The Adam Friedland Show Aug 27, 2025 ✪ Members first on August 26, 2025 The Adam Friedland Show | Season 2JOIN THE FRIEDLAND FAMILY FOUNDATION / PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION:    / @theadamfriedlandshow   — Patreon:   / theadamfriedlandshow   — The Adam Friedland Show – Season Two Episode 10 | RITCHIE TORRES X: https://x.com/adam_talkshow

Sartre in 1965

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

― Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905  – April 15, 1980) was a prominent French philosopher, playwright, and novelist who played a key role in establishing existentialism as a major philosophical movement. His work centered on the human condition, exploring themes like freedom, loneliness, and the absurdity of existence. Sartre’s notable works include Being and Nothingness (1943), Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), and the plays The Flies (1943) and No Exit (1947). 

on Dec 29, 2025 (info@schwartzreport.net)

Laerke Christensen,  Contributing Writer  –  Snopes

Stephan: Imagine: while the rest of the developed democracies, including the United States, are filling garbage dumps with trash, Sweden is importing other countries’ trash to provide electricity and heat for Swedish homes. This is what fostering wellbeing as a nation’s first priority looks like.

Image courtesy of Avfall Sverige

Sweden imports trash from other countries because it does not have enough to fuel its waste-to-energy plants that produce electricity and heating.

What’s True

Sweden imports millions of metric tons of trash from other countries per year, using the garbage to fuel its waste-to-energy plants.

What’s False

Snopes found no evidence Sweden would be unable to fill its energy needs without the imported garbage. Swedish energy companies charge countries for incineration of overseas trash, and officials from Sweden’s energy industry have said their plants are not dependent on imported trash for fuel.

Can one man’s trash literally be another man’s treasure, as the oft-repeated proverb goes? In late 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that put a literal spin on the saying.

According to online posts, the country of Sweden imports trash from other countries because it does not have enough to fuel its waste-to-energy plants that produce electricity and heating.

Thanks to a top-tier recycling system and strong environmental values, less than 1% of Swedish household waste ends up in landfills. Instead, Sweden […]

Read the Full Article »

Portrait by Vasily Perov, c. 1872

“We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner. and that’s all eternity is?”

~ Dostoyevsky

Russian novelist (October 30, 1821 – February 9, 1881), short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Wikipedia

Cronkite in 1983

“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” 

– Walter Cronkite

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as “the most trusted man in America” after being so named in an opinion poll. Wikipedia

Wars Will No Longer Be Fought By Male Shannons, Terrys, Or Carmens

Published: May 15, 2025 (TheOnion.com)

WASHINGTON—In a move that significantly restricts the eligibility of thousands of American troops to fight for their country on the front lines, senior U.S. military officials announced Wednesday that all men with girl names would now be forbidden from serving in combat roles.

The ban, which goes into effect immediately, prohibits male personnel with clearly feminine names like Jamie, Sandy, and Alexis from serving in all artillery, infantry, and armored units. According to a Defense Department memo, the military is less effective as a fighting force when it deploys men named Francis, Sloan, Carol, or Loren in active conflict zones.

“For too long, we’ve sacrificed combat readiness in the name of inclusivity, ignoring the fact that there are innate differences between a Hank and a male Tracy,” said Gen. Doug H. Sandoval, who is a longtime opponent of men with girl names in the military and who worked with top appointed officials at the Pentagon to devise the new ban. “All these Shelleys and Dakotas are a liability. Imagine you’re in a heavy firefight, and your commander tells you to lay down cover fire for Casey. Your brain takes an extra moment to realize Casey is a man even though that’s a lady’s name, and in that plit second of hesitation, your entire squad is overrun by the enemy.”

“Or suppose your special forces team is parachuting into hostile territory,” he continued. “Can you really order someone named Ashley to jump out of a plane? It defies common sense.”

The Pentagon confirmed that servicemen with girl names would be reassigned to noncombat roles and that their pay would be lower as a result, an outcome officials justified by arguing that men named Allison should not be the primary breadwinners in their household anyway. Some hardliners have suggested these men should not be in the armed forces at all, and should instead stay home to father the Johns and Harolds needed to fight America’s wars.

Some exceptions will reportedly be made on the basis of spelling, with men named Nicky, for example, being eligible for combat deployment so long as their name ends with a y instead of an i. A military spokesperson told reporters tabs will be kept on once-masculine names that are starting to become girly, the way Charlie and Riley seem to have lately.

“America must project strength to keep our adversaries in check, and we can’t do that with men named Taylor on the battlefield,” said Navy Vice Adm. Scott Rigby, observing that the soft consonants of unisex names like Sasha and Avery never sat right with him. “China will never take us seriously so long as we’re sending Leslies to enforce our interests abroad. And if Russia ever learned we let men named Dana pilot our fighter jets? Forget it. When it comes to soldiers, we need big, strong Chets, Mikes, and Jakes out there, full stop.”

President Trump signaled his personal approval of the ban in a post on Truth Social, writing: “Bye bye, Bailey. He’s got to leave the fighting to GUS!!!”

The ban has been met with fierce condemnation from many effeminately named male veterans, including Aubrey Hart of the advocacy group Man Enough to Fight, which plans to mount a legal challenge on behalf of 24-year-old Army sniper Mandy Wright.

“Just because a man is named Stacy or Carey doesn’t mean he can’t fight like a Brock or an Axel,” Hart said. “Back when I served, there may have been a few snickers the first time I introduced myself, but once I set my fellow soldiers straight about Aubrey being a perfectly normal thing for a boy to be called, my name was never a distraction. To suggest otherwise is an insult to me and all the male Aubreys who have bled and died for their nation.”

While congressional Republicans appear to have fallen in line behind the Trump administration’s support for the ban, one GOP lawmaker was willing to speak on the record against it.

“This is the most egregiously unfair, bigoted, and discriminatory policy I have ever encountered,” said the senator and Air Force veteran Lindsey Graham. “I won’t stand for it.”

(Courtesy of Rob Brezsny)

Sasha Luccioni | TED Countdown and Bezos Earth Fund

• September 2025

The Astrology Podcast Dec 30, 2025 Monthly Astrology Forecasts The year ahead astrology forecast for 2026, with predictions about the major planetary alignments taking place over the next twelve months, with astrologers Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock. We spend the first half of the episode giving a big picture overview of the most important planetary alignments in 2026, and then in the second half we dive into a month by month breakdown of the astrology of the next year. Overview of the Astrology of 2026 The year opens with Saturn and Neptune departing from Pisces and moving into the tropical zodiac sign of Aries, where they form an exact conjunction with each other in February, marking the peak of the reality distortion field. March and February sees the start of our first eclipse season, with a solar eclipse in Aquarius in February, followed by a lunar eclipse in Virgo in early March, marking the beginning of a new eclipse series of major endings and beginnings in Leo-Aquarius while the Virgo-Pisces series winds down. The Saturn-Neptune conjunct is reactivated in April when Mars enters that sign and forms a quadruple conjunction with Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune. Later in April the planet Uranus moves into the sign of Gemini where it will stay until 2033, thus marking the full onset of the Uranus return of the United States. This Uranus transit through Gemini reaches a critical and explosive turning point around July 4, when Mars conjoins Uranus in Gemini, which is the first in a series of four pivotal conjunctions between now and 2032. Jupiter spends the first half of the year wrapping up its transit through the sign of exaltation in Cancer, with one of the main highlights being an auspicious Venus-Jupiter conjunction in early June, but then in the second half of the year Jupiter moves into Leo and begins a series of alignments that will put the spotlight on that sign in late 2026 and early 2027. In August we get our second eclipse season of the year, with a solar eclipse in the sign of Leo, followed by a lunar eclipse in the sign of Pisces, thus fully inaugurating the Leo-Aquarius eclipse series. There is a messy Venus retrograde in the signs of Libra and Scorpio in October and November, and then the year closes with Mars getting ready to station retrograde in Leo and Virgo, leaving us on a cliffhanger that leads into the beginning of 2027. This is episode 517 of The Astrology Podcast:

Niebuhr c. 1927

• Google AI Overview

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the famous 

Serenity Prayer (“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”) in the early 1930s, amid the rise of Nazism and global turmoil, as a call for mature, responsible love and action against injustice, not passive acceptance, urging people to find courage to change evil (like Nazism) and wisdom to know what to accept, reflecting the desperate need for ethical clarity during that era, notes Rehabs.in and The Presbyterian Outlook. 

Key Context:

• Timing & Purpose: Niebuhr penned the prayer (around 1932-1933) for his summer congregation, grappling with the spread of evil and the need for Christians to act responsibly, even when facing morally hazardous situations, as seen in Germany.
• Action vs. Acceptance: While often used for personal serenity, Niebuhr intended it to encourage active engagement and fighting against societal evils, rather than merely accepting them, as he later discussed in The Irony of American History.
• Not Just for Recovery: Though widely adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), its original context was theological and political, addressing the profound moral challenges presented by Nazism and global war, as detailed in Rehabs.in. 

The Prayer (Original Version):

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things that should be changed,
And the wisdom to know the difference”. 

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Wikipedia