Open thread 6/27/2026
The names are far less interesting than the hairstyles. My high school yearbook features some doozies, although mine was relatively sedate:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
The names are far less interesting than the hairstyles. My high school yearbook features some doozies, although mine was relatively sedate:
You are right, I.had almost forgotten.
Nothing beats Billie Eilish.
Names nearly gone—I am finding it difficult to remember female peers who did NOT have those names. Susan was, I believe, the most common name.
Rob Butler on the “Tectonics of the ‘doublet’ Venezuela earthquake(s) – 25 June 2026”, (8:20): https://youtu.be/sGALP-s6Tmo
Butler also briefly explains the method and purpose of the projected death and injury estimates.
Debbie.
Peggy Noonan’s weekend WSJ piece has been quoted at length elsewhere. Here it is if you’d like to read the whole thing – it’s great!
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-tartan-army-takes-america-12f40479?st=y6XpJE
AI has made several disruptive developments that have just come to light Amazing is the only thing I can think of to describe them.
AI Scott Adams has an excellent summary: https://x.com/AIScottAdams/status/2070873472767496333 The AI stuff starts around minute six.
Texas Board of Education votes to require Bible reading in schools.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/article_0d462f54-9051-44a1-903a-66f542363382.html
Probably most of us has seen it before but SSA keeps track of popular names, for example here you can see the popularity over time of Liam, the #1 boy baby name for the last 8 years.
You can also see what was most popular for your birth decade. Mine has exactly the names I remember from school.
How to deal with knuckleheads that insist that the US fought the wrong army in Europe in WW2 ?
It should be clear to any rational person that the very temporary wartime US – Soviet alliance was not an endorsement of Communism even if FDR was from the left side of the American political spectrum. Some knucklehead on the Fox News comment section – a rabid anti ” boomer”- insist we were fighting for Communism in WW2. What weirdo world do these people inhabit ?????? Is this Tucker Carlson’s doing?
Those hairdos! I am old enough to remember them . . . and the urban myths surrounding them.
I’ve been reffing youth soccer for 20 years. I was amused around 2015 and even up to now, how many “Maverick”s were playing soccer on boys teams. Yep, those 30 to 40s year old parents. Top Gun really was a cultural phenomenon movie.
Names all common enough, but the hair.
Seems to me more late 60s pictures
These dames are depressing.
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Women’s hair should be clean. It should not be colored. With a few odd exceptions, the terminal point should be below the ear. There should be no gunk on your hair. You can part it on the side with barettes or you can part it in the middle. Bangs on women are good but not for everyone. The lenses on your glasses should not be oversized; cat’s eye glasses are an idea whose time has come and gone, one hopes for good. Eschew contact lenses. If I can see your cleavage, you’re showing too much. If you’re having trouble with acne, consult an expert for a program to keeping your pores clean; do not take tetracycline. If you’re a heavy girl, try ponchos and muumuus. Your clothes should not be too busy; you should have a clear preference for solid colors. Favor flat shoes.
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Don’t even think of getting a tattoo.
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If you have an amulet and a don’t-bug-me ring on, you have sufficient jewelry.
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Use dental floss 2x a day, no exceptions.
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Leave expletives for stag settings (where you’re not present). Slow down when you speak and avoid junk and filler (“and I’m like…and he goes and I go…”).
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Not everyone needs to know what is your opinion or what your mood is at this time.
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If you cannot afford orthodontics for all of your children, give priority to your girls.
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Do not give your daughter manufactured names, cutesy names, or names with non-standard spellings.
Selfy: Texas Board of Education votes to require Bible reading in schools.
Here’s the list:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2026/texas-schools-required-reading-list/
ArtDeco: These dames are depressing.
Instant Classic!
I’m a Boomer (born in 1957) but by the time I graduated high school many of those names, and all of the hair styles, were no longer popular. IIRC.
steve walsh:
Yes, I’d say those styles are pretty much 1961-1965.
There still seem to be plenty of Karens around;)
Art Deco said, those dames are depressing.
You forgot “get off my lawn.”
Takes me back, not to high school, which I don’t remember, but to college in the Sixties. Some of that stuff was a real glamor look, which worked in public but…..
”Probably most of us has seen it before but SSA keeps track of popular names…” [link follows]
ssa.gov is unavailable.
”This website is temporarily unavailable
We’re sorry, we are working on restoring the site as soon as possible.”
It’s getting to be that it would be easier to make a list of things that work than things that don’t work.
Niketas: Thanks for the SSA site. That was interesting.
How are are all those Deep State/ Russiagate prosecutions going?
From Joey DiGenova, we find Paul Sperry reporting that while tactics have changed, the over all strategy for prosecutions remains the same.
Two intro paragraphs:
“Although Donald Trump’s defenders describe the Russia hoax and other efforts to frame the president as a “grand conspiracy,” RealClearInvestigations has learned that the man now leading the probe of that scandal is pursuing multiple conspiracy prosecutions that are smaller and more manageable, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the probe.
“Since taking over the Justice Department’s far-flung investigation in April, veteran prosecutor Joseph diGenova and his team quickly concluded that combining all of the alleged wrongdoing, which ranges from falsifying evidence and committing perjury to leaking classified information and obstructing justice, into one unified plot and trying them together as a single case would be unmanageable.” MORE
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/russiagate-prosecutor-calls-audible-grand-conspiracy
It’s a long article!
Something I find a bit annoying is the habit of using ‘Karen’ as a pejorative. It’s needlessly unkind to a very substantial number of perfectly pleasant women of all ages who happen to be named that.
HC68: re, Karen as a pejorative:
Yes, I agree. I wonder how to make the point without a name. Make one up?
I felt similarly about “Brandon” — knowing a couple smart ones.
But the joke still made me laugh.
Re: Jordan Peterson update
Just learned that since April JP is in bad medical shape again. Here’s his daughter giving a lengthy update on his health and her health — she has similar problems:
–Mikhaila Peterson, “Jordan Peterson Health Update and Psych Med Injury Discussion”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9bzpDogoeo
She says that severe depression runs in the family. She and her father have spent years on antidepressants and other psych meds that she believes has damaged them both. This was the driving force behind their all-meat diet, which helped to an extent.
JP has had a flare-up of akathisia, apparently due to the stress of both his parents dying, selling his house and moving plus mold exposure. Akathisia is a nightmarish condition of acute physical and mental distress, making it impossible to relax and difficult to sleep. Normal functioning is out of the question.
Akathisia is often linked to the use of or withdrawal from psych meds. After JP got off the SSRIs and Klonopin in 2020 then recovered, he was good. So when the symptoms started returning, he and his doctors didn’t understand what was happening.
The Petersons are having a very tough time. JP will be releasing some of his recorded presentations this year but that’s about all he can do for now.
Mikhaila is using this as an opportunity to update people on her father’s condition and also as a sort of public service announcement on the dangers of psych meds.
I saw those drugs do terrible things to my mother and college roommate. Mikhaila has my full support on that score.
Thanks for the update, Huxley.
He’s one of the great men of this generation—trying to help others and to often getting slammed for it.
Any idea why those meds are still being prescribed if they do such horrible things to (some) people?
You forgot “get off my lawn.”
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If you’re on my lawn, you should be delivering a package, or you should be one of the visiting nurse staff we see, or you should be one of the shirt-tails who live down the street from us.
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Women who make deliveries for a living or work as OTs have to be utilitarian about certain things. Getting tattoos, piercings, and coloring your hair blue do not advance practical ends.
Blue hair and tatoos make a statement – hostility to normies, not of my tribe. Tribalism, another failed mode of human society.
Happy birthdays today to Mel Brooks and Elon Musk, 100 yrs and 55 yrs of age respectively. Good goin’, guys!
To huxley’s update, Barry adds “[Jordan Peterson is] one of the great men of this generation—trying to help others and to often getting slammed for it.” True.
I saw a one year user review of Peterson Academy online, at YouTube.
At $400 annually, with almost 100 courses available, it’s worth it IF you enjoy exploring themes and topics like psychology, philosophy, and history.
Basically, PA reflects the founder’s interests. But If you prefer STEM subjects, it’s fair to say it’s lacking.
I’ve reviewed many of the web sites offerings. Rob Henderson on the sociology of status amped up my attention, as did several others. I expect to join at the start of July!
Um, er, that 11:19 pm post (just above) wasn’t me.
(I would never, ever misspell “om”…)
Looks like that scripture-quoting, moniker-nicking, shape-shifting, fake-apologizing Z-varmint’s still lurking…
Barry Meislin:
Gone now.
That wascally weasel!
(So on top of everything else, now you gotta play whack-a-mole?)
Barry Meislin:
Yep, he is back, sewing chaos by sock puppeting with other people’s handles or variations on their names.
Still the same? Haven’t seen any Can Do! B.S. yet. And haven’t heard him singing the praises of the Temu tofu weapons that Iran bought from Xi, his master.
And I missed the 11:19 impersonation by the malicious troll.
Oh, just some meditation on a Broadway musical, IIRC.
Offers of faint praise.
Nothing terribly compelling…
@Barry Meislin: Any idea why those meds are still being prescribed if they do such horrible things to (some) people?
There are many incentives for the over-prescription of such meds.
Mental illnesses are painful and hard to treat. Doctors want to help people and people want to be helped. Drugs are easy to prescribe and easy to take. Drugs are quite profitable for the corporations which make them.
Furthermore the medical establishment usually does not do the necessary testing to understand the dangers of such drugs. Recall that “heroin” began as a non-addictive painkiller, hence the heroic name. The SSRI antidepressants were never tested for long-term usage. It was never planned that people would take them for years and even decades.
Yet here we are. The Petersons’ reactions are unusual but not freakish.
From what I read the SSRIs are not a medical catastrophe like thalidomide or arguably heroin and the amphetamines. However, lesser but nonetheless real drawbacks are the blunting of emotional and sexual feeling, weight gain, sleep disruption, medication cascades, and withdrawal problems.
Is this huxley or another sock puppet, with huxley’s gif?
om:
I would hope I sounded more reasonable than Z. 🙂
OK, but multiplied by…a whole lot, it seems pretty catastrophic to me; though I guess everything’s relative (as the granddaddy of rationalisms claims).
And they’re all “doing their best” to help (which is also potentially terrifying…).
I’m fascinated by all the stuff that’s been coming out about gut health and “second brain” conjectures—prebiotics, diet, lifestyle, etc. That is, if we’re poisoning ourselves into this mess, why shouldn’t we be able to detoxify ourselves out of it? And WITHOUT “the help” of hyper-medicating?
(Ah, PATIENCE, DISCIPLINE…there’s the rub…but there would likely have to be a social support dimension to all this. An “Outward Bound” methodology? Group Therapy for motivation and self-expression? A “hybrid” social/motivation/supervision framework?)
Wonder if RFK Jr. has any ideas, with the assistance, ideas and initiatives of the best of the best (funded by Elon Musk…?)
Anyways, thank q…
huxley was “q” you?
The “Z” could be poaching gifs too?
Is this a case of alliteration?
@Barry Meuskub: it seems pretty catastrophic to me;
Actually it does to me as well. I was striving for a moderate tone.
I’ve had trouble with depression myself, serious enough that my therapist fought to get me to a psychiatrist who would put me antidepressants for the rest of my life. That’s what she said.
But after I saw what happened to my mother and other people I just would not do it. I tried everything else I could think of — exercise, diet, swing dancing, therapy, St. John’s Wort and Tony Robbins. Which somehow worked.
I don’t claim my approach would work for everyone, but it did for me. I believe there are more options than drugs and people are paying a higher price for the drugs than is realized.
That’s phenomenal!
You refused to give up.
Refused to succumb.
Refused to give up agency. Your freedom to choose.
Your freedom, period.
Instead, you decided to fight. Do it your way. Survive, even flourish, on your own terms. Or fail…on your own terms. (Though it seems to me that this choice of resistance itself represents a victory.)
I’ve been thinking about this in relation to diabetes (or LADA). I’ve been a lousy patient, driving my doctors to despair. So far I’ve refused any medication, preferring to go the diet, supplements, exercise, and intermittent fasting route. Requires a lot of discipline, which in my case worked out for a while but which had begun to break down all too often. Nonetheless…
And it’s entirely possible that on this I’m delusional; but it seems to me that once you decide to give in (and take the meds) without trying to fight it on your own, you’re totally and entirely cooked….
Related (just saw this counter-intuitive approach to treating depression):
“Revisiting Depression — Dopamine-Serotonin Balance Gains Attention for Treatment-Resistant Depression“—
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/06/29/dopamine-serotonin-treatment-resistant-depression.aspx
Key concept:
“… For decades, the prevailing theory [of depresssion] has been that depression stems from a lack of serotonin, the brain’s so-called “happiness chemical,” and treatments have largely focused on raising setotknin levels…
Yet many of those who turn to medication continue to struggle, leading to the recognition of what is now called treatment-resistant depression.4 As the number of people in this group has grown, scientists have begun to probe deeper into the brain’s chemistry, and what they are finding challenges long-held assumptions.
Emerging research points to an excess of serotonin, not a shortage, as a driving factor in depression.…”
The photographs and a lot of the names were definitely early boomers. I am a later boomer, sometimes called Generation Jones. Our high school yearbook shows the girls with non-curled, non-hair sprayed long hair, parted in the middle. Although “wings” were also popular—think of that famous Farrah Fawcett poster.
Our daughter, born in the 90s, has a very 50s name, Kathleen. When I was pregnant and reading through baby name books with my husband, he just hated every one of them (I remember advocating for Jenna). Had to go through every name in the book, and for some reason, when I got to Kathleen, he said he liked it. I almost dropped the book!
It’s kinda nice for her now, not having a weird name but also not having a common one for her generation. With our son, there was a different twist on popularity. I had come across the name Connor years before, from an Irish novel, and it just struck me deeply that I wanted this to be my son’s name if I ever had a son.
Nobody in the US was using this name and that too was appealing.
But a few years later, I began to come across other little Connors. What??
Turns out that one of the ways that names can become popular is from soap operas, and a popular show introduced a character named Connor, so there went the especially unique aspect.