ONE MORE POINT ABOUT THE MONA LISA: This is hardly an original thought, but it will make me feel better to say it in one sentence: Nothing makes it clearer that climate activism is about hating Western Civilization (and not about climate) than attacking one of Western Civilization’s greatest works of art.
I would add, “Throw the book at ’em,” but that would be more than one sentence.
OPEN THREAD: Have fun, kids!
OLD AND BUSTED: “America First.”
The new hotness? Watch: Ilhan Omar Rips the Mask Off and Pledges Her Allegience to Somalia in Disturbing Video.
THIS IS AN AGE OF MIRACLES AND WONDERS: World’s First Partial Heart Transplant Is Growing With a Baby.
JOHN KASS: Hero on the Border: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
QUESTION ASKED:
Jan 28, 1986: the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster took place. #80s I will always remember where I was when I watched it happen. Do you remember where you were when it happened? pic.twitter.com/C7Tnbj3fRE
— Old School 80s (@OldSchool80s) January 28, 2024
THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: Protesters hurl soup at Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in Paris.
It’s enough to wipe the smile off her face.
A pair of climate-change activists hurled pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa on Sunday at the Louvre Museum in Paris as onlookers gasped, shocking new video shows.
“What is more important?” the crazed activists shouted in French. “Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system?”
The two nuts are members of the activist group called “Riposte Alimetaire,” or Food Response, which issued a statement saying the stunt was meant to highlight the need to protect the environment.
No it isn’t. As Don Surber wrote last year: It is the painting they protest, not the oil.
We call this the cancel culture without realizing the accuracy of the phrase. The communists or whatever you wish to call the elitists and their brain-washed masses are turning the founding fathers of our constitutional republic into villains because that makes it easier to replace the God-given rights enumerated and protected by the Constitution with nonsense about the right to abortion and transgendering.
Perhaps there is a blowback.
The Daily Caller reported, “A leaked scene from the new film Tár went viral on social media on Thursday, largely as a result of the inherently anti-woke scripting from Todd Field.
“The scene shows leading lady Cate Blanchett’s character sitting at a piano with a young musician, seemingly in front of a class of students, as he completely misses whatever point she is trying to make about the power of music (or so one can assume without the full context of the storyline).
“‘Nowadays, white, male, cis composers, just not my thing,’ the young student says to her of Bach, one of the greatest and most famed composers of all time.
“‘Don’t be so eager to be offended,’ Blanchett’s character says back — not in a cruel or aggressive way, but seemingly as a way of pushing the young student to expand his mindset to accommodate Bach. ‘The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.’
“As the scene goes on, the script calls out the hypocrisy and history of music as it relates to the modern woke cultural movement. ‘If Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours,’ Blanchett continues.”
***
The problem with her “so can yours” argument is that they are untalented. All they have is their gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on.
They seek entitlement because they have no merit. They can only destroy — with cans of soup.
Related: The Taliban: an apology. “But today’s conversation about statues is not an argument about slavery or colonialism or even minorities more generally. It is an argument about historical objects, and what you do with them as values change. Values always change, and have done so for generations. But over the years, we’ve learned that our commitment to liberalism and free speech was outmoded. We won the battle over ourselves, and learned to see that the Afghan dogmatism that we wrote off as medieval was, in fact, the future.”
LOST IN A ROMAN WILDERNESS OF PAIN, AND ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE, ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE, WAITING FOR THE SUMMER RAIN: Democrat Marianne Williamson considers ending presidential run.
SO YOU’RE SAYING IT’S MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS? Two Young Boys Stabbed to Death, UK Police Urging Public Not to Identify Suspects. “The British authorities are fearful that the brutal killing of two teenagers could trigger another wave of public unrest. A 15-year-old boy and a 16-year-old boy, who are yet to be publicly identified by police, were stabbed by a ‘group of men’ on Saturday night.”
Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia was written by Kate Manne, a feminist philosophy expert and author of two other books about misogyny and “male privilege,” respectively. Prospect magazine named her one of “the world’s 50 top thinkers” in 2019 alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Greta Thunberg. She self-identifies as a “small fat,” as opposed to a “large fat,” “superfat,” or “infinifat,” and other terms from the “fat studies” lexicon you didn’t know existed.
Manne could have written an interesting book challenging the conventional wisdom that being fat is bad for your health. Most scientists seem to agree that it is, but if the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything it’s that so-called scientific experts don’t really know what they’re talking about and are prone to make authoritative pronouncements for purely political reasons. Manne cites other studies that found the relationship between fatness and health to be more “complicated” than we think, and there’s probably some truth to that.
Unshrinking is not that book. It is simply another data point supporting the argument that academic elites have lost their damn minds, starting with the James Baldwin epigraph and trigger warning about “frank descriptions of fatphobia in its intersections with racism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, etc.” Further reading reveals that fatphobia also intersects with classism, ageism, colorism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. It’s bigotry all the way down.
Flashback: obesity: Michael Fumento on COVID’s Third Rail.
The very same thinking prevails regarding the obesity-COVID link, notwithstanding that even Saint Anthony Fauci has often made it. Declared a February 2021 article in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, “. . . questions remain about the quantitative risk of the association between fatness [and COVID].” It uses a common term in shame-shaming literature, “fatphobia.” That means if you disagree, you’re mentally ill.
“‘Unjust And Unethical’ Fatness Being Called A Risk Factor For Coronavirus – Kiwi Fat Studies Scholar,” is the headline of an article in a New Zealand commercial publication. “This insidious move of taking responsibility away from governments and putting it onto individuals [is ridiculous],” insists our scholar. “To say that your health is solely a matter of your own choice and your own personal responsibility, and therefore if you become ill or if you die, it’s your fault [doesn’t make sense].”
Yet shame has always been an effective tool in encouraging good behaviors and discouraging bad ones. I was a critic of the “Environmental Tobacco Smoke” pseudoscience (and was therefore accused of being paid by Big Tobacco), yet I’ll be the first to admit that it apparently served its purpose by shaming smokers in changing the message from “your smoking will kill you” to “your smoking will kill others.” The percentage of Americans smoking plummeted during and after the campaign, and I have no other explanation other than that “Smoking shaming” worked—an outcome I’m happy about, despite the underhanded method.
But smokers were much in the minority, whereas obese and overweight people are very much in the majority. Moreover, given that American journalists aren’t required to be fit like members of the military, there’s no reason to think that American journalists are any less fat than their target audience. They’re writing for themselves.
QED:
CAN WE QUIT INDULGING CALIFORNIA’S IDIOSYNCRATIC AUTO AND ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS? California Bill Calls for Tech to Make New Cars Unable to Speed. “The bill would require 2027 and newer vehicles to have a speed limiter that could prevent them from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit.”
WHOSE SILVER BULLET WINS 2024? Democrats are confident abortion will be their silver bullet to win the 2024 elections, but a GOP pollster points to new data that strongly suggests the border chaos will do the trick for the Republicans. Read it here only in my Special Report for The Epoch Times.
WELL, THAT’S SMART: “I don’t feel safe on the NYC Subway since the pandemic.”
Because you’re not, and the City, by all appearances, likes it that way.
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) Wireless Ear Buds. #CommissionEarned
REMEMBER WHEN ELECTING BIDEN WAS SUPPOSED TO BRING DIGNITY BACK TO THE OVAL OFFICE? Biden Freaks Out in South Carolina and Starts Screaming About Trump.
CAN’T TRUST ‘EM. IF WE CAN’T TRUST ‘EM, CAN WE ALLOW THEM TO EXIST? NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data. Violating Americans’ privacy “not just unethical but illegal,” senator says.
I HOPE NOT: Martian lake confirmation brings hope sediment samples may reveal past life. Or at least that it’s limited to past life.
Related: Why I hope there’s no life on Mars.
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH:
1. What process will the public use to scan, filter and follow events?
2. By what process will the public form and modify mental models about the world?
3. Where facts are disputed or manipulation is rampant, how will the public verify truth?— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) January 27, 2024
Endless bad luck is nature's way of telling you something is wrong.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) January 28, 2024
DARK SIDE OF THE ZOOZVE: “So about a year ago, I was putting my little guy to bed in his crib and I noticed a strange detail on the solar system poster up on his wall. Venus had a moon called Zoozve. Huh, I thought. Never heard of that.”
They told me that Zoozve is NOT a moon of Venus. But it’s also NOT NOT a moon of Venus. It’s both and neither. WTH?
* * * * * * * * *
Contrary to the posters, we don’t live in a big clockwork, we live in a dance club, and while some of us are doing the same old waltz with our same old moon, there are bodies out there do-si-do-ing their way all over the solar system.”
Read the whole thing.
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