Many conservatives have bought into this common notion that, while pornography is immoral, nudity in high art is permissible. Often, these arguments tie into the concept that truth, beauty, and goodness are interconnected. Because art conveys truth and beauty, it must also be good, even when it contains nudity.

Or so the narrative goes.

In What is Art?, Leo Tolstoy presents an alternative view. He addresses the common assumptions about nudity in art by questioning the truth, beauty, and goodness framework.

Is Art Good because it is True and Beautiful?
Tolstoy dismantles the Western assumption that truth, beauty, and goodness are inherently interconnected, an idea that stems from ancient Greek philosophy. Why, he asks, do we so willingly accept ideas about morality from the ancient Greeks? As he points out, they were far from a moral people.

Before we accuse Tolstoy of committing the genetic fallacy, it’s worth considering the pitfalls of conflating the three. In The Great Good Thing, Andrew Klavan remarks how humans often confuse symbols with the things they symbolize. For example, we love the actors because of the characters they portray and are tantalized by sex rather than the love it embodies. Likewise, beauty isn’t intrinsically good, but can be a symbol for goodness.

This is important to remember when evaluating art. Too often, we make the mistake of thinking that because an artwork is beautiful, it must therefore be good. Goodness naturally creates beauty, but not all beautiful things are good by default. Beauty can be imitated and used for evil as well as good. //

Tolstoy notes that the naked body is “precisely what one never sees and what a man occupied with real art hardly ever has to portray.” Even if art’s purpose is to imitate life, it is peculiar how overrepresented nudity is. There is more bare skin in a single art exhibit than most normal people will ever see in a lifetime. //

I’m not suggesting we take a sledgehammer to Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s masterpieces or erase every living memory of them off the internet. However, as we create art, we need to reevaluate our long-held ideas and assumptions. The fact that celebrated works from the past contain nudity doesn’t justify us including it in our films, literature, and other mediums. It’s time to reassess giving art a free pass just because it’s art.

economist and fiscal policy guru Daniel J. Mitchell has crunched the numbers. https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/improved-data-on-ronald-reagans-fiscal-performance/

In 2020, I crunched numbers from OMB’s Historical Tables to rank the fiscal performance of nine recent presidents, going all the way back to LBJ.

I was especially interested to see which presidents did best and worst when looking on overall domestic spending (entitlements plus discretionary).

The numbers showed that Ronald Reagan easily was the most fiscally prudent while Richard Nixon was the worst of the worst (though there’s an argument that LBJ was even worse when looking at the long-run impact of his policies). //

Mr. Mitchell also notes:

You have to go back to Harding and Coolidge to find presidents who were analogous to Reagan.

And there's a name I was not surprised to see: Silent Cal Coolidge. We could use a little Silent Cal today.

If you're on X, you've probably seen videos similar to this one scroll across your feed randomly. It's usually not original content, being fed to you through an account that often posts things like it. The person posting it is often just as outraged as you, but in truth, it's all in an effort to get you mad.

The goal is to make you furious, cause you to interact, possibly repost it, and get the engagement for that post to skyrocket.

Your goal is not to buy it. Don't interact. Don't engage. Don't get baited.

The underlying issue here is that in order for this engagement bait to work, they have to get you to believe that the world is truly that awful. While evil does occur, and humanity is clearly capable of doing horrific things, these engagement baiters are trying to trigger your will to fight for goodness and morality in an effort to stop their depravity from spreading.

What they don't want you to figure out is that the way to defeat it is not to play their game. //

To be clear, this is a fallen world with evil in it, but the internet is an exaggeration machine, and it increasingly exaggerates for profit. Even supposed defenders of morality and goodness use outrage to bait you into interaction on platforms like X, Instagram, or TikTok, all of which can reward high engagement with big bucks.

There are plenty of real things to be angry about and take action on, but these social media rage-baiters are a waste of time and paint the world as a far darker place than it actually is.

Bottom line: If it seems so vile as to be cartoonishly evil... it's fake. If it feels overtly sexual to a point where you're wondering what the goal of broadcasting that depravity is... it's fake.

A good rule of thumb: If it's a viral video on the internet that evokes some kind of excitement or stirs your will to react... it's likely fake.

Hegseth is potentially a transformational SecDef. Recruiting is on the upswing because the nation can sense the change of purpose in DOD. Pride of the military, not the gay variety, is returning to the Armed Forces. Hegseth is not beholden to any corporate interest and is making changes for the benefit of the nation. That makes him a very dangerous man to the failing status quo.

It's really fast and only requires a few lines of shell scripting. You won't need to run systemd inside of WSL 2 either.

This step-by-step guide will help you get started developing with remote containers by setting up Docker Desktop for Windows with WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux, version 2).

Docker Desktop for Windows provides a development environment for building, shipping, and running dockerized apps. By enabling the WSL 2 based engine, you can run both Linux and Windows containers in Docker Desktop on the same machine.

MikroWizard is designed to help MikroTik users monitor and manage their routers from an IT administrator's viewpoint. Beyond being merely a monitoring and management tool, it functions as a complete management solution that offers PAM-like capabilities specifically for MikroTik devices.

Before developing MikroWizard, which originated from a customer request, I explored existing central management software for MikroTik devices. While "Dude" and other free or commercial tools are available, they didn’t meet my requirements. Many commercial options looked promising but posed security concerns, as trusting a cloud provider to access our network—or relying on the internet for server access—was not an acceptable risk, also they are not offering what I actually looking for.

Here’s what I was searching for MikroTik Managment:
✔ The ability to manage all users who access MikroTik devices, including coworkers, admins, support center staff, customers, and even IT administrators themselves.
✔ A logging system to track all actions performed by admins, customers, and support operators on the router, with historical data showing who made changes and when—similar to the logs provided in PAM solutions.
✔ Centralized creation and editing of system users and groups.
✔ Scheduled firmware updates without requiring internet access on MikroTik routers.
✔ A syslog grabbing and storage feature with filtering and search capabilities.
✔ A centralized, reliable backup solution with differential backups and scheduling options.

To avoid having to deal with further issues relating to RSA keys, I've decided to migrate all my SSH keys to Ed25519.

Potential issues with RSA keys

• Key length growth: Will gradually require more bits to stay secure as compute capacity advances (Current minimum: 2048 bits)
• Not future proof: Potentially vulnerable to breaking by quantum computers
  Advantages of Ed25519 (EdDSA) keys:
• Performance: Ed25519 is the fastest performing algorithm across all metrics
• Security: EdDSA provides the highest security level as compared to other algorithms with the same key length (Source)
• Dummy proof: No need to specify number of bits when generating keys
• Shorter public keys: No wrangling with unwieldily long public key strings like in RSA 4096-bit

For context, 253 bits EdDSA is equivalent in strength to RSA ~3000 bits. As you can see, Ed25519 blows all other cryptographic algorithms out the water in terms of performance.

America’s education system wasn’t designed to unlock the genius in every child. It was designed to produce compliance. Efficiency. Predictability. In short—factory workers, not thinkers.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a matter of historical record.

The Industrial Blueprint

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the U.S. surged into the Industrial Revolution, it looked a lot like today’s China—a manufacturing behemoth. Industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller understood that in order to fuel mass production, they didn’t need philosophers or inventors. They needed disciplined laborers who could follow instructions, show up on time, and never question authority.

So the school system was modeled on the factory floor:

• Rows of desks like assembly lines
• Bells to simulate shift changes
• Subjects taught in isolation, with minimal cross-disciplinary thought
• One-size-fits-all learning geared toward standardization, not inspiration

Horace Mann and John Dewey—often celebrated as pioneers—helped usher in this system. Dewey even said: “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and assist him in properly responding to these influences.” In other words, social conditioning, not personal discovery. //

It’s time to unplug the conveyor belt.

Let’s stop pretending our schools are sacred. Let’s start building a system that grows free minds, not gray-suited cogs.

Because our children aren’t factory products.

They’re image-bearers of God—capable of wonder, wisdom, and greatness. If we don’t fight for their minds, someone else will program them.

Many Jewish students are disgusted with the university’s behavior:

Harvard students and alumni are speaking out after the university announced it is suing the Trump administration rather than comply with its demands to address antisemitism on its campus.

"The government withheld funds from racist schools that refused to integrate. The Obama administration repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funds to sexist schools that refused to combat sexual assault. The Trump Administration's efforts are in no way an unprecedented threat on higher education. Should Harvard still like to enjoy American taxpayer money, they can simply choose to comply with federal law at any point," Harvard student Shabbos Kestenbaum told Fox News Digital. //

Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 @JewsFightBack
·
Every time someone says “as a Jew” right before minimizing Jew-hatred or covering for institutions that enable it, antisemites everywhere breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Alan Garber isn’t speaking as a Jew.
He’s speaking as a coward.
11:24 AM · Apr 22, 2025. //

anon-u7cz
8 minutes ago
Beth Israel Hospital in Boston was founded in 1916 by the city’s Jewish community to address significant barriers faced by Jewish immigrants and Jewish medical professionals during an era marked by religious separatism and widespread anti-Semitism. At the time, Jewish patients and physicians often encountered discrimination at other hospitals, which limited both access to care and professional opportunities.

Why do shockwaves extend past the body that created them? As seen in this photo, the shock doesn’t stop in the air the plane is effecting, but continues on. I always assumed it was high pressure air from the shock extending out, but now I’m not too sure. //

Shocks are not because of the pressure. Shocks happen because of the turning -- the pressure jump is a result of the shock. – Rob McDonald Mar 14, 2024 at 17:27

A shock wave generated at 30,000 feet at Mach 1 cannot be heard on the ground for precisely the reason you surmise in your comment.

The US Air Force has conducted tests with supersonic aircraft and has this to say:

Under standard atmospheric conditions, air temperature decreases with increased altitude. For example, when sea-level temperature is 58 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at 30,000 feet drops to minus 49 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature gradient helps bend the sound waves upward. Therefore, for a boom to reach the ground, the aircraft speed relative to the ground must be greater than the speed of sound at the ground. For example, the speed of sound at 30,000 feet is about 670 miles per hour, but an aircraft must travel at least 750 miles per hour (Mach 1.12, where Mach 1 equals the speed of sound) for a boom to be heard on the ground.

Is he a "Maryland father?" No, he's an illegal alien who's lived in the U.S. for years and has never made any attempt to become a citizen. Is he an American citizen who was unlawfully deported? No, he’s in this country illegally and had a valid deportation order issued against him. (It is true that he wasn’t supposed to be deported to El Salvador because he was fearful of opposing gangs, but he is not and never was an American citizen. //

CNN and MSNBC referred to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man” or similar terminology a total of 506 times in three weeks.

Garcia was described as being from Maryland nearly five times more often than he was described as being from El Salvador.

Only 10% of the 318 reports about Garcia on both networks included any mention that he was in the U.S. illegally.

Talking heads on MSNBC were almost twice as likely to misrepresent Garcia’s immigration status as they were to describe it correctly.

Julio Rosas
@Julio_Rosas11
·
Follow
NEW: Here is a copy of the sworn statement signed by Jose Hermosillo. During questioning, which was done in Spanish, Hermosillo stated he:

-Was born in Mexico
-Was not a U.S. citizen
-Crossed the border illegally via the desert
-Wanted work
-Was in the U.S. illegally
Frank Luntz
@FrankLuntz
Replying to @FrankLuntz
“He did say he was a U.S. citizen, but they didn't believe him.”

An American citizen named Jose in Arizona was detained by immigration officials for 10 days. His family later provided officials with his birth certificate and Social Security card.

https://azpm.org/p/headlines/2025/4/18/224512-us-citizen-in-arizona-detained-by-immigration-officials-for-10-days/. //

If I go up to the cops and tell them I murdered someone and then sign a statement to that effect, they are going to detain me until they figure out what's going on. That's what happened here, and it is not the fault of ICE or CBP that they were lied to.

And that brings us to the obvious question, given how odd this situation is. Was this a setup? //

Red in Illinois
39 minutes ago edited
So we have one of two things here:

1) Lying to a federal agent and knowingly making a false report

2) Forged/fake official documents

Charge him either way to deter this kinda behavior.

Intel i7-5600U vs i5-8350U vs i5-8265U vs i7-8650U

A Swedish columnist, Linda Jerneck, has the right take on this:

Still, putting the best-preserved 17th-century ship at risk “reveals the activists’ fanaticism,” columnist Linda Jerneck wrote: “Restore Wetlands wants us to show solidarity with future generations—by pissing on what previous generations left behind.”

But it's worse. These eco-loons are not only initiating micturition on the past, including on the legacy of one of Sweden's greatest kings, but also on the future. They oppose everything that makes our modern lifestyle possible. They oppose, in effect, modern civilization. And this latest act just shows the callous disregard they have for the past, the present, and the future.

You know what you don't see in those headlines? Any mention of God. On the contrary, if the words "pope" and "Church" weren't included, one could assume a CEO or politician had passed.

What does that tell you? It tells you exactly how the press views Christians and what their hopes for Francis were. The proliferation of the Gospel, you know, the entire purpose of Christianity as a religion, doesn't even register with these people. Instead, the Church only exists to serve left-wing secular wants. In that context, "reform" is simply code for secularization.

The press truly wanted Francis to use his role to change church doctrine on things like homosexuality, gay marriage, and sin as a whole. It never crossed the average journalist's mind what the Bible says about those things, nor why Church doctrine is what it is. Everything is a political game to them, and if that meant perverting an institution like the Catholic Church to achieve their ends, that was just fine with them.

That's not how any of this is supposed to work. Christians are not supposed to bend their viewpoints to the world's hedonistic views, and though I disagreed with Francis on several issues, I likewise disagreed with those who saw him as a vehicle for their political wants. The Church, no matter what denomination, is not supposed to be a plaything for left-wingers. It's not supposed to "reform" so that people can feel better about their sin. It is supposed to preach the unvarnished, unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The host wasn't done , though, in her crusade, bringing up the judge's stay on the district court's order that the Trump EPA "unfreeze" $20 billion in funds that Team Biden had ready to go to clean energy grants. Zeldin was off to the races in his thorough answer:

I'm glad you pointed out that the circuit court then stopped what the district court was saying. So, self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, lack of sufficient EPA oversight, these were all concerns that we had. First were- had the alarm raised when a Biden EPA political appointee in December was on video saying that they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day. And also said, with an eye towards getting themselves jobs at recipient NGOs. So for example, as it relates to unqualified recipients, there was one recipient NGO that only received $100 in 2023, they got $2 billion in 2024. They also have in their grant agreement requirement to complete a training in 90 days called "how to develop a budget." They were amending the account control agreements days before the inauguration, reducing EPA oversight.

Burgum said:

Again, I have to smile because, apparently... having been in the private sector for my whole life until being a governor, and then working in a state where we had to balance the budget, which is different.

I mean, if the federal government is like a ranch that, where they threw everything in the barn for 100 years, and great grandpa and grampy never threw anything away, and has accumulated everything and you never had to clean it out, that would be—that's what the federal government is. //

From administration to administration, Democrat and Republican, they have simply thrown things into the federal barn without any assessment of whether they have any purpose or use, and instead of assessing this, they hire people to manage or oversee the barn, without assessing whether its contents are even worthy of management or oversight.

Burgum continued,

And typically the federal government would send in a committee of 25 people who pick up one object, spend two weeks talking about, should we get rid of it, what did great grandpa use this for, maybe we should save it, it might be historic. What we're doing right now is emptying out the barn and deciding what should go back in. And what should go back in is what actually serves the American people. //

Take national parks for an example. There is so much overhead of people that work for the park system that don't work in a park. We could actually increase the number of people. Like this summer, we'll have more people working in Yellowstone than we had in 2020. More people working, but we could end up with fewer people across the whole park system. Because, guess what? We may not need that many people in IT, we may not need that many people in HR, there's things that we can do to streamline. And if we've got people who are in this business because they care about the environment and they care about our lands, we've got customer-facing, land-facing jobs available. We have 5,000 jobs posted to go work in the parks[..]. wildfire fighters, people that are for summer help, come work for us. But work in a job where we're serving the public as opposed to in D.C. or in a regional location, where you're just doing overhead that's part of the barn that's never been cleaned out. //

Random US Citizen
30 minutes ago
The federal government owns 640 million acres. That's almost 30% of the land in the U.S. Fully 80% of Nevada is owned by the feds. In Utah, it's 65%. While that's a lot of land to manage, that management shouldn't require 50% of its 80,000 employees to live in Washington D.C. Probably 800 of them should be in D.C. and the other 79,200 should be on or near the land that's being managed.

People often look at countries like Liberia and focus on the trauma of war, the chaos, the displacement. But here’s what I see: our government does the same thing in America when it tears families apart. The trauma may not be caused by civil war, but the suffering is eerily similar.

The child welfare system uses its power to forcibly remove children from their parents, just like I was separated from my siblings. These children are often placed with strangers, stripped from their community, their culture, and everything they know. Siblings are split up. Families are erased. And all of it is done in the name of safety.

Let’s be honest. This isn’t safety. It’s state-sanctioned separation. And it’s causing a level of trauma that mirrors the effects of war.