Have you ever wondered why text shows up backwards in a mirror? It's confusing to our brains because it doesn't seem like anything else is flipped like that. If we turn our head, it doesn't move the opposite direction in the mirror. Or does it? After all, right-handed you is actually left-handed you in the mirror. Right? (Wait, is that right?)Mirrors can be confusing despite not being very complicated. A mirror image is simply a reflection of what's in front of it. But when someone else is looking at us head on, they don't see text in reverse, so why don't we see what other people see when we see ourselves in a mirror? Woman smiling in a mirror.Canva Photos.(If you think this is a super stupid question with a super obvious answer, congratulations. Pat yourself on the back and scootch along so the folks who don't fully grasp the physics of mirrors can enjoy a demonstration that makes it a little easier to understand.)"Why do mirrors reverse text?" asks the creator behind @humanteneleven on YouTube. "You might think it's just a property of mirrors—they flip things from left to right—but that's not true." He then picks up a metal arrow to show that it points the same direction in the mirror as it does in real life. So why is the text flipped when the arrow isn't? - YouTube youtu.be He then holds up a book to show how the text on the book cover appears backwards, just like the shirt. But when he holds up a Ziploc bag with the word "HELLO" written on it, the word shows up properly.Why? How?It's because he had to flip the book over to see the cover text in the mirror. The baggy, on the other hand, he could just hold up and see the letters through the transparent plastic, just as we see them in real life. If he flips the baggy over like he did the book, the text shows up backwards in the mirror, just like it does in real life."So it's actually not the mirror that's flipping anything from left to right," he says. "It's the human."People appreciated the simple, straightforward explanation and demonstrations."One of the most insightful demonstrations I've seen. It's simple and explains the phenomenon. Well done!" — (@) "While I've heard this explanation many times before, I've only recently seen it demonstrated with text-on-transparency, which is what really makes it click. Great video!""Love these sorts of demonstrations. It’s a bit of a complicated one, but I love seeing how different people's minds work when explaining simple things like this. My kid explains it with “left is on the left, right is on the right, things aren’t flipped, they are mirrored” but it’s true that you are the one who flips things and I’ve never thought of it that way before.""Oh my God, I haven't understood explanations from physics videos about why mirrors flip but this, gosh this helps."Mirrors have been hilariously befuddling people in other videos as they try to figure out how the mirror "knows" what's behind a barrier placed in front of objects. @sarahcoome this is kinda creepy ? #mirror #relatable #creepy Is this something all of us should probably have learned in high school? Yes. Do all of us remember everything we learned in high school? No. Does the scientific explanation make perfect sense to everyone even if it's explained in detail? Um, no.Like the reversed text question, having a simplified explanation that doesn't fully get into the nitty gritty physics and geometry of how mirrors work is helpful for some folks. - YouTube youtu.be For those who want a bit more scientific substance to their explanations, this next video does a good job of giving a bit more detail while still keeping the explanation simple. It even uses a visual diagram to explain: - YouTube youtu.be And for those who say, "This is so basic! How do people not understand this?" here's a video that really does get into the nitty gritty physics and geometry of how mirrors work, diving into ray and wave optics, photons, wave functions, probability, and quantum mechanics. It's only 12 minutes, and it manages to entertain while explaining, but it certainly blows the notion that understanding mirrors is super simple. - YouTube youtu.be As one commenter wrote, "I thought I understood mirrors. I understand mirrors even less now. And that's a compliment."Isn't science fun?This article originally appeared last year.

No matter how much caregivers may want to keep a loved one with dementia in their home, it's not always feasible. Living with dementia is not easy, nor is living with someone who has dementia. But moving a loved one with dementia into a traditional care facility isn't always ideal, either. It can be difficult to find a suitable living situation that ticks all the boxes for what a family and their loved one would want. That's where a "dementia village" comes in as an alternative. Instead of trying to fit a person with dementia into a living situation that either isn't designed for them or is overly focused on their limitations, a dementia village is an environment designed specifically to help people with severe dementia feel safe and free and live as normal a life as possible. - YouTube www.youtube.com The Hogeweyk was the world's first dementia village, founded in 2009. Since then, the idea has been replicated in dozens of locations all over the world. The concept is quite simple: A full, self-contained neighborhood where people with dementia can walk around freely without fear of getting lost, where everyone from shopkeepers to restaurant servers to salon workers are trained in dementia care, and where people who are losing their memory to dementia diseases are treated as people who still have aspirations.Eloy van Hal, one of the founders of the Hogeweyk, explained to Vox how the guiding principle of the village is "normalcy." Traditional nursing homes keep all residents under one roof, and they are subject to do whatever program the institution provides for them. In the Hogeweyk, people live in small groups of six or seven in apartments with furnishings like they'd have at home. Distinct landmarks in the public space help residents know where they are, and putting a theater, grocery store, barber shop, etc. in separate buildings encourage movement through the neighborhood."It's about choice, choice, choice, where you want to be during the whole day and with whom," said van Hal. The idea is to balance safe design with controlled risk, allowing for as much of a normal life as possible. Every worker in a dementia village is trained in dementia care.Photo credit: CanvaThe one downside to the village concept, of course, is cost. Without adequate funding assistance from governments, living in a dementia village can be prohibitively expensive.Does it really make a difference for residents, though? Has it been proven that outcomes are better than traditional care models? With dozens of villages now being used around the world, research is ongoing, but the data from the Hogeweyk is promising. People in the comments of Vox's by Design video shared how such facilities have been life-changing for their loved ones and how traditional care doesn't always meet the needs of people with dementia. — (@) "My grandmother had dementia and when her caretaker who was my grandfather (her husband) passed unexpectedly we had to scramble to get her into a memory care facility in the US. The first place she was in temporarily was so sad, I could see her spirit drain but after about a year we were able to get her into a "village" and the quality of life difference is nothing short of ASTOUNDING! She could function in a way that was familiar and comfortable to her and not be in a foreign hospital setting. The abrupt change from a home where they are familiar, to a clinical setting must be very disorienting and upsetting to these people. That side of my family had mental health issues and memory loss starts early, so I know it will happen to me to some extent and I only hope I can have people take care of me as well as in this Hogeweyk.""I've worked in a nursing home through high school and college. While I can't say it was the worst place for dementia patients, it certainly did not work well for all of them. One patient once tried to wedge herself through the door begging to go outside with me and I even had patients confide in me that they hated being institutionalized, they missed being able to live a normal life, being part of a real community, and being able to come and go as they pleased. This concept is probably the closest thing possible to a normal life a dementia patient could ever have." In a dementia village, residents can live somewhat "normal" lives.Photo credit: Canva"A relative of mine used to get aggressive, violent and angry when she would encounter a locked door in the institution she was in. She couldn't understand why there would be a locked room in what she understood to be 'her home', this would take a lot of calming down and management, only for her to discover another locked door, and kick off again. I love these village based models as they allow autonomy for residents, and have an individual experience. Just because someone has a brain disease doesn't mean they aren't entitled to the very best care. I hope the govt spends far more on these establishments in the future.""As he said at the end, people with dementia are still people—even if there is proven to be no benefits to this model over a care home, I would much prefer to have dignity in my final days than live in a clinical trap. Love all the incredible ideas the Netherlands come up with." A dementia village is a self-contained neighborhood with shops and places for people to go like a normal neighborhood. Photo credit: CanvaDementia care is something Americans are going to have to look at closely. According to The Alzheimer's Association, the number of people living with Alzheimer's is set to nearly double from seven million to 13 million by the year 2050. As more of our elders require full-time care, the more we'll have to consider prioritizing putting resources into things like dementia villages.Everyone deserves safety and a good quality of life. The Hogeweyk is a great example of what it looks like to view people with dementia as people first and to care for them accordingly.This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

As this week’s columns got backed up a day thanks to President Trump’s late-breaking Greenland deal on Wednesday night, I’m doing a little more unserious weekend version of the 5QT. (RELATED: Europe Is Thus Illuminated, Exactly As It Is) And I’ll start at the movies, which, yes, you don’t care about anymore. But I’ve got something of an explanation why… 1. Disney’s Impending Send Help Disaster Disney bought 20th Century Fox a couple of years ago and has renamed it 20th Century Studios. Among the properties the new company is rolling out is a Rachel McAdams-Dylan O’Brien thriller called Send Help, which debuts on Jan. 30. You probably know all about Send Help if you watched Indiana beat Miami to win the college football national championship on Monday night. The ABC/ESPN broadcast pushed the movie shamelessly from the pregame show to the postgame show. It was almost oppressive. If you missed it, this is what they were pushing… Everybody likes Rachel McAdams. She’s terrific. People will probably tend to prefer the Wedding Crashers Rachel McAdams to… whatever this is. And let’s remember that Disney was pushing this movie in front of a college football audience. How many college football fans do you think are interested in watching a movie about a frumpy corporate secretary who turns into MacGyver Meets Schwarzenegger as soon as she drops down onto a desert island, to the consternation of her prissy, frat-boy boss? Practically nobody is the correct answer. This movie is destined to bomb for the same reason all of the female-led action movies bomb. Men roll their eyes, and so do women. But Woke Disney can’t help itself. It isn’t a big-budget production, unless you count the bags of money clearly paid to influencers covering social media with rave reviews after its sneak-preview premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Wednesday. I saw all that promotion on Monday night, and I decided to wait for the rest of the week before writing anything about it. And just like I thought, there was very little buzz around this movie. Even when the biggest media company in the world throws all its weight behind a film, the world simply yawns. This is what a dead, clueless industry looks like. 2. Bark Boy and the Death of Advertising You’ve undoubtedly seen this. You can’t not see it. It’s absolutely everywhere, and they will not stop showing it. And what you’re told is that it’s the funniest commercial going. Click on the YouTube link in the embedded video and check out the comments, and you’d certainly get the impression people love that ad. Sure, they do. Just like this ad… And this ad… These are all from Allstate, which actually is capable of great ads (the Mayhem ads starring veteran actor Dean Winters are among the best ever made). And there’s something consistent in all of them. Which is the main character is a stupid white guy with zero situational awareness who causes chaos — for his female Georgia fan boss, for the Hispanic guy tending to the longhorn mascot, and for Charles Woodson and his kid. These are commercials that have been running all year long on college football broadcasts. To state the obvious once again, college football fans are among the most traditional and conservative that you’ll find in sports, and sports is a pretty traditional and conservative audience to begin with. And yes, college football audiences skew white and male. You can’t escape the fact that Madison Avenue is incapable of presenting white men in a positive light. People have been talking about this phenomenon for years. And yet this is what the advertising industry has to offer, principally, to white men. And they wonder why young white men are listening to Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes? They wonder why “homophobia” is “rampant” among Gen Z? Michael Jordan was one of the greatest mass marketers in the history of the world, as well as being the greatest basketball player who ever lived. And Jordan’s greatest contribution to advertising was a simple statement: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” He understood the purpose of mass marketing was to make your product available and desirable to as many people as you can. And yet look what Allstate put in front of the college football audience. The Bark Boy ad might have been funny in a different context. In the current context, it has to be seen as an attack, and the natural response isn’t likely to be good for business. 3. Transvestites at Halftime of the Super Bowl? By all means, let’s keep unspooling the rolling disaster that is the NFL’s decision to inflict Bad Bunny on its Super Bowl audience as the halftime-show performer. ????????: Bad bunny plans to “honor queers and LGBTQ+” communities during upcoming Super Bowl performance by wearing a dress. Many NFL fans have already said they will be boycotting the Super Bowl as a result. ??? pic.twitter.com/ayus89GoEU — Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 23, 2026 How do you think that’ll go? The sad part about all of this is that the NFL has really had a great year. The games have been good, the four teams left are excellent, physical football is back, and there has been almost no stupid wokery. And they’re going to ruin it by having the entire country, minus a few people who aren’t football fans, throw their hands up in disgust. This isn’t really the NFL. It’s the music industry more than the NFL. Jay-Z is the guy dictating who does what at those halftime shows, and this is all corporate media, which is paying the bills for the league. Corporate media is essentially what George Washington said of government: it is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Yes, you’ll get paid. But you’ll be corrupted. 4. Is There a Better Way? This is what I wrote about in Blockbusters, my latest novel, which has been out for a couple of months. In that book, I presented a scenario whereby a group of investors might couple with new technology to bring down the Big Five media companies and reset the entertainment industry. It’s a super-entertaining book that has nothing but great reviews. (READ MORE: Blockbusters) But it’s only one vision of how things might change (they’re going to have to change, because these people don’t make profits anymore). There are others. Let’s think about this: what’s the fundamental issue in the way of quality entertainment getting to audiences? It’s this — film and TV are massively expensive undertakings, and even “low-budget” projects will cost millions of dollars to produce. Because of that, they’re the province of large corporate institutions, and those institutions have been under attack by cultural Marxists for decades. So much so that the cultural Marxists control them. And Marxists destroy everything they control. Which is why practically every piece of intellectual property corporate media produces is openly, aggressively negative toward white men or traditional America, to the immediate detriment of its profitability. And the lack of profitability means there are fewer resources to produce the same volume of IP. It ought to be understood that film is a medium that is well more than a century old. Feature films date back to the 1920s. We’ve internalized these as the dominant form of entertainment and storytelling. But is it in evidence that it’ll always be like this? Nope. I said in one of our Spectacle Podcast episodes of recent vintage that what I expect we’ll see this year is the debut of something new. I think you’re going to see something — I’ll call it a video novel, but who knows what it’ll ultimately be known as — which fuses books and movies together. (READ MORE: The Spectacle Ep. 313: Here’s What We’re Leaving Behind in 2025) I don’t have a good example of this to show you, but consider that most books now come with book trailers, which are essentially video commercials pushing the book. Those have exploded thanks to the availability of AI text-to-video apps. But the application of AI video to digital marketing for books will inevitably lead to its use within the manuscript itself. It’s only a matter of time before you start to see digital books, whether on Amazon or on their own platforms, illustrated with video clips. And once those pop, you’ll have a whole new medium that corporate media will have a hell of a time trying to control. For the price of a few subscriptions to apps like Kling, Veo, and Sora, a storyteller will be able to craft a cinematic vision of his or her product and embed it straight into the text, then deliver it on a platform like Patreon or Substack where readers can access it at their leisure for a few bucks a month. You’re getting a taste of the cinematic experience, and you’re getting it straight from the author. And it isn’t prohibitive for the storyteller to bring it to you; it won’t cost millions of dollars — thousands, is more like it. If six months go by and you haven’t seen something like this, I’ll be surprised. In fact, I’m playing around with the idea of repurposing the Tales of Ardenia novels, which were the first foray I made into fiction writing, into a video novel series. Doing that has driven me down the rabbit hole of the AI video apps, and there is an enormous amount of creative power to be wielded that people simply don’t get yet. Anyway… 5. I Have More Red Clay Strays for You A few 5QTs ago, I threw in a video from my favorite band, The Red Clay Strays out of Mobile, Alabama, of a song called “God Does.” You guys responded awfully favorably to that, so it’s been in my head that I ought to drop a couple more examples of their work. This one’s just audio. It’s from an album they dropped about a year ago that was recorded live at the Ryman Theater in Nashville, and it’s an old song of theirs called “Till Things Get Right…” And here’s a new one… READ MORE from Scott McKay: Europe Is Thus Illuminated, Exactly As It Is Was That Church Attack the Tipping Point in Minnesota? How Great Is the Great Healthcare Plan?

This week, the European Commission issued a direct challenge to the Trump administration by releasing a sprawling “Anti-Racism Strategy” for 2026–2030. The document heavily prioritizes expanding the policing of “hate speech,” especially online, framing the effort as “Stepping Up Protection Against Racial Hatred.” Last year, Vice President JD Vance delivered an address to the Munich Security Conference in which he warned, “In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.” (RELATED: Letter to the Editor: A Report From Germany — Censorship and Hope, Vance’s Speech in Munich) Evidently, however, European leaders have spit on this warning and are happily continuing plans to expand their censorship regime. Hadja Lahbib, the European Commission’s “Commissioner for Equality,” in proudly announcing Monday what she termed “Europe’s first-ever Anti-Racism Strategy,” pointed out her “curly dark hair” as a marker of her racial diversity. She went on to explain why she believes people need to be prosecuted for comments she deems to be racist. “We have extremists who are sowing fear and terror,” Lahbib lamented. “Racism is not just a question of insults, but something insidious which has wormed its way in amongst our people.” The “Anti-Racism Strategy” document fretted that “incidents of racial discrimination and racist harassment” often “go unreported.” The solution? Police and prosecutors need to increase enforcement against speech. “Enforcement of the relevant EU laws and national legal frameworks must be strengthened to prevent this,” says the document. “Protection against racist hatred must also be ensured, including online, through coordinated actions by the judiciary, police and prosecutors.” (RELATED: How Sweden’s Demographic Winter Turned It Into Europe’s Rape Capital) The reality of how this enforcement operates shows how “hate speech” codes function only to restrict civil liberties and chill speech on topics such as marriage, Islam, immigration, and abortion. Consider what happened to C.J. Hopkins, an American novelist living in Berlin. Hopkins published a book critical of the restrictions imposed on citizens during the COVID pandemic. What got him in trouble was that the book’s cover featured a swastika on a face mask, thus accusing German government officials who imposed pandemic controls of being Nazi-like. Law enforcement has interrogated him, confiscated his computer, and searched his home. And back in 2012, a Catholic bishop in Ireland was the subject of a police investigation for “hate speech” as a result of a homily he gave in which he said the Church was being “attacked from the outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture.” (RELATED: Is Hostility Against Christians Going to Increase in 2026?) Lahbib and the European Commission evidently believe that more prosecutions of this type are necessary. “Protecting people from hate crime and hate speech is at the heart of the EU’s anti-racism agenda,” declares the “Anti-Racism Strategy” document. The document goes on to detail how the European Commission is working to increase prosecutions for “hate speech.” The European Commission, the document explains, has launched “infringement proceedings” to ensure the full enforcement of the 2008 “Council Framework Decision on Combating Certain Forms and Expressions of Racism.” This 2008 document declares that “[r]acism and xenophobia constitute a threat” and that “It is necessary to define a common criminal-law approach in the European Union to this phenomenon in order to ensure that the same behaviour constitutes an offence in all Member States and that effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties are provided.” The “anti-racism” document also calls for adding “hate speech” and “hate crime” to the list of “EU crimes,” a move it says would “strengthen the legal framework on tackling hate speech and hate crime.” Citing an “absence of progress” in enforcement, the strategy also brings attention to a legislative initiative that would “harmonise definitions of online hate offences” across the 27 EU member states. The “anti-racism strategy” document further claims that the European Commission is targeting “hate speech” in places of worship. The “anti-racism strategy” document further claims that the European Commission is targeting “hate speech” in places of worship. It says it is merely “helping to improve responses to incidents of hate crime and hate speech” by supporting member states “responsible for safeguarding public spaces, including places of worship.” Further initiatives from the European Commission include encouraging member states to expand training for police officers on “hate offenses”; working with UNESCO to “strengthen anti-racism education”; and educating journalists on how to “promote fair, inclusive storytelling” through a focus on “unconscious bias” and “using responsible language.” Somehow, some European activists against “hate speech” still aren’t happy. Julie Pascoet, an activist at the European Network Against Racism, told DW, Germany’s state broadcasting network, that she is very displeased by the European Commission’s “Anti-Racist Strategy” because she believes it was tempered by officials’ fears of the Trump administration. “We don’t need the U.S. to water down our policy documents,” she said. During her press conference this week, Lahbib disputed that the document had been affected by the U.S. “When it comes to the Americans, they do what they want,” she said. “They can mock, but we are not like this. These are our values. This is who we are. When they say we are losing our identities, they shouldn’t forget that Trump, basically, is from German descent.” (Trump’s mother was born in Scotland, and her first language was Gaelic. Trump’s paternal grandparents were German immigrants.) Republicans have taken action against Europe’s growing censorship of online speech. Last year, a report from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee found that the Digital Services Act, an EU regulation requiring online platforms to censor speech deemed unlawful, “compels censorship and infringes on American free speech.” The members accused the EU of using the Digital Services Act as “a censorship tool” to require social media platforms to silence “core political discourse in Europe, the United States, and around the world.” In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on “foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States.” Former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who had a role in the creation of the Digital Services Act, was among those blocked from entering the U.S., as were the directors of the European censorship activist organization HateAid, Josephine Ballon and Anna Lena von Hodenberg. HateAid demands “[s]tate recognition of the particular seriousness of insults on the internet” and “[e]asier prosecution” of those who engage in online “hate speech.” As the EU continues to engage in this scheme of prosecuting people for online speech, it will become clear that targeting everyone who insults someone over the internet will be impossible. Instead, certain viewpoints — particularly those that are conservative — will be targeted because they are politically disfavored. A regime of ideological silencing will take over, and prosecutions will become a means of forcing conformity on the public. READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: An AI Bubble Could Pop Newsom Mamdani Appoints ‘Black Liberation’ Activist Afua Atta-Mensah After Accusations of Black Exclusion Carney Cozies Up to China

In an attempt to figuratively poke Donald Trump and the United States in the eye, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney just announced that Canada is cozying up to China by slashing tariffs on imported Chinese EVs. The new tariff rate will be just 6.1 percent, opening up his country to 49,000 Chinese vehicles initially, and increasing to 70,000 in the coming years. China “reciprocated” by dropping the tariff on Canadian canola oil to 15 percent. Carney’s determination to strike a deal with China clearly put the Chinese in a very favorable negotiating position. It would behoove Mr. Carney to have a talk with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum about the perils of economic surrender to China, especially as it relates to Chinese auto imports. (RELATED: Carney Cozies Up to China) At almost the exact moment that Carney was capitulating to China, Mexico was implementing draconian new tariffs against China, largely in response to China’s practice of dumping its glut of vehicles into the Mexican market. The auto industry is Mexico’s largest employer, providing about 350,000 jobs. Those jobs are suddenly in peril as Mexico is being flooded with inexpensive vehicles manufactured in China. The market share of Chinese vehicle sales in Mexico has exploded, from under 10 percent in 2021 to over 20 percent by 2023, and is still rising. (RELATED: Tariffs Have Created the Monster We Feared) According to a recent Automotive Logistics report, through the first nine months of 2025, China’s auto exports continued to grow by double-digit percentages, and Mexico is its biggest export market. To grasp the magnitude of China’s market share grab, the total number of new vehicles sold in Mexico in 2025 is estimated to be about 1,500,000. Through the first nine months of 2025, China had already exported almost 500,000 vehicles to Mexico, with estimates of another 100,000 being shipped to Mexico by the end of 2025, bringing the full-year total up to about 600,000 units, or equal to 40 percent of annual Mexican new car sales volume. (RELATED: America’s Trade Deficits Are Not Innocuous) Despite all the global chatter about Chinese electric vehicles, the vehicles being dumped in Mexico (and other countries) are overwhelmingly gasoline-powered internal combustion (“ICE”) vehicles, not EVs. In fact, it is the growth of EVs in China’s domestic market that is necessitating the export surge of ICE vehicles to developing countries like Mexico. Allowing Chinese vehicles into a market is not “free trade.” As reported in a Reuters article from last month titled “China floods the world with gasoline cars it can’t sell at home,” China has been subsidizing the country’s electric vehicle industry for both domestic sales and to gain market share in Europe’s government-mandated EV market space. As EV manufacturing has rapidly increased, China chose not to let its legacy ICE manufacturers suffer, so it subsidized them too, creating an immense glut of government-subsidized ICE vehicles that continue to be produced. Eight of the 10 largest Chinese vehicle exporters are manufacturers of gasoline-powered vehicles. (RELATED: Celebrating the End of EVs) Even worse, many of the Chinese auto manufacturers are state-owned. SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation), which has the largest Mexican market share of Chinese auto companies, is owned by the Chinese government. With Mexico being flooded with Chinese cars, the trade gap between the two nations has veered dramatically in China’s favor. As reported by a Mexico News Daily piece from last August, through just the first six months of 2025, Mexico had imports from China exceeding $62 billion against just $4.6 billion of exports to China. The full-year trade deficit is expected to be around $120 billion. This is almost quadruple the trade deficit of 10 years ago. Trade with China has become so one-sided and so out of balance that an overwhelming majority of Mexican legislators from across the political spectrum voted to impose harsh tariffs on China to protect Mexican labor and the businesses that employ the workforce. President Sheinbaum signed the legislation into law in late 2025. Effective Jan. 1, 2026, the new tariffs went into effect on more than 1,400 product categories from countries with which Mexico does not otherwise have trade agreements prohibiting such tariffs. The tariffs range from 5 percent to 50 percent, with a special impact on Chinese vehicle imports, for which the tariff is increasing from 20 percent to 50 percent. It’s also relevant that the USMCA trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico is scheduled for review in July 2026. Mexico will be seeking relief from U.S. tariffs, and by effectively aligning with President Trump in keeping Chinese exports out of North America, President Sheinbaum is strengthening her negotiating position. (RELATED: Trump Proved ‘Experts’ Wrong About Tariffs) Allowing Chinese vehicles into a market is not “free trade.” China has excess capacity of government-subsidized vehicles, which it is dumping into new markets, causing great harm to existing auto manufacturing operations. Many of these vehicles are manufactured by state-owned entities, whose primary purpose is to provide jobs in China, not to make a profit. Mexico has learned how damaging this trade structure is. Canada would be wise to take note. READ MORE from Buck Throckmorton: EVs and Autonomous Vehicles: General Motors’ Doomed Focus on Unprofitable Boutique Products The War on Labor Expense is Renormalizing Slavery, Just in a 21st Century Form Banks Are Racially Profiling Mortgage Applicants — The Government Requires It Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

I thoroughly enjoyed Drew Allen’s “Open Letter to Europe” in The American Spectator. I am not “Europe.” I am a tiny part of Europe. Although with all the weight I’ve gained this Christmas, I am now a slightly larger part. Large enough to respond to Allen’s kind correspondence. At least the extra weight has served some purpose, aside from causing a terrible back strain from attempting some strange strength exercise suggested by ChatGPT — probably designed by ISIS. (RELATED: An Open Letter to Europe) Back to Allen. I deeply envy your first work experience in Italy. Rome, Tuscany, Florence — anywhere in Italy represents, for me, an eternal dream destination. High on my list of things I hate not having accomplished yet are, on the one hand, moving to Italy, and on the other hand, going on a romantic date with Sydney Sweeney. Not necessarily in that order. I also toy with the idea of doing both at the same time — moving to Italy with Sydney Sweeney — but as a good Christian, I understand that at my age, Heaven will have to wait. (RELATED: The Incomprehensible Failure of My Attempts to Woo Sydney Sweeney) However, I want to tell you something. Italy, like my country, Spain, is something of a paradise within Europe. But Europe also has its hell, whose epicenter oscillates between Germany and Brussels. It is there that all the evils plaguing the EU today originate — France included, of course. I hardly need to tell you that 90 percent of the most pernicious, violent, and stupid ideas of the last few centuries originated in France. Sometimes, when I see Macron wearing Hells Angels-style sunglasses, I think that when the French began cutting off heads, they consciously agreed to decapitate all the intelligent people in their country. They didn’t leave a single one. The heirs of the executioners haven’t improved things. The last intelligent Frenchman is Michel Houellebecq. I suppose that’s why they’re always trying to assassinate him. (RELATED: The Art of Being an Idiot) The origin of the current pro-China and anti-American stance among Europe’s political elites is not explained by ideology or geopolitics, but by corruption. There is a factor you don’t mention in your letter, yet it is often more illuminating than a simple ideological battle: the origin of the current pro-China and anti-American stance among Europe’s political elites is not explained by ideology or geopolitics, but by corruption. China has infiltrated the elites in Brussels across all parties, with the exception — at least for now — of the new right. Giant Chinese corporations, for example, employ the children of some leaders of the European People’s Party, that immense political fraud masquerading as conservative — a kind of posthumous tribute to wokism. As always, they’re late to the party, and now they’re becoming “woke” just as even the left has abandoned that madness. Meanwhile, Beijing-funded think tanks pay substantial sums to socialist and social democratic leaders. They are all bound by the sickle — which they have never actually held — and the hammer, which terrifies them. Trump is right when he shouts in Europe’s face, “Aren’t you surprised that the Chinese manufacture so many wind turbines and sell them, but never install them in their own country?” Although Trump is also being naïve about this. The real reason the European Green Deal and all that garbage have triumphed among the elites is corruption, not conviction. Corrupt people never reason from rhetorical questions. (RELATED: Europe Is Thus Illuminated, Exactly As It Is) Nevertheless, Drew, there is light at the end of the tunnel. As I wrote here a few days ago, the EU no longer exists as such. My thesis is that we live in post-European times — not in the sense that the continent has ceased to exist, but in terms of the EU, which today is nothing more than ash and scorched earth. Corruption, stupidity, and above all, the arrogance of figures like von der Leyen have brought the edifice down. It was an easy structure to tear down. The Europe you and I know will never fall. The Europe of Notre Dame, the Colosseum, Don Quixote, and the Sistine Chapel is founded on Greece, Rome, and Christianity. The EU, by contrast, through the efforts of left-wing political elites and cowardly center-right politicians, was constitutionally founded by erasing all traces of Christianity and renouncing its heritage. In other words, it was built on feet of clay. Its downfall only surprises the idiots who promoted that Masonic constitution in the French style. (RELATED: Thank You, Trump, for Reminding Europe’s Leaders How Utterly Stupid They Are) The EU has always been a chimera, a construct that seems designed by sociologists or social engineers, and it will never be real. The European Economic Community had its purpose; the EU has lost it. Europe does not exist. What exists are strong nations of precious diversity that manage to agree on a series of things, building on their shared cultural heritage. Everything else is smoke. And what is the great light? The greatest reason for hope is that the traditional parties — social democracy and Christian democracy — are in decline. Across Europe, a network of patriotic, conservative, unapologetically right-wing parties is growing, fully aware of the importance of national sovereignty, the fight against communism, and the Atlantic alliance that enriches the West. These new right-wing parties are not yet winning elections in every country, partly because the left and the center-right, backed by their legion of bureaucrats, maneuver like desperate, dying men to exclude them, unite against them, or even attempt to declare them unconstitutional. But it doesn’t matter. Change is unstoppable in the streets. And it will be good for Europe. And it will be good for the West. And, of course, it will be good for the United States. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: Thank You, Trump, for Reminding Europe’s Leaders How Utterly Stupid They Are The Sports I Tried While Trying to Lose Weight It Was Bound to Happen: Brooklyn Hipsters Now Want to Return to the ’90s Internet

“Vanity made the Revolution; liberty was only a pretext,” is a quote widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte — and germane to President Trump’s continued fixation with the Nobel Peace Prize and the political consequences for Venezuela. As is well known, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s freedom movement. Her merits? She has fought the Chavista dictatorship ever since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999 and started dismantling the country’s institutions. At first, she did so through an NGO focused on monitoring electoral processes, then through political participation. Rather than go into exile, this woman, who comes from a well-known family and was trained as an industrial engineer, chose to risk everything for the pursuit of liberty. (RELATED: Maria Corina Machado Getting the Nobel Peace Prize Is Just Fine) She was beaten up, harassed, kidnapped, prosecuted in Chavez’s and Nicolás Maduro’s (his equally despicable successor) kangaroo courts, barred from leaving the country, and prevented from seeing her children — who had to settle abroad, graduate, launch their own careers, get married and have children — and was disqualified from holding public office — first by being expelled from the National Assembly and subsequently by being prevented from participating in any election. Because she was a woman, because she was uncompromising, and because she had classical liberal convictions, she was poo-pooed even by the opposition, who did not take her seriously. Gradually, at an ant-like pace, she earned the respect of the voters. A quarter of a century later, she became a widely admired national figure and her country’s only hope. In the 2023 primaries organized without the participation of the authorities, she obtained 92 percent of the vote to represent the united opposition in the following year’s presidential elections, in which dictator Nicolás Maduro would seek his third mandate. Of course, she was disqualified. But she found a replacement in Edmundo González, a mild-mannered diplomat in his mid-seventies whom very few Venezuelans had heard about, but who had the courage to accept the challenge. María Corina’s endorsement made it possible for him to win the July 2024 election with almost 70 percent of the vote. How do we know? Because Machado mounted one of the most brilliant operations ever organized by a freedom movement under a brutal totalitarian regime. With the help, or the passive acceptance, of government security forces guarding many of the polling stations and thousands of well-trained independent voters, she obtained tally sheets reflecting the real vote and relayed them electronically to the outside world. Despite a repression that reached horrendous levels (thousands were imprisoned, many were killed), González and Machado held several protest rallies. Eventually, González went into exile; his son-in-law was kidnapped by the regime in an attempt to keep the winner quiet. Machado stayed in the country, went into hiding, and continued to agitate for recognition of the election results and to call for the fall of the regime, appealing to the military to turn their backs on Maduro. She promised a peaceful transition and an amnesty for the men and women in uniform, as well as the government’s civilians, except those personally guilty of heinous crimes. This is the heroic woman who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 — a symbol of her people’s endurance in the face of one of the most tragic stories of the 21st century. She said it belonged to the Venezuelan people and promised to bring the medal to them. Until Trump stepped in — and practically forced her to “share” it with him, as she did recently during her visit to the White House. Forget that the Nobel Prize cannot be transferred or shared, as the Norwegian Nobel Committee recently said. What kind of leader would take away from a woman like Machado and the Venezuelan people the Nobel Prize? The Donald Trump kind. The U.S. president has held a gun to Machado’s head since the day she got it by using all sorts of tactics—diminishing her role, ignoring her, then insulting her, and finally leaving her out of the transition process underway in Venezuela under the leadership of the entire Chavista apparatus except Maduro, who was captured and transferred to a U.S. prison. A man who presides over a $1trillion military budget, controls more than three thousand nuclear warheads, has declared himself the ruler of Venezuela and the owner of its oil, and has twelve warships and the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group in the Caribbean, put Machado in an impossible position. Either she “shared” the prize with him, or she and the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans who see her as the country’s true leader would be indefinitely bypassed until such time as Trump decides that elections should be held with other “more palatable” candidates. Meanwhile, she swallowed her pride, kept her eyes on the endgame, cajoled him, and played into his ego by “sharing” the Nobel Prize with him despite criticism from many Venezuelans and others, in the hope that by massaging the U.S. president’s vanity, she would achieve her lifelong pursuit — the liberation of the Venezuelan people. Because, in the end, these small humiliations are nothing compared to the ones she has suffered in Venezuela for the cause of freedom. Alvaro Vargas Llosa, son of a Nobel Prize winner, is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif. His latest book is “Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization and America.” READ MORE: Trump, Nobel, and the Globalism of Oslo The Nobel Peace Prize Hits Rock Bottom

by Jim Hoft, The Gateway Pundit: After 77 years, the United States has officially severed ties with the corrupt, China-influenced, and globalist-controlled World Health Organization (WHO). President Donald Trump, fulfilling a promise he made to the American people, completed the withdrawal on Thursday, exactly one year after signing the executive order that set the wheels in […]

by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics: Newly released emails show that Anthony Fauci KNEW that natural immunity was more effective than the COVID vaccine. If you want to understand how the modern world is collapsing, you have to stop pretending this was ever purely about “health.” COVID was not simply a virus. It was a stress test on society to […]