NO, THE NATIONAL DEBT ISN’T $40 TRILLION: That figure, published by the Treasury Department earlier this week, is off by at least $130 Trillion. And, if Adam Smith is right about nations and debts, it’s doubtful we will ever be out from under this mountain of dependency upon creditors, domestic and foreign.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UCLA funds research on ‘feminized’ robots, transgender stigma.

ONE STICK OF BUTTER IN TEN MINUTES OF MICROWAVE: Here’s How Team Trump Got Ariana Grande to Have a Complete Meltdown.

THAT’S WHAT XI SAID! Members of Mamdani’s DSA pledge to ‘support’ and ‘defend’ China: ‘Survival of Chinese socialism is a crucial matter.’

Why, it’s as if:

BREAKING: A new report completely exposes what everyone has known for a long time.

More extreme candidates, specifically linked to the DSA, are getting massively boosted by non-Americans on X. pic.twitter.com/8CMRV2EPdb

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 21, 2026

IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE: Russia Is Out of Gasoline, but Complaining Is Not an Option.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:  I studied in Jason Arday’s department at Cambridge. Here’s the crap I was taught.

I studied in the academic department at Cambridge that later employed Jason Arday. My degree was in ‘Politics, Psychology and Sociology’, and one of my papers was on the Sociology of Education. Arday became a professor of Sociology of Education a few years after I left.

I want to give a few examples of the scale of progressive ideological capture even then, pre-Peak Woke, in 2012 (when I graduated). As well as to try to illustrate the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of so much of what gets passed off as chin-rubbingly profound academic scholarship at some of the most elite educational institutions in the world.

Where to begin?

For one module, I wrote a lengthy essay about how cultural products like kids’ cartoons and jazz songs serve as instruments of capitalist oppression. I got a top mark on that paper (despite knowing at the time that I was essentially regurgitating complete crap).

While studying for another paper I had a debate with the professor, an eminent anthropologist, because she insisted that native tribes could fly through the trees – not metaphorically, but that they could literally fly because they believed they could fly. After all, who are we to question ‘indigenous ways of knowing’…

O’Brien smiles: “‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation — anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.’”

Read the whole thing.

Another example of the corruption of sociology and education departments that changed their telos for the search for truth to social activism. The goal of these professors is to indoctrinate students into far left progressive woke politics, not research, rationality & science. https://t.co/09IO4oYwku

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) August 21, 2026

CULTURAL CHANGE IS HAPPENING:

Women who spent years saying they wouldn’t date conservative men are now being held accountable for their dangerous opinions on Lindsay Clancy.

I love it. https://t.co/iYbjO076jT

— Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) August 21, 2026

TRUE:

It’s very much an out-group phenomenon. Over the last decade, Big Tech has managed, in different ways, to deeply alienate both the political right & political left, and most of the American public to boot.

Much of it returns to the same enduring problem: techies are tragically… https://t.co/2oeCkjR7yF

— Zarathustra (@zarathustra5150) August 21, 2026

Flashback: Silicon Valley has gone from liberating to creepy. Next stop, government regulation.

CHANGE:

2021: Riots
2022: Riots
2023: Riots
2024: Riots
2025: Riots

2026: SPLC indicted, Act Blue under investigation, USAID defunded — no riots.

— Steve 🇺🇸 (@SteveLovesAmmo) August 21, 2026

Flashback to Jon Gabriel in 2024: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

LIGHTNING DEAL: HOSHANHO 5 Pieces Knife Set. #CommissionEarned

ICYMI: CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT:

EXCLUSIVE: Fauci Text Implicates Biden Task Force

“I’m sending this via text messaging to avoid any FOIA issues.” -Michael Osterholm COVID-19 Advisory Board

Obtained by @ChuckGrassley via @HHS:

– Apparent admission Osterholm @mtosterholm is creating a federal record
-… pic.twitter.com/5E46HZ9YR9

— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) August 19, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “Are We the Baddies?”

The New Hotness? Am I a Bond Villain?

For years we were told Fauci was the infallible expert who never made a mistake and never lied. Now his lawyers are admitting the legal exposure is so large they need a special fund to handle it.

You can’t fundraise the truth away. https://t.co/ZQaOSHIbzJ

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 22, 2026

SPEAKING TO HER HUSBAND IS AN HAZARDOUS OCCUPATION*:  The Charon 2.0. Technology comes to the River Styx, and not everyone’s happy about it (*Grumbles in “Made the mistake ended up writing Deep Pink.”-SAH)

REMINDER:

It’s not hypocrisy, it’s hierarchy. Spoiled rich kids become socialists because they hate themselves for not being as successful and worthy as their parents, so they seize the power they couldn’t obtain. It’s all just self-loathing being projected onto society. Scammers. https://t.co/yerbnboh6s

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) August 21, 2026

IF YOU’RE CONTEMPLATING A CROSSCULTURAL MARRIAGE, READ THIS:  Cross Culture.

And for the record, my husband waited till the kids were adults, and then got them to join him in the revolution of “No more bacalhau for Christmas eve.” Sigh.

HEED THE SPEAKER TO ODDS:  Many people think social rituals are pointless and seem proud that they’ve discovered that small talk and other courtesies are inane. This feels particularly strange to me because many of the same people understand concepts like control channels for data, metadata, and headers. How can you not see that human communication also needs similar framing? Small talk is a negotiation protocol. If it bores you, imagine a modem noise. You can’t send the packets until you’ve established a channel that decodes them properly.

X-cancel.

ARE CNN HOSTS ALLOWED TO SAY THAT?  CNN Legal Analyst: Anyone Who Cheered Trump’s Hush Money Prosecution Has Nothing Left to Stand On.

VOTER FRAUD? SHE’S NOT INTERESTED IN BLOCKING VOTER FRAUD!  Lisa Murkowski Was Not Amused by James O’Keefe’s Latest Video.

GOOD:  Trump Cyber Strategy Taps Private Firms to Fight Foreign Hackers.

CALIFORNIA NO LONGER CARES ABOUT CALIFORNIANS:  A Suspected Arsonist, a Wildfire, and California’s Failure to Protect the Public.

SURE, BUT ONE STILL MUST ASK “STUPIDITY OR MALICE?”:  More evidence that Washington State is encouraging forest fires, rather than preventing them.

And “Yes” might be a sufficient answer.

JUST DON’T:  Don’t go to John Oliver for news.

IT’S NOT GENOCIDE:  There Is No Genocide in Honduras. And more importantly, no one is arguing about it.

ANOTHER GRANDSTANDING DEMOCRAT PRIORITIZING INVADERS OVER AMERICANS AND BREAKING HER WORD:  Prior to the visit, the Congresswoman signed ICE’s Facility Visitation Agreement form, indicating she would abide by all processes and policies governing personal conduct at ICE facilities. One of these policies is that meetings with detainees must be scheduled in advance, both for the privacy of detainees and the safety of visitors.

X-cancel.

OKAY, BUT IF THEY MAKE PEANUT BUTTER TASTE FUNNY, MY HUSBAND WILL HAVE WORDS:  New hypoallergenic peanuts could bring the salty snacks back to airplanes and school cafeterias.