Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Covid Lockdowns May Have Permanently Stunted Brain Development in Children, Alarming Study Finds

The Covid lockdowns may have inflicted long-term harm on children’s brain development, an alarming new study has found. The Mail has the story.

The research, led by the University of East Anglia, found that the pandemic hampered children’s ability to regulate their behaviour, stay focused and adapt to new situations – skills known collectively as executive functions.

The greatest impact was seen among pupils in reception, aged four to five, when the first lockdowns began in March 2020.

This age bracket is a crucial stage when children normally learn to socialise, follow routines and navigate the busy world of the classroom, but millions of youngsters were forced to stay home and be taught either online, or by their parents.

The children in this cohort are now around 10 to 11 years old, in their final year of primary school. 

The research, published in the journal Child Development, found these children showed less growth in their self-regulatory and cognitive flexibility scores over time compared to a second group of children who were in preschool when the pandemic started.

The researchers from the University of East Anglia, Lancaster University and Durham University say these children may still be feeling the effects years later.

Scientists were already running a long-term study tracking youngsters from toddlerhood to early school years when the Covid pandemic hit.

The study followed 139 children aged between two-and-a-half and six-and-a-half years old over several years, including 94 families who joined the study before Covid struck.

This meant that they had a baseline of children’s abilities before the pandemic began, which allowed them to track exactly how development changed during and after the lockdowns.

Using a standardised assessment called the Minnesota Executive Function Scale, they were able to measure the same cognitive skills at regular intervals.

Lead researcher Professor John Spencer, from UEA’s School of Psychology, said: “Children who were in reception when the country shut down showed much slower growth in key self-regulation and cognitive flexibility skills over the next few years than children who were still in preschool.

“Reception is a critical year for peer socialisation. It’s when children learn classroom norms and build early friendships that shape their confidence.”

For the cohort who started school in 2020, classrooms were closed, routines collapsed overnight and opportunities for social interaction were severely limited.

“Without these experiences, children’s self-regulatory skills didn’t develop as quickly year-on-year after the lockdowns ended,” he said.

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‘Cowardly and Despicable’: Hegseth Condemned for Sinking of ‘Defenseless’ Iranian Ship

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday was condemned for his boasts on Wednesday about sinking an Iranian military ship after allegations emerged that it was “defenseless” at the time it was torpedoed in international waters by a US submarine.

Military.com reported Thursday that the Iranian ship had been departing from a biennial multinational naval training exercise that it had been invited to participate in by the Indian government.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so far remained silent on the US attack on the ship, but other politicians in India delivering sharp condemnations.

According to the Times of India, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tore into Modi for not speaking up after the US torpedoed a boat that his government had invited into its waters.

“The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean,” Gandhi said. “Yet the PM has said nothing. At a moment like this, we need a steady hand at the wheel. Instead, India has a compromised PM who has surrendered our strategic autonomy.”

In a social media post, former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said there was no way that the Iranian ship could have been perceived as any kind of military threat.

“I am told that as per protocol for this exercise ships cannot carry any ammunition,” he wrote. “It was defenseless… The attack by the US submarine was premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise to which the US navy was invited but withdrew from participation at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind.”

Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim noted that, in addition to striking what appears to have been a defenseless boat, the US also didn’t help rescue any of the shipwrecked men who were aboard the vessel.

“The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water,” Grim commented. “I am hard pressed to think of any other nation throughout history that would do something so cowardly and despicable. We are genuinely in a league of our own, and American media—mostly shrugging off the bombing of a girls school and acting as if carpet bombing Tehran is a normal military tactic—is deeply complicit.”

Author Bruno Maçães also pointed to the decision to leave the shipwrecked crew at sea as an act of historic depravity.

“Really quite extraordinary that the US bombed an Iranian ship and then left the surviving sailors to drown,” Maçães wrote. “There are many many accounts of the Nazis or Imperial Japan saving survivors at sea. I see we have now dropped below that level.”

Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the US attack on the Iranian ship constituted either a war crime or straight-up murder.

“What Pete Hegseth ordered the military to do violates international law,” he wrote. “The Iranian ship was near Sri Lanka, in international waters outside the combat zone and on a training exercise. Under the Geneva Conventions, you are obligated to rescue the crew of a ship that you sink during war. Abandoned any survivors and leaving them to drown is illegal and a war crime.”

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The Misconception That Air Supremacy Has Been Achieved Over Iran

There are growing misconceptions that the U.S. and Israel have achieved total control of the airspace in Iran and sanitized the threat of ground-based air defenses to a degree that their forces have relatively free rein — commonly referred to as air supremacy. This is absolutely not true, nor has this been the outright claim of the U.S. military. It also should be of no surprise at this point in the campaign.

A lot of the commentary I try to provide for events like this is on X. It allows me to respond quickly to what is going on, and often that includes trying to swat down false narratives, some of which originate in the social media echo chamber and among general commentators/influencers, but also increasingly among the mainstream media. This is one of those times.

Moving as fast as possible from standoff attacks to stand-in (direct) attacks isn’t just about trying to conserve expensive long-range munitions. In fact, this is far from the primary concern. Doing so is absolutely essential to ramping up the frequency and amplitude of the air campaign. This is something we have been highlighting in our rolling coverage of the conflict for days.

Moving to direct strikes allows for a significant increase in the total volume of targets hit, as well as offering a broader array of effects to be brought to bear on those targets. Very deep-penetrating bunker-buster munitions, for instance, are typically not available in a standoff capability.

This transition to direct attacks has now begun.

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Covering for International Abusers, Media Reverse Victim and Offender in Iran

People who study domestic violence have an acronym, DARVO, for the set of tactics abusers use to avoid accountability: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.

It’s that last tactic that came to mind while reading news reports of the United States and Israel’s unprovoked and illegal attack on Iran, and the assassination of Ali Khamenei, its leader. US corporate media frequently presented Iran as responsible for the predictably violent consequences of the US/Israeli aggression.

Sometimes the reversal is straightforward, as when an NBC News “analysis” (2/28/26) warned that “Iran’s Retaliatory Strikes Threaten an Escalation Across the Region”—as though it is Iran’s response, and not the ongoing attacks by the US and Israel, that poses a threat to the region.

Another NBC analysis (2/28/26), by Richard Engel, more subtly tried to pin the blame on Iran, noting in the headline that “Iran Is Now in Conflict With Pretty Much All of Its Neighbors.” Wrote Engel:

Today Iran has launched drones and missiles not only at Israel, but also at US military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq…. It puts Iran in a difficult position, because now it is at conflict with pretty much all of its neighbors.

Pretty much all of its neighbors, that is, except for Turkiye, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Azerbaijan said Iranian drones crashed in its territory on Thursday; Iran denies targeting the country.) And if we’re going to count Jordan as Iran’s “neighbor,” then Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well. Aside from those, though, pretty much all of them.

The point of depicting Iran as “in conflict” with “pretty much all of its neighbors,” of course, is to paint it as the country that no one can get along with. In reality, the countries Iran isn’t getting along with are the ones allowing the US to use them as platforms for launching bombs and missiles at it—behavior that will put a damper on any relationship.

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Florida Legislators Advance a Bill Authorizing Government Surveillance Based on ‘Views’ or ‘Opinions’

A bill that is advancing in the Florida Legislature would authorize government surveillance of people whose “views” or “opinions” are deemed “a threat” to state or national “interests.” What could possibly go wrong?

“This outrageous claim of authority would be a profound betrayal of Americans’ First Amendment rights,” Carolyn Iodice, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, warns in a press release. “Imagine being arrested or having your home raided because the government has decided that your opinions are a ‘threat’ or simply don’t align with its interests. This puts everyone’s free speech rights at risk. Even if your views aren’t in the state’s crosshairs today, they could be tomorrow. Free societies do not investigate or arrest their own citizens for their opinions.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida also has “grave concerns” about the bill. It “could easily be used to silence dissenting voices under the guise of security,” ACLU of Florida strategist Abdelilah Skhir told Florida Politics last month. “The vague and overbroad language could easily be weaponized against everyday Floridians engaged in First Amendment protected activity.”

State Rep. Danny Alvarez (R–Riverview), who filed the bill on December 30, does not understand what all the fuss is about. He says he is simply trying to combat threats such as “drug cartels,” “terrorist organizations,” and foreign “intelligence entities.” Last week, the Florida Phoenix reported that “Alvarez said it’s only been in the past week that he’s become aware of First Amendment concerns.”

Alvarez’s bill, H.B. 945, would create a Statewide Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Unit within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, consisting of “at least seven” 10-member teams. The unit would be charged with “identify[ing] threats by analyzing patterns of life, gathering actionable intelligence, and formulating effective plans of action, and by executing arrests or by revealing its intent to compel a response using all counterintelligence and counterterrorism tradecraft necessary to protect the state from adversary intelligence entities.”

What is an “adversary intelligence entity”? The bill’s definition goes far beyond spies employed by foreign governments. It says the term “includes, but is not limited to, any national, foreign, multinational, friendly, competitor, opponent, adversary, or recognized enemy government or nongovernmental organization, company, business, corporation, consortium, group, agency, cell, terrorist, insurgent, guerrilla entity, or person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”

On its face, the bill would empower the Statewide Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Unit to investigate organizations and individuals based on the “views” or “opinions” they express. Alvarez insists that is not his intent. But by his own account, he did not recognize the obvious First Amendment implications of that broad mandate until a month and a half after he introduced the bill.

When some of his colleagues alerted him to those civil liberties concerns, Alvarez promised to address them. “We are very, very aware of the questions regarding [the] First Amendment,” he told Florida Politics last week. “We’re going to address that in an amendment that comes to the next committee.” He told reporters he was willing to excise the language referring to any “person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”

So far, however, the original version of the bill is the only one listed on the Florida Legislature’s website. And despite his avowed willingness to amend the bill, Alvarez does not seem to think it is actually necessary to do so.

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In Senate Testimony on DHS Shootings, Kristi Noem Lies About Her Lies

After Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti on January 24, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed he was “brandishing” a gun and “attacked those officers.” She also said Pretti “committed an act of domestic terrorism.”

None of that was true, as bystander video immediately showed. But when given the opportunity to correct the record during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Noem instead lied about what she had said. Her obfuscation and dishonesty provoked angry rebukes not only from the Democrats on the committee but also from Sen. Thom Tillis (R–N.C.), who reiterated his recommendation that she resign.

“I did not call [Pretti] a domestic terrorist,” Noem told Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.). “I said it appeared to be an incident of [domestic terrorism].” Noem offered the same revisionist account when Sen. John Kennedy (R–La.) asked her about the “domestic terrorism” label. “In answer to questions at the press conference that afternoon,” she said, “it was that it appeared to be” domestic terrorism.

Here is what Noem actually said on the day of the shooting: “When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism. This individual, who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers, committed an act of domestic terrorism. That’s the facts.”

Those were not, in fact, the facts. Videos showed that Pretti never “attacked those officers” and never drew his holstered pistol, which he was licensed to carry. The officers did not even notice the gun until after they tackled him, and he had been disarmed by the time the shooting started. Yet Noem did not merely say Pretti “appeared to be” a domestic terrorist, which would have been bad enough; she asserted, flat out, that he was a domestic terrorist.

By contrast, the official DHS statement about the incident hedged a bit. “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” it said.

Initial impressions are often wrong, of course, which is why it was reckless to describe Pretti as a would-be mass murderer just a couple of hours after he was shot. That is especially true because the only basis for that characterization was the self-interested account of the same immigration agents whose conduct was at issue.

“We were being relayed information from on the ground from CBP [Customs and Border Protection] agents and officers that were there,” Noem said during a Fox News interview five days after Pretti’s death. “We were using the best information we had at the time.”

Noem reiterated that excuse during Tuesday’s hearing. “We were relying, in the hours after that incident that was so horrific, on information we were getting from the ground from our agents,” she told Klobuchar. “We’re relying on reports from the ground and from agents that are there,” she told Sen. Richard Durbin (D–Ill.). “I was getting reports from the ground from agents at the scene, and I would say that it was a chaotic scene.”

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Appallingly shoddy Vietnam War memorial to be torn down after $1million was spent on building it

A $1million memorial dedicated to Vietnam War veterans is set to be torn down just a year after a fraud scandal plagued the community behind the project.

California officials announced the memorial in 2023 as a way to honor Vietnamese soldiers allied with the US during the war. 

The construction began in the upscale Orange County neighborhood, which is also home to the largest Vietnamese population in the US. 

Former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do spearheaded the project, allocating $1 million in taxpayer funds to the Viet America Society nonprofit. 

It was later revealed that Do was funneling money through the organization for his personal gain, and the disgraced politician was sentenced to five years in prison on conspiracy charges as a result.

Do’s fall from grace left the Vietnam War memorial in shambles, with new leadership appalled by the shoddy construction. 

A county report obtained by the Los Angeles Times found that repairing the unfinished monument would cost between $168,000 and $420,000, with an additional $40,000 to finish engraving the names of fallen soldiers. 

Since demolition would only cost a fraction of that estimate, county officials opted to start the project from scratch. 

Crews arrived at Mile Square Regional Park this week to tear down what remained of Do’s tarnished legacy. 

His successor and former political rival, Janet Nguyen, called the monument a ‘disgrace’ in a statement to the Daily Mail. 

‘The county decided to tear down the wall because we can do better. This memorial is a disgrace to veterans and not the respect they deserve. We have been looking for alternative options, including a space at the new veteran’s cemetery,’ she added. 

Nguyen told California news outlet, KTLA, in November that it was ‘heartbreaking’ to see how veterans were honored.  

The new county supervisor added that the monument was not even accessible to those with disabilities. 

Veterans from Vietnam are now elderly, but the monument was designed in a part of the park without a wheelchair-accessible path. 

‘What was the point?’ Nguyen questioned at a press conference in November. 

‘They … put up these cheap materials that are getting worn down already within not even a year, just so they could launder the rest of the money themselves.’ 

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Epstein Army: Jeffrey Epstein helped place 18-year-old woman in ‘elite IDF unit’

Emails show sex trafficking billionaire Jeffrey Epstein worked Israeli connections to help his lawyer’s daughter join an elite IDF unit. The woman, who Epstein wrote would make a “fantastic ambassador for Israel” at Columbia University, served on the board of Hillel International.

Jeffrey Epstein personally recruited an 18-year-old girl from New York to serve “in one of the elite IDF units,” email records show.

Epstein’s request came in a June 29, 2011 email to Anat Barak, the daughter of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In the message, the financier described the girl in question, “Tali,” as an 18-year-old who’d been accepted to Columbia University’s Barnard College and had “been to Israel more than a dozen times.”

His young female friend had spent a summer hiking the so-called Israel Trail and another “working as a counselor at a summer camp in Dimona Israel for children who are victims of terrorist attacks,” and would therefore “be a great asset to any unit,” Epstein wrote.

Tali, he said, would continue serving Israeli interests long after her placement in the Israeli army. Upon her return from military service in Israel, Epstein wrote that “she would be a fantastic ambassador for Israel” at what he called “one of the more important college campuses in the country, Columbia.”

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Arizona Senators Scale Back Bills To Punish Marijuana Users Over Excess Smoke Or Odor Complaints

Arizona senators have dialed back a pair of measures that would penalize people who create “excessive” amounts of marijuana smoke or odor, with members advancing revised versions of the legislation following criticism that, as introduced, they would have added criminalization provisions back into the state’s cannabis use laws.

The latest bill and companion resolution, sponsored by Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R), were amended by the Senate Committee of the Whole on Wednesday, with a floor vote on third reading now imminent. While the bill would on its own enact a statutory policy change, the separate resolution would put the issue before voters to decide.

As the original proposals moved through the legislative process, advocates and certain lawmakers voiced concerns about undermining the will of voters who passed legalization at the ballot, as well as the ambiguity around enforceability and what constitutes “excessive” marijuana smoke.

The legislation was previously amended in committee last month in an attempt to provide a clearer definition of “excessive” smoke and remove a reference to making the offense a “crime.”

The latest revised definition of excessive cannabis smoke or odor describes it as “airborne emissions resulting from the burning, heating or vaporizing of marijuana or marijuana products,” according to a summary of the adopted floor amendment.

Such emissions must also be “detectable by a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities on other private property” and “occur for more than 30 consecutive minutes on a single occasion or on three or more separate days within a 30-day period.”

Members further revised the legislation in response to criticism that the committee-passed versions continued to lack clarity and would pose the threat of criminalization by making the offense a class 3 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail, a maximum $500 fine and up to one year of probation.

That, too, was ultimately changed in the bill (SB 1725) and resolution (SCR 1048) that are teed up to advance through the full Senate.

Specifically, the legislation stipulates that “excessive marijuana smoke or odor is a public nuisance if the person’s conduct is intentional or the person knowingly and substantially interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property,” a summary of the amendment says.

The proposals also now specify that “lawful possession or use of marijuana does not preclude a finding of nuisance, except that a court may consider possession of a valid registry identification card as a mitigating factor,” and they provide that “a person is not liable for committing a private nuisance unless the person has received notice of the interference and fails to abate it within five days.”

Under the revised legislation, the affected party would first have to file a compliant with local officials before they pursue action with the state, but only if the municipality has already adopted an ordinance regulating excessive cannabis smoke or odor.

A person would be deemed in violation of the law if a local court has issued a written order directing them to “abate excessive marijuana smoke or odor that constitutes a nuance” and that person “knowingly violates or refuses to comply with the order.”

Each day of non-compliance after failing to adhere to the order would be consider a separate offense, and failure to comply would be a petty offense, rather than a criminal violation.

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US Bill Aims To BAN Geoengineering

Last month, Congress introduced legislation that would impose a nationwide ban on geoengineering and atmospheric weather modification, criminalizing activities such as aerosol spraying, cloud seeding, solar radiation management, and other atmospheric interventions designed to alter weather or climate conditions.

The bill, H.R. 7452, titled the Air Quality Act, was introduced February 9 by U.S. Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) and referred to the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Science, Space, and Technology.

You can find your Representative here and voice your support for the bill.

If enacted, the legislation would prohibit the injection, release, emission, or dispersal of chemical or biological substances into the atmosphere to alter atmospheric behavior, weather, climate, or sunlight intensity, establishing criminal penalties for individuals or organizations involved in such activities.

The bill states: “Whoever… knowingly authorizes or conducts weather modification in the United States shall be subject to the penalties described.”

Violators could face criminal fines of up to $100,000 per violation, imprisonment for up to five years, or both, along with civil penalties of up to $10,000 imposed by federal regulators.

The legislation also specifies that each individual injection, release, emission, or dispersal would constitute a separate violation, potentially multiplying penalties for repeated operations.

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