THE STOLEN SPANISH BABIES (1939-1980’s)…..For decades, the Spanish government partnered with Catholic nuns…..to systematically steal up to 300,000 babies from poor, working-class or unmarried mothers…..doctors lied to the weeping mothers….claiming the infants died at childbirth…..the church then illegally sold the stolen children to wealthy, politically connected conservative families….religion and state actively conspired to harvest the children of the poor to supply the rich.

THE iPHONE BLOODLINE……In 2010, the executives at Apple and Foxconn aggressively subjected Chinese factory workers to such inescapable, grueling slave-labor conditions to manufacture luxury iPhones…..that the desperate workers began hurling themselves off the factory roofs in mass suicides…..the billionaire tech elite did not reduce the brutal quotas or raise the starvation wages…..instead they cold-bloodedly installed massive wire suicide nets around the buildings…..just to catch the falling bodies….and forced them right back to the assembly lines…..Karl Marx once said….. “Capital is dead labor….which vampire-like….lives only by sucking living labor.”

THE BLACKBIRDING KIDNAPPINGS…..When the British and Australian empires legally abolished slavery….the wealthy sugar cane plantation owners simply rebranded it….under a practice called “Blackbirding”….heavily armed corporate ships sailed to the Pacific islands….they systematically tricked, drugged and violently kidnapped up to 60,000 indigenous Polynesians…..the victims were hauled in chains to Australia and forced to sign “employment contracts”…..they couldn’t even read….the political elite didn’t end human trafficking…..they just invented new paperwork to make it legally defensible…..Albert Camus once said….. “All modern revolutions have ended….in a reinforcement of the power of the state.”

A NEW SoHo BAKERY….Is charging $60 for a single loaf of bread…..and New Yorkers are lining up to buy it….Rye by Martin Auer sells one 3.3 pound sourdough made form organic Austrian rye, water, salt and “time”…..it ferments for 24-hours….stays fresh for up to ten days and comes from a two-ton German oven…..a comparable loaf cost under €10 in Austria…..for the record…..my wife busted out laughing when she read this…..but in Manhattan, old peasant bread….has become a luxury status symbol…..y’all have no idea how much “Good” bread 60 bucks could buy over here.

45 AMERICAN STATES….have removed cursive writing…..research suggested it was a mistake…..between 2010 and 2020, schools quietly dropped cursive from classrooms, often without consulting neuro-scientists…..the reasoning was simple….keyboards exists, handwriting is outdated….but a 2023 Norwegian EEG study found cursive activates widespread brain connectivity that typing does not….John Hopkins also confirmed handwriting supports stronger reading and spelling skills…..students who learned cursive outperformed peers across literacy measures…..this wasn’t a science-driven decision….it was made for convenience…..in 2023, the state of Indiana brought cursive back….the other 44 states haven’t….they basically didn’t upgrade education…..they downgraded how the brain learns.

HEY!….Here’s a tongue twister for ya….

THE WAFFLE WARS…..Wally Waffleton whipped up a wobbly waffle with whipped walnut whip, but Wendy’s wobbly waffle-eating weasel wandered in and wolfed Wally’s wobbly walnut waffle whole, so Wally whipped a whole new wobbly batch while wailing about the weasel’s whopping waffle-wrecking ways.

MICHIGAN, 1912…..Midwest resort towns banned Black travelers from public lakes, cabins and hotels….middle class Blacks purchased nearly 3,000 acres of wilderness around Paradise Lake in Michigan….and transformed it into the “summer Apollo”…..where 25,000 visitors flooded in every summer to see Dianah Washington, Duke Ellington and Jackie Wilson play….they called the town “Idlewild”…..the “Black Eden.”

FINNISH PARENTS…..Routinely put babies outside to nap…..even when winter temperatures fall below freezing…..the infants are bundled in layers of wool, a sleeping bag and a sheltered pram….while adults monitor them nearby….the custom too off in the 1920’s after pediatrician Arvo Ylppö…..promoted fresh-air sleeping…..a Finnish study found outdoor naps lasted 92 minutes longer than indoor ones….with -5C described as optimal….to outsiders it looks dangerous….in Finland….it can look like good parenting.

THERE ARE….Over 150 ways to cook eggs?

THERE ARE TEMPLES IN KYOTO, JAPAN…..That feature ceiling marked with bloodstains….the ceiling materials were repurposed from the wooden floors of Fushimi Castle….this historical site is where 380 samurai committed Seppuku following an 11-day siege defending against a force of 40,000 soldiers…..bloody handprints and footprints of the fallen warriors…..are still preserved today…..in several Japanese temples dark bloodstains can still be seen on wooden ceilings…a grim reminder of the turbulent Sengoku period…..Fushimi Castle after it fell in 1600….the castle had been defended by samurai loyal to Torii Mototada….when facing defeat, committed ritual suicide along with his remaining men…..instead of destroying the bloodstained boards…..they were installed as ceiling in temples around Kyoto and nearby regions….as memorials to the fallen.