Retired crime and courts reporter @RTDNEWS. Skeptical, old school scribe. Mizzou alum, KC Chiefs fan
Joined June 2009
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Mark Bowes retweeted
Chiefs OLs make cryptic posts to social media after loss to Broncos
📸 Denny Medley, IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect chiefswire.usatoday.com/stor…
ALT Chiefs OLs make cryptic posts to social media after loss to Broncos
Mark Bowes retweeted
From another friend:
JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible. Rusk responded, "Does that include those who are buried here?"
DeGaulle did not respond. You could have heard a pin drop.
When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of 'empire building' by George Bush. He answered by saying, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those who did not return."
You could have heard a pin drop.
There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?" A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships. How many does France have?"
You could have heard a pin drop.
A U.S. Navy admiral was attending a naval conference that included admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian, and French navies at a cocktail reception. He found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks when a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, "Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?" Without hesitating, the American admiral replied, "Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German."
You could have heard a pin drop.
AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE...
Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically. Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. "Then you should know enough to have your passport ready." The American said, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it." "Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France!" The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."
You could have heard a pin drop.
I am proud to be an American, and proud of this God given heritage!
“This era really feels like America's mid-life crisis.”
The sheer speed at which this particular change has come about and intensified is truly incredible.
I mean I'm only 32 and even in my lifetime, absolutely basic opinions that 95% of Americans espoused are now utterly Haram even amongst self-styled "conservatives."
In 2002 -- just 25 years ago -- gay "marriage" was unthinkable to all but the lunatic fringe of the furthest left liberals. "Trans" literally didn't exist except as an exotic (and gross) joke. Most families, at least in rural areas like the one I grew up in, were still basically traditional -- wife at home mothering the kids, fathers were heads of household in the true sense, kids were running and playing outside.
The only "working mothers" I knew were very poor, usually single mothers. It was still considered desirable and high-status for a woman to not have to work. Women would openly show gratitude for not having to work jobs, and would say things like "what woman would want a job? Seeing what my husband deals with at his job, I'm not envious of THAT..."
Hell, around that time kids were still coming to school after deer hunting and left their rifles in their locked trucks. No problem. No metal detectors or "safety officers" at High Schools. It was essentially impossible to buy marijuana in my town, too. Wildest it got was drinking a 12-rack of Molson at a bonfire or maybe a fistfight with a kid from another town, no kidding.
Fast-forward just 25 years and you'll get crucified online or at family functions for even suggesting that there are objective differences between men and women, or that kids need their mothers at home instead of being raised by daycare staff, or for even saying the word "queer."
Having a beer or trapping beaver or "having too many kids" is looked upon with disgust by many, but publicly celebrating sodomy isn't. Even many "conservatives" gasp if you suggest that things like marijuana, pride parades, vasectomies, or divorces are bad -- and many of them are open atheists.
The worst part of it is that you're not only not supposed to notice these changes, you're intensely socially pressured to go along with all of it.
Are we better off for this incredibly swift series of changes? It doesn't appear that we are. Birthrates continue to crater, depression rates are sky-high, people are lonelier than ever.
We've changed too much too fast, and for it, we've lost ourselves, everybody is in this kind of mass psychosis -- and those who see this for what it is are scorned even in the company of "conservatives." It's insanity.
This era really feels like America's mid-life crisis.
Mark Bowes retweeted
Legendary Hall of Fame coach Dick Verneil talked about the false start against Jaylon Moore that doomed the #Chiefs against the #Broncos on @ArrowheadAllies – at Gladstone, MO
Mark Bowes retweeted
Why it’s worth living and hanging in there for just a few more years
In the very near future:
all diseases will be curable
ASI will be here
aging reversal tech will be here (AI will decode the human body at the cellular level. Aging will be solved, and ultimately reversed).
Everyone (who is not suicidal and doesn't want to die from aging) will be biologically 20–25
your parents young and in their prime again (from this moment you will never see them old and weak)
advanced technology will keep people young as long as you want. 5000 year olds dating 1000 year olds.
dating will be strange in the future (by current cultural standards). Right now, people make a big deal when a 55 year old man dates a 25 year old woman.
Universal prosperity - Poverty and hunger eradicated, everyone lives in abundance. $10 000 000 gdp per capita (global average), growing daily.
Full Dive VR technology will let you relive the 80s, 90s, or 2000s if you're feeling nostalgic for those decades. It will feel like time travel tech.
Crime/criminals eliminated through Neuralink like technology.
We will create entire virtual worlds and experience realities beyond imagination.
Earth's ecosystems will be fully restored, thriving biodiversity everywhere.
beyond 2030s
We will explore the Universe and carry life beyond Earth.
Mark Bowes retweeted
🚨 JUST IN: Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński STARES into the camera to drop this message for any American considering voting Democrat in 2026
"Socialism is DEATH, slavery and lack of any freedoms. PLEASE don't do it — don't go through 70 years of occupation like Poland did."
"You know what socialism is? Everyone is equal...Equally HUNGRY. And that's what we went through. Please, don't do it. Do not vote socialist for your next generations for your children and grandchildren!"
@D_Tarczynski 💯💯
Poles LIVED THIS: ration cards, empty shelves, lack of food and martial law by the commies
Now Democrats are running open socialists like Mamdani and ABDUL EL SAYED
Listen to the people who actually survived it! 🇺🇸🇵🇱
Everyone who fled communism does NOT want to go back. Americans must vote Republican.
My former employer is getting ratioed in the comments. And rightly so. They are begging for people to subscribe and post this drivel.
Election Day will dawn with uncertainty on Tuesday, as voters who haven't cast their ballots already will go to their polling places not knowing who might be there watching. With political control of Congress at stake midway through the term of... richmond.com/news/state-regi…
Mark Bowes retweeted
Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński is explaining what is happening right now at Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, calling it nothing less than a COUP D’ÉTAT!
“In Poland, we have a liberal-left government led by Donald Tusk, who is the Prime Minister. What is happening right now with the Constitutional Tribunal is that they want to take it over and fill it with their own people.
Why? Because they want to get rid of the Polish currency, bring us into the eurozone, and eliminate our secure borders. They are being pushed by the Germans, who want to spread the burden of illegal migration and send migrants to Poland.
First of all, the Polish złoty is our constitutionally protected currency. They have to change the Constitution to replace it, and without the Constitutional Tribunal, they cannot do that.
So, number one, they want to get rid of our currency and force us to adopt the euro and join the eurozone. Then they want to take our gold reserves, the largest in the European Union, to Frankfurt, to the European Central Bank, which is a German-based institution.
They also want to open our borders. And they want to make sure that when they lose the next elections, which are coming next year, the Constitutional Tribunal will be unable to do anything to stop their actions or reverse what they have done.
There are many more reasons, but I want you to understand one thing: they are under German influence. They are globalists, and we are fighting not just for Poland, but for Europe.
Be like Poland. Be strong. Our nation is strong, and we are going to win this fight!”
Mark Bowes retweeted
Think about the purpose of this tweet. PBS is a total laughingstock to anyone who is even mildly conservative, which of course PBS knows perfectly well. So the intended audience is the brainwashed legions suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
But why bother telling them something they already believe anyway? Because the purpose is to reinforce those beliefs, give them a veneer of official legitimacy, and, above all, convince them that anyone who dares to ask questions about late night vote counting behind locked doors, with suitcases full of supposed ballots, is a dangerous extremist who deserves their hatred and contempt.
This is a lawfare operation, pure and simple. The objective has nothing to do with informing the public. It is to whip the already brainwashed into a frenzy of hatred against their fellow Americans.
If you go to bed on election night and don't know who won a midterm congressional race, that's normal. And if you wake up the next morning and find that a candidate who was behind hours earlier has since pulled ahead, that's normal, too. (via @PolitiFact) to.pbs.org/4zqnWBa
Mark Bowes retweeted
Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger “restored” the voting rights of convicted felon Biscuit Rigsby.
Who is dead…and a dog. Which makes sense, as dead people, animals and felons are some of-the most loyal democrat voters.
Mark Bowes retweeted
It wasn’t at all normal for most of my life.
If you go to bed on election night and don't know who won a midterm congressional race, that's normal. And if you wake up the next morning and find that a candidate who was behind hours earlier has since pulled ahead, that's normal, too. (via @PolitiFact) to.pbs.org/4zqnWBa
Mark Bowes retweeted
Ambre a raison, les gauchistes et les droitards sont câblés différemment.
C'est la fameuse étude de la heatmap gauche/droite (Waytz, Iyer, Young, Haidt & Graham, 2019)
Deux tempéraments opposés se distinguent. Le conservateur concentre sa compassion sur ses cercles proches. Le progressiste la concentre sur des cercles lointains et abstraits.
Et cette différence explique pourquoi l'un parle du monde pendant que l'autre parle des siens.
Pour le comprendre, il faut donc lire l'étude de Waytz, Iyer, Young, Haidt & Graham, publiée dans Nature Communications (vol. 10, article 4389, 2019).
C'est en fait un ensemble de 7 études. Les deux plus importantes ont interrogé environ 14 000 personnes, avec une seule question : où va la préoccupation, vers le pays ou vers l'humanité ?
Le résultat ?
Plus on se dit conservateur, plus on s'identifie à son pays (0,28) et moins à tous les humains (−0,34). Même sens sur les valeurs : la sécurité de sa nation (0,46) contre l'universalisme (−0,41).
Les auteurs nomment ça "parochialisme" et "universalisme".
Le plus intéressant dans cette étude, c'est comment les personnes répartissent les unités d'attachement. 131 personnes répartissent 100 unités morales sur 16 cercles, de la famille immédiate jusqu'à toutes les choses qui existent.
Là, l'affectation a un coût d'opportunité. On arbitre.
Comme en économie : lorsque vous choisissez une alternative, vous renoncez aux autres. La préoccupation et l'attachement sont exclusifs, ils ne se partagent pas. Ils excluent donc nécessairement.
C'est pour cela que le progressiste attribue ses unités vers le lointain. Il ne peut pas les donner en même temps à "L'Humanité" entière qu'il ne connaît pas et à ses voisins qu'il connaît pourtant.
Quand on augmente les unités à attribuer, on pourrait s'attendre à ce que les individus répartissent mieux les unités entre les cercles d'affection.
Bah en fait, non.
Le total ne change pas. La quantité de préoccupation est la même.
Si on sort du champ de cette étude on peut dire que le progressiste qui affiche une empathie plus vaste a en réalité une empathie plus diluée et floue, qui ne peut jamais s'exercer concrètement, car il est impossible d'aider ou de rendre service à des entités-totem lointaines.
L'Humanité avec un H, c'est bien un de ces totems.
C'est l'inverse du conservateur, qui ne distribue pas sa compassion dans des causes abstraites et inatteignables. Il l'investit concrètement sur des individus qu'il connaît, avec qui il interagit au quotidien.
En bref, "l'amour de l'Humanité" est précisément ce qui dispense d'aimer les hommes. C'est, poussé à sa logique ultime, un antihumanisme.
Mark Bowes retweeted
For the past few years, I've finally understood why so many people stay on the left even when reality keeps sending them signal after signal that their ideology doesn't work.
The answer fits in one word: incentives.
An incentive is what you gain or lose depending on what you say and do. Your salary, your position, your reputation, your friends, your place in a social circle. Charlie Munger put it best: "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." People don't think in a vacuum. They think inside a system of rewards and punishments, and most of the time they don't even notice it.
Then you have to accept a slightly brutal truth: on average, people are not courageous. That's not a moral judgment, it's biology. For hundreds of thousands of years, being kicked out of the group meant death. Our brains are wired to prefer being wrong with the tribe over being right alone.
Now imagine that your entire context depends on your position. Your status in your circle. Your money. Your funding. Your network. Sometimes even your relationship. At that point, telling the truth doesn't just cost you an awkward dinner conversation. It can cost you your career, your friends, your whole identity.
So you don't lie outright. You do something worse: you stop looking. You find an explanation for every failure. It's never the idea that's wrong, it's that it wasn't applied hard enough. Not enough public money. Not enough rules. Not enough time.
And that's where it gets truly dangerous. After a while, it's no longer a compromise. It becomes your normal. You're not pretending anymore, you actually believe it. Your brain has rewritten reality to protect your context. From the outside, you look completely detached. From the inside, you feel perfectly lucid.
Emmanuel Macron is the textbook case. Elite civil service school, investment banker, adviser and then minister under Hollande, and now almost ten years in the Élysée. For more than fifteen years he has lived in an ecosystem where every single person around him depends on him. Nobody has an incentive to tell him the truth. Everyone has an incentive to tell him he's right. The result: a brilliant man who seems genuinely surprised every time the country doesn't react the way he planned. The 2024 dissolution of parliament is the perfect illustration. It's not an intelligence problem. It's an incentive problem that, over time, turned into a problem of perceiving reality.
The lesson applies to everyone, me included: if you want to know whether you think freely, ask yourself what you'd lose if you changed your mind tomorrow. If the answer is "everything," be suspicious of your own certainties.
If people only tell you the truth when it costs them nothing, you will never hear it.
Mark Bowes retweeted
This might be the best sentence ever constructed
Mark Bowes retweeted
“Breasts which are round, full, supple, do not sag, and have a rosy-white hue are the most beautiful part of a woman. … No yearning within me will ever be as strong as that for a woman’s breast upon which to rest my head” - Wilhelm Reich
Mark Bowes retweeted
One of the greatest ironies of the COVID era, for me, was watching people whose self-concept revolved around championing multiculturalism, Indigenous wisdom, and respect for non-Western traditions suddenly demand absolute conformity to a single Western biomedical approach to health.
Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and countless Indigenous healing traditions around the world emphasize the health of the whole organism, its environment, and the cultivation of balance and resilience over fighting a particular pathogen.
Yet during COVID, discussions of these perspectives—overall health, fitness, mental health, nutrition, and internal balance—were met with ridicule and even censorship, while people who refused the novel allopathic pharmaceutical intervention were excluded from most aspects of society.
It was so dark that it was hard to appreciate the parody. People whose entire cultural narrative revolved around multiculturalism were insisting that everyone conform to the dominant Western biomedical establishment—a system consolidated through Rockefeller-era reforms, backed by oil wealth, that marginalized traditional approaches to medicine.
Anyone who refused to conform to the system during the Covid era was treated as an ignorant savage, too stupid or dangerous to participate in society.
And anyone who practiced holistic medicine and rejected the novel allopathic intervention was labeled "hesitant"—someone who needed to be "educated." The colonial irony was breathtaking. Here were the self-appointed champions of Indigenous wisdom, assuming the familiar role of the enlightened colonizer, arriving to educate the ignorant savages out of their supposedly primitive beliefs.
The acceptable public narrative was framed as a war against a pathogen, with almost no tolerance for even discussing the holistic conditions of health.
My point isn't about a warlike binary of germ versus terrain theory, or a belief that traditional medicine should replace modern allopathy.
I'm pointing out the extraordinary irony of people who celebrated cultural diversity becoming completely intolerant of medical pluralism.
For me, that contradiction was a profound wake-up call about a culture I'd lived in for decades without ever seriously questioning.
Apparently, when diversity goes deeper than the appearance of a Benetton ad, tolerance for differences can go right out the window.