Déjà Di and Déjà Duchess of Windsor fashion sense may be the real tell
LNP leader Zak Kirkup loses seat as Labor on course to win 53 of Western Australia’s 59 lower house seats
Deirdre McCloskey memoir update. Good stuff, more interesting than the core memoir itself.
#TaxValentines 2021
How to Write a Gratitude Letter The New York Times – “Concerned about a friend or a loved one who may be feeling the winter doldrums? Try writing them a gratitude letter. If you are looking to make someone — even yourself — feel better during what has been a hard winter of the pandemic, consider writing a gratitude letter. You can think of it as a slightly longer and more meaningful thank you note, but instead of offering thanks for a physical gift, you are offering thanks for something that was done or said. There are two excellent reasons for writing a gratitude letter: It will make you feel really good, and it will make the recipient feel great. Among the research showing the benefits of letter writing is a study led by Indiana University and published in 2016 in the journal Psychotherapy Research and led by Indiana University, which tested whether gratitude writing helps people seeking psychotherapy. Scientists randomly assigned the 293 participants to three groups: Those receiving psychotherapy, those receiving psychotherapy and participating in expressive writing, or those receiving psychotherapy and participating in gratitude-letter writing. Even in the small study, participants in the gratitude group reported significantly better mental health than the other two groups, even three months after the trial ended…”
MICHAEL WALSH: Saying ‘No’ to the Cancel Culture.
As the Lebanese-born essayist and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written, huge cultural changes are wrought by the smallest minorities: “It suffices for an intransigent minority to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.”
Taleb’s point is that a small number of intolerant people with a passionate commitment to their cause can command the culture; he calls this “the minority rule,” and cites Alexander the Great’s famous aphorism that it’s better to have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.
So the next time the Left comes for some institution, act like a lion and just say no. Say no to wokism, no to the media robinettes, no to the platoons of captious hall monitors, Karens, and other assorted muttonheads who seek to shame you publicly for transgressions against the voices in their heads and the fillings in their teeth. Treat them with the same respect they treat you, which is none.
In short, take it from Dr. Seuss: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Digitally Reading 17th-Century Locked Letters
Using an x-ray technique, MIT researchers have digitally unfolded and read 17th-century letters that had been “letterlocked”by their authors to prevent them from being read in transit. Reading the letters in this way allows close study without actually unfolding and potentially damaging these letters or altering them against further study. This is a fully digital image of one of the unlocked letters:
