TRUE:

Now we need punishment, to discourage similar actions in the future.

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

LINUS PAULING SMILES: Common Vitamin Could Be The Secret to Younger-Looking Skin. “A new study has found that nourishment with vitamin C boosts epidermal thickness in lab-grown human skin models, and it does this by reactivating genes linked to cell growth. What’s more, vitamin C concentrations normally delivered to human skin via the bloodstream are sufficient to have a measurable effect.”

BARRETT WASN’T A DISSENT:

WYLIE AND BALMER THOUGHT OF THIS NEARLY A CENTURY AGO: This Is Not the Way We Usually Imagine the World Will End: Stars passing close to the sun could cause planets to collide, including with Earth, or even be ejected as rogue planets, new simulations show. “The researchers found that 0.5 percent of their simulations resulted in planets colliding or a planet being ejected from the solar system. And the world most likely to be affected in such a cataclysm? “Mercury is the most vulnerable planet by far,” Dr. Raymond said.”

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Gay Comedian Scott Thompson: Eliminate GLAAD. “The ‘Kids in the Hall’ alum still saved plenty of venom for another target, one that’s unexpected given his political leanings.”

QUESTION ASKED:

HMM: Is This How Mamdani REALLY Won the NYC Democrat Mayoral Primary? “Lazer claims Mamdani’s ‘rizz’ — a Gen Z term that’s short for charisma — helped earn him what his campaign couldn’t afford to buy. That, and cracking TikTok’s algorithm.”

Reminder: TikTok is social malware.

DON’T MOURN THE DEATH OF TV:

At first, the establishment was caught flat-footed by the internet. After being blindsided by Trump’s 2016 victory, it took analysts his entire term to recognize the seminal role that alternative media played in his victory – something that COVID and the associated increase in conservative institutional distrust served to underline.

In this light, the hypocrisy, lies and injustices of 2020 and the early Biden presidency can be seen as the ungraceful swan song of the 20th century television world. The concealing of the unmistakably violent nature of the Black Lives Matter riots, the spinning of narratives suggesting that anti-vaxers (a slur by any reasonable definition) were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, and, of course, the brazen censorship of those with concerns about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election; never before and never since was the manipulation more apparent – and hopefully, given television’s continued decline, it never will be again.

President Trump’s persistence through that brief but intense dark age is a testament to how impotent it all was. Had January 6th occurred twenty-five years ago, it’s unlikely that the media-manufactured narrative of a violent putsch to establish a dictatorship would have been meaningfully contested. After years of baying for reprisals, vilifying those involved as un-American terrorists, and canonizing January 6th as the newest installment in America’s long series of historical black spots to be overcome, few bit. Nobody really ended up caring, and recent attempts to condemn the President as having spared terrorists their rightful fate are entertained only by those poor souls whose eyes and ears are still in thrall to what remains of network television. America is better for having largely abandoned television, and the results speak for themselves.

It was a gradual process: as viewers increasingly abandoned television news, television executives allowed their newsmen to abandon half of their potential audience of viewers. From Dan Rather cooking the books in September of 2004 to attack President Bush, to the entire DNC-MSM railing against “cheap fakes” twenty years later in an utterly futile attempt to protect their party’s (p)resident, TV news did everything it could to hasten its own demise.

THEY’RE JUST DOING THE JOBS THAT LOCAL GOVERNMENT WON’T DO: Four more Portland Antifa riot suspects federally charged. “This brings the total federally charged so far to 17, devastating the numbers Antifa need to attack the building night after night. The cases are not being dropped immediately. Dozens of local Antifa riot cases have also not been dropped by the moderate district attorney, Nathan Vasquez. (Vasquez, running on a law and order platform, won against radical leftist incumbent Mike Schmidt in November last year.)”

TO BE FAIR, THEY HATE THE MIDDLE CLASS:

HMM: Foxconn mysteriously tells Chinese workers to quit India and return to China.

Citing unspecified sources said to be familiar with the matter, the report claims that Foxconn has been telling Chinese workers to return, for about the last two months. So far over 300 Chinese workers have left, and one source claimed that most people remaining are support staff from Taiwan.

Neither Foxconn nor Apple have commented on the move.

It’s not known why Foxconn has done this, nor is it clear whether workers have been laid off or redeployed to the company’s facilities in China. The move, though, does follow Beijing officials reportedly working to prevent firms moving away from China.

Those officials are said to have been verbally encouraging China’s local governments and regulatory bodies to curb exports of equipment or technologies to India and Southeast Asia.

Overall, China has been making it harder for skilled labor to leave the country.

Looks like they’re making it more difficult for skilled labor to remain abroad, too.

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MATH: Mamdani’s government grocery stores plan is based on an accounting error.

Here are the hard numbers: All in all, the city has given up about $30 million in tax revenue through this program. In the last six years, since FRESH got into full swing, the program has reduced revenue by about $20 million total, according to the city’s estimates. That is, it costs an average of $3.3 million per year. So, this program would take 42 years to cost the city the $140 million that Mamdani says “the city is set to spend” on it.

So why does Mamdani use that $140 million number?

He misread the city’s webpage.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation estimates that grocery stores have invested $140 million of their own money thanks to the FRESH program. Mamdani is counting the $140 million in private spending as government spending.

Was it over when the Germans bombed the 54th Street D’Agostino’s? Forget it, he’s rolling.

Related: From Glenn in the New York Post: Mamdani’s grocery scheme is foolish — but there’s method to the madness.

BOB VYLAN ARE A PRODUCT OF THE ESTABLISHMENT:

On the title track of their latest album, Vylan tells us:

Black man shine

Completing my goals on black man time

No blacks, no dogs, but the Irish are fine

This is a reference to the “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” signs which, as everybody knows, haunted Britain in the 50s and 60s. But they didn’t. It’s a myth. “Got a message to the thieves in the palace,” Vylan snaps on “Reign”, “We want our jewels back.” Repatriation is of course the cringing obsession of British museums — and there is no doubt that some artifacts were seized from British colonies. But the Crown Jewels, as a collection, have existed for the best part of 1000 years. Many more recent objects were legitimately acquired. Why Mr Vylan has a greater right to the Cullinan Diamond than Thomas Cullinan, who extracted and sold it, is unclear.

Onstage at Glastonbury, meanwhile, Vylan performed in front of the slogan “This country was built on the backs of immigrants”. This is an obvious reference to the “You called … and we came” Windrush narrative, most recently promoted by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But, again, it is a myth. Non-European immigration played a small part in the post-war reconstruction of Britain. As Ed West writes, the prominence of HMT Empire Windrush in the national imagination can be boiled down to “well-intentioned inclusive myth-making”.

The Vylans are the angry product of a cultural orthodoxy which has confused reflexive oikophobia with deep and radical thought. Unlike self-flattering commentators, critics and curators, though, they have taken this thought to its emotional conclusions — being patted on the back by taste-makers as they do so. To prosecute them would be wrong on its own terms — but it would also be to affirm their radical delusions. Finally, it would be proof of revolutionary credentials.

Related: Bob Vylan dropped from festivals in UK, France and US after Glastonbury chant sparks backlash and visa ban.

Iowahawk notes that while they’re officially dropped, they could always drop in on a music festival: