophisticated tools designed to confuse AI surveillance and reclaim public anonymity in an increasingly data-hungry world.

Read it.

Political orientation has been shown to correlate with fertility, raising the possibility that demographic processes contribute to long-term ideological change. Using data from the US General Social Survey, we analyze completed fertility across 17 birth cohorts (1898–1982) to examine how political orientation has contributed to fertility decline in the United States and whether emerging selective forces can be detected. Earlier cohorts show little difference in fertility by political orientation. From the 1943–1947 birth cohort onward, however, a pronounced divergence emerges: individuals with right-wing political orientations maintain fertility at or above replacement level, whereas fertility among left-wing individuals declines sharply to well below replacement. Applying Lande–Arnold selection gradient analyses, we find increasing directional selection that may favor right-wing political orientation over time, while education shows consistent negative associations with fertility and religiosity positive but weaker effects. Separate analysis of Black and White Americans reveals, however, that the increasingly stronger association between political orientation and fertility in more recent cohorts holds only true for whites but not for blacks. Nonetheless, these findings suggest that recent fertility decline in the United States is driven disproportionately by left-leaning individuals and point to contemporary demographic processes that may gradually shift the ideological composition of populations.

Evolution acts to weed stupidity out of the gene pool. It’s slow, but it’s sure.

Read it.

Solar railways could soon become commonplace in Europe, following a successful trial in Switzerland.

Europe’s infrastructure is embracing the renewables boom, with one company determined to transform the continent’s railway lines into mini solar farms.

Last year, Swiss start-up Sun-Ways unveiled the world’s first-ever solar railway after rolling out 100 metres of photovoltaic (PV) panels in between active tracks in Buttes, a village in the Val-de-Travers district.

Originally planned as just a three-year trial, the railway was fitted with 48 specially-designed solar panels with a combined power of 18 kWp.

However, the positive results yielded just one year into the trial mean the installation of a permanent system along the railroad track is now likely, Euronews Earth has been told.

The Economist.

ot much remains today of the walls, ramparts and moats that once surrounded Benin City in southern Nigeria. Yet for centuries these giant earthworks—second in length only to China’s Great Wall among man-made structures—bespoke a mighty civilisation whose authority extended across much of west Africa. By the standards of pre-colonial Africa, the Benin state was exceptionally strong: erecting the wall in a single dry season might have required mobilising as many as 5,000 men, each working ten hours a day. But as the empire withered and eventually succumbed to British invaders in the late 19th century, most of the earthworks vanished. So did those of many other fortified towns across west Africa.

Now they are returning. Since the mid-2010s, as jihadist insurgencies have spread across northern Nigeria and the Sahel, defensive earthworks have risen up around towns and cities. Many are so extensive they are clearly visible in satellite images. According to new research by Olivier Walther and Steven Radil, geographers at the University of Florida, all urban centres in north-east Nigeria with populations of more than 10,000 are now secured by trenches. Most big towns there and in the Lake Chad basin are surrounded by sand berms up to three metres high.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

Not the Bee.

The World Cup is a terrific opportunity for the country to come together and put aside politics and squabbles to cheer on our home country.

Unless you’re a Democratic Socialist, that is.

While we were all cheering on the USA, the Attorney General of Arizona wanted to make sure that everyone knew she was cheering not for America, but for Mexico.

Wealth doesn’t migrate for no reason. Think about what rich people know that you don’t.

Said no Democrat ever.