Think of the happiest people you know. Do you find yourself often wondering what they are doing to maintain a general level of joy? There has been a lot of discussion in the scientific world about whether our overall levels of happiness are the result of a genetic lottery that leads to a “set point” that people tend to default to. If that’s the case, then is there any way that you can “level up” in the happiness game? There is significant evidence that suggests that some people are simply happier than others due to certain mechanisms that they tend to employ which keeps their baseline happiness relatively constant. However, don’t despair, some habits can affect how happy people are, so just because some people are more genetically disposed towards happiness doesn’t mean that your happiness is out of your hands. Here are three habits of especially happy people. Set the right type of goals The kinds of goals you pursue certainly affect your long-term happiness. The happiest people tend to pursue goals that connect them to others. For example, those who see their careers as part of a broader purpose that involves helping other people are often happier in their professional lives, which generally lifts your overall happiness. To get more specific, happy people set goals that are cooperative rather than competitive or comparative. A comparative goal is one where you want to see yourself do better in comparison with others, whereas a cooperative goal is one where you strive for the success of your friends, family, neighborhood, and community. This allows those who engage in cooperative goals to celebrate their own success, as well as the success of those around them. Accentuate the positive As the saying goes, life isn’t black and white. Most experiences have pros and cons. Happier people will choose to focus on the more positive aspects of any given situation, making the negative aspects less noticeable as they fade into the background. Focusing on the positive has two benefits for well-being. Firstly, the perception of each experience is more enjoyable because the focus is on the good. Secondly, focusing on the good parts of any experience at the moment will translate into your memories (because the information that you focus on is what stays in the memory), so when you look back on the experience, you’ll perceive it as a happy memory, which in turn will boost your overall happiness. Forgive others No one is perfect, which means that even the people you hold most dear will likely do something to offend you. Happy people forgive others well, which enables them to forget the irksome details of what people have done to upset them in the first place. As a result, you won’t be reminded of those negative things when you see or think about the offender in the future. On the other hand, those who do not forgive others end up holding on to negative feelings and perceptions of those who have wronged them. Social pain tends to stick around longer than physical pain because simply remembering an event or experience can regenerate feelings of anger, shame, or embarrassment. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that you’re letting them off the hook, or that you must continue spending time with them—forgiveness simply lets you move past unpleasant interactions without holding on to negative feelings that will drag down your mood and ultimately mess with your happiness.The post 3 habits of the happiest people first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Our knowledge concerning human evolution is apt to be limited and general. We’re unlikely to know the specifics about how our various body parts—eyes, nose, ears, tongue, hands, feet, knees, spine, and genitals—originated. We’re also probably curious about these matters; the need to know is basic to all of us, after all. This list will […] The post 10 Amazing Origins of Human Body Parts appeared first on Listverse.

How do you think you will die? It’s a morbid question, sure. But one thing is for certain about this life: we’ll all leave it at one point or another. And for most of us, we’ll not only have very little control over how we die but also where and when. Sure, we’d love to […] The post 10 of the Most Unusual Deaths Ever Recorded in History appeared first on Listverse.

The European Union may have just taken a big step to the political right, and the Biden administration should take note, Nile Gardiner says.  “I think that the Biden White House is going to be very nervous, looking at the results in Europe, because European voters have overwhelmingly turned against a lot of the left-wing dogma and agenda, not only [that] Europe leads, but the same agenda that is pursued by the Biden administration,” says Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation.  The European Parliament held elections Thursday through Sunday, in which millions of Europeans cast their ballots across 27 countries, and Europe’s conservatives won big.  “I would describe the election results over the weekend as nothing short of a political revolution within Europe—a firm rejection of socialist ruling elites,” says Gardiner, who prior to joining Heritage in 2002 was foreign policy researcher for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In response to this “political revolution,” French President Emmanuel Macron has called for snap legislative elections at the end of June and beginning of July. According to Gardiner, this is a very risky move for Macron, as he is giving the French electorate the chance to further embrace a conservative government.  Gardiner joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the implications of the European elections on the U.S.  Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript: Virginia Allen: It is my privilege to welcome to the show today Nile Gardiner. He serves as the director for the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation. Nile, lots of news to jump in today. Thank you so much for being here. Nile Gardiner: It’s my pleasure. Great to be here. Thank you. Allen: The European Parliament is the legislative body for the European Union, and there are 720 seats in the European Parliament. And after 185 million votes were cast in Europe across 27 countries, Europe’s conservatives won. Big, Nile. Were conservatives expected to have so much success in this parliamentary election in Europe? Gardiner: Well, I think that the expectation in advance was that conservative parties would make significant gains, but the sheer scale of the victories that we’ve seen by parties on the Right across Europe exceeded expectations. And I would describe the election results over the weekend as nothing short of a political revolution within Europe, a firm rejection of socialist ruling elites. And I think that millions upon millions of European voters were saying that they wanted to have a voice in Europe, that they were against a lot of the policies being advanced by European leaders. And I think that in many respects the overwhelming rejection of socialist policies in Europe is the shape of things to come really for the future of Europe. I do think that we are looking at the rolling back of socialist, big government power in Europe. And that’s a very good thing for Europe. It’s a good thing for the United States as well to see that happening. Allen: And I’m excited to talk in just a moment a little bit about what this does mean for the United States, but what are Europeans embracing? What is the platform that the Conservative Party really advocates for in Europe? And by saying, “Yes, we want to elect leaders who represent that platform,” what are Europeans signaling? Gardiner: Well, we have a very wide range of parties on the Right in Europe and there is tremendous variation from country to country. But I think some common themes emerged from these election results. Firstly, I think that European voters emphatically rejected mass migration, illegal migration, the open borders mindset that has been dominant in Europe for so many decades. And voters said, “Enough is enough.” They’re concerned about rising crime. They’re concerned about the Islamification of their countries and huge issue in countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, for example, Italy—concerns over large-scale migration from Islamic countries and the Islamification of Europe. I do think the issue of migration was front and center in this election and probably the most important issue for European voters. I think, secondly, the election results were a rejection of net-zero policies, the far-left’s environmental agenda, the green agenda—which many in Europe view as fundamentally destructive in terms of economic growth, in terms of job creation. And millions of European voters view net-zero policies as incredibly expensive, at the expense of European people. So, I think that we saw sort of the net-zero elites being humbled in this election. So, environmental issues very important and European voters do not want to see the huge costs associated with net-zero policies. I think, thirdly, we saw a success for a wide range of Euroskeptic political parties across Europe parties that believe that there should not be a federal Europe. Many of these political parties believe there’s too much power in Brussels. Some of the political parties in Europe believe that European government should follow the example of Brexit and should go down the path of restoring sovereignty and self-determination. Brexit, I think, has been a tremendous game-changer for Europe. The Brexit vote was 2016, but here we are in 2024 and the shock waves of Brexit are still spreading across Europe in a major way. And that’s a good thing because Brexit is all about sovereignty, self-determination, taking power away from unelected elites. Brexit is fundamentally democratic. And I do think that we’re seeing the rise of Euroskeptic parties who do not believe in the creation of a federal Europe, who want to see power restored to nation-states. So, I think a rejection of European socialist elites was a big part of this vote over the weekend. Allen: There will now be many conservatives in the European Parliament. How is that going to change the EU as a whole? Gardiner: Well, there’ll be several hundred conservatives of the European Parliament spread across multiple different political parties and also political groupings. And I do think this will result in a European Parliament that’s going to push back a lot more against the centralized power of Brussels, pushing back against the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU. And this is a big positive. In terms of what this means for the United States, I think that the Biden White House is going to be very nervous looking at the results in Europe, because European voters have overwhelmingly turned against a lot of the left-wing dogma and agenda not only of European leads, but the same agenda that is pursued by the Biden administration. Here in the United States, you’ve seen over 10 million illegal migrants cross the U.S. border under the Biden presidency. You’ve seen the Biden administration advancing an extreme left-wing environmentalist agenda, which is hugely costly to the U.S. economy. And European electors have rejected this agenda. I think also in Europe, as well, millions of voters have rejected far-left woke ideology that left-wing elites have pushed in Europe for the last couple of decades. And so, all of this actually bodes very badly, I think, for the Biden presidency because European voters have the same issues, the same concerns that American voters have and voters across Europe have said a firm “no” to woke left-wing ideology. And they’re calling for strong border controls. They are calling for the restoration of national sovereignty. They are calling for an agenda that is culturally conservative. And all of this, I think, is problematic for the left-wing Biden administration. And I imagine a lot of the Biden advisers around the president are nervous, horrified by what’s happening. And that’s a very good thing, isn’t it? Really. And it’s a good thing when European voters turn against far-left domination. And American voters, of course, have exactly the same concerns about what is the most left-wing presidency in American history that is causing immense damage to the United States at home and abroad. So, what happens in Europe I think will have an impact in the United States. What happens in Europe matters and the developments across the Atlantic should be closely watched here in the U.S. Allen: We’ve seen that play out time and time again on various issues that often Europe forwards into something and then the United States follows. And so, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this does play out in American—specifically, what cues the Biden administration takes from this. Now, before we let you go, I do want to get your thoughts on France’s response. French President Emmanuel Macron, in response to this election, made an announcement that he’s going to hold snap parliamentary elections in France. Is this common? Explain what’s going on here. Gardiner: It’s a very rare move, actually, by the French president. This has only happened on a few occasions in French history where Parliament has been dissolved. It’s a very dangerous move, of course, for Macron. He was absolutely humiliated in these elections. His party received only around 14% to 15% of the vote. And they were absolutely trounced by right-wing French parties. And so, I think that this is a huge gamble by the French president because parliamentary elections in France could deliver a resounding victory for the opposition National Rally party, who made huge inroads in the European parliamentary elections. They pulled in over 30% of the vote and Emmanuel Macron could end up potentially as a lame-duck president ahead of the next presidential elections in France, which are, actually, in 2027. So, a high-risk move by Emmanuel Macron. This is a president who’s in real trouble. He is one of the most unpopular presidents in French history. And the French people are very, very upset on multiple fronts—everything from soaring mass migration to rising crime, unrest in French cities, social disorder. This is a country in real crisis in so many respects. And at the ballot box last week, French voters said they had enough of Emmanuel Macron. So, let’s see what happens with the parliamentary elections that are coming up at the end of June and also into July. And we’ll see whether Macron ends up as a lame-duck president. There’s a strong possibility of that. Allen: But yet he seemed to feel that it was worth the risk. Gardiner: Yeah. You know, for some reason, Macron felt emboldened to hold a parliamentary election. I think it could be disastrous for him. We’ll have to see what the French voters decide, but Macron is an incredibly unpopular figure in France. And I think that French voters are angry and many want to see him out of office. So, the parliamentary elections probably will not go very well for him. Allen: Nile, any final thoughts on issues that Americans should be aware of as we continue to see the fallout from this election in the EU? Gardiner: Yeah. That’s a great question. In my view, it’s in the interest of the United States to support a Europe that believes in national sovereignty, self-determination, strong borders. It’s in America’s interests for Europe to move in the direction it’s moving right now. And I think that the American people should welcome the results in Europe this past weekend. These are positive results for the United States. And it’s a demonstration of the fact that European voters are, in many respects, actually like their American counterparts. And they don’t believe in being ruled by far left-wing elites. They’ve had enough and they’ve spoken out at the ballot box over the last few days. I think what we’re seeing in Europe should be greatly welcomed here in the United States, is a very positive development moving forward. The post European Parliament Elections Likely to Make Biden ‘Very Nervous’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Wokeness is impossible to escape. Everywhere you turn, you see rainbow flags, Black Lives Matter signs, or calls for “diversity and inclusion.” Companies force DEI trainings on staff. FBI agents march in Pride parades. Teachers tell kids in school that they are oppressors or oppressed based on their skin color. Target stores sell transgender swimsuits and Bud Light teams up with a grown man who acts like a little girl. Even Buzz Lightyear and “Star Wars” have gone woke. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is falling all over itself to push transgender pronouns, to promote drag queens, and to celebrate Pride—even on Easter Sunday! It’s enough to drive anyone with common sense up a wall. Yet when Americans dare to say, “Enough!” they find themselves branded “authoritarian” for wanting a moment’s peace. If you don’t get on board with woke, you oppose “democracy.” You’re a bigot, a racist, or a Christian nationalist. Where does this insane idea come from? It comes from the spin masters at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC has long demonized mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits by putting them on a map with Ku Klux Klan chapters. It updates this “hate map” annually with a “Year in Hate and Extremism” report for the previous year. On Tuesday, it published the report for 2023. That report reads like a dispatch from a “Handmaid’s Tale” dystopia, where evil white Christian jackbooted thugs have seized control of the government and are forcing everyone to adopt their propaganda. The report is so divorced from reality, it would be downright hilarious if so much of the legacy media, corporate America, the Democrats, and the Department of Justice didn’t take it deadly seriously. In a classic case of projection, the SPLC report warns that the Right is trying to take control of the culture and erase the poor persecuted left-wing minority groups while the SPLC covers for the woke movement, which has already seized the commanding heights of American culture and is straining to silence dissent. It calls conservative efforts “ethnocide” (the erasure of an ethnic group’s culture, akin to genocide), and “Christian supremacy.” Back at home in the real world, the woke elites have already taken control of the culture and worked to dismantle America’s heritage. Christians, Jews, and even atheists who hold beliefs about the world and America that used to be the norm find themselves living in what feels like a different country—nay, a different world. Education Woke ideology has seeped into the education system at an alarming pace. Critical race theory, or CRT—a lens by which teachers tell white students they are oppressors and black students they are oppressed in a “systemically racist” America—amounts to a new form of “anti-racist” discrimination on the basis of race. Transgender ideology teaches kids that males can become female and vice versa, encouraging experimental medical interventions while ignoring the horrific toll that “gender-affirming care” takes on young bodies. Yet for the spin masters at the SPLC, efforts to weaken the suffocating grasp of woke ideology on America’s institutions amount to cultural tyranny. To them, commonsense Americans’ campaign against critical race theory and transgender ideology in schools is a form of oppression, while “drag queen story hour” is a symbol of “freedom” and is important for “democracy.” The SPLC has something of a fetish for drag queens. Not only did it praise drag as a symbol of "freedom" and a tool to promote "democratic engagement," but it attacked @againstgrmrs for protesting "drag queen story hour." ?? pic.twitter.com/DhIHCyxW86— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 7, 2024 The “Year in Hate and Extremism” includes a long section demonizing parental rights groups and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for “ethnocide through authoritarianism.” That section compares Florida’s efforts to prevent discrimination (what else do you call shaming students for the color of their skin?) to the “forced acculturation” of Native Americans in previous eras. It suggests parental rights groups and DeSantis are trying to “control a man’s thinking” to make minority groups more subservient. Another section raises the alarm about school choice, suggesting that it is a secret “Dominionist Christian” plot to take over society. The SPLC warns against “dominionism,” the idea that “only Christians … have the right to control government and all influential posts in society and culture.” “The goal of much of this theology is to strip government of functions such as education and welfare and … reserve those for churches,” the SPLC warns. It claims “dominionists” want to “siphon off public funds and put them in the hands of a reactionary minority.” The SPLC strains to connect its attack on school choice to racial segregation. It warns that dominionism aims “to fulfill a decades-old dream, begun when segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional, to keep education shackled to a narrow, authoritarian version of Christianity.” So, parents who are fed up with the woke takeover of public education, who want to find schools that won’t indoctrinate their kids into CRT and transgender orthodoxy, and who want the education dollars they pay in taxes to follow their children when they leave this woke school system are pushing a form of segregationist “authoritarianism?” If anyone is “authoritarian” in this situation, it’s the leftist activists who subverted the public school system in the first place, not the parents who want another option. Religious Freedom The SPLC report also demonizes efforts to defend religious freedom. The “Year in Hate” goes out of its way to attack House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., mostly for his previous work with the Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. The SPLC claims that ADF “often pits Christians unfairly against LGBTQ+ people in a legal gambit to undermine nondiscrimination laws through claims of ‘religious freedom.’” In reality, ADF’s most famous client, Christian baker Jack Phillips, will gladly sell cakes to anyone, but he refuses to craft custom cakes to celebrate same-sex weddings because he believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Colorado’s government used a “nondiscrimination” law to punish him for this, and ADF sued on his behalf. ADF did not “unfairly” pit anyone against anyone. LGBTQ activists are constantly demonizing conservative Christians and attempting to silence them. The SPLC demonizes ADF for pushing back. Shoring up the Deep State The SPLC report also condemns an effort to restrain the federal bureaucracy, which has acted like a “deep state” under former President Donald Trump and under President Joe Biden. Bureaucrats bragged about opposing Trump from within, and many officials have openly complained about Biden’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza. Project 2025, a coalition of more than 100 commonsense and conservative organizations led by my former employer, The Heritage Foundation, aims to rein in the administrative state and make it more accountable to the people’s elected president, as the Constitution envisions. The SPLC faults the coalition for working with “at least nine hate and antigovernment groups with strong ties to the Republican Party,” singling out mainstream conservative organizations that the SPLC has repeatedly attacked: ADF, the Center for Immigration Studies, and Moms for Liberty. “The coalition’s ‘Mandate for Leadership’ [a manual for the next conservative president containing policy recommendations for reforming federal agencies] characterizes Christianity as under threat and frames some policy recommendations as part of a ‘Judeo-Christian tradition,’” the SPLC notes. “It also calls for staffing the federal bureaucracy with ideologues recruited with the assistance of many partner groups.” The SPLC suggests that Christianity is not under threat, that the Judeo-Christian tradition does not undergird American freedom, and that the federal bureaucracy has not already been flooded with ideologues—and the SPLC is completely wrong on all three counts. The organization and its allies are the very people threatening conservative Christianity, demonizing the Judeo-Christian tradition, and seeding the administrative state with left-wing activists. When conservatives launch a plan to counter this influence and restore sanity to the situation, the SPLC cries foul. Antisemitism Perhaps the most galling aspect of the SPLC’s report involves antisemitism, however. The SPLC admits that “antisemitism on college campuses” is a “legitimate issue,” yet it does not condemn any group for harassing Jews on campus. It does not mention the anti-Israel agitators at the New York college Cooper Union who locked Jewish students inside a library while shouting, “Free Palestine!” It does not mention the anti-Israel demonstrator who physically blocked a Jewish student from walking on the University of California, Los Angeles, campus. Instead, the report states that “a faux hypersensitivity toward antisemitism was particularly visible among right-wing media and politicians in the United States as they utilized the legitimate issue of antisemitism on college campuses to disingenuously further an attack on higher education.” Almost as an afterthought, the SPLC notes that colleges should “review and revise their policies,” before it moves on to condemning the conservatives who call out antisemitism. These “accusers need to acknowledge their own ties to antisemitic narratives before accusing others,” the scolding SPLC intones. “Certain politicians targeting education overlook their associations with groups like Moms for Liberty, which has a chapter that quoted Hitler, and entities like PragerU, known for promoting right-wing ideas and neglecting the realities of slavery and indigenous peoples in American history, and fostering a pro-white Protestant narrative that emboldens extremist groups.” In other words, conservatives can’t criticize anti-Israel rioters for antisemitism because one Moms for Liberty chapter quoted Hitler—never mind that the chapter was quoting Hitler ironically to demonstrate how the woke Left took over education. Conservatives can’t speak up about Jews getting harassed because they might agree with PragerU, which presents Judeo-Christian heritage as a good thing. Oh, horrors! The SPLC also warned, “The upcoming election year will likely witness a continued use of George Soros as an antisemitic trope to symbolize the existence of the ‘deep state.’” Never mind that George Soros, a Hungarian American hedge fund billionaire of Jewish heritage, bankrolls a broad swath of the modern Left and is largely responsible for the “Rogue Prosecutor” movement that helps elect left-wing local prosecutors who refuse to prosecute most crimes, all in the name of racial equity. Never mind that his son, Alex Soros, who has now taken the reins at his father’s Open Society Foundations, is providing free political advice to Democrats in opposing Trump. Ignore all that and remember: It is the height of “antisemitism” to suggest that George Soros may be impacting our political system! Democrats should refer to Trump as a convicted felon at every opportunity. Repetition is the key to a successful message and we want people to wrestle with the notion of hiring a convicted felon for the most important job in the country! ?? https://t.co/WLLMWatlkP— Alex Soros (@AlexanderSoros) May 31, 2024 Of course, the SPLC doesn’t just defend Soros out of the goodness of its heart. It has financially benefited from Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society, which gave the SPLC a $75,000 grant in 2016. Rather than addressing the antisemitism on college campuses, the SPLC weaponizes the issue against conservatives and defends its political allies. ‘White Supremacy’ Longtime readers know that I almost always bring up a few points when writing on the SPLC. First, my book, “Making Hate Pay,” documents how the SPLC became the far-left smear factory it is today. It took its “hate map”—a fundraising tool masquerading as a report on white supremacist terror networks left over from the Ku Klux Klan—and weaponized it to demonize conservatives. Second, both my book and my reporting illustrate how the SPLC is notoriously unreliable, and a court is actively considering defamation claims against the center. The latest SPLC report once again demonstrates that the “hate map” smears mainstream conservative and Christian organizations by associating them with the Klan. The SPLC spells out that association in black and white in the report’s introduction: “The Southern Poverty Law Center’s preeminent ‘Year in Hate’ report provides a comprehensive analysis of the organizational infrastructure—the groups—upholding white supremacy in the United States.” In short, if you disagree with the SPLC’s agenda, you’re part of the “white supremacy” nexus supporting “ethnocide,” “Christian supremacy,” “authoritarianism,” and whatever new term we can think of to make you seem nefarious. The only way to escape these epithets, you see, is to get with the all-of-government, all-of-society woke CRT transgender program, which isn’t authoritarian at all. The post SPLC Brands Conservatives’ Response to Woke Culture Takeover ‘Christian Supremacy,’ ‘Ethnocide’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Self-described “drag queen” Brigitte Bandit, who claims to be a biological female, was a featured speaker at the Texas Democratic Convention on Saturday and told the audience that they had “a duty”…

According to Access to Information documents, Canadian Armed Forces vaccine injuries skyrocketed from 14 in 2020 to 128 in 2021, an 800% increase, with over 100 injuries being attributed to Moderna’s experimental […]

by Frank Bergman, Slay News: The Australian Senate has just launched a major inquiry into the nation’s soaring numbers of excess deaths among the widely vaccinated population. The country has suffered staggering losses since the mass vaccination program was launched in 2021. Australia led the world in tyrannical lockdowns and vaccine mandates during, and after, […]