Stonehenge? It was actually a chariot repair facility. A sort of garage, if you will.
A prototype for the railroad roundhouse no doubt. If we build it they will come!
Amit Segal :
In the Middle East, there is an entity that believed it could wipe out its arch-enemy in one grand operation. In pursuit of this goal, it dragged its allies into a war they did not believe in, and one they would ultimately lose. I speak, of course, of Hamas.
According to an analysis of captured Hamas documents by the Hebrew University’s Dr. Daniel Sobelman, Hamas’s thinking was the precise opposite of Israeli intelligence assumptions. By 2019, the terror group had come to believe that it was Israel that was deterred from action. In the words of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, “Any violation of the red lines… the resistance will be capable of deterring.”
The turning point came in 2021. In early January, a top-secret Hamas military command document emphasized the need to bring Jerusalem into its “rules of engagement.” That May, Hamas initiated a 12-day conflict over tensions on Temple Mount. Israel responded with Operation Guardian of the Walls. Israel’s head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, came out of the operation with the now-painfully overconfident assessment that “five years of complete calm with Gaza” was achieved.
In Gaza, however, Hamas was celebrating a paradigm-shifting strategic victory. The fighting had sparked unprecedented Arab Israeli uprisings—an internal vulnerability Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar realized could be weaponized as a “nuclear bomb” to destroy Israel. The war had also seen the organization’s first active wartime coordination with Iran and Hezbollah via a joint situation room. Most of all, Hamas watched Israel scramble to contain the domestic violence and avoid a larger regional war. Paraphrasing Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, they assessed Israel was “weaker than a spider’s web.” Far from a deterrent, the 2021 conflict was a highly successful “dress rehearsal” for the full liberation of Palestine.
The article goes on detailing at length the thinking of Hamas’ strategies. Do read the whole thing for the broader picture.
The host delivered a little monolog on how ridiculous Gavin Newsom is because he is attacking the CA “affordability crisis” by giving away free diapers to any CA family that needs them. Part of the punchline is that Gavin’s wife sits of the board of the company that is selling the diapers to the CA government. Uh huh. Got it.
Interesting part: The host brings on Marc Thiessen for extra commentary. Marc says, “I’m going to disagree with you. This country has a severe birthrate problem. Anything that helps people to have children isn’t a bad idea.”
Then Marc says that Gov. De Santis has a program in place that allows parents to buy all their baby supplies “tax free.” Cribs, strollers, etc. I presume that “tax free” means that those costs can be subtracted from your gross income before you calculate your taxes. I’m not sure I understand this, as Florida doesn’t have an income tax, and they can’t control anything on the federal tax level. Perhaps it’s about sales taxes.
That would be a nice approach on the federal level, although many lower income people don’t pay any fed. taxes.
Re: Incentives for having children
A good idea, of course, and they are being tried everywhere in the developed world, but they aren’t working.
A few hundred dollars here, some taxes breaks there, longer maternity leaves, etc. don’t begin to offset the costs and pressures of raising children well in modern societies for most people.
Some people are still having kids, but fewer than replacement rate. The incentives are bandaids for those on the fence.
Another one for Kate: my left friends in NC are now upset that the state income tax rate is going to be lowered from 3.99 to 2.49. They say, of course, that it puts all the social services and education in jeopardy. Guess they don’t notice what we have going here in Florida.
Surely huxley is correct that minor and even modest incentives are not enough. Although, for lower income folks, financial incentives might have some effect.
I recall this tactic from a decade or more ago. Other countries were running TV ads encouraging people to make babies. The Danish one is sort of astonishing and laughable. I never bothered to look them up before.
@om: You may be on to something with the roundhouse. Just a couple of weeks ago in a broadcast segment about the California “no-speed” railway — the one that is at 200% of budget and has no trains or rails — was dubbed by one participant as “California’s Stonehenge”, referring to the various concrete structures in the middle of the Central Valley that are expected, without evidence, to someday support rails and trains.
What promotes having children is a culture that promotes marriage, doesn’t devalue mothers and the raising of children and doesn’t promote the fiction that the highest achievement for a woman is the corner office. We are light years from that.
It’s not the free diapers that are the issue, it’s that California is overpaying by a factor of two for them to funnel tax money to the connected instead of just sending moms a check or a voucher.
We don’t need more people for the sake of more people. We already pay too much to feed and house other people’s children. This is going to get very bad with UBI. Far too many people will use their free time to cause trouble. They already do. All kinds of things I pay for others to do will be done by robots.
“Optimus, clean the roof and gutters and then wash the car.”
Bessent’s “Suffocating” Iranian Regime Strategy Materializes In Kharg Island Satellite Imagery
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s description of “suffocating” the Iranian regime through economic and financial pressure, whether via sanctions or the US military blockade of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint, now appears to be showing up in the data.
New geospatial intelligence indicates that Iran’s main crude export terminal has gone quiet, while a separate report suggests seaborne oil exports have effectively been halted for the past month.
The first report comes from Bloomberg, which cited European satellite imagery showing a massive bottleneck developing at Iran’s energy complex: no ocean-going tankers at Kharg Island, the country’s main export terminal, on May 8, 9, and 11. This marks the longest stretch in no crude tanker loadings since the US-Iran conflict began nearly three months ago.
If Kharg Island remains idle and storage capacity reaches its limit, Iran could be forced into deeper oil production cuts.
“To our best knowledge, Iran hasn’t successfully exported any crude oil by sea over the past 28 days. Some refined products managed to escape because US OFAC did not slap sanctions on those tankers,” research firm Tanker Trackers wrote on X.
sdferr:
Thanks for the Amrit Segal link.
It appears that Hamas was high on its own supply and expected to drag in Hezbollah, the PA, Arab-Israelis, and Iran with the October 7 attack, thereby annihilating Israel.
Hamas considered the barbarism of the attack to be a feature for advertisting their power and galvanizing Muslim support. Doubly horrible.
However, they caught their allies by surprise and support was sparse and not well coordinated.
There was some violence by Arab-Israelis on the West Bank, but nothing on the scale Hamas required. In fact:
________________________________________
Regarding the Arab citizens of Israel, the explanation seems fairly straightforward. The Hamas gunmen on October 7 did not differentiate between Jewish and Arab Israelis. A number of Arab Israelis were murdered on that day, some in particularly cruel ways. Some others were taken hostage. Arab Israelis seem to have noted the brutality of Hamas’s treatment of their fellow citizens, and of its own rule over the people of Gaza, and to have quietly concluded that staying with Israel was the better, if imperfect, option.
October 7 emerges as not only an act of horrific barbarism, but one of the great strategic miscalculations of history.
What promotes having children is a culture that promotes marriage, doesn’t devalue mothers and the raising of children and doesn’t promote the fiction that the highest achievement for a woman is the corner office. We are light years from that.
— Richard Cook
That’s true, but it’s probably even worse than that. I suspect we’re seeing a failure of the entire post-Enlightenment social model slowly playing out over time.
There isn’t any purely rational reason to care about anything after your own death. Even the biological imperative of ‘survive long enough to breed’ can fail if subjected to a pure-rational, pure-mechanistic analysis by a sapient being, because it’s a blind natural imperative and if you don’t care, why care?
Which is not to say that no reasons exist, but you have to find those reasons in domains that transcend or bypass Enlightenment logic.
Trusting natural instinct to fix it will eventually work, of course. Darwinian factors will adjust the balance as people who for deep genetic reasons want offspring have them regardless of disincentives, outbreeding the maladaptive. But that’ll take a lot of time.
Part of the problem, too, is that the issue is rooted in aspects of human nature that we don’t like to admit are there. Things like ‘men often marry in part to get sex’, ‘males usually prefer younger women, everything else being equal’, and ‘women tend to be attracted to social status and money’. But they’re there whether we like them or not, and a society that pretends they aren’t malfunctions over time.
(Of course that isn’t the whole story! But pretending it doesn’t hold a lot of truth is futile.)
This is a hard problem to fix because it touches on things we’d rather weren’t true, in ourselves and others.
A society that enshrines ‘personal autonomy’ as an ideal almost by definition short circuits the biological and social processes that sustain a society.
BREAKING: The Prime Minister’s Office confirms that, in the midst of Operation Roaring Lion, Benjamin Netanyahu made a secret trip to the UAE, where he met with President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The covert visit reportedly led to a historic breakthrough in Israel–UAE relations.
We don’t need more people for the sake of more people. We already pay too much to feed and house other people’s children. This is going to get very bad with UBI. Far too many people will use their free time to cause trouble. They already do. All kinds of things I pay for others to do will be done by robots.
“Optimus, clean the roof and gutters and then wash the car.”
— Chases Eagle
Maybe, but you can’t count on that. Robotics is hard. Robotics operating outside highly controlled environments is one of the hardest tasks in engineering. The stuff humans can do trivially is some of the hardest stuff to duplicate in a machine.
I’m not saying it can’t or won’t be done, but it’s not just around the corner, either.
But we do need more people, for basic cultural and societal reasons. A society that has a negative fertility rate will become dysfunctional over time, if that negative rate lasts for long.
I suspect that this is one of the reasons for the deranged intensity of the hate we see in some social subgroups now.
Indeed, the Biblical aphorism (or command) is most certainly not “Go forth and subtract….”
– – – – – – –
And a cautionary tale…
But we do need more people, for basic cultural and societal reasons. — HC68
Just about everything that makes investment in securities work, begins to fail in a shrinking society. Would you like to buy an insurance policy? Those companies take your money and invest it. Usually in bonds.
Iranian oil wells shut down from pumping up the oil because of full storage tanks, e.g. at Kharg, are hard to get pumping again. So Iran faces sustained (several years, or longer) reduction in oil production and revenues from sale if this occurs.
@TommyJay: Just about everything that makes investment in securities work, begins to fail in a shrinking society.
Just about everything in economics begins to fail in a shrinking society. It’s a big problem.
HC68
Last paragraph is right on.
physicsguy, Democrats in NC are also running on the platform of canceling school choice vouchers and putting the money into public school salaries. I don’t think that will help them.
“What promotes having children is a culture that promotes marriage, doesn’t devalue mothers and the raising of children and doesn’t promote the fiction that the highest achievement for a woman is the corner office.” Richard Cook
Bingo
“A society that enshrines ‘personal autonomy’ as an ideal almost by definition short circuits the biological and social processes that sustain a society.” HC68
Bingo
The long held liberal belief that societal ills can be ‘fixed’ if only enough money is applied is a perfect example of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Good news from Kentucky, challenger Ed Gallrein is leading pro Democrat traitor Thomas Massie in race for Congress seat
Quantus Insights polled 908 likely GOP voters and found that Gallrein holds 48.3% of the voters’ support, while 43.1% support Massie. Just 7.6% of polled voters remained undecided, with the majority of those undecided voters leaning toward Gallrein. The pollster reported that while “the race remains competitive,” their survey “points to a clear advantage for Gallrein.”
@physicsguy: my left friends in NC are now upset that the state income tax rate is going to be lowered from 3.99 to 2.49.
It sounds like your friends are activists. I never heard of ordinary people complaining about lower taxes.
Illinois Democrat Governor Pritzker removed the toilets from one of his mansions before it was assessed, in order to declare it uninhabitable, and save $331,000 in taxes.
It seems that the Hispanic people in my area don’t need any incentive to have children, and they don’t appear to be wealthy.
= = = = = = = =
I think calling Massie a “pro Democrat traitor” is inaccurate. It appears that he is fiercely independent and not afraid to oppose Trump; similar to fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but to a greater degree.
Mr. Trump goes to Beijing?
Might just be the time to review the murderous, if lucrative, antics of Dr. Fauci:
Subpoena Fauci to testify. If he invokes the Fifth Amendment have him advised that he has already received a pardon so he is at no risk if he answers questions truthfully.
If he lies, indict him for perjury and obstruction.
Simple.
…which is all very well except that Fauci will be sure to pull “a Comey” (and not be able to recall anything—“so sorry, it was all so long ago and my memory ain’t what it used to be…”).
To do, so to speak, Stonehenge from conception to as far as they got took an incomprehensible amount of time without disruptions. Records of solar travel had to e kept without being lost in war or eaten by cockroaches or dropped for lack of interest due to cultural change.
The amount of work done, however it was done, subtracted from food production, so those still producing had to pay–voluntarily as in some religious sense or as tax by an organization large and consistent enough to keep collecting the food for those working. Either seasonally….can’t do much of this in the winter, I expect..or from time to time as circumstances allowed.
IOW, an immense, unbelievably consistent social compact over a huge period with no substantial interruptions was required for Stonehenge. Hard to picture with what we think we know of the time.
Blame Covid for me looking at so much Youtube, and I’m hoping that the examples that I see are not representative, are very skewed, or are mere acting, but there are a lot of videos of women complaining that men no longer pursue them, women who belittle, and some who very vocally hate “useless” men—”don’t need no man,” “boss bitches,” “strong, independent women” (and, conversely, women who moan that they are just realizing that they are now too old to have children), women who brazenly, and with no prior notice, bring their several children or friends on a “first date,” or order everything on the menu, sometimes plus five meals to go for their kids—it’s all transactional–and wonder why the man won’t pay for everything, accusing him of not fulfilling “the man’s role,” if he refuses to pay for everything or everyone, doesn’t lay down and take it, but, instead, just walks away.
Then, there are the young women—quite often pierced—and sometimes heavily, and/or tattooed–who talk/brag about their astronomical “body counts,” and argue that their count should not matter to men who might be potential marriage partners.
How about how the courts–which are definitely on the side of women in divorces and are–more often than not–quite willing to strip men of the assets they worked hard to accumulate?
The vibe that I am getting is that—for many men in the young demographic which should be involved in dating, marrying, family formation, and having children–the whole atmosphere out there is just rancid, and unappealing; it just ain’t fun anymore, it seems like it’s dangerous.
It’s a minefield, and women who want to commit to one man, who actually want to be wives, to have children, and to raise families, are apparently increasingly hard to find.
If true–and widespread—societal rot like this, I would think, might play a large part in discouraging men from participating in dating, and eventually marrying, forming families, and having children.
P.S. It just seems to me that in our current Leftist dominated social/cultural/political/financial/legal atmosphere–things are stacked against men–and that many women in the pool of potential mates have—to a great extent–been ruined by the indoctrination, the ideas, ideals, world views, and thought processes fed these women by all of the outlets pushing leftist ideology today—the MSM, the Educational Establishment, the Entertainment industry, literature, many parts of government, etc.; that pool is tainted.
Is any wonder, then, that some fraction—perhaps a large fraction– of men are apparently just “walking way” from the whole idea of playing the current “game,” of dating and marriage.
Selfy: “I think calling Massie a “pro Democrat traitor” is inaccurate. It appears that he is fiercely independent and not afraid to oppose Trump; similar to fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but to a greater degree.”
From here in California, there seems no difference between the way Massie and Rand vote and Democrat votes. Rand’s latest stunt is voting with the weak sisters and the Democrats to force an end to the Iran war. That was stopped by Fetterman, who is not so consumed with hatred of Trump that he votes against his country like Rand. At least kentucky’s other senator Mitch McConnell voted with the United States interest.
According to ballotpedia, Kentucky has closed primaries, so if Massie wants to win, he’ll have to get the Democrats in his district to re-register.
@ Bob Wilson & Selfy – buried in this Washington Free Beacon article is some interesting information about the connection between Massie and Rand Paul.
The young man whose behavior precipitated the post was drunk, and I have no idea why he picked on Lawler other than both of them being in the same bar that night, but he seems to have also imbibed his father’s beliefs.
I used to look up to Rand, who was not nearly so nutty as his dad Ron, who was my representative when we lived in Texas (although I wasn’t following politics then and only found out later about his positions).
However, he is another formerly solid conservative (albeit with idiosyncratic leanings) who has taken positions all over the map regarding Trump’s presidential priorities in this administration. (Or so it seems to me, based on admittedly incomplete samplings from the news cycles.)
Was he mugged by TDS somehow since then (in addition to literally being mugged by leftist protesters)? Is he just following his own pathway through the party platforms?
I really don’t know what to make of him now.
AesopFan:
Rand is less weird than his dad, but he’s nevertheless a libertarian, plus he likes being mavericky. I think a lot of his votes have to do with those two things.
Selfy on May 14, 2026 at 12:23 am said:
” I never heard of ordinary people complaining about lower taxes.” Some of us also watch to be sure the spending and tax levels are responsible and in sync. FL legislation is trying to reduce or do away with property taxes, and what little I have learned about their ideas sounds pretty absurd or flakey. Conservative “prudence” says we should proceed down this path very cautiously, if at all. But the FL chief financial officer (or whatever his real title is) has been conducting audits of the 67 county governments and calling out wasteful spending when he sees it and highlighting better practices when those are found. So some grounds for cuts are probably fully valid. Just have to keep an eye out for them.
“Illinois Democrat Governor Pritzker removed the toilets from one of his mansions before it was assessed, in order to declare it uninhabitable, and save $331,000 in taxes.”
That should put a real damper on his presidential aspirations – just image the Republican’s ads!
Selfy on May 14, 2026 at 12:24 am said:
“I think calling Massie a “pro Democrat traitor” is inaccurate. It appears that he is fiercely independent and not afraid to oppose Trump; similar to fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but to a greater degree.” I want to give him the benefit of the doubt [and I don’t live in KY so little I can do anyway] but I agree sometimes “independence” can take on the form of “better is the enemy of good enough” and he should stick closer to the R’s than he does.
Richard Aubrey on May 14, 2026 at 7:24 am said:
“To do … Stonehenge from conception … IOW, an immense, unbelievably consistent social compact over a huge period with no substantial interruptions was required …”
Something similar could be said about the building of European cathedrals, except of course writing and records keeping was better. And by 1059 (or so?) the Vatican had achieved separate administrative and controlling domains between temporal kings and religious authority over souls. So perhaps wars did not interfere quite that much? But in checking I also learned that Notre Dame de Paris was mostly built in a 100 year span ending in 1260, with more added later.
So, actually, on balance given the drastic differences in life circumstances, maybe you are correct. 🙂
I have no doubt that the civilization that created Stonehenge, and Avebury, and the many other stone circles across Britain and probably elsewhere changed over time, just as subsequent civilizations did. That is, the answer to ‘what was Stonehenge for?’ probably had different answers over the course of centuries.
It would appear from archaeological studies (though that should always be taken with a grain of salt) that the circle construction started small, got bigger with time, went through a period of major activity (when Stonehenge reached its fanciest stage and things like Avebury were built), and then there came a period when the circles got small again, and construction trailed off. All over the course of centuries.
So, it sounds like the classic pattern of a rising culture, a peak and a decline and finally dissolution.
Something that always amuses me to ponder: when Stonehenge, and the Pyramids of Giza, were constructed (the oldest part of Stonehenge appears to be roughly contemporary with the Great Pyramid), there were still living mammoths in the world.
They were too big for the mammoths to push over, even though they died trying. And then there is Easter Island; it appeares that pushy mammoths could swim quite well.
The Endangered Species Act came too late.
I suppose I should mention that an Upstairs Aubrey discovered the Aubrey Holes, surrounding the ‘henge.
Downstairs relation was with Wolfe for Plains of Abraham.
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Stonehenge? It was actually a chariot repair facility. A sort of garage, if you will.
A prototype for the railroad roundhouse no doubt. If we build it they will come!
Amit Segal :
The article goes on detailing at length the thinking of Hamas’ strategies. Do read the whole thing for the broader picture.
https://newsletter.amitsegal.net/p/its-noon-in-israel-israels-secret
An interesting exchange on FoxBiz just now.
The host delivered a little monolog on how ridiculous Gavin Newsom is because he is attacking the CA “affordability crisis” by giving away free diapers to any CA family that needs them. Part of the punchline is that Gavin’s wife sits of the board of the company that is selling the diapers to the CA government. Uh huh. Got it.
Interesting part: The host brings on Marc Thiessen for extra commentary. Marc says, “I’m going to disagree with you. This country has a severe birthrate problem. Anything that helps people to have children isn’t a bad idea.”
Then Marc says that Gov. De Santis has a program in place that allows parents to buy all their baby supplies “tax free.” Cribs, strollers, etc. I presume that “tax free” means that those costs can be subtracted from your gross income before you calculate your taxes. I’m not sure I understand this, as Florida doesn’t have an income tax, and they can’t control anything on the federal tax level. Perhaps it’s about sales taxes.
That would be a nice approach on the federal level, although many lower income people don’t pay any fed. taxes.
Re: Incentives for having children
A good idea, of course, and they are being tried everywhere in the developed world, but they aren’t working.
A few hundred dollars here, some taxes breaks there, longer maternity leaves, etc. don’t begin to offset the costs and pressures of raising children well in modern societies for most people.
Some people are still having kids, but fewer than replacement rate. The incentives are bandaids for those on the fence.
Another one for Kate: my left friends in NC are now upset that the state income tax rate is going to be lowered from 3.99 to 2.49. They say, of course, that it puts all the social services and education in jeopardy. Guess they don’t notice what we have going here in Florida.
Surely huxley is correct that minor and even modest incentives are not enough. Although, for lower income folks, financial incentives might have some effect.
I recall this tactic from a decade or more ago. Other countries were running TV ads encouraging people to make babies. The Danish one is sort of astonishing and laughable. I never bothered to look them up before.
Denmark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE2YSYxMVyQ
Singapore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX_xQABi1oI
@om: You may be on to something with the roundhouse. Just a couple of weeks ago in a broadcast segment about the California “no-speed” railway — the one that is at 200% of budget and has no trains or rails — was dubbed by one participant as “California’s Stonehenge”, referring to the various concrete structures in the middle of the Central Valley that are expected, without evidence, to someday support rails and trains.
What promotes having children is a culture that promotes marriage, doesn’t devalue mothers and the raising of children and doesn’t promote the fiction that the highest achievement for a woman is the corner office. We are light years from that.
Father Josiah Trenham
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYQOn_ZyQ-i/?igsh=ZHF5d3R5Zjl6bXpt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eclUz-RYI
It’s not the free diapers that are the issue, it’s that California is overpaying by a factor of two for them to funnel tax money to the connected instead of just sending moms a check or a voucher.
We don’t need more people for the sake of more people. We already pay too much to feed and house other people’s children. This is going to get very bad with UBI. Far too many people will use their free time to cause trouble. They already do. All kinds of things I pay for others to do will be done by robots.
“Optimus, clean the roof and gutters and then wash the car.”
Meanwhile at the US-Iran war:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/bessents-suffocating-iranian-regime-strategy-materializes-kharg-island-satellite-imagery
Bessent’s “Suffocating” Iranian Regime Strategy Materializes In Kharg Island Satellite Imagery
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s description of “suffocating” the Iranian regime through economic and financial pressure, whether via sanctions or the US military blockade of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint, now appears to be showing up in the data.
New geospatial intelligence indicates that Iran’s main crude export terminal has gone quiet, while a separate report suggests seaborne oil exports have effectively been halted for the past month.
The first report comes from Bloomberg, which cited European satellite imagery showing a massive bottleneck developing at Iran’s energy complex: no ocean-going tankers at Kharg Island, the country’s main export terminal, on May 8, 9, and 11. This marks the longest stretch in no crude tanker loadings since the US-Iran conflict began nearly three months ago.
If Kharg Island remains idle and storage capacity reaches its limit, Iran could be forced into deeper oil production cuts.
“To our best knowledge, Iran hasn’t successfully exported any crude oil by sea over the past 28 days. Some refined products managed to escape because US OFAC did not slap sanctions on those tankers,” research firm Tanker Trackers wrote on X.
sdferr:
Thanks for the Amrit Segal link.
It appears that Hamas was high on its own supply and expected to drag in Hezbollah, the PA, Arab-Israelis, and Iran with the October 7 attack, thereby annihilating Israel.
Hamas considered the barbarism of the attack to be a feature for advertisting their power and galvanizing Muslim support. Doubly horrible.
However, they caught their allies by surprise and support was sparse and not well coordinated.
There was some violence by Arab-Israelis on the West Bank, but nothing on the scale Hamas required. In fact:
________________________________________
Regarding the Arab citizens of Israel, the explanation seems fairly straightforward. The Hamas gunmen on October 7 did not differentiate between Jewish and Arab Israelis. A number of Arab Israelis were murdered on that day, some in particularly cruel ways. Some others were taken hostage. Arab Israelis seem to have noted the brutality of Hamas’s treatment of their fellow citizens, and of its own rule over the people of Gaza, and to have quietly concluded that staying with Israel was the better, if imperfect, option.
https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/why-october-7-didnt-ignite-the-west-bank
________________________________________
October 7 emerges as not only an act of horrific barbarism, but one of the great strategic miscalculations of history.
— Richard Cook
That’s true, but it’s probably even worse than that. I suspect we’re seeing a failure of the entire post-Enlightenment social model slowly playing out over time.
There isn’t any purely rational reason to care about anything after your own death. Even the biological imperative of ‘survive long enough to breed’ can fail if subjected to a pure-rational, pure-mechanistic analysis by a sapient being, because it’s a blind natural imperative and if you don’t care, why care?
Which is not to say that no reasons exist, but you have to find those reasons in domains that transcend or bypass Enlightenment logic.
Trusting natural instinct to fix it will eventually work, of course. Darwinian factors will adjust the balance as people who for deep genetic reasons want offspring have them regardless of disincentives, outbreeding the maladaptive. But that’ll take a lot of time.
Part of the problem, too, is that the issue is rooted in aspects of human nature that we don’t like to admit are there. Things like ‘men often marry in part to get sex’, ‘males usually prefer younger women, everything else being equal’, and ‘women tend to be attracted to social status and money’. But they’re there whether we like them or not, and a society that pretends they aren’t malfunctions over time.
(Of course that isn’t the whole story! But pretending it doesn’t hold a lot of truth is futile.)
This is a hard problem to fix because it touches on things we’d rather weren’t true, in ourselves and others.
A society that enshrines ‘personal autonomy’ as an ideal almost by definition short circuits the biological and social processes that sustain a society.
https://x.com/i/status/2054608160942399794
— Chases Eagle
Maybe, but you can’t count on that. Robotics is hard. Robotics operating outside highly controlled environments is one of the hardest tasks in engineering. The stuff humans can do trivially is some of the hardest stuff to duplicate in a machine.
I’m not saying it can’t or won’t be done, but it’s not just around the corner, either.
But we do need more people, for basic cultural and societal reasons. A society that has a negative fertility rate will become dysfunctional over time, if that negative rate lasts for long.
I suspect that this is one of the reasons for the deranged intensity of the hate we see in some social subgroups now.
Indeed, the Biblical aphorism (or command) is most certainly not “Go forth and subtract….”
– – – – – – –
And a cautionary tale…
“Ex-Con Hacker Twins Fired – Proceed To Wipe Out 96 Government Databases In Minutes”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ex-con-hacker-twins-fired-proceed-wipe-out-96-government-databases-minutes
But we do need more people, for basic cultural and societal reasons. — HC68
Just about everything that makes investment in securities work, begins to fail in a shrinking society. Would you like to buy an insurance policy? Those companies take your money and invest it. Usually in bonds.
Iranian oil wells shut down from pumping up the oil because of full storage tanks, e.g. at Kharg, are hard to get pumping again. So Iran faces sustained (several years, or longer) reduction in oil production and revenues from sale if this occurs.
@TommyJay: Just about everything that makes investment in securities work, begins to fail in a shrinking society.
Just about everything in economics begins to fail in a shrinking society. It’s a big problem.
HC68
Last paragraph is right on.
physicsguy, Democrats in NC are also running on the platform of canceling school choice vouchers and putting the money into public school salaries. I don’t think that will help them.
“What promotes having children is a culture that promotes marriage, doesn’t devalue mothers and the raising of children and doesn’t promote the fiction that the highest achievement for a woman is the corner office.” Richard Cook
Bingo
“A society that enshrines ‘personal autonomy’ as an ideal almost by definition short circuits the biological and social processes that sustain a society.” HC68
Bingo
The long held liberal belief that societal ills can be ‘fixed’ if only enough money is applied is a perfect example of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Good news from Kentucky, challenger Ed Gallrein is leading pro Democrat traitor Thomas Massie in race for Congress seat
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/congressional/4566906/gallrein-lead-massie-latest-kentucky-primary-poll/
Quantus Insights polled 908 likely GOP voters and found that Gallrein holds 48.3% of the voters’ support, while 43.1% support Massie. Just 7.6% of polled voters remained undecided, with the majority of those undecided voters leaning toward Gallrein. The pollster reported that while “the race remains competitive,” their survey “points to a clear advantage for Gallrein.”
@physicsguy:
my left friends in NC are now upset that the state income tax rate is going to be lowered from 3.99 to 2.49.
It sounds like your friends are activists. I never heard of ordinary people complaining about lower taxes.
Illinois Democrat Governor Pritzker removed the toilets from one of his mansions before it was assessed, in order to declare it uninhabitable, and save $331,000 in taxes.
It seems that the Hispanic people in my area don’t need any incentive to have children, and they don’t appear to be wealthy.
= = = = = = = =
I think calling Massie a “pro Democrat traitor” is inaccurate. It appears that he is fiercely independent and not afraid to oppose Trump; similar to fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but to a greater degree.
Mr. Trump goes to Beijing?
Might just be the time to review the murderous, if lucrative, antics of Dr. Fauci:
“CIA spy BLAMES Dr Fauci for covering up Chinese COVID lab leak by ‘injecting himself’ into top-secret probe”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2026/05/13/cia-spy-blames-dr-fauci-for-covering-up-chinese-covid-lab-leak-by-injecting-himself-into-top-secret-probe/
Conclusion: Whoever it was that issued Fauci a blanket pardon KNEW EXACTLY why that pathetic, pathological prevaricator needed it…
Re the good doctor…Shipwreckedcrew has some pertinent/impertinent, expert, legal/lethal advice:
https://x.com/shipwreckedcrew/status/2054382990751654048
…which is all very well except that Fauci will be sure to pull “a Comey” (and not be able to recall anything—“so sorry, it was all so long ago and my memory ain’t what it used to be…”).
To do, so to speak, Stonehenge from conception to as far as they got took an incomprehensible amount of time without disruptions. Records of solar travel had to e kept without being lost in war or eaten by cockroaches or dropped for lack of interest due to cultural change.
The amount of work done, however it was done, subtracted from food production, so those still producing had to pay–voluntarily as in some religious sense or as tax by an organization large and consistent enough to keep collecting the food for those working. Either seasonally….can’t do much of this in the winter, I expect..or from time to time as circumstances allowed.
IOW, an immense, unbelievably consistent social compact over a huge period with no substantial interruptions was required for Stonehenge. Hard to picture with what we think we know of the time.
Blame Covid for me looking at so much Youtube, and I’m hoping that the examples that I see are not representative, are very skewed, or are mere acting, but there are a lot of videos of women complaining that men no longer pursue them, women who belittle, and some who very vocally hate “useless” men—”don’t need no man,” “boss bitches,” “strong, independent women” (and, conversely, women who moan that they are just realizing that they are now too old to have children), women who brazenly, and with no prior notice, bring their several children or friends on a “first date,” or order everything on the menu, sometimes plus five meals to go for their kids—it’s all transactional–and wonder why the man won’t pay for everything, accusing him of not fulfilling “the man’s role,” if he refuses to pay for everything or everyone, doesn’t lay down and take it, but, instead, just walks away.
Then, there are the young women—quite often pierced—and sometimes heavily, and/or tattooed–who talk/brag about their astronomical “body counts,” and argue that their count should not matter to men who might be potential marriage partners.
How about how the courts–which are definitely on the side of women in divorces and are–more often than not–quite willing to strip men of the assets they worked hard to accumulate?
The vibe that I am getting is that—for many men in the young demographic which should be involved in dating, marrying, family formation, and having children–the whole atmosphere out there is just rancid, and unappealing; it just ain’t fun anymore, it seems like it’s dangerous.
It’s a minefield, and women who want to commit to one man, who actually want to be wives, to have children, and to raise families, are apparently increasingly hard to find.
If true–and widespread—societal rot like this, I would think, might play a large part in discouraging men from participating in dating, and eventually marrying, forming families, and having children.
P.S. It just seems to me that in our current Leftist dominated social/cultural/political/financial/legal atmosphere–things are stacked against men–and that many women in the pool of potential mates have—to a great extent–been ruined by the indoctrination, the ideas, ideals, world views, and thought processes fed these women by all of the outlets pushing leftist ideology today—the MSM, the Educational Establishment, the Entertainment industry, literature, many parts of government, etc.; that pool is tainted.
Is any wonder, then, that some fraction—perhaps a large fraction– of men are apparently just “walking way” from the whole idea of playing the current “game,” of dating and marriage.
Selfy: “I think calling Massie a “pro Democrat traitor” is inaccurate. It appears that he is fiercely independent and not afraid to oppose Trump; similar to fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but to a greater degree.”
From here in California, there seems no difference between the way Massie and Rand vote and Democrat votes. Rand’s latest stunt is voting with the weak sisters and the Democrats to force an end to the Iran war. That was stopped by Fetterman, who is not so consumed with hatred of Trump that he votes against his country like Rand. At least kentucky’s other senator Mitch McConnell voted with the United States interest.
According to ballotpedia, Kentucky has closed primaries, so if Massie wants to win, he’ll have to get the Democrats in his district to re-register.
@ Bob Wilson & Selfy – buried in this Washington Free Beacon article is some interesting information about the connection between Massie and Rand Paul.
https://freebeacon.com/elections/sorry-for-calling-you-a-jew-rand-pauls-son-lashes-out-at-gop-lawmaker-tells-him-jews-to-blame-if-thomas-massie-loses-primary/
The young man whose behavior precipitated the post was drunk, and I have no idea why he picked on Lawler other than both of them being in the same bar that night, but he seems to have also imbibed his father’s beliefs.
I used to look up to Rand, who was not nearly so nutty as his dad Ron, who was my representative when we lived in Texas (although I wasn’t following politics then and only found out later about his positions).
However, he is another formerly solid conservative (albeit with idiosyncratic leanings) who has taken positions all over the map regarding Trump’s presidential priorities in this administration. (Or so it seems to me, based on admittedly incomplete samplings from the news cycles.)
https://thenewneo.com/2021/01/26/led-by-rand-paul-republicans-say-the-senate-trial-of-citizen-trump-is-unconstitutional-also-leahy-in-hospital-for-observation/
Was he mugged by TDS somehow since then (in addition to literally being mugged by leftist protesters)? Is he just following his own pathway through the party platforms?
I really don’t know what to make of him now.
AesopFan:
Rand is less weird than his dad, but he’s nevertheless a libertarian, plus he likes being mavericky. I think a lot of his votes have to do with those two things.
Selfy on May 14, 2026 at 12:23 am said:
” I never heard of ordinary people complaining about lower taxes.” Some of us also watch to be sure the spending and tax levels are responsible and in sync. FL legislation is trying to reduce or do away with property taxes, and what little I have learned about their ideas sounds pretty absurd or flakey. Conservative “prudence” says we should proceed down this path very cautiously, if at all. But the FL chief financial officer (or whatever his real title is) has been conducting audits of the 67 county governments and calling out wasteful spending when he sees it and highlighting better practices when those are found. So some grounds for cuts are probably fully valid. Just have to keep an eye out for them.
“Illinois Democrat Governor Pritzker removed the toilets from one of his mansions before it was assessed, in order to declare it uninhabitable, and save $331,000 in taxes.”
That should put a real damper on his presidential aspirations – just image the Republican’s ads!
Selfy on May 14, 2026 at 12:24 am said:
“I think calling Massie a “pro Democrat traitor” is inaccurate. It appears that he is fiercely independent and not afraid to oppose Trump; similar to fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but to a greater degree.” I want to give him the benefit of the doubt [and I don’t live in KY so little I can do anyway] but I agree sometimes “independence” can take on the form of “better is the enemy of good enough” and he should stick closer to the R’s than he does.
Richard Aubrey on May 14, 2026 at 7:24 am said:
“To do … Stonehenge from conception … IOW, an immense, unbelievably consistent social compact over a huge period with no substantial interruptions was required …”
Something similar could be said about the building of European cathedrals, except of course writing and records keeping was better. And by 1059 (or so?) the Vatican had achieved separate administrative and controlling domains between temporal kings and religious authority over souls. So perhaps wars did not interfere quite that much? But in checking I also learned that Notre Dame de Paris was mostly built in a 100 year span ending in 1260, with more added later.
So, actually, on balance given the drastic differences in life circumstances, maybe you are correct. 🙂
I have no doubt that the civilization that created Stonehenge, and Avebury, and the many other stone circles across Britain and probably elsewhere changed over time, just as subsequent civilizations did. That is, the answer to ‘what was Stonehenge for?’ probably had different answers over the course of centuries.
It would appear from archaeological studies (though that should always be taken with a grain of salt) that the circle construction started small, got bigger with time, went through a period of major activity (when Stonehenge reached its fanciest stage and things like Avebury were built), and then there came a period when the circles got small again, and construction trailed off. All over the course of centuries.
So, it sounds like the classic pattern of a rising culture, a peak and a decline and finally dissolution.
Something that always amuses me to ponder: when Stonehenge, and the Pyramids of Giza, were constructed (the oldest part of Stonehenge appears to be roughly contemporary with the Great Pyramid), there were still living mammoths in the world.
They were too big for the mammoths to push over, even though they died trying. And then there is Easter Island; it appeares that pushy mammoths could swim quite well.
The Endangered Species Act came too late.
I suppose I should mention that an Upstairs Aubrey discovered the Aubrey Holes, surrounding the ‘henge.
Downstairs relation was with Wolfe for Plains of Abraham.