Why Toyota’s Alt-EV Course Makes Us All Better Off

Have you heard about the latest leap in automotive innovation from Toyota? Far from a breakthrough or new offering in the EV world, Toyota is charting an entirely new path. And while I love my Tesla, I’m all about innovation and outside-the-box initiatives. Toyota is flipping the script on emission reduction with the invention of an ammonia-powered engine. Yep. Ammonia. Ammonia (NH₃) is composed of nitrogen and hydrogen, and is commonly used in household cleaners and agricultural fertilizers. A key characteristic in this context is that it does not contain carbon, meaning its combustion does not directly produce carbon dioxide. Note that while ammonia combustion does not produce CO₂, the production of ammonia and its use as a fuel can have other environmental impacts, including the production of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are potential pollutants. That means that the environmental benefits of ammonia as a fuel would definitely depend on

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Oregon’s New Graduation Standards: A Red Flag For All

Oregon’s Declining Literacy and Math Standards Have you been following this story out of Oregon? In a state where reading proficiency for graduating seniors is far below 50%, and math skills rank even lower, the social activists masquerading as education professionals have decided that the answer is to simply remove any graduation requirement for reading, writing, or math. What could go wrong? The Bigger Picture: A Nationwide Educational Shift But make no mistake, this is not an isolated misstep; it’s a bellwether for a concerning trend in our nation’s educational landscape. The shift away from essential academic skills in favor of identity and politics is a development that all parents should watch with vigilant eyes—because what happens in Oregon today could very well be knocking on the door of your child’s school tomorrow. At the heart of the Tuttle Twins’ mission, and in every effort we spearhead at the Libertas

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Confirmed! The Post-Pandemic Education Revolution

The educational landscape of the United States is witnessing a transformative wave, one that has carried the concept of homeschooling from the peripheral fringes right into the mainstream. This change, meticulously chronicled in a recent Washington Post article, it turns out, is not merely a reaction to the pandemic’s education disruption but rather a deep-rooted shift in the perceptions and aspirations of American families towards personalized education. As an author and advocate for educational freedom, I find these revelations not just exciting, but also as affirming echoes of the Tuttle Twins ethos: that the education of children is a profoundly individual and familial endeavor, deserving of a profoundly decentralized approach. 1. The Enduring Appeal of Homeschooling The pandemic, an unbidden catalyst, necessitated remote learning—a distant cousin of homeschooling. Yet when schools reopened, many parents chose to keep them metaphorically shut by continuing to educate their children at home. This persistence

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Humor and Hayek

Parents and educators know how challenging it is to break down intricate economic ideas for kids. Heck, that’s why I wrote the first Tuttle Twins book to begin with. I couldn’t find any resources to help teach my kids these important concepts in a way that wouldn’t make them fall asleep. Our books cover important works by everyone from Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich von Hayek, to celebrity psychologist Jordan Peterson, and everyone in between! To be fair, a lot of adults even struggle to understand F. A. Hayek’s work, so I’m extra proud of the job we’ve done with this episode of the Tuttle Twins cartoon. Inspired by the wisdom of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, we explore what happens when a handful of people think they know what’s best for everyone else. (Spoiler: more often than not, their supposedly well-meaning plans result in a cascade of problems no one saw coming.) This

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When did normal become bigoted?

Kinda funny being called hateful/bigoted/phobic/etc for expressing opinions that were emphatically mainstream just five years ago. And by funny, of course I mean it’s asinine. There was a time not too long ago when common sense ideas and opinions were pretty much the norm. Now, anyone who dares to express a perspective or a belief that goes against the new orthodoxy is met with accusations of bigotry or hate speech. What’s happening is nothing less than a concerted effort to silence dissent and control the narrative, and the folks doing it don’t seem to care about how antithetical it is to the principles of a free society. Maybe that’s the point. Prince Harry recently made headlines by calling the 1st Amendment “bonkers,” but he’s got it all wrong. What’s bonkers is the idea that politicians and bureaucrats should be the arbiter of what speech is appropriate. It’s not just the

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The only proper way to celebrate Karl Marx’s birthday

Happy birthday to Karl Marx, the father of communism and hero to totalitarians and villains the world over! Let’s take a look at Karl’s legacy: Marx believed in a socialist society where the state owned the means of production, and everything was distributed equally among the people. Not surprisingly, regimes that follow Marxist ideology have suppressed dissent, brutalized their citizens, and caused millions of deaths. It’s almost like people have free will, and don’t go willingly along with the so-called “equal” distribution of the fruits of their time, talents, and labor. Crazy. Under Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union, millions of people were sent to labor camps where they were subjected to torture, starvation, and death. The Gulag system was infamous for its inhumane treatment of prisoners, where forced labor and extreme conditions resulted in the deaths of scores of innocents. In addition to the labor camps, Stalin’s policies of

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