67 Comments

Well put, indeed! For folks who see through the nonsense of "we're in the era of global boiling!!" (for isn't that what the head of the UN bleated a year ago?) this is sad and funny.

If you haven't heard of Tony Heller, he has been railing about the nonsense for years - I like to send my hand-wringing friends to this video where he points out how by judiciously cherry picking the data those who wanted to convince the easily misled about this did the deed.

https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU?si=mRB6_iWOtu1KkfK_

He takes the tongue in cheek approach I enjoy, but then underlying realities are not funny at all.

Expand full comment

Could not play the song, link not available in USA? What was it?

Expand full comment

Leftfield - Open Up

Expand full comment

Thanks for the link, should be compulsory watching in all schools

The manipulation is breathtaking.

In Australia it is the same with the government weather bureau not releasing statistics on comparison of its changed method of analysing temperatures. Also its start dates conveniently misses out on the drought and hot weather prior to the start of the series of temperature statistics

Expand full comment

You should check this out: https://a.co/d/drFjxgg

If it's worthless block me for suggesting it.

Expand full comment

Anything for a $ in LaLa Land!

Expand full comment

Let's take away the prizes from politicians for a start: https://a.co/d/drFjxgg

Expand full comment

Great piece again, Irina! Spot-on, and remember, the whole Climate Crusade™ in the US began with a bit of stagecraft, when Enviro-Aware Congressional aides turned off the A/C inn the hearing room where NASA's Dr. James Hansen gave his 1988 "Hockey Stick" AGW presentation.

And for me personally, Hollywood could not only burn, but slide right into the Pacific and vanish from sight before I would even notice it was gone.

I haven't watched episodic TV since "Married with Children", and the only movies I've watched in a theater this century were the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "Dunkirk". Hollywood lost my interest long before they began to openly propagandize, and I think we'd all be better off without them.

Expand full comment

There were good sitcoms in the 90s, too, and even a couple after 2000. Parks and Recreation is, to me, as brilliant as Married with Children, though for different reasons. It's sad to see the demise of good TV screenwriting.

Expand full comment

I dabbled around the edges of "Seinfeld", "Frasier" and "Friends" in the 90's, but that was about it. (And "Friends" I was only interested in because of Jennifer Aniston!)

But I concur, screenwriting in all forms has gone the way of the Dodo, as they can't seem to come up with any new ideas, only "Woke" re-writes of old shows and films.

Hence my boycott in favor of my old favorites, paperbacks and hard covers!

Expand full comment

Yes, it's a bit like the music world. Original music is getting increasingly harder to find these days. There are attempts being made at writing actual comedy for TV but the shows get cancelled because the audiences don't want actual comedies, I imagine.

Expand full comment

I agree with you on the music side. Ever since MTV came along and added a visual dimension to music, it's become more about the visuals than the audibles. Why does one singer need 36 dancers on stage with them? Simple: One doesn't.

There has been an attempt to let some humor at the expense of the left creep back into comedy here in the US, but our left simply cannot laugh at itself, and comedy will never get back to what it was just last century.

Expand full comment

This breaks my heart. Self-irony is the foundation of good comedy.

Expand full comment

Indeed it is, Irina, as self-parody usually allows us to examine the absurdity of our own positions from another's perspective, which again the US left simply will not allow in 2024.

The original iteration of "Saturday Night Live" was a brilliant example of comedy lampooning both left & right equally, but that fair-mindedness went out the window in the 90's, long after I stopped watching that program.

Today, SNL lampoons the right with aplomb, but handles the left with kid gloves, if it all.

Sad, really....

Expand full comment

“Then I had an uncomfortable thought about the mental age of many millions of people that are biologically above the age of four but may not be above that age in certain cognitive aspects.” Alas - you are, in my view, correct. The infantilisation of the population. State dependency via welfare statism, always look to Government to solve your problems, others must provide what you don’t provide for yourself, State control of education and mollycoddling of children, protecting them from all imaginable harms so they do not learn by trial and error, don’t know how to evaluate and manage risk because they have never been exposed to it. And they have not been taught critical analysis and how to teach themselves. There is an extraordinary lack of curiosity and imagination among people these days. Nobody thought it odd that after 200 years of vaccine research and production and amid so many vaccine products there were, uniquely, no safe & effective vaccines for respiratory viruses, but within a matter of weeks one popped up by order of Governments. Then like good little children, they lined up to take matron’s medicine. Then shocked to learn these miracle products were neither safe nor effective.

Here in the UK at the end of commercials for gambling companies, we are urged to, “Gamble responsibly.” At the end of ads for booze, “Drink responsibly.” At the start of old programmes made in the 70s, 80s - “Contains language and views current at the time, which viewers today might find inappropriate.” Another, which gave me a good laugh, “Contains mild language.” I hope my language herein has been sufficiently mild, but “read responsibly”.

Expand full comment

This reminds me about a recent Jeremy Clarkson column in The Sun, I think, where he observed that parents no longer toiler-train their children, leaving the job to pre-school teachers.

Expand full comment

This is true. My niece is a pre-school teacher and she has told me a number of children aged 3 years and 4 years arrive still wearing nappies, and some cannot use cutlery. Parenting in Britain is not what it used to be. When I first went to live in France 20 years ago, I noticed how well behaved and nice mannered children were, compared to British children. Other British people remarked on this so not just me.

Expand full comment

The pitfalls of ultra-liberal parenting. I know parents like that, they couldn't be bothered to toilet-train and they argued it's less stressful for the child to delay it as much as possible. Anything to not stress the little ones, turning them into blobs of hypersensitive tissue needing emotional support animals.

I remember years ago how parents in Britain campaigned for the return of corporal punishment at schools. As far as I remember, they were at their wits' end trying to handle their children. How did this happen? Trying to shun as many parental responsibilities or outsource them to teachers as possible? As a friend of mine recently remarked, we Gen Xers may turn out to be the most rotten generation yet.

Expand full comment

The problem wasn’t with the abolition of corporal punishment, it was that it was not replaced by some other sanction. In fact all punishment over the next few years disappeared. Other means, writing lines, detention, suspension resulted in angry parents confronting teachers - and detention was against the child’s Rights… isn’t everything.

This left one final sanction, expulsion. That too met criticism, and Government banned it. There is now no way to discipline a child at school, so they know they can get away with anything and expect the same when adults.

Compulsory school uniforms were discontinued because it stigmatised children from poor families who could not afford them - but could afford the latest fashion items like Nike trainers.

Back in the 90s I asked a friend, a teacher, how he dressed in school - he replied, like ‘this’. ‘This’ was jeans, sports shirt, trainers. How did pupils address him in class - by his first name.

Nothing just happens - it’s caused. As you say, we are in the mess that post-war generations created. I saw the rot starting in the ‘anything goes’ 1960s with the Hippie generation. No need to work, no need to get married, children by different women living in a commune in some slum - school for children optional. Then feminists who didn’t need men as husbands, just to impregnate them, then clear off.

All of this - no need for a job, marriage, no decent home, was only possible because of the Welfare State which supported all the drop-outs and became surrogate husband and father. . These and their children then went on to be teachers, other professionals, bureaucrats, politicians, company managers, media.

The Welfare State - everybody believing they can live of each other, is the greatest ruination of our societies and root cause of all our ills. The Welfare State is Socialism/Fascism by the back door. Anything that gets all Party agreement and support, will be what’s best for them not the people.

So - as the saying goes - we are where we are.

I do recall an older person in the 1970s dismayed at what was happening in society, saying to me that what we need is another war. I thought what a stupid thing to say, I now know what he meant. And the psychopaths in Governments poking at Russia and China, seem willing get us into one.

Expand full comment

Sounds about right. We have a similar problem here with schools. Teachers' rights to sanction unruly children have been limited to such an extent that enforcing any form of discipline has become impossible for the meeker/indifferent among them.

That older person you spoke to in the 70s was right, sadly. I suspect the politicians' sabre-rattling right now seeks to distract people from everything that's wrong in the country, courtesy of those same politicians. Deliberately pushing for a world war because you failed as government is insane but there it is.

Expand full comment

That trailer for the series: "From the Writer of CONTAGION"

That is all I needed to know. Because, JESUS ... that movie. Did the CDC and WHO give him notes on that old chestnut?

At this point, I'm waiting for them to remake Soylent Green, but the WHO as the good guy and Heston's character as a "traitor" to modern society.

Expand full comment

I think the "remake" of "Soylent Green" is happening live in the real world...

Expand full comment

I missed that but didn't miss the star-packed cast. Idiots, the lot of them.

Expand full comment

You had me at the title. Speaking of indoctrination. In the middle of a 25 year career in O&G, I spent 10+ years teaching high school Math in a large, suburban Oklahoma high school. I loved the Math, but the pay was extremely insufficient. When someone would ask why I left engineering to teach, I had a stock reply. "Yes the pay is low, but I get to spend one hour per day with 125 kids, that believe everything I say." I never took advantage of that opportunity, to spew venom, stupidity, lunacy, etc. But it sure appears there are people more than willing to go there. Footnote - I subscribed to RS in the 70's. It ceased to be a relevant music rag in the mid 80's. It's been a print version of the MSM, NPR for decades. GREAT POST! 🤘😎🤘

Expand full comment

I feel like the globalist machine has sacrificed Rolling Stone as the proverbial canary in a coalmine, to test the credulity of "the masses". They run the STUPIDEST opinions and the most incorrect stories, and the masthead suffers with each blow. (The one about the hospital in Oklahoma treating ivermectin overdoses when in reality there were NONE was a particular dealbreaker for me!)

I think the globalist cartel, masters of long game, are mocking us by taking out their grudges on this once esteemed anti-establishment magazine.

Expand full comment

Scientific American went down the tubes in the late 80s/early 90s. So it wasn't just RS, although wildly different genre.

SciAm used to be sort of like a Reader's Digest of scientific journal articles. The articles weren't dumbed down. They were a selection of the kinds of things one might find in current scientific journals, when that still meant something.

Then they got dumber and dumber, until in the early 2000s they were the ones to popularize Mark Jacobson's drivel about running a civilization on just wind and solar.

Used to be such a good magazine...

Expand full comment

I noticed also New Scientist started sharing fArticles with that other fallen magazine "the Economist"

Expand full comment

Thanks! Teaching is a calling, not just a job. Too bad it's a calling to indoctrinate for many these days.

Expand full comment

Apologies in advance if I offend someone, well, not really. My politics run right down the middle so , regarding the comment's about who believes this crap, there is an amble supply on the fringes of both parties of mindless drones waiting to be spoon fed. Whether it's the planet will burn to a crisp because you scrambled an egg on a gas stove, or you will forever burn in hell because you had sex with your wife for any reason other than making a baby. All this extremism on both sides is simply ridiculous

Expand full comment

All extremism is ridiculous but it can also become dangerous. Yet it seems it's trendy, whichever extreme one chooses. Never could understand this urge to be extreme.

Expand full comment

The website! If I’d found that on my own I would have suspected the Babylon Bee was running a stealth operation. We cannot stand to watch the new TV and movie offerings. We are stuck with Northern Exposure, Adam 12, Have Gun will travel…which is great. I don’t think we are alone. Hollywood can only suck air for so long. They can’t be making money on this crap.

Expand full comment

Irina,

Some suggestions for you from an old film hand (in a previous life):

Mini Series

A Spy Among Friends

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15565872/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Short Film (Anime)

Shelter

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6443118/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Full-Length Feature

Once Upon a Time in the West

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Happy hunting, and keep up the great work,

vladROBOT

🪱

Expand full comment

Once Upon a Time in the West is an all-time family favourite. I can never get tired of watching it.

I haven't seen A Spy among Friends but now that you mentioned it, I remember Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was pretty good. Thanks for the suggestions!

Expand full comment

My dad was in the Good Bad and the Ugly

Expand full comment

How interesting.

Expand full comment

Maybe there's a copper lining in this cinematic insanity. As an ancient observer, I well remember "The China Syndrome," a 1979 disaster thriller based on the premise that a nuclear reactor could melt down and keep melting to the core of the earth, all the way to... you get it. The film got lots of attention, but everyone except the little kids knew it was absolute bullshit. In retrospect, this film marked both Peak Nuclear Hysteria and Peak Jane Fonda. On the dark side, it still took fifty years for people to start discussing new nuclear power investments. Today's climate change hysteria is bigger and stupider than the anti-nuke frenzy, but we have better giant slayers today (like Irina) than we had back then. So keep it up, Irina; let's kill this beast.

Expand full comment

You and Mr. Blackmon do an excellent job bringing the sick propagandists to the public's eye.

I thank you for your desperately needed efforts. Hopefully, the masses can see this crap for what it is.

"Then I had an uncomfortable thought about the mental age of many millions of people that are biologically above the age of four but may not be above that age in certain cognitive aspects. Because they have been subjected to indoctrination from Hollywood and TV for years."

Excellent!

Expand full comment

Hope's what keeps us going. Thanks!

Expand full comment

I'm not sure whether to thank or curse you for sending the link to that trailer, which is truly epic. fortunately, I don't have Apple TV so will never be able to see the whole thing.

At the same time, I agree that there are an increasing number of cracks in the facade of the climate hysteria, and ultimately, as energy prices rise and it becomes clear that it is these policies that are the driver, there will be changes in a positive direction. Until then, see this for the comedy it really is. If we only still had Mystery Science Theater 3000 still, it seems movies like this are best viewed through that lens

Expand full comment

I would totally understand it if you feel a curse is in order. It IS epic. :D

Expand full comment

Honestly the mental/emotional age of a large segment of the adult population here in the states is a range of 14 to 22. Their brains are frozen in time and trained to think emotionally more than rationally. An intentional result created by our public education system. Which has now infected almost all schools both public and private.

Movie suggestions in no particular order and none important but entertaining.

1) Fall of the house of Usher - Netflix series

2) Kung Fu Hustle

3) The entire animated Avatar series - Netflix (watch with kids, yours preferably)

4) The extraordinary attorney Woo. - Netflix series

5) The Last Kingdom - Netflix

Expand full comment

You mean Netflix has been able to do Poe justice? This sounds like something worth checking out, thank you! And for the rest, too.

Expand full comment

The entire premise of the climate change and transition propaganda is based upon a prediction of a coming crisis.

Every day is a new day that the crisis has completely failed to materialize. The predictions about sea level rise and the polar ice caps melting and all arable land turning to desert, are getting to be very, very long in the tooth.....in fact almost the only zealots they still have are those who are too young to remember how long ago Al Gore's movie came out......

Expand full comment

What frightens me is that a lot of people do not care at all that none of the apocalyptic predictions have materialised.

Expand full comment