Apparently, the Body Positive movement will be with us for a while longer; in fact, it will be growing

/

Hey, whatever floats your boat — or barge

Is this new McDonald’s burger coming soon to the US after its ‘big’ debut abroad?

[Spoiler alert; Yes it is.]

Weighing in at 14 ounces total — compared to the total 3.5 ounces of a standard burger — the Big Arch is comprised of two 4-ounce beef patties, three slices of white cheddar, crispy fried as well as raw sliced onions, lettuce, pickles and its secret Big Arch sauce.

Those who have tried the burger described it as essentially being “two Big Macs in one.”

The new “Fatso Burger” weighs in at 1,060 calories vs. the Big Mac’s 563, which, adding on a medium fries (350), soft drink (200) and, say, a Glutton McFlurry (410), delivers a total calorie count of 2,020 vs 1,523.


AI Overview

The suggested daily maintenance calorie count for a 30-year-old, 120 lb, 5'5" woman is approximately

1,740 calories, and for a 30-year-old, 180 lb, 5'10" male, it is approximately 2,450 calories, assuming a lightly active lifestyle for both individuals. 

And here’s our cover lady coming out of Binney Park after smelling a Big Arch grilling at McD’s Riverside:

Why are Greenwich housing prices so high? Well for one, we don't have many rampaging elephants in our parks — at least we don't have THOSE!

/

Rogue elephant kills nearly two dozen people in 10-day rampage through eastern India

Nearly two dozen people were killed and 15 were injured by a large wild bull elephant that went on a 10-day rampage through several towns in eastern India, terrorizing locals who reportedly climbed trees and slept on rooftops to stay out of its reach.

The single-tusked male struck first on New Year’s Day when it killed a 35-year-old man in the village of Bandijhari in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district.

Four days later, the animal killed five members of the same family in the nearby town of Sowan. The next day, it killed five more people in Babaria, including a married couple and their two children, the Times of India reported.

In the hardest-hit villages, nightfall brought panic, with residents refusing to sleep indoors and instead perching on rooftops or in trees, keeping watch for the sound of breaking walls or footsteps as the elephant roamed the forest edge.

This reminds me of some of the college frat boys I witnessed way back when; awful people.

The animal is believed to be in a state of musth — a natural but dangerous hormonal condition in male elephants marked by a surge in testosterone that can last weeks or even months.

During musth, bulls become extremely aggressive, restless and unpredictable, often roaming long distances and attacking without warning.

And I don’t get this part:

Animal control personnel made multiple attempts to tranquilize the elephant using dart guns, but each effort failed as the giant became increasingly agitated — forcing teams to repeatedly abort operations over fears it could charge crowds gathered near villages.

I can see giving an elephant a pass on his first dozen kills — everyone has their bad days — but after twelve? Still staying with tranquilizer darts? I’d call back an old British Colonel from his retirement and put a stop to this nonsense.

The story as reported by Reuters …

/

Reuters:

Leave aside wondering what Renee Good has to do with this and why Reuters felt compelled to bring her into the discussion — here’s the rest of the story:

I should have just stayed off the Internet after reading that refreshing story about Winnie the Pooh and enjoyed an evening of peace. But since I didn’t, why not afflict you too?

/

I did not know this

/

Winnie-the-Pooh and WWI: 100 Years of a Veteran’s Creation for His Son

Catherine Salgado

Today is “Winnie-the-Pooh Day,” the anniversary of the birth of Pooh author A.A.Milne. While many people now associate the stuffed "hunny"-loving bear with Disney, the character was born of a World War I veteran’s struggle to recover from the war and relate with his little son.

What does Winnie-the-Pooh’s popped balloon and failed intrusion into a beehive have to do with  one of the most devastating battles of WWI? And how did a teddy bear help a traumatized veteran heal emotionally and psychologically while creating a special bond with his young son?

Alan Alexander Milne joined the British military at the outbreak of the First World War, and in 1915 was commissioned an officer in the 4th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, with the Royal Corps of Signals, according to Military.com. In just one August 1915 incident, when his commanders ignored Milne's warning of enemy movements, 60 British men died in a brief clash. Ultimately, Milne went to fight in the Battle of the Somme, accurately described as "Hell on Earth." It is interesting that the Somme influenced the creation both of Middle-Earth (by J.R.R. Tolkien) and Winnie-the-Pooh, as two British soldiers tried to cope with the horror through writing fiction.

The first day of the Battle of the Somme was bloody to the point of nightmare, and Britannica states that the offensive cost over a million lives altogether — 420,000 for the British alone. For context, British casualties for all of WWII were around 450,000, meaning the Somme alone rivaled the Second World War for deaths. Bodies were stacked in the trenches. Milne lost many of his closest friends, according to Military.com. Milne himself was wounded.

This is the backdrop of A.A. Milne's post-war projects. He had a wife, Daphne, and a new civilian life, but he was still dealing with what we now call PTSD. Then in August 1920, Daphne gave birth to Christopher Robin. Milne became a doting and absorbed father, and to connect with his little boy, he invented marvelous stories about the child's stuffed animals.

Winnie-the-Pooh wasn't just a stuffed animal, though. At the London Zoo, Milne and Christopher Robin found a black bear named Winnipeg, who had been a mascot for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WWI. Milne and Winnipeg were both in a sense veterans, and both a little shy of strangers. Milne loved the bear, and so did his son. So in honor of Winnipeg, Milne bought Christopher Robin a yellowish-brown teddy bear.

That teddy bear helped Milne explain to Christopher Robin why he sometimes reacted strangely to ordinary noises. Popped balloons and buzzing bee swarms triggered scared reactions in Milne, who had flashbacks to battles and bullets, sometimes startling the little boy. Military.com notes that Milne built these fears into the Pooh stories, helping explain in a child-like way why a person might find popped balloons or bee swarms alarming. Now Pooh has been in print for a hundred years.

The Pooh stories and their cast of characters, including Piglet, Eeyore the donkey, Rabbit, Tigger the tiger, Owl, and Kanga and Roo, are charming tales for little children. They have been immortalized and passed to new generations through Disney movies. Yes, they were certainly funny bedtime stories from a loving father to his son. But they also represent the path that WWI veteran A.A. Milne took to healing and peace.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

/

Haunting image shows pile of abandoned shoes after Iran’s bloodthirsty regime burned protesters to death: ‘Iranian Holocaust’

“They belonged to people trapped after regime forces set the historic bazaar on fire and shot those trying to escape. The imagery is unmistakable — an Iranian Holocaust unfolding in real time.”

The victims of the Rasht massacre had reportedly surrendered to security forces before being slaughtered, according to Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norway-based NGO.

Footage of the aftermath, shared by the rights organization, also shows the burned-out, smoldering remains of the bazaar.

See Also

Iranian doctors reportedly say protest death toll over 16K: ‘Genocide under the cover of digital darkness’

Iran remains under an internet blackout since Jan. 8, when authorities all but cut ordinary Iranians off from the outside world, allowing security forces to act with impunity.

“The mass killings started right after the internet blackout,” IHR’s founder, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, told British newspaper the Observer.

Iran has remained under an internet blackout since Jan. 8, when authorities all but cut ordinary Iranians off from the outside world, allowing security forces to act with impunity.

Among the scenes of brutality that have emerged from behind the regime’s sensors is footage showing government forces firing on people in the capital, Tehran, on Thursday.

The disturbing video shows demonstrators running for their lives as they are sprayed with bullets during protests at the city’s Second Sadeghieh Square, VOA’s Persian news network reported.

It comes as the death toll from the protests, which began last month initially in response to soaring costs of living, is now feared to have topped 16,000.

That alarming figure, far exceeding the roughly 3,000 verified by activist groups, was detailed in a new report from doctors on the ground, the UK’s Sunday Times reported.

Part II

David Strom: The Shameful Silence of the Left on Iran

Nobody on the left seems to care because the Ayatollah is not Orange. Orange Man is the center of the universe for them. All evil has its origin there. Rapists, murderers, terrorists, and the like are, compared to him, the good guys. Iran sits on the UN Human Rights Council, which chastises Israel far more than all other countries combined. The UN might murmur a bit about the mass slaughter of Christians in West Africa, but Israel must be eradicated because...Jews. 

And of course, it is not just the United Nations. Few leftist groups will say a word about human rights abuses in Iran because Iran hates the West, and the "colonialists" of the West deserve whatever they get. And if it takes a few Iranian women's deaths to keep Iran opposed to the West, clearly it is worth it. 

You would think that, of all the ideologies in the universe, liberals could unite in opposition to Islamism. But you would be wrong. Radical leftism is not driven by a vision of the good or of human rights; it is a purely negative phenomenon built out of hatred for Western values. 

Liberals are thrilled by the calls for justice and human rights, but don't seem to notice that the actual passion is behind destruction and violence. It's not that leftists hide their intentions. They are quite open about them. 

Strom concludes his post with an observation that I’m sure many readers will reject, but one which I agree with, because it fits exactly with what I’ve encountered when attempting to get past my few liberal friends’ TDA.

It's just that liberals only seem to hear what they want to, and share the belief that Orange Man is bad, so those opposing him must be good. 

In one way, you could argue that Trump plays into this latter tendency. He is obsessed with trolling the left, and he gets the response that he wants. But he doesn't seem to get that there are a lot of people whose main objection to him is his style and temperament, and that their sympathy for the left is driven by the blind rage they feel toward him. 

I'm not saying their blindness is Trump's fault; we all have a responsibility to base our opinions on rational considerations. Iran is objectively evil and should be easy to condemn, regardless of the fact that Iranian leaders hate Trump. 

Leftists actively support Iran because it is a key ally in the fight against Trump; liberals tolerate this support because they are so distracted by their own hatred of Trump that they don't even seem to notice that the left supports regimes and groups, such as Hamas, that are objectively evil. 

No doubt you could ask a thousand liberals what they think of the Iranian protests and 950 would support the people in the streets; if you ask them why their favorite leftist organizations like the UN and Doctors Without Borders seem passive in the face of atrocities, they likely wouldn't even have noticed. 

It is a moral blindness, and I think driven by their obsessive focus on Trump.

The man who could have been VP

/

(I never tire of this image)

…. [Although] Walz has had a lot to say over the course of the past 12 months, in the aftermath of the disgusting invasion of a Minneapolis church by anti-ICE agitators on Sunday, Tim Walz hasn't had anything to say about it. Nor, for that matter, has the city's Democrat mayor, Jacob Frey:

As you ponder that, also recall Walz's warnings about the ICE possibly disrupting "midnight mass services" over the holidays - something that never happened:

Now it's Ohio, but the graft is everywhere, in all states, and certainly not restricted to just our new Somali friends, although they are displaying an admirable knack for exploiting the system

/

SHADIEST Financials Ever Seen: Receipt-Filled Thread EXPOSES Somali-Led Ohio NGO 'Helping' Ex-Convicts

Just keep scrolling down the link and you’ll see example after example of what this scammer’s been up to, all without federal or state scrutiny. Here’s just one: