Wednesday Potpourri

First, two days ago Spain and Portugal experienced complete and total blackouts. It was not just the lights that went out; the electrical grid went down.

Was it because they had both instituted climate friendly net zero policies? Or was it just serendipity that the moment they declared the electric grid totally climate friendly, it broke down.

Michael Shellenberger described the scene:

Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday.

At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.

In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn’t pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn’t process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand. Cell towers collapsed under surges and outages.

Second, on the DEI front we have just seen the final report about the collision between a black hawk helicopter and a passenger jet a few months ago over Washington, D. C. 

Alex Berenson has the salient detail:

The @nytimes story on the January DC plane crash hides its takeaway until the last sentences: the lady helicopter pilot ignored multiple warnings from her right seat about altitude (and his directly telling her to turn away) and flew straight into a passenger jet.

Third, Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, was a favorite of the teachers union. So he led the march toward giving teachers more money.

How did that one work out? Glad you asked:

DEI: Chicago’s teachers insisted that higher pay would unlock student success. The city obliged, hiking per-student spending by 70 percent and boosting average teacher salaries to $100,000. 

The result? Failure on a grander scale. Today, just 11 percent of black students in Chicago are proficient in reading — a tragic monument to the bankrupt promises of a broken system.

Fourth, a few years back the grandees at Citigroup decided to grant their employees better work/life balance. You would imagine that serious business executives would be immune to such drivel, but, alas, they are not.

So, they opened a branch in Malaga, on the Costa del Sol, where they limited the time that staff would need to spend in the office.

Now, Tyler Durden reports on Zero Hedge, the three year experiment has run its course and the bank is closing the Malaga branch:

The good news is that without the work, former employees are going to have plenty of time to spend on their lives. The bad news is that they're not going to have much more money to spend. 

Citigroup is shutting down its Málaga office less than three years after opening the hub, cutting a few jobs and relocating others to London and Paris, according to FT.

Opened in 2022 during a fierce post-pandemic talent war, the Costa del Sol office offered junior bankers eight-hour days and work-free weekends, a sharp contrast to the grueling hours typical in New York and London

Fifth, what happens when a city adopts more progressive policies? Apparently crime and taxes both increase. Such is the case with London, England. The result is, more and more millionaires are picking up and leaving town.

Over the past ten years, London has lost some 30,000 wealthy residents. You can kiss the tax base good-bye.

The Epoch Times has the story:

Devin Narang, an Indian entrepreneur, said in a meeting attended by David Lammy, then shadow foreign secretary, that fear of crime in London was one of India’s elite’s biggest concerns about the city.

“People are being mugged in the heart of London–in Mayfair,” Narang, a member of the executive committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said at a meeting in New Delhi in February 2024, the Financial Times reported.

“All CEOs in India have had an experience of physical mugging and the police [in London] not responding.”

Manchester United owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe also said that he had stopped wearing luxury watches in the capital.

Sixth, speaking of crime, Europe has a serious Muslim migrant problem. It should not be news.

Now, we learn that said Muslim migrants have gotten into the habit of burning down churches. Apparently, seeking sanctuary is not very high on their to-do list.  Nor is respecting the religion of other people.

Pamela Geller reports:

A church in Wales was set on fire by two Muslim migrants. Bethany English Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in Wales has stood since the 19th century. Over 1000 churches have been burned or vandalized in Europe.

British churches are vandalised an average of eight times a day, according to new data by the Countryside Alliance.

A freedom of information request reveals there were 9,148 records of theft, burglary, criminal damage, vandalism and assault between January 2022 and December 2024.

Over three years, there were 3,237 cases of criminal damage to churches – including arson.

Seventh, meanwhile, up north, the people of Canada were so offended by President Trump that they went out and elected a fool as their new prime minister.

Famed market strategist David Rosenberg, a Canadian, offers this commentary:

Only in Canada does the party that governed over a decade of unprecedented economic ineptitude get rewarded for a fourth term in office. Less a case of there being a fresh face with Mark Carney, who previously served on the sidelines as Justin Trudeau’s external economic advisor, and more a case of ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. Talk about getting fooled again.

Eighth, as the poet said, fear no more the heat of the sun. Apparently, the British Labour Party did not get the message. It is going ahead with a crackpot plan to block the sun, thereby pretending to solve the problem of global warming.

Benjamin Bartee reports for PJ Media:

“Experiments to dim sunlight to fight global warming will be given the green light by the Government within weeks,” British outlet The Telegraph reports. “Outdoor field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, are being considered by scientists as a way to prevent runaway climate change.”

Don’t worry about the potential devastating and irreversible effects of blocking out the literal singular object that provides the basis for all life on Earth; the agency launching the project — the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) — assures the public its project will be “rigorously assessed.”

Ninth, just when you thought that Gen Z was growing up, or some such, we read this, in The New York Post. Apparently, Gen Z women are all addicted:

Gen Z women are abusing stimulants and binge drinking more than their male counterparts — and any other age group, new studies have found.

Nearly 37% of women ages 18 to 25 reported excessively popping uppers such as Adderall and Ritalin in the past year, more than double that reported by women older than them, according to a study published last month in JAMA Psychiatry.

Only 25% of women ages 26 to 34 reported improper use, according to the study. Women 35 to 64, who researchers said have seen largest rise in stimulant prescriptions, are abusing them the least — 13.7%.

Keep in mind, this cohort has been supersaturated with feminist thinking. And it has largely rejected the notion of marrying and having families.

Do these have any connection or is it just correlation?

But, that’s not all folks!

The alarming findings follow reports that young women are also out-drinking men for the first time.

A study published last week in JAMA of 267,843 men and women 18 and older found that 31.6% of women ages 18 to 25 reported binge drinking — consuming four or more drinks on one occasion — more than any other group.

The study compared men’s and women’s habits over two time periods, 2017 to 2019 and 2021 to 2023. It found that men’s binge-drinking levels plummeted nearly 8 percentage points, from 37.7% to 29.9%. But women didn’t see such a drop, falling only 4.8 percent from the prior years.

You’ve come a long way, baby!

Finally, I now have several open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, please contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com

Back to the Office

Strangely enough, the Financial Times of London breaks with tradition and offers some kind words about Gen Z. 

Those who manage this Gen Z cohort in the business world, know that insolent, arrogant behavior has become de rigueur. To the point where, when you read something flattering about Gen Z, you assume that it is untrue or that it is British.

The subject of the recent FT article is the return to the office, the movement against working at home. As you know, this habit took hold during the covid pandemic. And you also know that serious business executives, from Amazon to the JP Morgan Bank have begun insisting that their staff show up in the office.

According to the FT, Gen Z workers are more likely to be at the office than are their 0lder managers:

Con­trary to some ste­reo­types Gen­er­a­tion Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012, is lead­ing the charge back to the office, while older gen­er­a­tions are more reluct­ant to return to past pat­terns of present­ee­ism. Work­ers under 24 years old are more likely to be in the office than their older coun­ter­parts, accord­ing to research by prop­erty group JLL: on aver­age com­ing in 3.1 days a week, while other age groups put in between 2.5 and 2.7 days.

Hopefully, we have all learned that being in the office contributes to development:

Man­dated office returns are partly being jus­ti­fied on the grounds of young people need­ing time work­ing in-per­son. Com­ments on remote work­ing from Jamie Dimon, chief exec­ut­ive of JPMor­gan Chase, were leaked this year. “The young gen­er­a­tion is being dam­aged by this,” he said. “They're being left behind socially, ideas, meet­ing people.” Other lead­ers have expressed con­cern that the old appren­tice model, of learn­ing by listen­ing, is deteri­or­at­ing due to home­work­ing.

When you are present in the office, you get to interact with your colleagues and managers, in person, face to face. You develop your social skills and improve your loyalty to your company. None of this is trivial:

Gen­er­a­tional dis­par­it­ies can cre­ate chal­lenges for man­agers, who must bal­ance com­pet­ing demands for flex­ib­il­ity from older work­ers who have exist­ing net­works and caring respons­ib­il­it­ies, with younger peers' desire to learn and meet col­leagues. It high­lights some of the dif­fi­culties for a gen­er­a­tion that spent part of their edu­ca­tion in lock­down.

Again, it’s about building relationships, connecting with other people. You are not seeing through a glass darkly, as the saying goes, but are looking someone in the eye, face to face.

Lucy Blitz, a 22-year-old con­tent pro­du­cer at Two Circles, a sports mar­ket­ing agency, finds rela­tion­ships easier to build in-per­son: “Actu­ally being able to speak to my col­leagues and man­agers face to face if there's an issue, is easier than com­mu­nic­at­ing over Slack, which I can't stand.”

Just in case you were becoming optimistic about Gen Z, the article adds that this group still values work/life balance.

While young people are more enthu­si­astic about the office, sur­vey responses sug­gest they also appre­ci­ate flex­ib­il­ity. The JLL report, which ques­tioned more than 12,000 employ­ees across indus­tries and coun­tries, found the young­est work­ers said their ideal num­ber of days was 2.6 — lower than the days they actu­ally spent in the office but higher than 35- to 44-year-olds, who wanted just 2.1 It also found work­ers under the age of 34 pri­or­it­ised work-life bal­ance and flex­ib­il­ity, while over-55s were more “sens­it­ive to phys­ical con­di­tions like tem­per­at­ure, noise and air qual­ity”.

Flexibility means that they do not feel obliged to spend too much time at work and that they insist on having the proper amount of time off. So, for all the good we see in Gen Z, the group still has a long way to go.

Does Psychoanalysis Make You Human?

Now that psychoanalysis, especially the Freudian version, has passed from the mental health scene, we are now being confronted with post mortems. 

Dare I say that I am being generous. When we read Adam Blum’s attempt to explain psychoanalysis in Psychology Today we are struck by the utter vacuousness of it all. Dare I say that it is an embarrassing exercise, one that is so embarrassing that I hesitated before commenting about it.

Blum explains:

At its best, we imagine a psychoanalyst relieving our anxiety or depression through empathic responses to our thoughts and feelings, or perhaps bringing conscious awareness to whatever we are unconsciously doing. At worst, we picture someone lying on a couch, talking, while someone else sits behind it, not talking. (The unlikeliness that this arrangement should be helpful to anyone is one reason why there are so many actual cartoons about it.)

The arrangement is not just unlikely. It is bizarre, because it precludes face-to-face communication. It makes socialization impossible. Freud understood clearly that the purpose of this arrangement was to provide him unfiltered access to the patient’s mind. Presumably, if the patient is not looking at the analyst he can let his mind wander and can speak whatever obnoxious nonsense passes through it.

Blum is not finished. He offers his theory, namely that psychoanalysis is an education that makes us into human beings.

As I said, the word “vacuous" does it justice. Ask yourself what you were before psychoanalysis made you into a human being. He believes that we all need an education, presumably, in talking to people who refuse to look us in the eye, to become human beings.

Through this mutual formation of theory and practice emerges a picture of psychoanalysis that is as much a kind of education as a kind of cure — the very education that makes us into human beings.

A minimum of reflection will tell you that you are many things in the world-- a son or daughter, a father or mother, a husband or wife, an American or a Russian, and so on. Let’s not forget, executive manager and teammate. We identify ourselves by our membership in different groups. This membership gives us roles and offers rules that we are to follow. If the group succeeds we feel pride. If it fails we feel embarrassed and ashamed. 

In no case do we set out to become human beings. We are human by virtue of our DNA. No more, no less. You do not need to do anything to become human. Nothing can make you subhuman. What were we before we were human beings?

As for the notion of talking to walls, the purpose is to make us into something resembling disembodied minds, which is not the same thing as being human. If anything, it makes us angelic.

Blum continues to suggest that there is something seductive about the process. The analysand, staring at the wall, wants to interact with his analyst, to make some form of connection. Thus, the patient will try his damnedest to find the magic word that will awaken his analyst and help him escape from his Freudian shell.

But even when this goes very well — and especially when it doesn’t — this process has a distinct quality of seduction. Who is this person, a patient may start to wonder, who is so interested in the intimate details of my life? What do they want from me? Why am I bothered or tickled or just curious about that thing they said last time? And why did I have that weird dream?

To analyze means to break down, and when familiar ways of thinking about ourselves and our lives are disrupted by analytic work, we don’t know ahead of time what will come up, or what to make of what does. A desire forms to make sense of these new experiences, which in turn seduces us into becoming more curious about ourselves and our relationships.

As it happens in reality, when an individual is taught the bad habit of talking to the walls, of talking as though he cannot offend  his interlocutor, he becomes something like a disembodied mind. He does not become human. If he graduates from the process he will become more like the literary version of the disembodied mind, the great detective of Anglo-American detective fictions.

That is, he will become like C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Endeavour Morse, and so on. The one thing that characterizes these fictional beings is that they are not human. They do not have lives and do not have spouses or children. Saying that they are more or less human or humane is simply a misunderstanding.

There you have it. Psychoanalysis, as it is practiced by people like Blum, will teach you to think incoherently.

Sundaze

With a warm welcome to new subscribers. And, a special thank-you to paid subscribers.

Being as today is Sunday, we take the day off from opining in order to request donations. They are the fuel that keeps this work going. 

Not to be overly obvious, but it takes time and effort to put up a new post daily. Very few others manage to do so. Thus, it’s a job, one that is worthy of compensation. 

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Saturday Miscellany

First, whatever you think about the rest, Barack Obama was right about one thing: some people have too much money.

Data Republican offers this view of the recent work of one Bill Gates.

So, let me get this straight about Bill Gates... 

He bankrolled Common Core, and wrecked public education. Zero accountability. 

He helped script the pandemic playbook at Event 201. Zero accountability. 

He funneled millions into African circumcision programs based on junk science. Zero accountability. 

And now he wants to dim the sun? This guy has done more harm than almost any criminal behind bars.

Second, and then there is the due process question. Apparently, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, currently inhabiting a prison in San Salvador, did not receive sufficient due process. 

To which Yale Law graduate JD Vance replies:

I just disagree with the idea that he hasn't been offered due process. He had a couple of immigration hearings; he had a valid deportation order... ...I think there's actually a deeper issue going on, which is that you see some radical judges at the district court level who are trying to layer so much "process" on top of the immigration system that it makes it impossible to function. We have over 20 million illegal aliens in the United States of America—are we not allowed to deport them? Because if we're not allowed to deport them, then what these district courts are saying is fundamentally, they reject the will of the American people as it was expressed in November 2024.

They used to call it a democracy.

Third, Matt Margolis brings us up to date on Kilmar’s record:

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the now-deported MS-13 thug was driving a car registered to a convicted human smuggler during a traffic stop in Tennessee back in 2022—and he wasn’t alone. He had a group of men with him, raising even more questions about what exactly he was up to. This is the kind of criminal the Left is fighting to protect while pretending Trump is the threat.

During that 2022 traffic stop, Kilmar Abrego Garcia wasn’t just out for a joyride. He was transporting eight other individuals on a shady cross-country trip from Texas to Maryland. His excuse? They were supposedly headed to do “construction work.” No tools, no luggage—just bodies in a car. Sounds legit, right?

And get this: the car Garcia was driving belonged to none other than Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, a convicted human smuggler busted for bringing illegals into the U.S. from Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras. What are the odds? Just a harmless road trip in a smuggler’s vehicle packed with men and no bags. Nothing to see here, folks.

Fourth, another day, another command officer relieved of command. The reason: disrespecting the commander in chief, among others. This, from Rick Moran on PJ Media:

If for no other reason, Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez, former commander of Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, should have been relieved for demonstrating extraordinary stupidity.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the reason that Col. Baez Ramirez was suspended. On Sunday, Hegseth reposted an X post claiming, "Commander of Fort McCoy, whose base chain-of-command board was missing photos of Trump, Vance, and Hegseth, has been SUSPENDED."

Fifth, according to Ilya Shapiro, President Trump was right to attack Harvard’s anti-Semitism. He wrote this in his Substack:

As Bill Ackman put it in a revelatory essay the day Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned, antisemitism is the “canary in the coal mine,” a warning about larger issues. It’s a leading indicator of underlying pathologies, which here means everything from cancel culture to ideological indoctrination, intellectual corruption to moral decay. We’ve seen a subversion of the core mission of universities to seek truth and knowledge, and of classical-liberal values like free speech, due process, and equality under the law. It’s been a shift from education to activism.

The root cause of all of this is a noxious postmodern ideology that contends that truth is subjective and must be viewed through lenses of race, gender, and other identity categories, according to some privilege hierarchy. Your rights and freedoms depend on whether you’re part of a class deemed oppressor or oppressed.

Sixth, you might be familiar with an R and B artist named Kehlani. I was not. She had been hired to perform at Cornell, but then someone figured out that she was an anti-Semite.

In time the university administration cancelled the concert. Reported by the New York Post:

Cornell University on Wednesday canned Jew-bashing entertainer Kehlani’s upcoming campus performance after facing overwhelming backlash over the decision to host the anti-Israel musician.

President Michael Kotlikoff said he’d rescinded the Grammy Award-nominated R&B artist’s invitation to perform next month at the university’s “Slope Day” end-of-year celebration — just days after the school initially defended the move.

“Unfortunately, although it was not the intention, the selection of Kehlani as this year’s headliner has injected division and discord into Slope Day,” he wrote in a letter to students and staff.

“In the days since Kehlani was announced, I have heard grave concerns from our community that many are angry, hurt, and confused that Slope Day would feature a performer who has espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos, and on social media.”

Seventh, by now you are well aware of the damage done by DEI programs. You probably thought that science would be immune from this madness. Apparently not. It has infested medical schools, and that means, medical care.

Conservative Yankee posted this on the Lucianne blog:

Medical schools nationwide are forcing students to promote left-wing ideologies on race, gender, and obesity at the expense of proper patient care, according to a new watchdog report released on Thursday. The comprehensive investigation, produced by non-profit group Speech First, examined 54 public medical schools across the United States, seeking to document how “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) mandates are being enforced throughout medical education. “This ideological conformity is required not only of students but also of faculty, who are often tasked with serving as enforcers of these mandates,” the report explains, noting that ideological requirements begin as early as the admissions process.

Eighth, speaking of DEI, or, more specifically the efforts it is making to stay alive, this, from Mother Harvard, via Aaron Sibarium:

NEW: The Harvard Law Review has made DEI the "first priority" of its admissions process. It routinely kills or advances pieces based on the author's race. It even vets articles for racially diverse citations.

Ninth, always nice to have some numbers to go along with your morning coffee. From the TGIF column at the Free Press, the numbers regarding the political affiliations of young men. As you know, the Democratic Party has seriously lost this group:

(I’m getting this from a fascinating Yale Youth Poll.) Among 18- to 21-year-old men, Donald Trump has a +7 net favorability. Kamala Harris has a −48 net favorability. Let’s sit with that for a moment. That’s really, really unpopular. Telling young men that they are fundamentally toxic and teaching them from age 3 to strongly identify with their race (whether it be inherently good or evil) turned out to be a bad idea for progressives. Now they strongly identify with their race and also don’t care if you call them toxic.

Tenth, the Ivy League never ceases to amaze. For those who think that the anti-Semitic protests are merely an exercise of free speech, consider this from Yale. Also via the Free Press:

Students at Yale University briefly set up a new pro-Hamas encampment, where they chanted a call and response: We will honor all our martyrs / Mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. And no, they are not talking about their parents and siblings who sacrificed so much to get them to Yale (I’m guessing they screen calls from their actual mothers). They said the quiet part out loud by wearing Hamas headbands, the hottest new campus accessory. So again, to reiterate, they are wearing Hamas headbands and chanting to honor their martyrs. If anyone buys the line that these are just anti-war protesters, or that they’re protesting some specific Israeli policy, you’re deluding yourself. They are Hamas supporters, plain and simple.

Last, I now have several open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

The Return of the Tradwife

The contempt oozes in every other sentence. A woman by name of Chine McDonald has written a column about tradwives, that is, about women who are happy to function as homemakers. McDonald directs a think tank called Theos. She has written her current screed for the Financial Times. 

By her rather dim lights the phenomenon of the trad wive is something to be analyzed and discredited. Supposedly it signals a flaw or defect. The notion that an intelligent adult female might choose to be a tradwife does not seem to cross her mind. 

The phenomenon either means that there is something wrong with the world or that there is something wrong with these women.

She does not consider the far out possibility that they may be making a decision about what is best for them. Aren’t they free to choose? 

And, dare we mention, at a time when large numbers of American children are brought up in broken homes, homes where their mothers are only occasionally present, some women might have decided to prioritize domesticity and childrearing over fighting to overthrow the patriarchy.

According to McDonald, it’s all just propaganda. There, that solves it, doesn’t it?

The imagery is a 21st-cen­tury iter­a­tion of pro­pa­ganda about fem­in­ine and mater­nal ideals presen­ted in art and cul­ture for cen­tur­ies. Just like Raphael’s “Sis­tine Madonna” or Bot­ti­celli’s “Madonna Litta”, the trad­wife visu­als depict moth­er­hood as young, typ­ic­ally white, beau­ti­ful and serene. But beneath the sac­char­ine icon­o­graphy, we can dis­cern mark­ers of our cur­rent moment.

As though a stable home with two parents present and where defined roles define areas of influence and authority-- is an anomaly.

Obviously, McDonald also takes offense at the notion that these tradwives will be good mothers and will raise healthy children. Again, this is hardly an anomaly in human history. The anomaly is the current American situation where homes are broken and children are left on their own.

Again, McDonald does not want women to believe that they have a choice. The tradwife phenomenon, in her eyes, romanticizes:

… an unat­tain­able domestic per­fec­tion, you can also see it as an under­stand­able reac­tion to fear of con­tem­por­ary uncer­tain­ties. Hyper­loc­al­ism is a response to a scary inter­con­nec­ted world and you can’t get more hyper­local than the trad­wife’s realm. When mil­it­ary con­flicts are raging and eco­nom­ies col­lapsing, why not retreat to the home and make jam?

Again, this is amateur psychology, designed to tell women to get out of the house and into the marketplace. And yet, traditionally, the home has been a woman’s domain, a place where women have power and authority. Apparently, there is something wrong with that.

Worse yet, she is telling young women that no one will ever want to support them and their children. How much confidence does that build?

True enough, as Anne-Marie Slaughter explained when she resigned from her position at the State Department to spend more time at home with her children-- one of whose lives had been seriously deteriorating after she took her job away from home-- there are superhuman women who can pursue career goals and care for their children. The problem is, Slaughter explained, this is very rare, and not very likely. More power to those who can, but telling women to abandon home and hearth in favor of working in the marketplace is very often very bad advice. 

One understands that Slaughter made her decision because it was best for her elder child. And yet, feminist blowhards, who shall not be named, denounced her for betraying women and betraying the revolution. 

That is the feminist position. It is straight-up misogyny. Encouraging women to abandon their children in order to pursue dubious career goals is not a good thing.