SoutheRNer in the Midwest

Thinker, Father, Healer, Patriot, Southerner in the Midwest. In roughly that order. Pronouns: is / eius / eī / eum / eō

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.

The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.

What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.

Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.

In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

[MAZE @mazemoore]

This clip of Charles Payne during Obama's second term is really incredible. Well done Charles.

In 2010 Obama put the federal government directly in charge of lending money to students. Eliminating private lending made the loans much easier to get, but they were not less expensive.

Before Obama took office, outstanding student debt was less than $100 billion. By 2015, outstanding student debt was approximately $800 billion and almost a third of the borrowers were in default. Of course the price of college continued to soar the entire time.

This is the best part. Payne predicted that someday the politicians would be promising to forgive student debt as a way to buy votes. He was spot on.

There are people like Ro Khanna on this site right now arguing that Elon Musk should be paying down the student debt when it's a problem that politicians created.

[Elsa @elsathora]

Indiana is exactly how I dreamed America would be

Small towns, wide open spaces, cornfields, barns, cute houses, diners, water towers, friendly people, great food, American flags everywhere, and so much more!

Time for the next part of this adventure

Thank you Indiana!

[Lukas Söderbäck @SweChurchman]

Currently wrestling with my views on bishops and apostolic succession, I stumbled upon this quote by Lancelot Andrewes, from a letter adressed to Hugenout theologian Pierre du Moulin. It really touched my heart and challenges me in my thinking.🧵1/7

[Eric Jorgenson 📚 ☀️ @EricJorgenson]

Everyone can use @elonmusk's "Magic Wand Number" and "Idiot Index"

They're universal ideas, helpful in any industry.

[SoutheRNer in the Midwest @clarimer]

@MarioNawfal Thing One Battle-Mech mode

[SoutheRNer in the Midwest @clarimer]

@Toon4life_ @realrikkidoolan He’s not Anglican in any way, shape, or form. He explicitly states - at the beginning - that he’s an “Old Catholic” successionist which means his orders descend from Arnold Matthew. There is no relation to the (now vacant) See of Canterbury or any of its predecessors.

[Eric Conn @Eric_Conn]

Strength training briefly spikes cortisol, a stress-related hormone, but in the long-term helps body adapt and deal with stress.

Physically bearing weight helps you deal with the weight of life’s trials. It’s the path to glory.

Weight bearing -> gravity -> gravitas -> glory

[Eric Conn @Eric_Conn]

Modern worship music: “I wAnT to tOuCh yUr fAcE daDdY gOd lEt’S hoLd hAnDs.”

The Psalms: ‘God strengthened me in war to run a spear through the guts of all my enemies’ (Ps. 18:34-38).

Modern churches try to make religion palatable to lonely women. That’s why they’re gay.

[Eric Conn @Eric_Conn]

Goes so hard 🇺🇸

[Eric Conn @Eric_Conn]

On Christian parenting:

“The well-worn cliche of a cart and horse is probably almost as old as the debate over faith and works, but it may still help us understand the relationship between them. Faith in God and His Word is the horse that pulls the entire cart. The cart is the work that follows as a result…The legalist tries to pull the horse in the cart, and the antinomian shoots the horse and burns the cart.” — Doug Wilson, “Standing on the Promises”

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

You won’t regret watching this clip

I first listened to this truly prophetic speech decades ago, but I’ve thought about it countless times since then

Neal A. Maxwell masterfully diagnosed the problems with our increasingly godless society

[Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec]

Croatia has stormed the Eurovision final with a historic anthem that denounces the Ottoman occupation and revives the ancient Christian tattoo tradition to protect young girls from rape

Performed entirely in Croatian, the song slams centuries of Islamic Turkish occupation of their lands and recalls how Catholic girls were tattooed with Christian motifs to stop them from being abducted, converted to Islam, and forced into sexual slavery

"That’s why many chose the grave, our mothers did not birth slaves”

Turkey is already attacking the group for performing the song

[SoutheRNer in the Midwest @clarimer]

@NathanielSami Graduate nursing education programs directly address the “nursing shortage.” However, they are all heavily subsidized by the universities themselves such that federal dollars are nearly irrelevant for students pursuing nursing education degrees.

[SoutheRNer in the Midwest @clarimer]

@ShadyPollster @thenmillions @Sargon_of_Akkad

[Carl Benjamin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @Sargon_of_Akkad]

Antiracism's Rivers of Blood

The purpose of a system is what it does.

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

The world needs men…

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Je veux présenter mes excuses, au nom des Français, pour avoir enfanté la French Theory (qui a enfanté la pire des merdes idéologiques : le wokisme).

Nous avons donné au monde Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. Et puis, dans les ruines intellectuelles de l'après-68, nous avons donné Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Trois hommes brillants qui ont fabriqué, dans l'élégance de notre langue, l'arme idéologique qui paralyse aujourd'hui l'Occident.

Il faut comprendre ce qu'ils ont fait. Foucault a enseigné que la vérité n'existe pas, qu'il n'y a que des rapports de pouvoir déguisés en savoir. Que la science, la raison, la justice, l'institution médicale, l'école, la prison, la sexualité, tout n'est qu'une mise en scène de la domination. Derrida a enseigné que les textes n'ont pas de sens stable, que tout signifiant glisse, que toute lecture est une trahison, que l'auteur est mort et que le lecteur règne. Deleuze a enseigné qu'il fallait préférer le rhizome à l'arbre, le nomade au sédentaire, le désir à la loi, le devenir à l'être, la différence à l'identité.

Pris isolément, ce sont des thèses discutables. Combinées, exportées, vulgarisées, elles forment un système. Et ce système est un poison.

Car voici ce qui s'est passé. Ces textes, illisibles en France, ont traversé l'Atlantique. Les départements de Yale, de Berkeley, de Columbia les ont absorbés dans les années 80. Ils y ont trouvé un terreau qui n'existait pas chez nous : le puritanisme américain, sa culpabilité raciale, son obsession identitaire. La French Theory s'est mariée à ce substrat, et l'enfant de ce mariage s'appelle le wokisme.

Judith Butler lit Foucault et invente le genre performatif. Edward Said lit Foucault et invente le post-colonialisme académique. Kimberlé Crenshaw hérite du cadre et invente l'intersectionnalité. À chaque étape, la matrice est française : il n'y a pas de vérité, il n'y a que du pouvoir, donc toute hiérarchie est suspecte, toute institution est oppressive, toute norme est violence, toute identité est construite donc négociable, toute majorité est coupable.

Voilà comment trois philosophes parisiens, qui n'ont probablement jamais imaginé leurs conséquences pratiques, ont fourni le logiciel d'exploitation à une génération entière d'activistes, de bureaucrates universitaires, de DRH, de journalistes, de législateurs. Voilà comment on a obtenu une civilisation qui ne sait plus dire si une femme est une femme, si sa propre histoire mérite d'être défendue, si le mérite existe, si la vérité se distingue de l'opinion.

C'est de la merde pour une raison simple, et il faut la dire calmement. Une civilisation se tient debout sur trois piliers : la croyance qu'il existe une vérité accessible à la raison, la croyance qu'il existe un bien distinct du mal, la croyance qu'il existe un héritage à transmettre. La French Theory a entrepris de dynamiter les trois. Pas par méchanceté. Par jeu intellectuel, par fascination du soupçon, par haine de la bourgeoisie qui les avait nourris. Mais le résultat est là. Une génération entière a appris à déconstruire et n'a jamais appris à construire. Une génération entière sait soupçonner et ne sait plus admirer. Une génération entière voit le pouvoir partout et la beauté nulle part.

Je m'excuse parce que nous, Français, avons une responsabilité particulière. C'est notre langue, nos universités, nos éditeurs, notre prestige qui ont donné à ce nihilisme son emballage chic. Sans la légitimité de la Sorbonne et de Vincennes, ces idées n'auraient jamais traversé l'océan. Nous avons exporté le doute comme d'autres exportent des armes.

Ce qui se construit maintenant, en silicon valley, dans les labos d'IA, dans les startups, dans les ateliers, dans tous les lieux où des gens fabriquent encore des choses au lieu de les déconstruire, c'est la réponse. Une civilisation se reconstruit par les bâtisseurs, pas par les commentateurs. Par ceux qui croient que la vérité existe et qu'elle vaut qu'on s'y consacre. Par ceux qui assument une hiérarchie du beau, du vrai, du bon, et qui n'ont pas honte de la transmettre.

Alors pardon. Et au travail.