From this guy, talking about the Iranian Ass-Kicking Exercise and BritPM Starmer’s reaction thereto:
“Progressive realism has met reality: when the chips are down, nobody cares about international law; nobody cares about tolerance and diversity; nobody cares about human rights; nobody cares about doing the right thing. They care about winning.”
Yup. It works at both the macro- and micro levels, btw. (see: Righteous Shootings)
I know that this is just stating the obvious, but here it is anyway:
Babies born during the COVID-19 pandemic are ‘falling behind’ on key milestones including talking and crawling because of a lack of social interaction, early learning staff and scientists have warned.
Studies have also revealed children born after March 2020 are less likely to be able to vocalize than their peers were at this age, and are yet to develop social skills such as sharing and waiting their turn — leading to more fights.
Scientists suggest a lack of social contact with family and relatives due to restrictions is behind the shift.
The long-term impact of the pandemic on children is not yet clear, but experts have warned keeping children away from their peers for so long with lockdowns is bound to have harmed their development.
Look, I’m not remotely an expert on this stuff, but it’s a well-known fact that childhood learning (particularly during the early years) requires continuous stimulation — and by “continuous” I mean uninterrupted.
While it is generally acknowledged that children’s brains are absolute sponges when it comes to learning, it is also true (to continue the metaphor) that letting the sponge dry out during the process, even for short periods of time, can affect its absorption capacity. And once that is lost, there is no recovery of the ability.
So for the (dubious) purpose of saving a few lives, an entire group of children has been irremediably harmed.
A paper published in JAMA in January this year that looked at 225 children born in 2020 revealed babies were less likely to be crawling and smiling at themselves in a mirror within six months. It also showed they had reduced social and problem solving skills.
And a UK-based survey of teachers released last month found those teaching children in the early grades were now seeing more biting and hitting in the classroom than previously. [New Wife reports the same from her preschool, incidentally]
British-based charity Ofsted has also suggested in a report that after reviewing more than 280 educational settings, children are struggling with basic skills such as writing and speaking in the wake of the pandemic.
They said some teachers even said they had seen youngsters lack confidence in group activities, and struggle to share and take turns.
Similarly, Brown University scientists, who assessed 1,000 children, found there was a 23 percent dive in ‘pandemic’ babies scores in three cognitive tests.
Any time in the future that the Panic Purveyor Set (e.g. Fauci) suggests that we isolate ourselves in the Covid-19 manner, we should set about them with baseball / cricket bats (apply according to national preference).
For the children.
Here are a few A.I. videos that I think are worthy of consideration, so if you care for the thesis — and you might, because it’s all very much focused on the economic scenario in various countries and not so much on politics (although the two are pretty much entangled, as you will see).
The first has to do with Canada; the second with France; the third with the EU and the fourth with the U.K.
Finally, if you want to see yet another (but shorter and more superficial) article which (because it’s CNN) looks at the actions rather than the motivations behind the actions, there’s New Zealand. And if you want to really chuckle, note that the fleeing New Zealanders are mostly heading for Australia — as the video calls it, “the new Argentina” (and to be clear, they’re referring to Peronist Argentina, not the Argentina of Milei).
Now the chilling bit. If you distill all the events in the above, it will become clear that even with MAGA, with DOGE, and with all the Trumpism reorgs, the U.S. is heading down the same path. The manifestations thereof are well known: the citizens of ur-European soviets (New York, California and Illinois, etc.) fleeing their failed states for states that aren’t being run into the ground by their respective state governments.
And the spoiler: all the above — all of it — can be ascribed to Marxism and the mindset it creates.
Just in passing, I see that Liz Hurley has recycled a dress from her earlier life:
Hot back then, maybe even hotter now. I can’t help thinking that Satan is involved, somehow.
O Sage One, please call your office so that we may send you your “new” item of gunny goodness.
Congratulations to you, and many, many thanks to all who participated. Thanks to your generosity, the Widow Irish will be getting $1,000 in her account tomorrow.
I have spoken before about how I get celebrities confused with other celebrities when reading about them. Here’s a recent example, that being between Emma Watson and Keira Knightley:
I know, they don’t look anything like each other when seen side by side. But when I read about one, I’m thinking “petite Brit brunette with no boobs”, and I think you’ll acknowledge my confusion when those criteria are applied.
So now I have to apply a discrete mental tag to each one, such as “skinny Brit brunette with no boobs in Harry Potter” and “skinny Brit brunette with no boobs in that pirate movie with Johnny Depp”.
Of course, my life would doubtless be simplified if I just ignored reading about them altogether, but that would probably require that I quit reading my guilty pleasure, the Daily Mail. And I don’t really want to do that, because the very definition of “guilty pleasure” is something that one gets pleasure from even though one shouldn’t.
What’s even worse is that I don’t find either of the above that attractive because “whiny voice / skinny / no boobs” (all of which they both have in common) is generally speaking a total turn-off for me.
What a mess…