The New York Post in a recent 6:12 video reports the Scottish Police contention that 12-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister were the guilty parties harassing innocent Bulgarian immigrants and brandishing weapons. The Internet memes praising the little girl for protecting her sister is just a bunch of bigoted right-wing misinformation.

And, though the Post reporter does note that the girls’ aunt started a fundraiser telling a completely different story, he accepts the Scottish Police report dismissing the white Scottish family’s allegations and exculpating the Bulgars and even quotes a Muslim Scottish National Party politician denouncing victimizing immigrants.

I’ve been looking regularly at the British Spectator, The Telegraph, and the (London) Times looking for what Ernest Hemingway used to call “the true gen” and I’ve been quite surprised to encounter no coverage at all of a story that produced millions views of Internet memes around the world.

The British Police released a rather Orwellian statement:

We are aware of misinformation being shared on social media in relation to an incident where a Bulgarian couple were approached by youths in St Ann Lane, Dundee, on Saturday 23 August 2025.

“A 12-year-old girl has been charged with being in possession of offensive weapons. She will be referred to the relevant authorities and our inquiries are ongoing.

“We would like to thank the local community for their help with our investigation and would urge the public not to share misinformation about this incident or speculate on the circumstances.”

Mustn’t speculate now! you hear?

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Does this look like a reasonable and objective police response to you?

It looks to me like a wildly excessive response, suggesting that some sort of highly sensitive issue is involved and the point is being made emphatically that no one had better dare violate a top level taboo.

It may be simply that the left-wing insistence on the State’s Monopoly of Force is being affirmed, but it is also highly possible that what is being made clear is that anyone guilty of an affront to a member of a protected victim group like exotic alien immigrants, especially Muslims, will be made a conspicuous example of.

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The Scottish Sun, additionally, puts a suggestively different light on the story identifying the Bulgarian immigrant victim as 21-year-old Fatos Ali Dummana who, on social media, has described himself as a “gypsy gangster,” and posted a photo of himself leaning on an obviously expensive two-seater sportscar with the caption: “I’m waiting for you whores to get in my supercar.”

Mary Harrington makes the interesting point that “Art” is a modern way of viewing objects.

If we look at the longer history of humans making beautiful things, it’s clear that what this term means now isn’t an eternal feature of the cultural sphere, but specific to modernity. In fact the trajectory whereby making beautiful things became “art” tracks the onset of modernity more generally. In Saving the Appearances (1957) the literary historian Owen Barfield traces the slow retreat of what he calls “participation”, which is to say our felt sense of interconnection and implication in everything we observe.

I read Owen Barfield against Jacques Derrida here, as contrasting approaches to postmodernism. Meanwhile, I’ve also argued recently that the resulting emergence of objectivity, and with it modernity, is impossible to disaggregate from the cultural transformations enabled by the printing press. This new distinctive norm of “objectivity”; of seeing things as objects, in turn helped shape the emergence of art galleries as cultural spaces, within which one consumes beautiful things in the abstract, as objects. And once established, this mode of seeing art would go on to retcon earlier work within its own paradigm.

But if you look at premodern paintings, even those hung in the de-contextualised space of a modern art gallery such as the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, you will swiftly realise that these artefacts may be on display as though they created for the objectifying eye of the “art critic”. But that’s not what they are at all. On the contrary, you are looking almost exclusively at devotional objects created for a culture of participation, and whose referent is not material but spiritual.

You are not looking at artefacts that were created to be examined critically as “symbols” or “representations” of some abstraction or other, or consumed as aesthetic objects. You are not looking at “artworks” at all. You are looking at artefacts created to be venerated, perhaps as visual focus for spiritual meditation, or simply to focus a prayer for help.

Catherine Shannon says that we men just don’t understand. Yes, he whacks people and even cheats on his wife, but these little flaws aside, she explains that Tony Soprano has most of the specific qualities that make the female heart beat faster.

It was a dry spring day, April, and we were a few blocks from Wall Street. My female colleagues and I secured our cocktails and canapés at Fraunces Tavern, the oldest bar in New York. We were a relatively diverse group, ranging in age from twenty-three to late forties, from all over the place: England, California, New Jersey. Gathered around a high wood table, we cast our votes.

The question: “Do you think Tony Soprano is hot?”

Yes. Of course. Duh. Absolutely.

We were unanimous. Some of these women were practically squealing with delight just thinking about it. “Wait—he’s literally so hot and I don’t know why!” said the twenty-three-year-old. (Haha.)

“But he’s fat.” A male colleague inserted himself into the discussion. “And balding.” We looked up at him with annoyance and pity. This is when I realized: the modern male mind simply cannot comprehend the allure of Tony Soprano.

RTWT

HT: Andrew Sullivan, who is so dumb he believes in climate hooey, but does have a knack for anthologizing good stuff.

Our rights don’t come from government or the DNC.

They come from God. @timkaine, I suggest the Dems go back and read the words of our Founding Fathers. pic.twitter.com/QRmhTcbbOH

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 3, 2025

When you’re the King (or Czar or President of the People’s Republic), you clearly have access to an unlimited supply of Other People’s Organs (as well as Other People’s Money).

Quite a hot mic moment on CCTV in Beijing today as Putin and Xi, both 72 years old, are caught casually talking about living to 150 and maybe forever thanks to organ transplants. (As picked up by Bloomberg.) pic.twitter.com/kC4VTRaobq

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) September 3, 2025

In 2019 Erin Burnett wanted to make sure that there was no way for Paul Manafort to escape the seriousness of the mortgage fraud charges.

In 2025 it's mortgage fraud, really?

This is CNN. pic.twitter.com/8be4cNK6IF

— MAZE (@mazemoore) August 30, 2025

Photo from the Instagram account of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Center for Disease Control.

Following news of CDC director Susan Monarez’s ouster by the Trump administration, Dr. Daskalakis resigned along with three other CDC senior officials.

None of these people went quietly. Susan Monarez first refused to obey her boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, on replacing some senior personnel and on vaccine policy, then she refused to accept being fired. Needless to say, she and her key staff members, including Dr. Daskalakis, quickly ran to the media attempting to go over the heads of Secretary Kennedy and President Trump and seek the support of the public.

Supposedly, all of these health professionals have been bravely defending Science against political interference.

Their viewpoint overlooks the important consideration that they are working for a Cabinet officer appointed by a President elected by 77 million Americans and they were elected by nobody.

As to claims of possession of a supposed scientific high ground, well, it seems obvious to a lot of us that Dr. Daskalaskis’s overall judgment and that gentleman’s grasp of Biology are both seriously open to question.

I have not taken the time to look into all the public expressions of Susan Monarez and those other brave martyrs to Science, following in footsteps of Galileo, but I feel comfortable in guessing that a close examination of their opinions and careers would result in my applauding their dismissal.

Britain. https://t.co/vBdmTiQtlx

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) August 29, 2025

“Your punishment for having a knife when they searched you would be very different from the thief’s. For him to have a knife was mere misbehavior, tradition, he didn’t know any better. But for you to have one was ‘terrorism.’”—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pic.twitter.com/pn4DQExkVP

— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) August 26, 2025

A 14 year old Scottish girl was arrested for defending herself and a friend? or sister? from the unwelcome advance of a Muslim immigrant in Dundee. The Muslim retaliated for being rebuffed by making a cellphone video as he taunted the girl and then whistling up the police.

Link to story and video.

Admire the pussinalimity of the BBC report.

Harold Nickolson, Vita Sackville-West, Rosamund Grosvenor, Lionel Sackville-West (1913).

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the State, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the State who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: . . . less than 8 per cent of the national income. . . . [B]roadly speaking, the State acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.

–A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Volume XV of the Oxford History of England), 1965.

“What goes around…” https://t.co/8KMkyABf0U

— Larry Elder (@larryelder) August 22, 2025