Greta Thunburg, my choice for Absolute Monarch of Earth, delivers a gut-wrenching address to the UN Climate Action Summit:

I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. … The eyes of all future generations are upon you and if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you.

All Trump could do is mock her. He did show up at the summit, even though he wasn’t invited. Jay Michaelson puts it this way:

Trump popped into the summit for a few minutes, glowered in the back, and then gave a speech in an adjacent conference room about fake solutions to a nonexistent problem: America’s persecution of Christians.

After rallying other anti-abortion countries behind the scenes, Health and Human Services Secretary Alaz Azar told the UN General Assembly that they should all stop talking about reproductive rights:

We do not support references to ambiguous terms and expressions, such as sexual and reproductive health and rights in UN documents, because they can undermine the critical role of the family and promote practices, like abortion, in circumstances that do not enjoy international consensus and which can be misinterpreted by UN agencies.

There is no international right to an abortion and these terms should not be used to promote pro-abortion policies and measures. Further, we only support sex education that appreciates the protective role of the family in this education and does not condone harmful sexual risks for young people.

Speaking of backward ideas, turns out most Americans believe that divorce rates and teen births are climbing, but they’re not, and religious Americans are the most likely to be wrong about this. Jana Riess writes:

In a nutshell, a majority of Americans seem to think that although things are satisfying in their own homes, other people’s families are in trouble. In the absence of correct information, they appear to be vulnerable to what [an American Family Survey] study’s authors call “negative sensationalizing” about broader social trends.

Tech and tech-adjacent companies are backing a bill to end the Trump Muslim ban.

Susan Gerbic writes at Skeptical Inquirer about a rising celebrity psychic, Matt Fraser, and how his conventional cold reading con act is more than enough to get himself fluffy, adoring coverage on TV news.

“Today in chapel we confessed to plants.” Ladies and gentlemen, the future of America.

Ray Comfort now says that oranges, not bananas, prove that God exists, but I’ll give him credit for this: It never occurred to me to open an orange like that and I’m excited to try it. Because as it is right now, oranges only prove to me that God hates me and wants me to be frustrated and have sticky fingers.

Speaking of Kiwis (as in New Zealanders like Ray Comfort, not the fruit like the oranges), a new survey shows that about half of them (48 percent) identify as having “no religion.” The people, that is. Not the fruit. Or the bird, for that matter.

Quote of the Day

Jennings Brown at Gizmodo reports from Storm Area 51/Alienstock/whatever:

[Event creator] Roberts said he wasn’t sure if he’d continue his current academic path. “This has changed my life dramatically. Three months ago I was a full-time petroleum engineering student and now I am basically professional party host,” he said. “It’s exciting that something I did garnered this much attention from the entire world. I’m loving everything that’s come my way so far.”

“It seems like there can be a lot of money in memes,” I said.

“That’s a fact right there!” Roberts replied. …

… It wasn’t the promise of seeing aliens that made my visit to Area 51 so enchanting. Here, on a desolate road by one of the most mythologized places on Earth, the cops and oddballs had come together to share this strange moment.

It remains to be seen whether Alienstock will become an international party brand, another annual music festival, or something entirely different in the future. But last weekend, the Area 51 stormers successfully brought the internet into the real world by committing to an idea that was silly, mostly harmless, and too weird to die.

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.