Free Republic

A recent meta-analysis published in Psychological Bulletin has confirmed what many have long suspected —engaging in critical thinking is not just hard work but also mentally draining and often unpleasant. The study, led by psychologists Louise David, Eliana Vassena, and Erik Bijleveld, found that mental effort is consistently linked to negative emotions across a variety of populations and tasks. This revelation suggests that critical thinking, often celebrated as an essential skill for personal and professional success, comes at a real psychological cost. “Overall, mental effort felt aversive in different types of tasks (e.g., tasks with and without feedback), in different...

For the first time, humans aren’t producing enough babies to sustain the populationFor anyone tempted to try to predict humanity’s future, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb is a cautionary tale. Feeding on the then popular Malthusian belief that the world was doomed by high lbirth rates, Ehrlich predicted: “In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” He came up with drastic solutions, including adding chemicals to drinking water to sterilize the population.Ehrlich, like many others, got it wrong. What he needed to worry about was declining birth rates and population collapse. Nearly sixty...

ransomnote: TRANSCRIPT of 2 minute x.com video clip below the White House image. Related links at the bottom.The Dems now want the American People to believe it was actually Trump and the Republicans who blocked securing the border.This comes after the Dems blocked every attempt to build a wall, and refused to allocate $5 billion for our own border, but sent $200+ billion to Ukraine.During Trump’s first term, they claimed that there was no crisis at the border whatsoever. Now they admit there is a crisis, but it’s somehow it’s actually Trump’s fault.There is no limit to their lies and...

Donald Trump Jr. has caused an uproar after calling his teenage daughter Kai 'sexy'. The former First Son made the comments while he and Kai, 17, were getting ready for the Republican National Convention earlier this week. In a clip posted on his TikTok page, Don Jr. can be seen in a makeup chair next to his daughter. 'Kai what do you think?' He asks while panning the camera to show her giving a wave. 'Getting makeup make me look sexy like you?' Kai flashes a small smile and replies: 'I think you look very beautiful.'

[snip] To be fair, some people who watched the speech thought that the first 10 minutes or so, in which Trump recounted being injured, were good, even thoughtful. I thought they were terrible; although Trump and his people have emphasized Trump’s defiance in the moment after he was hurt, his blow-by-blow account of the incident came across to me as creepy and solipsistic rather than brave. Contrast that with Ronald Reagan, the previous president injured in an attempt on his life. Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post reminded us today that Reagan appeared before Congress a month after he was...

The selection of J.D. Vance on Monday as Donald Trump’s running mate is a direct result of the political media’s failure to understand class in America. For his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance was venerated by many journalists and book critics as a powerful voice representing long-overlooked Americans. But he’s no working-class hero.Vance portrayed this group — 35% of Americans, by the way — as tragic victims of alcoholism, drug abuse, laziness and their own self-destructive moral failings. Journalists ran with that, bringing their own stereotypes to depict the working class as angry, uneducated white men driven by economic insecurity...

The Homeland Intelligence Experts Group convened by the Department of Homeland Security, disbanded under a settlement with America First Legal, called President Biden an "ineffective messenger" for the group's surreptitious campaign to convince the public that supporters of former President Trump are the bulk of "domestic violent extremists."The disclosure was made in AFL's latest dribbling out of screenshots of the internal meeting notes from the group, which included two Obama administration proponents of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.Previous disclosures in the #DeepStateDiaries series showed the group proposed a reboot of...

Patrick Woodbeck, who uses He/They pronouns, spent a decade as the pastor of Windsor Park United Church before taking on a position at Gordon-King Memorial United Church. Both congregations are part of the United Church of Canada denomination, which was formed when liberal Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches merged to create a new denomination. A Canadian version of the United Church of Christ, they are a denomination so woke and corrupt that one of its most prominent ministers, Gretta Vosper, has spent decades leading her church as an avowed atheist, and she has never been removed. A proponent of progressive...

George Stephanopoulos, the former Bill Clinton staffer who is now the political director of ABC News for some reason, said recently that it is journalistic malpractice for a reporter to do a live TV interview with Trump. You can tell that Stephanopoulos is greatly worried that Trump will win because he has increased the number and severity of his attacks on Trump in recent months. He has even lectured his audience about the importance of the election. FOX News reports:

A new article published in Rolling Stone magazine Monday accused the United States Supreme Court of being controlled by “right-wing” dark money interests. “The Most Ridiculous, Right-Wing Supreme Court That Dark Money Could Buy,” reads the headline.The magazine’s official X account wrote, “The Supreme Court has been successfully captured by right-wing, dark money interests. The result: a court that’s in your body, working to elect Donald Trump, and in-your-face corrupt.”The author, Andrew Perez, claimed SCOTUS has reshaped “our laws and society according to their reactionary, far-right vision” over the past twenty years.Touching on the fact that the court currently has...

Alex Soros, the son of left-wing activist and billionaire George Soros, suggested Democrats mention that former President Donald Trump is a “convicted felon at every opportunity” they get. Soros wrote in a post on X that “repetition is the key to a successful message” and that Democrats want American citizens to “wrestle” with having to vote for a “convicted felon” in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

“Numerous commentators have identified the broader context of Israeli occupation as a cause of the [Israel-Hamas] war. The Associated Press wrote that Palestinians are ‘in despair over a never-ending occupation in the West Bank and suffocating blockade of Gaza.’ Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have likened the Israeli occupation to apartheid, although supporters of Israel dispute this characterization.” This quote, which seems to have an anti-Israel slant, is actually from the “Israeli policy” part of the background section on the main Wikipedia page documenting the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. One editor who has run...

Who’s ready for the nation to be covered in rainbows again this year? Apparently Walmart is, as it just released its newest collection for its gay clothing options this pride month. While the store seemed elated about its new clothes, users on social media, who are arguably tired of woke crap being literally everywhere, blasted not only the collection but Walmart as a whole. The video advertisement, which was shared on Walmart’s Instagram page, showed queer people gathered all together for a photo shoot. “Queer people have magic that we can share,” a man said at the start of the...

Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi unveiled “The Apprentice” at the Cannes film festival on Monday. The film is about Donald Trump’s rise to one of the most successful ‘winners’ in the New York real estate game. One scene shows Trump raping his wife Ivanna. Another shows Trump popping amphetamine pills and getting liposuction. The ghouls at the Cannes Film Festival gave an 8-minute standing ovation. ““The Apprentice,” the story of the 45th and possibly 47th president’s early years as a real estate developer, earned a eight-minute standing ovation on Monday. It’s probably safe to assume that the film festival crowd isn’t...

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said Tuesday on “The View” that he believed the so-called deep state was “packed with patriots.” Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “The book is so good. My favorite thing is you interviewed Situation Room staff. I have always said it’s White House staff whose names you’ll never know are the writers of history. They will tell us so many details.” Stephanopoulos said, “That was my favorite part about doing the book. I interviewed about a hundred duty officers from the White House and these are people who come, they are relatively young people who come...

In a world where romantic relationships traditionally adhere to monogamy, the reaction to a partner’s intimate connection with someone else is typically assumed to be jealousy. However, within the community that practices consensual non-monogamy, a different emotional response known as compersion — defined as feeling joy when a partner is romantically or sexually involved with another person — is increasingly recognized and valued. A recent study provides insight into the predictors of compersion, revealing that emotional closeness with a partner’s other intimate connections, clear communication about these relationships, and reduced feelings of jealousy are key facilitators. The findings have been...

Supercharging their efforts to gaslight America, Donald Trump’s enemies are denying the law of physics.At least since Isaac Newton formulated his laws of motion, we’ve understood that every effect can be explained by its cause. This insight was a radical break from more primeval beliefs that things just happened or resulted from the will of often inscrutable deities and phantasmatic beasts.Trump opponents reject this foundation of science and logic. Going beyond their grotesque comparisons of him to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, they now cast Trump as a mythical beast – like Golem, Leviathan, or Kraken – who wreaks whirlwinds...