Occasional Reader sends me clip from an India Times article, about a brouhaha in the German Parliament recently. Which clip was all about the clitoris. Yes, this little baby, this clit, that sometimes elusive (to men) part of the female anatomy, was the subject of mirth in Berlin’s Bundestag. Who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour? Not that the article said anything about the substance of the parliamentary debate that led to this clitoral humour. This chucklesome clitoris. This curiously charming clitoral comedy. So I went in search of it. Basically, the debate was about "violence against women and girls in Germany". A serious subject. Treated to German mirth, thusly:
Above: a short, simple and clear explanation. Why Islam is not compatible with the West.
By Benedict Beckeld.
Shorter Beckeld: Islam is both a proselytising religion, AND a political religion. In that, it’s unique amongst the Abrahamic religions.
Christianity is proselytising, but not political. (Give unto Caesar what his Caesar's and unto God what is God's)
Judaism is political, but not proselytising. It's super-hard to convert to Judaism.
Islam is both proselytising AND political. It's a totalitarian system of life. It's super-easy to convert to Islam. Once you're a Muslim you have a whole swathe of stuff you have to do, because you're Muslim. One of those is to try to convert those around you. If necessary, by war, by Jihad.
THAT's why Islam is incompatible with western societies. Which make a clear and clean distinction between the Church and the State.
Notes from my recent back operation at Hong Kong's Canossa Caritas hospital, 1 Stubbs Road. Where happens our son was born in August 1997, just after HK's handover to China.
Mise en scene: me, on one of those mobile trolley bed things they have in hospitals, to move the patient around. Dressed in operating gowns. Slightly dosed with relaxing drugs, I'm feeling pretty chill as we head to the Operation Theatre.
I'm feeling chill because I trust them. All the staff, the nurses, the doctors, the support staff, I trust them all. They are all super friendly, super supportive, super kind, super "give confidence" type people. I know that they have all been trained to the top international levels. I know all the equipment is the latest, world class stuff.
So, here goes. [It's kind of AI-assisted slop, but if I don't post it now, I never will. It's been sitting in my pending tray since the op last December]
The fluorescent lights of the operating theatre in Hong Kong’s Canossa hospital hummed like a lazy orchestra as the pre-op sedation wrapped my nerves in warm cotton wool. I lay on the narrow table, leads stuck to my chest, watching the monitors blink and beep. One small machine kept up a steady, almost cheeky *ping* every few seconds.
“Ah,” I slurred “I see you have… the machine that goes ping.”
A polite silence. Then a ripple of courteous, slightly puzzled smiles crinkled the eyes above the masks. No belly laughs, no “Brilliant, Monty Python!” Just the gentle, professional equivalent of “Very good, sir, now count backwards from ten.” Dr. Penelope Shum leaned in, her almond eyes sparkling with wry amusement.
“Call me Penny,” she had told me earlier in the holding bay, voice calm as still water. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
She adjusted the IV. “Relaxed already. Good.” The surgeon gave a small nod. The propofol slid in like velvet darkness, and the theatre faded.
Hours later I floated back to the surface in recovery, my back a distant, polite ache beneath fresh dressings. Pethidine hummed through the line—pure liquid bliss, the kind that makes the world feel gift-wrapped. Penny was still there, chart in hand, flanked by masked doctors and nurses whose dark eyes watched me with gentle curiosity. A Westerner on their table, now murmuring through the haze.
“How are you feeling?” one nurse asked. “Pain? Nausea? Anything you need?”
I smiled the lazy smile of the truly medicated. “Just… some more drugs, please.”
Soft laughter among the blue scrubs. Even through masks, the warmth was unmistakable.
Then, unbidden, the old Tang lines rose like moonlight on water. In my opioid stupor I began reciting, in Classical Chinese:
床前明月光, 疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月, 低頭思故鄉。
Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng, Yí shì dì shàng shuāng. Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè, Dī tóu sī gù xiāng.
The moon shines bright before my bed, I think it is frost upon the ground. I raise my head to see the moon, Then lower it, thinking of home.
The masked faces froze. A Westerner, high on pethidine, quoting Li Bai? Penny’s eyes widened. “You know Tang poetry?”
“Studied it years ago" I said. In Beijing.
She reached over and adjusted the drip. “Python in theatre,” she said, “Li Bai in recovery. Quite the patient. Rest now.”
As the bliss pulled me under again, her steady gaze was the last clear thing—competent, kind, a quiet bridge across cultures sealed in shared vulnerability, unexpected verse, and the soft, faithful *ping* of machines that, this time, really did go ping.
The operation itself had been a marvel of modern mercy. An MRI months earlier had shown the culprit: sneaky bone overgrowth—osteophytes and thickened facets—slowly strangling the nerves in my lumbar spine. Walking had become a painful shuffle; left unchecked, it would have parked me in a wheelchair for good.
But instead of the old-school ordeal, the surgeon had slipped in through two tiny incisions, guided by a camera smaller than half a chopstick. Minimal muscle damage, targeted bone removal, nerves freed like untangling a garden hose. I was up the next day, hobbling but free.
======================
ADDED: For anyone currently staring down spinal stenosis, or just curious why I keep thanking modern medicine like a deranged convert:
Twenty or thirty years ago this would have been a completely different horror movie. Think open laminectomy—the surgical equivalent of taking a crowbar to a stubborn sardine can. A foot-long incision straight down the back, muscles stripped off the bone like wallpaper from a damp wall, the entire lamina (the bony “roof” over the spinal canal) sawn away, ligaments hacked out, everything wide open to the fluorescent lights.
Blood loss, drains, a scar that looked like you’d lost a duel with a zipper factory, and weeks of lying there feeling as if a tram had reversed over you. Recovery? Months. Risk of the back turning wobbly like cheap IKEA furniture (they call it iatrogenic instability when the surgeon accidentally makes your spine even more exciting than it already was). Many patients traded leg pain for permanent back pain and a lifelong limp.
Today? Ninja surgery. Tiny keyholes, endoscopic camera playing peek-a-boo, muscles gently parted rather than ripped, only the offending bone removed. I walked out of hospital feeling like I’d had a really thorough massage instead of major spinal work. The difference is night and day—like upgrading from a horse-drawn cart to a silent Tesla for your central nervous system.
So yes, I recited Li Bai while floating on pethidine, but the real poetry was the operation itself. And the best line of all? Penny’s calm promise, delivered with those beautiful almond eyes: “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
“Night sky from a lonely beach in New Zealand”. Milky Way with the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds
Via a New Zealand sailing mate, the above photo of the Milky Way, with the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds… those smudges just off to its right.
Taken by Ekant Veer, professor at University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
It’s taken from Birdlings Flat, near Lake Forsythe (!) located right at the base of the Banks Peninsula just south of Christchurch.
Places my ancestors came to in the mid 19th century.
The Magellanic “Clouds” — actually galaxies — are two of our closest galactic neighbours in our Local Group of galaxies. In about a billion years they’ll merge into our own Milky Way, to become part of our spiral arms and add to the 400 billion or so Stars we already have.
I’ve looked at this very same night sky, the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, from offshore East Coast Australia, in a racing yacht, Sydney-Hobart. The southern night skies are glorious.
Are we alone? Are we, mammals on Earth, alone in this vast universe? I used to think “certainly not”. Star number: at least 8 x 10 with 23 zeros. And more planets than even this vast number of Stars. What are the odds? Surely there must be life, intelligent life, elsewhere! Surely….
But maybe not. The very-very-very odd combination of random events that led to Homo Sapiens on Planet Earth may well be too random for even such a vast number of Stars and Planets to guarantee another civilisation. We may well be alone. Even if not alone, we’ll never be able to communicate with an intelligent alien species. The distances are simply too vast. The physics too brutal.
We, Homo Sapiens, are the consciousness of the universe. We are the only one we know, so far. We may very possibly the only one. Better care for it. Better nurture “the light of consciousness”.
Some people and some states didn't take part because they hate Trump so much. Which doesn't make sense to me. By all means hate on Trump. But hate on your country? Because you hate one man? Weird.
What I saw recently somewhere on the socials. The distinction between Patriotism and Nationalism. Not exact, not perfect. But handy:
Patriotism: loving and supporting your country, its people and customs.
Nationalism: loving and supporting a particular regime of your country.
Seems to me those who are not celebrating America's 250th because of Trump, are confusing these two.
For China: I can love the country, the language, its food and people. Its culture. While not loving at all the Chinese Communist Party. I make the distinction. Love the country; hate the government.
That's a report above from NBC. Which used to be Trump Deranged. But is, perhaps, no longer. Or at least makes the distinction between Trump and the United States. Lots of sailing! Yay! Three cheers to the Red, White and Blue...
Well, not of AI. As in “Artificial Intelligence”. I’m not saying we should be scared of that.
But Artificial Super Intelligence? Perhaps we need not be literally “scared”. But concerned? Yes. We ought be concerned. We ought to consider, very seriously indeed, its potential dangers.
I’m not talking Luddite stuff. Tolpuddle Martyrs stuff. I’m not talking “AI will take away my job” stuff.
I’m talking existential. As in: life threatening. As in: a threat to the survival of humanity itself.
This is not being a “retard”. Plenty of super smart people worry about it. Chief amongst them Elon Musk, himself a major owner of AI. His concern about the existential threat led to his funding OpenAI, to be public, open to public scrutiny, of understanding its dangers. But which was hijacked by Sam Altman, litigated… but that’s another story.
I’m reposting the above video I posted in February. I rewatched it last night. It’s a good summary of the issues, in short film format.
There’s a follow up to “Writing Doom”, by Suzy Shepherd: Seat at the Table
And for a deeper dive, there’s Roman Yampolskiy talking to Steven Bartlett about AI Safety: Only 5 Jobs left in 2030
There’s a non-zero chance ASI could wipe out Homo Sapiens. Perhaps a non-trivial chance.
Surely we should look at it? Discuss it? Without worrying that we’re becoming EU-apparatchik worrywarts?
“America is already great!” Gushes the Great, the Gorgeous, the patriotess, the one and only Bridget Phetasy.
Happy Birthday America! 🇺🇸 🥳
ADDED: It’s true what Bridget says. People are tuning out of politics. And so am I.
There’s too much: too much… info…confusion…uncertainty…what’s real what’s not… what’s AI what’s human….
I’ve been watching sailing videos, vids about trimarans and catamarans. About building them and sailing them. Thinking if I’m 20 years younger I’m looking to get one or the other, a Cat or a Tri. The Cat’s for comfort, the Tri’s for speed. And how much fun it would be to do all the exploration and research, to go out on sea trials of both. To do an ocean crossing, or a South China Sea crossing, on both to test them… Whoopi do!
All of that. And also watching vids on log cabin builds, on homesteading, on carpentry.
While the very smart young Coleman Hughes tells Americans: don’t listen to the Progressives, don’t hate America. It’s a wonderful country. As so many Football World Cup fans are finding out. I don’t go as far as “America is the greatest country in the world… in the history of mankind” vibe, but hyperbole aside, I sure do love America and what it stands for. We need, the west needs, America. We need it to prosper and lead.
The huge increase in the world population NOT living in poverty (the Green above) began after mid 1970s. A big chunk of it from China expanding market forces. Aka Capitalism.
Everywhere in the world that things go better, where the poor get richer, where the rich also get richer, in every single case it’s down to capitalism. ,
“But isn’t China socialist?”. “Didn’t China have huge growth since 1980?”. Yes to both. But but…. The growth wasn’t down to socialism. It was and is, very simply, because the Communist Party allowed the market to expand. It was market expansion, aka capitalism, that grew the growth.
China has been economically successful to the exact extent that it has allowed market forces to operate.
I saw that with my own eyes on the ground in China, from the 1970s to now.
Whenever China shifts back to more Party control, growth stops or slows. We’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, lived it, experienced it.
That’s the reality of the world in the last century. Capitalism works.. Socialism doesn’t.
Rest of World (ROW) launches: 49. Successful: 88%.
Elon Musk has done what was unthinkable, even “impossible” a decade ago. A private individual launching rockets… then a private individual launching and retrieving rockets… then a privately individual launching more rockets than the ROW combined. At 100% success. And retrieving, reusing them.
But… you know, “Elon bad”. Because he thinks, as I do, that the Democratic Party in America has gone lala-loopy crazy left, full-on Socialist. Anti-democratic hard-authoritarian Left. Not me saying this: they, the Dems, say it themselves, loud and proud.
Meanwhile. You have something you need to put in space? How do you like your odds if you don’t use SpaceX? Because you don’t like Elon. How do you like the 12% chance of losing your precious cargo…?
The girls above, on our very own Discovery Bay beach, July 1, 1997, will now be in their early thirties! Wearing Hong Kong bauhinia flag and Union Jack shirts. Behind them, folks wearing China and British flag shirts. Credit: South China Morning Post.
By the way, I prefer “Happy Reunion Day”. Much simpler and just as correct. The headline phrase is typical apparatchik jargon…
From my post last year:
Happy "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day". A Hong Kong holiday.
28 29 years ago that Hong Kong was handed over to the Chinese government, by the UK government.
In Chinese it's 回归, Hui Gui, which is much simpler and much more descriptive. It means "the return of Hong Kong to our beloved motherland".
28 29 years ago, last night, Jing and I sat in a Wanchai Bar, watching the proceedings. All the Chinese army waiting on the Shenzhen side, to cross over into Hong Kong on the stroke of midnight.
It was a very wet, rainy night. Prince Charles was here for the handover, and famously described the Chinese bureaucrats at the ceremony as "appalling old wax works". It would be good if he was as honest today about Islam in Britain as he was then about those appallling Chinese apparatchiks.
Jing was pregnant with John, who was born two weeks later.
The Chinese largely kept out of Hong Kong politics, until forced to do so by the riots of 2019. But even then, I think it's fair to say, they handled that with a light hand, given what they could have done and many people, including people here in Hong Kong, were calling for them to do.
One simple thing to note: unlike most post-colonial places, Beijing has not demanded the change of a single name of a single street or building in Hong Kong. It's still Victoria Harbour, Victoria Park, Queen Elizabeth street, Pottinger St, Des Voeux road, and so on. I'd guess there's been more renaming in Australia than here in Hong Kong.
Britain’s famous “strictest headmistress” Katharine Birbalsingh lays it out. No punches pulled.
She is indeed the Head of the Michaela School which she founded. And is now super famous for graduating kids who are bright, well balanced and academically accomplished.
Adam B. Coleman Allen West Amala Ekpunobi Briahna Joy Gray Byron Donalds Carol M. Swain Chloe Valdary Christian Watson Clarence Thomas Coleman Hughes Condoleezza Rice David Webb Delano Squires Esther Krakue Glenn Loury Greg Foreman (YT: "Black Conservative Perspective") Ian Rowe
Jacinta Nampijimpa Price Jason Riley John McWhorter John Ogbu
Katharine Birbalsingh Kemi Badenoch Larry Elder Morgan Freeman Nathaniel Broughty (YT: "Nate the Lawyer") Shelby Steele Thomas Chatterton Williams Thomas Sowell Tim Scott Walter Williams
Warren Mundine Wilfred Reilly Zuby
Huh? Why post this?? Dunno really. Was keeping a list anyway, now put here for reference.
On the Left it’s assumed that People of Colour vote Democratic. Or vote Labour in England, vote Labor in Australia. Or, worse, vote Green. Most do. But many others do not. They have their own views. They are independent thinkers. Not driven by their peers to do “what’s expected”. Not afraid to “go off the plantation”. Most, above, are from America, some from Oz, some the U.K.. Heterodox, strong, brave, commonsensical voices. That’s the people above. Not the “Silent majority”, but of the Loud Dissenters.
My post from 15 years ago. We’d been cruising our yacht, Xena, around Thailand, having just done the King’s Cup regatta, in December 2010. With friends from Oz, Barry and Theresa.
“So what brought you to Phuket”, I asked Pieter, the septuagenarian Dutchman we were chatting with at the Yacht Haven dockside.
He thinks a bit, rubs his chin and teeth, and says “Freedom”.
What sort of freedom did he have here in Thailand that he didn’t have in Holland?, I asked.
He pointed to his ochre-red shorts, sun-faded, and said that’s all he wore during the day. As night fell he put on a shirt. When he rode his motorbike, he was helmetless. That sort of freedom, he said. To be oneself, and not mollycoddled by a Nanny-state bureaucracy, or stifled by peer pressure to dress this way or that.
We knew what he meant, having just been to the Similan Islands and climbed Sail Rock, which would give palpitations to the Occupational Health and Safety bureaucrats. Indeed, it would not be allowed without a “proper” path and fences around the precipitous drops.
Instead, in free Thailand, there’s a rickety path, occasional wooden steps, ropes studded with rusting nails, and the top is a clear vertiginous rock, the edge of which I couldn’t even go near. But if I’d wanted to, I could’ve. It's your own responsibility; you look after yourself.
The Left running around calling small government, capitalist, social conservatives 'Nazis' while praising Palestine ... the county whose leadership ACTUALLY sided with the real Nazis while conservatives were off fighting Hitler.
You seriously could not make this crap up.
We are living in psycho world run by the delusional spawn of angry communist professors.
And the media nods along because they'll print literally anything to bring about the Big State, endless gravy train ticket of Labor's socialist utopia. [Link]
She’s 100% correct.
In WWII, the leader of the Muslims of the Middle East was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Huseini. I’ve read a book about him, called “Hitler’s Mufti”. He spent the war in Berlin, a guest of Adolf Hitler, broadcasting on radio wild Jew-hatred to his captive Middle East followers. He organised Muslims into S.S. Army units to help the Germans liquidate Jews in Eastern Europe. He told Hitler that he would “take care of the Jews in the Middle East” once Hitler had done the job in Europe.
Al Huseini was -- and still is -- a hero to Muslims in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat was a distant relative and idolised him. By some measures he’s the foundational root of the venemous Jew hatred that only allows “No” as an answer, to never acccpet Jews as neighbours, to kill them even when they “hide behind every tree”.
Hamas are Al-Huseini spawn. Direct.
It doesn’t matter, not to me, that the majority of people in the west seem to have been infected with Hamas’ Hatred of Jews. I mean, of course it matters. But it doesn’t mean that the majority is right. Just as all the millions of Brownshirts idolising Hitler didn’t mean they were right. Or that he was…
When I first mentioned Hamas 15 years ago in this blog, I noted their Nazi practices. They used the Roman Salute. They are supremacist. They hate Jews. HATE! Hitler woulda loved them! And today’s young western Hamas-nicks too.
They do not hate Elon Muskdespite his achievements. They hate him because of what those achievements expose.
He is the living refutation of crony capitalism — the cozy, managed system where success flows not from building better things but from regulatory moats, lobbying access, subsidy capture, and the right friendships. That system wears the costume of "capitalism" while functioning as its opposite: a protection racket for incumbents, held together by red tape and quiet corruption, where the press, the regulators, and the entrenched giants all scratch one another's backs.
Shorter Brivael: they hate Musk because he exposes Crony Capitalism. Exposes its cushy, quiet, hidden, life. Exposes what amounts to a massive grift.
By the way, China’s version of capitalism which Beijing calls “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is also a form of Crony Capitalism. At least, the private sector of it is. The State Owned sector remains the state-owned sector, with all that being run by government apparatchiks involves.
Who are the “They” in the title? Why, all those that hate on Elon, o.c.!
This is the essay I would have written if I’d been able to write as elegantly as Brivael Le Pogam.
This is not me being crazy. This is not me being deluded in calling them Communists and Islamists. They themselves make no secret of it.
Who? Who am I talking about?
This has happened in the last few days, in the Democratic Primary for New York State elections. The Democratic Party candidates who won their primaries were all endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of NYC and himself a self-declared Islamist and Communist. They have all offered their fealty to him, the new kingmaker of the Dems.
Each of them has said they hate America. Actually hate America. Yet representing people in New York State. Each has said that 911 was a good thing. Which they celebrated. They love and celebrate Hamas. They call for worldwide revolution. To “globalise the intifada”. Each glazes communism. Each is a member of the crypto-communist Democratic Socialists of America.
They despise America and its flag. One has said she used the American flag as toilet paper. Using the Flag as toilet paper! Shouldn’t that be disqualifying?!
But they’re winners of Democratic Primaries to be Representatives! In the Congress of New York State.
Sure, Free Speech and all. But these are Representatives. Who — to repeat and be extremely clear — have said they hate the country in which they live, they hate its flag and they support international terrorism. And yet are now one November election away from Representing the State of New York.
We must ponder this. Where in earth are we? And where is New York? Where is America?
Asmogold above is Zach Hoyt. He reckons this is a good thing because it makes clear where the Democratic Party is. Where that is, he reckons the majority of Americans is not going to like. So he thinks this is good for Republicans. Which is where he now stands. Or sits.
Like me, Asmogold is an old time Democrat. Like from the era of Bill Clinton or even Barack Obama. For sure I could buy into Clinton”s agenda, or even first-term Obama’s, of Free Markets, closed borders, stopping illegal immigration, law and order, helping the working class while expecting them to work if able. Staying out of foreign entanglements. Trying to control the budget.
But that’s no longer the Democratic Party of today. It’s changed and changing behind recognition.
I don’t agree with a hell if a lot of Asmogold’s views. But I do with many. His analysis of how this all came about is interesting and I largely buy it.
I sure hope Asmogold is right that the majority of Americans won’t buy this Communist- Islamist bullshit. And that these Communist-Islamist flunkies won’t win in November. If he’s wrong then America and the west is in real trouble.
Communism is bad enough. Islam is worse. The combination is like Russian nerve poison.
The Ruthless Podcast has the four fellas, all veterans of political campaigns, give us their take. Which is along similar lines as Asmogold, though less “ranty”.
The left just normalized so much insanity that basic self-preservation now gets called “far right extremism.”
Decades of open borders and failed assimilation delivered parallel societies, welfare strain, and crime spikes in city after city.
Green fanaticism delivered energy poverty and deindustrialization while virtue signaling.
Woke ideology delivered confused kids, erased women, and attacks on national identity.
And the result is voters across France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the UK and beyond are backing the parties the media smears as “far right.”
Those parties are simply saying what was common sense centrist a generation ago.
Secure borders. Citizens first. Affordable energy. Law and order. Protect children. Preserve your culture.
The Overton window got dragged so far left that reality, sanity, and common sense now look radical.
The Overton window got dragged so far left that reality, sanity, and common sense now look radical. H/t: @Rothmus
Meantime in Space:
Humanity's goal for the next century is... prevent WW3.*
Elon: "Okay, this is going to sound pretty crazy."
"I'd say the economy is 10 times the its current size in 10 years. Greater than. I feel like that's actually a fairly comfortable prediction."
"Obviously if there's like World War III or something. that that could put a kink in those plans or those expectations. In the absence of World War III, if current trends continue, I would say the the economy 10xes in 10 years and we have a base on the moon." H/t: @PeterDiamindis
