Quick Hits

Update on the Wuhan Alleged Bioweapon: A military scientist " " " fell from the roof of the Wuhan Institute of Bat Virus Bioweapons " " " in May 2020. He had begun work in the Institute in November 2109... just when the alleged bioweapon escaped from the lab.

I'm on vacation, supposedly keeping my mind away from all the troubles in the world, but the Daily Mail offers an eye-popping scoop, relating to the Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist who began work on a vaccine for Covid-19 in May 2020. He had begun work in the Institute in November before almost anyone else on the planet had even heard of the virus.

Zhou, who worked for the People's Liberation Army and was collaborating with Wuhan scientists at the time of the outbreak, died in mysterious circumstances in May 2020, aged 54.

US investigators are said to have been told 'Zhou fell from the roof of the Institute', although this has not been confirmed.

Oh, I'm sure he was just checking out the view and leaned over too far. I would say that this Russian habit of important people falling out of windows must be contagious, but as we know, the Chinese government is habitually reluctant to label anything as contagious.

Secretary of State Blinken and Russiagate conspirator Anthony Blinken: "We do not support Taiwan's independence."

In return, China is treating Blinken with absolute disrespect and even "scolding him," admits Obama staffer and CNN "journalist" Jim Sciutto.

Karine Jean-Pierre: "I'm a historic figure and I certainly walk in history every day."

More from Karine Jean-Pierre from Karen Townsend. She makes so many historics you won't believe how much of a historic she is.

Bill Simmons, who is both a podcaster and executive at Spotify, calls Harry and Meghan Markle "f***ing grifters" as Spotify cuts ties with the pair.

Federal Judge: Schools are allowed to openly propagandize that children should experiment with homosexuality and transgenderism, but a kid wearing a t-shirt that says "There Are Only Two Genders" is breaking the law.

On Friday, a federal judge in Massachusettes ruled a shirt that read "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS" could be construed as bullying of a protected class and is not protected speech after a 12-year-old and his father filed suit against officials in the Middlesbrough Public School district for First and Fourteenth Amendment rights violations.

Judge Indira Talwani said in the court ruling, the boy and his father had "not established a likelihood of success on the merits where he is unable to counter Defendants' showing that enforcement of the Dress Code was undertaken to protect the invasion of the rights of other students to a safe and secure educational environment."

"School administrators were well within their discretion to conclude that the statement 'THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS' may communicate that only two gender identities--male and female--are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent," the ruling continued, "and to conclude that students who identify differently, whether they do so openly or not, have a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities."

Trans and gender non-conforming students are considered a protected class under Massachusetts law, and while this shirt does not constitute the bullying of a single student, the ruling says that the school was justified because it could make "a group of potentially vulnerable students" not feel safe.

Obama: I can't figure out how much of the Tea Party's opposition to Obamacare was based on conspiracy theories, and how much was simply racism.

Bizarre: The New York Times runs an opinion piece by a psychiatrist saying that 90% of what young women want to talk about with her is... Taylor Swift.

A few months ago I started joking that half of the treatments in my psychiatric practice had become "Taylor-based." Many of my patients are adolescent girls and young women, and they have leaned on Taylor Swift as a kind of big sister through the daily agonies of being a teenage girl: unsteady friendships, the 24-hour firing squad of the internet, and of course, the endless longing to feel seen and valued. At the end of a session exploring these struggles, I've appreciated having her to keep my patients company the rest of the week.

But as the Eras tour steadily lurched toward our favorite city, the Taylor-based therapy issues reached a boiling point. "How am I going to stay calm before she goes onstage?" "I need to do remote today because I can't get Covid before the concert." "How am I going to go back to regular life once it's all over?" They were saying they needed to calm down, and to help them do that we dug through the full bag of tricks -- behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic, existential -- and explored these patients' relationships to anticipation, to enjoyment, to self-regulation, to suffering.

...

When I was growing up, I had the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, singers for whom a troubled inside matched a raw, edgy outside. But there was nobody who held forth on righteous anger from the inside of a sparkly bodysuit -- who suffered as I did, but whose confident prowl could make me walk a bit taller. My singers would sit outside the party and complain with you, but when you got your courage up, they weren't going to go inside, ready for it. Taylor doesn't force you to choose, because she is both The Lucky One you want to be, and every bit the Anti-Hero you are inside.

...

"What would Taylor Swift do?" is a refrain among certain patients in my practice...

We will all eventually calm down, but for now I am leaning in to this fever dream, this restlessness, and sleeplessness, and decline in focus on anything else -- a champagne problem perhaps, but also a gift. Sometimes it's good to let yourself be disrupted, to be a little less productive, to stay stay stay in an enchanted place as long as you can. Especially when there is someone new in your life who shows you colors you can't see with anyone else.

It's not a gift, it's a disorder, and this psychiatrist shares it -- if you read the parts I've not bothered to quote, you'll see she is a Taylor Swift Obsessive herself -- and who knows, maybe she's making up this crap about her patients being obsessed as an excuse to share her own Taylor Swift Mania with the world in a formerly prestigious newspaper.

The Rainbow Jihad is pushing people to the breaking point. Here, the UK flag is removed from a line of rainbow flags, because the Rainbow Jihad Flag is the true flag of Britain.

As it is the true flag of Occupied America.

As MTV taught Gen Xers -- at some point it's time to stop being polite, and start being real.

posted by Ace at 06:35 PM

| Access Comments