OPEN THREAD: It’s Friday Night.
September 29, 2023
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China to attempt lunar far side sample return in 2024.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: What We Can Learn From Dianne Feinstein.
NOW OUT FROM THOMAS SOWELL: Social Justice Fallacies.
RFK, JR. TO RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT: “While the cope in public will be that the party is better off without RFK Jr. and that he’ll pull perhaps more from Trump’s support than Brandon’s, neither of these claims is true in reality. Democrat voters, who are given no real option besides Brandon at the moment and are constantly mocked by party apparatchiks that they have no other choice, will take their support elsewhere in 2024. If RFK Jr. goes through with his plans, and he’s not suicided Epstein-style in the process, this will very probably be the death knell for Brandon’s re-election prospects, which were on thin ice as it was.”
The Epstein thing is alas real, as are other threats. I mean, there have already been issues.
SPIDER VENOM AS the next Viagra.
YOUR GRANDMOTHER WAS RIGHT: Debunking Freud: Suppressing Negative Thoughts May Be Good for Mental Health. “Researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit trained 120 volunteers worldwide to suppress thoughts about negative events that worried them, and found that not only did these become less vivid, but that the participants’ mental health also improved. . . . Suppressing thoughts even improved mental health amongst participants with likely post-traumatic stress disorder. Among participants with post-traumatic stress who suppressed negative thoughts, their negative mental health indices scores fell on average by 16% (compared to a 5% fall for similar participants suppressing neutral events), whereas positive mental health indices scores increased by almost 10% (compared to a 1% fall in the second group). In general, people with worse mental health symptoms at the outset of the study improved more after suppression training, but only if they suppressed their fears. This finding directly contradicts the notion that suppression is a maladaptive coping process.”
A cynic might suggest that suppression is disfavored by mental health practitioners because it generates less business for mental health practitioners.
KILLJOYS ARE EVERYWHERE: Broadcasters should avoid ‘problematic’ shots of alcohol covering sporting events, researchers say. “Broadcasters providing news coverage of sporting events should avoid “problematic” shots of fans drinking alcohol, a team of researchers said Thursday. Frank Houghton and Daisy Houghton, a team of social scientists in Ireland, made the declaration in a commentary article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine focusing on gender equity in sports driven by this year’s Women’s Soccer World Cup Final.”
Oh, please.
AT THIS POINT, I’LL ONLY BELIEVE THEM IF THERE ARE HONORABLE SUICIDES:
If the establishment is sensing impending disaster on all fronts; that revelations they've concealed so far are going to break, perhaps the prepared narrative for 2024 is the story a penitent, born-again Dem party vs an unrepentant, dirty DJT — if you'll buy it.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) September 28, 2023
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: It’s Your Birthday and You’ll Do WHAT If You Want To? “This week we have a daring police cruiser escape, a CIA bike ninja, and the Oklahoma judge who really should have known better.”
EBOLA IS A RIVER, ZIKA IS A FOREST: My Civil Right Commission colleagues rightly say that opposition hate crimes shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But for something nonpartisan, the Commission’s report on Anti-Asian Racism (released Wednesday) spends an awful lot of time suggesting Trump’s use of the term “China virus” and “Wuhan virus” inspired violent crime against Asians. In my response to the report, I point out just how many diseases are named for their point of origin.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Florida man charged in Jan. 6 riot slams ‘double standards’ as ex-prosecutor makes bail in road rage stabbing.
OPEN BORDERS HAVE THEIR CONSEQUENCES: Sweden calls up the army to help deal with gang violence. “The violence and bombings in Sweden have had a major impact on the country’s politics. Last year, voters made the right-wing Sweden Democrats the 2nd biggest party in parliament and effectively made Kristersson, leader of a center-right party, the Prime Minister. . . . It’s worth noting that the connection between immigration and the current violence is not a right-wing fever dream. In fact, the figures are quite clear, though the former government and their media allies did their best to rule the question out of bounds. . . . The effort to hide the evidence that this was an immigrant wave failed and the government which tried to ignore the problem is now gone. Police officials estimate there are about 30,000 gang members nationwide who are contributing to the shootings and bombings.”
GOOD: The Supreme Court is about to rule on America’s most powerful, unaccountable federal agency. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America is an appeal of the Fifth Circuit’s unanimous holding that the CFPB’s use of the Federal Reserve System to fund its operations violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. That opinion declared that the agency’s ‘perpetual insulation from Congress’ appropriation power, including the express exemption from congressional review of its funding, renders’ it unaccountable ‘to Congress and, ultimately, to the people.'”
LOS ANGELES HATES POOR PEOPLE: As California Charter Schools Excel, Los Angeles’s Top Public District Makes It Harder To Attend Them. “The Los Angeles Unified School District voted Tuesday to overhaul its implementation of Proposition 39, a state law that compels California’s public districts to give charter schools access to their facilities. Under the district’s new measure, hundreds of district sites that charter schools could typically use to hold class will no longer be made available, thus forcing those schools to use locations that are farther away from where their attendees live. Given that Los Angeles’s charter schools typically attract students from low-income families who lack reliable sources of private transportation, the added commute could force students to ditch their charter school in favor of a more convenient district location.”
SOMEBODY LEND ME THEIR “SHOCKED FACE”, MINE IS WORN OUT: Just The News is reporting that even our own State Department says China continues to be a very very naughty boy:
“China’s government is investing in “unprecedented resources” in disinformation, surveillance and censorship tactics to influence the worldview of the country, according to a State Department report[…]The communist-run country faces international criticism for such issues as its record on human rights, unfair international trade practices, spying on other countries and not condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine.”
Of course, that didn’t stop the Bidens from accepting $260,000 in wire transfers originating from Beijing that listed Joe Biden’s Wilmington home as the beneficiary address when he was running for President.
Deluded apologists countered by saying “Hey, Hunter lived at Joe’s house in Wilmington. Nothing fishy there.”
Not so fast. Hunter Biden notes in his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” that he was living in California at the time the wire transfers were made.
So there’s no evidence, right?
THAT’S NOT SO MANY: Adding 3,000 steps per day may lower blood pressure among older adults.
THIS DANGEROUS INDUSTRY NEEDS TO BE CLOSELY REGULATED SO THAT FEWER PEOPLE ARE EXPOSED TO THESE RISKS: UK study finds increased risk of depression and anxiety when in higher education.
JACOBINS IN TRAINING: My leftist peers tore down my ‘Free Speech, Even When You Hate To Hear It’ flyers.
BIG TECH VS. DEMOCRACY: Pro-Joe Biden bias is algorithm-deep: Google’s search-&-destroy agenda. “If anything changed the outcome of the 2020 election, it was Big Tech interference — and there’s nothing to say it won’t happen again in 2024.”
