J

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.

If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.

If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.

If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up.

He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour.

Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself.

Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it.

Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows.

Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result.

Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing.

The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

Plastic recycling is a “dead-end street."

That quote…unbelievably…is from @Greenpeace.

In my new video, we debunk the recycling religion.

[Fred Jelly Beans 🇺🇸 @FredJellyBeans]

Trump, R.F.K., Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan and Pnut the squirrel team up to crush the deep state.

[Jason @Bitcoin4Freedom]

I can't stand Donald Trump. He is braggy, he insults people for no reason, and he is just a brutal personality. But my mind is made up. I'm voting for him and here's why:

* He puts Americans and their well-being first. Kamala will not.

* He will bring @elonmusk into his cabinet to be the efficiency czar and get rid of waste. This alone may be the best single reason to vote for him.

* He will bring @RobertKennedyJr into his cabinet to Make American Healthy Again. He will finally get to the bottom of why our food companies are destroying the health of our children.

* I'm sick of the way the media lies continuously about @realDonaldTrump, starting with the incessant racism claims. They are just nonsense. The latest thing I learned? He sent his plane to fly Nelson Mandela home after he was in jail with the U.S. wouldn't do it. Racist? No.

* I'm sick of the U.S. being embroiled in foreign wars. Trump will keep us out of them again. He's just crazy enough that foreign nations will stand down. They have no fear of Kamala. They will fear him.

* Trump sees this country as fundamentally good. Kamala sees it as inherently evil.

* Trump will end the nonsense of the open border which makes our country less secure, less financially stable, and brings in millions of people illegally who compete for Americans' jobs.

* This government has to print billions to care for the illegals. That makes all of our dollars less valuable and makes prices zoom upward.

* He will stockpile Bitcoin.

* He will keep men out of women's bathrooms and women's sports.

* He is a heavyweight personality and negotiator. Kamala is a phony personality and a lightweight negotiator.

* The people who want Kamala Harris to win are the most annoying people in the country. They have pushed for pronouns, masks, endless vaccines, cancel culture, riots, blatant racism towards whites, gender confusion, undermining the U.S. constitution.

* He will upset the current political system. He was nearly the victim of assassination 3x. And he keeps going. He's not the best in interviews, but he at least puts himself out there. Over and over and over. Kamala hasn't done a single press conference.

* Harris and the media trying to prop her up hid Biden's cognitive decline. They accuse @realDonaldTrump of being a threat to democracy. Yet she was installed as the nominee with no votes. She wants to pack the Supreme Court. She wants to eliminate the filibuster. She sued @RobertKennedyJr to keep him off the ballot. And the threat to democracy is Trump? Nonsense.

* Those who support Harris look at Trump supports as vile, stupid, ignorant, and fascists. They disown family members or disinvite them from Thanksgiving dinner of they support Trump. This is disgraceful.

* Every time she talks, I try to give her a chance. But she is the most phony and condescending politician I have ever seen. Ever. I can't do it. I won't do it.

* She and those who support her are resistant to Voter ID and believe requiring an ID is racist. Her Department of Justice is suing the state of Virginia for trying to purge the voter rolls of illegals. Why would we not want 1 vote per 1 U.S. citizen? Is it more racist to believe people from the inner city are perfectly capable of securing a government issued ID? Or to believe they are incapable?

That's it. I'm done. Thanks for hearing me out.

[Mr Reagan 🇺🇸 @MrReaganUSA]

This is my favorite man-on-the-street video of 2024.
This is AMAZING.

[FAN TRUMP ARMY @TRUMP_ARMY_]

@elonmusk Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs. They cannot stand that they do not own me.

I don’t need them. I don’t need their money.

They cannot steer me, they cannot shake me, and they will never, ever control me.

And they will never, ever, therefore, control you.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

If this looks good to you, vote for Kamala

If not, vote for Trump

[Jay Merz 🇺🇸 @OopsYouMissed]

@mattgaetz It’s happening .. Police are folding

[J @jillysu]

@carolmswain Keep fighting the fight and talking with him - it’s worth it

[J @jillysu]

@elonmusk Buy Disney next @elonmusk 🙏🏼🙏🏼

[Ann Bauer @annbauerwriter]

So if I have this right, over the last 48 hours women lost the secure guarantees and protections of Title IX and the House voted to send a combined $95 billion of OUR taxpayer money to Ukraine and - remarkably - both sides of the war in the Middle East. Am I missing anything?

[Bill Ellmore 𝕏 @Ellmore]

@elonmusk Ricky said it best

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

"And so it went. No bells or sirens. No general alarm. But all over the Titanic, in one way or another, the word was passed."
-- Walter Lord, "A Night to Remember"

[Amy Eileen Hamm @preta_6]

Years ago I saw a documentary that included a young woman whose infant son was murdered by Taliban. A man grabbed the baby, threw him against a wall and then tossed him in a fire before her eyes. She hadn't spoken since then, and her family took care of her. She was essentially an empty husk of a woman.

I still think of her from time to time and feel this terrible sinking feeling whenever I do. I've been thinking of her a lot over the past week. The vacant look she had in her eyes is unforgettable.

How can anyone justify this type of violence? It's disgusting. How can Canadians gather and cheer for this type of violence? This is the type of crime that should repel to the core any human who bears witness. The type of crime that shatters the psyche of a mother or father. There is something dark and rotten inside of anyone who believes there is any justification for such evil acts of violence.

I am disgusted by every Westerner who would celebrate this evil in the name of "decolonization." Things have gone horribly wrong inside the minds of these people. I used to think they were stupid ideologues who would destroy our culture and unfairly "cancel" people. Now I think they're capable of far worse.

[Iraqveteran8888 @Iraqveteran8888]

I don’t want to talk about this, but considering current events, I’ll share something I saw in 2006 in Iraq. Understand that I hate discussing this. Not a single day goes by that I don’t think about it. One night our PL walks in the enlisted tent inside BIAP around 2300 and asks for volunteers. Being the crazy bastard I am, I immediately got up and began to put my armor on without saying a word. I grabbed the M249, a few extra belts, and some extra hand grenades and followed the LT to the motor pool where our M113 was waiting. We performed all our radio checks, fueled up, called in to HQ, and left the front gate. It was dark. Really dark. The air had an awful stench of burning trash and the water in the canals smelled of feces. A dead dog laid on the side of the road under a dimly lit street light outside the gate. It was very quiet. Like the world was dead. Perhaps it was in that moment. We proceeded to our objective. A small home with a humble adobe brick wall outside its perimeter with some very dim lights barely lighting up the courtyard. Out came a middle aged man, carrying a little girl who was screaming bloody murder. We brought her in the M113 where our medic immediately began to stabilize the wound on her right hand. Two of her fingers were missing just above the knuckle. She calmed down considerably once our medics took possession of her. We proceeded to take her back to BIAP to receiver proper treatment with the father riding along with us. I was pulling security with the M249 but I would occasionally glance back at the little girl who had a look of sorrow and desperation on her face. It felt routine but in some ways something wasn’t right. The following day, about a dozen 60mm mortars landed very close to our tents. Luckily nobody was hurt. We later learned that the father purposely cut his daughter’s fingers off so he could gain access to the FOB and collect intelligence. Not a single day goes by that I don’t see that little girls face. Not a day goes by that I don’t realize what that look was on the ride back. Not a single day goes by that I don’t wonder if she is still alive. Point is…never underestimate the lengths your enemy is willing to go to in order to destroy you. Never forget the innocents who are caught in the middle.

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

Like the rest of you, I'm trying to understand the Hamas strategy.

On the surface, it looks insane. There's no real hope of conquering Israel, and no hope it will make anything better for anyone. Nor can any "expert" explain their strategy without appeal to some form of group insanity.

But Hamas seems too capable to be dismissed as crazy people. And their Iranian handlers are likely not insane either.

So I rule out "making anything better" as a Hamas objective.

What is left?

Israel's response will (necessarily) create civilian hardship in Gaza that is likely to shock the civilized world. And that will, in theory, weaken Israel's holocaust narrative that is -- by far -- it's most valuable asset.

Looks to me as if Hamas is playing a long game. Step one, weaken the Holocaust narrative and gain more militant supporters across the region. All it will cost Hamas is severe hardship for 1.7 million people on their side. But few of those people were thriving.

That makes Saudi Arabia the most important player in this drama. When and if they take a side, the new narrative is formed.

[Note: I don't know anything about this topic. But neither do the experts. None saw this coming.]

[John Rich🇺🇸 @johnrich]

With war breaking out in the Middle East, it's good to know we have a full strategic oil reserve in case fuel becomes an issue...oh wait...My mistake, Biden drained it so he could lower gas prices for the midterms. Carry on.