Links - 3rd September 2026 (2 - Jason Arday)

John Carter on X - "The embarrassing thing for the left isn't that Arday was a conman, it's that he was a retarded conman who couldn't even tell halfway credible lies, and every single empty headed leftist academic fell for it hook, line, and sinker without pausing for even a moment to question him."
Angela Linton on X - "Seems to me that Ardays downfall was not the plagiarism it was his tall tales which caught the attention of the public. Most non academics are not very interested in plagarism if Jason had been just another race grifter the story might have blown over."
Max Adler on X - "The important question now: if DEI enabled a total fraud like Arday to escape scrutiny on a stage as big as Cambridge, what’s going on at the university near you?"
Fartrapist666 on X - "I doubt even a majority of them fell for the lies, but I'm sure all of them were certain they'd be, at best, fired for saying anything."
Hiram Finnegan on X - "I suppose. But after seeing otherwise intelligent people earnestly argue that transgenderism is healthy and not a mental disorder, I've realized that most people can not resist tribalism. Not to put too fine a point on it, transgenderism is about the most absurd possible take."

NateGraynor on X - "They really have only two possible fallback positions. "I fell for a series of painfully obvious lies." "I knew he was full of it and promoted him anyway." Any third positions are indefensible and reduce to those two in the end. They will, however, beclown themselves for another few months before beginning to admit one or the other. It's in their nature."
Simon Bern on X - "Fallback position #3: “EVERYONE IS RACIST!!!!!”"

Meme - Helena Horton @horton_official: "It was right for the Guardian to publish its investigation, and it is wrong that the journalists who did their job responsibly are now being subjected to an onslaught of abuse."
Dr Nafeez Ahmed: "I'm a former Guardian journalist. The Guardian's demonstrably did not do its job responsibly. It published hyperbolic, unverified, speculative inferences without real merit. This is now a matter of record, and history will be the judge:"
Marjorie Hutchins @leakylike: "Or maybe not actually..."
Dr Nafeez Ahmed: "so prickery it is then. I was a freelance writer contracted to run a Guardian environment blog. I was not a salaried, in-house staff reporter and I've never claimed I was."
Charles Arthur @charlesarthur: "Come on. "Former Guardian journalist" overstates your relationship to the paper. "Former Guardian blogger" would be accurate. When you start with an exaggeration about yourself, you undermine everything else you say. Surely by now people are absorbing this lesson?"
"This post is unavailable."
No wonder Nafeez Ahmed blocked Marjorie Hutchins. Left wingers hate the truth being exposed and try to suppress it

Meme - "REMEMBER KIDS, YOU DON'T NEED TO WORK HARD TO GET SOMEWHERE IN THIS WORLD! *Jason Arday* BLACK LIES MATTER"

Meme - *Jason Arday* "BLACK LIES MATTER"

Meme - "*Ann Widdecombe*
"DON'T DARE POLITICISE HER MURDER" *mute button*
*Jason Arday*
"GET READY FOR US TO POLITICISE HIS SUICIDE AND KEEP IT RUNNING FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE" *microphone*

Arday and the Left - "With a little political Jiu Jitsu, we can turn this whole thing to our advantage. Here’s how.
1. Make Arday a martyr
2. Reframe the rightwing frame
3. Mobilize allies
4. Find better symbols
5. Make sacrifices
6. Make it about race, race, race"

Meme - "To ensure that the United Kingdom continues to be a safe place for all to flourish, we will urgently push the Government to act decisively and urgently, introducing legislation which protects individuals from such extreme harassment. We will remember Jason with honour, pride and gratitude for all he did for the world. We will miss you. Rest in peace, Professor Jason Arday. - Joint Statement by the Parliamentary Black Caucus. Dawn Butler MP, Chair of Parliamentary Black Caucus"
Black politicians believe that holding black people accountable is racist

Meme - BijanOmrani: ""I take academic quality and integrity very seriously... Was Jason Arday a plagarist and a fabulist? I don't know and I really don't care" says university professor and chair of examiners. Incredible."
Glen OBrien: "I serve as Chair of Examiners in Australia's smallest university, The University of Divinity. It's part of my job to respond to charges of plagiarism and other breaches of academic integrity. I read the examination reports of every Higher Degree by Research and make a determination about the results. I take academic quality and integrity very seriously. My heart is weighed down with sorrow at the death of Cambridge academic, Professor Jason Arday. The pile on from those who considered his appointment to be 'woke' DEI gone mad has been sickening. Even after his death, people are still piling on their accusations, led by those with discredited racist theories of eugenics and white supremacy. The question that has played out in the public square is whether we should give 'minorities' extra supports or additional consideration, a 'leg up' in their careers that white people like me might not be given. For the record, I believe we should. After hundreds of years of systemic exclusion from such academic posts and opportunities, we should bend over backwards to provide additional supports to such people, to move over and give others the opportunity they deserve. Was Jason Arday a plagiarist and a fabulist? I don't know and I really don't care. Whatever he may or may not have done, it pales in comparison with what imperialism and racism have delivered to Black and brown people everywhere. Forget the acronym, 'DEI', which has just become a lightning rod for racist bigotry. I believe in and support diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia, and will unapologetically continue to do whatever I can to make it a reality in the little corner of academia where I have some influence. Rest in peace Jason Arday and rise in power."

Meme - "THE *black* VICTIMHOOD CYCLE
Do things that are immoral, unethical, or illegal -> blame white people-> face accountability for doing things that are immoral, unethical, or illegal -> blame white people->Do things that are immoral, unethical, or illegal"
"The Media Lynched Jason Arday"

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) - (Global Compact Network UK)
More than half of UK businesses changing DEI approach due to Trump’s criticism | DEI policies | The Guardian
Future-Proof Your DEI Strategy in the UK | Compliance Guide
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the UK: A Comprehensive Guide
The future of DEI: are UK companies withdrawing their DEI policies?
Diversity, equity and inclusion (Association of Charitable Foundations)
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy (short form) | Practical Law
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Programme | CJBS Executive Education (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Do Britons think ‘DEI’ initiatives have gone too far in the UK?
Weird. Left wingers were claiming that there was no such thing as DEI in the UK, so those who criticised it had no idea what they were talking about and had no right to have an opinion (in Canada, left wingers sometimes also use the claim that there's no freedom of speech in Canada, only freedom of expression, to dismiss those who criticise their authoritarianism). Ridiculous nitpicking based on terms aside, it isn't even correct

Meme - Spirited1 @helen_spirit1: "One transforms kids rejected by grammar schools into outstanding students. The other defrauded his students by lying about his achievements & stole other's work. One is despised by the left for rejecting woke culture, the other, lauded by them. Both, victims of the left. *Katharine Birbalsingh and Jason Arday*"

Meme - Jack Genesis @Jovianmoon: "You lot killed him. You. You were the ones who propped him up, fed him the lies, and loaded him with the crushing weight of unearned merit. You did that. You're still doing it. You used him while he lived. Now you're using his corpse for clicks."

Dr Nafeez Ahmed on X - "EXCLUSIVE: Jason Arday was targeted in a coordinated campaign by an anti-black race science network with ties to Cambridge and pro-Trump billionaire Peter Thiel, whipping up a catalogue of systemic misinformation across the British press 🧵/1"
i/o on X - "Here are just a few of the outlandish fabrications your dead hero engaged in:
Extensive plagiarism in his 2015 PhD thesis: More than 100 passages identical or nearly identical to Paula Zwozdiak-Myers’s 2009 Brunel University thesis.
False funding declarations in research: Claims of funding (including from Mind) that the organization denied.
Claimed authorship of a published book Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse (Palgrave Macmillan) that was never published.
False or exaggerated academic positions and qualifications: Visiting professor at University of Glasgow School of Education (denied); visiting professor at Ohio State University Office of Diversity and Inclusion (denied; office later closed); visiting professor at Nelson Mandela University (at most a temporary adjunct); honorary professor at Durham (contradicted); master’s in psychodynamic counselling/practice from Birkbeck (no record).thetimes.com
Non-verbal/mute until age 11 (or profound non-verbal autism from early childhood): Diagnosed at age 3 with autism, global developmental delay, etc., and claimed doctors said he would never walk, talk, or read (“no better than a vegetable”); schoolmates, neighbors, and others described a verbal child who joked, imitated voices, played football, and was “just normal” or a “class clown.” Experts noted the claimed trajectory had no precedent.
Illiterate until age 18 (or unable to read/write until late teens): Contradicted by school records/experiences and recollections; accounts of when/how he learned varied (e.g., vs. statements involving his then-partner).
Running 30 marathons in 35 days (around 2010), including continuing after an epileptic seizure/fit and hairline leg fracture on roughly the 20th/21s.
Running 600 miles in six days (Edinburgh–London or treadmill, for charity): Would rank among elite ultra-endurance performances; later revised to ~12 days with rest days for “cumulative wear and tear.”
Raising £5–5.5 million+ for charity (often via the above running feats, “most notably” for Shooting Star Children’s Hospices and Shelter, over ~20 years, sometimes framed as personal): Evidence showed far smaller documented sums (e.g., one JustGiving page at £380); later clarified as part of a “syndicate”/collective of ~100 under NDAs (none named); bios and speeches escalated the figure over time; publisher later softened related memoir http://language.spectator.com
Installing water points/pumps in South America (e.g., Rio favelas) and West Africa with/for WaterAid: WaterAid stated it does not send volunteers abroad and does not encourage/facilitate self-funded visits.
Appearance in the BBC’s Seven Up documentary series: Claimed participation (or being “pulled out” at 14); the original series began in 1964 (Arday born 1985); BBC stated he had “nothing to do with our films.”
Academy-level and/or semi-professional football career: Claimed in at least one speaking engagement; not detailed or repeated in the memoir, with no club specified
Substantial prize money from local snooker competitions while at secondary school (enough that his mother suspected drug dealing): Records (e.g., CueTracker) show limited amateur participation with no significant winnings.
Corporal punishment at secondary school (teachers striking knuckles with a pen for incomplete tasks): Corporal punishment was banned in English state schools in 1987 (Arday born 1985).
Threats by a masked intruder (twice, once at knifepoint) in his Cambridge faculty building, demanding resignation: No CCTV capture, not reported contemporaneously to colleagues/police in full detail, panic alarm response issues noted, and he continued work (including a viva).
Severed pig’s head delivered to his family home in south London (plus related claims of investigation linking it to a local butcher who sold a whole pig that morning): Metropolitan Police stated “categorically” that no such investigation occurred; the butcher had no recollection of police contact or the sale in that context.
Major medical/life events with inconsistencies across accounts): Teenage car accident leading to months in a (conscious) coma/locked-in syndrome, doctors suggesting switching off life support, then relearning to walk/talk (in proposal; omitted from final book); testicular cancer (proposal) vs. one or two brain tumors (book/other accounts); origin stories for epilepsy varying.
Additional disputed or unsupported elements appearing in bios, speeches, or the memoir proposal: Carrying the Olympic Torch (2012); various unproven awards/accolades; a claimed large book advance; and the resignation letter itself flagged by some AI detectors as fully machine-generated."
Bley Mingus on X - ""Non-verbal/mute until age 11" I find this lie far more serious than most people. It is impossible to become a fluent adult speaker after being non-verbal at such a late stage, no documented cases exists. The scandal for me is that Professor Baron-Cohen at Cambridge (a specialist in autism) was mute about this lie and allowed Arday to give false hope to parents of autistic children. Cohen should be questioned by the media about his unconditional support for Arday."

Nathan Cofnas, the Controversial Academic Who Ignited the Jason Arday Furor - WSJ - "Cofnas, speaking from Belgium in one of his first interviews since Arday’s death, said he doesn’t regret publishing his Substack post. But he also said Arday was unfairly hounded by the press and let down by Cambridge University, which overpromoted him and then abandoned him when under scrutiny. Cambridge said it provided Arday with mental-health support, and has launched an investigation into its hiring practices. “I was part of a series of causes that led to that outcome,” but “you have to be allowed to criticize powerful people,” Cofnas said of Arday and his death. “The British media published 249 articles about Arday in a 22-day period. I published one article, which was 100% factual,” he said... He has received death threats and a wave of hate mail... Research over decades shows a strong interaction between most biological traits and the environment, debunking the idea that genetics is the main determinant of behavioral traits like intelligence, said Marcus W. Feldman, biology professor at Stanford University. Feldman said making such claims is also dangerous. “I’m worried [that] the rise of hereditarianism is taking along with it racism,” he said. “Strong hereditarianism can be the antecedent to very bad social policies,” Feldman explained, citing the Nazis’ use of eugenics to pursue racial purity as an example. Cofnas denied that he is racist and said academics have a duty to question the assumption that all groups of humans are born intellectually equal. In 2018, Cofnas argued in a paper that technology would soon allow this unknown to be hurdled. “We have failed to work through the moral implications of group differences to prepare for the possibility that they will be shown to exist,” he wrote... Cofnas argues that hereditarianism isn’t about skin color per se. He has written that in the U.S., for instance, “rednecks” are likely to have lower IQs than other American whites. He points out that Blacks who migrated to the U.K. on average perform better in school than British whites... after a talk on wokeism to the Catholic Flemish Student Union, a student threw a bottle filled with yogurt at his face. Cofnas said he was treated for concussion. It was around this time that a former colleague at Cambridge got in touch and tipped Cofnas off about Arday. Questions about the professor’s meteoric rise and astonishing back story had been circulating for a few years in academic circles... Cofnas wasn’t the first to find Arday’s work suspicious... [After other whistleblowers were threatened by the police and lawyers]  Cofnas took it upon himself to break the story. He said he had no qualms about publishing. “Arday was a powerful, influential, famous person who sought his position, who manipulated people to obtain it,” he said."
Russell T. Warne 🇺🇸🇨🇱 on X - ""Research over decades shows substantial heritability for most biological traits, debunking the idea that environment is the main determinant of behavioral traits like intelligence, said Marcus W. Feldman, biology professor at Stanford University. Feldman said making such claims is also dangerous. "'I’m worried [that] the rise of environmentalism is taking along with it blank slatism,' he said. 'Strong environmentalism can be the antecedent to very bad social policies,' Feldman explained, citing the Soviets' use of communism and Lysenkoism to pursue economic equality as an example.""
Left wings cheer on harassment and death threats when it's against people they hate
Sadly, Pinker also says that some things should not be researched; this is a standard view for left wingers (does the same hold for gain of function research?)

Thread by @mboudry on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Here is the full letter from Ghent University suspending @nathancofnas. As you can see, it’s one long heckler’s veto: the decision is not so much about Cofnas’ actual violations as about the flood of complaints and protests the rector has received, the reputational damage to the university, the cancellations by certain speakers, the possible boycott against UGent due to Cofnas' appointment, etc.  The letter holds Cofnas accountable for all the “tension and unrest” his presence has caused (even though he never even shows up on campus), and for the “severe psychological distress” among students and the “negative impact on the well-being” of colleagues.  Since the rector is transgender, here’s an analogy she might appreciate: this suspension is like banning a Pride event in a city because of the “unrest and tension” (read: anti-LGBT violence) the organizers are “causing” among religious fanatics. Or excluding trans women from political positions because of the “psychological distress” they may cause to people who believe in a sex binary.  It’s even worse than a conventional heckler’s veto, because I know that the rector has actively encouraged the “hecklers” to flood her with complaints, thereby giving the university a stick to beat the dog with. Shockingly, the letter documents that Cofnas has called Jason Arday a “worthless scholar.” Someone fire that miscreant, please! Never mind that “mentally disabled” is pretty much how Arday described himself—being functionally illiterate, reading only one page per hour, etc. Describing Cofnas’ exposure of serious fraud and plagiarism as a “targeted campaign of professional elimination” is just completely deluded, and buying into the far-left narrative hook, line and sinker.  Once again, none of this is to imply that I agree with Cofnas’ views on race, his calls for a “hereditarian revolution,” his statements about Arday, or anything else.  This is purely about academic freedom, something the rector understands absolutely nothing about. Right after taking office, she declared that academics questioning the “genocide” in Gaza or the safety of vaccines would no longer be protected by academic freedom: “This is a line that cannot be crossed.” (She was specifically targeting me at the time, when I still worked for UGent.)  And that’s not even mentioning the fact that the rector used AI-hallucinated quotations in her inaugural speech and then covered it up and lied about it—which has nothing to do with ideology, just sheer incompetence and dishonesty. I’m almost inclined to call her a “worthless scholar.” But as Einstein probably never said at the Sorbonne in 1929: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
*text of letter*
This internal email from a tenured professor at Nathan Cofnas’ department shows not only that the “barrage” of complaints about the “negative effects on well-being” was perfectly coordinated, but that it was explicitly encouraged by rector Petra De Sutter herself. If this is true, she was actively egging on the hecklers in order to grant them a veto, which makes the whole affair even worse."

Committee for Academic Freedom on X - "Concerning to see the way The National has reported the story of more than 800 academics signing an open letter raising concerns about disciplinary proceedings against Dr Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University.  Signatories to a public letter can obviously be named and reported on. But “8 Scottish academics sign letter defending Nathan Cofnas over Jason Arday pile-on” is a misleading description of the position those academics were actually taking. Rather than defend Cofnas’s substantive views, the letter argues that academic freedom must encompass the scrutiny of alleged research misconduct, and raises concerns about Ghent treating hostile third-party reactions, including threatened boycotts, as grounds for disciplining the academic targeted by them.  More troublingly, the article identifies eight Scottish signatories individually, names their universities, and then reports that those universities “have been contacted for comment”.  Comment on what, exactly?  The article identifies no misconduct by these academics, no breach of university rules and no other reason why their employers should be expected to account for what they have signed.  Unfortunately, this is not the only outlet now reporting on signatories in this way. And CAF encounters the consequences of involving an academic’s employer in controversies over their lawful speech rather too often. What begins as somebody drawing an academic’s public comments to their university’s attention can end with the academic being contacted by HR about the “tone and nature” of their comments, reputational concerns, or some variant thereof.  We have no reason to suppose that these universities will respond in that way. But if you have signed this letter and subsequently find yourself under institutional pressure — or are experiencing something similar in another context — do get in touch with CAF. As well as engaging directly with universities on behalf of academics facing threats to their academic freedom, where appropriate we also obtain and fund specialist legal representation.  You can contact us at manager@afcomm.org.uk, or through the case submission form on our website."

i/o on X - "Over the past week, I've asked a number of accounts who have argued that Nathan Cofnas engages in "pseudoscience" or "eugenics" to explain how SPECIFICALLY he does this, and not one of them has responded, not even after I ratio'd them in their replies. "Pseudoscience" and "eugenics" are just empty slurs hurled by people who know nothing about the subject areas that Cofnas is interested in."
Nemesis 2026 on X - "I continue to request a definition of "race science", but get nothing."

Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "Just learned that a lot of Arday’s papers were “autoethnography” where he would basically interview himself about the experience of being a black academic with autism and then quote the interview and analyse it. Fascinating."
Max Klinger on X - "People really do not understand just how much of what gets passed off as ‘profound’ and even ‘seminal’ academic research in the social sciences and humanities is just absolute, pseudo-scientific, progressive activism and woowoo. This was glaringly obvious to me, even as a young and ideologically (at that point) left wing student at Cambridge, and would be to most of the rest of the country if they were exposed to it.   The basic lack of rigour and the obvious ridiculousness of stuff like a man interviewing himself about why he thinks he’s experienced racism, or cartoons being described as instruments of imperialist domination (based on nothing), or the pre-modern beliefs of uncivilised tribesmen being treated as ‘true’ even if they believe they can use magic and cast spells and so on, is self-evident (all real examples btw, you can look each one up).   Academics who willingly promote this stuff are engaged in intellectual fraud."
Φασολάκια on X - "And then it’s laundered by them citing each other"
Max Klinger on X - "That’s the real kicker which very few people understand"

Jennifer Thetford-Kay on X - "This letter is exactly right.... Jason Arday held multiple positions of real influence; Cambridge professor, college fellow, trustee of major organisations, advisor to ITV and the NHS. Public scrutiny of his academic work and claimed achievements was not only legitimate, it was necessary.    Blaming journalists and academics for his tragic death, calling it a “lynching,” or demanding the press be reined in is reckless. It prioritises feelings over truth and seeks to chill free speech and academic freedom.    Powerful people must still be held to account. The focus should be on standards in academia, not silencing those who examine them."
You're only allowed to speak truth to power if it pushes the left wing agenda

The UWI pays tribute to Prof Jason Arday | News Extra | trinidadexpress.com
KEVIN BALDEOSINGH | Facebook - "Does this mean that, when black UWI students commit plagiarism or some other transgression, they will be excused because of "systemic racism"? Will they have to undergo a DNA test to ensure they have no white ancestors, or will phenotype eyeballing be sufficient?  Can we be sure Kareem Marcelle, for example, wasn't marked easier than other law students to compensate for the legacy of slavery?"

Why Arday Splits Anglosphere Elites

He is too generous to the press, because there're lots more instances where they failed. And the Guardian, after a good article on Arday, went back to their usual grievance-mongering trash.

Besides silly season, probably the reason why the mainstream press were more fair here was that Arday was outright lying and plagiarising and could be shown to, and they are nominally still committed to pursuing truth. Whereas when it comes to fuzzier claims about "white supremacy", the standard left wing line cannot so easily be clearly falsified. 

I'm sure the fact that Arday himself tried to suppress journalism about him using the police and lawyers can't have endeared him to many in the press either.

Why Arday Splits Anglosphere Elites

"The Jason Arday story continues to surprise. I didn’t believe that there would still be much to talk about regarding this man’s individual story nearly a week after his death, even though I thought it was clear that his rise and fall exposed deep problems in academia. Instead, the reaction of the British left to the entire episode has been clarifying, and helps explain how we got a figure like Jason Arday in the first place.

What is interesting here is the split between different factions of what gets lumped together as the “liberal establishment” by conservatives. Some of the most devastating reporting against Jason Arday came not from Nathan Cofnas or others on the right, but pillars of the mainstream media in the US and the UK, namely The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. The first of these found people who knew Arday as a child and contradicted his story about being non-verbal until eleven. The Atlantic harshly reviewed Arday’s memoir before it was released, tried to get his publisher to explain its fact-checking process, and even found his book proposal, which included additional lies that didn’t make it into the finished work like that he had testicular cancer and had spent several months in a coma. The New York Times published Jesse Singal on the Arday fiasco, and gave this brutally frank assessment of the man and his career in what was a news article, not an opinion piece, after his death...

As someone of the position that the media is honest and good, all of this was encouraging to see. The only acceptable view on Arday is that he was a fraud, and that his career exposes how low academia has fallen due to declining standards and a commitment to DEI. Who exposed him, their motivations, Nathan Cofnas’ views on how many black scholars would be at Harvard without DEI, etc., are simply not relevant. In general, this is how the prestige media has approached the story. The worst reactions from the prestige press that I’ve seen have not denied that Arday was a liar and in the wrong but simply denounced the feeding frenzy as racially motivated and going too far. See these pieces in the Financial Times and The New Yorker. It’s not exactly wrong that many conservatives were eager to take down a black scholar, but this was based on an accurate belief that Arday got where he was precisely because he was black. 

I wish we could leave the story there. And indeed, I thought that the pro-DEI crowd would, being unable to defend Arday, try to forget that he ever existed. They wouldn’t necessarily admit that he had proved something was deeply rotten in academia, but surely they wouldn’t want to keep the focus on a story that makes a mockery of everything they believe in?

Maybe that’s what would have happened had Arday not killed himself. But his death seems to have energized the British left and brought out its authoritarian impulses. There are broadly two camps here. The first is actually pretending that Arday was right and his critics were wrong. Byline Times is an independent British outlet whose motto is “What the Papers Don’t Say.” Earlier this week, it published a bizarre article about how a “Peter Thiel-linked race science network” made its way into Cambridge and was responsible for the downfall of Arday. They helpfully included this picture showing the masterminds of this network.

The piece describes Cofnas as an “anti-black racist” as if that’s his official title, noting that “many of these articles did not acknowledge that the central accusations were being made by a man who believes that inherited racial differences make black people less intelligent and would leave black people absent from virtually every elite position in public life outside of sport and entertainment.” Of course they didn’t mention that, because real journalistic outlets understand that whether an accusation is true or not doesn’t depend on its source.

Byline Times goes on to dismiss the plagiarism charges against Arday, and characterizes his claim about running 30 marathons in 35 days as supported by contemporaneous records – which only came from sources reporting what Arday himself said. The article continues in this vein, finding some post hoc rationalizations for some of Arday’s lies and exaggerations, while ignoring the ones that no one can plausibly defend.

Others on the British left aren’t trying to defend Arday on the merits, but are angry at the media for focusing too much on the man and his story. Unlike their American counterparts, British leftists have accompanied this with calls for the press to be regulated so something like this doesn’t happen again. Dozens of parliamentarians signed a letter demanding an investigation into the media over the Arday story, noting over 200 articles written about him before his death, which one signatory described as “reach[ing] way beyond what could be reasonably considered in the public interest,” as if this is a matter for the government to decide.  

The Good Law Project has another open letter, signed by over 100,000 people, including members of Parliament, declaring that “self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed” and calling for “an immediate public inquiry into how to ensure a responsible press given its contribution to Dr Arday’s tragic death.” For his part, Andy Burnham has reportedly not ruled this out, but for now doesn’t show signs of being inclined to immediately give the activists what they want.

The most amusing proposal is a petition with 6,000 signatories advocating for “Arday’s law,” which would limit the number of articles that can be published about a person within a timeframe. I like to imagine Putin suing British newspapers for spending too much time covering the war in Ukraine. After they’ve used their Putin quota for the month, he can launch a nuclear weapon safe in the knowledge that no one will be allowed to know that he was responsible.

This entire episode highlights how left-leaning elites are not monolithic. Despite its problems, the mainstream press overall does a good job when it focuses on a story. It checks its facts. When actors are accused of lying, it will see whether the accusations are true. It is able to separate the merits of a claim from its source. And perhaps its most underrated virtue is that it is capable of shame.

This is not true for the British left, including much of academia. They have their narrative about right-wing racists, fascists, and oligarchs, and facts are not going to get in the way. If things look bad for Arday, you adjust the standards for assessing evidence, and change the subject to the motivations and behavior of his critics. 

In terms of identity, the most prestigious journalistic outlets tend to have standards, which means that they select people who first and foremost see themselves as reporters, with whatever political commitments they have being secondary. When they behave ideologically and act contrary to their ideals, the rest of us can critique them on this and there is often a correction, as has happened on the trans issue.

We can distinguish the far left from the mainstream establishment by saying that it puts political activism first. Such people now select into more fringe news organizations like Byline Times, which thinks that The Guardian is too far right, or into the less rigorous fields of academia. From the perspective of a MAGA, these are all the “left” and it’s not much worth distinguishing them from one another, but the divide between the two camps represents the line between civilization and barbarism, and honestly between a camp that you can try to persuade and one that you need to find a way to destroy.

From the American perspective, it’s striking to see how many in the UK go straight to demanding regulation in response to media coverage they don’t like. This is a cultural difference, proving that the First Amendment is not simply a legal principle, but something that creates and reflects a distinctive attitude toward speech...

A lot of the pathologies of the current American right are rooted in the personality of Trump himself – whose very existence mobilizes the chuds and gives them power within their coalition – while the British left appears to be more organically hostile to principles like fairness and a concern for truth...

Iif you add up all the Ardays and Arday enablers in the world, you get something that is often at least in the same neighborhood of being as threatening to liberal institutions as right-wing fascism, and almost certainly more so in a place like the UK"

Links - 3rd September 2026 (1 - Being Black in the US)

Unhinged mom fires handgun, throws bowl of soup at server in wild sushi restaurant meltdown - "A deranged St. Louis mother opened fire and hurled a bowl of soup inside suburban Missouri sushi restaurant after allegedly hearing racial slurs through a translation feature on her headphones and having problems with her food order.  Aaliyah N. Moorehead, 31, was inside the Kirkwood eatery on Wednesday night with her 9-year-old child and another adult woman, where police say she became agitated over an issue with her order...   Wasabi Sushi Bar staff offered to fix the order, but Moorehead began swearing at a server and was promptly asked to leave.   Moorehead then threw a bowl of soup at the server, striking him and other people inside of the restaurant, authorities allege.   The male employee tried to block himself from Moorehead’s onslaught with a chair, but she grabbed it and threw it.   The unhinged woman then took out a 9mm Glock handgun and said to the employee “you’re going to get it,” before firing a single shot in his direction shortly after 8:30 p.m... At the time of the shooting, Moorehead’s daughter was walking between her mother and the server...  Moorehead later told local cops that she believed the restaurant staff were rude to her and her family on arrival, and that she had overheard the chefs making racial and derogatory comments about herself and her family in Spanish through a translation feature on her AirPods"
The violence of the oppressor is not the same as the violence of the oppressed! Time to release her and give her reparations!

New York Magazine on X - "“I once lived in a Black mecca. But by the summer of 2022, my toddler son and I were often the only Black folks on the playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a fact that felt both alienating and surreal,” the novelist Naomi Jackson writes.   Jackson was born in Crown Heights to parents from the Caribbean — part of a tidal wave of late-20th-century West Indian and African emigration that changed the face of Black New York. “My formative years were in Flatbush, which is called ‘Little Caribbean’ even though it becomes less and less Caribbean,” she writes.  Over two decades, from 2000 to 2020, New York City lost nearly 200,000 Black folks, or about 9 percent of its Black residents. These losses have been particularly notable in historically Black strongholds like Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem. Data shows that in 2000, Black residents made up approximately 75 percent of Bed-Stuy’s population, and that number dropped to about 40 percent between 2019 and 2023, with the white population increasing more than tenfold.  In 2006, Jackson convinced her dad that buying property in Prospect–Lefferts Gardens was a smart idea. “At the time, I was 25 years old and scraping together a down payment on a modest studio apartment through a combination of savings and first-time-homebuyer grants. The neighborhood was already transforming; there was a new coffee shop and more white residents. Back then, the abbreviation PLG felt like a harbinger of gentrification that would protect my property value. Now, it feels more like a death knell for the childhood I remember.”  Read Jackson on how gentrification has reshaped her sense of belonging in the city:  https://nymag.visitlink.me/wlkg7h"
i/o on X - "Must be liberating for black people to be able to express how disappointing and "alienating" it is to see a neighborhood that was once overwhelmingly populated by people of their own race become mostly populated by people of another race and not be called a racist.   And I can't help but notice that when this sort of thing happens to black people it almost always means that the neighborhood is getting safer and better and when it happens to white people it almost always means it is getting worse in nearly every way.  You'd think that, this being the case, it would be white people who should be allowed to complain, and not black people. But that's not how it works in America."
Ricky "Bobby" Jones on X - "This isn’t just black people. In Mexico City, locals complain about white people moving in raising prices and making the area objectively nicer. In America we are racist if we complain about Mexicans moving in and making the area objectively worse, I think we are approaching or have reached the point where most of us just don’t care what they say anymore, they will always find something to whine and bitch about, and it’s always white people’s fault"

Lou Perez on X - "I'm a parent. My children have never heard the N-word and I plan on keeping it that way. That's why I refuse to live around people who say it."

Meme - "MEMPHISRAP. HIP HOP NEWS. WTF. Woman Beats Men in Rap Battle, So They Rape, Set Her on Fire and Shoot Her"
Woman Beats Men in Rap Battle, So They Rape, Set Her on Fire and Shoot Her - "Joey Betrail Garron, 28, Robert Carl Johnson, 23, and Ketorie Glover, 23 all of Columbus, Georgia could not handle losing to a woman in a hip hop rap battle, so they allegedly raped, beat, shot and doused the woman with gasoline setting her on fire before leaving her for dead."

No crimes reported at Lincoln Park since basketball hoops removed

Martin Luther King III on X - "Angela Davis is a scholar, activist, and unwavering advocate for justice. From prison reform to civil rights and LGBTQ+ rights, she continues to shape movements for equality and liberation.   I’ll never forget seeing her at an event after her release when I was 14. Even then, I understood the gravity of her presence.  This #BlackHistoryMonth, we honor her intellect, her leadership, and her lifelong commitment to freedom and justice for all."
A Gene Robinson on X - "No.  You don’t get to wrap radical deviant prison-abolition ideology, Marxist theory, and anti-family activism in the language of “justice” and pretend it built the Black community.  It didn’t. That’s a lie. I’m old enough to have lived through this.   Angela Davis built movements around dismantling systems. Especially the black nuclear family.  Understand, the Black community wasn’t built by dismantling anything.  It was built by married mothers and fathers. It was built by discipline. It was built by church on Sunday and work on Monday. It was built by men who stayed. It was built by women who guarded the home.  In 1960, nearly 70–80 percent of Black children were raised in two-parent households. Today that number has collapsed to roughly 22 percent.  That collapse did not happen because we lacked “liberation theory.”  It happened because the nuclear family was undermined… culturally and politically.  You cannot celebrate “freedom and justice” while ignoring that fatherlessness is the single greatest predictor of poverty, incarceration, school failure, and violent crime.  That’s not opinion. That’s Department of Justice and Census data.  The civil rights generation fought for access to opportunity within a framework of family stability.  What followed was an ideological shift that treated the family as optional… even oppressive.  And the results are measurable.  If we are going to honor Black history, then let’s honor the structure that actually sustained Black excellence:  Married households. Present fathers. Mothers and fathers aligned. Faith communities reinforcing moral order.  Without that structure, slogans mean nothing.  The Black nuclear family is not a side issue.  It is the infrastructure.  Everything else is commentary.  #SilentMajoritySpeaks #AStoneGroove"

Meme - Seamus (FreedomToons) ) @seamus_coughlin: "This is literally the first time in all of human history that "boys will be boys has been use as an excuse for rape and not a single shitlib is going to mention it"
End Wokeness @EndWokeness: ""This is a 12 year old boy. A black boy!! You gonna put him in jail?!?" Father of a 12-year-old r*pist:"
More to the point, apparently you're not supposed to send black boys to jail

Meme - iamyesyouareno @iamyesyouareno: "Just two years after his heart transplant, he carjacked someone, robbed a house, shot at an old woman, and finally got into a high speed police chase that killed him. But of course CNN used a picture of him playing chess."
"Teen heart transplant recipient killed in police chase"

My interactions with black people as an adult have turned me into a racist, and I don't know what to do. : r/TrueOffMyChest - "Growing up, race wasn't talked about or an issue around. I had friends of every race and didn't really think much about it. As I grew older, I learned about systematic injustices and absoltuely agreed they needed to be.  Then, one summer in college, I worked at a restuarant (in a fairly white but diverse part of town) where a large percentage of our clientele were African American. While I did have a few "karens" or stuck-up white people, and really had shitty people of all races, the majority of my experience with African American customers was negative. They constantly tipped less (or not at all), ruder, dirty looks, insulted me, given the middle finger, got called a bitch for not letting a table leave without paying, seeing a coworker brought to tears because how a large party was treating her, etc. I left because I genuinely felt abused by a good percentage of the customers. I've always been a big believer that you can true character of a person based on how they treat those they perceive as less than them. In my experience in the restaurant industry, African American failed that test miserably. It really shifted my perspective in a negative light and I'm still working on overcoming it.  After college, I got a job in my field and became a teacher. For a while, I the prejudices seemed tk By far, the majority demographic I struggle the most with classroom management and write referrals for are African American students. Plus, after I transitioned at school, I lost the complete respect of several black students, several started stopping by my classroom merely to gawk and/or laugh. They're the only ones who I've ever had to redirect using "gay" as derogatory. Literally no white, Asian, Middle Eastern, or Indian students cared; in fact a few said supportive things in private. I'm just like "no wonder transwomen of color are more likely to be murdered." I can't stand how loud they are, when they walk down the halls blasting rap music for everyone to hear, dress like thugs, and in fact the whole rap/hood/ghetto culture just rubs me the wrong way. It really does comes across as glorifying violence. Sometimes I'm like "How did we get from the Harlem Renaissance, jazz, blues, soul, and The Cosby Show to gangster rap and calling the characters on Blackish 'white washed'?" While us white people look back with disgust with shame about what our ancestors have done, sometimes I wonder if black people of the past are seeing their children and grandchildren and going "What are you doing?"  So yeah... that's my story. I don't want to have these prejudices, and feel like I'm contributing to the problem because of it. I don't know what to do about it. I've opened up in some circles about this and they're either like "that's racism, we're not going to talk about that" or simply say "Stop being racist" as if it's a switch I can turn off."

Asian Dawn on X - "So far, I've seen clips saying Buddha, Sun Tzu, and Confucius were black...."

Meme - "WE WOULD HAVE GROWN UP TO BE SURGEONS BUT YALL PUT A PICTURE OF A BLACK WOMAN ON A BOX OF PANCAKES AND RUINED IT *2 black men sagging (pants falling off), one with a pistol*"

Meme - Sizwe SikaMusi: "Black people on average spend 30% more on luxury goods and brands than White people in the same income group. Why? Because wearing designer and luxury brands is necessary for affluent Blacks to gain respect and status in the White world"
"I can assure you nobody looks at your jordans and Versace hoodie, and thinks "wow. This guys great!""

Meme - Patrick Byrne @PatrickByrne: "Remember six years ago when we were hearing about "The Talk"? Black parents had to sit their teenagers down and give them "the talk" about systemic white violence against black folk. What "talk" should white parents give?"
Taya @travelingflying: "Crimes in which Black people attack White people occur 42 times more often than crimes in which White people attack Black people."
"Interracial Violent Incidents Per Capita of Offending Race"

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Some sociologists have proposed that American society discriminates against those with distinctively "Black names".  One proposed effect is that people with Black names do worse on tests.  However, they actually do no worse than their siblings with less Black names:
The reality is that people with more Black names are selected, even within the Black community.  More competent and higher socioeconomic status Black parents are less likely to give their kids a distinctive name like 'Jaquan' or 'LaShawnda' and more likely to pick, e.g., 'Lisa'. But when comparing siblings from the same family, the more or less competent one is no more or less likely to be the one with the Black name."

Lauren Chen on X - "Over 11 years, there were no recorded cases of a white male raping a black female.  Zero.  In the whole country.  Conversely, in a single year, there were 35,000 white females raped by black males.  Insane."

Emily Saves America on X - "When I was 13 I was waiting outside of a mall for my dad to pick me up. I was probably barely 90 lbs then if that. A HUGE black guy ran up punched me shoved me to the ground and stole my phone and purse. Broad daylight. When I got up I realized it was all black people watching and not ONE came over, said anything, asked if I needed help, none offered to call 911. I looked around crying. They just looked at me like yeah that’s what you deserve. I hate to say it but things like that just change the way you see certain people. After that I always thought oh you guys just hate me."
Damn anti-blackness!

Raven-Symoné clarifies past remarks when she said, 'I'm not African American' - "Raven-Symoné is addressing a comment she made in 2014 during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that she said has "haunted" her ever since... "I want to be labeled a human who loves humans," she said. "I'm tired of being labeled — I'm an American, I'm not an African American. I'm an American."... "When that aired, I felt like the entire internet exploded and threw my name in the garbage," the former Disney Channel star said. "There was so much backlash from my community and others that misunderstood -- slash didn't hear the exact words that I said. And the exact words that I said is that, 'I'm an American, not an African American.'"  "A lot of people on the internet thought I said that I wasn't Black, and I never said that. There's a difference between being Black and African," she said.  When Maday asked her to clarify what she meant, she continued, "When I say that African American does not align with me, that label, it doesn't mean that I'm negating my Blackness or I'm not Black."  "It means I am from this country, I was born here, my mom, my dad, my great-great-great-great-great — and that's what I'm saying. The pure logistics of it," she explained... To further justify the comment, she added, "When I am in another country, they don't say, 'hey look at that African American over there,' they say, 'that's an American,' plain and simple.""
She is quoted as saying "How long do a people have to live on a land before they're natives of that land .. If white people in America aren't European Americans, why do I have to be an African American ?! ", but doesn't seem to have said that

Eric Adams on X - "A 15-year-old kid was beaten and shot to death at a Southeast Queens playground yesterday. And somehow this isn’t the top story. Credit to AG Letitia James & BP Richards for speaking up. Where is everyone else, including @NYCMayor Mamdani? Outrage shouldn’t depend on zip code. Every child deserves protection."
Eli Steele on X - "This killing is more brutal than the far more famous Michael Brown shooting.  The real scandal here is not just the violence, but the culture around it. In this video, you see a generation raised in moral chaos. Each one of these kids belongs to a family. What were they taught? What were they raised to believe?  The crowd recording and taunting instead of intervening reveals a deeper rot. Where is the individual conscience?  What we are witnessing are the internal failures that our white guilt racial order has long excused. Whites who have exploited blacks for cheap moral virtue all these years will never look this problem in the eye. They don’t want to see the horror they contributed to."

How true is Thomas Sowell's claim that poor Scots-Irish culture influenced African-American culture? : r/AskHistorians - "First, it’s important to understand what Sowell is saying in his essay titled “Black Rednecks and White Liberals.” He is not saying that Scots-Irish culture, as it existed/exists in the US, and especially the rural Southern US, merely influenced African-American culture. That claim would be nearly universally accepted by scholars. Poor whites and blacks have lived close to each other for hundreds of years, and there has been much interchange between the two communities. This means that yes, some amount of Scots-Irish-American culture has influenced African-American culture and vice versa.  Recently, there has been a lot of interest in the African/black origins of the banjo, an instrument often associated with rural white music like old-time and bluegrass. I talked about this in an episode of the AskHistorians Podcast. Less well-known today is the tradition of ballads among Black Americans, an adaptation of the ballad tradition commonly found in Britain and Ireland. Popular folk songs like “John Henry” and “Stagolee” are examples of these types of songs, which have many hallmarks of these British/Irish ballads but are both by and about Black Americans. If you’re looking for some nice listening, the album Classic African-American Ballads on the Smithsonian Folkways Label has some great recordings of these songs.  This is one tiny slice of Southern culture, but it shows that there was great interchange between communities that are often thought of in rigid boxes. One influenced another and vice versa, and often those influences compounded between them in a kind of blended culture. You can see, as another example, the popularity of various strands of Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Christianities in both white and Black communities in the South, and similarities in theology even between church groups that are otherwise quite racially segregated.  However, this simple concept of interchange is not what Sowell is contending. Sowell argues that black culture basically reproduced or took on poor white Southern culture, not just that it was influenced by it. And what exactly was this culture?
The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.
First off, it’s obvious to see where Sowell is going here. He also includes various anecdotes and quotes in the essay to try to show that all the stereotypes often associated with Black people in the US, especially poor black people, were once associated with poor whites. Or, as he puts it,
Much of the cultural pattern of Southern rednecks became the cultural heritage of Southern blacks, more so than survivals of African cultures, with which they had not been in contact for centuries. (Even in colonial times, most blacks on American soil had been born on American soil.)
And so if this culture was passed from poor whites down to poor blacks, where did the whites get it? Sowell traces it to varying migration patterns from Britain and Ireland throughout the years. Crucially, his argument is that poor whites in the American South came from certain areas, namely Northern Ireland, Highland Scotland, and Wales. Of particular interest are the so-called “Scots-Irish,” descendants of Scottish planters in Northern Ireland who ended up emigrating to the US.  It’s obvious that one source Sowell uses and cites is Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtics Ways in the Old South. McWhiney uses the term “Celtic Fringe” for these areas he sees as the edges of Britain, the areas where the old “Celtic” culture remained and stayed with the people who would eventually emigrate to the US. These Celtic cultures supposedly had a number of tendencies, including many listed in the quote above, and people in those areas supposedly were imbued with these cultural characteristics more so than the populations that emigrated to other areas of the US like New England and the mid-Atlantic states. These remnants of old “Celtic” culture eventually became the backbone of so-called “Redneck” or “Cracker” culture of poor whites in the Southern US.  There are a number of issues with this characterization, though, the first of which is that “Celtic” is a fairly dicey way to describe many of the people McWhiney and Sowell are discussing. In fact, the Scots-Irish, also known as Ulster Scots were/are primarily descended from lowland Scottish people who would not have been Gaelic/“Celtic” language speakers. This was a large part of the reason why they were brought to Ireland in the first place, as part of a plantation to displace the Gaelic residents of Ulster, the northern province of Ireland. Ulster Scots are, in fact, in many ways defined in opposition to Celtic culture!
Weird how poor Southern whites and Scots and Irish back in the old country aren't as dysfunctional today

The Key to Lasting Love: Why White Men/Black Women Marriages Stand Out - "In our family, there are mixed-race ancestors in the Silent Generation and, of course, during slavery, but no mixed-race marriages exist in the Boomer or the Generation X generations. It was strictly Black-on-Black crime.  When we tried to question the older generation about why Aunt Keke was obviously ½ white, they would admit she was ½ white but refuse to tell us how that happened in the middle of a marriage. When we asked why they preferred we date Black — the answer was, “Shut up and don’t bring any white people home.” So, we did not dare.  My mother’s father was ½ White, but he would not talk about it. Grandfather was smack dab in the middle of eight children, who were all as dark as blackberries as were their parents. He had a handsome, tall appearance and had a very light complexion. He would feel insulted if Black people called him white, but he used his fair skin to deceive others. How? Society considered light-skinned people more trustworthy and intelligent than darker-skinned people...
Interracial marriages are 28% more likely to end in divorce than same-race marriages. Within the first ten years of marriage, interracial couples have a 40% chance of divorce, while same-race couples have a 31% chance. The divorce rate of Asian and white interracial marriages is 59% higher than that of white and white unions. 12 years following marriage, 44% of white women who married a black man were divorced, compared to 33% of white women who married a white man. Black women married to white men have a 50% lower risk of divorcing than black women married to black men.
I checked this data on other websites, and it said the same thing. For interracial marriage compared to same-race marriage — all racial mixtures have a higher chance of getting divorced other than the white man/ black woman couple, which had a higher chance of staying married."

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies - "Online correspondence audit studies have emerged as the primary method to examine racial discrimination. Although audits use distinctive names to signal race, few studies scientifically examine data regarding the perception of race from names. Different names treated as black or white may be perceived in heterogeneous ways. I conduct a survey experiment that asks respondents to identify the race they associate with a series of names. I alter the first names given to each respondent and inclusion of last names. Names more commonly given by highly educated black mothers (e.g., Jalen and Nia) are less likely to be perceived as black than names given by less educated black mothers (e.g., DaShawn and Tanisha). The results suggest that a large body of social science evidence on racial discrimination operates under a misguided assumption that all black names are alike, and the findings from correspondence audits are likely sensitive to name selection."
Not all black names are equally black (e.g. some "black" names are a lot more uniquely black than others, some "black" names are associated with the hood, some "black" names are given by uneducated mothers etc)

Links - 2nd September 2026 (2 - Colonialism)

Meme - "Bea Cetina: BREAKING NEWS: Colonizers Angry When Colonized"
Licensed Memes: The Banterbury Tales: "I'm glad you agree colonisation is bad. Thankfully, no English person today is a coloniser but I'm glad you acknowledge those from outside are indeed colonisers."

Scammers ‘defrauding British women as retribution for colonialism’ - "Fraudsters in Ghana are deliberately targeting British women in online scams as retribution for colonialism, a report has claimed.  Accra, Ghana’s capital, is a hub for gangs of cyber criminals, known as Sakawa Boys, who pose as white men on Facebook to manipulate affluent Western women into entering a relationship... Interpol marked West Africa as a new regional hub for “online scam centres”, where people are tricked into working as digital scammers through fake job advertisements, pushed into debt bondage and held in a compound against their will.  On Friday, more than 1,200 scammers accused of targeting nearly 88,000 people were arrested in a sweeping crackdown across Africa. The Interpol operation, involving investigators from the UK and 18 African nations, led to £73m being recovered from the raids... British and American women, often those who are vulnerable and seeking romance, are targeted on Facebook by scammers pretending to be white men of good social standing, such as government officials, bankers or soldiers.  Dr Lazarus said that not only do the scammers justify their crimes because of Ghana’s colonial history, but also that even some of the police officers sympathised with the criminals’ point of view... “These women are also targeted in line with Sakawa Boys’ moral interpretations of their activities. They believe their actions carry moral repercussions and that middle-aged women are more forgiving, and therefore more likely to pardon them.  “A striking feature of my interviews was how offenders framed their scams through the lens of history. Many explicitly drew on colonial exploitation, arguing that what they do is a form of digital reparations. This rationalisation allows them to recast fraud as resistance rather than crime.”  The article, titled Fraud as Legitimate Retribution for Colonial Injustice: Neutralisation Techniques in Interviews with Police and Online Romance Fraud Offenders, was published in the journal Deviant Behaviour."
Grievance mongering has very real harms

Why does it seem like many of the ex-British colonies went on to be very successful/highly developed while the Spanish and Portuguese colonies did not? : r/stupidquestions - "It largely comes down to the fact that British colonialism was reliant on industrialism and exploiting the commercial enterprise of other countries. That meant that these countries had infrastructure developed to grow the colonial economy with the profits siphoned off to Britain. When these countries got independence, all of those enterprises were still there, they just needed to be maintained.  But also, probably a little controversial, Britain actually somewhat cared about the natives for a decent portion of the British Empire. So there were investments in these countries to improve the food supply, to bring clean water, to develop the agricultural economy by building aqueducts and irrigation infrastructure, to export new technologies like livestock breeds and trains etc."

Meme - Spencer Joseph @SpencerJJoseph: "Do you know why most people in the West know nothing about the indigenous peoples of the Middle East and their ancient cultures ? It’s because fundamentalist Arab-Islamic colonialism erases them."
"MANDEANS GREEK CHALDEANS CYPRIOTS ARMENIANS MARONITES ASSYRIANS COPTS NUBIANS JEWS SAMARITANS PERSIANS DRUZE BALOCH ARAMEANS/SYRIACS KURDS YAZISIDS"

Paul on X - "The Belgians left the Congo with electricity, railroads, Highways and ports. None of those exist today."
Damn colonialism ruining the Congo!

German outlets expose alleged staging of Gaza food photos : r/europe_sub - "'Britain caused many of the current worldwide situations'
Because we tried to build monoethic states post WW2, causing ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing (India, Pakistan, Israel, Jordan) or because we ignored ethnic lines creating unstable multiethnic states, causing ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing (Sudan, Sri Lanka, Burma)?"

pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "“give it baaacckkk” since 2014, India has had over 600 “stolen” artifacts returned to it and we currently only know the confirmed whereabouts of 12 of them. most of the others are allegedly being held at a storage facility that has failed every audit it’s ever had"

Meme - Daily Turkic @DailyTurkic: "Turkish President Erdogan: "Turks have never been colonizers.""
Liberty Prime 7395 @KawaiiSpecOps: "What?! C'mon man! Don't be ashamed of your history"
"The Ottoman Empire in 1683
Directly administered territory
Vassal & autonomous territory
Territory lost before 1683
Vassal territory lost before 1683"
Naturally, there was a lot of cope

Meme - Daily Turkic: "What if Ottomans discovered America first"
Islamicize: "No genocide. No capitalism. Just call to prayer echoing through the Rockies"
christoph @Halalcoholism: "Person who finds it hard to imagine a scenario in which the Ottomans would commit genocide"
BOBBY MARS @bobby_on_mars: "“No capitalism” buddy they had a mercantile empire for hundreds of years"

Meme - i/o @rational_wiki: "Evidence of the existence of rape prior to European colonialism: Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia, the Old Testament, ancient Chinese records (e.g., Shiji by Sima Qian), ancient Egyptian texts, Assyrian records, Mesoamerican codices (e.g., Mayan), Roman law and Justinian Code, ancient Greek texts, ancient Hindu Texts (e.g.,  The Mahabharata and Ramayana), Herodotus’ Histories, observations of native behavior by European colonialists...  And of course many of the places Europeans colonialized had rapey cultures but no historical records of it because they had not yet developed written language."
Kate Kelly: "Rape did not exist among native nations prior to white contact. I repeat, rape *did not exist* among native nations prior to white contact."

Meme - "Christopher Columbus was just a simple refugee. He longed for a better life in a new land. A dreamer bringing with him nothing but Diversity, Inclusion and a suitcase of gabagool"

Meme - "The Muslim conquests of territories were significantly different from Western colonialism. Our motivation wasn't rooted in worldly gains or plundering wealth. In many cases, we were provoked, leading to conquests. Upon conquest, we became an integral part of the land, rather than"

Scottrhawk on X - "By the way, the British not only respected local customs, their historical and archeological research often recovered civilizations otherwise lost to history, like the great Indian empire of Ashoka. Champollion recovered the list secrets of the hieroglyphics. Arab conquerors, especially early on, had no interest in prior infidel civilizations, but simply saw subject non-Muslim populations as a source of labor wealth. And Muslim traders vastly expanded slave trading networks across Africa and the Indian Ocean.,"

Meme - @Ayishamuhamad: "The aim of every settler colonial country is to make life impossible for indigenous people. FREE all occupied People."
@Ayishamuhamad: "We should never have stopped." *Areas Under Muslim rule at one point or another in history*
"Colonialism" is something only white people can do

Meme - Dr. Maalouf @realMaalouf: "Arab Muslims are the biggest colonizers that have ever existed in the history of humanity." "ISLAMIC CONQUEST BETWEEN 7tth AND 9th CENTURY" "How come no one ever talks about that. Or the 4 to 10 million estimated black African slaves that they traded. And that number doesn't include slaves from other regions."

Liza Rosen on X - "Muslim Influencer explains why Muslims are the only justified colonial project. She insists that as invaders, Muslims were given divine justification to force their rule on others by force—ie, invade, take over lands, murder, rape, enslave, oppress and plunder the local non-Muslim population which refuses to submit to Islam. According to her, when Muslims take over and do all the atrocities Islam orders them to commit, they actually bring justice to the places where non-Muslims maintained freedom, equality and human rights in violation of Islam. You see, when infidels simply live their lives without taking into account the laws of Islam, Muslims get offended and feel like the infidels inflect unbearable suffering, oppression, and injustice upon them.  What is your response to her?"
It only counts as colonialism if white people do it. Christians thinking that their colonialism was justified by divine mandate or oppressive local government or practises (e.g. sutee) are racist, ethnocentric white supremacists. The Byzantines oppressing religious minorities was bad but Muslims not allowing religious minorities that are not Peoples of the Book to exist is good because of divine mandate, but there is still no compulsion in religion

Meme - "HAITI 200 YEARS AFTER CEASING TO BE A EUROPEAN COLONY *trash, ruined buildings*
SINGAPORE 50 YEARS AFTER CEASING TO BE A EUROPEAN COLONY *modern buildings*"

Meme - Khaled Beydoun @KhaledBeydoun: "If France doesn't want "immigrants," it shouldn't have colonized Algeria for 132 years."
Waz Swindlehurst: "Europe unable to handle migrants from countries they colonised. You made your bed so lie in it."
Devonteshiquanda @Devonteshiquand: "Algerians were raiding Europe and kidnapping them into slavery long before France colonized it. Consider colonization being payback for the Barbary slave trade."

Apolitical on X - "Saying that White countries deserve to be flooded with brown migrants because of colonialism is acknowledging that you people are a plague and a punishment"
Left wingers see brown and black people as a way to punish the West

Emil Kirkegaard on X - "It's occasionally claimed that Hutus and Tutsis are actually the same people, and that European colonizers made up these groups for nefarious reasons. However, there are a few genetic studies of them. They are not the same people genetically."

Meme - Crying Black Man: "WE CAN'T DEVELOP BG WE WUZ COLONIZED BUT WE WUZ KANGZ WE MADE EVERYTHING"
Africa 2000 years ago: *mud huts*
Africa today: *mud huts*
Hiroshima, Japan 1945 *devastated*
Hiroshima, Japan 2020 *modern city*
Warsaw 1945 after hombing: *devastated*
Warsaw 2020 *modern city*"

Queen Bob on X - "I'm sorry that the British people went to India, and introduced an uncorrupted legal system, built bridges, trains, roads, universities, aquaducts, viaducts, schools, hospitals, trains, banned suttee (the burning of widows), kept out the Russians, the Alfredi, and the Afghanistani armies, banned the thuggees, brought advancements in farming, medicine, technology, telecommunications, created trade routes, and created a lingua franca and common currency. I feel so ashamed. Thank you for apologising for me Chris. Whilst my ancestors were 3000ft down a tin mine whilst their kids died of lung disease and hunger, I'm reminded by pretentious millionaire cunts like you, how ashamed I should feel for something I played no part in. X"
Coldplay concert: Chris Martin apologises for British rule at concert: Thank you for forgiving all the bad things Great Britain did

captive dreamer on X - "Did you know that the oldest institution in India dedicated to study of Sanskrit was founded by the British governor of Bombay, Jonathan Duncan, in 1791? Thank an Anglo-Saxon for this! Thank you Anglo-Saxons!"
🗿 Woe to those who dwell upon the earth 🗿 on X - "Without European intervention, hardly any of the ancient history of any other race would even be known."
🗿 Woe to those who dwell upon the earth 🗿 on X - "The Rosetta Stone was found buried in a random wall during demolition. Machu Piccu was an overgrown, abandoned nothing until Hiram Bingham stumbled upon it. Archeology & anthropology are entirely European conceits. We're the only reason the riches of dirt world are preserved."

Meme - Steve Sailer @Steve_Sailer: "From SteveSailer dot Net:  Why has Haiti fallen behind even the better sort of West African countries like Ivory Coast and Ghana, and far behind its Caribbean neighbors like Jamaica and Dominican Republic?"
"The trees have long been stripped from the hills on the Haitian side of the border with the still-forested Dominican Republic."
Clearly, this is because the Dominican Republic was never colonised

Meme - Taz @ItsTaz1989: "The Indian government killed more Indians between independence and 1970 than the British killed throughout the entire period of the Raj — just to put Kaur’s anti-British propaganda into context."
"Alan noted that more people had been killed by police firing on riotous mobs in independent India than in the entire period of the Raj-this before the worst violence of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet the comparatively small punitive action at Amritsar by Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer of 1919 continued to dominate "atrocity studies" in India. In Pakistan, military rule"
Narinder Kaur @narindertweets: "I am in Punjab at the Jalliawala Bagh Massarce memorial wall, where you can see the bullet marks fired at a crowd of thousands ordered by General Dyer during British Rule.  We will never forget the brutality of the British and how many thousands of lives were lost in 1919 (not forgetting how the very same people had just helped them win a war)"

Meme - Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z: "I don't know, if I ran an account called Irish Unity I wouldn't support the principle that if there's a smaller island off the coast of your country you're entitled to annex it, but that's just me."
Irish Unity 🇮🇪🇵🇸 @IrishUnity: "The British Ambassador to Argentina has stormed out of a meeting in Buenos Aires when local politician Augustina Propato wore a t-shirt emblazoned with,  “Las Malvinas Son Argentinas - The Malvinas Are Argentinian”"

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry on X - "When you read about colonial history, what you find is that, in every single case (the only (arguable) exception I've found is the Opium War), whatever Europeans did to the natives, the natives were doing far worse to each other, and the Europeans ended it.
Yes, even the Belgian Congo:"

Meme - Paul Williams @freemonotheist: "The difference between conquest and colonialism"
"Islamic Conquest
Primarily driven by religious motivations to spread Islam,
Respected local cultures and governance.
Economic exchange and educational institutions were encouraged.
Colonialism
Primarily driven by economic gain and maximum resource extraction.
Imposed their own culture and language. Suppression of indigenous cultures was common.
the Indigenous populations would be worker slaves to their colonial masters."
Woffydo @woffydo: "“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history.” [ Will Durant (1885-1981) the well-known American historian ] Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant MJF Books. 1935. p. 459 and 505 and 524 – 600)."

AF Post on X - "Mexico’s newly-elected female President Claudia Sheinbaum demands Spain apologize for colonizing Aztecs, Incans, and Mayans. Follow: @AFpost"
Ada Lluch Mannarino on X - "Darling, without Spain your country would not even exist. You should thank us."
Mike Solana on X - "when will descendants of the aztecs be apologizing for the culture of mass human sacrifice?"

Meme - "Oh gosh, did I just go and conquer a native empire that was enslaving its neighbors, practicing human sacrifice and cannibalism, teach them to read and write, convert them to Christianity and give them modern ideas of sanitation? Did I just do that? I'M SORRY!"

Thread by @whyvert on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Settler colonialism is trending. Some current examples. 🧵  1. China. Settled loyal Han in disloyal Xinjiang (from 90s). Settled 1m loyal mainlanders in disloyal Hong Kong.  A road across Xinjiang's Taklamakan desert China built to entice settlers. Image 2. Indonesia. Settled about 300k loyal Javanese in West Papua. Many around the giant Grasberg gold and copper mine, which had been a target of attacks by Papuan independence activists. Image West Papuans are not pleased. Image 3. Morocco. Sent settlers to Western Sahara, which it has occupied since 1975. One source says Moroccans are now a majority of the half-million or so population. Image If Russia conquers Ukraine, or China conquers Taiwan, we can be sure that they will try to settle loyalists in their new territories. 4. Bangladesh. After defeating an insurgency (1970s-90s) by the local ethnic group in the Chittagong Hills, Bangladesh settled loyal Bengalis in the area. Image 5. Sri Lanka. During the civil war (1983-2009), the Sri Lanka government settled Sinhalese in Tamil areas as a loyal bulwark. Image 6. Iraq. In the 1960s to 2003, Iraq had a policy of Arabization of Kurdish areas. It burned Kurdish villages, deported the people, and settled Arabs, especially around the oil fields. Ba'athist Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27athist_Arabization_campaigns_in_northern_Iraq Two conclusions: (1) In recent times, the vast majority of settler colonialism has been in the non-Western world. (2) But it gets little attention because it is "brown-on-brown". If whites aren't involved, it's invisible."

Dr. Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui on X - "You know what the colonisers didn’t count on?   Those of us born and raised in the West - in the mothership of the colony, turning on them.   They thought we’d be forever indebted to them for their benevolence in how they imprison us.   They thought they could colonise our minds like they colonised our lands.   They didn’t know we’d take their gab and garb and use them as tools to free the rest.  They didn’t know their empire would eventually end by implosion."
Wesley Yang on X - "It was only liberals who thought this wouldn’t happen   Anti-immigrant nativists assumed it would from the get go and tried and failed to stop it   Progressives also thought it would happen and welcomed it because they share in the goal   Now we know who was right"
Dual loyalty: "This is not happening, and it's good that it is"
Of course, if you accuse those with immigrant backgrounds and heritage of trying to destroy the country, you're xenophobic and racist

Sarah Haider 👾 on X - "“Behold, a picture of me. Am I not beautiful? But wait, there is more! I am unburdened by duty, see? I hold not an ounce of loyalty to those who gave me food and water. I am also blessed with the undisturbed peace of the imbecile—I cheer for the world my parents ran from.”"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "When someone openly says they are your enemy and want to destroy your society, you should take that seriously."
Cirsova - The Dream Lords Live on Kickstarter on X - "immigrants bragging that every immigrant child is a sleeper agent waiting to bring down their nation of residence is pretty good fodder for the "they all have to go back and we should never let any more in" crowd."

Meme - "Decolonize they said, it will be fun they said..."
"Rhodesia circa 1950 *manicured vegetation, Grande Hotel in good upkeep*
Zimbabwe today *wild vegetation, Grande Hotel in ruins, dead (?) child lying on street*

Thread by @WanjiruNjoya on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "When Britain banned the slave trade they sent an unarmed delegation to West Africa to inform the slaver-kings that slavery was henceforth illegal.  The slaver-kings slaughtered the British delegation in cold blood.  They didn't see why they had to stop slaving. Look up the story of how the Benin Bronzes ended up in Britain. They were seized during a punitive expedition sent by the Royal Navy to avenge this outrage. Slavery was a lucrative trade for West African slaver kingdoms. They'd traded slaves with Arabs for centuries. They didn't see what gave Britain the right to tell them their own business.  "Who are you to ban the slave trade? Who made you king of the world?"  That was their view. They're still slaving to this day. They don't see the problem 🤷‍♀️"

Kids Killed in Mass Shootings in Schools in the US in Perspective

A common trope about US Schools is that they are shooting ranges, and that children in the US are in mortal peril from mass shootings. Other anti-US rhetoric commonly accompanies these claims.

We are told that Americans are more likely to die from a parachuting accident, being buried alive, a lightning strike, drowning in your bathtub or choking on food than from a terrorist attack, so they shouldn't worry about the risk of terrorist attacks. And that since the risk is so low, anyone who might be worried about terrorism, you're Islamophobic. And that Muslims are demonised for these rare terrorist attacks because they're an outgroup.

Given how much attention is placed on mass shootings at schools, one might be given to suspect that the numbers there might be similarly inflated.

So let us compare deaths of school students in mass shootings at schools to an American cause of death that most would consider banal.

Cows.

In a 2024 article published in Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology, Death and injuries caused by cattle: A forensic overview, Roger Byard informs us that "It has been estimated that approximately 20–22 deaths occur each year in the United States from cattle". Note that this is total deaths.

Meanwhile, in another 2024 article published in Pediatrics, School Shootings in the United States: 1997–2022, Rapa et al. inform us that "On average then, over the 25-year time span examined, there were approximately 5 fatalities and 5 injuries per school year that could be attributed to school mass shootings".

So about 4 times as many Americans die every year due to cows as in school mass shootings. Note that strictly speaking, the school mass shooting data includes adults as it is for all fatalities. It is safe to assume that most of them are students, as the majority of people in schools are students, but still this number somewhat overestimates the number of school students in the US who die from school mass shootings - yet we still get this seemingly shocking result.

Perhaps one might object by claiming that there're more school shootings nowadays, so newer data will show more kids dying in school mass shootings. So let us more generously test the claim.

School shootings are not evenly distributed across years. From the same paper, here is Figure 3: U.S. School Mass Shootings by School Year: Number of Fatalities and Number Injured, 1997-1998 through 2021-2022.

One can see that in the majority of years, there are no fatalities or even injuries from school mass shooting.

But for the sake of argument, let us cherry pick years to get the maximum number of deaths from school mass shootings. In school year 2017-2018 27 people died in them, and in 2021-2022 25 did. None died in the intervening years, so we get 52 deaths across 5 years, or 10.4 deaths a year.

This is still half the number of Americans who died due to cows every year.

Clearly, the amount of froth generated by school mass shootings cannot be attributed to the number of deaths alone.

Of course, if you apply the left's dismissal of jihadist terrorism and apply the same logic to their demonisation of guns and (white) gun owners that always accompanies school mass shootings, they will not like the results.

Links - 2nd September 2026 (1)

Meme - "HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE KIDS COMPASS
*Jeffrey Epstein to Mr Rogers* *Ms Rachel to Israel*
Jeffrey Epstein & Ms Rachel: "PRO-DAYCARE"
Mr Rogers & Ms Rachel: "HEALTHY ADORATION"
Jeffrey Epstein & Israel: "FUCK 'DEM KIDS"
Mr Rogers & Israel: "NEIGHBORHOOD GENTRIFICATION"

Meme - Bonchie @bonchieredstate: "Look, Democrats just want to protect our democracy and restore norms by packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the electoral college, outlawing "misinformation," censoring their opponents, banning guns, and ending the filibuster. Stop questioning their motives."

Wu Chi-wai: Hong Kong activist allowed to stay in UK after deportation threat - "Former Hong Kong opposition leader Wu Chi-wai has been allowed to stay in the UK with his family for six months, after initially being detained at the border. Wu had arrived at London's Heathrow Airport last Wednesday, where he was detained for nearly 10 hours and initially refused entry, he told BBC Chinese. He said he was later told he could stay for only one week, after which he would have to report to the airport to be deported. But on Monday, the UK Border Force approved his entry and granted him a standard stay of six months, he said. The 63-year-old was the leader of the now-defunct Democratic Party and one of the most recognisable faces of the city's quashed pro-democracy movement. Wu is one of the so-called Hong Kong 47, a group of high-profile pro-democracy leaders who were sentenced to jail after a controversial national security trial. He was released in June after spending more than five years in prison for subversion and other convictions. Wu told BBC Chinese that his son and wife moved to the UK in 2022 and 2023, and the only communication he had with them since then was through monthly phone calls and letters. He had hoped to reunite with his family in the UK during his recent visit, he added. Ahead of his departure, Wu said he had consulted staff at the British Consulate General in Hong Kong, asking if there would be any problems with his entry. "The information I received was that there would be none," he said, adding that consular staff said they would explain his criminal record and itinerary to the UK Border Force. The Border Force said he was not considered a "genuine visitor" who was solely visiting family, he said. Wu denies that he had intended to apply for political asylum in the UK - a claim that was previously reported in the media... Wu was using his British National (Overseas) (BNO) passport - a special travel document issued to Hong Kong permanent residents before 1 July 1997, when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule - to enter the UK. BNO passport holders are typically allowed to stay in the UK visa-free for six months."

Meme - "The Olive Garden waitress when I ask for an extra fork to go with the strawberry cream pie"
"You naughty bastard! I'm still on my 2nd day... meet me out back in ten!"

Meme - Faramir with Eowyn: "This is my new girlfriend father"
Denethor: "You can do better"
Faramir: "Thank you for your concern father but she is the love of my life"
Denethor: "I wasn't talking to you"
Faramir:

Meme -"Christopher Lee: "But Peter, I want to be Gandalf."
Peter Jackson: "And that's exactly why you will play Saruman. Let the envy fill your heart, and guide you during the scenes"

Papa Johns employee fired for insisting on paying tax - "A Papa Johns employee was fired after he refused to be paid cash-in-hand because he wanted to pay the right amount of tax. Ashwani Kumar, who worked as a Papa Johns store manager, had to be removed from the pizza chain’s Harlow store by police after he refused to leave the premises when he was told he had been fired. A tribunal heard that Mr Kumar was dismissed for requesting itemised payslips and correct income tax and National Insurance reductions after finding out he was being given fake payslips by the franchise. The judge ruled in favour of Mr Kumar, who sued his former employer – franchise owners EEM London, EEM Holdings, and owner Abdul Sattar Askar – for automatic unfair dismissal, unlawful deduction of wages and failure to pay holiday pay."

Bernard Arnault hits back at claims his office won’t hire fat people - "Journalists from Left-leaning newspaper Le Monde made the claim after visiting the Paris headquarters of LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate that Mr Arnault, 77, founded 40 years ago. “The women stand up straight, and are mostly young, pretty and slim. You would not come across a single overweight or sloppily dressed employee,” Raphaëlle Bacqué and Vanessa Schneider, reporters, wrote in their six-part series on the Arnault family. In a three-page response posted on LVMH’s X account, Mr Arnault said: “I offer my apologies to readers for this failure of bodily diversity, and I shall raise the matter with the company canteen on Monday... Le Monde reported that Hermès ties were banned from Mr Arnault’s suite at LVMH’s head office. The journalists wrote: “Not even an occasional visitor would show up in Monsieur’s office wearing a Hermès tie. An aide would hand you a different one before you even reached the elevator.” Mr Arnault said visitors did not have their ties confiscated: “We let them keep them. We simply offer a second one, more discreet, for the elevator. A question of manners. “I add, under the seal of secrecy, that I own several.” Mr Arnault said Le Monde had reported more favourably on the Wertheimer family, which owns Chanel, even though he and his family had cooperated more extensively with the two journalists. “I suspect you, very clearly, of having punished transparency,” he wrote, addressing the journalists directly. “Let that serve as a lesson for your next subjects.” But he said he would not be cancelling his subscription to Le Monde. “Rest assured, I shall keep doing the Monde crossword. That, at least, is excellent.””

Turkish governor fired after wearing Lycra cycling tights - "The governor of a province in Turkey has been fired following criticism of his choice of tight cycling clothes. Mehmet Fatih Çiçekli was dismissed with a decree signed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, after sharing photos and videos of himself on social media wearing Lycra. A number of politicians had rebuked the governor of Ardahan province for “spending all day creating social media content” in recent months and “wearing cycling tights all day”."

Japanese women complain about men’s hairy legs in the office - "Japanese women have complained of “leg hair harassment” after men were encouraged to wear shorts to work... the presence of bare legs in the office has triggered so much debate that a new term has been coined in Japanese media – sune-hara, or “leg hair harassment” – to describe the uncomfortable feeling many women feel when forced to see their colleagues’ uncovered limbs... One disgruntled woman said of the new dress code: “Middle-aged men, please do not wear shorts. It makes me uncomfortable. Please do not expose your shins. I don’t want to see them.”"
Don't tell men not to expose their legs. Tell women not to look

Shorts in the office is an HR incident just waiting to happen - "in the UK too, the heat is wreaking havoc on our fashion sense. In a 2024 survey, 75 per cent of people thought that men going shirtless was unacceptable “unless there is a very good reason”."

Mother loses seven teeth after tripping over pothole - "Alison Smith, a 48-year-old café owner, said she was left with the injuries after tripping in the 3in-deep hole in the road on the Isle of Wight while walking to meet her daughter at night... Ms Smith permanently lost her teeth and suffered serious mobility issues in her left hand, meaning she no longer has the strength to pull herself up with it."

Blind drink-driver followed tail lights for 150 miles - "A blind drink-driver travelled 150 miles through the night by following the taillights of lorries. Anthony Hall, 49, had taken his partner’s car without permission before setting off from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, despite being registered blind, unlicensed and uninsured. He was also above the drink-drive limit as he made the journey towards Cumbria."

Why are millions of NHS crutches still gathering dust in Britain’s cupboards? - "Damaged crutches that are passed on to new patients are a potential safety and litigation risk, should the person then have an accident. Eventually the cost of sending out vans to pick up crutches, which only cost the NHS around £10 to buy, led them to tell patients to dispose of them themselves – a mentality that appears to persist. There are pictures on social media of skips filled with crutches, along with tales of their being strewn at local dumps."

French teenager fined £348 for licking a straw in Singapore - "A French teenager was fined in Singapore after pleading guilty to a public nuisance charge for licking a straw and placing it back in a vending machine. Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 19, was handed a Sg$600 (£348) fine after admitting to posting on social media a video of himself putting a straw he had licked back into the dispenser for orange juice... Last year it deported an Australian man at the end of a nine-day jail term for rushing film star Ariana Grande during the Asian premiere of Wicked: For Good."

What it’s like to visit Europe’s last gender-segregated beach - "In a time of gender-neutral toilets, outfits and facial hair, it might seem anachronistic that a sex-segregated beach functions. And yet, in a quiet corner of Trieste’s harbour, one such site still exists – the last of its kind in Europe, a relic of a bygone era. Intrigued, I took a trip north east from my Emilia-Romagna home and, to my surprise, discovered that not only is it still thriving, it’s locally beloved. The beach – officially “Alla Lanterna” but affectionately known as Pedocin (meaning both “mussel” and “flea” in the local dialect) – hit the news in June following a heated dispute (initiated by a tourist) about the dividing wall, which extends 74m into the sea, with women on one side and men on the other."

Man blew up childhood home in Blackpool in mistaken belief he was disinherited - "Darren Davies, 55, poured petrol in the bedroom and the attic of his detached bungalow near Blackpool on March 27 last year. He then set the £260,000 four-bedroom property on fire with a candle and the resulting explosion engulfed it in flames, with glass and debris strewn across the road outside, and only one wall left standing."

Why Darwin’s discredited rival may be proved right 200 years later - "For centuries, Charles Darwin’s rival has been mocked and dismissed for his alternative theory of evolution. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed his evolutionary theory half a century before Darwin published his, but was derided by adversaries, and was even insulted by Napoleon Bonaparte. His belief that organisms can pass on physical changes acquired during their lifetime to their offspring has proved no more popular in the intervening centuries, and remains largely discredited in the scientific community. But 200 years on, “Lamarckism” may finally have come into fashion thanks to a wave of scientific papers, essays and books arguing that the theory can occasionally explain cases of evolution in the natural world... Prof Richard Buggs, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Queen Mary University of London, said there was a “growing acceptance” within the evolutionary biology community of evidence to support Lamarckism... tiny, transparent worms, known as Caenorhabditis elegans, can adapt to overcome infections, starvation, or stressful temperatures by producing ribonucleic acids (RNAs) that “fine-tune the activity of their genes to mount an effective response”. He claimed that adult worms pass along these small RNAs to their offspring – and even to further descendants – and that their offspring are thus able to cope better with those same stressors from birth. Prof Edelaar also gave the example of female killer whales that acquire the skill to hunt a different type of prey, such as seals instead of salmon, and claimed that this skill is then copied by their offspring."

Exclusive | Treasury stopped nearly $100M in taxpayer money from going to dead people - "The Treasury Department has blocked nearly $100 million in taxpayer money from going to dead people since implementing a government-wide payment verification process... The $99 million figure is a tiny fraction (0.0036%) of the $2.7 trillion the department reviewed as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse — but more than triple what Treasury discovered going to the deceased in the days before President Trump took office last year"

David Weigel on X - "Odd detail in new Talarico ad. He drives a Chevy Colorado, which has appeared in other ads and in profiles. But here he's driving a Dodge Ram 1500. And it's not hard to spot; you can see the plate, which is linked to an Enterprise rental. Was his car in the shop or something? idk, asked and didn't hear back"

Instagram - "When illustrator Kinntarou faced criticism over the design of his 211cm-tall main character, some fans argued that her proportions were unrealistic and could never exist outside of a drawing. Instead of arguing, he found someone who proved them wrong. The artist teamed up with a cosplayer who naturally matched the character's unique physique and recreated the exact pose from the artwork. With the same outfit, angle, and lighting, the side-by-side comparison showed that the character's appearance wasn't just fantasy, someone with those proportions actually exists. The photoshoot quickly became a reminder that real life is often stranger than fiction. Human diversity can surprise people, and artists don't always have to limit their imagination to what the internet considers "normal." Did this cosplay prove the character was more realistic than critics thought? #anime #fyp #animeedit #viral #foryou"

Richard Hanania on X - "Danish manager goes to work in Russia. He finds they treat him like a king and are too passive and deferential to get anything done. They think he's a weak and ineffective leader. People assume Russians are like Westerners because they look white, but the culture is third world"

End of Owning Music: How CDs, Downloads Died - "As streaming gives the music industry its biggest profits in a decade, the CD business continues to plunge. CD sales have fallen 80 percent in the past decade, from roughly 450 million to 89 million. Since Tesla began manufacturing cars without CD players, other companies like Ford and Toyota have recently followed. Downloads – once seen as the CD’s replacement – have plummeted 58 percent since peaking in 2012, their profits now even smaller than physical sales. Artists have taken note; Bruce Springsteen released his latest box set, The Album Collection Vol. 2, 1987-1996, exclusively on vinyl, with no CD option, unlike 2014’s Vol. 1. “It’s a streaming world and a vinyl world with a quickly diminishing CD,” says Daniel Glass, president of Glassnote Records, indie-label home of Mumford & Sons and Phoenix... Who’s still buying CDs? “The Walmart customer,” says Glass, adding that sales are still strong in “country, greatest-hits, soundtracks and baby records.” In the country world, Chris Stapleton’s second LP sold an impressive 373,000 physical releases last year. CDs are also doing fine in some international markets – in Japan, where streaming has been slow to take off, 72 percent of last year’s music sales were physical. Introduced in the early Eighties, the CD prompted massive record-business expansion over 20 years—and was surprisingly resilient even after Napster and online piracy, then the iTunes Store, threatened to destroy the format. As for modern-day CD enthusiasts, Glass points to older listeners who still prefer loading CD carousels rather than configuring Spotify or Pandora on car stereos or home-theater systems. And touring bands still find it far easier to sell a portable CD as a concert memento than an LP or portable hard drive... When vinyl sales started to climb in 2006, some experts saw it as a fad. No longer: Those sales hit a 25-year high last year, and labels are investing in more sophisticated packaging than ever"
From 2018

Whether slow or fast, here’s how your metabolism influences how many calories you burn each day - "If you really want to give your metabolism a jolt, the easiest way is to bump up your muscle mass and activity level. By increasing muscle mass, you’ll also increase the base number of calories needed to maintain those muscles. Instead of complaining about a slow metabolism, you can try to turn it up to be at least a bit quicker."

Department for Education on X - "What would you do with an extra 30 minutes in your day? 🤔 Free breakfast clubs are transforming mornings for 500,000 children - that's 95 precious hours back each year while children get a nutritious start to their day. Part of our Plan for Change ✨"
Bev Turner on X - "Is this actually satire...? Your government is using lazy parents & self-centred attitudes to advertise the BENEFITS of dumping the kids early at school!
"You're not sure if they've eaten" .. Wtf?
"I'd have a nap"
"I'd have coffee with the other mums"
They are literally advocating selfishness over the challenge of good parenting. We are in big trouble......"

Can We or Cannae We? - "a reader asked me if I thought the Democrats could survive as a viable political party and what I would do if I ran the DNC to save it—and strangely enough, I have been thinking about how it could be possible the Democrat Party could ever return to relevancy, given that it has sold its soul to collectivism, communism and antisemitism. First of all, given that over the past year there have been actions taken (defunding NGOs, cleaning up voter rolls, deporting illegal aliens, SCOTUS declaring racial gerrymandering illegal) and information revealed (the revelation that ActBlue has never monitored foreign money flowing into Democrat coffers) that have materially weakened the Democrats financially, electorally, and reputationally, it would seem their legitimacy as a political party is in question. Their success appears to depend completely upon siphoning taxpayer funds, election fraud, manipulation of representation (via inflating population headcounts using illegal immigration, racialism and foreign funding. I mean, Holy hell, Batman, from Snakehead Carville to Graham “Herr” Platner espousing everything from confiscation of private property to violent revolution to assassinations, it does appear the have lost their ever-lovin’ F-ing minds. The lurch to the far left is just part of the story, but it also might be the only thing that saves them. Sounds weird, right? Maybe a little counterintuitive?... If I were in charge of the DNC, I would plan an ambush— and the single most celebrated example of an enemy being intentionally invited into what appeared to be success, only to discover too late they were trapped is Cannae. It is usually considered the gold standard because Hannibal essentially convinced the Romans they were winning right up until the moment they realized they were surrounded... World history proves communism doesn’t work because it destroys every incentive to improve anything and every attempt at it has failed miserably, resulting in poverty, hardship and death. That’s no secret—and something else that is not a secret is that this bunch of “comrades” in the Democrat camp are some of the least qualified, least philosophically grounded and most intellectually deficient people to ever try to collectivize an entire socioeconomic system in history. This is the dumb being led by the dumber. While they appear to be succeeding, populist communism is a complete dead end, but it could be useful in the long run as long as it is used as a feint to pull Republicans farther to the left, as Hannibal did the Roman troops, and once I drew them in far enough, I would expunge the idiot radicals from the Democrat Party in a grand purge and declare that the Democrat Party is the true home of free market conservatism, muscular foreign policy, and constitutional protections. I would claim that Democrats are the true America Firsters."

Eric Daugherty on X - "🚨 BREAKING: CNN SHOCKED as 59% of Democrats believe their *OWN PARTY* does not get things done, 68% that they don't have strong leaders. And only 16% of Americans say the Democratic Party has "strong leaders," 19% say Democrats "get things done." Huge yikes."

Army turned First and Second World War gravestones into gravel - "The British Army crushed gravestones belonging to Commonwealth soldiers after they were removed from Basra, in southern Iraq, according to newly emerged documents. Hundreds of gravestones engraved with the names of those killed in both world wars were removed from the Basra War Cemetery in 2003, over fears that they could be destroyed or vandalised. A further 80 large panels bearing the regimental crests of Army units and the names of war dead were also removed. However, emails and minutes disclosed under the freedom of information act revealed that the memorials for Britain’s war dead were destroyed and turned into gravel. The documents record that by March 26 2005, authority had been given for the gravestones to be crushed and for the material to fill a drainage ditch at the Army’s Shaibah logistics base, around nine miles from Basra."
Time to condemn Israel for desecrating Western war graves by exposing Hamas tunnels