The Left has let the mask slip and made clear that it intends to pack or otherwise decimate the Supreme Court. President Joe Biden announced last week in a Washington Post op-ed that he would promote a “reform” of the nation’s highest court that would include term limits and new “ethics” rules for justices. The plan was signed off on by Vice President Kamala Harris, who at this point appears to be the de facto president with Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. The Left’s plan to bork the court isn’t just being backed by the White House; it’s being adopted by prominent Democrats and members of the left-wing literati. “The Supreme Court has become a morass, both ethically and substantively,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. told NBC News after Biden’s announcement. “We’re going to look at everything. There are lots of proposals.” A leftist law professor at Northwestern University wrote for The Hill that Biden didn’t go far enough and that the White House should just start packing the Supreme Court without bothering to soft-pedal it with term limits. These threats should be taken seriously. Justice Neil Gorsuch weighed in over the weekend on Fox News, saying that the Biden administration—presumably including Harris—should “be careful” about threatening the independent judiciary. Gorsuch noted that it’s important for Americans to be confident that even “when you’re unpopular you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution.” Gorsuch then asked, rhetorically: “Don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American?” I don’t think the Left actually cares about that. Many leftists are seemingly happy with a two-tiered system of justice as long as they control it and decide which people deserve what the Left sees as government-granted rights. The God-given rights explicitly cited in our Declaration of Independence are just a crazy, right-wing, Christian nationalist fantasy, they say. Once leftists think they’ve taken unassailable political power, they think any limitation of their power is unacceptable. Leftists rely on powerful, unelected institutions—whether higher education, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Big Tech companies, federal and state bureaucracies, and often the courts—to effectively carry out their agenda perpetually, regardless of elections or their popularity.  They’ve made long-term bets that those who control institutions control the future. And it’s hard to deny that the Left no longer marches through the institutions; the institutions are marching on the Left’s behalf. It’s this institutional ecosystem they’re referring to as they perpetually lament that “our democracy” is under threat by former President Donald Trump or Project 2025 or whatever their boogeyman of the moment is. Which leads us to Democrats’ plan to “reform” the Supreme Court. Right now, the high court operates as one of the few checks on the Left’s power. Instead of just court-packing right away during the Biden presidency, a tactic unlikely to work with Republican opponents in the Senate, leftists used the past few years to do everything in their power to smear the court as illegitimate. The Left likes to promote the idea that public confidence in the Supreme Court has dropped to a “historic low.” That may be technically true, but the court only hit that historic low because of its collapse among Democrats.  Also, how are other institutions doing these days? Mostly a whole lot worse. Much of the Supreme Court’s collapse in trust happened—no surprise—during Biden’s presidency. The court didn’t simply rubber-stamp the administration’s policies and power grabs, and when it overturned the bad precedent of Roe v. Wade, it sent the Left into a tizzy.  The Left’s elite media allies went into action, cooking up bogus scandals to create the illusion that Republican presidents’ appointees to the Supreme Court are crooked or wild-eyed maniacs. Remember the dopey flag stories targeting Justice Samuel Alito? All those reports were meant to ensure that the Left’s base would turn fully against the high court, and that largely worked. Alito, Clarence Thomas, and other conservative members of the Supreme Court on the Left’s hit list haven’t backed down, haven’t resigned, and haven’t recused themselves from specific cases. This gave the Left a green light to say, “See, we tried to appeal to reason, now we have no choice but to take action.” It’s hard to see the Left and the Democrat Party refraining from taking the next step.  The radicals aren’t just going to patiently wait for Supreme Court justices’ retirements this time. They’ve lined up their metaphorical cannons and await the right political moment to declare a mandate and launch the hostile takeover, consequences be damned. The post The Left Plans to Demolish the Supreme Court appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Today, people are taught, when it comes to slavery, America was the worst. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., actually said, “The United States didn’t inherit slavery from anybody. We created it.” An MSNBC “expert” claims that “American slavery was worse because slaves were treated as property.” “That’s complete nonsense,” replies political science professor Wilfred Reilly in my new video. “Generational slavery, [where] if you’re the son of a slave, you’re a slave … that was extraordinarily common.” Reilly’s new book, “Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me,” rebuts anti-American propaganda that dominates many American schoolbooks today. Partly thanks to The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” students are taught that “America’s slavery [was] unlike anything that had existed before.” “There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging your historical mistakes,” Reilly responds. “I’m Black, Irish, a bit Native American … . Those are three peoples who have experienced a great deal historically. Nothing wrong with acknowledging that. But it’s extremely odd to focus only on the negatives of your society. And to exaggerate those!” Kids are now taught that slavers bought people in Africa and shipped them to the United States. Few are taught that most were shipped elsewhere. “Between 10.7 million and 12 million slaves from Africa went to the New World. We got a little under 400,000,” says Reilly. That’s less than 4%. “The extreme focus on slavery in the United States, why did that happen?” asks Reilly. “One reason is that a lot of black people survived here. Slavery was harsh, but a lot less harsh than clearing the Brazilian jungle.” “But American blacks are at a disadvantage,” I push back. “They have less capital, financial and educational capital. What’s the harm in pointing out how abusive white people were?” “The harm,” he replies, “is that pointing out how abusive white people were is not going to get black Americans any more capital. Most problems in the modern black community don’t have anything to do with historical ethnic conflict 160 years ago.” Reilly says today’s problems began when government welfare began. “Crime in the black community,” he says, “increased about 800% between [around] 1963 and 1993. Racism didn’t increase between 1960 and the modern era. You’re looking at the impacts of the Great Society, the welfare programs.” It’s better to teach the truth, says Reilly. Almost every society had slavery. “The Arabs were history’s premier slave traders. Muslims took so many blond slaves out of the [Slavic] region, they gave the world the name ‘Slav’ [or] ‘slave,’ to the global slave population.” Arabs captured and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans. Years later, the first people who seriously tried to abolish slavery were white Westerners: The British and then Americans. They called slavery immoral. “Yeah, the British navy,” Reilly explains, “in a story almost no one now knows, sank 1,600 slave ships. They freed 150,000 people that were enslaved at the time.” By contrast, Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962. And even now, the Global Slavery Index estimates that there are still 700,000 slaves in Saudi Arabia. “Where there were no Westerners,” Reilly notes, “you’d have a lot of slavery for a long time.” American slavery was horrible. But it wasn’t unique. And we didn’t “create it.” Our culture would be healthier if we learned about that. Schools dwelling on early America’s evils hasn’t helped Americans get over them. Gallup polls show that since schools started focusing on racism, race relations has gotten worse. “The idea of generational slavery, the idea of slave trading,” Reilly says, “none of that was unique to America. You don’t need radicalism to critique the worst excess of an existing system. All you need is incrementalism and honesty.” Next week, I’ll report on another myth; namely, the claim that, before Christopher Columbus, the natives were “kind stewards of the environment.” Kids believe it. After all, it’s what Disney movies teach. But that’s not true either. Copyright 2024 BY JFS Productions Inc. Distributed by Creators.com. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Truth About Slavery in America: Neither First, Nor Worst appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrats Meddling in Alaska Congressional Primary

New Limits on Abortion in New York Introduced by...Planned Parenthood?

In 1947, a covert Soviet test facility carried out experiments into sleep. The researchers took several test subjects – prison inmates – and sealed them in an airtight space that was then filled with an experimental stimulant gas designed to prevent sleep. Over the next few weeks, the researchers planned to observe their hapless test subjects by way of hidden microphones and two-way mirrors.At first things ran smoothly, but after a week the test subjects began to exhibit signs of stress. They became withdrawn and paranoid, whispering into the microphones about their fellow inmates. But then, a few days later, the screaming started. The prisoners suddenly turned frantic, they ranted and raved, and screamed themselves horse. Some apparently screamed so hard they practically ruptured their vocal cords. And then it all went silent.The experience was terrifying, so the experimenters tried to stop the study and open the chamber. However, they were stopped from doing so when a voice, one of the prisoners, announced “We no longer wish to be freed”.By the time the researchers cut the gas and opened the chamber a few days later, most of the inmates were dead, apparently having mutilated themselves or one another. Some had reportedly resorted to cannibalism. Those who remained alive were in a state of psychosis, refusing to leave and refusing to sleep again. Of course, the Soviet authorities tried to remove all evidence of this grisly event from the record."Photos" can make a story seem convincing but they are easy to edit to look real or older, like we've done here.Image credit: Vladamir Mulder/Shutterstock.com, modified by IFLScienceIf you are familiar with this story, or some version of it, then congratulations, you have come across an urban legend that has made its way onto the internet in recent years. The Russian Sleep Experiment, as it is known, was originally a creepypasta story – a kind of short horror story designed to sound plausible – that has now mutated into a living urban legend. Much like the popular Slender Man that lurked and crept its way from a work of internet fiction to very real tragic events, the Russian Sleep Experiment now has a life beyond the authors who originally created it.But what makes stories like this so “believable”? Or, to put it another way, why do some stories become urban legends when others do not, and why do we accept them?A new folklore Urban legends are effectively a form of modern folklore. The stories can vary in their content, from the mundane culinary experience – the Kentucky fried mouse story – and creature sightings – alligators in the sewers – to the supernatural encounters like Slender Man and the Vanishing Hitchhiker. All these stories are united by a sense of strangeness, albeit to varying degrees, as well as a sliver of believability.This is an important factor for a budding urban legend. No matter how ridiculous, or worrying the content, it has to have a small amount of credibility to survive. This is usually achieved by combining elements of the familiar with the unfamiliar, but only in measured doses.Previous research into the popularity of folk stories, such as those in the Grimm Brother’s fairy tales, has shown that the more popular narratives are those that only use a few supernatural components. For instance, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella are fantastical stories with a few references to the weird, but they are also recognizable and extremely popular. In contrast, The Donkey Lettuce (sometimes Cabbage), which appears in the same collection of stories is filled with supernatural elements and yet is barely known.It seems our minds have a credibility threshold beyond which our critical thinking starts to object. The same may be true for urban legends. If they include too many surprising details, then the story becomes less enjoyable or believable.The psychology of urban legendsIn terms of psychology, this could be explained in relation to thinking styles and what is known as the dual processing model. According to this idea, we have two ways of processing information that are distinct but nevertheless interrelated.Essentially this is a kind of “system one” and “system two” approach, Dr Neil Dagnall, a cognitive and parapsychological researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University, told IFLScience. The former favors emotional, instinctive, and subjective evaluations and the latter focuses on objective and critical thinking. [P]eople are likely to engage with urban legends because they're interesting anecdotes or something topical. So [people] latch on to it from that subjective side, and then are less interested in validating its accuracy and more interested in the story for the story's sake.Dr Neil DagnallAlthough these processes work in parallel, each style draws on different cognitive resources. Critical thinking, which relies on established rules of logical reasoning, is more mentally taxing. It’s intentional and attentional, whereas emotional thinking is less demanding, relying on general cognitive processes to interpret information, and is mostly automatic.Previous research into dual processing theories has found that belief in paranormal phenomena is closely related to “system one” thinking, that is, intuitive rather than critical thinking. So perhaps something like that is happening with the belief in urban legends.“[P]eople are likely to engage with urban legends because they're interesting,” Dr Dagnall explained. “They're nice little stories, or they're interesting anecdotes, or something that's topical. So [people] latch on to it from that subjective side, and then are less interested in validating its accuracy and more interested in the story for the story's sake.”This explanation contrasts with others that try to view humans as simply being prone to believing outlandish ideas, that they are generally non-discerning. Or, as psychologist Gordon Pennycook argues, humans will generally believe “bullshit”.Essentially, this suggests some people are simply not discerning and will rely on system one thinking. They are not particularly selective with the information they believe and instead endorse things that are not true. As such, they will believe any form of bullshit, from urban legends to paranormal events to ridiculous conspiracy theories.But Dagnall believes there is more going on here. We know, for instance, that even within the conspiracy theory world, believers in one claim may not necessarily believe in another. For instance, he explains, “I might think Elvis faked his death, I might think Elvis was murdered, but I don't necessarily think that's true of Marilyn Monroe.” Equally, someone who believes in the Flat Earth conspiracies may not necessarily believe in aliens or be opposed to vaccinations.Although it is true that people who believe in conspiracies often do have other unusual beliefs, the situation is more complicated and contextual than simply saying they just believe “bullshit”.Even “within people who engage with urban legends,” Dagnall says, “they're going to be more critical of some of those urban legends than other ones, and the degree to which they're susceptible to them will be influenced by other factors, such as how plausible they think they are.”At the same time, because of the rise of the internet and social media, how such stories spread has changed. Not only is it easier for people to circulate various new urban legends across the internet, but many of us are also too busy to apply critical thinking to everything we see.“There’s less opportunity to evaluate stories or to deal with them...," Dagnall notes. "[I]n the past, if you just get it in an email and you may get a precautionary thing, it's more likely to be the focus of your attention. Now, you just get them popping up all over the place.”This returns us to credibility. Good urban legends are stories that have something believable about them. So the alligators in the sewers story, for instance, works well because it has historical precedence in places where they are native. It is therefore plausible that alligators or crocodiles may have infiltrated other sewer systems, even in places like New York City.This too is true for the Russian Sleep Experiment story. The Soviet Union is remembered as a cruel and barbaric regime that demonstrated a staggering disregard for human life, especially under Joseph Stalin. Couple this with contemporary stories about unethical human experiments, such as those performed by the Nazis in the Second World War, or the CIA's Project MKUltra and you have the framework for a believable narrative about abused inmates and sinister experiments.So like any worthy urban legend, the story may not be true, but for some it may nevertheless feel like it could be.

Just three years ago, researchers discovered a new geomagnetic phenomenon. Dubbed "space hurricanes", scientists saw huge swirling arms of plasma in the Earth’s magnetosphere hundreds of kilometers long around a calm "eye of the storm", just like in a regular hurricane. These events can disrupt satellites in low-Earth orbit and even cause aurorae closer to the ground – and they occur more often than thought.Initially, the discovery was exclusive to the Northern Hemisphere, likely due to more people living near or within the polar region in the North compared to the South. More people means more scientific instruments and observations. However, now scientists have quantified and qualified what space hurricanes are like in the Southern Hemisphere.It appears there aren't any major differences between the two hemispheres. Between 2005 and 2016, there were 329 space hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere and 259 in the Southern Hemisphere. Space hurricanes are more likely to occur in the dayside polar cap at a magnetic latitude greater than 80°, very close to the magnetic poles. They are strongly dependent on the interplanetary magnetic field, the solar cycle, and even the Earth's seasons.            Space hurricanes are more likely to occur in summer and during the daytime, suggesting that sunlight exposure and magnetic tilt both play a role in the hurricanes. Unfortunately, their high latitude and daytime occurrence make it unlikely they can be witnessed by human eyes.The team estimates the average velocity for the plasma in space hurricanes is 1 kilometer per second (2,237 miles per hour). That sounds pretty fast already, but it is about 10 times faster than the average plasma found around the polar regions.Understanding these events is important as they might play a big role in space weather. The work helps create a three-dimensional picture of these magnetic vortices and how they affect the lower atmosphere. The goal is to be able eventually to be able to predict these hurricanes and be ready to mitigate some of their effects.The study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

Pet cam footage released by the fire department in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has shown the moment a house caught on fire after the owner’s dog chewed into a lithium-ion power bank.According to a statement from the fire department posted to social media, firefighters responded to the house fire back in May. Though the building was significantly damaged, nobody was hurt – including the two dogs and a cat inside, who were able to escape through a dog door.The source of the fire was identified as a lithium-ion power bank or battery pack, which one of the dogs had been chewing whilst lying on its bed. Eventually, the power bank started to spark, causing the dog to drop it. Sparks then turned into flames, the bed caught alight, and a large fire grew.There’s a reason why lithium-ion batteries make a popular choice to base devices like power banks on – they can store a lot of energy for how lightweight they are, which is pretty convenient when you’re out and about without access to a regular charging point.But as the Tulsa Fire Department’s public information officer Andy Little explained in a video accompanying the statement, holding that amount of energy can end up being dangerous.“When this energy is released uncontrollably, it can generate heat, produce flammable and toxic gases, and even lead to explosions,” said Little. “These incidents can occur due to various reasons, such as exposure to extreme heat, physical damage, to the battery overcharging, or even using incompatible charging equipment.”In this case, physical damage means a dog who mistook a battery pack for a tasty snack – but this type of fire appears to be far from an isolated incident.“Fire departments all over the country are seeing fires related to these batteries,” reads the department’s statement, “and we want the public to learn about usage, safe storage and proper disposal of these potentially dangerous batteries.”On that point, Little has some good advice.“It is crucial that you adhere to manufacturer guidelines when using lithium-ion batteries, only using approved chargers and storing them out of reach of children and pets.”“Furthermore,” Little continued, “it is imperative to dispose of lithium-ion batteries properly. They should never be tossed in household garbage or recycling bins as they can cause fires during transportation or at disposal facilities.“Instead, take these batteries to designated recycling centers or household hazardous waste collection points.”

Yet another study has poured cold water on the sensational claims surrounding Homo naledi, an extinct human relative with a puny brain that has been claimed to have buried its dead.In 2023, archaeologists working at the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa claimed they had found evidence that Homo naledi intentionally buried their dead over 240,000 years ago and decorated their graves with abstract markings.It was a bold assertion because this is well over 100,000 years before Homo sapiens are known to have buried their dead, plus the species possessed a brain that’s no bigger than a chimpanzee's.After posting three pre-print articles on the discovery, the team led by Lee Berger then embarked on a huge media campaign, culminating in a slick Netflix documentary called UNKNOWN: Cave Of Bones.However, skepticism quickly followed. A peer review of their articles found that the evidence was “incomplete and inadequate, and should not be viewed as finalized scholarship,” while other researchers dished out some strongly worded rebuttals.In a new paper, another group of researchers put forward more evidence that Berger’s conclusions are unfounded.           The burial theory centers around where the 15 Homo naledi skeletons were found in the Rising Star Cave system. The bodies are found at the back of the cavern in a hard-to-reach spot that takes modern cavers more than half an hour to reach, laid out in a seemingly ordered position. What’s more, the 2023 papers argued the bodies were laid to rest in a shallow dug-out pit and covered with soil, as if they were given an organized funeral. The new paper believes this isn’t the case. The researchers carried out a re-analysis of the geochemical and sedimentological data used by the original authors to conclude that none of the surrounding sediment shows the dirt was shifted around to entomb the bodies in a deliberate burial. It is still uncertain how the Homo Naledi bodies ended up in this peculiar position. Others have speculated whether it was the work of scavenging animals, the flow of water, or a roof collapse. However, there’s a lack of evidence to support these claims too. The researchers in the latest study don’t attempt to provide an alternative answer, simply concluding that “the interpretations, the narrative, and the data are not aligned” in Berger’s work. They do, however, believe the whole saga shows the perils of using sleek TV shows to hype up ideas before they've been rigorously peer-reviewed.“I hope that this work is able to instill some skepticism in the public when it comes to archaeological research in the public eye,” Professor Kimberly Foecke, author of the new study from the Anthropology department at George Mason University, said in a statement.“We see so often flashy shows with charismatic archaeologists presenting huge claims about the past, but we must hold scientists who communicate with the public accountable to the science itself and ensure that we as a field are doing good work,” she added.   The new study is published in the journal PaleoAnthropology.

If you ask citizens of wealthy English-speaking countries which moral values they consider most important, their answers vary by the time of year, according to a new study. Naturally, the variation is not enormous, or people would have noticed it before, but it is large and surprisingly consistent over many years and may shape choices when it comes to election time.When Robert Bolt called Sir Thomas More “A Man For All Seasons” (borrowing from More’s contemporary Whittington), he was referring to the way More held true to his values even as the political climate shifted around him. The implication was that this was rare, but “Seasons” was used metaphorically, and it probably didn't occur to anyone that it might be relevant for literal seasons of the year. However, University of British Columbia researchers thought to check and found that for many of us, the time of year does affect what we believe.Social scientists have been asking people about the importance of values like loyalty and kindness for decades as a way to understand their behavior.Based on an impressive sample of 232,975 people, their data collected through yourmorals.org, UBC doctoral student Ian Hohm looked at whether the views of these values shift with the seasons, and found that they do, but in some curious ways.Purity, loyalty, and respect for authority – values venerated by traditional conservatism – often go together, and are collectively known as “binding values”, so it is no surprise they rise and fall together over the course of a year. What is stranger is that instead of peaking in summer or winter, this trio is most valued in spring and fall, and considered less important both when it is hot and cold. The effect was far stronger than required to meet tests of statistical significance and remained robust when controlling for the fact that older and wealthier people were more responsive in spring and summer.How survey respondents considered purity, loyalty, and respect for authority, showing a clear seasonal trend.Image credit: Evolutionary Social Cognition Laboratory at UBCMeanwhile, values typically  emphasized by liberals and progressives, like fairness and caring for others, showed less variation throughout the year. To the extent they did, the pattern was less clearly seasonal. Consequently, in summer and winter, they were more influential, relatively speaking.“People’s endorsement of moral values that promote group cohesion and conformity is stronger in the spring and fall than it is in the summer and winter,” Holm said in a statement. “Moral values are a fundamental part of how people make decisions and form judgments, so we think this finding might just be the tip of the iceberg in that it has implications for all sorts of other downstream effects.”Historically, this means US conservatives may have had a small boost from the requirement to hold elections at the start of November. Whether American history would be significantly different if they were held in summer or winter is hard to tell. This survey could also not tell if this advantage has been weakened now that a number of those who call themselves “conservative” have become openly contemptuous of the authority of science.In countries where the prime minister or president gets to choose the date of the election, the findings could be even more interesting to politicians. The authors looked at other English-speaking countries and found a similar pattern in Australia and Canada. In the UK, on the other hand, support for binding values fell strongly in summer, but peaked in winter. However, in each case the sample size was less than a tenth of that available for the US, so these results require more caution. It seems logical that people's values will change more with the seasons in places where the difference between summer and winter is greater than where seasons are barely a thing. Indeed, the variation observed was considerably larger for Canada than Australia, but the authors didn’t break the US variation down by state to see if Alaskan values vary more than, for example, Floridian values.Explanations for this pattern might be easier to come up with if winter and summer were opposites, instead of close matches, but the authors did find a major clue in terms of mood. Americans are more anxious in spring and fall, a follow-up study using similar methods found. “This correlation suggests that higher anxiety may drive people to seek comfort in the group norms and traditions upheld by binding values,” said senior author Professor Mark Schaller. Schaller has recently published work on how much seasons affect other aspects of psychology.The data was collected weekly over ten years, and the same pattern was seen each time, so it's unlikely it was too skewed by specific events of a particular season. Then again, anniversaries like September 11 could be an ongoing factor unrelated to the weather, and the authors speculate Christmas may have some influence.The authors also note that it is not just elections that could be affected by these trends. Criminal convictions imply a disrespect for authority, and suggest further investigation into whether judges impose heavier penalties in certain seasons as a result. Moral values also shape how we respond to crises, with the authors using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. Knowing that respect for authority and loyalty are higher at some times than others might affect the targeting of public health campaigns. The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Have you opened an old-fashioned hard copy dictionary, lately? You'll find the terms and their original definitions are a foreign language. You certainly won't find the word, 'Woke.' We used to consider that simply... poor grammar. But our 'hip' and 'inclusive' cultural overlords used it to guilt us into surrendering our free way of life so we could 'wake up' and fix our social injustices. Because of that, we blindly consented to an entirely new language that redefines truth in order to tip toe around those who reject it. America and the West turned woke because we were all actually asleep. Welcome to 'Woke of Weak.' Join new host, Justine Brooke Murray as she brings you some of the Left's most insane moments and exposes their attempts to weaken our minds. Check out her first video here. Tune in every week for the latest episodes!