Food Thread: I'll Gladly Give You A Slice Of Beef For Your Vote On Tuesday!

Passover is coming soon, and because of a confluence of events I will have just a short time to prepare for a dozen people's holiday dinner.

So how to plan something delicious and festive while keeping the prep to a minimum?

What I do is think through the steps for each dish, and if there are too many, then I swap it out. And if it requires a bunch of utensils and dishes and bowls and pans...I swap it out.

Cooking time isn't a big deal. I can be doing something else while the Matzoh Balls cook. Besides, I'll make those the previous day, and that makes it smoother on the big day! Of course making stuff in advance is a huge time-saver and is probably the best way to streamline a big dinner, so choosing foods that can be made the day before or at least prepped in advance is a very big deal.

Sometimes money fixes these problems, but I just feel funny about buying premade stuff. Part of the joy of holidays is the careful preparation, and Passover is no different.

Yeah...that is a Pistachio and Parmesan Crusted Tenderloin. I spoil my damned guests! I think I will make that for the Seder meal but extract a promise of a vote for Trump before anyone gets a slice.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (264) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

Why yes, that is a homemade candle. I like scented candles, especially when I make strong-smelling foods and my woefully inadequate exhaust fan fails miserably at IT'S ONE JOB! The commercial candles mostly suck, so...

We go through a fair number of wine glasses, so I take the most beat up ones and make candles. It's fun, I get to choose the scent...no disgusting, stinky, pungent aromas...and because I am a cheap bastard it satisfies my parsimony.

But the wicks available for homemade candle making stink. Not literally, but they burn inconsistently, so sometimes the wick extends too far above the wax and it smokes and does other irritating things. Or it burns too quickly and it is just the barest little snippet with a tiny flame.

THE STRUGGLE IS REAL!

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (137) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Biden/Obama

One civilian death is too many! Israel is targeting civilian aid workers! Israel is murdering children! Israel must do more to protect innocents! Israel is risking Western support by being so brutal!

Israel Kills 37 Civilians At Wedding Party

Israel admits drone strike killed civilians

Except...those were American strikes that mistakenly killed civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is an unavoidable consequence of military action that civilians will be killed. The numbers are all over the place for both Afghanistan and Iraq, but the civilian to military/insurgent ratios seem to be 4-5 to 1. Of course the usual suspects accused America of purposefully targeting civilians, but no rational analysis of the conflicts will find any concerted effort to kill civilians, and in fact the rules of engagement for American forces were frankly insane. American soldiers died needlessly because of those rules.

The same can be said of Israel. The care with which its military fights -- to prevent civilian deaths -- risks its soldier's lives.

But that inconvenient fact is lost in the frothing Jew-hate across the world, as America's and the UK's leadership has faltered amidst a surging Arab population in both countries that is hellbent on delegitimizing Israel and creating the conditions necessary for its destruction. Their relationship of convenience with a myriad of left-wing NGOs that are traditionally anti-Semitic has created a perfect storm of institutionalized Jew-hate that gleefully manipulates the narrative to depict Israel as an apartheid state that is viciously attacking an innocent population on its border.

Here is Melanie Phillips with her usual brilliance, calling out the hypocrisy of the West...

The global onslaught against Israel: Britain and America are making the Jewish state their scapegoat

Although an IDF inquiry has yet to explain what happened, the Israelis have acknowledged a terrible mistake caused by “misidentification”. Bad things happen in war and this was a dreadful tragedy.

But the malice of the response is astonishing. Israel is being accused of having deliberately targeted the aid convoy, which allegedly proves that Israel has no concerns about civilian deaths, no heart and no conscience.

WCK’s response has gone far beyond justifiable anger and horror, defaming Israel with baseless and incendiary charges.

The organisation’s chief executive, Erin Gore, accused Israel of a “targeted attack” designed to deter aid agencies working in Gaza and of using food “as a weapon of war”. WCK’s founder, José Andrés, accused Israel of targeting his workers “systematically, car by car”.

Erin Gore and José Andrés are slandering the IDF and its incredible efforts to minimize civilian casualties. They are not perfect, but they are the best in the world at that task, and there is no reason other than virulent anti-Israel sentiment to explain it.

Even granting the laughable reasons that these leftist celebrities spout, Israel could simply stop the flow of aid at the border. But they don't, and in fact the aid organizations are incapable of handling the large volume of supplies that Israel checks for arms and then allows into Gaza.

That America and the UK are not steadfast in their support of Israel -- the country that does much of the fighting for the West against Islam -- is a political calculation intended to bolster the current governments. The Biden/Obama junta is concerned about the vital electoral votes of Michigan, with its huge Arab population, and waning support from the hard left, which is virulently anti-Semitic. The UK is in an even more precarious situation, with its Muslim population approaching 10%.

In addition, the lunacy of America's Iran policy, which seems to be designed to allow the Mullahs to build a nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible, looms large. The Obama faction in the Biden administration has always been anti-Israel, and their goal is a strong Iran to counter Israel's power in the Middle East. Never mind that there may be a nuclear exchange because of their policy!

Israel is a pluralistic society that embraces the Judeo-Christian concepts of freedom, individual dignity, and respect for the rule of law. It should be axiomatic that it is supported by the rest of the West in its struggles with Islam. But the difference of course is that Israel is a Jewish state...the ONLY Jewish state, and the traditional antipathy of the left toward Jews and Judaism has coalesced around Israel's response to the butchery of the October 7th Pogrom.

So far Israel has resisted the calls for it to stand down before the perpetrators of that monstrosity have been destroyed. And the unintended consequence of that horrendous event has been to unify Israel to a great extent. The country is steadfast in its focus on the destruction of Hamas and the other forces arrayed on its borders.

But the West, led by America and the UK are busily undermining Israel for political considerations that may fracture the relationship and push Israel away from its historical allies, and into a more friendly relationship with China, India, and even Russia.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (235) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 04-07-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, remember to protect your eyes during tomorrow's solar eclipse, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (376) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 7 April 2024

Top Story

• Ordered by a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to block access to popular accounts that say things inconvenient to the leftist regime, Elon Musk has responded: Fuck you. (MSN)
  
  A particular post separately ordered taken down by Australia's own radical left wing censor-in-chief - who is an imported American that you guys can take back at any time - remains invisible, but that had the usual Streisand affect and reposted screenshots of it are all over the place, and have not been restricted at all.
  
  Musk is an imperfect defender of our liberties, but I'll give him credit when he gets it right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (183) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (4/6/24)

*****

The Saturday Night Joke

Two ladies were talking in heaven.

“Hi! my name is Janet, what is your name?”

“I'm Sherry. It's nice to meet you. Can I ask you how you died?”

“Sure, I froze to Death.”

“How horrible!” responded Sherry.

“It wasn't so bad. After I quit shaking from the cold, I began to get warm & sleepy, and finally died a peaceful death. What about you?

Sherry responded, “I died of a massive heart attack. I suspected that my husband was cheating, so I came home early to catch him in the act. But instead, I found him all by himself in the den watching TV.

Janet said, “So, what happened?”

She continued, “I was so sure there was another woman there somewhere that I started running all over the house looking. I ran up into the attic and searched, and down into the basement.

Then I went through every closet and checked under all the beds. I kept this up until I had looked everywhere, and finally I became so exhausted that I just keeled over with a heart attack and died.

Janet said, “Too bad you didn't look in the freezer... we'd both still be alive.”

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:47 PM | Comments (464) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Weekend Hobby Thread (4/6/24) Rerun Edition

January 29, 2022
Weekend Hobby Thread and Crafting Too
Merriam-Webster
hobby noun (2)
plural hobbies
Definition of hobby (Entry 2 of 2)
: a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation
Writing is just a hobby of his.
Her hobbies include gardening and bird-watching.

Definition of craft

2a: an occupation, trade, or activity requiring manual dexterity or artistic skill
the carpenter's craft
the craft of writing plays
crafts such as pottery, carpentry, and sewing
He learned the craft as an apprentice.
b: crafts plural : articles made by craftspeople
a store selling crafts
a crafts fair

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 05:30 PM | Comments (272) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 6

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

* * *

Posted by: K.T. at 03:16 PM | Comments (73) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Apr. 6

Spring greetings, everyone! Don't you love the photo above?

Caught the final day before the rain washes it all away.
This first one is my favorite.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:21 PM | Comments (117) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Real Clear Politics responds with much deliberation to accusations by the NYT

I have always thought of Real Clear Politics as a site which has a sort of right-ish editorial stance, but which fearlessly links content from across the political spectrum so that readers can judge for themselves in whom they should place their trust.

On April 4, Carl Cannon published this:

Ten days after the 2020 election, Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of RealClearPolitics, received an email from a New York Times reporter who covers the media. The reporter, Jeremy W. Peters, advised Bevan that his newspaper was working on a story about RCP and asked for responses to various questions and accusations. Four days later, Peters' critique was published under the headline "A Popular Political Site Made a Sharp Right Turn. What Steered It."

The sleight-of-hand was right there in the headline. The New York Times simply declared that RCP "made a sharp right turn," and suggested it will document how this happened.

The Times' story asserted that during the period of counting absentee and late-arriving mail-in ballots, RCP took three days longer than other news organizations to call Pennsylvania for Joe Biden. It noted disapprovingly that we aggregated stories from other news outlets quoting Trump supporters who questioned the election results. It suggested that the RCP Poll Averages were manipulated to be favorable to Donald Trump. Peters focused on RCP staff layoffs in September 2017, and claimed we'd hired partisan Republicans to replace them. He reported that the RealClear Foundation, a nonprofit that supports our journalism, receives contributions from conservative donors. He also called into question a RealClear Investigations exposé naming the whistleblower whose complaints led to Trump's first impeachment.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:14 AM | Comments (209) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

*****

Good morning Horde. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping items (Rulz for those of you in Waupaca). In case you haven't heard J.J. Sefton is having some serious health issues. Please keep him in your prayers at this time.

1) This is an open thread. Please lurk, opine and/or bloviate away until the lovely and talented KT shows up.
2) Be Nice to others and the furniture.
3) If you run with sharp objects do not expect sympathy from us. Or contribution to your Go Fund Me campaign.
4) Have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (461) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 6 March 2024

Top Story

• To nobody's surprise the FCC has declined to intervene on California's plans to implement net neutrality. (Ars Technica)
  
  The problem I always had with the FCC's push for net neutrality - which is back on the table for a vote later this month - is that the claim that the FCC even had the power to vote on such a rule is based on assumptions that would grant the agency massive control over all forms of communication in the US.
  
  If an individual state legislature wants to fuck up internet access for their own voters, on the other hand, they can do so, subject to the First Amendment.
  
  I'll have to read up on what California is proposing to do; it's probably bad, but probably legal.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (257) | Trackbacks (Suck)

I Think We Are In Rat's Alley Where The Dead Men Lost Their ONTs

Friday night! Hope everyone is doing well. Anyone have any plans for the eclipse Monday? Maybe having people over for a big feed?

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (479) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Lost and Found Dog Cafe

Roswell, New Mexico 2017
via unwetter freaks

Sliding into the weekend like...

Zen stream.

Dolphin gets a lot of air.

Some pleasant Oklahoma weather.

The view leaves me speechless. Except for one single word: Riiiii-colaaaaa...

This traffic jam is bananas.

This horse: 1, is making silly faces to amuse the baby, or 2, just caught a sniff of what's going on in that diaper.

This is a Coors commercial come to life.

Meep-meep, coming through.

Republican in training.

Underneath a huge waterfall.

Driving above the clouds.

Tortoise vs. hare. They didn't lie.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (218) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Vamos Brandon: Hispanics Favor Trump 43%-31% Over Biden, With RFKJr. Drawing Another 14%

Politico: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may doom Joe Biden.

Well obviously. But they mean specifically that RFKJr. pulls a lot of Hispanic votes from Biden, and he's likely to be on the ballot in Hispanic-heavy swing-states like Arizona and Nevada.

To date, Kennedy is officially on the November ballot in just one state: Utah. But his campaign and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, announced in the last month they have collected more than enough signatures to make the ballot in the critical Southwestern battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada, where roughly one in five voters are Latino.

Those signatures are still subject to challenge, but if Kennedy does appear on the ballot, it could create dire complications for the Biden campaign. Latino Democrats are now taking the threat of Kennedy's campaign deadly seriously after national and state leaders were briefed on a previously unreported poll in mid-February by Democratic group Equis Research, which showed Kennedy performing surprisingly well among Latino voters in a dozen battleground states, effectively splintering Biden's Hispanic coalition from 2020, when he garnered 59 percent Hispanic support.

Kennedy's popularity appears to be a function of name recognition and a general lack of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, not to mention voters brushing their views onto the somewhat empty canvas of his candidacy. The poll of 2,010 registered Latino voters found Kennedy winning one in five young Latino voters, and also reported him capturing a sizable 17 percent Latino support in Arizona and an even more robust 21 percent in Nevada-- the highest number among the battleground states polled. The drag on Biden's Latino support was so great in the survey that Trump was winning among Hispanics overall in 12 battleground states, 41 percent to Biden's 34 percent.

If those numbers held in November, it would represent a seismic break in the Democratic coalition and a remaking of the electoral map, leading Democrats to likely lose Nevada and Arizona. In the wake of Trump's 2020 gains with Hispanics from South Florida to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and even in parts of New Jersey and California, Democrats could still rest easy because the entire Southwest held. But if Nevada and Arizona fall to Trump as a result of erosion in the Latino vote, it would mean Biden is likely suffering similar losses across the country, presaging an election loss.

Rasmussen Reports finds Hispanic support for RFKJr. at 14%.

But the bigger problem for Biden is that Hispanic support for Trump is at 43%.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:20 PM | Comments (190) | Trackbacks (Suck)

A New Documentary Makes the Case That It Was the Tyrannical, Obsessive Incompetent Deborah Birx Who Pushed the Hardest For Shutdowns and Lockdowns

John Tierney at City Journal interviews Rob Montz, who just did a documentary called "It Wasn't Fauci: How the Deep State Played Trump."

Now, I know, the first part of that title isn't so promising.

But let's hear a little about Deborah Birx.

I've written a lot about these issues at City Journal, how these terrible measures were imposed against the longstanding advice of the best experts on dealing with pandemics and against the best scientific evidence about these measures. Now, this was, I think, the costliest and worst mistake ever made in the history of public health. Probably the worst public policy blunder ever made during peacetime in America. And like a lot of people, I've wondered, how could we be so stupid? Well, Rob answers that question in his new documentary, and the answer will be news to the many people who put all the blame on Anthony Fauci.

Now, there's no question that Fauci bears a lot of responsibility. He was the public face of Covid. He was the darling of the gullible reporters in the mainstream media who bought his version of "the science." And because his agency controlled so much of the research funding into infectious diseases, scientists depended on that funding, were afraid to contradict them, and therefore there was a silence from people who knew better. But as Rob shows in his documentary, it was another veteran federal bureaucrat who actually orchestrated these terrible measures and conned Donald Trump and the White House into going along with it. Her name is Deborah Birx. Could you tell us about her, Rob?

Montz talks about people not wanting to even think about covid any longer - and by "people," he means the people who were wrong about everything, or believed the people who were wrong about everything.

Rob Montz: ...

They don't really want to be told that it actually wasn't worth it at all. There was no nobility to it. The cousin of yours that died of a drug overdose didn't die for a good reason. The fact that your nine-year-old still can't read. It's not for any particularly good reason. The fact that you had to shutter your family business, there was no good reason. So people just want to move on, even though, as I'm sure your audience knows, there's been a lot of pretty rigorous investigations into the efficacy of the lockdowns, and they've essentially proven that they had no impact whatsoever on cases or death rates.

Would you be surprised to learn that Mike Pence shepherded Deborah Birx into power?

Rob Montz: And it's so funny because the ways that lockdowns became the default policy prescription in America, it's so pedestrian. It's like Alex Jones-style conspiracy theorizing has all these grand forces and complicated machinery and all these complex variables, but then you dig into how Birx got power and it's the most mundane thing imaginable, and the mistakes she made is the most mundane thing in imaginable, and that became the default policy prescription for nearly 400 million Americans. So she immediately, in the wake of Covid hitting American shores in 2019, early 2020, the White House forms a special Covid task force. Importantly, Trump gives Pence complete control of the task force. He essentially outsources the whole Covid task force portfolio to Pence. And as they're assembling this group, they're frantically looking around for a public health expert that can bring some level of scientific rigor to their policy prescriptions for the rest of the country. And through a complicated set of connections, someone within the Trump administration recommends Deborah Birx. Her background importantly is in fighting AIDS in Africa.

It turns out that a report on Birx's performance in "fighting AIDS" says that she was a disaster.

Rob Montz: And it comes out, and this thing, which is mostly based upon surveys with municipal and public health officials in African countries that have been working with Deborah Birx, is a barnburner of an indictment on her management and leadership. It's insane. I mean, anybody can read it. It's not difficult to find. It's just nobody did read it because nobody's curious about it.

John Tierney: Right. This is the first I've seen of it, and it really is a barn burner showing what a horrible administrator she was.

Rob Montz: Everyone's like, she's a dictator. She doesn't listen to feedback. She very quickly becomes myopically committed to a particular paradigm and doesn't change it based upon the facts on the ground. She's dictatorial.

John Tierney: Draws the wrong conclusions, you say?

Rob Montz: Yeah. She draws conclusions that lead down the wrong path. And this is the person who then gets brought up to be part of this elite group of, it's only like 10 people that are principals on the Covid task force, and she's the chief scientist on the task force. That's the woman. Somehow the mechanics of history are such that she's the person that gets to write the guidelines. And what she does, and again, I don't want to give away everything in the documentary, I want people to have a reason to go watch it, is she essentially makes this 75 IQ instinctual parallel between Covid and AIDS. She makes a certain set of assumptions that the Covid virus and HIV/AIDS virus are the same. And from those parallel assumptions come a certain set of policy prescriptions, including getting to zero cases at any cost, treating Covid as an equal opportunity killer, focusing on children and shutting down schools. This is all based on an HIV/AIDS paradigm.

John Tierney: Right, where every case is potentially fatal.

Rob Montz: Exactly. I don't know. This is not a hot contrarian take to be like, "Yo Covid's not like HIV/AIDS." Not at all. It's extremely different. They're radically different diseases. We get into a bunch of the particulars, not least of which, and again, it's still shocking how few Americans seem to appreciate this. It's mostly because of the thematic misinformation fed to them by the corporate establishment media, that there's this really, really sharp age gradient for Covid death where it's a serious disease if you're 74, and it's not a serious disease at all if you're 20. And that reality needs to be reflected in your policy interventions. And it wasn't. Then the central mystery also that we try to solve, Trump initially had okayed the lockdown and very famously cut off air transportation from China. He greenlit a couple weeks to slow the spread, and then a couple more weeks.

He talks about Trump coming out publicly against lockdowns, while his actual government continued to push them. He says Deborah Birx was the "linchpin" for the government going in an opposite direction from the president which supposedly led it.

With Mike Pence's help:

Rob Montz: But my reporting mostly indicates that she was able, Birx in particular, was able to systematically stymie and marginalized Atlas, not because of her close alliance with Fauci and Redfield, but because of her close alliance with Mike Pence. Remarkable, right?

John Tierney: And he really emerges as another villain. He was supposedly in charge of the task force, but he just bowed to her at every turn. He was afraid to stand up to her. Right?

Rob Montz: Well, it's not exactly, I don't really know his motivations. From a distance, before I'd gotten into this, he'd always struck me as the paradigmatic hollow man elected politician. He just seems like he was grown in a lab and is a soulless political automaton, and he just regurgitates on command GOP Christianist talking points. Are you even a person? Do you have a subjective experience of reality, or are you just a non-player character? So I don't really know what his motivations were. I don't really know.

Full interview at the link, of course.

Deborah Birx went to Mike Pence and asked for his permission to "continue to write the guidelines" for shutdowns and re-openings which would directly contradict Trump. Pence understood she intended to be insubordinate, and he granted her permission to do so.

Also a Birx Booster: Jared Kushner, who was terrified at the idea of breaking from the Fauci/Birx line.

The second half of the mini-doc is infuriating. If you don't watch the whole thing, make sure you start watching from around the 10:00 mark.

The documentary itself is only 25 minutes long and is linked below. Along with the New York Times waking up after three years and realizing hey, maybe the lockdowns hurt students, huh?

Wait until they hear about the suicide and drug overdose numbers in adults!

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:33 PM | Comments (193) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Spring Into GAINZZZ

I took CBD oil a while ago. I had read it helps you get deep sleep -- the most important phase of sleep, which we get less and less of as we age. We begin getting more shallow, nap-like, Biden-during-a-Cabinet-Meeting sleep.

It worked for me. I had been getting around 45 minutes of deep sleep, when it's really better to get an hour and twenty minutes or an hour and a half. When I took the CBD oil I started getting 20-25 minutes extra deep sleep per night, or more.

And that really makes a difference. When I get 90 minutes or even 105 minutes of deep sleep, I feel renewed. "Mossy," even.

This Forbes article from January discusses CBD oil's use in promoting deep sleep.

The hypothalamus plays a role in several sleep-related functions, including regulating body temperature and synchronizing sleep patterns. CBD can help people with insomnia because it works with the hypothalamus to regulate stress, says Dr. Whitelocke. "Insomnia results from an overactive stress reaction that's spilling into a rest time when we're not trying to process conscious trauma," he adds. "CBD can suppress this dysregulated cycle of stress hormone overactivation and equalize the sleep and wake rhythm through counteracting hormones."

In a study examining the effects of cannabis on insomnia, researchers found CBD more effectively decreased symptoms of insomnia than delta-9 THC, which is the most abundant active constituent in the cannabis sativa plant that has an intoxicatingly psychoactive effect[2].

Circadian rhythm disorders, also known as sleep-wake cycle disorders, occur when the body's internal clock, which dictates when you fall asleep and when you wake up, is misaligned with your environment. Circadian rhythm disorders can develop when there are changes in sleep habits, often due to travel or work, or as a byproduct of a medical condition, aging or genetics.

CBD may improve both the quality and quantity of sleep by ensuring the body progresses through the normal stages of sleep and REM sleep without undue interruption, which would help people with circadian rhythm disorders, says Dr. Whitelock. "CBD's action on cannabinoid receptors initiates a cascade of events that culminates in a more natural timing of sleep relative to the diurnal rhythm of night and day," he explains. However, more research is needed.

...

Many studies have found CBD to be a potential treatment for anxiety disorders. While more research is needed, studies link CBD use to improved sleep due to its ability to decrease anxiety.

I don't know why I stopped using it. But I've been sleeping badly for weeks, so I got some more at the market. First night of using it, I got an hour and twenty minutes of deep sleep and felt great.

It doesn't always work -- I had a bad night of sleep generally Tuesday night, and only got 40 minutes of deep sleep. Still, that's actually better than what I get during a night of bad sleep.

CBD oil is pretty expensive - my bottle of 60mg strength oil cost $120, and it's a small bottle -- but it might be worth a one-time purchase to try.

JackStraw tells me I can quit any time I want.

Some health bites:

Possibly good news on cancer.

Cancer cells have an outer coat that hides their nature as destroyer cells, so the immuno cells of the body don't destroy them.

Supposedly a two-step treatment forces cancer cells to "unmask" so that they can be targeted by other drugs -- and the body's own self-defense system.

Using these tool molecules forces tumor cells from a specific type of breast cancer into a pro-senescence state -- similar to a sleep-like state in which they can no longer divide or cause tumor growth.

This condition makes the cancer cells sensitive to a second group of tool molecules, called senolytic drugs, which can eliminate them. It may also 'uncloak' the cancer cells, making them visible to the body's immune system, offering further therapeutic opportunities.

Researchers developed this 'two-punch' method while looking at basal-like breast cancer (BLBC).

Eating refined carbs can make you appear less attractive, according to a new study conducted by Jonah Goldberg's wife.

While the health implications of a diet rich in refined carbs has long been studied, researchers wanted to see whether there was a significant relationship between eating refined carbs and how attractive you are perceived to be. For this study, some participants (all men and women of European descent, in order to make the group more similar culturally and reduce physical differences) were given a breakfast high in refined carbs that raised blood sugar levels, while others received a low-glycemic breakfast. Later, opposite-sex volunteers assessed the facial attractiveness of these participants in photos taken two hours after breakfast.

The researchers found that higher consumption of refined carbohydrates was associated with lower facial attractiveness ratings in both men and women. The study also suggested that regularly consuming refined carbohydrates at breakfast and as snacks was linked to lower attractiveness ratings. On a positive side, the study also found that eating a breakfast comprised mainly of fats and proteins, such as dairy, with a small amount of refined carbohydrates boosted attractiveness ratings.

This may shock you, but obesity seems to result in poorer mental health in older people, particularly in women.

A trio of mental and physical health researchers with University College Cork's School of Public Health, has found evidence of poorer mental health in middle-aged to older people with obesity, independent of disease and lifestyle factors.

In their paper published on the open-access site PLOS ONE, Caoimhe Lonergan, Sean Millar, and Zubair Kabi, describe how they analyzed health data for more than 1,800 adult volunteers comparing BMI scores and mental health scores.

...

In analyzing the data, and factoring out lifestyle factors, the researchers found what they describe as an association between BMI/body measurements consistent with obesity and depression along with feelings of low well-being. They noted that such relationships were more common for the women in the study than for the men. They also noted that their findings were consistent with those found in other similar research efforts.

Ladies, if you ever find yourselves thinking about dying your hair purple and getting a nosering or three -- try intermittent fasting. It may be your only hope.

From the world of Gym Thots: A whore spits on the end of a barbell and simulates giving it manual stimulation.

In proof that not all Gym Thots are females, this degenerate films himself in the locker room, also catching other men changing, and then gets angry when a gym member dares walking in front of his precious camera shot.

Here's a thought wearing skintight booty shorts complainobragging that "Everyone's staring, yeah, get used to it."

Zooming In: No one's staring, Bitch.

Why It Matters: You will die alone and be forgotten by even your OnlyFans subscribers.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:00 PM | Comments (300) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Have Kids Been Made Mentally Ill by Cell Phones and Social Media?

I mean, the answer is "obviously yes," but let's pretend it's a more interesting question.

Pew survey: Nearly three quarters of teens say they feel happy and peaceful when they don't have their cell phones.

The survey comes as policymakers and children's advocates are growing increasingly concerned with teens' relationships with their phones and social media.

...

Despite the increasing concerns, most teens say smartphones make it easier be creative and pursue hobbies, while 45% said it helps them do well in school. Most teens said the benefits of having a smartphone outweigh the harms for people their age. Nearly all U.S. teens (95%) have access to a smartphone, according to Pew.

Majorities of teens say smartphones make it a little or a lot easier for people their age to pursue hobbies and interests (69%) and be creative (65%). Close to half (45%) say these devices have made it easier for youth to do well in school.

People I know who seem very phone-focused justify the omnipresence of the phone with the claim "I need to be plugged in all the time for work."

Which sounds to me like an addict attempting the justify the addiction.

About half of the parents said they spend too much time on their phone. Higher-income parents were more likely to say this than those in lower income buckets, and white parents were more likely to report spending too much time on their phone than Hispanic or Black parents.

AWFLs are addicted to their phones and social media? You don't say.

Schools are starting to ban cellphones during the school day. I have no idea why this rule isn't universal.

In Akron, Ohio, teens and tweens show up to school every day with their homework, their textbooks ... and a special magnetic pouch that renders their smartphones useless during the day.

The Akron schools are part of a growing movement across the US and Europe to ban phones in schools or require them to be locked up in pouches made by a startup named Yondr. School districts in at least 41 states have bought the pouches in recent years, a response to behavior issues as well as concerns about students' mental health and learning, which have ramped up since the pandemic.

"The results for us were just a game-changer," Patricia Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association, which represents teachers and other educators in the district, told me. Fights in the schools have decreased since the bags were introduced to all middle and high schools in 2022, and kids report engaging with their friends more.

More schools have been banning phones since the lockdown -- I assume the reason is the learning-loss experienced by students thanks to cowardly teachers. With kids now a half year to a year and a half behind where they should be, they certainly cannot be permitted any easy distractions from a phone.

There's also reason to believe that using cellphones in class is bad for learning. Studies on doctors, nurses, and others have shown that "multitasking during learning interferes with the long-term processing and retention of what you learn," said Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Some research suggests that curbing smartphone use in the classroom could help students stay focused on their lessons.

No shit, really? "Multitasking" -- dividing your singular focus of attention between several tasks near-simultaneously -- results in poor performance at those tasks?

Really?

I'm floored.

Jonathan Haidt is arguing that the combination of cell phones plus social media has destroyed what we knew as "childhood" for 100,000 years and resulted in anxious, perpetually frightened, and generally mentally-unhealthy children.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (285) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Meet the UN's "Youth Advisor" on Climate

The UN "Youth Advisor" on climate says that carbon dioxide isn't the enemy.

White men are the enemy.

She's a real peach.

A United Nations youth climate adviser has a history of social media posts that call for the destruction of capitalism, claim "terrorism" is used as a Western smear to justify its imperialism and attack White people for purportedly fueling humanity's extinction vis-a-vis the climate crisis.

...

Siddiqa was a Time Woman of the Year in 2023 who has co-founded two youth climate activist organizations.

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According to her social media posts, Siddiqa is more than an environmentalist.

She unabashedly promotes radical leftist beliefs like abolishing the police, espousing socialist ideals, sharing Marxist-themed and anti-capitalist content while repeatedly denigrating White people.

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The UN adviser didn't get involved in climate action because of the opportunity to protect the environment, she said, but because she wanted to rail against the West for its wars and involvement in the Middle East, which she claims is intimately connected to oil, according to a May 2020 post on X.

"You want to know why I got into climate activism, it wasn't because I wanted to protect the environment (although that is a very valid reason). I became involved [because] the West slaughtered, bombed and starved my people to death in the name of oil. And no one talks about it," she wrote.

"When I think of fossil fuel, I don't think of pollution... I think of... organized terrorism and I think of demolished democracies at the hands of the West," she wrote in a separate post in November 2020.

While accusing the West of "organized terrorism" in regard to purportedly fueling the climate crisis, the UN adviser cast doubt on the term used by the West for actions by Islamist groups.

"Why is it that when non-white nations stand up against bombing, and pillaging of natural resources that they are immediately vilified. and that vilification is attributed to an innate problem in their psyche, or concept of living known as religion," she posted in April 2021. "There is a reason why the phrase Islamic terrorism is only 60ish years old. This vocabulary was invented to justify covert Western imperialism."

In fact, she supports political violence and terrorism:

Siddiqa also mentioned Franz Fanon and Angela Davis, two Marxists thinkers who supported using violence as a means of liberation, in a post about Hamas as it launched thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian areas in May 2021.

"Ya'll were sharing Fanon and Davis left and right a few months ago, but are now saying 'but hamas... both sides.' Clearly you didn't read the books," she said. The adviser also expressed an overt animus against Israel on X, calling the country "fascist."

And of course, she blames "climate change" on white men.

Even though China and India, which are the chief producers of "greenhouse gases," are not white nations.

Siddiqa attributes a simple cause to climate change -- White people.

In March 2021, she posted, "[T]he white man has brought life as we know it, to the verge of extinction."

"The white man sits at the highest level of power in the world, the same way he has killed, looted and abused black and brown people for profit so has he the earth," she posted in May 2022.

The UN adviser also ranted about how she believes White people should take a step down from power in the climate movement, saying it belongs to people of color.

"We're allowing White people to have too much space," she said. "[W]hite people have absolutely no prerogative or authority to lead the movement."

She also accuses Arabs of being "racist" and of practicing slavery to a "repulsive" extent.

No comment.

She's Pakistani, by the way.

And not a racist herself at all.

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Stemming from her repeated criticisms of U.S. and Western foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East, in 2020, she called Biden a "war criminal" and said the British Royal family was "inequality, capitalism & White supremacy personified."

Following the George Floyd riots of 2020, Siddiqa said, "America you looted every inch of this planet, raped and [pillaged] its brown and black people and now you are angry that your citizens are doing it to you."

Around the same time period, she said, "racial harmony is fallacy."

In addition to supporting "Abolish[ing] the police," Siddiqa also believes the BLM demonstrations were exemplary for climate activists of what it looks like to be "a credible threat to power."

"When you are a credible threat to power, you don't get to... attain permits & permission to take to the streets... When you are really threatening systems of oppression you have to hide your identity, like many BLM protestors & BIPOC climate activists have had to do."

"Revolutionary fights... are battles born out of sheer necessity," she continued.

Below, video of this nasty, ignorant, racially-entitled WOC spreading hate and, even worse, misinformation.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (281) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Biden, Having Drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Boost Democrats' Chances for the 2022 Midterms, Now Breaks a Promise and Says He's Not Going to Re-Fill It

Biden lied. He's willing to weaponize the government and deplete critical wartime stocks for short-term political advantage.

He's an evil old vulture.

The Department of Energy said it has canceled its plans to purchase millions of barrels of oil to refill the depleted U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as oil prices rise to a five-month high.

In canceling the SPR purchase, the Energy Department said it was "keeping the taxpayer's interest at the forefront" of its buyback plan, which is to refill the depleted reserves so long as prices remain below $79 per barrel.

Prices for global benchmark Brent crude and U.S.-based West Texas Intermediate soared well higher Tuesday, with Brent prices nearing $90 per barrel and WTI climbing slightly above $85 per barrel, amid worries about supply from Russia and producers in the Middle East.

"We will not award the current solicitations for the Bayou Choctaw SPR site and will solicit available capacity as market conditions allow," DOE officials said, adding that they "will continue to monitor market dynamics" for future refills.

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Like other SPR caverns along the U.S. Gulf Coast, its levels remain depleted to historic lows following President Joe Biden's 180 million-barrel drawdown of SPR oil in March 2022, aimed at stabilizing energy costs for consumers in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It was the largest one-time drawdown in the history of the stockpile. And while the sales did help alleviate prices for consumers, they also sent levels plummeting to a 40-year low and prompted concerns that a lengthy depletion period could leave the U.S. vulnerable and resource-strapped in the event of an emergency.

Wednesday's delay could also risk putting the administration off track as it looks to meet its promise of fully replenishing the SPR by the end of the year.

Biden's fantasies about everyone owning an electric vehicle are being exposed as an exhaust pipe dream.

Ford Motor Company announced Thursday that due to a lack of demand from customers, they will delay the rollout and manufacturing of new electric vehicles.

"In a manufacturing update Thursday, Ford announced that it is pushing back the production launch of its planned three-row electric SUV at its assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario, from 2025 to 2027," Fox Business reports. "Ford lost about $4.7 billion on EVs last year and projects losses in the range of $5 billion to $5.5 billion this year."

Two weeks ago the CEO of Hertz resigned after the company's failed electric vehicle experiment.

America's Least Favorite Gay Uncle says that if you don't buy an EV, you ain't black.

I mean, "You ain't a hepcat."

Via the Daily Mail:

Buttigieg was speaking on Fox News Tuesday afternoon when he was asked about a downturn in sales of Teslas and electric vehicles despite Biden's administration pushing them.

He said: 'Let's be clear, the automotive sector is moving toward EVs and we can't pretend otherwise. Sometimes, when these debates happen, I feel like it's the early 2000s and I'm talking to some people who think that we can just have landline phones forever.'

Oh Secretary Bootyjuice, you're so Fashion Forward.

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Wall Street is bracing for the first Tesla sales decline in four years as appetite for electric cars continues to slow.

The last time it saw a year-on-year decline in deliveries was in the first half of 2020 when car makers had to shut down factories due to COVID.

Even with sales down of EVs, Democrats continue to push for them and against gas-powered vehicles.

At least eight states are planning to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars in the next decade - and others are considering joining them.

Only zero-emission vehicles can be sold in participating states beginning from the 2035 model year, according to the Advanced Clean Cars II legislation.

Biden spent $7.5 billion of this nation's ever-shrinking capital to build charging stations for EVs.

He built SEVEN charging stations in two years.

President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.

But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks -- which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road -- the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars.

"I think a lot of people who are watching this are getting concerned about the timeline," said Alexander Laska, deputy director for transportation and innovation at the center-left think tank Third Way.

In March, Biden pushed new rules on tailpipe emissions designed to force everyone to buy an EV.

Benjamin Zycher writes that the EPA justifies these new rules by, get this, lying about the data.

Biden's EPA can justify his new EV rules only by cooking the books

Before federal regulations are implemented, they must be justified with an extensive analysis of costs and effects. The new Environmental Protection Agency rule forcing a massive shift toward electric vehicles is no exception. Weighing in at 1,181 pages, it is accompanied by an additional 884 pages of "regulatory impact analysis."

The EPA analysis justifying this rule is not unique in its length, but it is unique in its dishonesty.

EPA claims that the rule will reduce total greenhouse gas emissions over 2027-2055 by 7.2 billion metric tons. But despite a long and disingenuous discussion of the purported adverse effects of greenhouse gas emissions, EPA admits that it "did not...specifically quantify changes in climate impacts resulting from this rule in terms of avoided temperature change or sea-level rise."

The reason for that failure is obvious: The answer would be embarrassing. If we apply EPA's own climate model, with assumptions that exaggerate the climate effects of reductions in GHG emissions, the rule would reduce global temperatures in 2100 by 0.0068 degrees Celsius -- an effect far too small to be detectable.

Yet somehow, EPA claims that the rule will yield "climate benefits" of $1.6 trillion. How is that possible for a near-zero effect on temperatures? As with the entire Biden climate regulatory regime across all agencies, EPA multiplies asserted reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the "social cost of carbon," a fictitious number that supposedly measures damage caused by the emissions.

This multiplier is fictitious because it is derived from an assumed future emissions scenario ("Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5") so extreme that it has virtually no chance of becoming reality. And this is incorporated into climate models that already overstate the actual satellite temperature measurements by a factor of about 2.5. The result? Climate doom and gloom predictions wholly at odds with the actual evidence.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (351) | Trackbacks (Suck)