Texas MoMe 2021:
10/22/2021-10/23/2021
Corsicana, TX
Contact Ben Had
April 21, 2021
Daily Tech News 21 April 2021
—Pixy Misa
Top Story
Nothing is currently on fire, off-site backups are complete and up to date, main server is back in production, and we have a powerful new server to take over if anything goes wrong anywhere.
So I'm probably going to get hit by a meteorite.
Just in passing, my three largest servers are named Akane, Akai, and Akko. This wasn't planned, it just happened.
Not an anime music video in the usual sense - this is a clip straight from the movie, Project Eden.
These are by far the largest and most powerful chips ever produced by anyone, and as you might imagine, they are rather on the expensive side. The previous model - not quite half as fast - sold for around $2 million. Yes, each.
Wait, isn't it already here? No, that's Thunderbolt 4? Okay.
USB 4 is a faster version of USB 3.2 gen 2x2 that can transfer up to 40Gbps bidirectionally or 80Gbps in one direction - i.e. for video output. It is also optionally compatible with Thunderbolt 3 - not 4 - and it's only optional because the USB Type C connector didn't have enough signal variants already.
One standard plug for all purposes, but you have no idea what it can actually do. Could be anything from 480Mbps to 40Gbps. But at least it doesn't have 540-degree rotational symmetry like USB Type A.
This is two generations beyond the server that I just set up this morning. However, the first of those two generations is already out and it is - to quote reviewers - "shit" and "a waste of sand" so the next generation has its work cut out.
The W-1400 range will have up to 16 cores - the W-1290P I just got has ten - but only eight of those cores are any good. The other eight are low-power cores for light laptop use, and are basically worthless on a server. In particularly, spreading load across all cores would give horribly inconsistent application performance, and a task stuck on a slow core could block one on a fast core.
I'm sure kernel developers are working hard to mitigate that nonsense - Apple already ships this kind of architecture in their M1 MacBook and Mac Mini - but far better to just not put it in servers in the first place.
The project uses the example of SQLite and MySQL but that's not really accurate. SQLite is a robust library that is used everywhere. You probably have a hundred copies of it already; I think their latest stats were that there were about a trillion SQLite databases in existence.
Mongita is MongoDB compatible but designed for development and testing - you can code against MongoDB without having to set up a server.
I totally missed this because I totally don't give a shit. It has an eight core CPU - actually four fast cores and four slow cores, as I mentioned above, a 24" 4.5K screen, okay, comes in seven colours, and has eight fucking gigs of fucking RAM.
My 2015 iMac has 32GB and can be upgraded to 64GB. Every standard PC sold today can be upgraded to 128GB, if it either has four memory slots or enough headroom for taller, double capacity modules. 8GB is for mid-range phones, not desktop computers.
The iMac is probably available in a 16GB model too, but (a) it should start there and (b) nothing I could see on Apple's store indicated that such was the case.
Microsoft reportedly offered them $12 billion, but in a market where a shuttered New York deli can be valued at $100 million, Discord thought they could probably get more.
Who is doing what? Oh, Pulse Secure is a VPN service, apparently one in trouble right now because there are a dozen different families of malware exploiting it.
I wonder if that is in any way connected with the bizarre wave of malformed HTTP requests that bombarded this site last night. The notable factor was that similar requests were coming from datacenters all over the world, with no obvious common factor. The hidden common factor could be an insecure VPN.
Their web site was coughing up other customers' license numbers from January 21 through to March 1.
Essential Minecraft Mods Video of the Day
Kiara Reacts to Haachama Cooking Video of the Day
Our new server in Dallas is named Akai after crazy Aussie sheila Akai Haato, also known as Haachama. Late last year she left Australia and returned to Japan, but on her very next video stream she cooked and ate... Well, for the gentle of stomach I'm presenting it one step removed.
Disclaimer: You can take the sheila out of Australia, but you can't take Australia out of the sheila, particularly if she has Amazon Prime.
Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (4/20/21) Who Knows If This Will Work Edition
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
***
The Quotes of The Day
Quote I
"We have an individual that’s being removed from this counter-protest for doing absolutely nothing wrong. He didn't violate any laws. He was exercising his constitutional rights within the city of Albuquerque and we had a sergeant taken off of his job, gun and badge removed."Police Officer Union President Shaun Willoughby
Quote II
I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?” Willie Nelson
Quote III
I can't get no satisfaction, I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no Keith Richards / Mick Jagger / Gary Barlow
So the blog has been "under the weather" most of the day. Much of tonight's ONT was on the "Temp site" only to have the "Old site" come back to life. Just a tad bit of scrambling has been going on. What was once found is lost and vice versa.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty Tuesday afternoon of second and third-degree murder along with second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd in May. Chauvin faces up to 40 years in prison. He will be sentenced eight weeks from today.
Resident of the White House had this pithy comment, "It was a murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole would to the systemic racism…that's a stain on our nation's soul."
Deep down in my heart I believe it wasn't racism that killed George Floyd. It was a combination of events that led up to an imperfect storm. And furthermore I believe guilty verdicts on all 3 charges in such a hasty fashion were to prevent the jurors from being doxxed and the Twin Cities from burning.
When do the leftist politicians start calling out children having children? When does the left start holding parents responsible for rolling over and smothering their babies while they sleep? When are gang bangers held responsible for shooting at other gang bangers and hitting innocent victims such as 5 year olds?
I could go on about the lack of an outcry. But, I've said my piece.
They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War
Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out.
OF ALL THE mysteries and injustices of the McDonald’s ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy O’Sullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode.
Press the cone icon on the screen of the Taylor C602 digital ice cream machine, he explains, then tap the buttons that show a snowflake and a milkshake to set the digits on the screen to 5, then 2, then 3, then 1. After that precise series of no fewer than 16 button presses, a menu magically unlocks. Only with this cheat code can you access the machine’s vital signs: everything from the viscosity setting for its milk and sugar ingredients to the temperature of the glycol flowing through its heating element to the meanings of its many sphinxlike error messages.
“No one at McDonald’s or Taylor will explain why there’s a secret, undisclosed menu," O’Sullivan wrote in one of the first, cryptic text messages I received from him earlier this year.
As O’Sullivan says, this menu isn’t documented in any owner’s manual for the Taylor digital ice cream machines that are standard equipment in more than 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants across the US and tens of thousands more worldwide. And this opaque user-unfriendliness is far from the only problem with the machines, which have gained a reputation for being absurdly fickle and fragile. Thanks to a multitude of questionable engineering decisions, they’re so often out of order in McDonald’s restaurants around the world that they’ve become a full-blown social media meme. (Take a moment now to search Twitter for “broken McDonald’s ice cream machine” and witness thousands of voices crying out in despair.)
But after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the food-equipment giant Taylor sells the McFlurry-squirting devices to McDonald’s restaurant owners for about $18,000 each, and yet it keeps the machines’ inner workings secret from them. What's more, Taylor maintains a network of approved distributors that charge franchisees thousands of dollars a year for pricey maintenance contracts, with technicians on call to come and tap that secret passcode into the devices sitting on their counters.
Steve Marriott leader of Small Faces and Humble Pie, died in a fire at his home in Essex. His work became a major influence for many 90s bands. Small Faces had the 1967 UK No.3 & US No.16 single 'Itchycoo Park', plus 1968 No.1 UK album 'Ogden's Nut Gone Flake', Humble Pie, 1969 UK No.4 single 'Natural Born Bugie'. As a child actor he played parts in Dixon of Dock Green and The Artful Dodger in Oliver. via thisdayinmusic.com
American singer, songwriter Luther Vandross who scored the 1989 UK No.13 single 'Never Too Much', first released 1983, and the US N0.10 and UK No.2 single with Janet Jackson 'The Best Things In Life Are Free'. Vandross also worked with David Bowie, Mariah Carey. Vandross died on 1st July 2005 aged 54 two years after suffering a major stroke. via thisdayinmusic.com
***
One of two Genius Award Winner stories tonight.
If kids are playing hoops and not vandalizing, stealing, looting, let them play. Genius Award Winner.
Woman threatened teens with knife before driving into them as they played basketball, sheriff says
DAVIDSONVILLE, Md. (AP) — An amateur genealogist has come forward to admit she scrubbed roughly 200 gravestones at a Maryland cemetery in a way that left them damaged.
The Capital in Annapolis reports that the woman scrubbed the markings on headstones dating back to the 19th century to make them easier to photograph for the "Billion Graves” genealogy website.
The scrubbing left nearly 200 stones at All Hallows Episcopal Church Cemetery in Davidsonville with awkward "zebra” stripes that may cost $10,000 to repair.
The Rev. Jeff Hual, rector at All Hallows, said a woman came forward on Thursday to admit she was one of two people who scrubbed the graves. Hual said she was contrite and didn’t know she was harming the graves.
Would you exchange $10,000 for a jar of applesauce? Unless the Golden Delicious apples it was made from actually contained chunks of real gold, probably not.
But that’s just the reward one Washington state man received for returning ten grand he serendipitously found in the road to its rightful owner.
Michael King had just taken out the money from the bank to cover a business debt he owed. For whatever reason, he was so distracted, he accidentally left his wallet on his vehicle before cranking up the engine and heading home.
"I just took the withdrawal that day, and I don’t know what compelled me to leave it on the bumper of the truck,” King told the Seattle Times. "… I am just flabbergasted that it didn’t get picked up by somebody else. It would have crippled us to have that amount of money disappear.”
***
Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Technology Relationships.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire, AceCorp, LLC., Pixy and God.
Now That a Racially-Stacked Jury Has Delivered a Scapegoat for Racist Vengeance, Minneapolis Is Flooded With Good Feelings and Racial Peace
—Ace
Just kidding, they're thirsting for fresh bloody scalps and revving up for possible riots tonight.
Newsmax reported that Burn Loot Murder's speakers are calling this lynching only a "first step," and they say they'll be demanding changes in the schools and the medical system next.
Democrats Reject Even a Mere Censure For Deranged Night-Hag Maxine Waters on Party-Line Vote
—Ace
Say, didn't they just impeach Trump for claiming that he "incited" people who had never before been violent at all?
And now they won't even agree to a verbal slap-on-the-wrist for Maxine Waters encouraging people with a long, sustained history of rioting and arson to get "more confrontational?"
Weird, it's almost as if they're enemies who conceive themselves as being in a solemn war against us and who wish to harm us and will do so By Any Means Necessary.
Meanwhile, the Democrat Party BLM revolutionary that we're all paying for because she works (or... "works") for the Propaganda Broadcasting System wants to know why Biden doesn't defend Maxine Waters:
PBS' Yamiche Alcindor asks Psaki why "the White House isn't also coming to the defense of Rep. Waters given the fact that she is facing an onslaught of attacks... She was obviously not threatening violence." pic.twitter.com/AqC4L3tTqE
Fauci just admitted to me—under oath—that the Biden administration is not following their own COVID guidance at the border that they are imposing on every other American.
Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
The backup server is under seriously heavy load from some weird attack that I don't fully understand, and I just got this server working again, so here we are.
Food Thread: Purina People Chow; An Idea Whose Time Has Come -- Or Just Eat Pizza
—CBD
It seems like this is the golden age of pizza, just as I went low-carb! I read pizza place reviews and even watch Dave Portnoy's reviews (which are pretty good). But what I don't do much of is eat pizza.
I lived in the Northeast for most of my life, and I know from pizza! But too much of it is just...food. Sort of like Purina People Chow. Sure, it satisfies my hunger, and it is pleasing on some level, but it is rarely great. So I hold out for great. No, that's a lie...I hold out for pretty damned good. "Great" is way too much of a pain in the ass. Going to Brooklyn and standing in line for hours at Lucali is fine for 20-something hipsters, but unless Sophia Loren in her prime is serving the pizza, I'll pass. And driving to New Haven? That might be worse.
There are some solid local places that make good pies, but too many of them are New York street pie, and it's tough to do much better than, "Yeah, that tastes good." I have found that unless the ingredients are fantastic and the dough is top-notch, I'm just not that into them.
If I were to choose one type I would probably go with the classic Neapolitan pie, which I think is an acquired taste.
How about you? What's the pinnacle of the pizza maker's art?
Broccoli Rabe can be a spectacular vegetable when cooked correctly and the ingredient itself is fresh and sweet. But it can also be a bitter and tough mess that is distinctly unappealing. But eating it as a side dish and using it as a sandwich ingredient requires slightly different presentations, and that's where it gets weird.
When I cook it as a vegetable, I blanch it and immediately shock it in ice water to keep its vibrant color and texture. Then I saute sliced garlic until fragrant, add some red pepper flakes, and then add the broccoli rabe. That way I get rid of most of the bitterness. But in an Italian sandwich? I want that bitterness. I NEED that bitterness. So I skip the blanching and go right to the pan. That also preserves the crunch and texture much better. But there is a risk of biting into a wad of bitter greens that is just too much for even the richness and intensity of great Italian salumi.
Even the sandwich I had in Philadelphia's Terminal Market was a bit on the bitter side, and those guys should be able to do it better than most.
******
You're damned straight I would try that, and I'd even try it with peanut butter just to irritate the whiny nag and his fixation with my health. Just shut the fvck up and let me eat what I want. I don't need your moralizing.
[Hat Tip: Sharon(willow's apprentice)]
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Matzoh Brei! Passover is incomplete without several breakfasts of this stuff. It's just a rough mash of matzoh, egg, salt, pepper and onion powder, all fried gently in butter. Oh sure, you can tart it up with fresh onions and other dreck, but a real Jew would never do that.
"Brei" means mash in German and Yiddish, so it's pretty accurately named.
Just don't serve it with maple syrup...I eat it with a bit more salt and a smear of cream cheese or sour cream or even crème fraîche if I've got it.
******
Commenter and .50BMG aficionado Nurse Ratched sent this video along, and it's interesting, though a bit long. 18th Century Naval Food - Time to get salty!
I think our Navy vets will appreciate the advances in food since the 18th century.
[Hat Tip: Nurse Ratched]
******
That's a wireless temperature probe, and I am insanely tempted by it, even though the one significant use I have for it will undoubtedly destroy it. I want to stick it into a rotisserie pork roast so I know exactly when it is perfectly cooked to 136 degrees. Yup, I have temperature creep in my pork world. I used to shoot for 140 degrees, but I think that pushes a bit too much juice out of the meat.
Anyway, My rotisserie has an infrared burner that will probably melt the damned probe after a few uses. And the company hasn't offered me a test unit, so I will have to gaze longingly at the photo and be disappointed...once again!
******
It's nothing earth-shattering, but this recipe for rack of lamb looks great, and has an interesting twist or two (smoked almonds? Interesting!). Rack of lamb, potato and pepper tray roast
One problem is that the recipe is written by a Brit, which means adorable but incomprehensible blathering about cooking. They need to stop with this whole "We speak our own language" stuff and get on board with us...the true English speakers!
******
Food and cooking tips, good American marbled beef, young wild pigs, bartenders who use vermouth in Martinis (but not too much), Snap peas (apparently they are no longer grown in quantity), an herb garden that actually grows herbs, beef short ribs that have meat on them (not the stupid little sliver of bone they sneak into the packages) and good tomatoes that aren't square, pale pink and covered with Mestizo E.coli: send to cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com. Any advocacy of French Toast with syrup will result in disciplinary action up to and including being nuked from orbit. And yes, shaking a Manhattan is blasphemy...it's in the Bible!
First-World Problems...Part Infinity Plus One (If I wanted To Be A Snake Handler I would Have Joined A Circus)
—CBD
It's a great idea...making a coiled garden hose that extends and retracts and is easy to carry. But it is a vicious fraud perpetrated on American homeowners by Big Hose, designed to lighten our wallets and make us spend precious time uncoiling the kinks and knots and all-around mess that these engines of the devil become if you turn your back for just a few seconds!
I even tried storing it on some lightweight PVC tubing, and while that works well when it sits in the garage over the winter, it is tedious and time-consuming to take it off and put it back on.
And all of this is to water a few patches of lawn that were destroyed by a fallen tree last autumn. I don't want to start up the sprinkler system because we may have a few freezing nights in store before spring finally arrives, but had I waited much longer to reseed it wouldn't have worked.
What Is The Political Philosophy Of The American Left?
—CBD
Our current miasma of constantly changing rules of political conduct and mushy language make it almost impossible to identify any coherent structure in the thinking of the current occupiers of the halls of power. In fact, it's difficult to figure out exactly who they may be? Is it Dementia Joe and his grasping harpy of a wife? Is it Susan Rice and her cabal of globalists? Is it Barack Obama the Hawaiian stoner pulling the strings?
Regardless of who they may be, what is important is the philosophy guiding their policy changes. And there's the rub, because there is no coherent philosophy or moral underpinning to their decisions. It is pure "The Ends Justify The Means" thinking, under cover of focus group pablum and Newspeak that would make Orwell scratch his head in wonder.
Democrats believe health care is a right, diversity is a strength, the economy should work for everyone, and facts and truth matter.
Let's ponder these words...
If health care is a right, then by extension we are entitled to the work of others. Doctors can be compelled to provide care, because after all, they would be limiting our rights were they to choose to withhold that care.
Diversity is a strength? In what way? And what does diversity mean? That is a simple subterfuge for opening the borders of this country and flooding it with a diverse mix of people whose world view is in direct opposition to the concept of American Exceptionalism. It is code for changing the nature of America by destroying the concepts of self reliance, individualism and free markets and replacing them with dependence on government largesse and the central planning of our economy.
The economy should work for everyone is arrant nonsense; a word salad that means nothing. Economies don't work for anybody...it is the inputs and outputs and consumption of individuals that make up the economy. What they mean is that competition, free markets and the risk of failure is an unacceptable condition, and that the amazing results of free markets are secondary to a lower but less stratified standard of living for all.
Facts and truth matter. Ah...like the history of the founding and struggles of our country being systematically erased by roving packs of lunatics and fascists and totalitarian brute squads? Like the destruction of objective analysis of Wuhan flu therapies simply because OrangeManBad tweeted about it? That sort of truth?
The reality of the Democrat political philosophy is simple: the acquisition and consolidation of power is of paramount importance; all other considerations are secondary, including national pride, respect for history, the rule of law, etc.
Vaccine passports...universal basic income according to race...national security interests made secondary to political considerations...preferential treatment of illegals with active COVID...destruction of religious freedom...
Judge them by their actions, not their words, because they are masters of obfuscation; spouting nonsense is their stock in trade, and the less sense they make the tighter you should hold your wallets, your churches and your guns.
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules). Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, snark, witty repartee, hilarious bon mots, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, spending way too much money on books, writing books, and publishing books by escaped oafs and oafettes who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's-- holy crap, it looks like Brian Stelter here would not be allowed on the book thread because of-- well, you know. No. Just no. Not allowed. Ahem. Let's just move on, shall we?(go ahead and click that link. I double-dog dare you!)
Pic Note:
There wasn't much of anything about the history of the library on the University of Bristol's web site and I got tired of having to plow though a bunch of woke crap looking for information, so I gave up.
It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®
I can accept this. Unless there are exceptions.
108 Reading is fundamental: fun and mental!
Posted by: Joe Biden at February 07, 2016 10:07 AM (UBS9M)
Last Week Was International De-Lurk Day -- And I Forgot
Yeah, that's right, I screwed it up. A couple three of you delurked, which was great, but I suspect there were some that didn't. Sorry for not announcing it, my bad. ANyway, if you're holding back a review of recommendation, now is the time to post it in the comments. Please.
Some New Book Sites:
Last week, 'ette author Sabrina Chase wrote:
There is YOBS up, (yet another book site), and it looks pretty good. Bookbinge.com, currently still in beta, but it looks to me like a true second generation book site. Really nice layout, graphics, and behind-the-scenes coding (I can tell, I am a QA engineer in the daytime), and it looks like they are in the process of setting up forums and discussion groups. The true key to providing Amazon with competition will be the direct downloads, but we have the technology. Just a matter of time now.
Posted by: Sabrina Chase at March 28, 2021 09:57 AM (BSV0x)
Having never heard of it before, I bopped on over to http://bookbinge.com/, and, according to their 'about us' page, the site has been around since 2007. So, not really new, but maybe they've had some sort of recent site makeover so they look new. Anyway, it's run by a consortium of bibliophiles who read and review (mainly) romance novels. If you're an author, they have have a submissions page with contact info if you would like them to review one of your books.
Also, moron authors Max Cossack and Ammo Grrll have thrown in together (I didn't even know they were married) with their own site, VWAM Books to sell dead tree editions of their books, here, and here.
(Last week's 'who dis' was the incomparable French actress Brigitte Bardot.
Addendum to 'The Transgender Industrial Complex'
Last week I mentioned that this book sounded like an interesting read. About that, I have some good news and some bad news. After I lamented the dead tree edition's high cost and lack of an e-book version, 'ette Tonestaple e-mailed and said, yes, there is actually an e-book version. For only $4.99. Which is a steal compared with the $47 price for the hardback.
So that's the good news.
The bad news is that the publisher appears to specialize in books extolling white nationalism and white nationalists, and by white nationalists, I don't mean Hugh Hewitt and Dinesh D'Souza or whichever conservatives are currently center-screened on the progressives' radar. I mean *actual* white nationalists (and anti-Semites) of the sort you never hear about because hardly anybody reads them. I had never heard of any of the authors of the books on that site. Of course, I probably should've realized this was a clue for me to do some further investigation.
Anyway, this guilt-by-association doesn't mean that The Transgender Industrial Complex is to be summarily discarded. Despite its dubious provenance, it still could be making a solid case based on reasonable arguments backed up with actual evidence. If that's the case, then it stands on its own.
Although if it claims that the transgender movement is being funded by a shadowy cabal of Jewish bankers, I'd be inclined to give it a pass.
Books By Morons
Got this e-mail from Joe Greer lurking author, back at the end of February:
Just discovered your Ace of morons blog via the Sunday Morning Book Thread. My book series, Portals of Yahweh, rolls right up your alley to split the pins.
The blurb for the first installment in the series, Roswell Boneyard, says this:
A gritty Sci-fi story of action, adventure, and poly romances. Not a book for prudish old women!! Real world, modern characters courageously drive the story farther and farther into the black void.
So there is a certain amount of action of the 'R' rated variety, iykwim.
The Eversole brothers develop a technology that will change the course of human history. But like all disrupting technologies, the weight of nations and greedy corporations that are eager to maintain their hegemony must be overcome. China is the most dangerous since they have decided it is their destiny to rule the world. They are the new Nazis.
There are still people of honor in the world’s militaries who understand all too well the corruption of the power elite. They throw their lot in with the Eversole crew to make something better.
Finding evidence of previous space faring peoples in our solar system is an ominous sign. The crew knows it is only a matter of time before there is a collision of civilizations and redouble their effort to promote Earth unity. Marco and Ariel who fought the Chinese in the South China Sea, now build a nascent military force for the coming storm. These will be starship troopers in the truest sense.
The Kindle edition is available for $3.99. The sequel is called Ghosts of Atlantis.
___________
Lurkette author 'Loretta the Prole' has just released her latest "Catholic aesthetic" urban fantasy, Rosita and the Beautiful Game. She tells me:
It’s about a law school student entangled in a doomed love triangle between a vampire and a lycan. It’s funny. It’s non-PC. There’s a tiny bit of lesbianism that goes nowhere. This is not a “story arc” novel like I’ve done. This is short and sharp and tight.
Manifesto the Great comes from a dynasty of leaders who treat women like breeding machines. When his father dies, he must take over as leader, but will he be able to keep control of the women?
The Rise Of Manifesto The Great is the first of three prequels to the Planet Hy Man science-fiction comedy series. If you like high-mileage heroines, fast-paced satire, and meticulously crafted universes, then you'll love Kerrie Noor's otherworldly farce.
Given the day, this seemed an appropriate rec to start off with:
30 Thank you to the moron who suggested
Left to Tell
It's a survivor's first-hand true story of finding and trusting God during the Rwandan genocide. I'm not usually much on religious-leaning books, nor one where people hack each other to pieces with machetes just because their skin is more or less dark than someone else's, but this one is fantastic.
Coming soon to an America near you, btw.
Posted by: Lysenko -Official dot gov Wyoming COVID vaccination card link, should be 4.25x3.5 at March 28, 2021 09:19 AM (bm04m)
...grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.
Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculée discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God.
She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.
I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to endure a hellscape like this. And then to forgive those who murdered your family. It frightens me that that's an absolute requirement of the faith I profess.
250 Lurker here. I just finished Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife by Ariel Sabar.In 2012, Karen King, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, made a splash by revealing an early Christian papyrus that referred to Jesus having a wife. Ariel Sabar embarked on an investigation into the provenance of the document. His search led him to a German-Floridian forger with pagan, possibly occult, connections. The Harvard professor comes off even worse. By the end of the book, she's exposed as a postmodernist feminist "scholar" who actually believes in neither facts nor history. It's an impressive feat of investigative journalism, and Sabar's takedown of the postmodern rot in academia is devastating.
Posted by: Linnet at March 28, 2021 10:55 AM (l8fD3)
This reminds me of a similar incident that happened some years ago when the anti-Christian propagandist Elaine Pagels started bruiting about the heretical Gospel of Thomas as if it was some amazing new discovery that would revolutionize (i.e. destroy) what we knew about early Christian history. Of course, there's nothing new about the Gospel of Thomas: one of the early church fathers, I think it may have been Irenaeus, who compiled an extensive list of the crap "gospels" the Gnostics were promoting, and, the GoT was, get this, on the list. So it was something the Church had been aware of for centuries. Of course, Pagels isn't a scholar seeking truth, she's an advocate with an agenda.
...far from being revolutionary, such attempts to find an alternative Christianity date back at least to the Enlightenment. By employing the appropriate scholarly and historical methodologies, he demonstrates that the texts purported to represent pristine Christianity were in fact composed long after the canonical gospels found in the Bible. Produced by obscure heretical movements, these texts have attracted much media attention chiefly because they seem to support radical, feminist, and post-modern positions in the modern church.
And no one is going to find some big secret locked up inside a hidden vault down in some Vatican basement. Dan Brown hardest hit.
Also, it reminds me of a documentary Mrs. Muse and I just finished watching on Netflix, Murder Among the Mormons, which is about what happened when a supposed historical document concerning early Mormon history called "the White Salamander Letter" came to light in the 1980s. The events surrounding the discovery, including the process of determining the authenticity of historical documents (and how fake documents can be produced that look old) is discussed in detail and it was quite fascinating.
So if any of you still subscribe to Netflix, I would recommend this 3-part documentary.
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14 This week I read The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. Morgenstern has crafted a fantasy world deep below the surface of the Earth. It is a world of tunnels and rooms filled with books . . . filled with stories. There are stories within the story. The book is a love story, a mystery, and so much more. Quite unlike any other book that I've read before.
Posted by: Zoltan at March 28, 2021 09:10 AM (qb8uZ)
The Amazon blurb for The Starless Sea is quite lengthy and difficult to abridge, so I'm just going to leave it at that. But it does sound like an interesting read.
Captain Hate recommends the same author's other novel, The Night Circus. Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams) has come to town and strange things are afoot. First, it is only open at night. Also:
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.
I like the Captain's somewhat back-handed compliment he gave to the author:
She has a gift for writing about things that other authors irritate me with, only she makes them interesting and compelling.
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So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, insults, threats, ugly pants pics and moron library submissions may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
Saturday Overnight Open Thread – 04/03/2021 [Buck Throckmorton]
—Open Blogger
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Tomorrow is both Easter and the final day of Passover. Where adherents of these faiths worship freely, civilization and liberty are more likely to flourish. Blessings to all of the Christian and Jewish readers of this wonderful gathering spot.
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EASTER MEMORIES
Am I the only person who didn’t like Easter Sunday as a child? I know I sound just awful, but I didn’t. In my mind, one of my two precious weekend days – right in the best part of Spring – was replaced with having to wear church clothes all day long, a big formal multi-family meal in the middle of the day, and no free-range outdoor play. Even the Easter Egg hunt seemed like a weak, imitation-Christmas stunt, and although I was happy to receive a chocolate bunny, I had no use for the hard-boiled eggs I found. Did any of you feel the same way?
It has been a several years since I departed the mainline protestant church I grew up in, due to it effectively replacing Christian faith and traditions with the sacraments and beliefs of the political left. But I still enjoy attending Easter service with elder family members who have not yet given up on the old denomination. And maybe I’m still awful, but since I know I’m going to be listening to a sermon from a left-wing pastor who doesn’t believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, I get mischievous pleasure from watching him/her/xir try to finesse the wording of the Easter story. The pastor will have a rare packed house, with most people wanting to hear about Jesus’ resurrection. But he also has fellow left-wing activists in attendance who cannot abide with icky pastors who actually believe in the resurrection. So he will mumble for 20 minutes about “the resurrection story” and how in that story we are all given new life, without actually ever saying that Jesus literally rose from the dead.
OK – on to your regularly scheduled ONT.
SPACE-AGE “GOOGIE” ARCHITECTURE
I occasionally drive by this beautiful building, which is an excellent example of “Googie” architecture. It was a Big Boy restaurant in the 1960s. I wish I could have had a burger there.
By the time I was sentient, things were more Groovy than Googie, but there were still a lot of Googie-inspired buildings around. They’re mostly gone now, or in terrible disrepair, but some are still in service.
The Comanches allowed the Germans to stay, but they had people to keep an eye on the settlers from the surrounding hills. At night, the Comanches would light big fires, which worried the newcomers.
Legend has it that one German woman, to calm her children during the fires, devised a story. “She knew that, in Germany, they always talked about the fairies would come and decorate the eggs,” Sagebiel says. “And she knew that the kids would never believe that there were fairies in Texas, so she came up with this story.” In her version, the Easter rabbit was using the big flames to boil water to cook the eggs before decorating them.
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CANCEL CULTURE
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” – George R.R. Martin
Monster Tech is deathly afraid of free people speaking freely. The more people they try to silence, the more people they inspire to fight back in defense of liberty and free speech. Conservative candidates for President in 2024 must make breaking up Big Tech one of their highest priorities.
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DESPERATE FOR A DRINK
The morons of the ONT probably have some crazy stories about acquiring and overindulging in alcohol. Can you top George Jones?
George’s success fueled his wayward ways with alcohol and he was drinking so bad, his wife Shirley resorted to hiding all the keys to the vehicles before she would leave so George wouldn’t drive to the nearest liquor store in Beaumont. But that didn’t stop him. After tearing the house apart looking for a set of keys, George looked out the window to see a riding lawnmower sitting on the property under the glow of a security light. “There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat. A key glistening in the ignition,” George recalled in his autobiography. “I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did.”
What’s the craziest thing you ever did to obtain your intoxicant of choice?
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BRR-R-R-R
This is from 1975. Just 25 years after climatologists were predicting a new ice age, Al Gore was running for President trying to save the Earth from global-warming, which the same climatologists assured us was real. Without Al Gore’s climate fixes, we were long-ago supposed to have seen the end of snowfall, with parts of Manhattan underwater, etc. Every prediction proved false.
Yet climatologists are still peddling their prophecies of doom.
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18TH CENTURY CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE: NOAH WEBSTER vs THOMAS JEFFERSON
In the late 1700s there was a fear among the intellectual class of global warming. Sound familiar? And Thomas Jefferson was one of the evangelists of that era’s climate scare. Jefferson didn’t blame internal combustion engines or frackers, but the message was the same – mankind’s sinful mistreatment of Mother Earth was responsible for the weather.
“Jefferson was affirming the long-standing conventional wisdom of the day. For more than two millennia, people had lamented that deforestation had resulted in rising temperatures.”
Thomas Jefferson famously rejected traditional Christianity and organized religion. Then and now, it’s funny how free-thinkers tend to default to the oldest and most primitive religious tenet – that bad weather is a result of people’s sinful lifestyles. He wrote:
“A change in our climate…is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are becoming much more moderate within the memory of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep….The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now.”
Noah Webster was apparently a “climate denier” and he wasn’t having it.
“Mr. Jefferson seems to have no authority for his opinions but the observations of elderly and middle-aged people.”
If the Republicans ever nominate another global warmist as a presidential candidate, I’m writing in Noah Webster.
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BAD NEWS BEARS
This 4-minute clip from The Bad News Bears is a time capsule that captures so much of that era. The Little League Field where we not only played baseball games, but where we also hung out when not playing baseball. The hair. The arcade. The kid on the motorbike that seemingly had the freedom of an adult. Unfortunately, this is another movie whose cancellation is likely imminent, since it involves children smoking, adults drinking and driving, and a whole bunch of forbidden words.
It saddens me that in this “travel ball” era, kids no longer get to experience the fun of playing their schoolmates at the local Little League field. Or just simply hanging out at the neighborhood ballpark all day on Saturday playing catch, horsing around with the other kids, and chasing foul balls for a free snow cone.
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THE WISDOM OF WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN
General Sherman had a populist disdain for the elite of his era, and an understanding that war is so awful, that it should be avoided unless you are willing to cruelly crush your adversary as quickly as possible. During his march through Georgia, he cut off communication to ensure that no one leaked his whereabouts or sought to undermine his mission. Sherman would have hated our current class of politicians and Generals who seek permanent engagement in war without ever achieving victory. Here are some of his memorable quotes:
In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.
This war differs from other wars, in this particular - we are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.
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CLASSICAL MUSIC YOU LIKE BUT CAN’T NAME
If you ever watched Firing Line with William F. Buckley, you’ll recognize this number, which served as the show’s theme song. It is Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Third Movement.
Speaking of Buckley, I wonder what he would think of National Review nowadays. WFB was no Trumpian populist, but he did famously state “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”
The faux-conservative leftists who now run National Review are worshipful of the Ivy League elite and openly contemptuous of average Americans.
Anyhow, here’s some beautiful music from Bach.
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I’M A McDLT, YOU’RE A McDLT
What if you took the “I’m A Pepper” concept of a hip guy dancing down a roadway while singing about a product, with a growing entourage of people dancing along? And what if you got Jason Alexander (George Costanza) to be that cool guy? And the product was a McDonald’s hamburger? This really happened.
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IF SOMETHING SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE…
So – which would be your Top 5 from these 38 options?
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MOTIVATION
”If you make something idiot-proof, the world will create a better idiot.” - Grave’s Law
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THROCKMORTON’S FIRST LAW OF LIVE MUSIC: IF THERE’S AN UPRIGHT BASS IN THE BAND, IT’S PROBABLY GOING TO BE GOOD
One of the pleasures of reading David Reaboi and following him on social media is that he’ll not only educate you on politics and international affairs, but he’ll also introduce you to some great jazz. I reached out to him to request a recommendation or two that would include an upright bass. Not only do both of these videos include an upright bass, but they’re actually featured instruments.
Thank you David!
Gary Peacock
Pat Metheny & Charlie Haden
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Tonight’s overnight thread has been brought to you by Treasured Memories of Easter.
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Thanks again to the horde for letting me play host tonight. Please feel free to offer any helpful feedback, insults, or tips at buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com
Higher pollen count may increase risk for COVID-19, study says. Some doctors in my area have been speculating that the high pollen levels here may account for the relative non-severity of cases in the region. But of course, reducing the immune response might both make you more likely to catch it, and also less likely to get the deadly immune overreaction we see in severe cases.
Notice the highlighted language in these assertions:"may," "could," "might," "help," "promote," "linked," all terms that appear so often in pop sci articles on biomedical research. What is the evidentiary value of these assertions? I'd say, it's nil, because if something may have some effect, then it also may not have that effect. In other words, they don't know for sure.
Suppose the weather forecast read: "It may rain tomorrow, although it could besunny, it might snow, and there could be a heat wave. That's the wrap-up for tomorrow's weather."
That clears that up, huh?
The obvious rejoinder to all such hedged statements is "Thank you for pointing out that various possibilities exist. We knew that before you started. Get back to us when you know, and don't just suspect or hope or have a hunch, OK?"
The assertions cited above result from the unholy confluence of biomedical research with "journalism," and clearly reflect the influence of "weasel words" taken from the marketer's art. Marketers use such hedged language to avoid legal liability, so that if litigation should ensue, they can protect themselves by pointing out that they didn't say the product did something, only that it helps to do something. Implicit in that statement is the possibility that the help afforded may be nugatory. (See, I'm catching on!)
Now anyone who takes such assertions at face value is, in my opinion, a fool, since even those making the assertion clearly don't repose much credence in it.
For some reason, however, some such hedged assertions are taken as gospel in some quarters. This is because the true religion of the 21st century is not any monotheistic belief, but rather health and nutrition fads. You can insult a man's nominal religion and he may shrug it off, but insult his dietary beliefs, and the matter will be settled on the field of honor. (In this contest, I've considered teeing off on the risible high fructose corn syrup cult, but decided against it because I don't want to join Salman Rushdie in witness protection.)
So far these types of health-based assertions are generally fairly harmless scaremongering to the neurotically health-obsessed, but a more pernicious variant is now extant in our race-obsessed culture.
Discriminatory housing practices from nearly a century ago continue to influence a person's risk of suffering a stroke, claims a new study that reveals the legacy of structural racism in the United States.
Researchers found a 1.5% higher rate of stroke within census tracts in Columbus, Ohio, most heavily marked for "redlining," compared to neighborhoods in the city least affected by housing discrimination.
Now purer, more crystalline horseshit would be difficult to find. As a voice crying out in the wilderness I shout - apparently to no purpose - first, that correlation is not necessarily causation. Second, how else might the two neighborhoods differ, perchance? Incidence of smoking? Of obesity? Of diabetes? Age distribution? Are these things not relevant to incidence of stroke? Third, what are the confidence levels on the 1.5% higher incidence? Is that significant?Assuming that the neighborhoods had the same population, that meant that if one neighborhood had 200 stroke victims, the other had 203. Seems to me that there's a lot of fuzz on that tennis ball. What was the year-to-year variance in each neighborhood? I'm guessing it's more than 1.5%. And to go out on a limb, I'm further guessing by suitable choice of years, you could find data supporting the exact opposite contention.
But that would not serve the purpose of the study's "researchers," which clearly was to use this study as a vehicle to advance a racial narrative.
As always, I denounce myself, of course. And to remind all and sundry that I long ago called "top bunk."
Goal: White can force mate in 6
Hint: Throw everything into an attack on the open h-file
r3qrk1/2pbppp1/1nQ5/4N3/2n2B1R/p3P2N/1PP2P2/1K5R w - - 0 1
Advanced Problem - Black To Play (1335)
Looking at the board, this is one of those times when going after the rook on a8, as White evidently did, turns out to be A Very Bad Idea. How quickly can Black make him pay for his foolishness?
Nnbk2nr/pp1p1ppp/5q2/2b1p3/8/3P4/PPP1PPPP/R1BQKBNR b KQ - 0 1
Dress Pr0n For the 'Ettes:
Breathtaking details of this 1904-08 day dress from the @V_and_A. It is made from cotton lawn, with handmade lace insertions and cotton crocheted flowers. The delicate, feminine material would have been perfect for summer garden parties and fêtes. pic.twitter.com/YpkIk3sHku
This circa 1898 dress by House of Worth reflects the influence of the Art Nouveau movement. The striking juxtaposition of black velvet on ivory satin ground creates the illusion of ironwork, with curving tendrils emphasizing the fashionable shape of the garment. Via @metmuseum. pic.twitter.com/q8GOMPch5a
Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and paste it into your chess app.
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So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.
Here is our self-adopted kitty who came to our house November of 2019. We named him Gunboots because of the circumstance of his arrival, at the end of a hunting trip, plus his ginormous boots! He is truly a specimen, and of course we had to have him neutered, but he would be an awesome sire, so in some way I regret that. He’s the shit. No need for any mousetraps or rat poison with this guy around. And snuggly, which is almost too good to be true. This pic is of him doing the thing he mostly does, “helping” Dad with reloading. Thanks for doing the pet thread! I know it’s hard, but so many of us enjoy it so much as a respite from all the shit that goes on. - Kalneva
Is that an adult beverage I see Gunboots with? It certainly sounds like the family addition was well received by all involved. Thanks for your kind words. They help me going.
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Greetings ! This is my American Staffordshire Terrier, Rebel the Dog! He’s now 6 years old and is a Fine K9. We are Best Buds,(well, at least I think we are!) and we’ve finally learned how to walk loose leash! Yay!!!! Rebel spends my work time at Laura’s house where he runs,plays and chases the ball with his pals! He loves truck rides and chasing squirrels. He’s a Good Boy and I’m very Proud of him! He was on the pet thread a while ago but I thought the hoard might appreciate seeing him again. Thanks for all you do at AOSHQ and God Bless! - Rick and Rebel the Dog!!
Rebel has matured nicely. Now if you could only get him to help with the yard work he would really be a GREAT dog. Yeah, I know, "No thumbs" response. Sounds like he is certainly loved. Thanks for being a regular.
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This picture is entitled “Why Sabin Never Got Any Work Done at the Bookstore”.
These three were my second set of bookstore cats. The tuxedo, Tiger, and the marmalade striped cat, Rosemary, were littermates I got from the Humane Society when they were four years old. The fuzzy one, KatyDid, was a Himalayan I inherited from a friend. Rosy and Tiger came to the bookstore after my first two bookstore cats died. I got tired of everyone complaining that there were no cats and when was I going to get more cats. I kept an eye on the Humane Society website until they showed up. They had been in residence at the store for well over a year when Katy came on the scene. Don’t let the picture fool you. While Tiger got along just fine with Katy, Rosy hated her with the heat of a thousand suns. The picture is one of those rare times when Rosy let Katy get near her. Poor little Katy was terrified of Rosy, and for a very good reason; Rosy would slap her silly every chance she got.
The three cats came home with me when I closed the bookstore. Rosy died abou8t a year later of fatty liver disease. (She was a little porker.) Katy died around this past Halloween -- upper respiratory. Tiger died of multiple health issues a few weeks back. So Sabin’s infamous bookstore cats that made it their life’s work to upstage every author who came to the bookstore, are no more - Captain Josepha Sabin
Condolences to the passing of your cats and the end of an era. This photo tells us they were well treated and loved. Thanks for sharing today.
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That Deplorable SOB Van Owen here. Just learned that my daughter's family dog Brucey passed away in his sleep. Her two sons adored him. He was a good dog and will be missed.
Such a happy photo and such sad news today. Condolences to your family on their loss. You can just see the joy Brucey brought to grandsons. Hopefully, a framed photo of this will grace their home soon.
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Great group of pets today. Small but fantastic. If you have something animal/pet related you can submit it to us here at petmorons at gmail dot com.
Until next time, Happy Easter and have a great week!
Hello KT, another bird photo from the backyard. This is the time of year when a lot of birds migrate through, and these are of a brown-headed
cowbird, one with both male and female.
They're quite distinctive with their two-tone color scheme - and the colorful foliage in the back are some Japanese Maples that have come out for Spring.
Take care,
Tom Servo
If you missed the series of great heron photos in the earlier comments by beckoningchasm, please take a look.
Carnivorous Plants
Entering another world, Tony Litwin's back yard:
Drosera filiformis filiformis and Sarracenia psitticina var. Okeefenokee Giant
Ready for that miniature Sci-Fi movie set.
Drosera filiformis tracyii
Close-up,
Pinguicula caerulea flower
Remind you of any non-carnivorous plants?
Below, Sarracenia oreophila var. ornata
Oreo?
Sarracenia rubra and alata flowers. I can't believe they go with those pipe-shaped death chambers. What do they remind you of?
Edible Gardening
Strawberries are on here. Mr. Bar-the-Door bought a whole flat. I'm going to need ideas. We've already had our yearly real Strawberry Shortcake (the biscuit kind, with real whipping cream). These are good plain.
We don't grow them ourselves. Around here, the big strawberries come from plants pre-chilled in the mountains. Hats off to our market farmers.
What fresh-from-the-garden or market things are you making for Easter?
Gardens of The Horde
From Thursday:
Hey KT,
The agave is still growing like mad. The flower pods are just about open. I think it has grown another 3 feet since the last update. Hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather. Ours has been fantastic.
Wee Kreek Farm Girl
This morning:
Hey KT,
The agave started to bloom today. It looks amazing up close. Got a good picture for you. When the whole stalk is in bloom it is pretty fantastic.
Wee Kreek Farm Girl
Sometimes things happen fast in the garden. What a dramatic plant! Should look great on Easter.
If you would like to send information and/or photos for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden
at that g mail dot com place
Include the nic by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ,
unless you want to remain a lurker.
Easter Saturday Greetings! I think this is a good time for reflection. We remember three men who died on November 22, 1963: JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley. A book, Between Heaven and Hell, imagined their meeting in the afterlife.
"We now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell." -C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
A masterful piece of religious prose disguised as satire, C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is a series of messages from senior devil Screwtape to his protege Wormwood on how best to corrupt mortals. Originally released during World War II, its tight 175 pages provide charming, timeless wisdom.
In an addendum released shortly before the author's death in 1963 - Screwtape Proposes a Toast - Lewis pivots from dispensing universal wisdom to directly criticizing social trends of his day, trends which have gone from mere whispers on college campuses 60 years ago to become orthodoxy with the power of law today. Reading it today, it feels like the author was more prophet than professor.
In the 15-page essay - full text available here - the devil Screwtape outlines how the term democracy can be warped into destroying excellence, first in the halls of education then to society at large to make sure everyone stays "equal."
Go ahead and read it. It's not too long.
"Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose," Screwtape tells his fellow devils. "The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' "
"Democracy is the word with which you must
lead them by the nose,"
Several examples are given at the link, with some not-too-obvious warnings about the wiles of tempting demons. And notes on the abolition of the middle class. Remarkable. And this (full of hyperlinks):
"For 'democracy' or the 'democratic spirit' (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be. For when such a nation meets in conflict a nation where children have been made to work at school, where talent is placed in high posts, and where the ignorant mass are allowed no say at all in public affairs, only one result is possible."
Whack!
Lewis also warns about changing the meaning of words. That's one of the ways we get to the state in the paragraph above.
Well, 1963 was a long time ago. Screwtape and his buddies have a head start. Time to wake up now?
I am going to repeat last year's Passover/Easter drama and music choices, because I think they were good ones:
Passover
Passover ends tomorrow. I think there are some messages with regard to slavery from the Passover celebration which we might want to pay attention to today. Also note that the "Equality Act" would be particularly hard on Orthodox Jews.
I still haven't found any Passover music that really sings to me. This scene from "Prince of Egypt" is dramatic.
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Easter Festival Overture
This 1888 overture is named for the Svetliy prazdnik or 'Bright holiday', as Easter is known in Russia.
An avowed atheist, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that he wanted to capture 'the transition from the solemnity and mystery of the evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious celebrations of Easter Sunday morning'. The piece paints vividly the explosion of light and colour at the end of a long, hard Russian winter.
Religious and pagan themes are entwined at the very heart of the work: Rimsky-Korsakov borrowed themes from the Obikhod, a collection of Orthodox chants that since 1848 had been a mandatory part of the liturgy for every church in Russia.
These austere motifs shine through the wild textures of the orchestra, no more so than at 8'35 when a solo tenor trombone ('a piena voce') evokes the chanting of a priest.
Some older Russian music:
Moving into a major key with Handel, below is the largest virtual Hallelujah Chorus ever. Unless someone has done another one since 2016.
You can still learn to sing your part so you can sing along with the video.
More Handel
Do you have a favorite piece of Easter music?
More Easter photos from Larro below:
Ran across a "friend of a friend" on social media recently who thought that donating money to religious organizations and other charitable organizations rather than paying money in taxes was "hypocritical", because taxes "help all of us".
Democracy!
Wonder if this kind of thinking contributes to the decline in the number of people who say they belong to a religious congregation? Are we letting Screwtape win?
Wishing you a wonderful Easter or Passover weekend.
Donald Trump, George Bush and Joe Biden were set to face a firing squad in a small central American country.
Donald Trump was the first one placed against the wall and just before the order was given he yelled out "Earthquake". The firing squad fell into a panic and Donald Trump jumped over the wall and escaped during the confusion.
George Bush was the second one placed against the wall. The squad was reassembled and George pondered what he had just witnessed. Again before the order was given George yelled out "Tornado". Again the squad fell apart and George slipped over the wall.
The last person Joe Biden was placed against the wall. He was thinking, I see the pattern here, just scream out something about a disaster and hop over the wall. He confidently refused the blindfold as the firing squad was reassembled. As the rifles were raised in his direction, he grinned from ear to ear and yelled "Fire".
(H/T Hrothgar)
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Opine and/or bloviate away on this fine Saturday morning open thread. Be nice to one another and there won't be any other rules.
I'll tell you one thing, the racism fights going on amongst Gen-Z on social media are fascinating to watch. It's a 3-way fight between the woke, those who are actually not racist using any sane definition, and those who are or are being turned racist by the woke (plus shit posters pretending to piss off the woke).
You know, I used to hear all the time about him slurring his way through a night at a local bar called Ramparts, spilling whisky out of his Bill-Braskey-Sized glass, whispering alcoholic nothings into young women's ears.
Earlier this morning, the Texas State Senate passed legislation with provisions that limit voting access. To make American's stance clear: We are strongly opposed to this bill and others like it. As a Texas-based business, we must stand up for the rights of our team members and customers who call Texas home, and honor the sacrifices made by generations of Americans to protect and expand the right to vote.
Voting is the hallmark of our democracy, and is the foundation of our great country. We value the democratic process and believe every eligible American should be allowed to exercise their right to vote, no matter which political party or candidate they support.
We acknowledge how difficult this is for many who have fought to secure and exercise their constitutional right to vote. Any legislation dealing with how elections are conducted must ensure ballot integrity and security while making it easier to vote, not harder. At American, we believe we should break down barriers to diversity, equity and inclusion in our society -- not create them.
CNN admits that the goal of stripping our liberties is to then offer us the "carrot" of getting them back... as long as we do what the government says.
Use an armored Suburban to bring a bike within a short distance of the destination. Unload it and ride in with a security detail in tow, pretending to save energy. 🙄 pic.twitter.com/Pxynakrl59
I will bet you any amount of money that he claims "Oh right, well this is just my Army (Reserves) training kicking in, I used to ride a bike for the last half mile of a trip when working in the motorpool in Kabul."
GAINZZZ... and... BOOKZZ ... and PROJECTZZZ and PLANZZZ
—Ace
I got the first dose of the vaccine this week. I didn't have a choice of which one; I got the Pfizer.
Here's me, Living My Best Life:
I didn't think I had any post-immunization side-effects but 48 hours after the dose I noticed those "flu-like" symptoms they told me I might get. General feeling of muscular and mental weakness/fogginess. Nothing horrible, but I definitely wasn't at 100%. (Not that that's out-of-the-ordinary.) If I had been at work, I probably would have asked to go home early, if I could.
I got it because I generally am pro-vaccine and pro-anything medical, really, and because I was very sick through multiple periods last year, and I definitely do not want a major illness. Even if it's non-fatal, covid's often very tough.
Sometimes it's not-- Kurt Schichter had it, and said he had the symptoms of a mild to moderate cold. His wife had it worse, at the level of a bad, persistent cold. But nothing actually serious -- just miserable.
Who else has gotten the jab? Anyone else have side effects?
On to GAINZZZ: I have moderate GAINZZZ.
Over the two weeks of my new commitment to keto (not half-assed dirty keto/almost not keto that I was doing before), I had weak GAINZZZ. I lost maybe 2 1/2 or 3 pounds (at most) over two weeks. I guess that's okay weight loss but it's nothing terrific.
So I started a semi-fast on Sunday (having bone broth, cream in coffee, and some Whisps parmesan chips, keeping total calories consumed to below 500 or 600). I've had better GAINZZZ fasting, of course, dropping three pounds or a bit more in five days.
I'm in the high-energy state of keto. If you're overweight and haven't tried keto (low carb), you should give it a shot for a couple of weeks, if only for the really unbelievable levels of energy you have from ketones. It's not a small effect, not one that just might be psychosomatic. It's a definite, real, and large effect.
I know eventually this passes. Not that you have less energy, but you stop noticing the new energy, because it's just routine after a while.
Right now I'm noticing it a lot. I'm practically hyperactive.
I'm going to take inspiration from this:
A big fat pig with a big low-hanging belly to a fat farm to lose weight.
Note: Every word of that sentence was literal and accurate.
The pig needs to lose 110 pounds. He's only lost 55 by the end of the video.
But that's halfway there.
So tell me about your GAINZZZ. And the BOOKZZZ you're reading, and any PROJECTZZZ and PLANZZZ coming up!
The man who rammed a car into Capitol Police officers, killing one, has been identified as Noah Green. Green was armed with a large blade when he was shot dead. On social media, he identified as a follower of the black nationalist Nation of Islam movement.
Noah Green, 25, has been identified as the Capitol Hill attacker, who killed a police officer and injured another. His Facebook page identifies him as a follower of Louis Farrakhan and a member of the radical group Nation of Islam. pic.twitter.com/7o9pbSixek
Note that he's talking about the militant black nationalist group the "Not Fucking Around Coalition," who take AR-15s to Republican rallies just in case they need to kill whitey.
That's not the same as Nation of Islam, except to the extent that both are parallel extremist groups who hate whites. (And NOI famously hates Jews, of course.)
He wrote that tweet before the day's Vehicular Insurrection so it's not about NOI.
But it was prescient. The Obama Administration made the intelligence services and FBI deliberately blind to any kind of leftwing terrorism, and those debased, corrupt services continued using Obama's rules that There Can Be No Terrorism From the Left.
Hapless leftwing grifter Jonah Goldberg praised the media for refraining from speculating or overselling this story, not considering the possibility they were playing it cool because you could see from early pictures that the attacker is black and not white as the media wished him to be.
I’m just getting on Twitter after a few hours away. Am I wrong or are people being uncharacteristically responsible in not over speculating about the Capitol assailant?
An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans support requiring an ID to vote, and any organization that abuses its power to oppose secure elections deserves increased scrutiny under the law.
Your Friends at Major League Baseball Are Attacking the Citizens and Economy of Georgia on Behalf of the Democrat Party and Their Radical Racist Election-Rigging Activist Base
—Ace
Because the perp in what I'm calling "The Capitol Vehicular Insurgency" is black, this is officially not a Major National Story, so I'm moving on.
Like CNN and MSNBC and the NYT and NPR and ABC and NBC and CBS and the Washington Post and AP and Reuters and Bloomberg all are.
Here's your daily reminder that we are all feeding your enemies who want to harass, imprison, dominate and kill you:
Say, remember when the NBA bullied, what was it, North Carolina over not banning trans bathrooms -- no, not even that far -- but merely banning localities from making trans bathrooms the law imposed on businesses?
TO KILL THE BEAST YOU MUST FIRST STARVE THE BEAST.
Gov. DeSantis issued a wide-ranging order on Friday banning all businesses and government entities in the state from requiring a "vaccination passport," or documented proof of vaccination for the coronavirus.
The order comes as some events and businesses had already started to implement some form of proof of vaccination, including a South Florida festival and the Miami Heat.
It was also unclear how such an order would work with nationwide or international businesses such as theme parks, cruise lines and airlines.
Reminder: You can't spell "MLB" without "BLM:"
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Don’t forget: MLB supports a violent movement that laid waste to the small business bases of cities that support MLB franchises. These are arrogant and sinister people who run this league.
Media Holds Its Breath To Find Out If Story About a Man Ramming the Capitol Hill Barricades Is a Story Or Not, Depending On His Race Update: Suspect Dead; One Cop Reportedly Dead; Multiracial White Supremacy Again?
—Ace
If he's white, it's a Major National Story.
If it turns out he has a name like Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, then it's not a story, and anyone asking why it's not a story will be declared to be a racist by a Daily Beast racist.
Update: It looks like this will not be a Major National Story, but will instead be a reason to explore "root causes" of "rage against oppressive colonialists structures," and to warn against "backlash" against one of the races that does not deserve backlash.
"If they truly care about Muhammad Anwar, immigrants, and the communities they represent, they can step up and show it instead of using his killing to attack Black communities and launder white supremacy," writes @WajahatAlihttps://t.co/Jt8W9v6QMB
Meanwhile there was another random racial attack on a Jewish woman -- and on her one year old baby! -- by someone of an Unknown and Utterly Irrelevant Race.
A (redacted descriptor doesn’t fit the media’s narrative) slashed a Jewish couple and their one year old baby. pic.twitter.com/bjthZKcucX
What race are the girls who spat upon an elderly Jewish man...? I can tell you which race they're not, because otherwise, it would be a Major National Story, wouldn't it?
Update: The suspect is dead.
Update: The Deep State leftists who are prosecuting the "insurrectionists" are leaping on the propaganda value of this already:
Maybe it's too dangerous to even have a trial, huh?
Maybe we should just have Fake President Biden decree that they are guilty.
The suspect appears black to my eyes, so that may explain why the government rushed out the claim that they already knew, just a half hour into their "investigation," that this was probably a "lone wolf" attack and not connected to more dangerous (white) terrorism.
Update: One of the cops hit by the car is reportedly dead.
Jacqui Heinrich
@JacquiHeinrich
BREAKING: law enforcement sources tell me a USCP officer injured today at the Capitol has died of his injuries.
Via Tami, Media Call Off All Coverage of Non-Story:
FOX NEWS "JOURNALIST" DECLARES, CONTRARY TO FACT, THAT BRIAN SICKNICK "DIED DEFENDING THE CAPITOL:
NPR Issues Major Correction, Retracting Intentionally-False Election Season Disinformation That the Hunter Biden Story Had Been "Discredited" By "Intelligence"
NPR issued a correction on Thursday after falsely reporting Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop was "discredited by U.S. intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations."
The now-edited, inaccurate claim was part of a review of Hunter Biden's memoir, "Beautiful Things," in which the president's son details his past as an alcoholic and a crack addict
"A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story. U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect," the NPR correction stated.
...
NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving initially wrote, "The laptop story was discredited by U.S. intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations."
NPR issued the correction after critics blasted the nonprofit media organization for the bogus statement.
The updated version of the NPR story said, "Numerous news organizations cast doubt on the credibility of the laptop story."
Oh, the press is reporting that the press doesn't like the story. Wow, what Pulitzer-level reportage.
Why the retraction, now?
Well, 1, it's after the election, so the disinformation campaign is no longer the top priority.
In an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning" about his new book, Hunter explained he didn’t definitively know if the water-damaged MacBook Pro laptop abandoned at a Delaware repair shop belonged to him, but he left the possibility open, saying it could "certainly" be his.
"You don't know, yes or no, if the laptop was yours?" CBS's Tracy Smith asked in a clip of the interview set to air on Sunday.
"I don't know," Hunter said, before clarifying that "of course, certainly" it could have belonged to him. "There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me."
Note that CBS does not ask him about the emails he sent, whose authenticity is verified by one of the addressees who received them, Tony Bobulinsky, detailing pay-for-play schemes with China paying money to Joe Biden.
He repeated the scripted lie that while this laptop "certainly" could be his, he still insists that maybe Russia planted it with a computer repair shop near his home.
NPR will not of course face any social media banning for repeatedly publishing this disinformation. Some fonts of disinformation are more equal than others.
Catholic Cardinal Raymond Burke recently made the case for pro-abortion politicians like President Joe Biden to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of their “open and aggressive” apostasy...
When asked how the Catholic Church should address the problem of a pro-abortion Catholic leader like Biden, Burke [a leading expert in Canon Law and former head of the Vatican’s highest court] outlined several steps, including confronting the individual and urging them to repent, CNS News reports. If the individual obstinately persists in doing evil, they could face excommunication, the cardinal said.
Sounds great, doesn't it? I would've been impressed 20 years ago, but these days, not so much. Alert morons will have already spotted the one word that renders the entire article pointless:
"Could".
So, in other words, it's just a theoretical possibility. It's not happening. No actual politician was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for promoting abortion in the writing of this article. In fact, I don't think the Roman Catholic Church has *ever* excommunicated a nationally prominent politician for promoting and cheerleading abortion. It's just not something that the modern Roman Catholic Church does. I don't know the reasons why, I know that some bishops and cardinals are in favor of it, but some aren't. Perhaps the Church is hesitant to directly interfere with the politics of another country, which is kind of a switch, since they used to do this ALL THE TIME in past centuries, and in much bigger ways. But that was then, this is now, and so maybe it's better this way, all things considered.
But, speaking as a Protestant, I wish the Pope would step up and start swinging the banhammer. And I'm not talking about booting out every single Catholic who has ever supported abortion, but there are some loud voices (ahem)Nancy Pelosi(ahem) who need to be put on notice. That is, their bishop (or, in SF Nan's case, archbishop) needs to tell them that you can be Catholic, or you can be a cheerleader for abortion, but you can't be both. And you have 'X' amount of days or weeks to choose which one you want to be. And if you don't make a choice in that amount of time, the choice will be made for you.
Because excommunication is the ultimate cancelling.
What do I think will happen because of that? Probably not much. Nancy Pelosi is not going to suddenly become pro-life. But she won't be Catholic any longer, and she will not be able to cloak herself in the robes of the Church. It will just be a witness to the world that she never really was a Catholic to begin with. The mask will be off, and the amount of honesty in the world will have been increased by some small amount.
Call it a clarifying moment.
And maybe some good will be accomplished. By discreet wielding of the banhammer, the Church may cause other Catholic politicians to reconsider their abortion-for-any-reason-even-into-the-fourth-trimester advocacy. Or no longer identify as Catholic. I'm sure there will be weeping and wailing and cries of "I didn't leave the Church, the Church left me" as if being pro-life is some recent innovation.
I guess I'm getting impatient in my old age. I'm tired of talk. The only thing that will impress me now is stuff getting done. I want to see those who are in a position to do something actually do something instead of talking about it.
Wednesday Who Dis: Jeanette MacDonald wasn't so much an actress who could sing, but rather a singer who could act. She made eight films together with singer Nelson Eddy, among them Rose-Marie and New Moon.
A Poem For Good Friday:
Today's Edition Of The Morning Rant Is Brought To You By Bread and Wine:
"We plagiarized wildly, copied wildly," Zang admitted. "What intellectual property rights? What patented technology? We'll get it first and deal with it later," he added.
After four decades, the Chinese Communist Party has "learned everything, and can do everything ourselves," Zang revealed before adding "When we look back, the factories are ours, the equipment is ours, the technology is ours, the patents are ours." "The foreigners have all gone," he emphasized.
The massive intellectual property theft allowed Chinese Communist Party officials to talk "tough" to President Biden's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser at a recent Alaska summit:
"That's why our Foreign Minister Yang [Jiechi] and Wang [Yi] could be so tough when they talked to the United States. [They thought] you have no right to talk to us in this way."
It's easy to understand how brainwashing a couple of generations of our youth to hate this, the greatest nation that ever was - and as of this writing tragically is no more. And now, the concentration camp-running, organ-harvesting, slave-labor driving filthy, degenerate Chi-Coms are stomping all over us for "human rights violations" and aiding and abetting the BLM blood-libeling of America - while Tony freaking Blinken the alleged secretary of state agrees with them! But, Psaki-circling back, speaking of shameless plagiarists, what excuse does Joe Biden and his contemporaries have? Yeah, I get it. They're greedy and crave power. But those his age and older, in particular those who weren't raised as red diaper babies but in the steel and coal belts (allegedly in Joe's case) should know the difference between George Meaney and Pol Pot. And yet, "Xi Jinping is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life"... in a numbered Swiss account, please.
So, in the grand scheme of things, the chicken and egg story of Chi-Com infiltration or Leftist self-loathing really doesn't matter all that much. Now that the wolf is at our throat, with the eager help of the Zuckerbergs, Dorseys, Bezos and Buffetts, whatever the Bidens and Obamas can't destroy or goniff is going to get egg-rolled into a mass grave.
"And as the Boston Herald's Howie Carr reminds us: 'Remember serial killer Gary Sampson? Before he murdered three innocent men in 2001, he called the FBI office in Boston from a pay phone in Abington and offered to turn himself in on some unsolved bank robberies." But the FBI apparently keeps banker's hours, and the call came on a Friday afternoon; the bureau ignored the call. "The following day, Sampson started his two-state carjacking murder spree.'" The FBI is Very Good at Woke Politics, Not So Good at Catching Killers
CIVIL WAR 2.0: LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, CAPITOL HILL BLACK WEDNESDAY PROTEST AFTERMATH, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
Julie Kelly: "If Americans truly want a full accounting of what happened on January 6, who was responsible, and who must be punished, Big Tech must be part of the accounting." When Will Big Tech Face a Reckoning for January 6?
Mark Levin: They are going to so undermine our economic system, they're going to so undermine our financial system, they're going to drive us into such deep debt that we won't even be able to pay the interest on the debt at some point here. And I want you to look at your children and grandchildren, as I always tell you, and I want you to think about their future. I want you to think about their future with the racism and division that Biden and his party are promoting..." Levin Slams "Wrecking Ball" Biden for Pretending to Be "For the Little Guy"
CHINESE CORONAVIRUS FICTIONS, FACTS AND AMERICA IMPRISONED
"The government will effectively attempt to force citizens to be vaccinated if they hope to remain an equal member of society, while making small business owners responsible for bearing the brunt of the backlash from those who disagree. Through this strategy, it will be the restaurant owner, the shop assistant, or the ticket vender who will be seen as 'the bad guy,' all while those responsible -- our elected officials -- hide in their shadow." With Vaccine Passports, Politicians Are Hoping Business Owners Will Do Their Dirty Work
"While they largely oppose Georgia's new election law requiring voter identification, dubbing it 'racist,' many on team-left are gung-ho on creating a 'vaccine passport' despite the actual vaccine hesitancy in black communities." Team-left Opposes IDs for Voting, But Not For Vaccines
"Dr. Fauci, great news! T cell immunity after natural infection shown to include variants. Do we still need to wear multiple masks after we've recovered or been vaccinated?" he tweeted. Rand Paul Humiliates Dr. Fauci AGAIN Over Double-Masking
"Despite insisting upon universal mask mandates in late 2020 and 2021, Fauci infamously told Americans in March of 2020 that 'people should not be walking around with masks,' adding 'there's no reason to be walking around with a mask.'" "Fire Fauci" Bill Introduced to Congress
"Macron wouldn't be in such a pickle if the vaccine rollout had gone smoothly. But like most other EU countries -- with notable exceptions -- the number of vaccinated citizens has fallen far behind projections." Macron Closes Schools, Orders National Lockdown for Another Month
"Public health authorities' emphasis on past injustices might account for racial disparities in attitudes toward the vaccine." Manufacturing Dissent
"The past year has offered plenty of lessons on the power of propaganda, of the cowardice of mobs, of the perils of blindly trusting government." Against the Chinese COVID Clingers
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
"The survey also showed a majority of voters, 53 percent, blaming the surge on the southern border on the Biden [junta's] changes from the Trump-era migration policies, such as nixing the Remain in Mexico policy and resuming Catch and Release." Poll: Net 14% Swing Against Biden's Immigration Approval Amid Migrant Surge
"Did you get that? Because you have access to more information, a range of opinions, or have read different takes than Holt and his colleagues will provide, you have lost your critical thinking skills. Has he ever written a research paper? Taken three dozen sources and combined them into a perspective after he chased down the answers to his questions? The idea that we lose perspective with more information is absurd." NBC's Lester Dolt Holt Apparently Thinks You're Too Ignorant to Hear Unfiltered Information and Evaluate It
"Then-President Bill Clinton insisted in the late '90s that letting China into the World Trade Organization would 'have a profound impact on human rights and liberty.' With Beijing breaking its word on Hong Kong and engaged in genocide of its Uighur minority, that optimism stands exposed as utter foolishness." Convictions of Hong Kong Dissidents Prove China is Only Getting Worse
Conrad Black: "No one could have imagined that we would so quickly squander the West's mighty strategic victory in the Cold War." Will the West Be Lost?
"The Texas-based non-governmental organization China Aid reported the same group of officials, led by the Yuzhong District Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau, raided the church during its worship service last Sunday. The authorities sent the members home and sealed the church without showing any papers to prove official authorization." Chinese Communist Party Shuts Down, Confiscates All Property From Church
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, THE BUREAUCRACY, WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE
"'Never before has the federal government attempted such a complete takeover of state finances,' West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement Wednesday. The lawsuit argued that the federal government is not allowed to force states to relinquish control of their taxing authority under the Tenth Amendment." (Stop going to the courts; they are not reliable and often the enemy. Nullification - jjs) 13 States Sue Biden Junta, Demand Ability to Cut Taxes
"The 2017 tax reform imposed a $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions for federal income taxes. Ever since, Democrat lawmakers, particularly those with high income residents and high state and local taxes, have been pushing to undo it." Take "SALT Limit" Repeal With a Truckload of Salt
"In any other consumer sector, companies switching to less-harmful products would be lauded, but CTFK couldn't be bothered to acknowledge the reduced harm of e-cigarettes." Vaping Prohibitionists Threaten Harm Reduction Efforts
"Climate activists have since tried to take down Big Oil with the #ExxonKnew campaign. Looks like the #ActivistLawyersShouldHaveKnown that the political question of regulating greenhouse gases has already been decided." IRONIC: Greenies' 2007 Court Victory Comes Back to Bite Them in 2021
Our intrepid science reporter with a twofer. First: "They're coming for you next: An industry group representing a number of big tech companies like Amazon and Google has written India's governmental agencies that regulate broadband and space and demanded that they block SpaceX's Starlink internet service in India." Industry Group Representing Big Tech Demands Starlink Be Blocked in India
Next up: "Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada announced today that it will not only build a manned version of its Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, it now intends to use that shuttle as a ferry to its own space station, made up of inflatable modules." Sierra Nevada Will Build Space Stations and a Manned Version of Dream Chaser
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
"The Equality Act is social engineering designed to 'perfect' society in the eyes of its authors and to root out cultural beliefs that the authors hold in contempt." Gender Equity Bill Threatens Liberty
CULTURE WARS, NATIONAL SUICIDE
"This is a smart decision because it imposes a cost on woke virtue signaling and cancel culture." (as with Kemp, all well and good but where were they when the water main broke on Election Night?! - jjs) The Georgia House Strikes Back at Delta
Larry Elder: "A couple of years ago, I gave a speech before a conservative, predominantly white audience. I couldn't help but notice a tall, heavyset Black man, arms folded, standing in the back. From time to time, I would look at him, only to see him frown and shake his head, I assumed disapprovingly, when I made what I considered important points. After the speech, he came up to me. 'I am angry,' he said. 'Not at you -- at myself. I thought I was well informed. I read the news. I watch the news. I now see I've been manipulated by the party that I voted for all my life.'" Fight Left-Wing Lies With... Facts
"The imperative of the moment demands that Left-liberals join the Right in an alliance against the neo-Marxism of wokeness, 'cancel culture,' and 'anti-racism.'" The Coalition of the Un-Woke
"Reliving Christ's suffering -- and, at the end, the hope of the resurrection." The Holiest Week
NOTE: The opinions expressed in some links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
I Have Nothing To Offer But Blood, Toil, Tears, and ONT
—WeirdDave
Welcome to the Thursday ONT! What's the best way to start, an opening that truly reflects the class, decorum and intellectual maturity of the Horde? Yeah, it's a dick joke.
I can think of worse things to spend the money on. I still haven't received one yet, I got a letter saying that I would get one, but so far, nada. Personally, I'm against stimulus checks at all, but if they're going to send them out, then I'm not too proud to spend the money.
In other news, Congress passed their latest “recovery” bill, and it made an interesting change to Obamacare subsidies. Previously, subsidies were limited to people who made < 400% of the federal poverty level for their family size. This bill eliminates that cap, and instead says that subsidies are available for anyone whose insurance premiums exceed 8 ½ % of their AGI. This got me thinking. Lets take a family of 5, husband, wife, both 45, and 3 kids. Put them in WV and give them an AGI of $150K. Most of us would say that they're doing pretty well, right? 8.5% of their income is $12,750. They could buy the top plan on the exchange, a pretty darn good plan with only a 1600 deductible, which would run them $48,204/year (Admittedly I chose WV for this example because it has some of the highest rates in the country) and get a check from Uncle Sugar for $35,000. I haven't found anything that says that this is not the way it would work. I ran it by my boss who though the subsidy might be limited to silver plans (in which case the check would be 29K, not 35), but we bucked it up to corporate counsel to be sure. Haven't heard back yet.
Meanwhile, the same family making $50K could get a subsidy that would knock their premium down to nothing – but that plan has a $15,000 deductible. This is just nuts, the feds shoveling money they don't have out the door to people who don't need it. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that white, upper middle class folks are a core constituency of the Democrats.
This is madness.
Thursday Night At The Movies
So, does anyone have any somewhat obscure movies they'd like to recommend? I have 2. First is Tag. I saw it a few years ago (I may have mentioned it back then) and just rewatched it this week. Based upon a true story, It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being 'It', it's about a group of friends who have been playing the same game of tag for over 23 years. It's not high cinema, but it's laugh at loud funny at times. My wife and I really enjoyed watching it.
The Emperor's New Groove. I decided to watch this because scenes from it are often featured in memes (which makes sense because it came out in 2000, and all the Gen-Z meme kiddies would have watched it as children), and since I see a lot of memes while looking for ONT content, I figured I should know the source material.
Anyhow, it's a short (just over an hour) animated film starring David Spade playing himself as the emperor of a South American empire that is not named but is definitely based upon the Incas. As part of your routine Disney palace intrigue, he's turned into a llama and has to make his way back to the palace to regain his crown, all the while learning that the real prize is the friends you make along the way. It's not Toy Story, but it moves right along and I found myself chuckling more than once.
How about it Horde, What are your semi-obscure movie recommendations?
Strange Comic Book Villains
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Codpiece:
Featured in Doom Patrol #70, Codpiece was traumatized in high school when he asked a girl out and she said he wasn't “big enough”. She was talking about his height, but he thought she was referring to the size of his willie. He becomes a brilliant engineer and turns to a life of crime after building a bulletproof super suit that features, er, certain codpiece-related weapons like a giant blaster, a drill and a boxing glove on a spring. He is defeated after Coagula, a transgender prostitute, uses her (His? I dunno which was s/he was going) powers to melt his cannon penis. And that was that.
80s Tributes On TV
First up is one of my favorite Simpson's couch gags. You'll have to watch it multiple times to catch all of the Easter eggs in the background:
The VHS tracking snow on the bottom of the screen is priceless.
Next up, from How I Met Your Mother, is Robin Sparkles' video for “Let's Go To The Mall”:
Technically a 90s tribute (because the 80s didn't get to Canada until 1993), it's every 80s MTV video wrapped into one. Both of these clips gently poke fun at the tropes of the greatest decade in mankind's history.
Remember When We Did Great Things In This Country?
In 1930 the Indiana Bell building was rotated 90°. Over a month, the structure was moved 15 inch/hr, all while 600 employees still worked there. There was no interruption to gas, heat, electricity, water, sewage, or the telephone service they provided. No one inside felt it move. pic.twitter.com/07lf2hsgGT
Okay, this last one, featuring The Happiest Animal on Earth (TM), the quokka, is very cute, but, not gonna lie, at first you're gonna say "Get that nasty mutant garbage out of here."
Marco Rubio, of All People, Blasts Delta and Coca-Cola for Attacking Georgia for Its Voter Law, While Continuing to Give the Concentration-Camp Operating Communist Chinese Regime They're in Bed With a Free Pass
—Ace
Apparently corporations are now taking their political cues exclusively from noted Lifelong Lover of Reading the First Page of a Book, LeBron James. He loves taking selfies of himself reading books. But strangely, always the first few pages. Never when he's on page 230.
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio spoke to the company directly, at least through Twitter: "Dear Delta, You are business partners with the Communist Party of China. When can we expect your letter saying that their ongoing genocide in #Xinjiang is 'unacceptable and does not match Delta's values'???" On Wednesday morning, Rubio posted a video in which he said of Delta's CEO and other woke corporate leaders, "They're hypocrites -- complete and total hypocrites."
Other Republicans spoke out too -- see the link.
I highlight Marco Rubio because he was, of course, homoerotically beloved by the corporate Conservative, Inc. grifters in 2016.
Strangely enough, these corporate PR reps have largely abandoned their previous slobbering love affair with Marco Rubio.
The backstory makes Delta, and Bastian, look even worse. Just last week, Delta released a statement praising improvements in the bill -- on absentee voting, weekend voting, poll worker flexibility, and more. Even though Delta conceded that "concerns remain over other provisions in the legislation," the assessment was basically positive.
The statement prompted some ugly blowback from the left. Former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann tweeted, "Do not fly Delta. Do not spend money with Delta. Boycott Delta. Ruin Delta." The hashtag #BoycottDelta began to fly around on Twitter.
Talk of punishing Georgia grew. On Wednesday night, President Biden said he would "strongly support" moving the baseball All-Star game set for July 13 in Atlanta. "This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they're doing in Georgia," Biden said. The president has consistently mis-stated what is in the Georgia law. As Karl Rove outlines here, Biden has leveled three specific accusations against the law, and all three are false.
This is why I despise -- personally despise -- the corporate shills of Conservative, Inc.
They always scold the right for counter-pressuring these corporations -- without ever taking notice of the fact that the left, from its activist core through congressmen through the (fake) president himself, are themselves constantly pressuring these corporations to propagate the political agenda of the hard left -- and are constantly succeeding.
How about your corporate cvcks stop attacking the right for applying reactivecounter-pressure and start attacking the left for applying the original pressure?
And how about you start telling your Corporate Benefactors to stop joining in the left's nonstop unamerican socialist totalitarian political campaigning? How about you dare to put your checks in danger by once slapping, or even gently pushing away, the corporate hands that feed you?
But no: Can't do that. That's not the hill to die on.
Attacking conservatives for meanly bullying tiny innocent defenseless mega-corporations -- that's the hill to die on, by gum!
Says so right in the signature line of our checks.
The corporations will allow themselves to be pressured by the left but never by the right and that is the Marching Orders they send out to their Conservative, Inc. minions: tell the right to shut up. Attack Republicans for fighting back.
Let us join the Corporatist Totalitarian Socialist Super-State of the left, like we want to do.
Stop all this insolent back-talk from actual real conservatives who aren't on our payrolls.
America's Oldest Teenager -- sexless grifter and feebleminded Twitter Addict Bill Kristol -- proves once again that he is a True Conservative by jerking his babydick off over Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure proposal:
Fellow Obese Grifter Jonah Goldberg is always whining that conservatives spend too much time "owning the libs" (i.e., owning his friends, future employers, and current donors).
And yet he never chastises the World's Oldest Troll Bill Kristol for constantly "owning the cons."
It's strange -- you'd almost suspect they were on the same leftwing propaganda ops team and were funded by the same leftwing donors.
Meriam Webster now defines being "color-blind" to race as The New Racism.
No, really.
The media brands the massage parlor shooter as a "white man" who killed "mostly Asian" victims.
But then suddenly decides that Specifying the Race of Perp and Victims is racist when it comes to an Arab man shooting ten white vicitms.
Did you catch that? His race was "Gunman."
And the race of the people he killed was, "people."
Maybe we should just identify people as that, as just people of no defined race.
But the media seems very, very determined to let you know the race of the Evildoers when it's One Single Race.
A hate-spewing suspect threatened to slash an Asian man at a Home Depot in Brooklyn -- just a few hours after an Asian woman was attacked by a racist assailant in front of do-nothing onlookers in Manhattan, police said Tuesday.
The 28-year-old victim in Brooklyn was with his girlfriend at the store in East New York around 2:30 p.m. Monday when a stranger approached the couple, menacing them with a 2×4 piece of lumber, cops said.
"Why you with that little d--k Asian n----r?" the suspect asked the woman, who is not Asian, according to police and a source.
"No mention of the perps race in the headline. That is weirdly the most obvious clue to their race nowadays. #JouralismDiesInWokeness."
Says one of the commenters on the Washington Post article "New York authorities file hate-crime charges in attack on Asian American woman."
There isn't even an attacker in the headline. The only human beings in the headline are the "authorities" and the "Asian American woman." The evildoer disappears. There's no attacker, only an "attack." But if there are hate crime charges, then the human mind is all important. "Attack" stresses the outward action. "Hate" requires a hater. There is a shadow of a person in the word "hate," the gesture at a mind.
But this person is depersonalized -- depersonalized because he is black. If a white man had stomped on an old Asian-American lady, he'd get full recognition in the headline. Is that racist?
By the way, this is a completely separate incident from the proceeding one.
Just more of that Multiracial White Supremacy in action.
Strange how only one race is allowed to be a perpetrator in stories written by journalists propagandists and racial arsonists.
Again... no worries about "backlash against whites" as we always hear about after a terrorist attack. It's like they... sort of want there to be a backlash.
Since most reporters are white (despite all their claims of loving diversity): May the backlash fall upon their own heads.
George Floyd's girlfriend testifies that the man he was in a car with was... his drug dealer.
She's white, I guess, so I guess that means that St. George will have to be absolved of this Racial Sin in the special heaven they made for people who die from sticking a pound of narcotics up your asshole.
Oh look, it's another delightful cyberflirting exchange between David French and Jonah Goldberg about superhero movies:
Weird, because I can't make distinctions between The Dispatch and The Bulwark.
Or the Lincoln Project.
Or National Review.
Won't be long now before Sonny Bunch comes in, and people post a Venn diagram showing the overlap of wrong opinions and Sonny Bunch's opinions.
It's so effortlessly inventive and fresh, every time!
Let's check in with the moderate centrist that Conservative, Inc. grifters assured us was more mentally up to the job as president than the real one, Trump:
What she's trying to say is the simple Spanish Si se peude (see, say pweyday), which was literally said by Obama at every rally in 2008 and 2012, but "Doctor" Biden apparently didn't pick up that credit in Seventh Grade Spanish while "earning" her "doctorate."
Here, let me save you the time and expense of an investigation: Baltimore is a shithole city and anyone with his act together already got the hell out of there.
Back in March of last year, Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby quietly began the process of "decriminalizing" a number of low-level crimes such as drug possession and prostitution. The move was ostensibly made to reduce jail populations during the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID behind bars. (We'll get to the real reason in a moment.) Now, after a year of refusing to prosecute people for breaking laws that are still on the books, Mosby has declared the project to be such a resounding success that she's going to make those changes permanent, even if we get the pandemic under control. What could possibly go wrong?
...
Meanwhile, Charm City still has the highest per capita murder rate in the country, an issue that Mosby has consistently failed to make a dent in over the entire time she's been in office. But it is true that there were certainly fewer incidents of drug abuse and prostitution showing up on the books. Why do you suppose that is? Perhaps it's because when you announce that you won’t be prosecuting those crimes, police don’t bother making arrests and fewer people report such activity since it won't do any good to call the cops.
Jazz Shaw notes that the "Empty the Jails" policy is animated by the obvious lie that criminal law just "punishes poverty."
Well that was a very Off Topic digression, and on the Zeroeth Post to boot.
Back to vaccine news:
Pfizer's vaccine is effective for at least six months after the second dose. I think they say "at least six months" because the sample group they're looking at only got immunized around six months ago. So it could be longer.
Pfizer says its vaccine continues to be effective against COVID-19 up to six months later.
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, announced updated results Thursday from their ongoing late-stage study of more than 44,000 volunteers.
The companies said the vaccine was 91% effective against symptomatic disease and was even more protective in preventing severe disease. Of 927 confirmed COVID-19 cases detected through March 13, 77 were among people who received the vaccine and 850 were among people who got dummy shots.
There were no serious safety concerns and the vaccine also appeared to work against a variant first detected in South Africa, the companies said.
I guess that's good news. It will be better, of course, if it's effective for a year, so that people only get the booster once a year, as they do with the flu vaccine. It would be even better if it conferred lifelong immunity, of course, but one step at a time.
Assuming these vaccines work around 90% (and make covid a minor bother for those few who get it), then I guess we could return to normalcy, except for the fact that the Upper Middle Class Woke White Woman cadre which apparently now controls all decisionmaking in the US does not want to ever return to normalcy.
Covid is giving their boring, sterile, shriveled little lives heroic meaning and Bossy Purpose.
Biden's Nasty Border Policy -- Encouraging Illegals to Come to Pander to the Left, but Then Stopping Them to Not Lose the Middle -- Results in Children Now Being Kept Under Bridges and Sleeping In the Dirt
Trump announced that anyone who traveled through Mexico while trying to illegally travel to the US had to remain in Mexico while the US worked out their (almost all bullshit) asylum claims.
Illegals don't want to do that. They just want to come to the US illegally, make bogus claim of asylum, and then not show up for their court hearing due to our catch and release program.
Biden scrapped that policy, claiming it was inhumane. And also, because the Democrats had falsely demonized it.
And Conservative, Inc. either condemned it or remained silent, because their corporate benefactors like illegal workers, and Conservative, Inc. hates American workers. American workers can't fund the additions to their houses.
But you know, at least the Tweets encouraging illegal immigrants to come were nice.
Project Veritas released a new video today showing migrants being held under the Anzalduas International Bridge, by Border Patrol agents.
A Brave Insider felt compelled to record and send never-before-seen footage to Project Veritas, in an effort to illustrate the inhumane conditions illegal immigrants --- many of them minors -- face while in custody.
The area under the bridge was converted into a makeshift processing center for Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), due to the overflow of normal detention facilities near the Southern Border.
In the clip, dozens of migrants are seen sleeping on dirt with nothing but a space blanket and the clothes on their backs.
Just a third of Americans questioned in an NPR/Marist poll released on Tuesday say they approve of Biden's handling of the issue of immigration, with 53% saying they disapprove of his performance. While two-thirds of Democrats say they approve of how Biden has handled the issue in the first two months of his presidency, approval plunges to 27% among independents and to just 5% among Republicans.
Secretly recorded video of Biden's Babies Under Bridges immigration crisis below.
Project Veritas has released secret footage showing that so many migrants are being taken in by the US that the accommodation for some is now under a bridge on the dirt floor in southern Texas. pic.twitter.com/mIG9HO9csI
In Wake of Delta Using Its Corporate Power and Money to Agitate for the Democrats' Fraud-Seeking Vote Schemes, The Georgia GOP House Votes to Strip Delta of Its State-Provided Tax Breaks
It's time to finally fight back against #WokeCorporatism, using the most obvious weapons we have.
The left has pressured corporations to advance the left's political agenda.
It's time to put aside the childish "libertarian" approach where we pretend we're letting corporations act freely and without political pressure -- ignoring the fact that the left (including Democrat politicians) pressure them every single day with threats both implicit and explicit.
There is no "libertarian" position in the middle of a war. You either win or you die.
The Georgia House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to strip Delta Air Lines of a tax break that was worth tens of millions of dollars in response to CEO Ed Bastian's condemnation of Georgia's recently passed voting reform law as "unacceptable."
Georgia's bill, which has been the subject of widespread disinformation and lies by prominent Democratic politicians, has provoked calls for boycotts of Georgia-based corporations by civil rights activists who have argued that these companies should do more to speak out against the law.
As if on command, a number of those corporations or their CEOs issued statements that often repeated false Democratic talking points about the law, including Delta CEO Ed Bastian.
In his statement, Bastian echoed the widely repeated talking point that "could make it harder for many Georgians, particularly those in our Black and Brown communities, to exercise their right to vote." In fact, the bill expands early voting and voting hours and generally made it easier for people of all races to vote -- in person.
Bastian condemned the law, stating, "I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta's values."
Well, maybe Delta's pro-coup values no longer match Georgia citizens' values.
Bullies only stop when you bloody their noses, and it's time to start delivering A LOT of bloody noses to our would-be Corporate Overlords.
It's time for a fucking REVOLT.
Get ready for the paid corporate propagandists of Conservative, Inc. to roar into action -- suddenly discovering, "Here lies a hill worth dying on!" -- as the people paying their mortgage demand value-for-money.
Also needing a bloody nose: Coca-Cola. Which should also be disburdened of any tax benefits the Racist State of Georgia is offering them.
EXCLUSIVE: Coca-Cola CEO says the restrictive Georgia voting law is "unacceptable...it is a step backward..."
Quincey also says "this legislation is wrong, and needs to be remedied, and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and in now even more clearly in public" pic.twitter.com/cdruteEiat
Killer Cuomo Assigned His Top Aides to Help (or Ghostwrite) His $4 Million Advance Book -- Public Employees Working for His Private Benefit -- While He Covered Up the Nursing Home Slaughter
As Cuomo Sought $4 Million Book Deal, Aides Hid Damaging Death Toll
Gov. Andrew Cuomo boasted, "I am not a superhero," in early versions of his book, drafted as his aides scrubbed a politically damaging Health Department report.
ALBANY, N.Y. -- As the coronavirus subsided in New York last year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had begun pitching a book proposal that would center on his image as a hero of the pandemic. But by early last summer, both his book and image had hit a critical juncture.
Mr. Cuomo leaned on his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, for assistance. She attended video meetings with publishers, and helped him edit early drafts of the book. But there was also another, more pressing edit underway at the same time.
An impending Health Department report threatened to disclose a far higher number of nursing home deaths related to the coronavirus than the Cuomo administration had previously made public. Ms. DeRosa and other top aides expressed concern about the higher death toll, and, after their intervention, the number -- which had appeared in the second sentence of the report -- was removed from the final version.
The revisions occurred as the governor was on the brink of a huge payoff: a book deal that ended with a high offer of more than $4 million, according to people with knowledge of the book's bidding process.
...
Mr. Cuomo also utilized the resources of his office -- from his inner circle to far more junior personnel -- to help with the manuscript. In late June and early July, for example, a top aide to the governor, Stephanie Benton, twice asked assistants to print portions of the draft of the book, and deliver them to Mr. Cuomo at the Executive Mansion in Albany, where he lives.
...
Emails and an early draft of Mr. Cuomo's book obtained by The New York Times indicate that the governor was writing it as early as mid-June, relying on a cadre of trusted aides and junior staffers for everything from full-scale edits to minor clerical work, potentially running afoul of state laws prohibiting use of public resources for personal gain.
...
Ms. DeRosa, the highest nonelected official in Mr. Cuomo’s office, was particularly involved with the development of the book, and was present during some online pitch meetings with Mr. Cuomo. The July 5 request, in fact, was to print a 224-page draft entitled "MDR edits" -- a reference to Ms. DeRosa, who had sent the draft to Ms. Benton on July 4, according to the emails. The staffers communicated via personal Gmail accounts, not official governmental email addresses.
The Ruling Class is different than you and me.
DeRosa, of course, also served her King in a more delicate matter:
Ms. DeRosa also had significant input on the July 6 report issued by the Department of Health, which basically cleared Mr. Cuomo's administration of fault in its handling of nursing homes -- discounting the impact of a March 2020 state memo that had asked such facilities to take in or readmit residents who had tested positive for the disease.
Publishing houses are now mostly money-laundering operations to pay money to Democrat politicians:
Crown declined to comment on the sale price or confirm that it slightly exceeded $4 million, a large sum for an author whose previous memoir, "All Things Possible," from 2014, sold fewer than 4,000 hardcover copies.
We need a law (and a law in every state) that specified high-level government officials can only be paid by publishers on a per-book royalty basis. No more $10 million advances for books that sell 4000 copies. If you sell 4000 copies, you get your 10% or 15% on each of those copies.
The tolerated system of open graft by politicians taking money from gigantic media conglomerates must no longer be tolerated.
She was seeking... state aid after a flood damaged her home.
And Cuomo, naturally, exercised his rights of prima noctae.
@GwynneFitz
Mar 29
Vill says Cuomo came to her town of Greece, New York when her home flooded in 2017. Cuomo asked to tour her flood-damaged home she shares with husband and kids. Cuomo forcibly kissed her on the cheek several times, and said "you are beautiful."
Gwynne Hogan
@GwynneFitz
"I felt embarrassed and weird," she says, adding she felt "manhandled." She then got a then got a call from a staffer who invited her to an event in town but not the rest of his family. "I know the difference between an innocent gesture and a sexual one."
Lord Acton (and others) understood very well that:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And nowhere in the free world is it more evident than Israel, and the interminable rule of Benjamin Netanyahu. He has been Prime Minister since 1996! 25 years is far too long. He has become corrupt, venal, and so protective of his power that he will do literally anything to hold onto it.
FOR DECADES, Israeli-Arab politicians have abused the state - and their own people. By confusing the Knesset with the United Nations, they self-destructively used their platform to direct abuse against Israel for existing rather than to direct resources for helping all Israelis coexist.
So guess who Netanyahu is courting to create a coalition so that once again he can be Prime Minister? At this point I have very little confidence that he has the best interests of his country at the forefront of his political maneuvering.
This is exactly what the Democrat Party in this country has done...allied itself with the hard Left to maintain their power, ignoring the possibly existential damage such a coalition will do. Add in the profound corruption of Chinese influence, and it is difficult to arrive at any conclusion other than they simply do not care if they destroy their own country as long as their power is undiminished.
Will term limits in Israel help? Sure...a little. How about here? Yes, but the power will shift from the elected leaders who term-limit out to the party organizations and, in a cruel twist, the deep state's unelected bureaucrats will gain even more control.
Thoreau's "that government is best which governs least" is the only rational solution, but we are long past the point at which we can shrink government without a true revolution.
The damage has been done. America has been convinced that government truly is here to help, even though the incredible mass of evidence shows that it is exactly the opposite; that everything government touches...dies. So the politicians continue to sacrifice the country on the altar of power, hoping that we just won't notice.
My apologies for the poor quality of the reproduction, but I snapped this at a recent showing of Maizie's work at a gallery in Tribeca, and the place made it very clear that photography was prohibited. She is intensely protective of her works until they are sold. Supposedly she was there, but since nobody except her agent knows what she looks like...who knows!
Her mononym's (it is derived from the Persian word for pearl) origin is the stuff of rumor in the art world, with some suggesting that it is her way of honoring a distant cousin (Earl "The Pearl" Monroe).
As for today's art? I simply don't understand it, so a few weeks ago I asked Kris to take a look and see what she could make of it. She was able to provide an analysis which is below the fold, but she also said that it just scratches the surface of this piece, and she needs more time for a full evaluation.
The thin, radiating lines create an energy that electrifies and animates the subject. They are contrasted by the thicker line of the body’s contour which defines the figure’s form and gives it substance. The lack of shading, however, eliminates the figure’s solidity. Therefore the form hovers in space, fazing in and out of our reality, but still has a presence that cannot be denied.
Lines: The thin, radiating lines create an energy that electrifies and animates the subject. They are contrasted by the thicker line of the body's contour which defines the figure's form and gives it substance. The lack of shading, however, eliminates the figure's solidity. Therefore the form hovers in space, fazing in and out of our reality, but still has a presence that cannot be denied.
Eyes: In any human form, the eyes are the most dominant feature. They grab us and our attention. The more arresting the eyes, the more interesting the subject. Here, the artist has successfully created the illusion that the eyes truly do move with the work. The figure could be looking down in one viewing, but flip the work and the figure miraculously looks above itself. This is a rare skill in an artist.
Color: The limitation of a cool palette keeps the colors from distracting the viewer from the dominant eyes. It also enhances the electricity of the radiating lines. The stark white background creates an almost pessimistic mood. This writhing, animated, staring being emerges out of the pure nothingness of existence.
Dr. Ryan Cole, CEO and Medical Director of Cole Diagnostics regarding Covid, vaccine, & treatments.
One half hour of must-see TV. The good doctor basically shreds the idiocy of masks, gives you some knowledge about the nature of viruses and the immune system, rips the bureaucracies for being in bed with Big Pharma and preventing safe, cheap effective treatments from being used and warns that these "vaccines" are one giant medical experiment. As we all suspected for a long time. [J.J. Sefton]
"We shall trudge to the work-camps like gentlemen, without the unpleasantness or uncouth demonstrations the so often mark the lesser orders, with our our principles intact and our wives held for safekeeping by our most trusted Tennis Coaches."
-- Conservative, Inc. motto
"What profiteth a man if he keeps his freedom but loses his principles?"
Hey Conservative, Inc., now that the left has launched its Final War on us, you know what might have been useful to us? Control of the presidency.
But you needed Trump out because of MUH FUCKING TWEETS
Scumbags. Grifter scumbag Karen liberals. Better save the money you took from the Koch Foundation, Google, FaceBook, the Chamber of Commerce, and Pierre Omidyar. Because once that's gone, you c***s are on welfare.
STAND BY...
THE SAGE OF SAVANNAH IS
PREPARING TO MAKE A STATEMENT...
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
PLEASE STAND IN HONOR
OF THE SAGE OF SAVANNAH
Erick Erickson
@EWErickson
We're rapidly getting to the point where the right decides organized boycotts are the only way to fight back.
Getting the point? Rapidly?
Your NeverTrump Conservative, Inc. Brain Trust, everyone.
While many of us were telling these corporate shills what was coming, they chose to suck up to #MuhCorporations and cash their fucking checks.
Please clap.
With this level of savvy commentary, I'm just shocked CNN hasn't snapped this handsome boy up.
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click Hints: female-fronted guitar band and a B-plus-list staple of classic rock radio; bass line: dum-dum-dumdum- d-d-dum-dum-dumdum, dum-dum-dumdum- d-d-dum-dum-dumdum
FOX NEWS "JOURNALIST" DECLARES, CONTRARY TO FACT, THAT BRIAN SICKNICK "DIED DEFENDING THE CAPITOL Is everyone ready to trust your corporate neoliberal friends at Fox again? Well, fooled you!
Arf...Arf...Arf...
Drift Compatible Podcast
Something musical to take your mind off of the current state of affairs: BABYMETAL. And Here's another song [dri]
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"In USSR, Extreme Chess Plays YOU!"
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DROSERA FILIFORMIS TRACYII.JPG)
PINGUICULA CARULEA FLOWER.JPG)
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SARRACENIA RUBRA AND ALATA FLOWERS.JPG)
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