Business Insider recently reminded us of Coca-Cola product placement saga from the period after the Second World War mythologizing a plucky Soviet general, designed to appeal to both conservatives and the far-left. The tale is an interesting illustration of the appeal of storytelling using iconic and archetypal characters for propaganda purposes – or, in his […]
The great puzzle about the lockdowns has been how support for the restrictions has divided along class lines. In general, low income earners, especially manual workers, oppose the lockdowns strenuously, while high income earners – the laptop class – seem to support it strenuously. This class divide, the elite versus the workers, is reflected in the […]
A fool and his money are easily parted and corporations love these fools. They used to have to work to prise money from the reluctant public who demanded value for these exchanges, but now they can do that with a lot less work by proclaiming the creed of social justice. Interestingly, in this regard, Big […]
Last year we reported on the strange virtue-signaling of outdoor wear company, North Face, as they made a big show of refusing to supply jackets with the company logo to a company involved in oil and gas exploration. It was pointed out by the CEO of one company, Inovex Downhole Solutions, that North Face’s garments […]
The best part of Matt Walsh’s trolling of AOC was the knowledge that she wouldn’t take the money. She couldn’t because that would mean that the state was not the best means of solving the problem. Sandy Cortez is a state-ist and every antagonistic dialectic she embarks upon has one objective; enlarge the state. In […]
Why is a widely used, clinically trialled and out of patent drug now suddenly considered “controversial” by the media? Youtube now explicitly forbids mention of the same drug – ivermectin – in its “community guidelines”, which have become a sort of continually-shifting technocratic blacklist that you have to abide with to stay out of the […]
After working away diligently to establish a smothering regulatory framework that would stifle innovation, the Irish government have finally arrived with a fully fledged but elegantly simple solution, the Climate Action Bill. Reading through the government’s press release, its evident the Bill is intended as an all-pervading regulatory burden on all aspects of life. The […]
Brian O’Nolan, otherwise known as Flann O Brien, was at his absolute best when his parody was closest to the bone. In a satirical scene in his best novel (in my opinon), An Béal Bocht (the Poor Mouth), he brings “na Daoine Uasaile” –the educated elite- down from Dublin, to poverty stricken west Kerry, to […]
I’m not proud of a feeling of schadenfreude upon hearing wealthy actor Paul Hogan whine about the homeless drug addicts that have descended on his Los Angeles elite Venice Beach neighbourhood. Mr Hogan feels blockaded into his $3.5m mansion and wishes the homeless just stayed somewhere else where property prices were more suited to their […]
The first record of a hurling match describes an epic encounter that took place in 1272 BC between the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Dannan at Maigh Tuartha near Cong in County Mayo. Hardly a stronghold of the modern game, Maigh Tuartha is nevertheless part of the rich body of lore that relates the […]
Lockdowns are conferring little benefit, but causing colossal damage, a Economics professor has concluded, using a cost benefit analysis to calculate that strict Covid restrictions caused 282 times the loss of years of life, that it saved. Economics Professor Douglas W. Allen, from Simon Fraser University in Canada looked at the effect of loss of employment, loss […]
A group of MIT researchers have published their findings on how the science on the effectiveness of masks is analysed by mask-critics, and they found that mask-critics were well informed and engaged deeply with the published data. They reported that: “Far from ignoring scientific evidence to argue for individual freedom, anti-maskers often engage deeply with […]