OPEN THEAD: Enjoy yourselves.

OVER AT MY SUBSTACK: Some Notes on Fitness: My practice with weight lifting and yoga.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Lust From Victoria’s Secret Mailers Down 800%.

A recent study has found that the level of sinful lust generated by Victoria’s Secret mailers has plummeted a staggering 800% in recent years. Experts are now attributing this significant decline to one simple, yet profound reason: the once-sexy magazine just isn’t as seductive as it used to be.

“We were absolutely flabbergasted by the results,” admitted Dr. Albert Jones, lead researcher of the study. “Apparently replacing beautiful, in-shape babes with obese women and hairy dudes in lingerie causes the lust factor to plummet drastically for some reason.”

According to sources, many participants in the study reported feeling a different kind of deep sense of disappointment and shame than usual upon receiving the latest Victoria’s Secret mailer. One recipient even remarked, “I’ve seen more enticing, sexy photos in farm equipment catalogs.”

Flashback: Leave Supermodels Alone!

The other night, after I’d had a little too much of this world, I decided to bathe in cleansing waters and scour my soul by watching the new E! True Hollywood Story episode on Victoria’s Secret.  (Yes, I know. Life is sad.)

Best I can tell, this investigative blockbuster was largely derived from a New York Times story from last year, subtly headlined, “Angels in Hell: The Culture of Misogyny Inside Victoria’s Secret.”  The gory particulars of both the article and the E! documentary were enough to curl your hair, not unlike the bouncy locks of former VS model Jill Goodacre (a Victoria’s Secret OG). There were harrowing tales of handsy, lecherous  executives, and of models getting ready for Objectification Fest (the once-hallowed Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show) by eating an apple a day with no sides.  Ed Razek, the former chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret’s then parent company, L Brands, was so creepy, that he kept company with Jeffrey Epstein, the latter of whom posed as a Victoria’s Secret recruiter.  It was all genuinely awful.

But perhaps most unsettling of all, according to the ominous narration, VS didn’t show a commitment to diversity of body types  (women, you may have heard, come in all shapes and sizes!), and they continued to “market a standard of beauty that customers found male, stale, and hopelessly out of touch.” (Just imagine a woman so deluded, that she’d try to make herself attractive to a man while performing the sacred fourth-wave feminist rite of buying lingerie.)  After hearing this last bit, I sat there in stone silence for what felt like hours, but was probably just a few minutes or so, until E! aired another rerun of The Bradshaw Bunch, in which former NFL great Terry Bradshaw “still stinging from their embarrassing loss last year…..coaches the family for a repeat appearance on Celebrity Family Feud.”

I hurt for my supermodel sisters.  I asked a lot of unanswerable questions like, “Why, God, why?”  Then I asked one last question, which you’re not supposed to utter in public: “Whatever happened to skinny, beautiful models, and will they be coming back any time soon?”

As Iowahawk likes to say:

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Return to the moon: The race we have to win (again): Those who control the moon gain a lot of options when it comes to the future. “China is focused primarily on the moon and is moving full-speed ahead on its lunar base. They plan to put their citizens on the moon before 2030 and stay there — permanently. China will then use its base to begin mining lunar resources as part of an industrial development program. From that first landing, their current plan is to expand and accelerate dramatically in the 2030s, leading to full-scale lunar factories by the 2040s producing materials to build massive solar power stations and other space facilities. For those who might be skeptical of my words or of Chinese promises, or are still bought into the NASA Artemis hype, let’s compare.”

I’LL TAKE “WHAT IS HUNTER BIDEN’S NEXT VACATION SPOT?” FOR $500, ALEX: ‘Cocaine Sharks’ may be feasting on bales of drugs off Florida’s coast.

ON THIS DAY IN 1969: First manned moon landing still amazes the world today, a powerful example of American exceptionalism.

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Does Oppenheimer have a post-credits scene?

RIDICULE IS MAN’S MOST IMPORTANT WEAPON: Just Stop Oil protestors get surrounded by counter-demonstrator group Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off.

SKYNET HEALS: A Cracked Piece of Metal Healed Itself in an Experiment That Stunned Scientists.

THE DREAM IS TO BE ABLE TO POWER A CAR WITH HYDROGEN GENERATED FROM WATER ON THE FLY: Extracting a Clean Fuel From Water – A Groundbreaking Low-Cost Catalyst.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Being Against Crime Added To List Of Things That Are Racist https://t.co/cx3bi2TrVy pic.twitter.com/oRfRbTA3Pb

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 20, 2023

The thing is, it’s not really a joke. The criminals are in fact tools of the Democrats — that’s why they promote crime when they’re in power — in a war to disorient and demoralize the normies. And “racism” is a tool the lefties use to try to keep their opponents from organizing against them. It’s true here, and it was true with the Yellow Jacket protests in France:

Talking about the yellow-vest movement, French geographer Christophe Guilluy observes: “Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist, but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.”

Any person or group in opposition to the Democrats is smeared as racist or bigoted because that’s their excuse for suppressing them. And there’s a whole infrastructure — see, e.g., the Southern Poverty Law Center — to promote the smears and launder them as coming from “nonpartisan” sources.

UPDATE: Related:

So Jason Aldean is catching A LOT of shit for his new song because of the lyrics in this video.

Let’s highlight some music lyrics that aren’t causing any controversy and see why that might be. Shall we?

• DMX: ‘If you got a daughter older than 15, I’mma rape her/Take her on… pic.twitter.com/IAJoCMWvXw

— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) July 19, 2023

WELL, GOOD: Finger prick blood test may detect Alzheimer’s.

ARMOND WHITE: Barbie Gets Weaponized.

Greta Gerwig’s $145 million Barbie movie from Warner Bros. is not for children. Although founded on the Sixties doll made of vinyl compound and marketed by Mattel (whose rainbow-flag logo introduces the film), it only pretends to be fantasy storytelling. Set in pink-motif Barbieland, home of the iconic doll (played by Margot Robbie), it traverses a sci-fi “rip in the continuum between Barbieland and the real world” to allow Gerwig’s jaded-feminist adult social messaging.

* * * * * * * *

When Barbie grouses about “sexualized capitalism” and pouts “I’m not pretty,” Mirren interrupts: “Note to filmmakers: Margot Robbie is the wrong actress to cast to make this point.” Fact is, tough-blonde Robbie lacks slim, doll-like fragility. Granted, she achieves one of the film’s only two good moments: pantomiming crestfallen Barbie’s plastic stiffness. But Robbie’s lewd, manic stare (perfect for Suicide Squad) is too scary for Barbie. The film’s other good moment belongs, surprisingly, to Gosling, who lip-synchs Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” in perfect raspy parody of a corporate folk-rock teen idol.

After that, Barbie goes to plasticine hell. Diversity hires America Ferrera and Issa Rae give abominable speeches about Latino and black feminist sacrifice, and Rhea Perlman appears morphing Barbie inventor Ruth Handler into Ruth Bader Ginsburg. New Lizzo and Billie Eilish songs provide feminist equity. Things get more child-unfriendly when Gerwig tosses in terms such as “irrepressible thoughts of death,” “Proustian flashback,” and “patriarchy anxiety.” Most kids will probably be bored by Barbie, and even the cool kids might frown at Baumbach’s name-dropping hipster in-jokes about The Godfather (“Coppola’s aesthetic, the genius of Robert Evans, and the architecture of ’70s Hollywood”).

Worst yet: One of the man-hating Barbies sneers, “Like, I was really invested in the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League!” How could any decent industry professional attack another filmmaker this way? It’s the ultimate sign that Gerwig and Baumbach know nothing about making pop entertainment. They left the indie-world of American eccentrics to join Hollywood’s obnoxious elite. Frantic, uncheerful, and graceless, Barbie symbolizes a culture that devalues childhood and goodness.

Gergwig is set to infuse another beloved childhood icon with maximum wokeness: Barbie Director Greta Gerwig Provides Update On The Chronicles Of Narnia Films.

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?

What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?

That is in many ways a terrible question, for reasons I’ll discuss shortly.

But it’s been on my mind as a ferocious heat wave roasts California and other states — and as I’ve watched Glendale respond to a Sierra Club lawsuit over the fate of the city’s gas-fired power plant, just across the L.A. River from Griffith Park.

I sat in a dimly lit courtroom in downtown Los Angeles last week as the lawyers squared off. An attorney representing the Sierra Club argued that Glendale officials had exaggerated the need for the gas plant as they urged the City Council to spend an estimated $170 million to keep burning fossil fuels. An attorney for the city countered that the investment — which the council approved in a 4-1 vote — is desperately needed to provide reliable electricity to Glendale’s roughly 190,000 residents, and avoid blackouts.

It’s a highly technical dispute. But it’s part of a larger conversation about how much blackout risk we consider acceptable in modern society — and whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.

(Bolding in original article.) Flashback: Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?

The Korean War Armistice – 70 Years And Counting: Iffy Anniversary: Korea Is a Forever War

South Korea is a huge success, North Korea remains a communist basket case. South Korea has the 12th highest GDP according to some statisticians. This website has South Korea as Number 10, ahead of Russia. So maybe the Korean War’s a successful forever war?

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Malaria has a rich history in the US. Should Americans be worried about rising cases?

WATCH: House Democrats Vote to Censor RFK Jr. During Hearing on Government Censorship.

Thursday brought about another hearing on the weaponization of the federal government on Capitol Hill. In an ongoing affair as of this writing, Robert Kennedy Jr. is testifying before the select committee.

Kennedy has been the topic of recent controversy after he claimed that COVID-19 may have been bioengineered to be less harmful to those of Chinese and Jewish descent. That was immediately claimed to be an antisemitic comment, with even his own family denouncing him.

I’m not a fan of Kennedy (I think his record shows him to be a far-left hack who has whispered a few sweet nothings into conservative ears), but I think that charge is really unfair. I don’t believe he was trying to suggest Jews were somehow behind engineering COVID-19. He was citing a study, albeit he cited it incorrectly. Certainly, you can criticize him for that, but that doesn’t amount to antisemitism.

Regardless, in one of the most ironic moves I’ve ever seen occur in Congress, House Democrats voted to censor Kennedy in a hearing on government censorship. You quite literally can’t make this stuff up. Reality is too absurd.

Evergreen:

EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED: Matt Taibbi: Covid’s Origins and the Death of Trust.

If you read the documents up at Public like a novel, and follow the chorus-like Slack exchanges between the four key scientists as a drama with a beginning, middle, and end, it’s hard to miss the brutal lesson. Four people whose job was to divine truth through scientific analysis were