Maggie's Farm

Greek People Don't Use Vinegar in Their Greek Salads—They Do This Instead

MacArthur Park is a Hellhole

The Forgotten American: Can There Be Life After 12 Years in a Chinese Prison?

What did ancient Rome smell like? BO, rotting corpses and raw sewage for starters ...

California’s Climate Retreat: A Triumph for Science and Common Sense

Wow. Politico's Take on the Texas Floods Was...Fair?

Wednesday Potpourri

Gov't Report Exposes Astronomical Crime-Rates For Young Foreigners Compared To German Youth

Hamas Security Officer: Let's Face It, We're Finished

The Sheiks of Hebron Got Some Shaking Going On

Boating has many hazards. Rocks, thunderstorms and squalls, fires, etc. I even know somebody whose rudder was snapped off by a whale 200 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Kids are now basically required to wear life jackets on board, by law. When I was a kid all we needed to do was to pass a water safety test. I remember some of it: tread water for 5 minutes, swim to the bottom of the pool and come up a few times, swim several laps, take your sneakers and pants off in the pool, grab a life ring in the pool, and things like that.

"Man overboard" - man, woman, or kid - is a chilling event. The most dangerous thing is not noticing, same as with kids around or in a swimming pool. On boats - not ships - It makes sense for somebody to know where people are. Unlike many others, I do not take babies on board.

Our little craft has life jackets of course, a throwable ring, and a Lifesling:

Archaeologists Unveil 3,500-Year-Old City in Peru

How Does It Feel?

Think Work-Life Balance Is Overrated? You’re Hired! Employers are
getting brutally honest with applicants, warning them of long hours and
few boundaries; ‘Companies are in control again.’

Democratic Party Ghouls

The saddest part is that the weather warnings were ignored 

Adams Takes Shots at Cuomo. The Heroes of Hill Country. Plus. . .

 Roger Kimball: Elon Musk is America’s dumbest smart person

 Homes for hipsters - From Zohran Mamdani to the YIMBYs, the leading figures in the housing debate have little to offer most Americans.

Germany Is Not Being Honest About Who Is Assaulting Children At Swimming Pools

Democrats: Maybe We Went Too Far Left on Immigration

"It's Not A Human Right To Live In Sweden" - New Integration Minister Calls For Migrant Values Survey

 Most Americans Like America A Lot, And The Left Should Stop Ignoring This Fact

The Age of Feelings

She Lost Her Husband. I Lost My Wife. Now We’re a Couple.

Against Self-Optimization - The wellness industry sells you a version of yourself it can’t deliver. Hope lies elsewhere.

Pete Geren to Newsmax: 'Most' US Kids 'Do Not Read Proficiently'

Science and accountability by Scott W. Atlas - On restoring trust in health care

Musk Should Stay Out of Politics, US Treasury Secretary Bessent Says

The Incredulous Tucker Carlson Act is Tiresome - Carlson’s never-ending
incredulity at the state of things leaves me wondering if he is naive,
dumb, or just playing a tired role.

How Trump became Washington’s unlikeliest centrist

The American Dream, Rewritten in Marxist Ink - How the State Pays to Undermine the Nation

French Left-Wing MPs Introduce Amendment To "Reduce" Coverage Of Migrant Crime Stories

New York Times Struggles To Explain Why It Reported News To Traumatized Readers

Huge spike in 'Trumpugees' fleeing America... but they'll quickly regret it

All are made differently of course but I did not appreciate the differences. I think I like gelato best and spumoni the least.

I think the Egyptians invented ices, with ice or snow brought from the Alps or something. Carvel and Mr. Softy were inventive too.

Perplexity has all the answers.

Psalm 66:1-9

66:1 Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth;

66:2 sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise.

66:3 Say to God, "How awesome are your deeds! Because of your great power, your enemies cringe before you.

66:4 All the earth worships you; they sing praises to you, sing praises to your name." Selah

66:5 Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals.

66:6 He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There we rejoiced in him,

66:7 who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations-- let the rebellious not exalt themselves. Selah

66:8 Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard,

66:9 who has kept us among the living and has not let our feet slip.

We all know this: "I Keep Exercising but I’m Not Losing Weight"

Yeah, we've been over this topic many times. I'm a fan of lifting, HIIT cardio, calisthenics - everything for fitness and functionality. But for losing extra fat, food volume is the main deal for most people.

Lucky to live in a place where food volume is no problem for anybody.

America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea. The Declaration of
Independence wasn’t just a break from empire. It was a challenge to
every regime that came after.

The Decline and Fall of Our So-Called Degreed Experts

AI’s great brain robbery — and how universities can fight back/ ChatGPT
and its like have swept through academia, changing how students work,
write and think. The bots are here to stay, so we need to reimagine
learning

454 Hints That a Chatbot Wrote Part of a Biomedical Researcher’s Paper - Scientists
show that the frequency of a set of words seems to have increased in
published study abstracts since ChatGPT was released into the world.

US Patriotism Among Democrats Crashes As Marxist Demands Grow Louder

Saturday Miscellany

 Black New Yorkers rage over Zohran Mamdani’s ‘African American’ claim: ‘He’s a fraud’

Republicans talk, Trump does

Trump 2.0 is a Wrecking Ball

Trump Seeks to Remake the World, He wants as much executive power as possible and the U.S. the top global player.

Trump Extends His Political Power With 'Big, Beautiful' Win in Congress

We Can’t Pay Everyone - It is a global phenomenon: more and more people are dependent, in one way or another, on government.

What is your favorite ice-cream?

Answer in  Comments. 

I’m Finally Hanging My American Flag - Growing
up, I was taught to dislike the American flag and all that it
represented. This year, for the first time, I hung one outside my house.

Early birds get the burn: Early bedtimes are associated with more physical activity

Metropolitan Opera’s Peter Gelb blames Trump for sales slump — but needs to look in the mirror

Big Apple driving school rigged licenses for illegal aliens, even if they couldn’t drive

Eat Your AI Slop or China Wins - The new cold war means a race with
China over AI, biotech, and more. This poses a hard dilemma: win by
embracing technologies that make us more like our enemy — or protect
ourselves from tech dehumanization but become subjects to a totalitarian
menace.

Ratcliffe Declassifies CIA Documents – Reveals Comey, Brennan, and
Clapper Purposely Corrupted Trump-Russia Investigation and Included
Discredited Steele Dossier to Take Down Trump Despite Knowing It Was a
Phony Report

DOJ Announces Indictments in $14.6 Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Ring

DC Judge Allows All Illegal Migrants to Seek Asylum, Halting Deportation

Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Plan to Deport 500,000 Haitians — Here’s Why

Democrats, Animated by Loathing of Trump, Are Driving Their Party to Self-Destruction

Mamdani’s grocery scheme is foolish — but there’s method to the madness

Establishment Democrats Created The Conditions For A Socialist Victory

Trump puts common-sense brakes on immigration enforcement for farm and hospitality workers

Trump’s racking up wins — and rewriting the book on diplomacy

IDF dismantles Hamas terror tunnel under school

By The Numbers: Even CNN’s Expert Pollster Shocked By How Anti-Israel Dems Have Become

What Is the Intifada?

Poland To Introduce Border Controls With Germany As Migration Crisis Grows

1 in 10 in the UK are on Disability. “They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money."

The “Join, or Die” cartoon was
created by Benjamin Franklin and first published on May 9, 1754. 

Bari Weiss: American Regeneration - This Independence Day, we don’t just
celebrate the birthday of the words that made us—but the choice to live
by them two and a half centuries later.

I deserve the ‘princess treatment’ when I’m out with my husband — tradwife haters don’t understand, but I feel special

How sorry are you? Why learning to apologise well could save your relationships

" The best reason to step across political or cultural divides isn’t
open-mindedness or civic virtue. It’s that it makes life more
interesting and fun."

Consumption Wars: Streaming Overtakes Traditional TV In May

How the Yuppies Became Socialists

Democrats, Animated by Loathing of Trump, Are Driving Their Party to Self-Destruction

Democrats Are Not Proud to Be American

Settler-Colonialist Zohran Mamdani Calls For "Seizing The Means Of Production"

Alligator Alcatraz Live: Trump Tours New Illegal Alien Deportation Camp In Florida Swamp

Jeff Bezos's Wedding 100% Funded By Your Wife's Amazon Purchases

  The Secret of Good Grandparenting: “As far as I was concerned there
was only one maxim to being a good grandparent: Zip it,” writes Julie
Rose. Let your children be the parents they want to be, not the parents you want them to be.

Hoarders say they feel stigmatized, face 'everyday discrimination'

Sleep helps stitch memories into cognitive maps, according to new neuroscience breakthrough

Guy is mad on July 4th week, but it's about hating Trump. Seemingly no other reason than that the Trump team is a bunch of stupid poopy-heads.

Nothing new there.  

Top Economist Admits Trump May Have ‘Outsmarted All of Us’ on Tariffs

German Police Raid 170 Homes Over 'Hate Speech', Insults To Politicians

We need to find out why family life is falling apart. Fewer couples are marrying, women are having fewer babies and more children are growing up with only one parent

Gen-Z Office Workers Are a Special Breed

The UK has a Communications Regulator 

Disney Hit With More Layoffs As Latest Woke Projects Bomb Hard

20 years ago, a Connecticut city gov't seized a little pink house and gave it to a developer.

‘Big beautiful’ AI rule means feds must act NOW to stop Big Tech’s abuses

Can't happen. It's all international now.

The Democratic Party Has Fallen. They bet it all on a ten-year war on Trump and Lost Everything.

European Researcher Bernadette Conrads Uncovers the Shadowy Reach of
USAID Across Europe — Deep State Dollars, Election Meddling, and
Censorship Campaigns Exposed

Of course it has been a CIA front 

How Long Will Trump’s Winning Streak Last?

Iranian Women Take to Streets to Offer Babies Up for Martyrdom

Good news: Botswana is doing fine 

District Court Issues Nationwide Injunction Against Supreme Court Ruling

Hanging out with sharks 

Attributed to Winston Churchill, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”

Why Johnny and Janey Can't Think

UK Pulls Plug On £24 Billion Desert Power Fantasy

Civil rights complaint filed against Cornell includes bombshell whistleblower emails

Campus conservatives are cool again, and the left is lashing out

Scholars upset SCOTUS lets Muslims opt kids out of LGBT books

Sotomayor says public education is doomed without mandatory gay and trans story hour

Justice Kagan’s Own Words Come Back to Haunt Her on Nationwide Injunctions

Anti-Semitism is now trendy.

This Excerpt From Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Dissent Explains Why She Got Nuked by Amy Coney Barrett

Tens of Thousands of “New Voters” Registered to Vote for Mamdani

 Zohran Mamdani doubles down on plan to target ‘whiter neighborhoods’ with higher taxes — and says billionaires
shouldn’t exist

Zohran Mamdani on why he wants to empty jails: "VioIence is an artificial construct"

 Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Glastonbury and the Purge of the Jews. Plus. . .Inside the ‘Stop Mamdani’ frenzy. Did the Supreme
Court just clear the way for Trump? Arthur Brooks on how to live a good
life. And much more. 

Trump’s Description of Ilhan Omar is 100% Spot-On

Chuck Todd Finally Figures Out the Problem With the Democratic Party and Thank You Captain Obvious

Vice President Vance Underscores Reports of Massive Waste and Corruption in Foreign Aid

Thousands of State Department Workers Brace for Layoffs

Smerconish: Trump Had One of His Best Weeks Ever

 NYT: Israel, Trump Stopped Iran Nuke ... Which Was Trump's Fault

Obama’s CIA Director Plots Global Censorship As Germany And Brazil Intensify Their Crackdown On Free Speech

Things Worth Remembering: ‘Endurance Comes Only from Enduring’. I was the last person in the U.S. to interview the great Czesław Miłosz, before he returned to Poland forever.

I do not need or use GLP-1 medicine, but lots of people do. It works mainly by reducing appetite and food intake, but does other useful things too.

I am a semi-fan of Creatine. Theory is that this stuff (found naturally in red meat and sold as something for muscle-building support) enhances ATP production in muscle so that muscle can be stressed more effectively.

It might be placebo effect, but I use it. I am not a body-builder.

The point is that Creatine (with exertion of course) may help reduce the muscle loss that accompanies all weight loss. If so, good. 

Luke 9:51-62

9:51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

9:52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for his arrival,

9:53 but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

9:54 When
his disciples James and John saw this, they said, "Lord, do you want us
to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"

9:55 But he turned and rebuked them.

9:56 Then they went on to another village.

9:57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."

9:58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

9:59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."

9:60 And Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

9:61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home."

9:62 And Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

1900 Scientists Say 'Climate Change Not Caused By CO2' – The Real Environment Movement Was Hijacked

The Icarian Gene: The Rise and Fall of the Expert Class

 Supreme Courts Upholds Right of Parents to Opt Their Kids Out of LGBTQ-Themed Classroom Activities

Saturday Miscellany

"Time To Leave NYC": Kyle Bass Urges Dan Loeb To "Embrace Your Inner Texas" After Mamdani's Socialist Shockwave

Zohran Mamdani And The Future Of The Democratic Party

Jewish Anti-Semitism

Eye-popping analysis of Trump’s win shows Democrats are in serious trouble

NYC Mayor Eric Adams To Run For Reelection Against Rival Mamdani

Trump Seizes Momentum From Ceasefire Deal to Expand Peace in Middle East

Not too much, and keeping a hummingbird feeder clean is a hassle. Fun for watching though, 

I asked Perplexity, which is a good AI place.