One day, I hope @MrWinMarshall will no longer be defined by or asked about his cancelation from his band; and that the experience of leaving something he loved so much in order to be free, would be the least interesting thing about him. Until that day.. 👇

I can see why she tried to prevent these texts from seeing the light of day in court. They are incriminating. It’s hard to believe a woman would be talking like a horny sailor with the man she accuses of sexual assault. The facts of the case speak for itself

The perfect South Park clip for this Mbappé moment: the Chinese market doesn’t just buy your product. It buys your spine.

Mao is up there with the most wicked humans ever. If we can’t speak that truth, we’re in for dark times.

The intense backlash for plainly describing Mao as a dictator is an exercise in psychological conditioning. Consider what is actually happening when activists insist that others affirm that biological males can become women. Publicly endorsing claims that contradict observable evidence and common sense imposes a significant reputational cost on the speaker. That cost makes defection more expensive and demonstrates that the speaker is a fully committed member rather than a free-rider who might abandon the tribe when conditions change. The more prima facie absurd the claim, the stronger the signal. In this respect, “Mao was not a dictator” functions in the same way. Its defiance of readily available historical evidence turns it into a sacred shibboleth - those who affirm it at the expense of their own credibility show that the group’s moral authority supercedes everything else. It is therefore a mechanism for sorting the compliant from the non-compliant. The people who readily accept the claim or remain silent while others are punished for rejecting it, are those who prioritize commercial access, relationships, and social standing above dignity and truth. The tremendous penalties incurred by Mbappé and La Liga for failing the slightest of slights on Mao’s legacy are meant to be noticed and internalized by everyone else. They illustrate the practical consequences of refusing to toe the line. What follows is a gradual narrowing of acceptable statements that foreign individuals can hold without commercial penalty. You may not be a Chinese citizen, but you will live under their moral codes and law. Each time someone subordinates evidentiary scrutiny to the demands of solidarity, this habit is reinforced. Repeat a falsehood often enough, and the distinction between what is useful to believe and what is true begins to erode. ✍️ Me in @TheSpectator: spectator.com/article/why-ch… (btw I'm quite proud of the title IYKYK)

Napoleon has been ridiculed so thoroughly that we still call insecurity the “Napoleon complex”

the funniest part is that trying to cancel someone for a meme that says Mao was a dictator has produced the largest global conversation about Mao being a dictator in decades

哈哈哈哈哈哈这谁做的图？

“How dare you call Mao a dictator!” > pulls the entire league off state TV, covers Mbappe's face on ads, and ends all brand contracts Same energy as: “How dare you say women dress like whores at the gym!” > wears neon shorts that climb her ass and posts gym selfies with camel toe to prove she’s not

Mbappé wasn’t even criticizing Mao. He was laughing at himself. The whole “Dictator” thing is a years-old running meme about how he runs the pitch and dressing room at PSG with main character energy. There are memes of him as Stalin, Gaddafi, Kim, etc. This is the same humorless authoritarian reflex that Monty Python skewered so well. It’s the impulse of a people who can’t process absurdity or self-deprecation without reading it as a threat to order. Meme culture runs on the opposite logic - everything is fair game, including you, and the point is often the ridiculousness of power rather than a precise political argument. This is why meme culture is so powerful, and anyone that overreacts to it is showing his weakness. After canceled sponsorships and Chinese state TV dropping broadcast of La Liga, Mbappé has, unsurprisingly issued an apology. So it’s up to the rest of us to uphold the Monty Python spirit and LMAO on Mao

The Chinese will drop the most unhinged savagery and insults at Turks 🇹🇷 online, no problem, but the moment a French footballer laughs at a photoshopped meme of himself as Mao and says he's "some guy - I think he's a Chinese dictator” in the most offhand way possible, it’s full Cultural Revolution mode. Within hours, energy drink Dongpeng announced it was ending its partnership with Kylan Mbappé. Then Mengniu, China's largest dairy producer, cut every tie with "immediate effect." Mengniu said it has "zero tolerance" for any words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. "Dongpeng Beverage ends cooperation with Mbappé" became the number one trending topic on Weibo. For laughing at a dumb Mao meme on a French show, and not knowing who he was, Mbappé lost sponsors, and the state is now blacking out La Liga on Chinese TV. Which is important context seeing that the Chinese keyboard warriors who popped out from behind the Great Firewall to hurl high IQ, historically sophisticated venom at Turks this past week have been advertising “look how free and based we are.” But you're not really free and based if you can't even be ignorant of or not supply sufficient reverence to your nation's leaders and heroes.

> be a high-flying MIT scientist > discover mTOR > expected to win a Nobel Prize some day > have consensual relationship with younger female biology MIT professor > she accuses him of sexual harassment, coercion and grooming after he declines a long term relationship with her > MIT launches investigation > MIT lets the accuser’s allies help pick the judges and threaten the president if he wasn’t destroyed > lo and behold, investigation finds he violated MIT’s sexual relationship and anti-harassment policies > he gets fired and resigns under threat of termination > loses his lab > he sues her for defamation > jury awards him $6 million in defamation case and rejects her claims that she was coerced in any way How did 13 members of a civilian jury come to a different conclusion than @MIT? Answer: MIT’s investigation was not exactly independent thanks to coordinated female faculty collusion. It was a kangaroo court and the verdict was pre-determined

I think what's happening in the Western Europe is that fiscal discipline has gone out the window in much the same way parental discipline has (in fact, it might be related). The fact that strikes are too often the natural response to budgetary restraint tells me that a large part of the French electorate is living in denial of the basic constraints of public finance. This is like denying the law of gravity. Markets obviously have taken notice. It's the same when parents stop demanding discipline and enforcing boundaries - children grow to become less able to handle delayed gratification or the consequences of their choices. Societies that lose the habit of fiscal restraint follow a similar path. Spending becomes an entitlement. Deficits are treated as temporary or someone else’s problem. The hard arithmetic of interest payments and primary balances is dismissed as austerity. The bond market is sending signals saying "stop." What scares the market is something other than the burning cars. It is what they symbolize - that there is so little understanding of the need for fiscal consolidation. In April, there is a presidential election. Mélenchon wants the central bank to cancel debt, and Marine Le Pen wants to lower the retirement age. The market might be starting to fear the election more than the debt itself. In 1981, François Mitterrand promised a break with capitalism. Capital responded by breaking with France, and two years later he was forced to change course. Back then, France could devalue. Today, the country has the euro. And be careful about counting on the European Central Bank (ECB) to come to the rescue as it did during the euro crisis. Back then, inflation was too low, and the ECB could print money without compromising its target. Today, inflation is too high. As the sick man of Europe, France should consider the Chinese concept of chi ku (吃苦) - eating bitterness. It is the idea of willingly enduring hardship, delayed gratification, in the belief that perseverance builds strength and later reward. China’s rapid industrialization and infrastructure build-out were not painless; they involved massive savings, hard trade-offs, and a cultural willingness to accept hardships and restraints for future gains. Admiring Chinese growth while rejecting the discipline that made it possible is incoherent. Without a willingness to eat some bitterness on the fiscal front, French admiration for China’s results remains hollow, and the bond market will continue to impose its own, less voluntary version of discipline.

Seven years ago today, Iraq’s Tishreen protests entered a new phase, becoming one of the most important popular uprisings in the country's modern history. What began as protests against corruption, unemployment, and failing public services quickly evolved into something much bigger: a rejection of Iranian influence and the political system that has kept Iraq behind many of its neighbors. And that is precisely what made Tishreen so dangerous to the Iranian regime. These were not political elites, Western-funded organizations, or opposition figures that Tehran could easily dismiss as American or Gulf proxies. These were ordinary Iraqis, many from the Shia-majority south, demanding their country back. It is much harder to dismiss a movement as a foreign conspiracy when the people challenging you come from the very communities you claim to represent. Hundreds of Iraqis lost their lives demanding a better future. Their courage and their stories should never be forgotten. At @IdeasB2, we want to highlight more of these voices and tell the stories of ordinary people challenging the forces holding their countries back. If you believe these voices deserve to be heard, please support our work by subscribing and sharing. themiddleeastuncovered.com/

Who is celebrating Lula winning Brazilian 🇧🇷 elections: - Criminals - Drug cartels - Illegal immigrants - Alex Soros