blame electronics

But that isn't the problem.

The real problem is much the same as the change in the American diet which has made Americans a lot fatter.

People who sell food have tweaked it so that the people who buy it buy more of it - it doesn't matter the the manufacturers that their customers get fatter and die younger.

People who sell opinions make their output more compelling rather than more informative, because that enlarges their audience.

Being able to get stuff published in the New Yorker won't make you all that rich. Becoming a star on Fox News is much more profitable - Tucker Carlson is a depressing example.

John Larkin's enthusiasm for climate change denial reflects his willingness to binge on the intellectual equivalent of junk food.

We need an intellectual equivalent of Ozempic - critical thinking in a pill. Academic education is supposed to instill critical thinking, but it didn't work on John, or Donald Trump.

Hilarious how the WSJ-s*****ad claims that when thousands of students are willing to be beaten and arrested en masse it implies they're "less resilient and disengaged." Did Tienanmen Square need TikTok to happen?

The super-rich will say any nonsense to protect their interests and the dividends of their gruesome wars. Fareed Zakaria, Douglas Belkin, the WSJ and NYT just work for 'em.

One of the more amusing indie games in recent history, where you play the editor of the NYT and have to keep the paper running while ensuring the super-rich, the police, and the state of Israel are always satisfied with the content:

Even many US university students tend to be smart enough to notice that the US seems to have endless money to fund foreign conflicts, but always talks austerity when it comes to them and their future (or lack thereof.)

"Haha you'll never afford a home even with a college degree but here's another $50 billion for Israel and Ukraine, and there'll be another $50 billion after that, and after that..."

There is plenty of "social capital" left among young people and university students. But the powers-that-be do tend to get particularly unhappy when a significant portion of it focuses into a beam pointed in their direction.

$50 billion is chump change compared to the US budget

It's not even chump change compared to the $1tn increase in the US national debt every 100 days. I have no idea what the thrust of the original article is suggesting. I have no idea what Bitrex is bitching about, either. Sending money for war purposes whilst ignoring domestic concerns is just what Globalism is all about. Globalism is what Bitrex has always espoused here, so why he's got his panties in a bunch I simply don't know. Anyway, what's most important is that the horse in the photo hasn't been provided with eye protection. All riot horses in the UK are fully kitted-out with personal protection gear. I'd assumed it was the same in the US but clearly it isn't. THAT issue at any rate, definitely requires addressing.

One thing it's worth asking yourself, if more people were like me, would the world be a better place?

It isn't. There's no way that you can can generate an objectively reliable estimate on your own effect on the world as a whole.

Anybody silly enough to ask the question has to live with the fact that if you are that silly your effect on the world is bound to be negative.

In John Larkin's case, his enthusiasm for climate change denial propaganda guarantees that his net effect on the world as a whole is going to be negative.

It isn't. Globalism is merely more international trade - it lets nations specialise in making what they make best and trading those products with other nations who have other skills.

Cursitor Doom associates it with the kinds of imaginary international conspiracies that enrich his fantasy life, rather like my undergraduate friends who thought that adobe haciendas were exotic (which they were) and exciting, which mud-brick farm houses weren't, when I told them what the Spanish phrase meant.

He knows what Globalism means in practice (and subsidising foreign wars isn't any part the practical reality), while you don't.

Getting horse used to wearing full personal protection gear takes time. Americans do tend to want to do stuff in a hurry.

Horses can be skittish, as a handful of the Household cavalry showed in London last week.