Harry Chittenden

UX Researcher. Lover of family and good food. #interiordesign fan @ #uxresearch

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

The only thing that stops violent men from raping you and your society are other men who are equally willing to be violent in stopping the rapists. The West has decided that the highest virtue is to quietly comply with the destruction of your civilization because to do otherwise is bigoted toward the rapists. It really is that simple.

[Michelle Maxwell ™ @MichelleMaxwell]

With everything we are hearing right now about ticks this seems like good information to share.

“Here’s what I’ve learned after more ticks than I care to count.
First, whatever your uncle told you, forget it. No matches. No nail polish. No Vaseline. No soap on a cotton ball. All of those do the same terrible thing, they stress the tick out, and a stressed tick empties its gut back into the bite before letting go. Which, if you think about what that actually means for a second, is literally how Lyme and the rest get transmitted so you’re not speeding up its exit. You’re making it throw up into you.
Fine-tipped tweezers. Grip right where the mouthparts enter the skin, not the body, the head. Pull straight up, steady, no twisting, no jerking. It’ll feel like it’s resisting because it is, the mouthparts are barbed. Just keep the pressure on and it lets go in a few seconds. If a piece breaks off in the skin, leave it alone. Your body pushes splinters out. Digging around with a needle does more damage then the fragment ever would.
Clean it with alcohol or soap. Wash your hands.
Now here’s the part most people skip: don’t flush the tick.
Tape it to an index card. Clear packing tape right over the body, write the date and where on your body it was, and stick the card in a drawer. If you come down with anything weird in the next 30 days, rash, fever, joint pain, that flu-that-isn’t-flu feeling, that tick goes with you to the doctor. Some labs will test the tick itself, which is faster and often more reliable than waiting for antibodies to show up in your own blood. A dated tick taped to a card is one of the most useful things you can hand a doctor who’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.
The other thing worth saying out loud: if the tick was engorged when you pulled it, and you can’t swear it was off your body within 24 hours, call your doctor that same day. Don’t wait for a rash. Fewer than three out of four Lyme cases even produce the classic bullseye. A single preventive dose of doxycycline within 72 hours of a deer tick bite cuts the Lyme odds way down, and most docs in tick country will write that prescription without giving you a hard time, especially if you walk in with the tick taped to a card and a clear timeline.”

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

On the night of 3 August 1944, retreating German soldiers blew up every bridge in Florence except one.

It had been standing since 1345...

The bridge is called the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge. It is the oldest surviving crossing of the Arno River, on a site that has carried bridges since Roman times.

The Romans built the first. The medieval Florentines rebuilt it twice, after floods in 1117 and 1333 swept the previous versions away. The third attempt — the one still standing today — was completed in 1345.

It was one of the first segmental arch bridges ever built in the West. Three low, wide arches replaced the heavy semicircular spans of Roman engineering. The new design needed fewer piers in the river, offered less resistance to floodwater, and allowed boats to pass underneath. Six hundred and eighty years later, the engineering still holds.

Shops have lined the bridge since the 13th century. The first tenants were butchers, fishmongers, and tanners, who used the river below as an open drain.

In 1565, Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned Giorgio Vasari to build a covered passageway above the shops, connecting his official residence at Palazzo Vecchio to his private home at Palazzo Pitti, so that he and his family could move through the city in private, away from the public eye. The passage is called the Vasari Corridor, and it still runs above the bridge today.

In the late 16th century, the smell of the butchers' waste reached the corridor windows. By decree, every butcher was expelled from the bridge and replaced with goldsmiths and jewellers. The rule has never been repealed. To this day, the shops on the Ponte Vecchio are required, by law, to sell only gold, silver, and jewels. The same shopfronts that hung over the Arno four hundred years ago are still selling the same trade.

Then came the war...

By August 1944, the Allies were closing in on Florence.

The retreating German forces, under orders from Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, prepared to destroy every bridge over the Arno to slow the advance. On the night of 3 August, the operation was carried out. The Ponte alle Grazie, the Ponte alla Carraia, the Ponte Santa Trinita, the Ponte San Niccolò — all were detonated. The Ponte Santa Trinita, considered one of the most beautiful bridges in the world, had to be blown up three times before it finally collapsed.

Only Ponte Vecchio was spared.

The reason is still debated. Some credit Hitler, who had visited Florence in 1938 and reportedly admired the city. Some credit Gerhard Wolf, the German consul to Florence, who is honored by a plaque on the bridge for his role in saving it. Some credit a Florentine shop assistant who is said to have disabled the mines placed beneath the arches.

I have walked across it more times than I can count. And every time, I find myself thinking that the people who built this could not have known we would still be crossing it. As John Ruskin wrote in The Seven Lamps of Architecture:

"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them: ‘See! This our fathers did for us.’"

-- -- --

If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here:

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[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Terrible

[Andrzej @AndrzejZmiasta]

Piosenka stara jak świat (1948), tysiące coverów i teraz jeszcze jeden, ale jaki!
Facet gra na gitarze jak gdyby z nią się urodził.
Posłuchajcie🔊
Bruno Cézar & Leandro Ghost - Riders In The Sky 🎶

[Electroverse @Electroversenet]

Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at MIT, says global warming fear isn't driven by data, but by money and control.

He recently told the Daily Mail that politicians saw climate policy as a multi-trillion dollar opportunity to reshape industries, to push globalization.

The public was fed panic over a minuscule temperature change that means almost nothing.

Lindzen calculates that even a doubling of CO2 would warm the planet by only half a degree.

He argues nature stabilizes, not amplifies, climate swings, and that today's warmth and CO2 levels actually help plants grow and expand farmland.

"People are finally starting to question this," he said.
"It'll be an embarrassment to our era."

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Group performs Beethoven’s symphony No.5 a cappella

[🎼 HotPlaysMusic]

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Take a look at this.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The research behind this is wild. Your sperm carries a set of instructions that tell your genes when to turn on and off. A Duke University study found that THC rewrites those instructions. The more weed in your system, the bigger the changes. It goes straight for the genes your future embryo needs in its first week of life.

I had to read the "day 3 crash" part twice. For the first three days after fertilization, an embryo runs entirely on the mother's DNA. Day 3, the father's genes switch on. If those genes carry cannabis damage, the embryo just stops growing. Fertility doctors see this happen in their labs: embryos that fertilized fine and looked healthy on day 2 go completely still by day 5.

Boston University tracked 1,535 couples trying to have a baby. Men who smoked weed once a week or more doubled their partner's miscarriage risk. That number held up even when the woman herself never touched cannabis. And the miscarriages clustered in the first 8 weeks, right when the father's damaged DNA would be doing the most harm.

Duke also found that the specific genes THC alters in sperm overlap with genes linked to autism. One of those genes, called DLGAP2, helps brain cells communicate with each other. It was changed in cannabis users' sperm. When researchers bred THC-exposed male rats and checked their offspring, the same altered gene pattern showed up in the pups' brains. The damage crossed a generation.

Weed has gotten way stronger over the last 30 years. THC content was about 4% in the 1990s but nearly quadrupled to 15% by 2018, and modern dispensary strains regularly sit at 20-30%. Concentrates go up to 95%.

Quitting for about 11 weeks (one full cycle of sperm production) reverses some of the DNA changes. Not all of them. Duke's lead researcher says men should stop at least 6 months before trying for a baby. Half of your kid's genetic blueprint comes from you, and right now, THC is editing that blueprint before conception even happens.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk thinks the entire education system is built on a broken assumption.

That every student should learn the same thing. At the same speed. In the same order. At the same time.

Musk: “Everyone goes through from like 5th grade to 6th grade to 7th grade like it’s an assembly line. But people are not objects on an assembly line.”

The model was designed for a factory economy. Standardized inputs. Predictable outputs.

That economy is gone. The assembly line is gone.

But the education system still runs on its logic.

A student who masters algebra in two weeks sits through eight more weeks because the calendar says so. A student who struggles gets dragged forward because the schedule doesn’t wait.

Neither is being served. Both are being processed.

Musk: “Allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or are interested in, in each subject.”

AI doesn’t teach a classroom. It teaches a student.

One at a time. Every time.

It skips what a student already knows. It finds where they’re stuck and approaches it from a different angle.

It adjusts in real time. Not at the end of a semester when the damage is already done.

A student obsessed with basketball learns fractions through shooting percentages. A student who builds in Minecraft learns geometry through architecture.

The subject doesn’t change. The entry point does.

No teacher with thirty students can do this. Not because they lack skill.

Because the math doesn’t work.

AI doesn’t have that constraint.

Musk: “You do not need to tell your kid to play video games. They will play video games on autopilot all day. So if you can make it interactive and engaging, then you can make education far more compelling.”

The brain isn’t broken. The format is.

Kids learn complex systems and strategic thinking for hours voluntarily. Then walk into a classroom and can’t focus for twenty minutes.

That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a design problem.

Musk: “A university education is often unnecessary. You probably learn the vast majority of what you’re going to learn there in the first two years. And most of it is from your classmates.”

Four years. Six figures of debt.

And the real value comes from the people sitting next to you. Not the institution charging you.

The degree doesn’t certify knowledge. It certifies endurance.

Musk: “If the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing college.”

The system was built to train employees. If you’re not trying to be one, it has nothing left to offer you.

Every lecture. Every textbook. Every curriculum. Now available instantly. Personalized to any learner. Adapted to any pace.

The question isn’t whether the old model survives.

It’s how long we keep forcing students through it while the replacement already exists.

[Mark Penn @Mark_Penn]

Iran’s upper hand?

The press is at it again. Iran has the upper hand now. Iran will collect billions in tolls. Trump is backed into a corner. Iran has once again won and they will be even tougher now

As they have at every turn they have systematically undermined America and pushed Iranian propaganda and it keeps getting worse.

First, the Biden administration negotiated with Iran for 4 years and what did they get? Spit. And they effectively let Iran off the hook and Iran collected billions of dollars they used to build missiles and enrich Uranium.

Today, they are coming to the table minus most of their leadership, without a Navy, without a functioning nuclear program, with no air defenses, their proxies in ruins, down 90 per cent in functioning missiles, shot down a single plane in 18,000 missions, are having to execute their own people and keep the internet off to prevent people from overthrowing them. And there is a huge armada circling them.

Yup. They got us right where they wanted us. Our negotiators have no leverage at all.

Because if you listen to mainstream media analysis they can send some drones to increase oil prices on a temporary basis until they face another round of devastation and new leadership.

Reality is they are at the table because they had nowhere to go and they alienated all the neighboring countries and Trump has always made clear that like the symbol of America itself he holds olive branches in one hand and arrows in the other.

If Iran does not realize this is not the Biden administration they are dealing with, these negotiations will be over fairly quickly and there will be another round of military action and we will see where they are then.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Milton Friedman (prix nobel d'économie) a dit un truc il y a 50 ans qui est encore plus vrai aujourd'hui. Et quasiment personne ne le comprend.

🧵

On lui pose la question : "Sans régulation sur les médicaments, des gens pourraient mourir en prenant des produits dangereux. Vous ne trouvez pas ça grave ?"

Sa réponse est un des retournements logiques les plus brillants de l'histoire de l'économie.

Oui, dit Friedman. Un médicament non régulé peut tuer des gens. C'est visible. C'est dans les journaux. C'est un scandale. Tout le monde le voit.

Mais ce que personne ne voit, c'est les gens qui meurent parce qu'un médicament qui aurait pu les sauver a été bloqué pendant 10 ans par le processus de régulation. Ce mort là, personne ne le compte. Personne ne fait sa une. Personne ne connaît son nom. Parce qu'il est mort de l'absence de quelque chose qui n'a jamais existé.

C'est l'asymétrie fondamentale de la régulation.

Le régulateur a deux types d'erreurs possibles. Erreur 1 : approuver un médicament dangereux. Résultat : scandale public, procès, le régulateur perd son poste. Erreur 2 : bloquer un médicament qui aurait sauvé des vies. Résultat : rien. Personne ne sait. Personne ne proteste. Les morts silencieux n'ont pas de porte-parole.

Du coup, le régulateur rationnel optimise pour éviter l'erreur 1. Toujours. Il rajoute des études. Des phases. Des comités. Des délais. Chaque couche de "sécurité" supplémentaire le protège, lui, au détriment des patients qui attendent.

Friedman estimait que la FDA avait probablement tué plus de gens en retardant des bons médicaments qu'elle n'en avait sauvé en bloquant des mauvais. C'est impossible à prouver précisément. Mais la logique est imparable.

Un exemple concret. Le bêta-bloquant Propranolol était disponible en Europe des années avant d'être approuvé aux États-Unis. Pendant ces années, des Américains mouraient de crises cardiaques qui auraient pu être évitées. Combien ? On ne le saura jamais. Parce qu'on ne compte pas les morts de l'inaction.

C'est le même principe partout. Pas que dans la médecine.

En France, les taxis autonomes sont bloqués par la régulation. Chaque année de retard, ce sont des accidents de la route qui auraient pu être évités. Mais personne ne compte ces morts là. On compte uniquement le premier accident d'un taxi autonome, qui fera la une de tous les journaux.

L'IA dans la médecine est ralentie par des processus d'approbation qui prennent des années. Des diagnostics qui pourraient être faits en secondes par un algorithme attendent des validations pendant que des patients attendent des mois pour un rendez-vous.

Le nucléaire a été bloqué pendant des décennies par la peur. Combien de gens sont morts de la pollution des centrales à charbon qui ont tourné à la place ? Personne ne les compte.

Le pattern est toujours le même. On voit le risque de l'action. On ne voit jamais le risque de l'inaction. Et comme le risque de l'inaction est invisible, le régulateur choisit toujours l'inaction. Parce que l'inaction ne produit pas de scandale.

Friedman résumait ça en une phrase : "Les gens qui ont été sauvés par la FDA sont visibles. Les gens qui sont morts à cause des retards de la FDA sont invisibles. Et dans une démocratie, le visible gagne toujours contre l'invisible."

La prochaine fois que quelqu'un vous dit "il faut plus de régulation pour protéger les gens", posez une seule question : combien de gens meurent en attendant que la régulation les autorise à vivre ?

La réponse est toujours plus grande que ce qu'on imagine. Mais personne ne la calcule. Parce que les morts de l'inaction n'ont pas de visage.

[🌷🦋 Love Music 🎶 & Dance 💃🏻🕺🏻 @Tiana_Celine_23]

She did the song justice ❤️

[🇺🇸RealRobert🇺🇸 @Real_RobN]

Here it is:

The Bill and Hillary Clinton Racket-Empire:

King Solomon Reporting:

FBI Director Andrew McCabe: “Shut the f**king thing down.”

Attorney General Sally Yates: “Shut the f**king thing down.”

Three separate FBI offices—out of New York, Washington, and Little Rock—all came to the same conclusion: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was running a massive bribery operation with foreign governments through the Clinton Foundation.

@jsolomonReports: “Hillary Clinton ran a pay-to-play scheme that delivered favors from her post as Secretary of State, while foreigners and others paid large sums of money to her family foundation, the Clinton Foundation, run by Bill Clinton and their daughter, eventually Chelsea Clinton.

Three separate agencies, three separate bureaus, offices of the FBI believed they had predicated evidence to pursue that.”

“Four U.S. attorney offices under Barack Obama were asked for help by the agents’ agency: ‘We need a grand jury, we need to get evidence, we want to move the case down the road.’ All three of those four offices told the agents, ‘You’re on your own; we will not assist you in your pursuit of criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.’

And then, perhaps the most extraordinary statement in the document: the Deputy Attorney General for Barack Obama, Sally Yates, explicitly told the FBI to ‘shut the f**king thing down,’ ‘shut it down.’

In other words, while Hillary Clinton was selling out America for hundreds of millions of dollars in the shadow of the 2016 election, she was also orchestrating the Russian collusion hoax as a means to overthrow the U.S. government, and Barack Obama was right there every step of the way.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Wow

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Truth is now considered a right-wing conspiracy.

That’s the chilling line from Melanie Phillips that stopped me in my tracks.

She explains how we’ve reached a point where simply stating observable reality — whether it’s basic biology defining a woman or pushing back against blanket accusations that all white people are inherently bad — gets you branded as evil. Not wrong. Evil. Therefore you must be silenced, cancelled, or erased. No debate. No evidence allowed.

She calls it cultural totalitarianism: a Manichean worldview where one ideology claims a monopoly on goodness, progress, and reason itself. Dissent isn’t argued with — it’s treated as a moral threat that has to be removed.

The deepest irony? In an era that smugly ditched religion in the name of superior rationality, we’ve ended up rejecting reason, evidence, and open inquiry altogether. We’re so “rational” we’ve dispensed with the very tools of rationality.

It doesn’t add up.

Her take has me wondering how we got here — and how quickly disagreement turned into moral excommunication.

Anyone else seeing this pattern play out in conversations lately? Where have you felt truth itself become off-limits?

[Harry Chittenden @harryc]

I hope things improve for him.

[Wake Up Patriot 🇺🇸 @WakeUpPatriott]

🚨BREAKING: In a bombshell revelation, CBS investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has gone public with explosive allegations: "CBS executives deliberately buried the 'Hunter Biden laptop story' and ordered her to wait until AFTER the 2022 midterms to help the Democratic Party."

What's your response to this...??👀

MAKE THIS GO VIRAL ON 𝕏. LET’S GO 👏

[Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou]

“Is it a little bit homophobic to focus on the straights of Hormuz rather than the gays of Hormuz?”

No Kings protester, completely serious: “Yes, absolutely, I agree.”

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Propaganda words work so well