Maggie's Farm

 A Brief History of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Weird, Wonderful Career

*The Two-Parent Privilege*

 All of our “theories of everything” are probably wrong. Here’s why

 Climate Change Activists Now Going After Rice – A Staple That Feeds Billions

  SFSU athletic director: ‘Common mistake’ to think men have physical advantages over women

 MAP: Transgenderism and “Queer Theory” in K-12 schools in all Continental United States

 Former Director Of National Intelligence Admits That Fauci Lied About Gain Of Function Research

 CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Finally Admits Vaccinated Individuals Can Spread COVID Virus

 WH Spox: “Happy Tax Day … I Know People Are Always Excited About This Day”

 How Bad Is Portland's Drug Problem? So Bad That It Closed a County Drug Center.

 Human tidal wave is waiting for border to open May 11 — Biden has no plan to stop it

 America, the World's Scold

Victor Davis Hanson: Can We Do Anything About America's Decline?

 Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket is turning into a space policy disaster.

Trifluralin is the active ingerdient of Preen.

Google it for prices cheaper than the brand name. 

Patrick is good

 The collector - David Fulton has owned some of history’s most treasured violins, violas, and cellos. Now he’s telling their stories—and his own.

 When Science Fiction Becomes Reality: Brave New World

 Pick a Practical Major, Like French

 The war on food continues

 Philosophy’s No-Go Zone - An MIT professor describes the outraged reaction from fellow philosophers when he argued that a woman is an adult human female.

 UN-Backed Report Suggests Normalizing Pedophilia, Decriminalizing All Sexual Activity

 Academic does research on political pressure in education. Guess what happened.

WSJ: The Companies That Give Everyone the Day Off When Life Gets Stressful

 New Chicago Mayor Warns Against Demonizing Thugs Who Beat Man - "It is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities"

 Russia steps up attacks on Bakhmut as Putin visits annexed regions of Ukraine

 Are ChiComs Staging Invasion of Mainland USA?

 Germany Closes Its Last Nuclear Power Plants - Electricity Bills To Spike Up To 45%

I don't know why The Atlantic presents this as "an American Problem": The Atlantic’s May Cover Story: “American Madness”. Jonathan Rosen writes about his childhood best friend’s schizophrenic break, and America’s ongoing failure to help the mentally ill.

The varieties of presentations under the umbrella of Schizophrenia worldwide is around 0.3 %. Not rare. There are no cures, but there are things than can help these people somewhat, if they want them. I do not know what % of the street people they represent.

In the old days, non-functional and irrational people were kept in the attic or basement, or situated in asylums and sanitariums. With modern medicines, people can do somewhat better if they accept treatment and reasonable support for a lifetime. In the US, that is voluntary.

Like the author of the article, a good pal in my freshman year in college descended into psychosis. I watched the darkness and dysfunction descend until his parents took him home. Tragic. I wonder what happened.

Preen prevents seed germination. All sorts of seeds. It is a pre-emergent germination preventer.

It's entirely safe with vegetable gardens, as long as any seeds you planted have first sprouted. 

Courtly Love, Modernized

 Landmark surgery cures prostate cancer in under one hour

Hope that is true 

A Laser agricultural weeder - very cool 

 Why don’t today’s teens want to drive?

 Colorado becomes first transgender tourism state: Democratic Gov signs bill that allows children to travel for puberty blockers — even if drugs are banned where they live

 Elon Musk Says US Government Had Access To Private Twitter DMs

 Buttigieg: roads designed to kill Black people

 Ukraine ‘Apes’ India & China To Buy Cheap Russian Oil; Pocketed Millions Of USD By ‘Trading With Enemy’ — Hersh

Chess has a new popularity

A friend's new novel about ghosts:  A Windmill, A Knight, A Ghost, A Jerusalem  by Nathan Szajnberg

 Long-Delayed Robert Johnson Bio Published 

 Prep isn’t ‘back’ — it never left. Why aspirational dressing will be with us forever

 The Fast Casual Society - Our abandonment of standards of dress means the loss of expressive potential and our sense of occasion.

 The Babylon Bee Sues to Block California From Forcing It to Be Unfunny

 Budweiser Replaces Clydesdales With Cows Dressed As Horses

 A large-scale French study suggesting symptoms of so-called long COVID may be more due to psychological factors than to infection with the virus has sparked debate among patients and scientists.

 Yale Columnist Enraged by the Politeness of Pro-Life Students on Campus. “Their smug civility was infuriating; their invitations for debate, inflammatory.”

Sheesh 

NYC:  The Office of the Public Advocate is Closed to the Public

 $29 ham and cheese sandwich a total rip-off — so why are NYers eating it up?

 Why People Are Fleeing Blue Cities for Red States

 70 yrs ago today, Allen Dulles launched the CIA's mind control program MKULTRA.

 COVID shutdowns were just the beginning. Climate lockdowns are next. Apart from the extreme limitations on personal freedom and travel, this means either a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation.

 Meta paid people to literally do nothing

 Elon Musk Sounds The Alarm During Tucker Carlson Interview, Says AI Has Potential To Destroy Civilization

 Google CEO says he doesn't 'fully understand' how new AI program Bard works after it taught itself a foreign language it was not trained to and cited fake books to solve an economics problem

Hal? 

 IT’S GOOD TO KNOW FACTS

I think about 5 hours is all, maybe 6, over this weekend. It's Spring here, so time for weekend functional movementss instead of gym. Unlike gym, beer is permitted here. But damn, my wheelbarrow broke so more deadlifts than I wanted.

- Till vegetable garden (mostly for tomatoes, but some squash too despite the f-ing squash borers) with shovel, and prepare trenches for tomatoes in a month or so. I will like to put some annual flowers in there too, for fun. Also, Mouse Melons and cucumbers. Someday, I want to make an herb garden, but now I just stick them in pots or anywhere. Thyme is my favorite flavor, and it lives forever.

- Prune all shrubs, roses, peach tree, and fig tree.

- Fertilize all shrubs and the rhubarb patch too. Late to do that, but better late than never. Really should have dumped a pile of manure on the rhubarb before it emerged.

-  Fertilize lawn. Man, my lawn is not up to snuff. I found a spot where the coyotes like to poop. 

- Planted all of the indoor seasonal narcissi in the front garden 

-  Put wren houses out and repair Screech Owl nest box (too late for that?).

Let's get two things straight first: 

- An hour of physical activity daily, just walking, jogging, or swimming laps, is better than nothing. It's minimal to maintain functionality.

-  You can't lose fat through exercise. That's about food. 

I've been chatting with doctors lately - my cardiologist for my annual stress test (no symptoms, no problems) and the internist who works out in my gym at 5 am. Oh, and my pure weights friend who is my internist (he is buff at 60). They joke about people who do long/slow exercise instead of weights and HIIT, but they are wrong to disparage people who make the effort to do anything more than sit on their asses. 

Of course, though, I know what the docs are talking about. 

Let's just talk about cardiac fitness rather than just the ability to hike for 5 or 6 hours.  The reasons to do "cardio" exercises are only secondarily for general endurance - they mean to address the heart muscle. That means Cardiac Output when needed, and improving heart vasculature (so you can maybe survive your first heart attack). People who just do "cardio" things do not build or maintain much strength.

That gets us to HIIT. HIIT is a serious cardiac stressor. It's sort-of fun too if you like to sweat. Yes, heavy weights are heart stressors too, but only for seconds. Our Maggie's calisthenics routines are too, to a degree, although they are more oriented to athleticism.

For people who like fitness, one way to do cardio days (assuming you do 2 weights days and 2 calisthenic/sports days) is to use the hour or so to mix in the HIIT with just trucking along. That's how the idea is designed to work anyway. 

 Low-Intensity Cardio Training: What Is It & How Does It Work? (Note that they assume that low intensity is just one part of a fitness program) 

 Is High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) the Most Efficient Way to Work Out? A simple guide to high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, the fitness trend du jour.

Eventually, we will all break down, get frail, and die (or die before we get frail), but why not make the most of today? Fitness is not about life span.

Meet the Australian lady behind your GPS 

WSJ: The Primary Breadwinner Is Disappearing From More Homes

 Protesters demand trans inmates be removed from all-female New Jersey prison, where 1 in 15 people were born male

 Thirty Years of Global Warming Prophecies

Meritocracy is racist 

 The Government’s Own Numbers Show Biden’s EV Mandate Is Crazy

Not serious 

Another menu I just found from our October hiking trip in Provence. No choices - it was what the Chef wanted to do that night. Olive Oil Ice? Yeah. Quite amazing. But for me, it's all about the cheeses.

 Primitive Asgard Cells Show Life on the Brink of Complexity. As researchers race to cultivate more of the intriguing cells from the deep seafloor, the few cells now growing in labs are giving us our best glimpses of the forerunners of all complex life.

Who was David Reimer?

 Too much AI has big drawbacks for doctors — and their patients

 Progressives’ years-long campaign to get NYers to flee state is working

 Natural Gas Derangement Syndrome

Nellie always is amusing: TGIF: They Can’t Handle The Truth. A professor lies about race. A newspaper condemns a leak. A state cooks data to hide its missing students. Plus: the Dalai Lama. And much more.

 The College Kids Who Unionized Amazon

 Diversity or Merit

 Political scientist: DEI policies linked to decrease in free speech support on campus, surveys show

 Hamas Official: May Allah Bring Annihilation Upon The Jews….

 The Chicago Teachers Union Now Runs the Mayor’s Office

"You will probably not recognize the name of Audrey Hale. For reasons that are not perhaps as opaque as they seem, her name and her cause have been conveniently erased from public consciousness.  After all, she shot up a Christian school, murdering three children and three adults last week." 

Some guys want to be eunuchs 

 Image via Doug Ross

 Global Warming Blamed for Home Runs

 "Bali is part of a growing number of popular travel destinations that are fed up with overtourism

This guy is no ballerina 

How large is Mexico? 

 College students with intellectual disabilities deserve better standards, agency says

"You Just Lied!": Elon Crushes BBC Reporter's Claims About 'Hate Speech' On Twitter

 Pouty NPR Claims That Twitter's 'State-Affiliated Media' Designation Undermines NPR's Credibility

 The Media and Politicians Keep Trying To Censor Things That Turn Out To Be True. The COVID-19 lab leak theory was labeled "misinformation." Now it's the most plausible explanation.

" Over the past three years, we reporters learned there were certain things that we weren’t allowed to say."

Why The People Who Cry "Hate Speech!" Are The Biggest Haters

As we have posted almost annually, lawns are not natural. They are more like turf farms. In the US, lawns and golf courses are imitations of UK sheep meadows and cattle pastures. 

 When to fertilize your lawn in spring? Lawn experts share their advice. Get the timing right for when you fertilize your lawn for lush and healthy results

The Pentagon Leak Is Really Bad, So Is Government’s Response

I believe nothing 

 Global Warming Blamed for Home Runs

 Stop freaking out over teenagers with fast-food jobs

 NYT gets what they wanted...good and hard

 Merit Over Identity - Dismantling DEI bureaucracies is the key to reviving American universities.

 The UK is among a number of countries with military special forces operating inside Ukraine, according to one of dozens of documents leaked online.

I'm not much of a stretcher except before heavy lifts. What good does it do?

 It's 50 years since Picasso died, and a lot of people are using the occasion to womansplain what a bad boyfriend/husband he was.

 The Case Against ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’. Canada’s assisted-death law seems connected to the atomization of our society—as much a symptom of inhumanity as a cause.

Artificial Therapy

 Now, This Makes Sense – Marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid Explains Why She MadeBud Light the Brand for Woke Transvestites

 How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives

 CAN THE DEMOCRATS’ STRUCTURAL ADVANTAGES BE OVERCOME?

 Victor Davis Hanson: Fiddling America Away

 The Left has killed our great cities

 New York Times goes full Trump Derangement Syndrome