Maggie's Farm

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Just Do It

I  know it's from an old Nike ad, but I have to use it on myself frequently.

 Strange Increase In Volume Of Congregational Singing Noted When Worship Leader Slips In Old Hymn

 The media is spreading bad trans science. Misleading studies are being taken as gospel

 Where Johnny Cash Came From

 Norman Mailer Was an Out-and-Out Psychopath

 Welcome to the MAGA Hamptons! Every summer, the haute bourgeoisie of Middle America descend on Lake of the Ozarks to jet ski, barbecue ribs, and (until 2023) drink a shit-ton of Budweiser.

Click bait:  Popular "all-American" Companies That Are Now Internationally-Owned

 Welcome To Canada — The Doctor Won’t See You Now, But The Undertaker Will

 Scotland Cuts Down Forest to Make Room for Windmills

 Biden DoD Lets Transgender Service Members Skip Deployments, Receive Indefinite Physical Fitness Waivers

 The Left’s Social Contract Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. A relentless focus on dubious forms of ‘oppression’ is alienating traditional leftists. Saving the progressive movement means returning it to its liberal roots

Stanford Law refuses comment on fate of DEI dean who helped shout down judge

 Stuart's miscellany

I have no hate for the guy, but he is in bad shape 

 Jack Smith bought a sandwich at Subway and CNN lost its mind

 Massachusetts asks homeowners to take in illegal migrants

Heard my first cicadas of the summer this weekend - just a few, and just for about an hour or two, but these are probably early risers - first emergers from the soil, practicing playing their instruments. Maybe this will be a good year for them.

Some people call them locusts. 

It means that in a few days we will be hearing the remarkably loud raspy buzzing from the tree-tops on every hot sunny day - the characteristic sound of high summer in New England, until replaced by the more refined Katydid's evening song as late summer comes.

We have both 13-year and 17-year cicadas - that's how long the two species live as larvae underground, sucking on tree roots, before they emerge to mate, breed, and die.

Their life is a metaphor.

Cicadas are edible, but I don't know anyone who eats them regularly except birds who have great sport chasing them when they fly from tree to tree. We often find their empty exoskelatons attached to tree trunks - as they grow, they crawl out of their old coat.

Some basic cicada facts here. There is a cicada fan blog, too.

 NYT casually drops a truth bomb: about 30% of "COVID deaths" weren't from COVID

 Top Scientists Misled Congress About Covid Origins, Newly Released Emails And Messages Show

Science begins with observation. Is observation Science? 

 America the Stoned - More states are legalizing weed every year. An estimated 13.2 million Americans use the drug every day. So why is it starting to feel like a bad idea?

 WOKE KINDERGARTEN

 The Comely Face of Western Self-Cancellation - Miss Netherlands is a Mister.

 9th Circuit Shuts Down Bid To Block Lithium Mine

 NYC Restaurants to Be Fined for Providing Forks

 Diversity officers’ exits fuel racial equity con­cerns. Evid­ence grows of cur­tailed invest­ment in schemes three years after Floyd’s murder

 Nearly Three-Quarters of French Public Wants to Strip Migrant Rioters of Citizenship

The fast metabolism myth: Here’s what actually determines how slim you are

 What is the audience for a woke, live-action “Snow White”?

 There’s always something new to report on New York’s housing follies.

 Dumbing America Down

City Journal on The New Censorship:

Only a powerful, watchful government, in the hands of the Party of Truth, can impose democracy on a troubled society by controlling the words said, as well as the means of communication that convey them, to the public. A wise guardian class, advised by specialists, must be mobilized to assume control of politics and culture. In this framework, opposition can never be legitimate—it belongs to the Party of Lies. Those who follow Savio’s exhortation and throw themselves on the gears of the great institutions will be ground to pulp—for their own good.

News That's Not Fit To Print - New York Times & LA Times Dump Sports Reporting

 CDC Used Journal To Promote Masks Despite 'Unreliable' And 'Unsupported Data': New Analysis

Yonkers’ only charter school illustrates just how broken the system is

 Without Affirmative Action Everyone Will Die. "All Americans will bear the burden of a less diverse health care field"

 NYC To Pay Minority Teachers Who Failed Teaching Exam Up To $2M. Each.

 Parents slam woke Massachusetts school district for axing advanced math classes to boost 'equity', after they attracted too many white and Asian students - with families now forced to hire private tutors instead

 California Approves New Math Guidelines That Emphasize 'Social Justice'

 The Fact-Check Racket Finally Unravels

 Biden forgives $39 billion in student loan debt via administrative tweaks

Suckers paid their debts 

 Imploding Cities Will Drag All of Us Down — Even if You Don't Live Anywhere Near One

 The War On Poverty Hasn’t Just Failed, It’s Failed Abysmally

 Jennifer Rubin humiliates herself using data from retracted story

VDH:  Illegal Immigration and Western Spiritual Sickness

 The Incredible Shrinking NATO

 Europe's Muslim Migrant Problem

' Arabs… Chechens’: German Swimming Baths Terrorised by ‘Migration Background’ Men

Technically, I guess so. More like a giant barge. Not my cup of tea. I love real ships.

Ronnie Hawkins had an ear for talent, groomed plenty of pop musicians. His groups were sort-of rockabilly, but all sorts of music.

Bob Dylan hired his band (one Hawkins' many) away from him. Dylan is an American musicologist, but I do not know who learned more from whom.

From 1964:

Re Kevin Spacey: Handsiness or assault? Fondling in the post-#MeToo era. Meet the new Italian defense for crotch-grabbing: if it’s under ten seconds it doesn’t count

New 'victim studies' is a fake discipline

 University puts trigger warning on Hemingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’: ‘graphic fishing scenes’

What about Moby Dick? 

  Youth Gender Transition Is Pushed Without Evidence, Psychotherapy, not hormones and surgery, is increasingly the first line of treatment abroad.

 When Ideology Corrupts Medicine—and How One Reporter Exposed it, A conversation with Hannah Barnes about the medical scandal at Tavistock, the UK’s only youth gender clinic.

 Budgets blown: Wind not exactly the net bargain they advertised

 TGIF: Hollywood Shutdown - Actors join the picket line. Zuck puts Musk on Thread alert. Tucker cozies up to Andrew Tate. Plus: Kamala, DeSantis, and Jonah Hill.

Stuart's Saturday Miscellany 

 Gov’t Can Continue Colluding With Big Tech, 5th Circuit Grants “Administrative Stay” of Injunction

 Loophole: Biden Admin Forgives $39 Billion In Student Debt For Over 800,000 Borrowers

Garth Hudson says that Dylan made this song up on the spot. I'd believe it. Songs of all sorts come out of his brain.

This is from the basement tapes (1967). I don't think it's entirely facetious, but his version of the good old music:

Summer Camps For Children Identifying As Transgender Open Across US

 The Russians Planted Cocaine in the White House to Frame Hunter Biden. Any other explanation is misinformation and threatens democracy.

 Scientists Agreed To Downplay Chinese Lab Leak Theory For Fear Of ‘S*** Show’, Messages Indicate

 A new memoir by Martin Peretz, the former owner and editor-in-chief of The New Republic, provides a timely reminder of what American journalism has lost.

I was a reader for decades 

 The Test Isn’t the Problem. Scrapping exam requirements at New York’s elite public schools won’t help black and Hispanic students.

 CHECC Has Petitioned The DC Circuit For Rehearing As To Its Standing To Challenge The Endangerment Finding

 Budgets blown: Wind not exactly the net bargain they advertised

 George Soros’s Bad Bet - The billionaire funded a series of experiments in the U.S. criminal-justice system—with disastrous results.

I'm always behind the 8-ball.

 Listen in as Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler examine Ben & Jerry’s founder’s “stolen land” comment, French riots and the illogical of illegal immigration, the Dutch government dissolved, and the court case forbidding Biden administration to collude with social media outlets.

All of my saved morning links got erased by some glitch. Here are some new ones:

 Professor made student ‘uncomfortable’ with open debate, gets fired

 Rage Against the Machine - Technology is our new god. What would a refusal to worship look like? Paul Kingsnorth offers a vision of resistance

Water mats are endless fun for kids. 

Take one out to the sea. Cool invention. Kids love to push eachother off.

Video at Gizmodo

 Bored with The Hamptons yet?

 The Rise and Fall of the Mail-Order Home

A culture without "shoulds"

 Where Does Your Department (Or Law School) Stand On Abortion? Antiracism? Immigration?

Asians confuse Goodwhites 

 Bosses Push Back on WFH Die-Hards: ‘They Will Need to Show Up’.. Managers say team productivity has taken a hit as employees stay remote

 Zuck's Threads Already Throwing the Ban Hammer Around

 US students need nearly 4 months of extra school to fix post-COVID 'achievement gaps' in reading, math: Study

Do you believe Gal Luft? 

 Vivek Ramaswamy Has Terrific Response to Disruptive Woman at Town Hall

Wikipedia is darn handy. Not perfect summaries always, but nothing is perfect.

Britannica missed a huge opportunity. 

Why AI will save the world

What does marriage have to do with capitalism? 

 Congratulations, a Man Just Won Miss Netherlands

 Lobsters likely feel pain. Should we get them high before eating them?

 It is pure statistical garbage when we are told what the average global temperature is and that it is a heat record

 California Bans Spanish Over Nouns Having Only Two Gender Options

 Why People Stop Using Drugs Like Ozempic. Drugs like semaglutide—better known as Ozempic or Wegovy—could be lifelong treatments for obesity, but what little data scientists have suggests that people don't stick with them for long.

 LinkedIn Should End ‘Diversity in Recruiting’ Feature: “Discrimination by algorithm is still discrimination”

 The drug war has been a failure, but is decriminalizing drugs even worse?

What is "meaningful work" anyway? Work is work. 

 'Pay your bills like adults!': Protesters take to White House after student debt ruling

 Why Diversity Programs Fail, And what works better

 Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance—and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.

VDH: Illegal Immigration and Western Spiritual Sickness - Enforcing the Law Has Become Abnormal

Israel:  Civilians who shoot terrorists will no longer face interrogation, gun seizure

 Bye Bye Paris: Chinese CO2 Emissions are Skyrocketing

 A Stronger NATO for a More Dangerous World

I don't buy it 

 Pence says some 'just don't understand' why we must endlessly support Ukraine

 Putin Held 3-Hour Meeting With Wagner Chief Days After Revolt

"Revolt"? 

Much as I love a Wellfleet Oyster, I'll draw a line at Oyster Ice Cream. Or any seafood-flavored ice cream.

A History of Ice Cream

Yes, I know the ancient Egyptians made sorbets. Ice from Lebanese mountains.