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2022.04.29 - The Daily Sceptic - Chris Morrison - Arctic Ice is Not “Rapidly Vanishing” – Study Finds Similar Trends Over At Least 200 Years: The divergence between climate hysteria premised on scientific modeling and historical observations is explored by Morrison. We see a constant stream of apocalypse predictions, whether of the “rapidly vanishing” ice caps kind all based on endless extrapolations of “self destructive positive feedback loops”, extraordinary claims such as Al Gore’s 2009 statement that arctic ice would altogether vanish in summer by 2014 or 2017. These predictions have proven spectacularly false, but are yet repeated with alterations in the expected ice free date. Morrison briefly examines historical data, studies examining the same which suggest the exact opposite of the current hysteria. The 2021 Climate Report by Professor Ole Humlum for Global Warming Policy Foundation which suggests a trend of *stable or higher * ice extent at both poles since 2018 onward is referenced.

The above story was picked up by a Reuters factcheck - “Misleading” was their verdict, and as usual the DS tear down of the factcheck is worth reading.

2022.05.01 - Chronicles Magazine - John Kline - America’s “Female Future” has Open Borders: Kline argues the extreme rhetoric around indiscriminate immigration in the United States today is a result of its increased feminization, presenting a tipping point. He notes interestingly that immigration advocacy organizations are overwhelmingly female with nearly 80-90 % women in the four of the five largest immigration advocacy organizations. Likewise Kline notes the predominance of women reporters in immigration coverage, alongside the steady increase in the prominence of women in American Public Life. He then explores what tendencies may answer for the preferences of increasingly dominant women in American Public Life, and how a preference for open borders ranks first in such political preferences, what he calls “immigration wokeness”.

2022 May - Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma - Taking Care Report: A Report which attempts a comprehensive mental health assessment of the Canadian Journalism Sector. Spreading propaganda, being partisan hacks has its heavy psychological costs, and this report is as much about journalists complaining. The Report paints a sector in severe distress with claims of nearly 1 in 10 journalists contemplating suicide upon covering difficult stories. More than half of all Canadian journalists surveyed report having sought “medical help to deal with work related stress and trauma”.

2022.05.24 - Upstream Reviews Substack - Mike Gallagher - SFWA eats their own: Mercedes Lackey is made Grand Master, banned from Nebulas on same day: That science fiction writing has suffered great politicization causing an even greater decline in quality is well known. The Science Fiction Writers’ Association bestowed one of its highest honors to the writer, Mercedes Lackey (Damon Knight Grand Master), and on the same day depanelized, disinvited her. All because she misspoke, using “colored” as opposed to the required “person of color” in praising a fellow SFWA Grand Master, Samuel Delaney. That Lackey embodied the woke in her work and outside it, that Delaney did not object to the term, that he defended Ms Lacked did not stop the SFWA, its members from attacking Lackey and her husband, Larry Dixon, an artist-author in his own right. Gallagher reports on the episode.

2022.05.26 - Etana’s Substack - Etana Hecht - Vaccinated Women: Fertility Signals are coming through: COVID-19 vaccines had been declared safe and efficacious for pregnant women despite there being no empirical basis whatsoever for such claims. Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers had in their inserts denied claims regarding pregnant women, suggesting effects unknown, but in the mainstream media safety and effectiveness were trumpeted. Drug Administrators went out of their way to short circuit emergency use authorization (EUA) procedure which itself deserved criticism. Important reportage weaving facts in chronological order as to the official and vaccine manufacturer narrative on safety and efficacy vis-a-vis pregnant women.

2022.05.26 - National Post - Terry Glavin - The year of the graves: How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves: World reportage on Canadian “mass graves” was notably entirely false, as there were no mass graves in Canadian Residential Schools, nor were any new mass graves discovered over the last two years. The world’s media gradually shifted the language from “mass graves” to “unmarked graves” but much damage was done by the hysteria. Glavin points out that all the supposedly fresh discoveries of graves at residential schools were well documented with centuries old history. He discusses the extensive century old public engagement around disproportionate indigenous deaths in the (compelled) residential school system. Glavin points out how the Indigenous, the supposed victims recognized that there wasn’t a discovery as such, while it was the political-media establishment which effectively concocted claims of genocide. While the indigenous urged “careful, thoughtful and precise” language, the mainstream indulged in a developing conspiracy. Glavin reports the contrast of perspectives, of politicization and projection, and ponders causes for such errors (deliberate and unintentional).

2022.05.27 - IM-1776 - Pedro Gonzalez - Servant of the Corrupt: Zelensky’s backer, Kolomoisky is explored here. The essay does not address the recent sanctioning of Kolomisky by the US State Department in 2021, though it notes the similar arm-twisting tactics against Yanukovych’s backer Firtash in 2014. The essay also touches on Burisma which it says is controlled by Kolomoisky, and the latter’s “business” practices.

2022.05.31 - The American Conservative - Rod Dreher - Divorce, Neurology and the Left Brain - An interesting questioning piece where Dreher mentions the philosopher-psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s work exploring the brain’s hemispheres and their impact on culture. In the context of increasingly female led divorces, Dreher references McGilchrist proposition that our cultural obsession with precision, on specific issues prevents comprehension of the overall picture, what he criticized as “left-brain chauvinism”. McGilchrist’s argument that mass delusions such as pronoun self identification may have to do with the tendency to undervalue experience, common sense and broad self-reflection, is explored briefly by Dreher.

2022 June - The New Criterion - Highways to Utopia: Long overall-picture essay by Kimball. This quote characterizes the piece well:

The historian Arnold Toynbee spoke in this context of the “barbarization of the dominant minority.” When a society is robust and self-confident, Toynbee suggested, cultural influence travels largely from the elites to the proletariats. The elites furnish social models to be emulated. The proletariats are “softened,” Toynbee said, by their imitation of the manners and morals of a dominant elite. But when a society begins to falter, the imitation proceeds largely in the opposite direction: the dominant elite is coarsened by its imitation of proletarian manners. Toynbee spoke in this context of a growing “sense of drift,” “truancy,” “promiscuity,” and general “vulgarization” of manners, morals, and the arts. The elites, instead of holding fast to their own standards, suddenly begin to “go native” and adopt the dress, attitudes, and behavior of the lower classes. Flip on your television, scroll through social media, look at the teens and pre-teens in your middle-class neighborhood. You will see what Toynbee meant by “barbarization of the dominant (or, rather ‘once-dominant’) minority.” One part of the impulse is summed up in the French phrase nostalgie de la boue. But it is not “mud” that is sought so much as repudiation.

2022.06.01 - The Hill - Kristin Tate - Census Blunder may tip 2024 election to Democrats: The US Census Bureau acknowledged serious errors in its 2020 Census, with significant miscounts affecting 14 states. The author argues that the pattern of miscounts involves overestimation affecting mostly Democrat States, and underestimation affecting mostly Republican States. Miscounts are significant to note given common understanding that Republican States like Texas, Florida etc. seeing large growths in their populations compared to Blue States. That despite such common knowledge, extensive errors involving the missing of nearly 5% of US Population went (apparently) undetected. As seat apportionment has already been conducted, the advantage for Democrats in 2024 is decisive for both Congress and Presidential Elections (a gain of 9 seats in the Senate and Electoral College each for Democrats at the expense of an equal loss of 9 seats for Republicans), Tate argues.

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