Links - 13th July 2026 (2 - Air Conditioning in Europe)

Melissa Chen on X - "How on earth did air-conditioning become so right-wing coded? Apparently man can conquer biological sex, but God forbid he conquers the heat wave"

CJ on X - "It's actually because socialist countries are too poor to afford the cost of an AC unit and its high electric usage. Only by supporting capitalism can the average person afford it."
NekoGaDaisuki on X - "You forgot some details : Is is also forbidden to protect the most at risk, such as our old ones, our kids, people that are disabled or with pathologies that put them in danger, etc.. Here in France, it is "bad" apparently to expect schools, regardless of the students age, as well as hospitals and EHPAD to have reversible heat pumps (pompes à chaleur), because bureaucracy and ecologist apparently consider it is needed to fill tons of papers just to "ask" for permission to provide air-conditionning. Oh, also, look at the irony : we are told the global warming is a reality, so lets enact laws that force new constructions to be more efficient during the winter (because global warming for shure) while these new buildings are littéral ovens during the summer. Yes that is a thing, it is called RT2012 construction standard in France. Earth becomes hotter, but lets make our lives hotter than ever just to be sure..."
Ex-Lefties on X - "The ideas of anthropogenic climate change and the solution to that 'problem': the sustainable economy are both communist coded. Communists believe that everything which opposes them is right-wing coded."

How Europe Became the World Champion of Heat Deaths - "a Frenchman relaxing in a spacious air-conditioned villa, drawing on nuclear power, still emits less carbon than a frugal German drawing from a coal-fired grid. Grid management beats self-flagellation... 'I’ve been scarred mentally and physically from sweating bedridden after a C-section in a German hospital without AC during a heat wave. And I was extremely fit and strong. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the truly sick and disabled this entire week. It’s torture. And it’s crazy that the people supposedly in charge of the vulnerable are the ones most opposed to A/C for ideological reasons.'
The harder task for Europeans is the mental switch: to stop treating energy as something to atone for. Energy is the master resource, the thing that buys us nearly every other good. The whole of human history is the story of harnessing ever more energy to improve our lives and to hold the lethal forces of nature at bay. To despise energy is to bite the hand that feeds you. Which brings me to one last trivia question: which continent suffers the most cold-related deaths? It’s neither Europe nor North America, but Africa. Prosperity is what allows us to adapt—to heat and cold alike—and adaptation is what stands between us and an inhospitable nature."

Make Europe Cool Again - "when it comes to AC access Europeans are not only behind North America, they’re also behind the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, as well as Central and South America. Why does Europe have so little AC? We could start with the fact that Europe has historically enjoyed a mild climate. As such, Europe has no existing “AC culture” and adoption will slowly change as a result of climate change. However, this “natural” explanation of European AC-poverty becomes less convincing if we compare Europe to other cases with a historically mild climate, such as South Korea. As recently as 1993 South Korea had a European-equivalent AC adoption rate of 6%, a “luxury tax” on AC and misinformed cultural beliefs such as “fan death”. Today, it has one of the world’s highest AC adoption rates at 97%. A better explanation is that European policy has strongly disincentivized installed ACs through a variety of national and local regulations. These regulations have not happened by accident, but they come from an ideology that emphasizes energy degrowth as the only viable solution to climate change... France has passed a Climate and Resilience Law (2021) that requires a “Diagnostic de Performance Énergétique (DPE)”, which means all apartments are assessed by how many kWh/m²/year they consume. Based on this, they receive an energy performance certificate that rates homes from A (best) to G (worst). This energy rating comes with severe consequences... Despite having the highest exposure, most heat deaths are not from outdoor workers. A typical heatwave victim in Europe is an older adult with pre-existing health issues, living alone in suboptimal housing... during the COVID-19 pandemic we shut down pretty much all economic life largely to protect the elderly. In comparison, allowing people to own an AC seems like a very small price to pay to protect the elderly... In Europe indoor heating consumes more energy and contributes more to climate change than AC. Yet, Europeans (rightly) don’t treat indoor heating as a luxurious indulgence that should require a strict permit and is by default not included in new buildings, unless you can prove carpets and ski jackets are not helping enough and that you have a special medical need for warmth. Similarly, AC is increasingly essential for health and well-being. If you want to ban indoor ski slopes in the desert, fine, but we can’t deny people AC when thousands die during heatwaves... As Europeans increasingly suffer from heat in their homes, more and more will eventually buy ACs, and if they can’t have installed ACs, they will buy mobile ACs... This is part of the irony. De facto banning installed ACs forces more and more people to choose less energy efficient alternatives. To maximize energy efficiency you should go in the opposite direction and promote scale through district cooling where chilled water from central plants is provided to multiple buildings... an individual living in France consuming 116’000 kwH (50% more energy than the average American) still has lower carbon emissions than an individual living the 2000 watt society lifestyle (17’520 kWH per year) in Germany... If you are concerned about the impacts of climate change, you should care about heatwave deaths. According to the European Environment Agency 94% of all fatalities from climate-related disasters in Europe from 1980 to 2023 have been due to heatwaves. However, as the old saying goes: There are no natural disasters, only natural hazards. We know how to prevent many if not most of these deaths. AC will not solve everything on its own, but it is a key tool for climate adaptation, especially during heatwaves."
Clearly, the solution is to ban mobile air conditioners

Greg Lukianoff on X - "Dear Europe (yes, even you, Glasgow!): a couple of points. Your aversion to air conditioning is moralistic, not scientific. Heating homes across Europe takes VASTLY more energy than cooling them. Not a little more. Orders of magnitude more. Depending on how you count it, home heating can swallow something like a hundred times the energy used for cooling. Globally, the same basic point holds: heating is the much bigger energy burden. Cooling matters, and it will matter more as the planet warms. But pretending AC is the great sin while everyone blasts heat all winter is just silly. I’ve watched the anti-AC theater in my mother’s home country, the UK, and it has all the earmarks of a devotional self-flagellation ritual: less environmental science than a belief in the nobility of suffering. Also: heat pumps exist. They cool your home in the summer and heat it in the winter, using far less energy than traditional heating."
Iain Murray on X - "One of the many ironies is that the government is insisting on heat pumps being installed, but also insisting that the cooling function is disabled."

Air conditioning must be REMOVED from homes say councils in Net Zero crackdown despite 40C heat - "Britons have been ordered to remove air conditioning from their homes - despite the country baking in up to 40C heat this week - under a fresh Net Zero crackdown. Planning officials at councils have told residents to take down their cooling units over concerns about carbon dioxide emissions. They say AC, despite the heat, should serve only as a "last resort". The crackdown comes from building regulations which demand "active cooling" is used only after all "passive cooling" methods, like opening windows or running fans, have been exhausted. The Tories have accused the Government of leaving Britain "in the dark ages" through Net Zero policies which prevent citizens from accessing "modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries". Standard guidance says planning consent is not needed for air conditioning in most circumstances. But permission becomes mandatory in specific scenarios, including properties in conservation areas - with separate regulations applying to flats, leasehold properties, and shared buildings. This creates situations where units are fitted believing they comply with rules, only for council enforcement teams to turn up and demand their removal. One Londoner received orders to "permanently remove" two cooling units from the rear of their property, The Telegraph revealed. Camden Council's planning inspectors determined there was "no justification" for the equipment, ruling it breached the authority's "cooling hierarchy" policy. During an appeal, the homeowner was advised to open windows and balcony doors in their first-floor flat to achieve ventilation "by natural means". When the resident raised security concerns in the crime-addled capital, inspectors dismissed these, arguing the risk was not "as great as those associated with ground floor windows" and suggesting windows could remain closed overnight. Camden inspectors specifically noted "the absence of ceiling fans" in the property, though this was never a stated requirement. Even after determining the units were "neither intrusive nor harmful" to the neighbourhood's character, officials still demanded they were scrapped. The homeowner ultimately won on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate by proving their property already featured environmental improvements like solar panels. Londoners are at greater risk of enforcement action. The capital's borough councils have incorporated rules derived from Sir Sadiq Khan's "London Plan" into their local planning frameworks. The Mayor's 2021 strategy notes that "new development in London should also be designed to avoid the need for energy intensive air conditioning systems as much as possible". Camden's local plan pledges to actively "discourage the use of air conditioning" over concerns it raises "demand for energy" and warms "the local micro-climate". Islington Council also restricts cooling systems on environmental grounds, saying they "must only be considered as a last resort". These local policies go above and beyond national building regulations, which merely prioritise "passive cooling" measures like window shading before AC. Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said: "It is totally bonkers for council bureaucrats to block people from installing air conditioning because it uses too much energy. "This is exactly why we must repeal the mad building regulations that force councils to care more about box-ticking and process than letting people keep their homes cool in the summer. "We have to get out of this miserabilist Net Zero mindset which says that Britain alone has to stay stuck in the dark ages and can't enjoy the modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries." Estimates indicate roughly three per cent of British homes have air conditioning, compared with 90 per cent in America. The Climate Change Committee has acknowledged the need for cooling systems in care homes, schools and hospitals as temperatures increase, appearing to contradict official Government policy. Labour failed to amend building regulations last week, saying they reflected "the Government's commitment to improving energy efficiency". A Government spokesman said: "Air conditioning units are not banned. They can be installed in both existing and new homes and we expect councils to take a common-sense approach to the rules around this, which are there to manage the interests of communities and the environment.” A Camden Council spokesman said: “Residents seeking planning permission need to demonstrate that alternative, more climate-friendly measures are not suitable, and that units will not create noise or other harmful impacts on neighbours. “Enforcement action in these cases is rare and used only as a last resort where this guidance has not been followed.” Meanwhile, a spokesman for the London Mayor said the policies kept “keep homes cooler without relying on energy-intensive solutions”. They added: "Local planning decisions are the responsibility of the boroughs, who have their own policies in place”."
The cruelty is the point

Ben Habib on X - "They cannot fix the roads. They cannot police the streets. They cannot stop the boats. But they can tell you to rip air conditioning out of your own home during the summer because it offends the net zero cult."
Human rights mean they cannot police the street or stop the boats. Human rights also mean they can force you to die of heatstroke

The Sales Bull 🎯 Follow if you sell B2C or B2B on X - "The British state gets away with so much because if you describe the the truth people think you’re mad"
See also "The Democrats' Insanity Defense"

Air conditioning: saving lives and accelerating net-zero - "Britain is getting hotter, but is poorly prepared for the heat. Only 5% of British households have air conditioning, compared to 37% of people worldwide. Half of all UK homes overheat during the summer months. Heat-related death rates in the UK in 2022 were over 10 times those in Sweden, and twice that of the (climatically-similar) Netherlands. London's rate of heat related deaths exceeded any other northern European capital city, and were similar to those in Rome. High temperatures are not only uncomfortable; they cost lives. In 2022, circa 3000 people in Britain died from heatwaves. Studies show air conditioning can cut heat related deaths by 75%. Heat related illness disproportionately affects the elderly and those with disabilities. High temperatures make workers less productive and students perform worse in exams during heatwaves. Despite these costs, government heat pump upgrade schemes exclude air-to-air devices whilst building regulations decree that air conditioning is only used when other measures are insufficient. This effectively bans air conditioning in new build homes. Similar restrictions are baked into London’s planning policies. Our analysis shows that UK electricity demand peaks in the winter months, and will continue to do so as heating is electrified. Adding air conditioning demand makes use of this spare grid capacity in summer. Air conditioning can help balance the grid and support the green transition, since its demand profile is well aligned with solar generation. Adoption is likely to increase solar energy demand and help speed up clean power. It may also help speed up clean heating adoption by giving homeowners a reason to upgrade. The impact of the modern British summer – on our health, welfare and productivity – is not inevitable, but the result of policy choices. This Government has the opportunity to make Britain a greener, healthier, and cooler place to work and thrive."

Polymarket on X - "JUST IN: German public broadcaster begins “anti-AC campaign” warning of the dangers of air conditioning, as record heat wave hits the region."

Meme - NIFFTYCAT: "Someone needs to step in"
"HVAC HERO FILMS PRESENTS: CITIZEN VIGILANTE 2: CHILL ARMADA *Armie Hammer with air conditioning unit*"

Auron MacIntyre on X - "The fact that the entirety of Europe is willing to sacrifice a notable amount of their population to a Covid-esque purity spiral is a pretty good indication that no lessons were or will be learned"
Covid and air conditioning hysterias are not about saving lives but pushing left wing ideology

Cruadin on X - "It's becoming increasingly apparent that most European electrical grids can't support a 21st Century civilization, complete with modern wonders like ... (*checks notes*) indoor climate control. Instead of simply conceding their glaring governmental malfeasance they've cobbled together a religious belief system to explain why their restive populations must continue to suffer."

Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 on X - "Here, Patrick explains with common sense & compelling examples that Europe has a degrowth/anti air-con mentality and is told that "these are just anecdotes". This is a type of argument often employed by so-called "moderates" that has done much damage in the past decades. Basically, for every talking point, you have a bunch of degrowth/extreme left crazy people that are fairly well-embedded in institutions and "respectable". The polar opposite right-wing/libertarian position is almost never represented in respectable institutions. Then, you have the moderates. They often distinguish themselves by insisting on "statistics" and hard facts and refusing to accept common sense arguments and "what is before their eyes". The "just anecdotes" dismissal treats empirical observations as epistemically worthless unless accompanied by a regression table. But quantitative evidence itself is abundant for things that powerful intellectual institutions want to measure. It is scarce for things they would prefer not to examine too closely. The intellectual landscape ends up looking roughly like this:
1) On one side, there is a well-funded, institutionally embedded, socially respectable body of opinion that is broadly degrowth, skeptical of markets, skeptical of air conditioning etc. These views appear in EU policy documents, in academic journals, in mainstream journalism and in NGO reports. They might not be held by most academics broadly construed (e.g. engineering profs), but they are held by the small minority that studies these topics and that is enough.
2) On the other side, the full-throated pro-growth, pro-energy and pro-development counterargument exists but is largely confined to think tanks that are routinely described as "industry-funded" or "right-wing," which in respectable discourse functions as a full rebuttal. In the middle sit the moderates, who pride themselves on not taking sides, on demanding evidence, on resisting "populist" or "anecdotal" reasoning. This moderate position is not symmetric in its effects and moderates do not apply equal skepticism to both sides. Overall, the lack of actually balanced perspectives leads to the polarization of those who are more right leaning and suspect something is amiss. But because they lack any institutional home, they end up becoming cranky and conspiratorial. End result: broad erosion of public dicourse. Also if you wonder why AC has become a right wing shaped topic, it's also because of the craziness of the discourse, caused by the above."
Richard Hanania on X - "The best reason to be pessimistic among Europe is that degrowthers actually have power. America has crazy people. But they actually try to argue that wokeness or socialism or MAGA will make people wealthier. In Europe, you can just be pro-poverty. That's insane."
Left wingers always dismiss examples that challenge their worldview as "anecdotes", and love ones that support it as "proof". You can see that with climate change in general too

Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Japan, USA, and South Korea dominate the world when it comes to air conditioning. Air conditioning is right-wing because civilization is right-wing"
Mr. Ovis🐑💼(Office Worker Sheeptuber) on X - "The reason why the EU is having this whole debate and calling AC right-wing is because the arguments in favor of AC are pro-freedom and pro-human. The arguments against are pro-collective and anti-human. For instance, an American says "Well, you should just be able to go get an AC if you want one, you'll be comfortable" The rebuttal to this from the EU is a grand sweeping "Well, we shouldn't need AC at all, we need to terraform the entire planet by paying all of our money in taxes!""

France blames US for deadly heatwave - "Unlike the US, where air conditioning is common, in France only one in four households has air conditioning. Historically, the French have been sceptical about air conditioning: an Ipsos survey published earlier this month found that 78 per cent of French people believe that it’s bad for the environment and one in six respondents said they would rather suffer for the sake of the planet."
Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - ""Dear American social media 'influencers': for days, you have been making fun of Paris because the city does not have A/C in every room..." -Audrey Pulvar, the city's deputy mayor Yeah, we have because your garbage ideas are killing people and they need help."
Weird how they don't blame China

Neighbours turn on each other in Portofino air-con crackdown | Italy | The Guardian - "Portofino has been part of a regional national park since 1935, and up until a few years ago, the installation of AC units on its pastel-coloured buildings was entirely banned. As summers became hotter, the rules were loosened to allow use of the appliances, so long as the homeowner asked permission and ensured that the units were discreetly placed and did not sully Portofino’s natural beauty. Police have been scouring the narrow streets for unauthorised units poking out over the terraces of the village’s homes. There were reports of 22 illegally installed units spotted on various rooftops and terraces between January and May, and a further 15 since June as temperatures soared... As the intrigue heated up along with the temperature, Corriere della Sera reported a “vendetta” among residents involving tit-for-tat denunciations between neighbours. Some culprits have attempted to hide their AC unit or disguise the appliance by painting it to blend in with the local surroundings. In some cases, people have reportedly accepted an invitation into the home of a neighbour, only to secretly take a photo of a unit that they have then passed on to police."

Housebuilder behind ‘flat-pack’ net zero homes on brink of collapse - "Craig White, its chief executive, told industry publication Inside Housing last year that it had “the proven model to tackle the UK’s housing crisis at low cost and speed”... The business built its pipeline around government-backed affordable housing schemes, but has been caught in a wider slowdown in delivery. The Government is falling short of its ambition to build 1.5 million homes by 2029. To reach its target, it needs to build 300,000 homes per year, but just more than 150,000 a year will be built between now and March 2028, down from 189,000 last year, according to Savills. “The planning system is broken, delays in getting planning permission have got worse and there’s a massive skills shortage in the UK,” said Mr Pear."
Time for more environmental regulations to cripple other builders so they can compete!

Thread by @ZubyMusic on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The fact that being 'anti-AC' is an actual political position shows you just how stupid large swathes of humanity are. It's essentially a pro-death position. It's as stupid as being against heating in the winter. Choosing to not personally use air conditioning is one thing... But actively opposing it lol? I do believe people used to be more sensible overall."

Meme - max tampers @maxtempers: "In Soviet Britain, there is a "cooling hierarchy" with five tiers that you must demonstrate to your council you have exhausted before you are allowed to install air conditioning; otherwise, it's taken down."
"The cooling hierarchy. 8.109. The cooling hierarchy, set out in the London Plan 2021, provides measures that should be used to manage heat risk in developments. The cooling hierarchy is as follows:
1. reduce the amount of heat entering a building through orientation, shading, high albedo materials, fenestration, insulation and the provision of green infrastructure;
2. minimise internal heat generation through energy efficient design;
3. manage the heat within the building through exposed internal thermal mass and high ceilings;
4. provide passive ventilation;
5. provide mechanical ventilation; and
6. provide active cooling systems."

Meme - Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "air conditioning still produces heat."
Simon Maechling @simon...: "Yes. in exchange for producing cold."
Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "feedback loop much ?"
IWaTaRA: "Not really, the interior electronics would generate significantly less heat than the cold air blasting inside. And the heat ejected outside disipates will away from your thermostat."
Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "hahahahah dude doesn't understand concept of cumulative. typical karen council."
IWaTaRA @pepperjackmack: "If only they're was some sort of cooling period either via a natural low energy state that occurs every day, or some machine that transfers heat away"
Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "hahahahah dude thinks heat floats off into space at night... clearly never been to lindos in rhodes."
Alex Godofsky on X - "Europeans literally believe that air conditioning doesn't work. their sincerely held belief is that air conditioning is actually a fraud that just creates endlessly more need for air conditioning to deal with the heat it moves outside your house, rendering net cooling impossible."

DaiWW on X - "As a Chinese person, I certainly don't want to see Europeans all installing air conditioners. If all 500+ million people across Europe ran AC and lived the way folks do in China, it would spell real trouble for our planet. Moreover, just as Europeans don't want to see modernization in China's Tibet and Xinjiang, claiming it destroys the culture of local ethnic minorities, we Chinese feel the same way — we don't like seeing modern technologies, such as AC, destroy Europe's primitive way of life. It's an assault on Europe's indigenous culture. We Chinese must speak up for the preservation of European traditions, and never allow modern technology to wipe out Europe's backward but beautiful cultures."

Lance Gooden on X - "Europe wants to blame the United States for its deadly heat wave.
1. Europe refuses AC to "save Earth"
2. The Paris Climate Agreement allows China to keep INCREASING greenhouse gas emissions.
Europe only has themselves to blame."

Pudge (Don’t Trust: Ver-i-fy!) on X - "Hey Europoors. I just got AC installed. In my garage. For my dogs. And I don’t even live in the South. My dogs live better than you do. I care more about my dogs than your govt cares about you." Meme - *Gillette The Best Men Can Be*
Interested White Man: *EUROPOORS*
White Woman walking by: *AIR CONDITIONING*
*Greta Thunberg stopping him*

How Female Grievance Prevents Adulthood

Feminism infantalises women:

How Female Grievance Prevents Adulthood

Pew recently found that women under 50 without children were more likely than men to say they simply did not want children, while young men without children were more likely than young women to say they wanted to become parents someday. This suggests a real shift in how young women imagine marriage, motherhood, and domestic life.

Frustratingly, the current conversation around delayed motherhood is desperate to solve the problem everywhere except at the level of psychology. We talk about childcare, dating apps, fertility treatment, and economic pressure. We even talk about how women were “sold” a lie about what feminism could give them. But we rarely ask why so many women bought it.

A lie is easier to believe when it flatters an existing wound. It is easier to tell a woman that marriage will trap her if she has already been trained to see dependence as humiliation. It is easier to sell the idea that motherhood will erase her if she has already been trained to see sacrifice as exploitation. The grievance framework didn’t only give women new ideas. It changed the emotional conditions under which those ideas became believable and are now so hard to erase.

That matters because the decision to delay or reject motherhood is not only a lifestyle preference. It often reflects a changed relationship to adulthood itself. For most of human history, forming a household and raising children were among the clearest signs that a person had adjusted to adult life. They required responsibility, reciprocity, gratitude, self-restraint, and the ability to tolerate frustration without immediately locating the source elsewhere. The central problem with grievance is not merely that it makes women unhappier. It is that it interferes with the development of precisely the qualities necessary to adjust to adulthood. We can identify three mechanisms through which this change might have occurred. 

Externalization of Blame

The first is externalization of blame. Locus of control research makes a simple distinction. Some people believe their choices meaningfully affect what happens to them. Others believe their lives are mostly shaped by luck, fate, other people, or forces outside their control.

In general, the first group copes better. The second tends to struggle more. That matters here, because grievance trains the second habit: look outward first, locate the cause elsewhere, and protect the self from responsibility.

That is how a grievance-centered model of female socialization can prevent maturation and keep adolescent patterns intact. If a girl is taught that her dissatisfaction is primarily caused by beauty standards, unpaid labor or social conditioning, it may protect her ego in the moment. But she loses something much more important for long-term success: the ability to ask, Was I unfair? What do I need to change? A person who automatically interprets frustration through external blame loses access to the most important developmental move: I am partly responsible for the problem, and therefore partly responsible for the remedy. That sentence is, in essence, adulthood.

When Victimhood Becomes Personality

The second mechanism is victimhood and suspicion hardening into personality. Once grievance colours perception, a woman does not merely notice unfairness. She begins to anticipate exploitation. Ambiguous situations are read as hostile before alternative explanations are considered. Dependence on a man feels inherently risky. Ordinary male flaws such as immaturity or forgetfulness, start looking less like human shortcomings and more like evidence of male malice.

An example of this effect can be seen in the “mental load” phenomenon: the viral trend that originated in academia. The concept captures something real; women often do more of the planning, remembering, organizing, and anticipating needs inside family life. Pew found that among married or cohabiting parents with children under eighteen, 78 percent of mothers reported doing more than their partner in managing children’s schedules and activities.

Perhaps because this trend fit so neatly into the narrative of the woman as the victim of family life, the default response (after loads of biased research) was to declare the trend evidence of inequality. Without considering other factors, such as women’s preferences or men’s burdens, maternal dissatisfaction was mapped directly onto paternal deficiency. The question bypassed whether family burdens were being measured fairly, jumping straight to how fathers could be made to do more so that women would feel better.

This reveals the psychological effect of female-grievance culture: it trains the female eye to see marriage as a zero-sum game. “If I’m exhausted, it means he’s not doing enough.” The possibility that two people can both be working hard, both feel overwhelmed, and both feel underappreciated begins to disappear. That is how the normal heterogenous parity in family life is interpreted to overemphasize her contributions, dismissing his, and then calling the resulting perception “inequality.”

That way of thinking extends far beyond childcare. When a woman struggles in marriage, the first question becomes: how am I being exploited? When she clashes with a man: how has he been conditioned by society to harm me?

This maps closely onto the literature on trait victimhood. Researchers describe it as a stable tendency to experience oneself as the victim across many different interactions and situations. People high in trait victimhood are more likely to assume malicious intent, hold onto perceived slights, and interpret new experiences through the lens of previous injuries.

The deeper problem is developmental. Adulthood is built through thousands of small frustrations. Experiences where the person must be coaxed to ask the uncomfortable question: Was I partly responsible? Did I contribute to the problem? What do I need to change? That process is how people mature.

Victimhood interrupts that process. If the source of distress is assumed to be male selfishness, oppression, inequality, or social conditioning, there’s no need for self-examination. The explanation arrives before the reflection. Responsibility remains external. The person becomes increasingly skilled at explaining suffering and increasingly unpractised at adapting to it.

Over time, she no longer thinks, “Something unfair happened to me.” She begins to think, “Unfair things happen to me because I am a woman.” The self becomes innocent by default. Men become suspects, and every disappointment filed away as further evidence of what she already believes.

This is how grievance becomes part of the psychological make-up. Perception starts organizing itself around expected exploitation. “I experienced unfairness” slowly becomes “I experience unfairness because I am a woman.” What began as a complaint becomes an identity. And once it becomes identity, it starts creating the very situations it claims only to describe. Sexism becomes a self-profiling prophecy.

Rewarded Antagonism

The third mechanism is rewarded antagonism through culture, therapy-speak, and media. Our social world has learned to reward contempt and outrage. Phrases like “weaponized incompetence,” “decenter men,” “mental load,” “boundaries,” “gaslighting,” and “trauma” were given as tools to turn ordinary conflict into moral injury.

Somewhere along the way, women were taught to think of suspicion as being insightful: The quicker she detects exploitation, the more perceptive she feels. The less she accommodates, the more empowered she appears. And slowly, the older virtues that make adult life possible—gratitude, sacrifice, reciprocity—begin to look not like maturity, but like naïveté. Think of the infantilizing, condescending tone feminists use when talking about “tradwives.” Or how they lecture stay-at-home mothers about risks.

There is a scientific basis for this. Anger-rumination research shows that rumination is associated with greater aggression and slower physiological recovery from anger. That matters because grievance culture does not merely encourage women to notice injury; it encourages them to revisit it and make memes and reels that they can bond over.

In an earlier moral structure, a woman might have been encouraged to cool down, forgive, contextualize, or look for her own part. Men are still often advised this way when they try to vent. “Go for a walk.” “Calm down.” “Don’t blow up your life.” But when women vent, the current script often moves in the opposite direction: name it, validate it, call it out, post it, locate what must change in the environment to make her feel better. Imagine advising a female friend in the middle of a rant about her husband to “go take a walk.” The advice may be good, but the culture now treats it as betrayal.

Social media, of course, intensifies this. Research on online outrage shows that positive social feedback increases later outrage expression. If a young woman receives likes, comments, shares, and solidarity for posting contempt toward men, suspicion toward relationships, or resentment toward motherhood, those styles are strengthened. Whether it began as conviction, frustration, or even fake performance matters less over time. Rewarded performances become habits and beliefs.

Over-represented in these social media performances is therapy-speak. The emergence of popularized clinical language gives grievance scientific authority. The woman is no longer simply angry, disappointed, jealous, exhausted, ashamed, or afraid. She is “triggered,” “dysregulated,” “traumatized,” “invalidated,” or “unsafe.” The life she is expected to lead by the mean society has made her sick. And so, the faulty perception of distress is now a symptom. That makes it harder to deal with.

You cannot tell someone with a “symptom” to grow up without sounding invalidating. You cannot tell her to learn to tolerate frustration without sounding like you are minimizing trauma. The clinical vocabulary shields the young woman from performing the difficult tasks necessary for adult adjustment. Any expectation will be met with clinical language; people will be forced to accommodate and growth stalls.

Together, these mechanisms arrest development. Externalization protects the ego from responsibility. Victimhood identity organizes perception around anticipated harm. Rewarded antagonism turns resentment into status, language, and belonging.

A closer look at the feminist well-being literature revealed a much narrower claim than the one usually drawn from it. It showed that women who identify with feminism often report feeling more autonomous, more self-accepting, and more assertive. But the relationship literature points in the opposite direction when it comes to long-term adult stability. Gratitude in everyday interactions predicts greater connection and relationship satisfaction the next day. Self-transcendence, constructive communication, and sacrifice are also associated with higher relationship quality.

These are not nice-to haves, these are necessary for long-term relationships. People have to notice what is being given, not only what is missing. Sacrifice has to be experienced as loyalty rather than theft. Burden has to be experienced as meaningful, not as evidence of oppression.

And that is the trade off the feminist well-being literature never really measures. It can tell us whether women feel more empowered, more assertive, and more accepting of themselves. It does not tell us whether they become more grateful, more stable, more forgiving, more reciprocal, or more capable of sustaining the ordinary burdens of marriage and motherhood. A grievance culture reverses that training. It teaches women to keep score, scan for exploitation, and treat gratitude as naïveté.

 

Links - 13th July 2026 (1 - IQ)

Meme - Hunter Ash @ArtemisConsort: "The reason I don't think the Democrats can ditch wokeness is because even the moderates are unwilling to say "group differences are not caused by past or present discrimination, and there's no reason to care about closing them as long as all groups do better over time."
Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma: "Democrats are not willing to accept "Black people are genetically dumber than white people" for the simple reason that *it is not true*"
i/o @eyeslasho: "I would bet my house that this guy hasn't spent one minute of his life reading any of the scientific literature on the subject, and therefore his tweet should be treated like the garbage framing and garbage opinion that it is.  There have only been two comprehensive published surveys asking scientists who study intelligence about the cause of the IQ gap between US blacks and whites, and in the most recent one (published in 2020 in the journal Intelligence) an overwhelming majority of respondents indicated that they believe that at least some of the gap is due to genetic factors. About half of the respondents indicated that about 50% or more of the gap is due to genetics.  "Because it's not true" should always be treated as code for either "I'm totally uninformed on the subject" or "I'm informed but my moral claim is more important" or "I can't deal with this question so I'm taking the easy way out."   The contempt I have for these people knows no limits. The fact is that the reason(s) for the gap are still an open scientific question, and if you don't acknowledge this you're engaging in bad faith, moral cowardice or ignorance.  (I had to use a screenshot of the tweet because, naturally, he blocked me.)"

Meme - Emil Kirkegaard @KirkegaardEmil: "We just published a study showing that national stereotypes of intelligence are also accurate. It looks like this."
John Carter @martianwyrdlord: "India lol"
"Relationship between national stereotypes and national IQs. Shaded region corresponds to the 95% confidence intervals of the linear regression"
*India with much higher stereotyped IQ than actual IQ*

Meme - Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil: "I was reminded of this yesterday when looking into national IQ estimates.  The "pseudo-analysis" style of critique is to just spit out tons of possible problems, to nitpick, and then to assume that means a whole enterprise is rotten without even checking if the critique holds."
"Pseudo-Analysis. A principal feature of the many critiques of hereditarian research is an excessive concern for purity, both in terms of meeting every last assumption of the models being tested and in terms of eliminating all possible errors. The various assumptions and potential errors that may, or may not, be of concern are enumerated and discussed at great length. The longer the discussion of potential biasing factors, the more likely the critic is to conclude that they are actual sources of bias, By the time a chapter summary or conclusion section is reached, the critic asserts that it is impossible to learn anything using the design under discussion. There is often, however, a considerable amount known about the possible effect of the violation of assumptions. As my colleague Paul Mechl has observed, 'Why these constraints are regularly treated as "assumptions" instead of refutable conjectures is itself a deep and fascinating question...' (Meehl, 1978, p. 810). In addition, potential systematic errors sometimes have testable consequences that can be estimated. They are, unfortunately, seldom evaluated."

Emil Kirkegaard on X - "The US congress is also an intelligence meritocracy. Replicates our prior finding of genetic meritocracy and IQ. Religious groups and race groups with higher polygenic scores for IQ/edu. have higher measured IQs and more success in life."

Alexander on X - "The people I learned about IQ from - in two separate master’s programs - were left-leaning and maybe moderate at most.  This is true of most researchers of human intelligence and cognitive ability in fact, given the large skew left in psychology overall.  But the people who have a sort of axe to grind against this line of research - which remains by the way one of the most robust and replicable lines of research in psychology - are almost always political activists of the far left.  They cannot conceive of individual differences in ability as anything except for a threat against their political ideology.  What I don’t entirely grasp is why they stop at IQ or research on intelligence. For example, we have a lot of (unfair, unequal?) individual differences in humans (and widely researched in psychology):
1. Physical attractiveness. Not everyone is equally attractive and large benefits go to those who are.
2. Personality traits, like conscientiousness. These benefit individual life outcomes about as much as IQ does. Not everyone is equally predisposed to be hard-working and diligent. These are also highly heritable traits.
3. Every other cognitive ability. Memory. Attention. Social cognition. We see big differences across individuals here, too.
The same methods are used to research all of these, by the way. Nothing special, unique, or different is really going on with IQ. Hard to imagine someone being an “IQ denier” without also leveling the same critiques at every other human psychological trait."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Low IQ is consistently associated with antisocial behavior, and antisocial behavior is consistently associated with criminality.  So it shouldn't be surprising that those groups with a higher mean IQ have lower crime rates than those with lower IQ nearly everywhere in the world."
i/o research @iointelresearch: "Genetic analysis (GWAS) of antisocial behavior found it negatively correlates with intelligence (rg -0.40) and educational attainment (rg -0.46). The association between lower IQ and higher antisocial behavior is a consistent finding..."

i/o on X - "High-minded new paper advocates restricting public access to genetic data so racistly racist comparisons between groups (especially on cognitive traits between blacks and whites) can't be made. When you think you're losing, you try to rig the game."
Peter Boghossian on X - "If someone genuinely believed an empirical claim, why would they oppose studying it? The argument that research might be “misused” is weak—that’s a call for better studies, not bans. My suspicion? The authors don’t believe their argument. It reeks of special pleading. Can you name another domain where believers argue against more research out of “misuse” fears? I can’t.  Let’s have a real conversation. I invite the authors on my show to discuss this paper. I doubt they’ll accept."
Charles Murray on X - "Back in the early 2000s, I tried to put together scholars on both sides to jointly design a major study testing the effects of racial admixture on IQ. Hereditarians were eager. Environmentalists had zero interest. Now, with so many alleles affecting various traits having been identified, and with big multi-racial genomic datasets available, much more informative studies are possible. Hereditarians are eager to conduct them. Environmentalists want to sequester the data. Inferring the reason is trout-in-the-milk level of uncertainty."
Emil Kirkegaard on X - "Hereditarians: Yay science! Open science awesome! Study all the difficult questions! Release the data publicly! No censorship!
Egalitarians: Nooo, hide the data, fire the offenders, you can't know nothing, what if someone somewhere derives a political opinion I don't want!"
What could the left possibly have to hide?

Alexander on X - "Reading this paper ranking 300 careers by cognitive ability (IQ).
1. The average IQ of tech professionals is similar to social scientists (around 110).
2. Skilled trades are where you begin to see average IQs around the upper 80s and low 90s (varies a lot by trade though)."
(Not just) Intelligence stratifies the occupational hierarchy: Ranking 360 professions by IQ and non-cognitive traits
It also looks at Big 5 and other personality characteristics by occupation

i/o research on X - "David Reich's Harvard team detects recent positive selection for intelligence among Europeans: "We also identify selection for combinations of alleles that are today associated with... increased measures related to cognitive performance.""
i/o on X - "In study after study, modern genetics research is murdering blank slatism, and it's quickly becoming a bloodbath.  Marxist biologist Stephen Jay Gould (who is still widely read and taught in academia) once said: "There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain."  This was orthodoxy for over 40 years because academia wanted it to be orthodoxy. The possibility that psychological traits like intelligence could change in certain groups but in not in others as a result of evolutionary processes put into operation by exposure and adaptation to novel environments outside Africa was morally and ideologically unacceptable.  But science is real, baby, and that well-meaning and rigidly-enforced orthodoxy is now in tatters."

i/o on X - "Something just occurred to me that probably won't mean much to most of you, but it does to me.  Years ago, when I had another (much smaller) account, big left-leaning accounts on Twitter would constantly post scientifically illiterate takes on IQ and I'd show up in their replies and beat the crap out of them and ratio them. This happened all the time.   Sometimes we'd send out the bat signal to @Steve_Sailer , who, if he wasn't too busy with something else, would drop by and calmly super-ratio them. It was a blast, like shooting at fish in a barrel: These accounts had no idea at all what they were talking about.  But here's the thing: I can't remember the last time this happened. No big lefty accounts on X post about IQ anymore. They know that they're going to get pummeled if they do, and my guess is that they also know by now that they're on the retard side of the debate.  I consider this a victory."

High intelligence is not associated with a greater propensity for mental health disorders

Spooky Werewolf Misha on X - "I think IQ believers often go too far in the direction of “if I was born into a slum, I would simply reason my way into a well-paid, nonviolent life.”"
Meme - Do Not @ Me, PhD @UsingLyft: "Black kids with IQs of 100 have the same odds of escaping the bottom quintile of socioeconomic status as white kids"
"Percent of Children Moving Up and Out of the Bottom Quintile, Conditional on AFQT Score, by Race"

Meme - (Black Woman) OmoAuntyNurse @_arike_adey: "Nursing hard af ain't nobody dumb finishing that shit. Passed my iq test and scored in the top 85%, lot's of the doctors I work couldn't even get that high"
"TestYourlQ.org. Results: Your IQ is 86. Your IQ is in the top 85%"

Auron MacIntyre on X - "For all its vaunted capabilities when it comes to contemplating hypotheticals or abstractions high-IQ doesn't seem to enable individuals to understand the lives of those who are lower on the distribution   High-IQ individuals have a very hard time developing a theory of mind for those with lower IQ and understanding how they order themselves  This leads to a cognitively sorted elite developing systems that rely on every mind working exactly like their own and then becoming disdainful of the 80% of people who do not function this way  Perhaps this was less of a problem when martial prowess and other factors were more heavily involved in elite selection but in a world of foxes cognitive capacity becomes the only selection criteria, and lions are left on the wayside  Any elite can become isolated and grow disdainful of the people but an elite selected solely on intelligence seems to be uniquely incapable of grasping what the good may look like for someone who isn't a few standard deviations above  It also seems to encourage the belief that all people are both improvable (at least according to the standards of the current ruling class) and interchangeable  Of course our elite have now become so insuler they are no longer selecting for merit even in the realm of intelligence, only for ideological conformity, for faith in the religion of the elite class, which only separates them further from a vision of the good which would serve other segments of the population  I don't have any immediate answer here but there just is a serious disconnect that will only increase as we encourage cognitive stratification"
The Black Horse on X - "A huge issue here is the isolation of high-IQ individuals from gen-pop and especially from physical hardship. The fact that our present elite class is coddled from birth is a bigger issue than their raw IQ."

Into the Memory Hole on X - "Reminder that the government forbids any further research on the proven genetic links to race and IQ"
Muzzling scientists and obstructing science is only wrong when it hinders the left wing agenda

Fight Mate on X - "Cameraman deserves an Oscar for catching this moment from ever angle..."
Eric S. Raymond on X - "It was difficult for me to watch this video all the way through to the end, but it reminded me of something important that I think a lot of people at and above IQ level 100 don't understand. It's something I only understand myself because travel is broadening.  This video is what like life among the truly stupid is like. The incompetent, spasmodic monkey-dance violence. The pre-verbal hooting crowding out articulated speech. The squalor of people without the cognitive capacity to plan much beyond the next cheap high.  No, the important thing about these wretched people isn't that they're black. It's that they're sampled from a population with an average IQ of 85, and the high time preference that predicts, and the general inability to handle counterfactual hypotheticals that that predicts. If you picked a stupid enough cohort of white people and let them stew in each other's juices for long enough, you'd see the same crap. Hillbilly Elegy anyone?  People of average intelligence (average intelligence for Europeans or Northeast Asians anyway) do not usually understand how stupid stupid gets. When they try to model the behavior of somebody with an IQ of 85 or below, they imagine someone like themselves but with a smaller vocabulary and missing the ability to do specific smart-people things like mental arithmetic or whatever.  It isn't like that. It isn't like that at all.  This video is what it's like."

Family of slain Twin Peaks photographer lament jury deadlock - "A mistrial was declared today in the murder trial of Fantasy Decuir and Lamonte Mims in San Francisco Superior Court.  The pair were accused of robbing and killing photographer and film location scout Ed French, 71, at Twin Peaks overlook in July 2017... While they did not dispute that their client fired the shot that killed Mr French, defense attorneys argued that, at the time of the killing, Ms Decuir was in a “sickle cell crisis” and suffering from opiate painkiller withdrawal.  They added that Ms Decuir had a low IQ, a “lack of adaptive functioning” and suffers from stress and anxiety. As a consequence, they said, she did not act “consciously” when firing the gun."
Weird. Didn't they get the memo that IQ was meaningless

Jeremy Stamper 🇺🇦 (e/acc) on X - "1) There’s only one race: the human race.
2) race is a social construct.
3) there’s no such thing as “intelligence.
4) there are many different kinds of intelligence.
5) the difference within races are larger than the differences between races.
6) Neil DeGrasse Tyson
7) the soft bigotry of low expectations
8) redlining
9) we can’t rule out clerical errors"
The original tweet got deleted (OOP seems to always delete his old tweets after a while) but it was something about the race/IQ taboo

Darkage Possum on X - "In my post graduate program in the 1980's at the youngsters request the chairman took us through the work of Jensen, the dishonest and facile criticisms of it, what happened to his career and everyone else who touched it, and basically said " never speak of this again.  These conversations never happened."  This has really opened up a lot since then.   It was okay to leave it alone as long as policy  was grounded  in the notion of equal opportunity and equal treatment as individuals.  The idea of equity, that group outcomes must be equalized forces confrontation of the fact that groups aren't equal because it is creating huge injustices.  Equality doesn't exist in nature.  It was nice to protect peoples ethnic pride and let that dog sleep but bigger things than peoples feelings  are at stake now"
Bala on X - "If you can't win an argument using facts, logic, or reason, then tabooing that argument is the way to protect your narrative."
Ralph Kaladin on X - ""Truth is not important, only social justice""

Meme - Emil O W Kirkegaard @KirkegaardEmil: "Smarter Nazi leaders more likely to be acquitted at Nuremberg trials."
Clearly, the only thing IQ tests measure is how good you are at doing IQ tests

Measuring Human Capital Across Countries: IQ and the Human Capital Index - "It has been shown that country-level IQ and aggregated performance by school-age children on international assessment tests in math and science are by-in-large capturing analogous indicators of the cognitive human capital. We expand that analysis by comparing country-level IQ to the World Economic Forum’s Human Capital Index (HCI). This index, comprised of several dozen separate indicators, accounts for inputs and outcomes to measure human capital, across age profiles and gender. Two outcomes are of note. First, there is a positive, significant correlation between IQ and the vast majority of the component indicators in the HCI across all age cohorts. Second, because the HCI’s interpretation of educational attainment extends beyond formal education by including indicators such as on-the-job learning and other work-related skills, our finding that IQ is positively correlated with these measures suggests a deeper connection between national average IQ and the fundamental factors of what constitutes the cognitive side of human capital development."

Meme - Asterix Respecter @ArmoricaStan: "Can anyone tell me the average IQ of a house elf? Miss Granger"
"Actually, IQ is a pseudoscience which doesn't measure anything exc..."
"That's wrong, 10 points from Gryffindor. Now, ogres make up just 13% of the population, yet-"
"50, Sir"
"Correct, 20 points to Slytherin"

Thread by @CiurriaMichelle on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Thread on the ableist fetishization of so-called intelligence in academia. I just read yet another article that glorifies so-called intelligence, which is a social construct rooted in eugenics. In an ableist culture (such as ours) in which so-called intelligence is so idolized that it’s a condition of citizenship & personhood, everyone will have anxieties about whether they’re ‘intelligent enough.’ Intelligence is a disciplinary apparatus that mobilizes people into a regime of compulsory (able-minded) intelligence, which conveniently justifies capitalism as a ‘meritocracy’ that both produces and rewards the most ‘intelligent’ (nondisabled) citizens. Capitalism is vindicated by its ability to produce intelligent citizens, who are, coincidentally, from the wealthiest & most elite families! And this capitalist regime of compulsory intelligence also punishes & persecutes the (disabled) ‘unintelligent’ by pushing them out of the economy, forcing them into public dependency, politically disenfranchising them and making them a spectacle of horror for the ‘intelligent’ able-bodied majority, who are compelled to avoid ‘unintelligence’ (in themselves & their offspring) at all costs. Academia is deeply complicit in this charade, and this can be seen seen in the ubiquity of ‘impostor syndrome’: academics have so internalized compulsory able-mindedness that they never feel ‘smart enough’ no matter how many degrees they rack up or how much they alienate themselves from the public by their ascetic intellectual regimens. We subject ourselves to rarefied philosophical defenses of human supremacy and, relatedly, the supremacy of (Eurocentric) ‘intelligence’ above all other human faculties to the point that we - or many of us - internalize this bullshit as scripture and live the rest of our lives in constant fear of being (seen as) ‘stupid.’ Crip theorists consistently debunk the fetishization of intelligence in academia and society in general, and underscore its roots in the capitalist-eugenics regime that uses ‘intelligence’ to uphold racial-patriarchal institutions and hence we are, unsurprisingly, marginalized and silenced. So is the toxic culture of the neoliberal-ableist university. #ableism #academia #philosophy #intelligence #iq #impostorsyndrome @biopoliticalph"
If you don't reward stupid people the same way as smart people, you're a bad person

Jesse Singal on X - "The New Yorker, on Jon Haidt: "He has been beset by a troubling fixation on the heritability of I.Q.—a contention widely dismissed as scientific racism" This is completely false. The heritability of intelligence is accepted by mainstream researchers. The debate is over *race*. I don't understand how something like this gets through fact-checking. It's quite frustrating. Spreading misinformation about the present state of intelligence research doesn't help anyone."
i/o on X - "The only consensus — and I do not use that word lightly — scientific finding that is routinely deliberately slandered in the media is the heritability of intelligence.  Literally — and I do not use this word lightly either — no reputable intelligence researcher disputes that intelligence is substantially heritable.  So why does this lie keep finding its way into the pages of even "prestige" publications like the New Yorker? Because intelligence heritability, if it were ever widely-known and understood by the public, can threaten the blank slate foundation of the modern progressive project."
When fact checking is about pushing a left wing agenda, and not checking facts, this is what happens

Meme - RAMZPAUL @ramzpaul: "Interesting. White women who date blacks statistically have lower IQs than black women who date Whites."

Meme - "r/trans
Trans people stay winning! Top 15% IQ and I barely even tried. It's time to destigmatize being your true self.
Your IQ is 86. 16%. Your IQ is in the top 85%"

i/o on X - "The decoding of the human genome brought powerful tools to investigate the relationship between genes, race, and IQ. But fear of where this research might go led the best genetic database in the US to restrict access. The most recent survey of scientists conducting research in this area indicated that findings on human intelligence have been tipping over the past few decades in favor of those who believe race IQ gaps have at least a partial genetic basis.  The left has waged a continuous campaign of smears, misinformation, data suppression, censorship, cancellation, grants withholding, and even physical intimidation and violence, to stop this research. Activist scientist Eric Turkheimer famously wrote that if the hereditarian hypothesis were ever proved correct it would be like an "atom bomb going off.""

i/o on X - "Jonathan Haidt: "I expect that dozens or hundreds of ethnic differences will be found.. the ways in which we now think about genes, groups, evolution and ethnicity will be radically changed by the unstoppable progress of the human genome project."
We already see federal government agencies and universities, as a matter of stated policy, refusing to share genomic data with scientists conducting research into certain types of differences between population groups."
i/o on X - "Institution: There are no innate differences in intelligence (and other psychological traits) between groups.
Scientists: Let's take a look at the genomic data so we can show that this is true.
Institution: No! Only bad people would want to do that kind of research!
Question: If they're so convinced that innate group differences are impossible, then what are they so afraid of?
Answer: They're afraid because they are not convinced.
They're afraid because they know what the existing scientific evidence looks like — and what the clear majority opinion is of those who conduct the research — and they will do everything they can to stop any scientific investigation that might be dispositive.  As activist scientist Eric Turkheimer warned: The effects of a clear scientific finding of innate race differences in intelligence would be like an "atom bomb" exploding."

RiotIQTest on X - "Intelligence researchers often focus on "g," referring to a general factor of intelligence that arises because different scores are positively correlated with each other. But is g found in non-Western groups? This 2019 study by @Russwarne says yes. The authors found 97 archival datasets from 31 non-Western, economically developing nations (shown in dark grey on this map) and performed a factor analysis. The results were clear: 94 (96.9%) of the datasets produced g, which is a strong indication that g is not a cultural artifact of Western culture or economically developed nations. The authors stated, "Because these data sets originated in cultures and countries where g would be least likely to appear if it were a cultural artifact, we conclude that general cognitive ability is likely a universal human trait" (p. 263, emphasis in original).  Moreover, the average strength of the g factor was 45.9% of variance, which is about the same as what is found in Western samples (~50%).  It is important to mention what this study does not show. This study is not evidence that the g in one country is the same as the g in another country. The study also cannot be used to compare or rank order countries in intelligence. Those conclusions would require a different design.  But it is still an important contribution to understanding g. It is not a cultural artifact. It is something that exists cross-culturally and is worthy of study."

Richard Hanania on X - "Study from Sweden shows that children adopted from non-Western countries ended up having lower IQs than native Swedes. The one exception was South Koreans, who actually had higher IQs than Swedes. I guess babies take "Confucian culture" with them when they are adopted?"

Links - 12th July 2026 (2 - Climate Change)

Biased science reports fuelled climate alarm | Financial Post - "The journalistic rule, “If it bleeds it leads,” appears to be widely followed in reporting on climate change. In a new National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, researchers compared newspaper articles from 10 major outlets in the United States and United Kingdom with scientific evidence from all six IPCC assessment reports from 1990 to 2023 (IPCC being the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body). Their conclusion? “Public summaries of IPCC climate assessments lean toward the more severe end of the technical evidence.”  The biased media reporting takes place in two stages. The first is caused by the unusual nature of IPCC reports, in which the scientific assessments are condensed into a Technical Summary (TS) and then further condensed into a Summary for Policymakers (SPM). “The SPM reaches policymakers, journalists, and the public,” the authors of the NBER paper explain. “Before its release, representatives of all 195 IPCC member governments approve it line-by-line in plenary.” As a result, the SPM is “a politically negotiated artifact rather than a neutral summary of the underlying science.” Using large language models to analyze scientific claims made in these documents, the researchers find that for every IPCC assessment report from 1990 to 2023, the politically negotiated SPMs skew towards the more severe ends of what the scientific assessments actually show. Next, when journalists and editors use the SPM to write their articles, the same shift takes place: the more severe climate impacts are given more weight and emphasis... If journalists favour emphasizing the most severe projected climate impacts, so too do activists and politicians keen on imposing sweeping government interventions. For more than a decade, including in his 2021 book Value(s), Mark Carney backed large-scale climate initiatives premised on the idea that RCP 8.5 (an extreme scenario under which temperatures rise an estimated 4.5 degrees by 2100) was a likely outcome. But RCP 8.5 was always an extreme top-of-range scenario, and the new scenario framework published last month that will form the basis for the next IPCC assessment report excludes it from the range altogether. The emission projections under RCP 8.5, the scenario authors concluded, have “become implausible.” In fact, RCP 8.5 was known to be implausible for years. An article in Nature in January 2020 called it a “dystopian” scenario that was becoming “increasingly implausible with every passing year. Emission pathways to get to RCP 8.5 generally require an unprecedented fivefold increase in coal use by the end of the century, an amount larger than some estimates of recoverable coal reserves.” Ross McKitrick noted in a column in June 2020 that the assumptions RCP 8.5 relied on not only didn’t make sense, they also contradicted each other. But that hasn’t stopped Carney and others from using it to stoke climate alarm. In recent years, both the Canadian Climate Institute, which is funded by the federal government, and federal departments themselves have used RCP 8.5 prolifically."

Steve Guest on X - "Vox with a BOMBSHELL admission in the wake of the demise of RCP8.5.   “Those numbers shaped a decade and a half of climate journalism, including a lot of my own when I covered climate change at Time magazine. I didn’t always know — and didn’t always communicate — that the scenario behind the most apocalyptic, attention-getting findings was largely an attempt to imagine how bad things could get, not a true forecast. But I wasn’t alone. RCP 8.5 was a frequent background presence in climate journalism.”"

Thread by @SenEricSchmitt on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Did you know our Judiciary has its own taxpayer-funded “neutral training pipeline"?  Meet the USAID of Article III.  The Federal Judicial Center. What I've uncovered isn't "neutral" judicial training. It's ideological capture. Take a look at how it's infecting our judiciary. 🧵
The Federal Judicial Center (FJC) is the official research and education arm of the federal courts, created by Congress to train and equip our nation's judges.  It shapes how these judges evaluate evidence.  Its materials influence real court cases across the country every day. You'd assume the FJC is filled with unbiased and impartial legal scholars, especially when it comes to directing judges' continuing education. Let's meet @jrlinkins, Director of Education at FJC. She describes her "heroes" as Zora Neale Hurston (known for her flagrant plagiarism in her extensive work on Haitian Voodoo) and Staceyann Chin (A Chinese-Jamaican Lesbian Poet known for writing smut and reciting it at poetry slams). Unsurprisingly, this is the type of content being promoted by the FJC's leadership. But does this asinine ideology flow into FJC's work? Of course. The FJC has partnered with Columbia University and other left-wing organizations. Together they “educated” over 2,000 judges on climate change nonsense. This is clearly a taxpayer-funded patronage network. While doing the Left's dirty work in the Judicial branch, Linkins quietly funneled kickbacks through ActBlue to Democrats in Congress and Biden's Campaign. Then came the bombshell: The FJC’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the guide judges use to decide what science counts in court.  They snuck in a MASSIVE new climate change chapter, written by organizations actively suing energy producers. The backlash was so fierce that the FJC was forced to pull the entire climate chapter, but only after it had already been distributed to thousands of judges.  Let that sink in. They laundered Greta Thunberg talking points into the official judicial reference manual.   This taxpayer funded outfit has become infested with pop scientists peddling Davos-approved talking points. This isn’t something we can simply overlook or ignore. The courts are not a branch of the left-wing NGO complex. They are not supposed to be trained by the very left-wing activists filing the lawsuits. They are not supposed to get their “science” from outfits whose explicit goal is to reshape law in favor of climate policy outcome. The rule of law is sacred. It demands real neutrality, not indoctrination from Columbia climate warriors and their NGO allies.  We’re going to keep shining a light on this until the pipeline is shut down and accountability is restored."

Lauren Chen on X - "This is why the left wins all the time.  Each bureaucrat is actually an activist working to ingrain their ideology into our institutions at every chance.  Take this example with the Federal Judicual Center, which has an official manual that instructs judges on how to weigh scientific evidence.  It turns out the climate section was really the work of green activists, meaning they were effectively biasing judges toward climate change activism before cases even got to court.  Now this climate chapter was pulled once it was discovered how slanted it was, but imagine how many more examples are out there in every corner of government, academia, media, and corporate life..."

WALLACE: The Iran shock destroyed the illusion of a renewable-only future - "The closure, first by Iran and then subsequently by the United States (US), of the Strait of Hormuz has caused an international energy crisis with prices spiking above US$100–120/bbl and LNG prices jumping more than 50% from 2025 averages. While the current events in the Straight of Hormuz were not predictable at the time we wrote our paper in 2022, the consequences of emissions policies that advocated for the curtailment, and in some cases the elimination, of vital fossil fuels were nonetheless predictable. As we wrote then:   “North America and particularly the European Union are experiencing the consequences of misguided energy policies that have undermined efforts to sustain energy security throughout the West.” Mintz and Wallace, 2022.  As Western economies raced to reduce carbon emissions, many lost sight of the vital contribution that fossil fuels make to economic resilience and national, regional, and international security. Those policies, especially in the EU, have demonstrated that energy transitions are neither automatic nor inherently secure and have been seen to result in market instabilities, power interruptions, and continued price escalations.  Evidence from Germany’s recent experience demonstrates that assumptions of a smooth, inevitable shift to renewables have seriously underestimated system complexity and have shifted the emphasis to reliability, affordability, and geopolitical resilience. The strategic role of firm energy supply was demonstrated when the EU was forced to spend an additional €6 billion in just 17 days on fossil fuel imports as renewables alone could not stabilize its grid. The EU’s energy bill rose by €24 billion in the first 52 days of the Iran conflict, showing how price escalations and supply insecurity persisted despite aggressive decarbonization policies... since 2015, Canada has implemented regulatory and tax policies that have substantially blocked Canadian energy from reaching beyond traditional destinations to enter the international marketplace. The exception is the performance of the Trans Mountain pipeline... a sobering reminder of the income foregone by Canada because of major project cancellations, like the Northern Gateway pipeline, by the Trudeau government. Canada and Alberta have both maintained legislated or policy anchored net zero commitments, frameworks that are explicitly designed to constrain the emissions profile of hydrocarbon production, at a time when the major points in the Canada-Alberta MOU for a BC coast pipeline remain unresolved. Meanwhile, as European states reassess and evaluate the effects of energy security shocks, Canadian energy could be backfilling against sanctioned Russian oil and gas and curtailed shipments from the Middle East. Despite reassurances, Canada appears fixated on policies for net zero, with few realistic options to increase exports to the EU or to optimize energy security within Canada.  Europe’s strategic policy decision to undermine its own energy production in favour of renewables has exacerbated the effects of the Iran crisis. Europe is now twice as exposed to the Hormuz crisis as is the US and faces an imminent shortage of strategic supplies such as jet fuel — a dual threat to the military and industrial capacity of Europe. Meanwhile, the US has become a major net exporter of refined products, including jet fuel, with shipments to Europe surging to record levels. Europe, by contrast, must import 60% of its total energy and 40%–75% of its jet fuel. The Iranian conflict demonstrates that policies for net zero and renewable energy, commitments that required vast financial investments, are wholly insufficient to maintain energy and economic security. As the fourth largest global producer of crude oil, Canada’s opportunities have been limited by insufficient infrastructure, punitive regulatory timelines, and limited international access. The Iran shock has exposed the false assumptions of uninterrupted global trade and steadily falling demand for fossil fuels."
The widespread cope is that the Iran war shows that countries need to double down on renewables. Reality is no match for climate change hysteria

Sainsbury’s ditching brown eggs is damning proof of the net zero farce - "The rationale behind this apparent scrapping of brown eggs is that, according to Sainsbury’s, its white eggs were found to have a 12.7 per cent lower carbon footprint than brown ones. This magical little figure was fashioned, the company reports, “through a lifecycle assessment with three of our egg suppliers”. This nugget appears in their recently published 2026 annual report.  Further wording adds little flesh to the bones, claiming that the lower carbon footprint is “largely due to better feed conversion” (the report’s authors don’t waste any time explaining whatever that might mean), and “the longer productive lifespan of the white hens”.  “Additionally,” the report continues, “white hens are less prone to feather pecking, leading to higher animal welfare.” It’s a point of no relevance to the issue at hand, of course, but it gives another warm hug of feel-good buzzwordery. Still, Sainsbury’s says determinedly it is “making progress on transitioning our shell eggs from brown to white eggs, aiming towards 100 per cent in our own brand core ranges”. Do you follow? If not, let me help with some clarity here. There appears to be some science, from just three egg producers, that there might be a slightly smaller carbon footprint from hens that lay white eggs, which has something to do with feed. Aside from that, the company’s claim to be “making progress on transitioning” means it’s unlikely to be doing very much very soon. Besides, this shift will only affect its “own brand core ranges”, so lots of other brown eggs will still remain on sale.  Yet this vague garbage is then pushed out as a story about Sainsbury’s glorious charge to net zero... Sainsbury’s messaging simply shows how infected it is by the woke dogma of Ed Miliband and his green agenda – a drive to net zero that makes us all colder and poorer, while having a direct effect on the planet’s annual emissions of less than 1 per cent. As Peter Mandelson was reported to have said: “The Chinese are not listening to Ed Miliband.”"

I’m not giving up meat for Miliband, and neither should you - "Everyone laughed when they saw that unfortunate photo of Ed Miliband trying to eat a bacon sandwich in 2014, but perhaps they’ll come to regret it because the Energy Secretary has just signed Britain up to stringent new climate targets. The Climate Change Committee, which provides independent advice to the Government, says that to help achieve these targets, the public will need to eat 25 per cent less meat.  In response to this claim, a spokesman for the Government has insisted that it will succeed “without telling people how to live or behave”. All the same, I have an uneasy feeling that a certain someone may privately see this as the perfect opportunity for revenge. “Now nobody will be able to eat a bacon sandwich because we’re going to drive all the farmers who produce bacon out of business!” At any rate, I certainly won’t be giving up meat for net zero – and neither should you. Why? For starters, net zero zealots endlessly claim that the farming of meat plays a huge role in causing climate change because cows and other farm animals release so much methane. Yet, a 2021 study found that vegan men fart seven times more than men who eat meat... an awful lot of vegans’ favourite foods – quinoa, avocados, lentils, soybeans and chickpeas, for example – are grown in countries many thousands of miles away. To reach Britain, they have to be transported on long, environment-damaging flights."

Net zero killed British industry, not Thatcherism - "Burnham, like many on the Left, argues that Britain’s economic and social malaise started with deindustrialisation brought about by so-called “neo-liberal” reforms undertaken by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in the 1980s.  While memories of miners’ strikes, union reforms and the privatisation of failing nationalised industries reinforce this popular narrative, the facts tell a different story.  Start with the total output of the industrial sector in inflation-adjusted terms. Between 1979, when Thatcher entered office, and 1990, when she resigned, industrial production rose by a healthy 16pc – barely slowing from its preceding trend. The volume of goods exports rose by 50pc over the same period. Under Thatcher, Britain produced more and sold more to the world.  Even as production and exports grew, industrial employment slumped by 28pc, a loss of 2.1 million jobs. Total employment rose by 6.5pc – a net increase of 1.7 million. In the 11 years to 1990, Britain created as many new jobs as it had done from 1952 to 1979. Similar patterns are visible elsewhere... Through the 1970s, successive British governments had run up massive costs, encouraged overmanning and capital misallocation to delay inevitable structural changes. Thatcherism, grounded in sound economics, represented the moment when policymakers decided to stop fighting the tide.  British industrial production, alongside goods exports, continued to grow steadily after Thatcher left office – under John Major’s Conservatives and for most of Tony Blair’s New Labour reign – even as both administrations stuck with the market reforms of the 1980s. But as production grew, its share of GDP predictably continued to edge lower, along with its employment share.  The decisive negative turn in industry came in the 2000s, when Britain tilted its energy policy towards decarbonisation and in favour of renewables like wind and solar. This process started in the 1990s, accelerated in the 2000s, and ramped up with the 2008 Climate Change Act, subsequent renewables targets, the Carbon Price Floor in 2013, emissions performance standards, contracts for difference and the 2019 net zero law.  However well-intentioned, these policies have resulted in energy scarcity in the UK and some of the highest industrial electricity costs in the advanced world. It is no surprise that trends in electricity availability and output in energy-intensive industrial sectors track closely over time. Energy capacity and production rose precipitously through the 20th century until 2005, when electricity supply peaked. A year later, industrial production reached record highs. Since then, the reduction of electricity capacity, including coal and oil as well as nuclear, combined with a painfully slow build-out of renewables, has cut electricity supply by a fifth, while industrial production has fallen by around 7pc. If Burnham wants to reindustrialise Britain, he needs to reverse net zero, not Thatcherism. Abundant, stable, and competitively priced energy is vital for a healthy industry.  But even then, he could not expect to see a jobs boom in the industrial sector. In the age of automation, that is impossible. The benefits from reviving British industry would stem from faster economic growth and increased productivity. Higher wages, stronger public finances and renewed national confidence would follow, without any need to recreate the factory floor of the 1970s. While Burnham may believe he can bring fresh thinking into No 10, his penchant for demonising Thatcher and appealing to misplaced nostalgia suggests there is limited scope for a course correction once the realities of office hit."

Sir Tony Blair mocks Energy Secretary Ed Miliband over net zero policies - "Sir Tony Blair has mocked Ed Miliband over his net zero policies, in a further attack on the Labour Government.  The former prime minister accused the Energy Secretary on Wednesday of pushing a “quixotic fantasy” and said that China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, did not care about his beliefs... Sir Keir is coming under pressure from his Cabinet to overturn a ban on North Sea drilling, according to reports.   Ministers are beginning to question Mr Miliband’s repeated claim that allowing new North Sea drilling would “not take a penny of bills” because even if they remained the same, prices would fall across the wider economy.   One Whitehall source said: “People keep saying that it won’t take a penny off bills. But if it improves your balance of payments, it helps your currency, potentially letting you get more for your money on all sorts of goods.   A second source said: “There is a growing feeling that we’ve boxed ourselves in with a line that’s technically true but politically useless. People hear ‘it won’t cut bills’ and assume there’s no economic benefit whatsoever.”  The UK emits less than 1 per cent of global greenhouse gases within its own borders. In 2025, its net contribution was estimated at 367 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent – a 2 per cent fall on the previous year and a 54 per cent decrease compared to 1990.  By contrast, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels were expected to rise by 1.1 per cent in 2025, reaching a record high of around 38.1 billion tonnes. Sir Tony warned Britain would continue to rely on carbon beyond the net zero deadline of 2050, adding: “I don’t understand why you’d shut your own fossil fuel industry and import someone else’s.”... Mr Miliband has been accused of having an “ideological obsession” with net zero, driving him to pursue green policies at any cost.  Earlier this month, he was accused of “covering up” evidence suggesting his flagship schemes could backfire while taxpayers foot a multi-billion-pound bill."

John Tomkinson on X - "In Ottawa, discussion on Alberta’s pipeline are now framed as violence against women. "Violence against nature and the climate are inseparable from violence against humans. One example is climate change as a gendered issue, which leads to systemic disadvantages for all women.""

Miliband defies Starmer over cuts to fund defence - "Sources said the Energy Secretary was pushing back against demands to find capital budget savings of at least 1pc within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to help fund the long-delayed defence investment plan (DIP)... The pushback will be seen as fresh evidence of Sir Keir’s waning authority as Labour MPs and ministers openly prepare for a leadership competition that could see the Prime Minister supplanted by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester.  Mr Miliband has been supporting Mr Burnham behind the scenes and is said to have fallen out with Sir Keir in recent weeks after telling him that he felt his position had become untenable."

Poll: Majority of British women think nuclear power is not low-carbon 🤦‍♂️ - "only 31% of British women believe nuclear energy produces no or low carbon emissions... The gap between men and women in this poll is staggering across the board. Men are more than twice as likely as women to think nuclear power is safe (64% vs. 28%). Men want way more nuclear energy in the mix (59% vs. 17%). And when asked about building a nuclear plant in their own backyard, men say yes at 57% while women clock in at a resounding 22%. People tried to offer explanations (most of them had to do with repealing the 19th Amendment, which isn't even a thing in England 😂). There are debates to be had over nuclear power, but one of these debates is not about its carbon footprint being too large. It uses magic rocks to give near-unlimited power while emitting steam (AKA water).  The UK is trying to lower its carbon emissions, but if women think nuclear power emits a bunch of carbon, they are going to be stuck with wind turbines and solar panels (both of which have regular replacement costs with higher carbon requirements)."
Epistocracy is "sexist", so too bad

We can’t afford a $20-billion Pathway to nowhere  | Financial Post - "Given its massive debt and never-ending deficits, Ottawa should not waste tens of billions of dollars in tax credits and cash on a project that has no chance of achieving its public policy objective, even if it does give the prime minister political cover. The boondoggle in question is the Pathways Project, a $16- to $24-billion (excluding cost overruns) carbon capture and storage (CCS) network in northeastern Alberta sponsored by the six largest oilsands companies. Its mission is to capture greenhouse gas emissions from over 20 oilsands sites and transport them via pipeline to an underground storage hub near Cold Lake. Prime Minister Mark Carney has made Pathways a condition for approving any major oilsands pipeline project, on the grounds it would eliminate emissions from drilling, processing and flaring. But such upstream emissions are only 15 per cent of the total. Downstream emissions from consumption in transportation, industrial use, power generation and buildings account for the rest. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith obviously knows this but succumbed to the feds’ extortion because it was the only way to get them on side. In a recent opinion piece, Martha Hall Findlay, chair of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and former Liberal MP, came out against Pathways, which she spent years helping create. She belatedly admits it would entail significant cost “with, frankly, a negligible effect on global emissions.” A dramatically changed world provides a reason for her about-face: “Canada’s priorities are now clearly economic diversification, national defence, national security — nothing less than our sovereignty.” Findlay is correct that geopolitical events make the Pathways project even more indefensible, but without massive government subsidies CCS was never economically viable, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). And another reason for her change of mind existed when she helped create Pathways: Canada produces a mere 1.3 per cent of global GHG emissions; the oilsands represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s total emissions; and Pathways’ first phase would likely reduce global emissions by less than 0.02 per cent — or one in 5,000 — with an undetectable impact on global temperatures. Even worse, the IEEFA says no CCS project anywhere has ever reached its target CO2 capture rate, and most miss by a lot. CCS projects have a troubled history around the world, with chronic underperformance, ballooning costs and technical failures. For example, in May 2024, Edmonton-based Capital Power cancelled a $2.4-billion project built to capture up to three megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from its gas-fired Genesee generating station in Alberta. The reason? It was not “economically feasible.” Even hard-line green NGOs oppose CCS. Environmental Defence called it a billion-dollar scam based on junk science, with associate director Julia Levin saying: “Carbon capture is unnecessary, ineffective and expensive.” Mind you, her solution is to prevent energy projects from being created in the first place. Then there are the safety risks, which have not been adequately addressed. When stored in deep saline aquifers or depleted reservoirs, compressed CO2 can leak into groundwater or the atmosphere. In 1986, a release in Cameroon killed about 1,700 people. In 2020, the rupture of a CO2 pipeline in Mississippi resulted in dozens of hospitalizations and the evacuation of an entire town. Apart from the dangers of carbon dioxide poisoning, fluid injection can induce earthquakes by altering underground pore pressure, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Unfortunately, Mark Carney is unlikely abandon Pathways. He is using CCS to justify pipeline construction on the false pretence it will make energy projects carbon-neutral. He may even delude himself that purchasers will pay more for “net-zero” fossil fuels, which they never have and likely never will. Even with Pathways going ahead, several Liberal caucus members, including Steven Guilbeault, could jump ship, jeopardizing Carney’s razor-thin majority. The NDP’s Avi Lewis, environmental activists and some members of the media will also be outraged by Carney’s perceived betrayal of the climate cause. Last Sunday marked 20 years since the release of Al Gore’s hyperbolic movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” That sci-fi thriller propelled Gore to centi-millionaire status and contributed to an outburst of collective madness that has cost the world $17 trillion in failed net-zero policies. Although in most places the tide has begun to turn against self-destructive climate hysteria, our government has been slow to acknowledge the new reality. Abandoning Pathways would help Canada catch up with the rest of the world. Too bad it won’t happen under Carney’s leadership."
Time to waste money on left wing conceits and weaken the country further, so the US can annex Canada faster

i/o on X - "Extraordinary. Among the many claims that Al Gore got wrong or grossly overstated were:
(1) An imminent 20-foot sea level rise
(2) The disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro
(3) Polar bears drowning in "significant numbers"
(4) Hurricane Katrina was a direct result of warming
(5) An influx of fresh meltwater from Greenland could completely halt the Gulf Stream, potentially plunging Northern Europe into a sudden ice age
(6) The drying of Lake Chad was entirely due to global warming
(7) Rising carbon dioxide levels historically directly caused the Earth's temperature to rise in a cause-and-effect relationship
(8) Glacier National Park would lose all (or nearly all) its glaciers soon
(9) Arctic summer sea ice could disappear very soon
(10) Low-lying Pacific atolls/islands were currently being inundated now, causing evacuations due to warming
(11) Coral reefs facing imminent widespread destruction primarily from warming
(12) Increased frequency and severity of floods, wildfires, tornadoes, or general extreme weather directly are tied to warming
(13) Himalayan glaciers melting rapidly and will soon lead to depletion of water supplies"

M. A. on X - "Want to manufacture a global climate emergency?  It’s easy: just delete Southern Europe from your dataset.  While the media runs a coordinated meltdown over a standard two-week summer stretch in England, France, and Germany, look at what’s actually happening in Europe's traditionally warmest regions.  Take a look at the real data for Valencia from 2000 to 2026.  The historical average for June sits at 34.3°C (the blue line).  But look at the far right of the chart for this year, 2026.  The temperature has plummeted all the way down to 32.0°C, well below the baseline.  But you won't see this chart on the news.  The strategy relies entirely on rigging the data pool: cheery-pick a tiny geographic window, filter out the cool regions that ruin the narrative, and declare a hot afternoon a global catastrophe.  This is pure geographical narcissism masked as science. Because the major media empires and political institutions happen to sit in London, Paris, and Brussels, they project their local afternoon sweat onto the entire planet.  They’ve rigged a linguistic trap where the narrative can never lose: when Western Europe gets hot, it’s a systemic planetary failure, but when the Mediterranean runs cold, it’s just background noise to be ignored.  Real analysis looks at the whole map.  Propaganda just hunts for whatever local thermometer is high enough to justify the day's headlines."

Tony Aubé on X - "I just came back to my Airbnb in France. It’s 96° outside and 104° inside. No AC. The woman was angry because one of the light was left on, and “they pay for it”. Have a lot of empathy for your French friend. People are surprisingly poor there and the struggle created by socialism is unbelievable for the average American."