NYT: ‘Trump in Mind, Spymaster Cites Disrespect for His Agencies’

Why should we respect America’s spy agencies? What major unexpected event in the past 70 years did they successfully predict? How have they earned that automatic respect?

Which of America’s government agencies should we respect?

New York Times:

In Senate testimony, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said the Russian effort to influence the election was a “multifaceted campaign” that included spreading fake news.
Mr. Clapper said there was a difference between “skepticism” and “disparagement” of the findings, a comment apparently aimed at President-elect Trump.

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Great Analysis From WP: Republicans run the spread offense to ram through Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees

I love football, I love football strategy, and I love this analysis.

Washington Post:

THE BIG IDEA: By scheduling six confirmation hearings for the same day, the Senate GOP is working to prevent any one Donald Trump nominee from dominating a news cycle. The gambit is very likely to succeed.

It’s no coincidence that Republican committee chairmen scheduled hearings for some of the president-elect’s most controversial and polarizing nominees next Wednesday.

Trump, after putting it off repeatedly, will also finally have his first press conference since the election at the same time. And Mitch McConnell plans a budget vote-o-rama, including votes related to the repeal of Obamacare. This will further distract the press and the public.

The GOP leadership’s approach will minimize unflattering process stories and prevent Trump’s nominees from receiving the kind of full airing and scrutiny that they would otherwise.

It’s the political equivalent of running a no-huddle offense in the first quarter and throwing a lot of deep balls when you know the defense is outmatched. The other side’s best safety is still recovering from a pulled hamstring, and the defensive coordinator is distracted by the head coaching job he’s going to take next season. The odds are that Team Trump will score a bunch of touchdowns.

In fact, the conventional wisdom inside the Capitol right now is that all of Trump’s picks will get confirmed, no matter how many red flags several have in their backgrounds…

— On a quiet day, most of the aforementioned hearings would have the potential to transform into get-your-popcorn-ready blockbusters that could lead the news and spark a national dialogue about hugely consequential topics, from the future of public education to race relations, America’s role in the world, the moral hazards of Trump’s support for torture or the virtue of a trillion-dollar infrastructure package. But the flurry of simultaneous activity will make it vastly easier for his allies to jam these secretaries through without any of these debates breaking through.

— Don’t forget: Because Harry Reid myopically went nuclear in 2014, all these folks can now be confirmed with just 50 votes.

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LAT: Less shrinkage: This is your aging brain on the Mediterranean diet

So brain volume and fast reaction times correlate with intelligence and lifespan?

Los Angeles Times:

The aging brain is a shrinking brain, and a shrinking brain is, generally speaking, a brain whose performance and reaction time are declining: That is a harsh reality of growing older.

But new research shows that brain shrinkage is less pronounced in older folks whose diets hew closely to the traditional diet of Mediterranean peoples — including lots of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and olive oil, little red meat and poultry, and regular, moderate consumption of fish and red wine…

Researchers also must demonstrate that, in their measurements of dietary intake and health, they’re not actually capturing well-understood relationships between intelligence, education and long-term health: People with certain cognitive strengths do better and stay longer in school and earn more; yes, the better educated and paid may consume healthier diets, but they are generally healthier anyway, so maybe the healthier diet is incidental.

The newest study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, helps untangle many of those mysteries. But it also leaves many questions unanswered.

Contrary to some research findings on the Mediterranean diet, the findings suggest that reduced brain shrinkage is not specifically linked to low intake of meat and high intake of fish. Maybe, the authors suggest (and many researchers believe this), the magic in the Mediterranean diet is all those plant-based foods, acting collectively to improve subjects’ cognitive health.

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I Still Call Australia Home

I was working an office job and playing this collection of Australian folk songs over and over until I had tears in my eyes. The Peter Allen song, “I Still Call Australia Home,” killed me, particularly this stanza:

Someday we’ll all be together once more
When all of the ships come back to the shore
I realise something I’ve always known
I still call Australia home

As I age, I get more nostalgic. I’ve led a fractured life all over the planet so hearing the words, “Someday we’ll all be together once more” touches on my yearning for healing, wholeness and reconciliation. I remember or imagine times in my childhood when I felt connected with family and friends and I yearn for that again. When I converted to Orthodox Judaism, to an extent, I cut myself off from my previous life (I lost many childhood friends, they felt that by choosing another religion, I was saying that their choices were wrong). I was born again. I was an orphan (from the standpoint of Jewish law, a convert doesn’t say kaddish or yizkor for his gentile parents and family).

Ironically, much of what inspired my conversion was my desire to connect, and yet my self-defeating and isolating habits get in my way over and over.

Here’s the whole song:

I been to cities that never close down
From New York to Rio and Old London Town
But no matter how far or how wide I roam
I still call Australia home

I’m always travelling
I love being free
And so I keep leaving the sun and the sea
But my heart lies waiting over the foam
I still call Australia home

All the sons and daughters
Spinning around the world
Away from their family and friends
But as the world gets older and colder
Its good to know where your journey ends

Someday we’ll all be together once more
When all of the ships come back to the shore
I realise something I’ve always known
I still call Australia home

But no matter how far or wide I roam
I still call Australia
I still call Australia
I still call Australia home

But no matter how far or wide I roam
I still call Australia
I still call Australia
I still call Australia home

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The alt-right movement: everything you need to know

From the Irish Times:

Alt-lite: The more mainstream form of the alternative right, embodied by figures such as Vice founder Gavin McInnes or Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos.
Alt-right: A young, energetic upstart faction of the Trump coalition heavily active on Twitter and underground forums. Characterised by nationalism, scepticism toward globalism and an irreverent sense of humour.
Blue hair: An aggressive, unpleasant feminist with brightly coloured hair, usually depicted as being overweight.
Cat lady: An older, less aggressive version of a blue hair. Cat ladies prefer MSNBC and Cosmopolitan, whereas a blue hair spends her life on social blogging platform Tumblr.
Cathedral: The ad-hoc post-second World War liberal-socialist alliance dominating western culture. Coined by pseudonymous neoreactionary blogger Mencius Moldbug, this includes everything from academia to media to government.
Chad: An alpha normie (see below). The alt-right seeks to appeal to Chads, a project known as Chad Nationalism.
Cuckservative: A portmanteau of “cuckold” and “conservative”, which was originally meant to imply that mainstream conservatives protected the welfare of foreign groups over Americans. Often shortened to “cuck” to describe any weak or feminine man. Conservative commentators Erick Erickson and Rick Wilson are exemplars.
Current year: A mocking reference to the left’s propensity to cite the current year as an argument. Example: “How can Donald Trump say these things? It’s 2016!”
Dindu or Dindu Nuffin: A black man convicted of a crime, often one lionized by the press or portrayed as innocent. An attempt to approximate the African-American Vernacular English pronunciation of “didn’t do anything” (“dindu nuffin”).
Fashy: Possessing a fascist aesthetic. Often used to describe military-style undercut hairdos such as those sported by Richard Spencer, publisher of Radix and the man who coined the term “alternative right”.
Kek: An Egyptian frog demon. Pepe the Frog is seen as an avatar of Kek. No, really. Also an onomatopoeia for laughter.
Narrative: Media and academia’s version of events. Individual events have a narrative, but so does the entire perspective advanced by mainstream culture.
Neoreactionary: A loose collection of anarcho-capitalists and monarchists centred around the writings of pseudonymous blogger Mencius Moldbug and continental philosopher Nick Land. Most have gone underground, writing for more mainstream publications.
New right: The heterogeneous political parties espousing a stew of nationalism, libertarianism and populism, such as the National Front in France, Ukip in Britain and Alternative for Germany. They are united by an opposition to globalisation and mass immigration. Donald Trump’s faction of the Republican Party is the de facto new right party in the United States. The alt-right and new right overlap but are not coterminous.
Normie: A normal person.
Paleoconservative: “Paleocon” for short. Paleoconservatives were a conservative faction emphasising tradition, family, identity, limited government and the rule of law. Prominent paleocon thinkers include Samuel T Francis, Joseph Sobran and Paul Gottfried, who coined the term “cultural Marxism”. Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign was their apotheosis. The alt-right can, to a certain extent, be understood as an irreverent and youthful rebranding of paleoconservatism.
Signalling: Ideologically conspicuous consumption or performative belief. For example, purchasing a hybrid vehicle to showcase concern for the environment. Can also be the ostentatious expression of politically correct views. Derided by the alt-right as a means to acquire social status with little risk.
SJWs: Social justice warriors. Shrill, unpleasant and vaguely totalitarian leftists into gender, sexual and racial identity politics. See also: blue hair.
Snowflake: A person with an unusual, potentially dubious, gender identity.

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