Off-Guardian – April 5, 2026
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. Babies make you sad and ugly and ruin everything
Easter. Spring. The time of year to celebrate the rebirth of the world and bringing of new life into a freshly green world…
…or not, according to the MSM, who are all rather down on the whole going-forth and multiplying thing.
A new study has apparently found the having children doens’t make you happy, but does ruin your relationship, according to the Daily Mail:
Having children DOESN’T make you happy: Becoming a parent provides no boost to wellbeing, study claims – but it does ruin your relationship
Dispensing even with the pretense of science, BuzzFeed is just straight up reporting anonymous anecdotes:
“There Is Literally No Escaping This”: Moms And Dads Anonymously Confessed Why They Regret Having Their Kids, And Wow
In a variation on that theme, the BBC has a story headlined:
‘Like a trap you can’t escape’: The women who regret being mothers
In which alleged mothers say they would erase their children from existence if given the choice, and describe motherhood thus…
“Motherhood has taken my health, my time, my money, my strength, and my body […] The price is too high, and the cost is forever.”
Just in case you’re missing the finer points of the subliminal messaging: DON’T HAVE KIDS!
2. Unshrouding Turin
A new study on Shroud of Turin has found DNA of many different people, animals and plants on the centuries old piece of cloth. Surprising no one with even the most basic understanding of DNA or how time works.
The New Scientist writes:
Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus’s body, further complicating the question of the cloth’s true origin
The “question of the shroud’s origin”? That was answered decades ago scientifically and centuries ago by common sense.
The Daily Mail has a separate story, also about the shroud, and headlined:
Shroud of Turin discovery places burial cloth at time of Jesus’ death
Which is just dishonest enough to tip-toe up the line of “lie”, without crossing it.
The “discovery” is a study of pollen from the 1970s. And when they say “places the burial cloth at the time of Jesus’ death”…they mean the time of year. That’s how dishonest the article is.
The pollen is only around at spring time. Which means nothing, since it is documented the shroud has existed for nearly 700 springs, all of which probably had pollen.
Why is this getting – if you’ll forgive a rather good pun – blanket coverage?
The shroud of Turin is not real. I mean, it’s a real shroud, but it was never wrapped around Jesus Christ’s body.
They found red ochre pigment on it over thirty years ago. It’s paint, not blood.
There’s no documented evidence of its existence prior to 1354. For the mathematically uninclined, that’s roughly 1320 years after the crucifixion. This lines up perfectly with radio carbon dating results, which date it to between 1260 and 1390AD
But, more importantly, just look at it:
No human has ever looked like this.
It is not a real face, it is a drawing, a clearly medieval-era painting of a very European-looking Christ, whose hair is somehow hanging perfectly straight around his oddly-rectangular face, despite supposedly lying flat on his back with a cloth wrapped tightly about his head.
With all the real mysteries hanging over the human race, the preoccupation with re-solving a non-puzzle seems like such a waste of time.
It’s a medieval fake, from the golden age of bought-and-paid for miracles. That has historical significance in its own right, but there’s no mystery or magic to it.
3. The Great Kit-Kat Kaper
In one of the more bizarre thefts I’ve ever heard of, some criminal (or criminals) have made off with a cargo shipment of 12 tons of KitKat chocolate, totalling somewhere close to 500,000 bars.
I guess someone really needed a break.
The more I think about it, the more I find it interesting. Why would you do this? Yes, alright, you can sell them for money, but any wholesaler is going to be immediately questioning someone offering massive numbers of KitKits – and ONLY KitKats – at below market price.
Which means selling them a couple at a time, hooking people up with black market chocolate bars in the alley behind a night club?
I just don’t get it.
As an aside, I’ve today discovered that I’m a victim of the KitKat Mandela affect. Apparently there is no hyphen, and never has been. Weird.
BONUS: Traumatising lunch of the week
Spectator Australia has set out to scar a few children with its suggestion of Easter dining…
Eating the Easter Bunny for Easter lunch?
Good luck explaining that to the little ones.
BONUS II: Artistic Injustice of the week
A 20-year-old Australian woman has been found guilty of vandalism and fined A$2000 for sticking googly eyes on a sculpture.
But you can’t tell me this isn’t an improvement…
I think death of the author applies here.
Easter Recommendations
This Easter, we should take some time out to remember a real man who has too often been overshadowed by embellished account of his life published over a century after he died.
That’s right, D’Artagnan.
…who did you think I was talking about?
In honor of the discovery of his burial place I’ve been revisiting my love of Dumas’ Musketeer romances and cannot reccommend them enough. In terms of viewing, no movie or television version has ever really captured the brilliance and dry humour of the novel, but the all-star 1973 version comes closest. A fantastically fun watch for the Easter weekend.
Or you could watch Ben Hur. Again.
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention how “shrinkflation” is ruining Easter just like everything else, Canada “criminalizing the bible” or the renewed debate on Daylight Saving Time.
Happy Easter, everyone. And here’s to a fresh new start.
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Mother of Nottingham victim accuses inquiry witnesses of being ‘arrogant, evasive and deflective’
Story by Ryan Hooper • 1h •The mother of a student killed in the 2023 Nottingham massacre said she is dismayed by the ‘arrogance, evasion, and deflection’ from witnesses to an inquiry into the atrocity.mma Webber, whose 19-year-old son Barney was one of three people stabbed to death by mentally ill Valdo Calocane, accused police, medics and prosecutors of ‘doubling down on their flawed performance’ as she reflected on failures uncovered during the probe’s harrowing first six weeks.
She said some of the evidence ‘ran over me like a steam train’, as inquiry chair Deborah Taylor heard how paranoid schizophrenic Calocane was free to kill Barney, student friend Grace O’Malley Kumar, and school caretaker Ian Coates during a bloody rampage, despite a history of violence which saw him sectioned four times.
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Labour caught planning emergency alerts to warn Britons of ‘danger to life’
during migrants planned summer unrest
Story by James Saunders
Labour is considering using emergency alerts to warn Britons of a “danger to life”
If the migrant gangs riot this summer
The violence, in past race riots has been mainly in the cities and almost brought the Government to the edge of activating the nationwide warning system.
Police are working to diffuse any summer violence here in the UK
Look just send them all home, how simple is that ?
A good reminder that the medieval world was (and still is) a time of lots and lots and lots of fakery. Fake books, fake years, fake centuries added to the calendar, fake battles ,and fictitious historical characters. They had to make up shit when all of the sudden the year became 1000AD. Kinda sounds like todays world of massive fakery.
Will Mother’s Day be removed from the greeting card colossus?
To be replaced by Third Bottom Hole day?
I’ve never liked it, anyway, because it was an intentional creation to lure the public into buying gifts and greeting cards.
LOL..
the shroud of Turin, they still muggle on with this nonsense, even Kitty struggles with the obvious..the main point being it’s a negative, which is seldom a positive.. except in scientism..
the shroud was made by heating up an old relief carved onto a tomb, hence the reason it looks like simon de montford lying in state, this produced the singed photographic effect and can be clearly observed under a schoolboys microscope…of course according to papist blather this is what made the old rag somehow miraculous and authentic… but then again they made most of their ackers selling bit’s of old wood and nails to brainwashed peasants traipsing round dirt tracks.. chunnering prayers to Saturn and Hecate..
if you feel inclined, you can try this at home with an old brazier, a dish rag and a garden gnome…but don’t forget to get mummy to help you… if you’ve got one.
the attack on the christian symbol of the shroud
smells yo me like a dirty jew wrote it
they just get in everywhere dont they