[That said and duly noted, a bit more sleep in the initial stages of the process would have been blissfully welcome…]

[Now, tbf, everyone with kids becomes a shadow of who they were because you can’t look after small humans 24/7, with all the ways that they try to find to break themselves, and be the same person. And it’s worth it, and it’s fine, because part of living is for experience to change who you are.]

Basically, we have removed the cost of being a jackass - disapproval, shame, facing the target who might well give you the smack you’ve earned - and increased the reward - dopamine hits - while leaving people to stew on their own with reduced contact with other people.

That’s never gone well. Ever.

The combination of wanting to be part of the consensus and the dopamine-reward for attention structure of social media means it attracts a lot of people to extremes.

Add in lockdown taking away many social guardrails, and it takes unusual strength of character to stay even relatively normal.

Nirere wins Windhoek Women Tour - Africa's only women's UCI race Everything that went down in this landmark women's race in Namibia

The TDFF is not the only landmark women's race that concluded today.

The Pupkewitz Megabuild Windhoek Women Tour in Namibia is Africa's only UCI women's race. It's vital to the development of the sport in Africa.

Here's what happened over the four stages

globalpeloton.substack.com/p/nirere-win...

It does lead me to wonder if a bit of tension in the camp delivers better rugby, much like you need a small bit of salt in food for savour.

Any of the teams playing in the tests in the last two Lions series would have done a solid number on either of the teams involved in the tests in this one.

The vibe was happy - as it was always going to be when picking Cohesion XV.

The rugby was generally muck.

Farrell was absolutely all-in on a 3-0 - you can see it in the way that the Argentinian game is memory-holed - and needed a highly-iffy call on Sheehan’s try not to lose the series.

Yeah, nobody made Scotland do the stupid thing.

This is why I can feel in my bones there’s a WR clarification coming on that Sheehan dive over the tackle. You get to recognise the feel of a narrative, and this Lions was always lined up for asterisk-tour at best.

WGE.

In some ways, the drug prices thing is the platonic ideal of Trump assertions:

An incredibly wrong statement that isn’t sensible much less possible, a media that won’t push back, and an American discourse that will adopt it uncritically, making culture just a hair worse. Great work, all around.

Newsom’s reaction to get back in the game is going to melt the California Republicans onto the bedrock, sir.

Feel like its a bad sign about the health of the republic that Pritzker has to talk about TX Dems like they’re the Polish government-in-exile in London

UPDATE: Governor Abbott just threatened to REMOVE THE TEXAS DEMS FROM THEIR SEATS if they don’t return by 3pm Monday (so Republicans can steal 5 seats in Congress using a special session about the flooding as cover) — and charge them with FELONIES.

We are over the cliff.

Elon Musk is a symbol of American collapse in many ways, but one of the big ones is how for years he has constantly engaged in multi-billion-dollar securities and consumer fraud, and the "consequence" has been him making billions more, including from the federal government paying him directly.

Voetsek, Nazi.

Yeah, you absolutely know more about what it is to be a German soldier with honour than the Bundeswehr that will call criminality criminal.

But hey, let’s see what the actual Bundeswehr think on the topic.

Oh.

www.bundeswehr.de/en/about-bun...

Who the living Christ do you think was working hand in glove with the Einsatzgruppen in, with and around them but the bloody Wehrmacht?

[The collective decision of Europe that Augustus was right and we’ll be back after Ferragosto is not lightly to be dismissed as a lifesaver.]

There’s a reason the RN had the rum ration and the WW2 USN had geniuses ensuring you could track it by the ice-cream ship, sir.

Even Achilles was singing in his tent. Everyone needs a break.

IIRC, Plato is one of the very few so good at both that Popper more or less put in a warning in The Open Society And Its Enemies to the effect of, this guy is so damned good at writing an argument you have to beware or he’ll suck you in…

[18th century prose was written to be read aloud. Try it; it suddenly bounces. Wodehouse, by contrast, is intensely textual. The contrast can be marvellous.]

All surviving former IDF Chiefs of Staff, Mossad directors, Shin Bet Chiefs and Police Commissioners have issued a joint statement warning Israel that Netanyahu is leading the nation to unprecedented defeat. (Restart Israel)

The last sane Republican was PJ O’Rourke, and he was in truth a libertarian who ended up voting Democrat.

Paris-Roubaix + Tour de France winners in same year

1905 Louis Trousselier 🇫🇷
1910 Octave Lapize 🇫🇷
1970 Eddy Merckx 🇧🇪
1981 Bernard Hinault 🇫🇷
2025 Pauline Ferrand-Prévot 🇫🇷

So much for any pretense of the rule of law.