BECAUSE THIS IS THE STUPIDEST TIMELINE:  Notre Dame Cathedral Restoration is Going Woke.

THE MOST DANGEROUS SITUATIONS ARE THOSE YOU DON’T REALIZE ARE DANGEROUS:  Drowning in Chocolate.

Until it’s too late.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: As Crisis in Ethiopia Unfolds, Biden Admin Prepares for a Second Afghanistan.

OPEN THREAD: It comes up late, once in a blue moon.

ABUSE OF POWER: Facebook declared Rittenhouse guilty, silencing his defense in the court of public opinion.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s space programme will go nuclear to power future missions to the moon and Mars.

RIP: ‘A titan of the American musical:’ Tributes pour in after renowned composer Stephen Sondheim dies.

THE WORLD REMAINS FULL OF MYSTERIES: We All Nearly Missed The Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Ever Detected.

She was flying home from a holiday in Samoa when she saw it through the airplane window: a “peculiar large mass” floating on the ocean, hundreds of kilometres off the north coast of New Zealand.

The Kiwi passenger emailed photos of the strange ocean slick to scientists, who realized what it was – a raft of floating rock spewed from an underwater volcano, produced in the largest eruption of its kind ever recorded.

“We knew it was a large-scale eruption, approximately equivalent to the biggest eruption we’ve seen on land in the 20th Century,” said volcanologist Rebecca Carey from the University of Tasmania, who co-led the first close-up investigation of the historic 2012 eruption, and together with colleagues finally published the results in a paper in 2018.

The incident, produced by an underwater volcano called the Havre Seamount, initially went unnoticed by scientists, but the floating rock platform it generated was harder to miss.

And yet it almost was.

THIS ISN’T BAD: A Whisky-Lover’s Knoxville Travel Guide.

DON SURBER: Erasing the Waukesha Massacre in Real Time.

Think of the press as a disinformation operation controlled by America’s enemies and you won’t go far wrong.

NO MORE REPUBLIC: Kilkenny-born farmer launches ‘no joke’ bid to get Ireland back into UK. ““In a functioning Republic, you must have an opposition and that opposition would be a unionist one realistically, seeing as over one million Irish people identify as unionist.”

A LITTLE LATE TO THE PARTY: Cultural Revolution was a catastrophe and Mao was responsible, China’s Communist Party upholds in landmark statement. But as they say that, they’re elevating Xi to Mao status, and he’s likely to do similar sorts of harm.

ARE WE SKIPPING SOMETHING?: The last COVID strain was called “Nu.” Going down the Greek alphabet, today’s new variant is called “Omicron.”

The W.H.O. wouldn’t want to offend China, now, would they?

UPDATE: It occurs to me that if they had any guts they’d have named it “Winnie.” But China is asshole.

TOP SELLER: Rockport Men’s Eureka Walking Shoe, Brown. #CommissinEarned

THOUGHTS ON WAUKESHA: Ford Should Be Thankful They’re Not a Gun Maker. “If Ford were a gun company, our betters in politics and the legacy media would be wringing their hands calling for accountability and liability right now. Against all rational thinking, they’d be shrieking on every cable news network that Ford should be sued by the victims of last weekend’s vehicular attack in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where a ridiculously powerful, high-speed Ford Escape killed six and injured at least 60 innocent Christmas parade goers.”

Especially since many major media outlets blamed the SUV instead of the driver.

COMPARISON TEST: Ford Bronco vs. Jeep Wrangler.

ZIPPY: The World’s Most Popular EVs Aren’t Cars, Trucks, or Motorcycles: The pandemic has helped transform the e-bike into a juggernaut. “Electric bicycles, better known as e-bikes, have moved from novelty to mainstream with breathtaking speed. They’ve been a boon to hard-working delivery persons during the pandemic (and their impatient customers), and commuters who don’t care to be a sweaty mess when they arrive. And while the scoffing tends to center around the “purity” of cycling—the idea that e-bike riders are somehow lazy cheaters—that electric assist is actually luring people off the couch for healthy exercise. That’s especially welcome for older or out-of-practice riders (which describes a whole lot of folks) who might otherwise avoid cycling entirely, put off by daunting hills or longer distances.”

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Pandemic depression persists among older adults, study finds.. “The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of older people living in the community, with those who are lonely faring far worse, according to new research from McMaster University.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: adidas Men’s EQ21 Trail Running Shoe, Black. #CommissionEarned

INFRASTRUCTURE LIKE NEW, NUCLEAR, POWER PLANTS: Ore., N.J. pushing for electric big rigs, but it will take infrastructure.

#RESIST: Joe Biden “I Did That!” Gas Pump Sticker. #CommissionEarned.

SKIN IN THE GAME: We Need ‘Kyle’s Law’ to Put DA’s on the Hook for Lying to Create Political Show Trials.

DEAL OF THE DAY: DEWALT 20V MAX Impact Wrench Kit, High Torque, Detent Pin Anvil, 1/2-Inch. #CommissinEarned

GEORGE KORDA: Authority should come with title of Knoxville’s community safety director.

THE PRESS HAS ALREADY STARTED TRYING TO BURY THIS STORY: The life and crimes of accused Waukesha Christmas parade killer Darrell Brooks.

The man who turned a quaint, small town Christmas parade into a blood-soaked nightmare that left six dead and over 60 injured is a career criminal who’s spent more than half of his life trapped in a revolving door of incarceration, drug abuse and violence.

Darrell Brooks, 39, allegedly used a red Ford Escape to plow through revelers at an annual Christmas celebration in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Sunday, but his life of crime started 22 years ago when he was just 17 years old.

Over the next two decades, Brooks would proceed to wreak havoc across three states as he racked up convictions for abusing his partners, raping and impregnating a teenager and a consistent streak of other violent crimes.

Out on $1000 bail.

Related: A common thread in Waukesha tragedy, Kenosha shootings: Government failure. “In fact, though, there is a thread connecting the Rittenhouse shootings and the Waukesha mass murder. But the thread isn’t so much racism as awful Democratic politicians.”

Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.