Maggie's Farm

Why Do They Want to Vaccinate Children?

 Italy Makes a Stunning Announcement About COVID-19 Death Toll

 NY Times Wonders If Classic Rock Songs Should Be Toppled Like Confederate Statues

 Arrest illustrates how the Steele dossier was a political dirty trick orchestrated by Hillary Clinton

New Jersey professor on White people: 'I want to say ... we got to take these motherf---kers out'

 MSNBC's Meltdown Over 2021 Races Was One for the Ages

 After Being Humiliated In VA, Democrats Tell the Voters to Kiss-Off

 Nearly a Week Later, It’s Still Not Clear . . . What Was the Lincoln Project Thinking?

Let's Go Brandon 

A cartoon (not The Simpsons for once) predicts liberal meltdown over 'Lets go, Brandon'

 Taibbi: The Red-Pilling Of Loudoun County, Virginia

 ‘Sure to infuriate a few folks’: Joe Manchin truth-bombs far-left Dems during interview with CNN

Even adventurous tourists like us prefer to stay in old towns, or the old town centers of cities. Sometimes country villas, but that is different. I've stayed in the real, ordinary Italy, and it's not so great for me. I like the Disney Italy.

Thing about the Italian life style is that most people do not work long hours. Whether in small towns or in cities, the passagiatta at around 5 or 6 pm is a ritual with kids, old folks and, of course, dogs on leashes. Delightful.  After that, some wine or aperatifs in a cafe. Dinner begins, mostly, 8-9 pm. That's when restaurants fill up. Many do not open for dinner until 7:30 or 8. After dinnertime, lovers are all out in the piazzas while kids kick soccer balls around in the dark. Cool.

Night is the time to get out and about. No danger except from growling dogs. Everything stays open at night.

Being American, dinner at 8 seems late but I am a guy who likes to get to the gym at 5 AM so I like to get to my books at 9 pm. (Readers know I do not do TV or movies.)

Sunset over the lagoon in Orbetello, which is not really a foreign tourist place but some Brits seem to like it (more night pics below the fold):

More evening and nighttime photos below - 

With the Maggie's General Fitness protocol (2 hrs of calisthenics, 2 hrs of HIIT and endurance cardio, and 2 hrs of difficult weights), there is no need to do any single exercise twice in a week.

Some examples:

For legs etc, you can do deadlift one day, barbell squats another. Or leg-press.

For HIIT, you can do stairmaster one day, treadmill sprints on another.

For triceps, you can do press-downs one day, skullcrushers on another.

For calisthenics, the list of choices is so long that you always vary what you do.

Varying the things you do reduces boredom, but also keeps your neuromuscular system nimble and adjusting. 

 Toxic Positivity

The Toll of Critical Race Theory on Our Children

 When are we going to stop doing this? When there's a third black mayor? A fifth? A tenth? Never?

Facebook Running TV Spots Begging Government To Regulate Them…

 What Have We Learned? The 'White Supremacy' Bit Is Hack

Desserts in Italy are not worth it. If you need a sweet, grab a gelato on the street. Or a lemon ice, which the Italians learned from the Arabs who, remarkably, imported the snow and ice from the Alps.

Tiramisu seems to be a popular Italian dessert. I think it's ok, but I rarely eat dessert anywhere.  I had one gelato (coffee) in Italy, and it was disappointing.

The guy who invented Tiramisu in the 1970s has died. 

Professor works to advance ‘fat justice’

 Did a NYT's OP-Ed Insinuate That the VA Girl Who Got Raped by Gender Fluid Kid Was Asking for It?

 GETTING MINDS RIGHT AT YALE: LEARNING FROM TRENT COLBERT

 The AMA jumps the Woke Shark, introduces Medspeak

 British government considers "psychological harm" punishment for online abuse

 Amazon To Open New Office In Jersey City After Being Chased Out Of NYC By AOC

 The Cost of Communism: 'Comrade de Blasio' Has Gutted the Big Apple

Poll: 71 Percent Say Country Headed in Wrong Direction Under Biden

 Glenn Youngkin's Win Officially Ends the Clinton Era in American Politics

 Bill Maher Continues His Anti-Democrat Streak, Wipes the Floor With the Woke Over Words

Driving north from the Rome airport along the coastal highway towards Orbetello, we had to stop in Tarquenia to look at the famous Etruscan tombs and their frescoes (the Monterozzi necropolis). This cemetary was in use from about the 9th C BC until Roman times.

Etruscans, as I view it, were proto-Romans.  A fresco sample:

Canceling Hogarth

  What did Alec Baldwin know of the firearm with which he killed Halyna Hutchins? The answer, based on his filmography, is not much.

 Bill Maher: Why won't blue states recognize that the pandemic is over?

 Virtue Signaling And Wokeness: A Return To The Primitive

White students lie about their race on college applications 

 Colin Kaepernick, Who By the Way Is Half-White and Very Ashamed of That, Claims That the NFL Draft Is Exactly Like a Slave Auction

VDH on the ignoble lies our government employees tell us 

 COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords

 The Big Climate Summit Welcomed Up to 30,000 Officials Flying in on Planes

 Young Climate Cultists Travel To Glasgow To Say This Is “The Last Chance For Humanity”

 DeSantis Calls $450K Payments To Illegal Immigrants “A Slap In The Face” To Americans, Claims Florida Will Fight Back

 Why Are Relatively Poor People Not More Supportive of Redistribution?

 McAuliffe: “Everyone Clapped When I Said’ Parents Should NOT Be In Charge Of Their Kids’ Education…

 Poll: 71 Percent Say Country Headed in Wrong Direction Under Biden

October is the best time of the year to visit Italy. The weather is cooler (low 70s), tourist crowds are way down except in Rome, the vineyards are turning golden yellow, and prices are off-season.  Very cheap deals at elegant places to stay. Just try to stay out of the hospitals because that is no picnic.

Best thing of all: it is truffle season.  Every decent place to eat had at least one truffle item on the menu, and we brought home two truffle pecorinos for Thanksgiving.  Our lovely place outside Montepulciano (Villa Poggiano) put up a chalk board of things they would arrange for you to do each day.  One of them was truffle-hunting. (Among others were a cooking class, horseback riding along the back dirt roads, and a rental Ferrari for 4 hours). 

I declined the truffle hunt because you have to pay but of course you don't get to keep the black truffles.  Also, I do not trust myself with a Ferrari although I do enjoy driving around rural Tuscany (in daylight only).  We did happen to see a truffle hunter with his dogs on one of our own back-country hikes on which we got happily lost. I always have a half-roll of toilet paper in the bottom of my Osprey daypack. Who does not?

An American honeymooning couple at our place did everything on the list during their stay. Ah, youth.

As we drove around southern Tuscany looking at various hill towns and things (MapQuest got us everywhere), we stopped by a Roman bath, Bagno Vignoni. We had a nice light lunch there, pecorino ravioli with black truffle. Roasted root veggies on the side. That's Italian!  I doubt that you have ever seen so many truffle slices in the USA. Naturally, I had a glass of Vino Nobile de Montepulciano. Fine for the purpose and helpful for driving confidence.

 A few more pics, and a truffle hunting vid below the fold -

Readers know that we like jump rope as an intense cardio (ie real "cardio") exercise. The heavier the rope, the more challenging. I have used a 1 lb rope a few times and it is brutal.

Speed rope vs. Weighted rope 

About jump ropes in general 

Jeremy Clarkson on why he won’t be giving up pheasant shooting

NYT on Cape Cod sharks 

 California condors: Virgin births discovered in critically endangered birds

How the FBI Discovered a Real-Life Indiana Jones in, of All Places, Rural Indiana. A 90-year-old amateur archaeologist who claimed to have detonated the first atomic bomb was also one of the most prolific grave robbers in modern American history.

 'We're being pressured into sex by some trans women'

WaPo:  What is an ‘emotional push-up’? Exploring the concept of mental health gyms.

Life is a mental health gym 

 University Allegedly Attempting To Fire Professor For Saying Hurt Feelings Are ‘No Big Deal’

 Border crisis hits classrooms as unaccompanied minors flood NY schools

 Elites Are Using Climate Hysteria to Immiserate the Working Class 

Dems Try To Pass Off $10,000 IRS Reporting Threshold as Merely Going After the 1 Percent. Proposed IRS surveillance now limited to non-wage net annual transactions of $10,000 and above. Which is still ridiculously low and intrusive.

 Judge Finds Teenager Guilty in Loudoun County Bathroom Assault

In Defense of Meritocracy. It’s the worst system for deciding who gets society’s most important positions—except for all the others.