National forecaster Deutscher Wetterdienst predicted a heatwave would persist through mid-August. Weather models show max temperatures will jump to mid-July levels of nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit by Aug. 14, then slide to the low/mid 70s shortly after.

A confluence of factors is pushing German electricity prices to new records. First are the rising costs of imported nuclear power from France and Switzerland. Utilities in both countries report nuclear generation output has been reduced in recent weeks for various reasons, some of which are related to the heat (read: here). Domestically, Germany's Uniper SE, the country's largest utility, warned lower river Rhine levels made it more challenging to receive coal shipments via barges to fuel coal-fired power plants.

A number of firearm companies have seen their shipments with UPS become damaged or go missing while on route to customers, while others have allegedly had their corporate accounts canceled by the parcel service, according to a report by Bearing Arms, a pro-Second Amendment news site.

Patrick Collins, CEO of The Gun Food, an ammunition supply company, told the news outlet that many packages his business had shipped via UPS had mysteriously vanished in transit. Specifically, Collins alleged that out of 18,000 rounds of ammunition that he's shipped, only around a third — roughly 6,000 — were actually delivered.

Collins said he was allegedly told by UPS that he was likely not packaging the shipments properly and that the company also noted an uptick in his recent claims regarding packages that are not being successfully delivered.

"They're not even making it. And I don't know what they are doing in the facilities if they are purposefully damaging them. However, they are not making it to the customer."

New York City's Democrat Mayor Eric Adams is reportedly requesting photos of city job applicants, as he wants to ensure that new members of the workforce are diverse — a move that seems to show the value of race and ethnicity over qualifications.

According to a report from Politico, most of the individuals — past and current city officials — the outlet spoke to are unsettled by the mayor's request, although it seems the mayor's office is presenting the request as a way Adams can simply "begin to recognize folks [sic] faces."

"Flagging that the Mayor would love all agencies upper leadership in this type of style," an April 19 email from an Adams staffer reads. "Clarifying also that the avatars in the attached should be actual photos as the Mayor likes to begin to recognize folks [sic] faces."

However, many remain skeptical and view the request as a way for Adams to prioritize racial and ethnic diversity. One former employee suggested everyone knew what the request was really about at its core.

"It was the first thing everybody said: 'We're going to start counting complexions now,'" the individual said.

The Cracker Barrel is a place where you can feast on meatloaf, with three "country" sides and a buttermilk biscuit, while seated next to a stone hearth or with an oil lamp silently flickering on your table. It's a place where you can, after your meal, buy a glass angel, a peacock fountain or cow-hide pillow in the attached gift store. It's the kind of place that presents itself as America's front porch, a rural refuge far from the cultural strife of our cities.

Cracker Barrel's country tranquility was apparently shattered on Monday, when the chain announced on Facebook that customers could customize their breakfast plate with a plant-based protein as a replacement for their traditional bacon or smoked sausage. Cracker Barrel wrote in its post:

"Discover new meat frontiers. Experience the out of this world flavor of Impossible™ Sausage Made From Plants next time you Build Your Own Breakfast."

The blowback was immediate and intense. Comments, hundreds and hundreds of them, were split along ideological, generational and political lines.

A huge out of control fire is ripping through a large warehouse of a popular Russian retailer near Moscow on Wednesday. Reported in Reuters:

"At least one person was killed and 13 injured when a huge fire broke out at a warehouse north west of Moscow owned by e-commerce firm Ozon on Wednesday, RIA quoted the emergency services as saying. Dozens of firefighters battled to douse the fire using helicopters and 100 tonnes of water as a large plume of dark smoke billowed from the roof of the bright blue warehouse."

UC Berkeley recently began clearing an area of land known as "People's Park" for the development of new student housing. On Wednesday, plans for that housing ground to a halt following violent protests by far-left rioters. According to far-left advocacy group Defend People's Park, the area where new student housing is being developed was occupied by a number of homeless people.

The group wrote in a June 9 Facebook post:

"UC Berkeley is now saying that 'camping' in the park is illegal. This means that no one living there and no tent or structure has the right to privacy - meaning cops or cleaners can throw away anything without any recourse whatsoever."

The park, which is owned by the school, was cleared on Tuesday and surrounded by fencing.

I don't know if Americans were ever fiscally responsible, if they ever had a time when saving was valued, where you didn't borrow for consumption, and where low-quality throwaway goods and products were avoided, but if they did experience such a period in their history, it was brief. Twenty years before Elmer Wheeler's discovery of sizzle, Bernays and his friends had already instilled the equally important concept of spending tomorrow's money today. The process began with Layaway plans, then moved to 'Pay as you Go', 'No money Down', 'Buy Now, Pay Later', and other easy credit schemes. Television ads displayed beautiful people enjoying their new home and car, kitchen appliances and furniture, TV, clothing and vacations, and not having to pay for them today. The marketers hired Bernays' psychologists to create a tactical plan to change American values from saving to perpetual consumption, and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. US marketers conceived and created a 'throw-away' society, where appearance was more important than substance, where quality was sacrificed for fashion. US automakers changed the entire external appearance of their models each year, converting transportation into fashion accessory with advertising campaigns that made people ashamed of driving last year's car. This is so true that since the 1950s, one of the largest 'fashion events' of the year was the unveiling by American auto manufacturers of their new models. There was never any attention paid to engineering or quality; it was all superficial consumerism.

Most Americans are too young to realise that their throwaway society is a recent development. It was not so long ago that quality and durability were important characteristics of any purchase, because people weren't rich enough to buy shoddy products requiring repeated replacement. Consumer goods were meant to last a lifetime - and many did. Many toys were expected to last for generations, and often did. As a child, I played with toys that were handed down from my grandfather. Early in his marriage, my father purchased a set of kitchen pots for my mother, for which he paid nearly two month's salary. My mother died at 91 years of age, and those pots still looked as new as when they were purchased. It was Bernays and his marketing people, the evangelisers of capitalism, who found a better way to make more money faster. Rather than selling you one good item and losing you as a customer forever (since it would never need replacement), they began lowering the quality, making and selling increasingly cheaper products that would soon fail and require replacement. This way, American manufacturers would have high profits and permanent repeat customers from a wasteful disposable society.

American manufacturers had developed the processes of large-scale mass production to serve the nation's war machine, but after the war these massive factories would remain mostly idle. The solution of Lippman and Bernays was to engineer one of the greatest shifts in social values the world has ever seen, by re-defining the concept of "need" in the public mind to coincide with every product American factories could make. They employed their wartime propaganda methods to indoctrinate the American people with a need to purchase everything possible, in their pursuit of "a higher living standard".

"Bernays began the process of selling not so much products as emotion itself. In psychologically linking the act of consumption to feeling free, happy, empowered, and confident, he tied notions of identity and self to items that could be purchased." This was the true birth of consumerism, and why it existed (and exists) only in the US. America evolved into a 'shop-until-you-drop' throwaway economy, based on easy credit and superficiality. In a few decades, Americans went from 'thrift' to 'spendthrift'.

Have you ever seen a teacher who is just a little too interested in getting kids to talk about their sexuality? Or a government bureaucrat seemingly obsessed with pushing LGBT ideology into schools?

Then you've likely encountered what James Lindsay, a cultural commentator and frequent critic of LGBT activists, calls a "groomer."

Lindsay, 43, is co-author of the book Cynical Theories, which highlights the decline in academic rigor in academia, as well as the rise of postmodernism. Lindsay, who lives in Tennessee, has been one of the loudest voices online exposing how activists are foisting LGBT ideology on unwitting children.

The combination of extreme drought and the spiralling cost of feed has put Portugal's livestock producers in a desperate situation. Many are shutting down operations altogether, others are drastically 'cutting back on heads of cattle' - meaning animals are being killed because their owners simply cannot afford to feed them. The costs of this drastic reduction "will reflect on consumers" eventually, explain reports, as the cost of meat will increase further than it already has.

Schools and hospitals used as military bases by Ukrainian forces

'We have no say in what the military does, but we pay the price' - resident in city of Bakhmut

'Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law' - Agnès Callamard

The Ukrainian military has endangered Ukrainian civilians by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in residential areas - including in schools and hospitals - as it has sought to repel the Russian invasion, Amnesty International said today.

Ukraine's tactics have violated international humanitarian law as they've turned civilian objects into military targets. The ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

Not every Russian attack documented by Amnesty has followed this pattern. In certain locations in which Amnesty concluded that Russia had committed war crimes - including in some areas of the city of Kharkiv - Amnesty did not find evidence of Ukrainian forces located in civilian areas unlawfully targeted by the Russian military.