Leftist hate knows no bounds
They will tear at the good whenever possible. Contrary to their lies, Churchill was a very active and heroic military man in his youth. He sought out action
A big budget Marvel series currently being screened on Disney+ attacks Winston Churchill, falsely accusing him of just 'posing for pictures' while others fought in World War I and then being 'smug' about it.
The third episode of Secret Invasion features a scene at the National Portrait Gallery where a character named Gavrick - portrayed by British actor Kingsley Ben-Adirs - stands in front of the famous Statesmen of World War I painting where he discusses the battle in which Churchill fought in after he was given command of a battalion of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Speaking in front of the famous Statesmen of World War I painting, Mr Ben Adir's character says: 'Statesmen of world war one, that's what it's called. It sums it up pretty nicely, I think.
'The difference between statesmen and soldiers. Because one lot spends the war posing for pictures while the other lot does all the killing and the dying.'
In a further slur on the late politician, the character then points to Churchill and adds: 'Look at the fat smug smile on his face.' Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn is also in the scene.
Viewers of the five-part blockbuster series which stars British actresses Olivia Colman and Emilia Clarke, as well as Hollywood A-lister Samuel L Jackson, were left confused and furious that Churchill's war hero status was misrepresented.
One said: 'Gravik shows he doesn't know his Earth history, Churchill spent time in the trenches in WW1 and served in India, Sudan in the army at the end of the 19th century and was a war correspondent during the Boer war, where he was captured. He knew about the blood.'
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TikTok brainwashed me into being transgender — now I’m detransitioning
At age 13, Ash Eskridge was severely under the influence, but not of drugs or alcohol — of TikTok. The brunette told The Post that trendsetters on the popular app wrongfully convinced her that she was transgender.
“I saw TikTok videos by influencers saying how that transitioning saved their life,” said Eskridge, now 16, from Missoula, Montana.
After becoming depressed at 12, she leaned on the virtual platform as an emotional crutch. “I was struggling and wanted it to save my life, too,” she told South West News Service.
It was just after the pandemic that the Gen Zer joined the crowd: As part of what’s been dubbed “Generation COVID,” Ash spent the majority of her recreational hours scrolling through social media, where viral hashtags such as #transgender and #trans have amassed a staggering 21.5 billion and 59.6 billion views, respectively.
According to 2022 Pew Research Center research, TikTok has a massive impact on up to 67% of teens 13 to 17. A 2021 study on its sway, conducted by the Shanghai United International School in China, found that the digital space contains “over-exaggeration content that shapes teenager’s value in a misleading way.”
In December 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate also determined that TikTok’s algorithm funnels mentally and emotionally damaging content — such as suicide and eating disorders — to adolescents within minutes of creating a profile.
Meanwhile, The Post’s March 2023 undercover investigation of the app also found that it directed harmfully persuasive visuals to teens.
In Eskridge’s case, she said the videos on her timeline “brainwashed” her into transitioning. “Being transgender is definitely a TikTok trend that all began around 2020,” she told The Post of the apparent social media wave. “I notice that the demographic it most affects is teen girls around 12 to 14, as they’re the most vulnerable since they aren’t matured yet,” she continued, noting that most trans folks in her age demographic would likely disagree.
“I know that all of the kids who are also being pushed to [take part in the transgender] trend definitely think they’re 100% right and that it wasn’t caused by TikTok, because that’s how I felt, too,” Eskridge acknowledged.
“But I’d say maybe 1% of the trans teens on TikTok are actually trans,” she claimed without evidence. “The rest, influenced.”
Her parents, Sean and Darcy, told SWNS that they were doubtful that Eskridge — a lifelong “girly-girl” — was, in fact, transgender. However, they supported her decision to live as a male.
“She told us she was trans. It was after COVID, and she was at home a lot,” said Darcy, a secretary. “She started spending too much time on TikTok, watching influencers who were saying how they went through the same thing [and] how they had transitioned and it made them happy.
“We questioned Ash and pushed back,” the mother continued. “We told her we would accept her for who she is but how we didn’t feel this was the right path for her.”
And while Eskridge understood her parents’ concerns, she elected to proceed with the gender swap. “My family [was] very confused,” said the youth.
“My life had been really girly and I never showed any dislike of being a girl,” Eskridge admitted. “They were very supportive of me, but they never thought it was right for me, but they stood by me regardless.”
She legally changed her name to “Greysen” and assumed the stereotypical look of a teenage boy — rocking a short haircut and wearing sporty togs.
At 16, she began taking testosterone, which caused her voice to become lower and body hair to sprout. But rather than feeling affirmed, Eskridge says the drastic changes felt “unnatural.”
“My voice dropping didn’t feel correct,” she lamented. “When the voice started dropping, it made me feel uncomfortable, and the body hair felt really gross.”
In fact, while living as “Greysen,” Eskridge said she “missed being a girl.”
“It was exhausting,” revealed the teen, “the people who I knew in real life didn’t know I wasn’t born a man.”
“I had to adjust the way I walked and talked in a way that wasn’t natural to me,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone that I was born a girl as I supposed I was ashamed and embarrassed of it.”
But a nighttime epiphany prompted a change of heart. “My breaking point was when I had a dream that I was a girl,” she remembered. “I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore.'”
In April 2023, Eskridge chose to detransition, reverting back to female with the support of her parents.
“She came to us and said how she made a mistake,” said Darcy. “She told us how easily influenced she was by social media. “There was a lot of shock from us but also a sense of relief as we never thought it would be the best path in life for her,” added the mom.
But reversing her gender identity proved to be a “tough road,” which derailed a number of her close relationships. “They thought I was born a man,” Eskridge said of her pals. “After I detransitioned, I lost a lot of friends.”
The number of children who report experiencing “gender dysphoria” in the West has surged. While statistics are difficult to track, between 2009 and 2019, UK children being referred for transitioning treatment increased by 1,000% among those assigned a male gender at birth and 4,400% among those assigned female.
Meanwhile, according to 2022 research from the University of California’s Williams Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of young people identifying as transgender in the US has almost doubled since 2017, to approximately 300,000.
However, detransitioning, in general, is not common, and past research has revealed that up to 86% of trans adults feel that transitioning was the right long-term decision for them.
According to a Fenway Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital study, about 13% of people who underwent “gender-affirming transition” said that they at some point detransitioned. A large number of those — 82.5% — cited external factors such as family pressure or having trouble finding a job as the reasons they detransitioned.
The research also reported that only 2.4% of the 17,151 trans people who were questioned had detransitioned due to “doubt” about their gender identity, and another 2018 survey listed reasons including hormone complications, unresolved psychological issues and discrimination, plus realizing their struggle pertained to sexual orientation as opposed to gender.
Since resuming her life as a woman, Eskridge and Darcy have begun advocating for better mental health care for teens and demanding the law require an age limit of 18 to get gender-affirming care.
“Through her journey, [Ash] has come to realize the dangers of having chemical or surgical intervention as an adolescent,” her parents said in a statement to The Post.
Eskridge has also become a detransitioning crusader on TikTok.
In a confessional with more than 2.2 million views, she said, “After about two years of living as a male, I realized I was wrong.”
The teen explained that after coming out as trans, she only went to one doctor’s appointment — during which she claims her mental health was not properly assessed — before being given instructions on the next steps toward becoming a man.
But the ill-fated journey led her down a dark path of drug use, self-harm and suicidal ideation, according to her post.
“I assumed this was because I wasn’t male enough,” said Eskridge, “but it was really because I wasn’t a male at all.”
She captioned the clip: “I support transgender people, I was simply was wrong about myself.”
On camera, Eskridge said, in closing, “Once I detransitioned, all my mental problems were gone. “I’m happy.”
https://nypost.com/2023/07/07/teens-says-tiktok-influenced-her-to-identify-as-transgender/
***************************************************Study Clarifies Association Between Autism and the Microbiome
A new study published in Nature Neuroscience clarifies the connection between the gut microbiome and autism. This research, led by the Simons Foundation’s Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), discovered a microbial signature that distinguishes autistic people from neurotypical people and found overlaps between gut microbes and metabolic pathways associated with autism.
Despite a growing body of studies looking at an array of genetic, cellular and microbial data, the biological roots of autism continue to evade researchers. Recent research has focused on the role of the microbiome, a collection of microbes that inhabit the human gut. The microbiome has been shown to play a role in autism, but the mechanics of this link have remained ambiguous.
The current study used a computational approach to re-analyze existing datasets. The global research team consisted of 43 authors across disciplines in computational biology, engineering, medicine, autism and the microbiome. The team developed an algorithm to re-analyze 25 previously published datasets containing microbiome and other "omics" - such as gene expression, immune system response and diet - from both autistic and neurotypical cohorts. Within each dataset, the algorithm found the best matched pairs of autistic and neurotypical individuals in terms of age and sex, two factors that can typically confound autism studies.
"We were able to harmonize seemingly disparate data from different studies and find a common language with which to unite them. With this, we were able to identify a microbial signature that distinguishes autistic from neurotypical individuals across many studies," says Jamie Morton, one of the study's corresponding authors.
"Rather than comparing average cohort results within studies, we treated each pair as a single data point, and thus were able to simultaneously analyze over 600 ASD-control pairs corresponding to a de facto cohort of over 1,200 children," said co-corresponding author Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, director of Therapeutics Alliances at New York University.
The analysis identified autism-specific metabolic pathways associated with particular human gut microbes. Importantly, these pathways were also seen elsewhere in autistic individuals, from their brain-associated gene expression profiles to their diets.
Particularly notable was an overlap between microbes associated with autism, and those identified in a recent long-term fecal microbiota transplant study led by James Adams and Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes. This study demonstrated the long-term safety and efficacy of Microbiota Transfer Therapy as a potential therapy to treat children with autism who have gastrointestinal problems.
The findings highlight the importance of long-term studies and interventions to understand the causal relationship between the microbiome and autism and to explore the potential application of this approach in other complex conditions, said the authors.
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“Greedflation” is a nonsense idea
Inflation is high, and the search is on for the culprit. The latest in the frame in Europe is profiteering businesses. The idea that greedy companies were to blame has taken a knock in America, where corporate profits are falling even as consumer prices continue to rise too fast. But that has not stopped the notion taking hold across the Atlantic. The IMF has found that higher profits “account for almost half the increase” in the euro zone’s inflation and Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, has at times seemed sympathetic to the argument. In Britain the government has asked regulators to look for evidence of price gouging; on July 3rd the competition watchdog added fuel to the fire with a finding that supermarkets had increased their margins on petrol between 2019 and 2022.
The “greedflation” thesis is in part a reaction against another common explanation for inflation: that it is driven by fast-growing wages. Central bankers live in fear of wage-price spirals. Last year Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, asked workers to “think and reflect” before asking for pay rises. The remark was incendiary because the inflation that has troubled the rich world since 2021 has largely left workers worse off. Wages have not driven prices up but lagged behind them.
Yet to argue that companies must therefore be to blame is to confuse cause and effect. In America the profit margins of non-financial corporations surged after vast fiscal stimulus during the pandemic, which amounted to more than 25% of GDP and included three rounds of cheques sent directly to most households. The infusion of cash into the economy—which the Federal Reserve chose not to offset with higher interest rates—set off a consumer-spending boom that overwhelmed the world’s covid-strained supply chains, disrupting other economies. With too much cash chasing too few goods, it was inevitable that companies would make more money. Then, after Russia invaded Ukraine, companies producing energy or food also found themselves selling into a shortage. Their prices and profits shot up.
Europe’s economy has not overheated as quickly or to the same extent as America’s. But the euro zone has recently spent 3.3% of GdP subsidising energy bills and its interest rates are still too low given the underlying rate of inflation. Today it is displaying familiar symptoms: high core inflation, high profits and wages that are surging in a tight labour market. It seems likely that profit margins there will also follow America’s downwards; analysts expect the profits of listed companies to decline this year.
Regardless, the fact that companies raise their prices in response to shortages is not only defensible but desirable. The alternative to letting the price mechanism bring supply and demand into line is to rely on something worse, such as rationing or queues. Though there may be examples of opportunistic or anti-competitive behaviour, the effects are unlikely to have been material. British supermarkets increased their profits by 6p ($0.08) on a litre of petrol, which today costs £1.46, but they did so at a time when the peak rate of annual fuel inflation was 129%. Properly measured, economy-wide profit margins have not surged in Britain.
Ms Lagarde has said that it would be desirable for profit margins in the euro zone to fall. She is right; such a decline would be disinflationary and would restore workers’ share of the economic pie. But that does not mean that a crackdown on corporate greed is needed. Instead, monetary and fiscal policymakers need to continue to correct the error of excessive stimulus by raising interest rates and tightening fiscal policy.
The right lesson to draw from the past two years is not that companies have got greedier, but that workers suffer when policymakers let inflation run out of control. All the more reason, in short, to care about price stability in the first place.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/06/greedflation-is-a-nonsense-idea
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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