I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER ACTUALLY WATCHING MUSIC VIDEOS ON MTV: MTV: From Cultural Juggernaut to … Whatever It Is Now.

MTV officially went live at midnight on August 1, 1981, with the video for the Buggles’s “Video Killed the Radio Star” and an edited clip of Neil Armstrong’s moon walk planting the MTV flag. The designer of the clip, which was initially played every hour on the channel, chose the moon landing footage because it was one of the “most famous television scene ever,” but more importantly, it was free. His first idea was the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, so let’s all give thanks for the public domain.

Flashback: Them’s Fightin’ Words: ‘Music in the ’80s Sucked.’

IRANIAN IMPUNITY IN THE U.S.? Man Arrested with AK-47 Outside Brooklyn Home of Iranian Dissident.

WELL, CAROLYN MALONEY: Facts And Details Were Beside the Point During Carolyn Maloney’s Gun Industry Ritual Beatings.

HARSH BUT FAIR: Wait, I Thought the Democrats Already Did That: Iran Threatens to Turn New York City Into ‘Hellish Ruins.’

BE PREPARED: Mountain House Chicken & Dumplings | Freeze Dried Backpacking & Camping Food |6-Pack. #CommissionEarned

JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO CLEAN GOVERNMENT: Prominent Senator Predicts ‘Deal’ to Hide Hunter Biden Indictment From American People.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The smart glasses that let deaf people ‘See’ conversations: £400 XRAI augmented reality sunglasses turn audio into captions that are instantly projected in front of your eyes.

OUT: SCIENCE SHOULDN’T BE UNDER THE THUMB OF THEOLOGY!!! IN: A new law is putting astronomy back in the hands of Native Hawaiians. “The law includes that the group must include one member who is a ‘lineal descendant’ of a practitioner of Native Hawaiian traditions associated with the mountain, and another who is currently a recognized practitioner of those Native Hawaiian traditional practices. That stipulation is especially important as it’s the first time community experts and practitioners will be able to make those kinds of decisions for their community.”

This seems constitutionally questionable on several grounds.

NEW NFL SEASON KICKING OFF SWIMMINGLY: NFL suspends Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson six games after sexual assault accusations: reports. Watson faced 24 civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault.

UNDERSTANDING WOKE TACTICS PT. 7: CALL-OUTS.

There is one other element of the call-out which we must say something about, and that is the artificiality of it. What the woke do is attempt to hijack the mechanisms of social rejection and social disapproval that we use to enforce moral and social norms, and use them in the service of enforcing wokeness. They will often co-ordinate attack on people by calling them out and socially swarming them in a way which looks organic. It is an attempt to make artificially created and pre-planned call-outs and swarms look like authentic, spontaneous, organic social disapproval. They are weaponizing social rejection as a way to shut people up. It’s mean, cruel, and unkind.

The way to deal with a tactic like this is to simple but we need to understand that call-outs thrive on the drama of the call-out. That is, a call-out generates a whole lot of publicity and interest as people wait to se how someone reacts. If you simply refuse to react to a call-out sooner or later the digital crowd which has gathered will lose interest. Remember, call-outs are almost always relying on artificial attention. There are certain accounts which have cultivated an audience that has as it’s goal to swarm, pile on, and drag people. They turn their accounts into a sort of evil call-out “bat-signal” that alerts their followers that now is the time to swarm, pile on, and brigade someone. This is not organic. Most regular people do not walk around looking for people to pile-on and swarm, and most people do not respond well to “hey, let’s pile on this random Wal-Mart worker.”

Now that we understand this, we can see that the solution to a call-out is to simply be as non-responsive as possible. In a social media setting the way to deal with it is to simply ignore it until the crowd that has gathered for the call-out drama has dispersed. The people who gather around for drama will leave just as soon as there is other drama to attend to, and there is always some drama somewhere for them to attend to. Once you realize that the pressure is artificially induced as a method of trying to make you shut up it is a lot easier to just ignore it until it goes away.

If you are in a real setting where someone is trying to call you out at work in some public way, the simple answer is:

“if you want to discuss this in private that’s fine, but I refuse to allow you to try to put me on the spot and then pepper me with questions and accusations under the bright light of social pressure so you can rake me over the coals. If you want to have a real conversation then we will set something up, if not then I consider the matter closed.”

The thing you must remember in a real life situation is that under no circumstances will you answer any questions in public. If they want to schedule a meeting fine, if not then let it die. There might be some drama or tension for a while, but not nearly as much as there would be if you indulged them and answered their questions. After all, no answer you give will ever be good enough, so it is best to highlight the fact that the person who is calling you out is weaponizing social pressure and then refuse to engage. If they want to take a matter to HR then you can deal with the matter there, but under zero circumstances will you be handling the matter in public.

Read the whole thing.

SHE’S RIGHT: Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Biden Administration of ‘Dangerously Promoting Child Abuse.’

ANTI-GMO PEOPLE WILL TRY TO GET IT BANNED: Genetically engineered rice needs less fertilizer, makes more food.

NICE, BUT THIS IS ALL MOVING MUCH TOO SLOWLY: US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design.

TALCUM X UPDATE: Pet Project: BLM Activist Shaun King Used Donor Funds To Buy $40k Thoroughbred Show Dog.

JUST SAY NO TO COMMON VIRUSES: Common viruses may be triggering the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

REPUBLICAN WHO IMPEACHED TRUMP LEARNS A HARD LESSON ABOUT HIS NEW FRIENDS:

For me, the problem here isn’t that [Peter] Meijer impeached Trump. If he really felt that was the right move, I’d disagree with him, but he was within his capacity as a House member to do so, and it’s possible for someone to be principled and wrong at the same time. What’s laughable, though, is how naive Meijer was in believing that such a move would insulate him.

His op-ed is just one long performance of political flailing as he desperately tries to signal his virtue to Democrats who are trying to defeat him. “I am the only freshman in history to impeach a president of his own party” he proclaims, making me wonder if he would like a cookie. To put it simply, if you are going to impeach the president of your own party based on no evidence whatsoever, at least have enough self-respect to stop groveling before your new friends after they betray you.

So you would think that the Democrats would look at [former Trump official] John Gibbs and see the embodiment of what they say they most fear. That as patriots they would use every tool at their disposal to defeat him and similar candidates that they’ve said are an existential threat.

Instead they are funding Gibbs.

No, I wouldn’t think that. Why would anyone think that? Is Meijer aware of the history of the Democrat Party? My gosh, dude, don’t just openly admit you have zero political acumen. They are boosting your opponent because they do not care about you. They never cared about you. You were a useful idiot to put a “bipartisan” stamp on their ill-fated impeachment. The moment you outlived your usefulness, they were always going to throw you overboard.

Frog meets Scorpion.

CHOOSE WISELY: Will Kyrsten Sinema Choose Her Country or Her Party?

“CANDYGRAM!” Bear rings doorbell at South Carolina home.

David Baron, call your office.

HMM: Lebanon Seizes Ship Loaded With Stolen Ukrainian Grain. “The fact that Lebanon, a small and broke country, is willing to defy both Russia and Syria, speaks to how unified much of the world is against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and how little such countries fear Russia’s wrath these days.”

THE ONION: China Threatens To Retaliate For Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip By Letting Her Return Safely.

Related: Live look at Pelosi in mid-flight:

PRIORITIES: ‘What’s a Monkeypox?’ San Fran Leather Fest Goes on Despite Public Health Warning from WHO.

PROF. JACOBSON: We Are At An Inflection Point In the Battle To Save Education.

YOU’RE NOT PARANOID, IF THEY REALLY ARE OUT TO GET YOU:

Some very odd things are happening in the modern world of government and politics that don’t conform to democratic theory. I’m thinking, for instance, of the mass protests against anti-Covid regulations in cities across France, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Italy, Australia, the United States, and in Canada without much attention from the international media; the brutally violent police tactics used against protesters in most of these cities, especially farmers in Holland and car-owners (the Gilets Jaunes) in France, again with not much media coverage; the attempts by the Canadian government to crush the truckers’ parking protest in Ottawa by such extraordinary (and extra-legal) methods as seizing the bank accounts of people who wanted to help them financially; the violent overthrow of the Sri Lankan government because it had instituted agricultural policies banning the use of fertilizers on the advice of the World Economic Forum that led to crop failures and widespread hunger; and the signing of a memorandum of understanding on future cooperation between the United Nations and the aforementioned W.E.F. which is little more officially than a conference of corporate CEOs (though it boasts of planting its former interns in high government positions around the world).

In short, though I haven’t weakened yet, I’m tempted to become a conspiracy theorist.

The mere existence of the W.E.F., an international conference of billionaires and CEOs who fly in annually to a remote Alpine resort to discuss how the world should be governed, to which prime ministers, presidents, and “opinion formers” are flattered to be invited, arouses my curiosity. It sounds (and acts) like a sinister conspiracy in a dystopian novel by writers as various as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley, or like Karl Marx’s “executive committee of the bourgeoisie.” Yet it is deeply respectable—it signs MoU’s with the U.N. for heavens sake!—and is seen as mildly and desirably progressive. Moreover, because it brings together “top people” from all enterprises and institutions, its policy prescriptions have an almost automatic credibility rooted in a general expectation that the W.E.F. network will get these things done. Next step: they’re inevitable!

These people are morons who pay no price when things go badly. You’d have to be crazy to consent to being ruled by people like that. And nobody has.

REGULATIONS ARE A FRIEND TO KARENS: Code Snitching: Nashvillians Are Weaponizing Metro Codes Against ‘Undesirable’ Neighbors: Taking a deep dive on a trend that disproportionately affects Black and low-income Nashvillians.

READER FAVORITE: Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body. #CommissionEarned