Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
Jay Guevara 2025 Jim Sunk New Dawn 2025
Jewells45 2025 Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the Second August Edition?
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Will someone please humor me and comment on how the diligent application of fundamentals has improved their shooting??
Pleeeeze?
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M1 Garand Overrated?
*GASP*! The hell? Has our pal hickok45 gone nutty in the haid?
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Mobs Surrounding Your Car Pt. Dos
More fun with mobs. Part II of the vid featured last week.
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More Sig P320 Stuff
Same guy, different topic.
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Bronze Brushes?
Bronze v. nylon? Comments? Concerns?
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Dry Fire Laser Systems
Someone recently asked about these in the comments and I found this from our pals at Gun Tests
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Our Pal Asbestos in Paving!
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Highway Patrol
This week's episode: Reformed Criminal.
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Gamera vs Zigra!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread:The Frogs Are The GOAT...At Least When It Comes To Goat Cheese
—CBD
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
-- Charles de Gaulle
Actually, de Gaulle underestimated the number, with most assuming that France has more than 1,000 different cheeses. He wasn't wrong about the "ungovernable" part, but that is a discussion for a different forum.
The variety of cheese is astounding. There are three excellent cheese stores within a five-minute walk of my apartment, and that's not counting the supermarket, which has a mass-market selection that is nevertheless pretty good.
That cheese in the photo is called La Tour Du Montot, made in eastern France by midget monks who live in a tower, and milk the goats only at night under a full moon, overseen by angels.
Well, maybe not, but it is the best goat cheese I have ever tasted, and I have tasted a lot of goat cheese! Of course the other cheese on the table was an absolutely marvelous sheep's-milk cheese from...somewhere. How the hell am I supposed to keep track?
I love America, and I am very pleased that I will be moving back, but damn! Great cheese and great bread is a wonderful thing, and the Frogs do them well...maybe the best in the world.
Freedom is an unalloyed good thing, even if it bites you in the ass because you did something stupid or even just unwise, or even something that has manageable but significant risk.
Due to continued recent severe cases of Campylobacter and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections linked to Keely Farms Dairy, located in New Smyrna Beach, FL (Volusia County), the Florida Department of Health is providing information to assist Floridians in making informed decisions about their health. Sanitation practices in this farm are of concern due to the number of cases. There have been 21 cases since January 24, 2025, including six children under the age of 10, and seven hospitalizations linked to consumption of raw milk from this farm. Severe complications have been reported in at least two cases.
The Florida Department of Health will continue working with Keely Farms Dairy to ensure that effective sanitation practices are implemented consistently across every batch.
STEC bacteria in its most severe form can result in hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) which is characterized by hemolysis and kidney failure, which is of particular concern for children. Groups at higher risk for severe illness include infants and young children, pregnant women, elderly individuals, and those with weakened immune systems.
Floridians are encouraged to use this information to make informed decisions about their health and sources of raw milk should they choose to consume it.
The state of Florida is managing this very well. Raw milk is legal in the state, and all they are doing is making sure that people are aware of the risks. They are treating Floridians like adults, which is a far cry from the nanny-state behavior in blue states and, sadly, in more than a few red states.
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[The Spruce / Leah Maroney]
Yup...that looks great! And as your snobbish Food Thread proprietor I should be telling you to modify the recipe for Breakfast Pie With a Hash Brown Crust to homemade hash browns instead of the packaged ones.
But that would be stupid. It's a pretty easy dish to make, and it looks delicious. Why complicate it? Maybe if you have some leftover homemade hash browns you can be all snooty and flaunt your gourmet cooking, but I'm going to make this with store bought!
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Remember that Croque Monsieur I waxed poetic about at the end of June? Yeah...we went back to the café to have another, and it was a decidedly inferior sandwich. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't special. Not crisp enough, not enough ham, and even the fries that were so delicious the first time were merely good.
Maybe Thomas Wolfe is correct; "You can't go home again!"
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He is amusing, but not 10,000,000 followers amusing. Although he is taking some well-aimed potshots at an absolute dipshit Woke celebrity chef, so I'll cut him a bit of slack.
[Hat Tip: nurse ratched]
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[Hat Tip: Misanthropic Humanitarian]
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I thought France would have good garlic, but the Frogs seem to have the same problem we have in the U.S. At least they don't import filthy garlic from China. Pork is great here, but no game, so send all of your extra antelope to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
Who are those poor deluded souls We know who shakes their Manhattans! These are the same people who drink fine bourbon with coke, and probably shake red wine with ice too.
$1,200 for a bottle of bourbon is just stupid, insulting, and a ghastly affront to most people's palates and wallets. I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.
The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!
I don't plan on needing any of these emergency services, and supposedly the general line will work from my U.S. cell phone. Whether I need to dial the country prefix is a question that is best left to the experts.
But we really are spoiled in America! You know...a 1st World country!
The Administrative State Is Broken, And The FAA Is A Prime Example
—CBD
The conventional wisdom holds that an administrative state made up of professional government functionaries will run well in spite of the constant political changes that most free countries expect every four or five or six years. Institutional knowledge, subject-matter expertise, and a non-partisan mindset should make the day-to-day function of government a process, rather than a political minefield.
It very obviously does not work that way. The administrative state in America has morphed into the Deep StateTM, or maybe it was always that way and it took many years for it to destroy even a semblance of competence.
Add in the catastrophically inefficient, labyrinthine process that our modern government does anything, and we have a reasonable explanation for the absolute mess that the FAA has made of our air traffic control system...over 40 years!
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Aug. 7 unveiled updated plans to hire thousands of air traffic controllers by the end of the year, and nearly 9,000 by 2028, as the agency looks to dig itself out of a now decades-long shortage of workers who are among the most critical for aviation safety.
The FAA has been beset by a decades-long shortage of air traffic controllers, who are critical for directing and overseeing air traffic in and out of the nation’s busiest and most congested air spaces.
The issue dates to 1981, when then-President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who were on strike, viewing it as an illegal strike. Months later, the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) decertified the only existing air traffic controller union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), which was the first time in history that a national union was decertified.
Okay, it was a bit of a mess in 1981. But it is also a mess in 2025, and two generations of so-called professionals made an absolute mess of the entire system, allowing it to become technologically antiquated, poorly staffed, and for four years under the Biden/Obama junta a mess of DEI hiring over competence.
For f*ck's sake...they still use floppy disks and CDs! And I am confident that the rest of the technology in our airport control centers is just as old.
So why did this happen? The short answer is that they just don't give a sh*t, and care more about their pensions than their responsibilities to the people of the United States of America. The longer answer is that the administrative state does not have any market pressures to excel, and no penalties for failure. Congressmen move on, senators get bored, and their high profile hearings about the sorry state of the FAA or the DoD or the department flavor of the month gets subsumed in the next news cycle. So nobody is held accountable over the years, and the institutional rot caused by lack of accountability is built into the process.
How to fix it? Decertify every government union. Employment must be at will. Make the compensation of all managers dependent on the successful and timely completion of capital projects. Do yearly evaluations with the expectation that people will get fired. And every one of us who has ever worked for any sort of large company recognizes that as business-as-usual!
The trick is to get Congress to go along, and that will have to wait until the House of Representatives actually represents Americans, rather than 20,000,000 wetbacks and gerrymandered districts.
Hopefully President Vance's second term will be calm enough that he can focus on the total restructuring of our civil service!
Man, did you guys 'n gals ever draw the short straw by getting your ol' pal Weasel as an interim host!
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Howdy Readers! Welcome to the Reading Thread, your Sunday morning source for the insightful, yet lively and spirited discussion of books 'n stuff. I'm filling in for a while as this space re-invents itself under new management, so please set your near-term expectations accordingly low.
Anyhoo...
What do we have this week? Why, it's none other than Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted Police - A Thrilling Story of the Canadian Woods, written by John G. Rowe. and originally published in 1929. Yes, an actual book for this inaugural Reading Thread but be forewarned, the longer I do this, you may not be so fortunate.
Why did I pick this particular book you ask? Well, mostly because I liked the title. Actually, I picked Sgt. Dick almost entirely based on the title and also the cover photo. Even with our hero losing his hat in the first few minutes of the story, something no self-respecting American cowboy or lawman would allow, it does otherwise seem good so I hope you like it. Feel free to discuss reading and books in general and share your thoughts on this week's selection if you're so inclined.
I know you're just as excited as I am, so just jump below the fold to get started!
I have RSV - respiratory syncytial virus - and putting a name to it doesn't help at all to be perfectly honest.
I bought a COVID test because I was starting to suspect this wasn't just a cold, and the particular test also tested influenza A and B - it didn't feel like the flu, but okay - and RSV, which hadn't crossed my mind at all.
Good news: My lifetime 100% COVID-free rating remains untouched.
Bad news: RSV is bloody annoying.
The common symptoms in adults match mine precisely, so I haven't developed an idiosyncratic reaction.
If present, symptoms are generally isolated to the upper respiratory tract: runny nose, sore throat, fever, and malaise. In most cases, nasal congestion precedes the development of cough.Unlike other upper respiratory infections, RSV is more likely to cause new onset wheeze in adults.
It drives everything and is implemented everywhere but it is rarely if ever entirely correct. The original 1.0 version in 1997 ran to 18,615 words; the later 1.1 version currently runs to 95,740 words, as much as a substantial novel.
Saturday Night "Club ONT" August 9, 2025 [The 3 Ds]
—Open Blogger
I was just here for the beer. Looks like the bartender majored in SycoLLeGy at HaVaRd.
Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration of your Sunday through Wednesday ONT Crew - The Disco, The Doggo, and The Dino. Arrive like a storm, dressed like the wallpaper. If you read the rules, congratulations. You are now the Director of HR for the evening.
The world's leading expert on European wasps walks into a record shop. He asks the assistant, "Do you have European Vespidae Acoustics Volume 2? I believe it was released this week."
The assistant checks the computer and then says, "Certainly. Would you like to listen before you buy it?"
The expert replies, "Of course!" The assistant hands him a pair of earphones and puts the record on a turntable near the counter, and turns it on.
The expert listens for a few moments and says to the assistant, "I'm terribly sorry, but I am the world's leading expert on European wasps and this is not accurate at all. I don't recognize any of those sounds. Are you sure this is the correct recording?"
The assistant checks the turntable. "Yes, sir," he says. "This is the European Vespidae Acoustics Volume 2. Let me skip ahead to the second track." Again the expert listens for a few moments and then says to the assistant, "This just can't be right! I've been an expert in this field for 43 years and I still don't recognize any of these sounds."
The assistant apologizes and lifts the needle to the next track.
As soon as the track starts playing, the expert throws off the headphones. "This is outrageous false advertising! I am the world's leading expert on European wasps and no European wasp has ever made a sound like the ones on this record!"
The manager of the shop overhears the commotion and walks over. "What seems to be the problem, sir?"
The expert turns to him, red-faced and fuming. "This is an outrage! I am the world's leading expert on European wasps. Nobody knows more about them than I do. There is no way in hell that the sounds on that record were made by European wasps!"
The manager glances down and notices the problem instantly. "I'm terribly sorry, sir. It appears we've been playing you the bee side."
Directions:
Add a handful of ice to a cocktail shaker along with the Aperol, Amaro, bourbon, and lemon juice and shake for 15 seconds.
Strain into a coupe glass and serve immediately.
The cocktail can be garnished with a paper plane or an orange or lemon twist.
Enjoy!
With dozens of items unclaimed, the embarrassed owner took her search for Leo’s victims wider this month, posting photos of his hauls on a local Facebook page along with an apology and her address. Those who showed up to claim their belongings included a woman who recognized her pink and purple underpants and a boy whose beloved and missing sports jersey was helpfully identifiable by his name printed on the back.
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Club ONT Moron Mobile
Looks like the car of your cool uncle. Has the same amount of wheels as a 911 but more seating for Morons. Who likes this car? Those that appreciate things like competence and khakis. If you're the rebel type, it is pretty easy to disappear into the Midwest while enjoying AM radio.
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Club ONT Moments of Nostalgia
Hey Disco! Found your people!
[Disco says: Hey ladies! How YOU doin'? Let's get FUNKY!]
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Carried us through the 90's. Sound up.
AOL says it will discontinue dial-up internet on September 30
Two former Oklahoma County jail guards have pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor cruelty charge for forcing inmates to listen to "Baby Shark" as punishment.
Gregory Cornell Butler Jr. and Christian Charles Miles were put on probation for two years and fined $200.
They also were ordered to pay $300 in victims' compensation and complete 40 hours of community service. They were also banned from working in law enforcement.
The two guards further mistreated inmates by playing children's music loudly on a loop, investigators reported. Both resigned after coming under investigation.
The criminal case centered on four victims, but investigators believe there were more.
One victim said he had to listen to "Baby Shark" for two hours straight, according to an investigative report. Another said the "weird little song" was blaring and played "over and over and over again."
Cliff Clavin says: Little known fact. The original Thompson Twins in 1977 line-up consisted of four people and none of them were twins. At various stages, they had up to seven members, but their best known line-up was as a trio from 1982 to 1986.
The name comes from two bumbling detectives named Thomson and Thompson in the English language version of The Adventures of Tintin, a comics series. Thompson and Thompson are close doubles but not twins, the naming makes even less sense.
Some other twins
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Top 10ish Comments of the Week. Or thereabout...
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Club ONT brought to you by rulz:
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Club ONT regrets that the M&Ms in the large jar on the bar are not equally distributed in color. Some guy named Dave came in just before opening and demanded that the brown ones be removed.
The last time I had to fill a post in the middle of a longer run, I talked about Bill & Ted and the three films the two dudes, focusing on how the three movies establish, break, and then retreat into formula. With that recently in my mind and a new hole forming in the middle of another run, my mind turned to the Taken franchise, a quick trilogy of films that blew up and went away almost as quickly at the box office.
Largely the brainchild of French director, Luc Besson, who cowrote (with Robert Mark Kamen) and produced all three films, it started as just...an action movie. Originally mean to star Jeff Daniels, he cast Liam Neeson once Daniels dropped out of the production, and the tight, 90-minute story of a retired CIA agent jetting to Paris to undo a sex trafficking ring run by Albanian gangsters in order to save his daughter became a surprise hit.
Made for $25 million, it ended up making over $200 million at the worldwide box office. And where there is success in the movie industry, even if based in France through EuropaCorp., Besson's production company, there will be more attempts to capture it. So, Besson wrote and produced two more until the third one which...made over $300 million off of a relatively modest $48 million production budget.
That there haven't been more confounds me, but there was a television series (starring Clive Standen as the main character, Brian Mills) based on the idea that ran for two seasons, so maybe that's where the energy for the franchise died out.
Anyway, the franchise interests me more for artistic purposes than commercial, so let's talk about the logic of sequels.
The first film in the franchise is a lot like the first John Wick film: a very simple premise of revenge that sees a retired, professional killer go on a rampage. I completely get this genre of movies. They're fun as we witness an accomplished, competent professional do a professional job with little extra business. Being 90 minutes long really helps things along as well because there's no time for side-business. They have one hour and thirty minutes to barrel through everything before the credits.
The second film can't do the same thing. Where the first film kept reminding me of John Wick (which came out later, admittedly, the same year as the third Taken film), the second film instantly reminded me of the Death Wish sequels. Charles Bronson keeps finding increasingly distant relatives and friends to kill a bunch of people over. Well, in the second, Brian Mills' family, including his ex-wife, decide to surprise him in Istanbul, a roughly 11-hour car ride from Albania, and Mills just...accepts it with a smile.
He goes on a date with his ex-wife, even, leaving Kim alone in the hotel. Nevermind that Kim ends up fine, the only way that danger happens is because Mills...just lets it happen despite a recent history of his daughter being kidnapped by Albanian gangsters who might not be that far away. So, why does this happen? So the movie can happen.
I think back to my admiration of the weird turn in direction that Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey took from the original film, killing the characters and having them go through the afterlife instead of having them do another report, wishing that Besson and Kamen had gone off in a weird direction. Having Mills be a worker in a sewer to make ends meet and then facing down a mysterious creature who steals his daughter through her bathtub, or something. Set it up quick, and get him moving fast. Instead, the second film's first act is interminably slow as it sets things up, in particular the effort to repair the relationship between Mills and his ex-wife Lenore (played by Famke Janssen).
However, there is cleverness in the script despite the tortured beginning. It's not Kim, the daughter, who gets taken. It's Mills and Lenore. Mills has to guide Kim to finding him, and we get that same flavor of tense, accelerated problem solving (without much action because Kim is a teenaged girl with no combat training) as she uses grenades to create sound and help direct her to him through his instruction. It's actually quite fun. The movie as a whole flounders a good bit in the first and third acts, but that second act is a take on the original material with a fun twist. Could they have done more around it? Sure, but I'm happy we got at least that much.
Take 3
I was surprised at the attempt to actually play with the formula established in the first film through the second film, but the third film tosses all of it aside. I don't mind that in general (think back to my imagined first sequel idea of Mills chasing a monster through the sewers), but the move is to the laziest of directions: loud action.
I'm not one to demand adherence to formula just for the sake of formula. I often advocate for active movements away from formula in sequels, but as I noted in my Bill & Ted post, that effort often ends up not being done well, and Taken 3 is a good example of that.
I think the key to understand is that the first two films are not action movies. The appeal is a professional man doing professional things to cut through chaos with a clear goal. The action is present, but it's mostly incidental (and also kind of pedestrian in execution). That's not what the third film is. It's Mills, again stupid in order to make the film happen, having to investigate a shadowy conspiracy around Lenore's death that involves her current husband, Shaun, and a Russian gangster.
The break from the first two films by not bringing in Albanian gangsters again is fine. The change in genre, from action-thriller to outright action, could be fine. The movement to a shadowy conspiracy that Mills needs to unravel instead of just cut through could be fine. And yet, it ends up just noise. You have to cancel out who Mills is, again, just to get the film to start, including retconning stuff from the first film (he did a deep background check on Stuart that didn't pick up that he did business with a known gun runner?), and the investigation gets sidetracked for long stretches in favor of middling action sequences, the problem being that Mills often doesn't have a clear goal of why he's there. He's being chased instead of chasing, making him reactive instead of active.
And the appeal of the first film, in particular, is just lost. There's no clear goal. The main character gets sidetracked and pulled back and forth without agency. The action is prioritized over professional effort. I just found it a loud, confused mess.
Legacy
So it doesn't surprise me that Besson moved the property to television. With these kinds of stories, you're looking for just continuing adventures of a character where nothing really changes in him from one to the next. It also allows for more adherence to formula by taking the procedural route (I've never watched an episode, but the episode summaries I've read indicate an overarching story over 10 episodes where repetition of story beats within episodes is the norm).
The film trilogy, though, will always be primarily known for two things: the first film as a whole and the over-done editing (about 17 cuts) to get Liam Neeson over a fence in the third film.
The sequels have their fans, but the IMDb ratings say everything, I think. The first one has a 7.7/10. That's high. That's actually, really high. The second has an IMDb rating of 6.2. The third has an IMDb rating of 6.0.
Larger Lessons
Is there a larger lesson to learn from this? It might just be that sometimes sequels aren't necessary. We want more Taken, but more Taken is going to struggle to be like Taken but different. What if Luc Besson had gone from the success of the first film and made something else...new with Liam Neeson? Similar in look and feel but not hidebound by formula from the first film? Another adventure with a new character played by Neeson that treads on similar grounds?
I think back to the period after the release of Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead when no one knew what would be coming next. There were rumors of a direct sequel titled From Dusk 'til Shaun which would have the same character go into a vampire movie. I mean, it would have been a real break from the zombies of the first, but Wright and Simon Pegg decided to go ever more afield than that, making Hot Fuzz, a Michael Bay/Midsomer Murders parody/celebration, instead, and it's generally as beloved, if not more so, than the first film.
But, that's not a lesson Hollywood wants to learn. IP is king. Remember, the Taken sequels made more money than the first one, and that's ultimately all that matters because cashflow is vital to keeping these studios alive. Selling Taken 2 to audiences is a safer financial bet than selling Liam Neeson Does the same thing but slightly different with a different title would.
I just think a Luc Besson written adventure dealing with a new character played by Liam Neeson doing similar things but not dedicated to the formula and lore of the first Taken film might have been more entertaining.
Ironically, I think that the only people to actually understand this are the people who are bringing us the reboot for The Naked Gun, starring Neeson, that obviously plays on the image he's curated over the past 17 years as an action star. No idea if it'll be funny or good or anything, but the marketing on the film is obviously leaning into that idea of him as an action star and just putting silly stuff around it. It's honestly more interesting than anything I saw in the two Taken sequels.
A Note
I'm still in Europe. It is very late. There is no automatic scheduling in the blog software. I will probably not be commenting, just staying up late enough, with the help of the movies I downloaded into my phone (Stoker, for instance), until 1:45 in the morning, to hit the publish button.
Taken (Rating 3/4) Full Review "Not great cinema, but a solid entertainment." [Personal Collection]
Taken 2 (Rating 2/4) Full Review "The second act is shockingly solid, but the first act is boring and the third act hinges on emotional catharsis that neither makes sense nor the movie properly sets up." [Library]
Taken 3 (Rating 1/4) Full Review "It's just kind of a miserable third entry in a franchise that probably never should have existed beyond the first one. Not a surprise." [The Criterion Channel]
The Young Stranger (Rating 4/4) Full Review "It doesn't surprise me that no one searches out Frankenheimer's first film, a small family drama he made in the middle of his television career before Birdman of Alcatraz with no movie stars and not at all genre related. But, I think that should be fixed." [YouTube]
Impossible Object (Rating 1/4) Full Review "Really, the only way this makes sense to me is if Frankenheimer was intending a psychedelic or phantasmagoric journey into madness, and it's obviously not what the film is. What it is ends up being…kind of just boring." [Library]
French Connection II (Rating 2/4) Full Review "So, the overall package is kind of weird. There isn't much of an overall package. It's too many different parts that don't gel together, but some of the individual parts have their charms from the innocent (Doyle trying to order whiskey at a bar) to the explosive (the shootouts). It's not a disaster, but it's not really good either." [Library]
Black Sunday (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It was about the thrills. He built up to the thrills, as inelegantly as he did, delivered the thrills, and exited stage right. I can't fault him for that." [Library]
Prophecy (Rating 1/4) Full Review "Frankenheimer wanted his own Jaws. He didn't get it." [Library]
Contact
Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.
My next post will be on 8/30, and it will be about the directing career of John Frankenheimer.
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. Good news! The Ace of Spades Wheel of HobbiesTM) is back in service. We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin and it landed on telescopes and astronomy photography.
I have faith that you can either find something in the content that resonates or contribute your own hobbying interests.
You might be tempted to say "I have no hobbies or interests." Bah. Dig around in the content and soak in the comments. Be curious. Glad you're here.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. However, politics, current events and religious debates can live in threads elsewhere. Pants are optional. Puns are welcome and encouraged.
TRex has been detailed elsewhere for a super secret special assignment, so the hobbying Horde is its own tonight. Thanks to scampydog for getting this posted. Play nice. Don't be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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TRex does not own a telescope and has only made modest efforts at photographing the night sky. The night sky, however, has always held interest. As a youngster, I remember visiting the Planetarium and watching the projections on the ceiling. It looked mysterious but was abstract. I also couldn't wrap my small dino-brain around things like billions and trillions of stars and galaxies. Still can't. Looking through a telescope and seeing the rings of Saturn somehow was completely different. Likewise for seeing the details and shadows of craters on the moon.
Perhaps at some point, my hobbying will involve a real telescope and a real effort at taking pictures of the night sky and its celestial residents. For now, we take inspiration from polynikes on last week's Hobby Thread:
Looking to the Horde to help polynikes spend his money. Also looking to the Horde in general to help with the hobbying theme this week. Are you wise in the ways of telescopes? Are you wise in the ways of where to go for truly dark skies? Are you wise in the ways of pointing cameras to the night skies? Does your hobbying otherwise involve the stars and planets in some way?
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As said above, TRex is not wise in the ways of telescope acquisition. These links seems reasonable and lower on the clickbait scale, but think of them as samples.
If you're going to get serious, you need a backyard observatory. There are many backyard observatory videos on the interweb, so this is more of a sample than an endorsement:
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How to photograph the Milky Way:
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Saturn!
How about further away... Andromeda Galaxy! (Fwiw, I thought this video was well done.)
Destin has a crazy story about shooting photos of an eclipse:
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Not sure why, but I've always found lunar reflectors fascinating.
There are five reflecting panels on the Moon. Two were delivered by Apollo 11 and 14 crews in 1969 and 1971, respectively. They are each made of 100 mirrors that scientists call "corner cubes," as they are corners of a glass cube; the benefit of these mirrors is that they can reflect light back to any direction it comes from. Another panel with 300 corner cubes was dropped off by Apollo 15 astronauts in 1971. Soviet robotic rovers called Lunokhod 1 and 2, which landed in 1970 and 1973, carry two additional reflectors, with 14 mirrors each. Collectively, these reflectors comprise the last working science experiment from the Apollo era.
Scientists have been using reflectors on the Moon since the Apollo era to learn more about our nearest neighbor. It's a fairly straightforward experiment: Aim a beam of light at the reflector and clock the amount of time it takes for the light to come back. Decades of making this one measurement has led to major discoveries.
One of the biggest revelations is that the Earth and Moon are slowly drifting apart at the rate that fingernails grow, or 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year. This widening gap is the result of gravitational interactions between the two bodies.
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What is your light pollution situation? Are you familiar with the Bortle scale?
Apparently this is a popular book for finding things in the night sky:
Any other recommendations?
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I know what you're thinking. "I'm into all of this, but it would be great if there was some kind of local gathering of like-minded enthusiasts that I could learn from and share stories with..." How about a local astronomy club?
If you're in the Columbia, South Carolina neighborhood, stop by the South Carolina State Museum and check out the world-class collection of antique telescopes and astronomical instruments. The telescopes and instruments total more than 200 objects dating back to 1730. Of the more than 60 telescopes in the group, 23 are fine examples of 19th and early 20th century American-made telescopes.
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If we didn't have a polynikes painting, this photo would have been at the top of this post.
When 42-year-old Valerio Minato woke up on December 15, 2023, he said he felt "agitated." For six years he had been trying to capture a photo showing the perfect alignment of the Monviso, a mountain in the Alps in Northern Italy, the Basilica of Superga, near Turin, and the moon. Having very few opportunities throughout the year where these three elements line up, Minato had just a small chance of getting the perfect shot.
Minato's research, patience, and dedication throughout the years paid off. He has been photographing Turin and its fascinating skyline and monuments for 12 years now and started trying to get this shot in 2017.
"I started going around this area of hills northeast of Turin where you could see Monviso and Superga [a hill that hosts the Basilica of the same name on top]. After finding the three or four points where these two are perfectly aligned, I started to evaluate - let's say complicate my life - to try and take a very different picture from the ones I had already shot," Minato said, smiling.
Other than researching the perfect locations, Minato had to study carefully the lunar phases that would allow for this alignment. He explained there were only around two days a year when he could attempt the photo and in some years the alignment didn't occur at all.
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This is the opposite of amateur astronomy, but seems like it needs to be in here somewhere.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.
Webb's image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This deep field, taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours - achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope's deepest fields, which took weeks.
This image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster.
Light from these galaxies took billions of years to reach us. We are looking back in time to within a billion years after the big bang when viewing the youngest galaxies in this field. The light was stretched by the expansion of the universe to infrared wavelengths that Webb was designed to observe.
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Speaking of NASA and this topic, seems like we should acknowledge the passing of Jim Lovell:
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Did you know the Vatican has a telescope in Arizona? Me neither.
The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) is an astronomical research complex operated by the Vatican Observatory Research Group (VORG) in collaboration with the University of Arizona.
The telescope is located in southeastern Arizona (roughly a three hour drive north east of Tuscon) where sky conditions are among the best in the world for astronomical observations. It was dedicated in 1987 and opened in 1993.
Photo credits: The Vatican Observatory.
Apparently private donations and a foundation provide the bulk of the funding. I'm guessing they'd say they're doing serious science stuff. They're probably looking for aliens just like everyone else in the southwest with an observatory or satellite dishes pointed at the sky.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a fishing theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
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Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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Would TRex include a mystery click behind the top photo in a Hobby Thread? Maybe... If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, hijack the thread for your hobbying as you see fit. We will feature a different theme next time. What are you hobbying? We love showing off Horde hobbying. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.
From Biden's Dog, regards from Jerusalem and a story from New Jersey:
Hi Katy,
I personally do not like cats. I suppose they rub me the wrong way. But for those of you who do like cats:
Coffee and a kitten! You can snuggle up with a feline friend at this N.J. cat café. | Paige Britt, NJ dot com
Ben Hudes, 21, and Dora Gorvorko, 23, are making it their mission to bring a cat café to South Jersey. The couple are DIYing a space in Oaklyn that will feature… pic.twitter.com/drJkCKU70C
Click over to X to read the details. Amazing that they would attract so much community support before they even open! That is an ambitious project! Interesting that they would focus on teaching kids how to interact with cats.
Here is our latest family member, Stella! And yes, everyone does their best Marlon Brando when they hear her name. She came with the name, not sure if it will stick or she will be given a nickname that takes over. She is 8 months old and was rescued from a bad situation. The rescue got her and we had just put down our Gigi girl and Littleman was not handling her loss very well, in fact none of us were. We had a hole in our heart to fill and she needed a family to call her own so it seems it was a match made in heaven.
We have no idea what breed she is or what mixture more like but we have sent off for the doggie DNA. She is sweet, curious, extremely smart, an incredible climber and jumper, loves to swim but hates the hose. There isn't a chew toy or stuffed toy she doesn't love, there are toys strewn all over the house. We already love her, as does Littleman except at feeding and treat time, she wants to eat her food and his food and he gets a little protective of his kibble. The cats after a few days of being wary have now accepted her as one of the pack.
We have had to Stella-proof the backyard as I was watering in the front yard and she managed to jump over the gate in a single hop. Didn't want to run away, just wanted to be by me, she is my little shadow. We miss our Gigi, but Stella is helping heal our hearts, one day at a time.
WeeKreekFarmGirl
How wonderful that you have found Stella! She looks right at home.
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Good afternoon KT and fellow Pet Morons,
Things are going well here. Chicks A & B continue to grow and are doing well. As you can see, Chick B's colors have really come in. They haven't taken their fledgling flight yet, but the primary and secondary feathers are in place and it should happen in the next few days. Chicks C & D are leaving the fuzzy state.
Today I'd like to introduce you to another bird in the house, Phoenix. He is a White Bellied Caique, and if you are a regular consumer on this site you will recognize this breed. They are high energy, smart and easily trained. However they are not a beginner bird, because they are high maintenance, somewhat hard to find and fairly expensive. As you can see in the picture, he still enjoys the formula we feed the chicks. That may be because we got him 3 years ago before he was fully weaned and it brings back memories. The breeder let us have him a little early because she knew we raised babies too and used the same formula and methods. They are medium sized parrots and good family birds. We let him have a couple of sips of the leftover food, but not much. It's too rich for adult birds.
Regards, David
Those birds are making progress with your wonderful care!
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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde
By-Tor took a photo of his Tuesday Tennis Group's mascot dog, Coco:
A cutie, I would say.
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Thank you for sharing your pets and pet stories with us.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
I felt like posting something from a cooler time period than today's 105 degree weather here:
Hi Katy -
Hope you are on the mend post-surgery. I'm sending good wishes and prayers your way.
Dogwood Daze - the dogwood blossoms were beautiful this spring. I thought I'd send this photo along before they fade away. Also, a photo of the first flower to bloom in my garden, the hardy Columbine.
I can't take pics like Don in Kansas, but I noticed that the dogwoods were particularly spectacular this year here (we're maybe 150 miles north of their natural range).
The white is the largest one in the State of Kansas.
Wow. Thinking about planting for next year?
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Edible Gardening/Putting Things By
California isn't really "Hatch Chile" country, but this is a supermarket advertisement similar to others this time of year around here. Along with Hatch Chile rotisserie chickens and the like.
The tweet above reminded me of this, received a while ago:
Greetings!
Lurker and Gardening Thread fan "RS" here.
For your consideration under the "nature" theme, may I submit a few pics from my daughter's recent foray into the Bavarian Alps. (She lives in Bavaria.) The mountain is called "Rotwand" and is considered one of Munich's "House Mountains."
Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks for your contributions at AoS.
Cheers.
That is a real adventure!
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Gardens of The Horde
We had a question about growing four o'clocks in challenging circumstances recently. Here is an example of four o' clocks doing very well:
Hi KT,
Could you kindly post these pics on next week's garden thread? The flowers are at their peak right now and I'm just not sure how long they'll last. As I mentioned in my follow-up post, I have done nothing to amend the soil in our back yard, as it's nothing but deep sand and we're plagued with pocket gophers that tunnel through and ruin everything. It's a complete miracle that anything grows in it to begin with.
These pics are a little dark as I took them late in the day once the temps dropped, but you can see the vibrant colors. The pink lily like flower is Amaryllis Belladonna, which grow like weeds everywhere in the SF Bay Area.
Thanks!
Effie
So colorful! I am surprised that four o'clocks stand up to pocket gophers. Not surprised that amaryllis do.
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
In the past few years, Canada has become obsesses with the idea of respect for the people who were living in the land when Europeans arrived. If you identified as a descendant of one of these groups, would you feel respected by the following?
Winnipeg Police: "One of our senior officers is a psychopathic serial criminal who—while maybe high on coke and mushrooms—sold drugs, extorted people and took grotesque pictures with dead women in their underwear. But before we get to that, let's do a dozen land acknowledgments." pic.twitter.com/YjvTgXIbAj
Here's an interesting reported legal development in Canada:
A Cree woman named Jamie Tanis Gladue was having a 19th birthday party in Nanaimo when she suspected her boyfriend was having an affair with her sister. The two started fighting and Gladue stabbed him to death
Sounds odd. You have to glance through the responses to the post to realize that the courts have reportedly adopted race-based criminal sentencing, straight-up.
You haven't noticed anything like this happening anywhere else, have you?
Residential Indian Schools
Caution: The guy who authored the tweet above wrote a book, The Scarlet Lesson"to describe what happens to school teachers who tell the truth" about the uproar concerning graves at church-run Indian schools in Canada. So it would be prudent to check out the details of the claim in this tweet.
However, you might also be interested in the close-mindedness of a "journalist" toward a university professor who helped write another book on this subject. Astonishing:
What is Grave Error? Some background:
About 18 months ago, I helped publish a book called Grave Error, a collection of essays written by top university professors and journalists setting the historical record straight on Indian Residential Schools (IRS)
54.3% of land ownership in Richmond BC is Chinese folks, greatest percent in tier 2 Canada, that’ll be interesting! Fortunately this is Canada and they’ll argue over this until autumn of 2120
In typically weasel word legal speak, the ruling says that there can be aboriginal title and private land on the same ground and the Crown must resolve it which means that the tax payers have to compensate the grifters. If the robed shysters had ruled that aboriginal title was final, then they would have just ruled themselves out of a job as there would be no BC nor Canada because there was no legitimacy of Crown sovereignty. This is the end game of the grievance industry – White-pimp judges declaring the taxpayer-paid Chiefs as our new landlords.
So, will the Chinese landowners or the Native Chiefs hold more sway here?
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Music
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Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
—Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus)
[Pretty & smart-H/T Sharon (Willow's Apprentice)]
*****
Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Keshena)
1. This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2. Be kind, be nice. Even trolls have feelings as do slugs.
3. Gosh darn it! No running with sharp objects.
4. Thank you Annie for your hard work!
5. Have a great weekend!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo atsign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
6/28 – H asked for prayers for a mom of two elementary aged boys who lost her mother 3 weeks ago, and her husband on 6/28, both to cancer.
7/19 Update – The visitation was good, but prayers are still appreciated, especially for the boys, as they go through a hard stage of life without their dad.
7/3 – Ciampino’s daughter posted to let us know that Ciampino is back in the hospital. He is dehydrated again. His kidney cyst is back and bigger, so he will need to have another surgery, but they don’t know when.
7/7 Update – Ciampino passed away. His daughter posted how much he loved everyone’s witty humor on the site, and sent her thanks for giving him years of enjoyment and community.
7/19 Update – Please contact Annie’s Stew for more information if you would like to contribute to Ciampino’s cremation fund raiser.
7/5 – Boswell asks for prayers for his best friend Mark’s mother. She is 90 years old and was diagnosed with sepsis after her colon burst. She had surgery on 7/3, but her recovery is not going well. She is too weak for the tests she needs to find out what is wrong. Please pray that she recovers fully, as she and Mark are very close. He is devastated.
7/16 Update – Mark’s mother passed away peacefully in her sleep. Mark is, of course, quite saddened by this, but at least she did not suffer at the end, and her family was by her side when she went. Boswell hopes that his friend finds solace that she lived a long, happy life and she raised such a wonderful son.
7/9 - Teresa in Fort Worth asks for prayers for her niece Amanda, and her husband Barkley. They are at Vanderbilt Hospital, where Amanda seems to be rejecting her second heart transplant. She is only 40 years old, and has been having heart issues for 20 years. She had her first heart transplant 4 years ago, and things are not looking good.
8/2 Update – Amanda isn’t out of the woods yet, but her condition is improving each day.
7/11 – Racially Ambiguous Honky, the brother of G’rump/toby928, sent his thanks for the prayers on his behalf, after his appendix burst and he had sepsis. He says he is recovering well.
7/11 – JR requested prayers for the families of those killed in Gaza.
8/2 – JR asked for prayers for the starving children in Gaza.
7/11 – Stateless sent his thanks to all for their thoughts and prayers for him. His house officially became his on 6/30, ending 6 months of uncertainty since his Mom passed. He is getting stronger and is learning about and working to process emotions differently, after losing so much.
7/11 – Screaming in digital asked for prayers for her mother. Mom is still recovering from a UTI plus 3 falls within the last couple of days. During the day, there is some improvement. But once she starts sundowning, she is terrified and clings to whatever she can hold onto. She only weighs about 105-110, and isn’t eating much, but it is hard to move her when she is like that. If she doesn’t improve her mobility and cooperate/help with transfers to and from the wheelchair, etc., and consistently feed herself, she won’t be able to stay at the assisted living facility.
7/19 Update – Screaming in digital’s mother passed away.
7/11 – Frankie asked for prayers for her friend “R”, who is back on hospice for Huntington’s disease. He was on hospice before, but went off for an experimental medication, but unfortunately it wasn’t helpful.
7/11 – Igotnothing sent a prayer of praise. A grand-nephew, quadriplegic since birth due to deformities, and now age 10, after many surgeries and care and prayers, is able to walk. The boy and his family (mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-aunt and great-uncle) went on his first ever walk in the woods. What joy!
7/11 – Matthew Kant Cipher requested prayers for Layne, a family friend who is also his son’s FIL. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer and is awaiting further test results to determine whether they treat with chemo or remove his bladder. As of now, it appears to be contained. Please pray that he and his family are blessed with God’s love and grace through this time of trial.
7/18 – Tecumseh Tea had a heart attack and needs prayers.
7/23 Update – Tecumseh Tea had a Type 2 heart attack, which is considered mild. She sends prayers of thanks for that! The angiogram showed a healthy heart, with little plaque and clean arteries, so no stent was needed. They did find a myocardial bridge, which is a congenital defect. The goal is to keep BP 140/70 with a pulse of less than 60, but so far they have not been able to meet that goal. She can’t get a cardiologist appointment until 8/22, so the GP is helping, but so far they have not been able to get the right BP meds. Please pray for a sooner visit, and the right meds that work for her, and answers.
7/19 – Huerfano asked for prayers for a rapid and full recovery for brother R, who had hernia surgery. He cannot see his grandsons until he has recovered. He misses them , and they miss him.
7/19 – Farmer Bob posted an update. He is doing well. He is competing in 5Ks and triathalons, and sends his thanks for the prayers. His ex-wife has “gone off the deep end” (or just remains so), with weird lies and accusations. She could use a prayer or two.
7/19 – Tonypete asked for prayers for Cheri and Gretchen, church ladies of his acquaintance. Cheri had a medical incident while driving and veered off the road and struck a number of pedestrians, sending 3 or 4 to the hospital. Gretchen and her husband were passengers in the car and her husband had a heart attack after the accident and died. Cheri is just sick about it and has kind of snapped. Gretchen has lost her best friend of 65 years.
7/19 – H asked for prayers for Brandon, a homeless man in San Marcos, TX, who has a broken ankle and has to seek care for that injury, specifically prayers that he would see God providing for him. He is asking for God to help him advocate for his care.
7/23 – D sent an update on his wife Susan, as they deal with cancer. The last few weeks have been a roller coaster. They cannot operate on the cancer, because it has spread too much. They have started chemo and hope to get it to shrink. Susan’s gallbladder is inflamed, but they cannot remove it, due to the chemo, and her blood sugar is having issues. Thanks to everyone for their prayers; Susan has pulled through all of this and is looking great as they keep praying to the Lord.
7/26 – Stateless asked for prayers for his neighbors. The nice lady across the street lost her husband of 30 years about 3 months ago. And a different neighbor lost his beloved wife of 34 years in July.
7/26 – Fenelon Spoke requested prayers for J, a dear lady who attends her church. J has been going downhill since she had a heart procedure several months ago and now cannot speak. She may have dementia and is living in an assisted living facility.
7/26 – Coelacanth sent his thanks for prayers for his son. He has come a _very_ long way but could still use more prayers as he deals with vax and black mold injuries. Also, Coelacanth cut his left hand pretty badly and severed two tendons. He will be on light duty at work for 6+ weeks. Prayers are appreciated.
7/26 - Brother Tim was discharged from the cancer rehab facility and has returned to his routine of living out of hotel rooms, while working on better housing prospects. He is praising God for all the blessings and mercies!
7/30 Update – Brother Tim found out that the cancerous mass impinged on a blood vessel. He needs a full body scan to make sure it has not spread. He is relieved that he only needs radiation and not chemo to make sure the original cancer stays gone. He’s also out of PTO. He said that sometimes it feels like 2025 will be the death of him – possibly literally.
8/1 – Jmel requested prayers for her husband, whose father just passed away after fighting cancer for two years.
8/2 – “Perfessor” Squirrel asked for prayers. His job seems to be in dire jeopardy.
8/2 – Teresa in Fort Worth received the good news that her cancerous tumors continue to shrink. She had some not-so-good news, that she has 2 pulmonary emboli, and has been put on a blood thinner, which should dissolve the clots and prevent any new ones.
8/4 Update – The oncological surgeon said everything is looking great. After her next CT scan, they will be planning surgery to remove the tumors. The largest tumor is showing signs of calcification, which means that it is dying.
8/2 – FenelonSpoke requested prayers for P. She was to have an experimental but successful heart procedure which the surgeon thinks will help her arrythmia, pain, and fatigue, but insurance will not pay for it. Prayer that rough places are made smooth for her to have this procedure.
8/4 – Moki posted that s/he could use some prayers. A daughter has gone AWOL, claiming that they don’t love her.
8/4 – Inogame asked for continued prayers. Baby #5 continues to grow, and the genetic test came back clean. Prayers for mom and baby (daughter #4), and also dad and son are appreciated.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 07:48 AMComments
Daily Tech Newsn't 9 August 2025
—Pixy Misa
Oops.
I've been sick recently, which hasn't been a problem for these threads because I couldn't sleep, which left me doing things like throwing out expired food items from the pantry at 3AM, or sorting my socks alphabetically.
So this is a trend which I can't evaluate. Is it funny, or just dickish? I guess possibly both but if it's too dickish I don't know if it can be funny. Anyway, the trend is walking up/driving up to people who have just had a car accident and telling them "You're not allowed to park here."
You let me know. I don't know what to think of this. It's kind of funny but I remember my couple of crack-ups and I was in no mood at all for joking at the time.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorses Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor.
REPORTER: "Democratic socialism--is this what the party should look like?"
WARREN: "Yes, you bet!"
Bear in mind that for 70 years, the Democrat Party has denied that they were socialists. Now they're endorsing socialists without apologizing for all their previous lying. This was always what they wanted: Socialism.
And communism.
The old Democrat Party claimed, "We're not socialists, we're just liberals."
The new Democrat Party says, "We're not communists, we're just socialists."
Well you lied last time. Why should we believe you now?
Jennifer Sey
@JenniferSey
I gift you with the dumbest thing you'll read today.
Where is the evidence that masculinity is crippling society? I can't with how dumb this is.
From a journalistic perspective, there is no evidence that masculinity is crippling society. There is more evidence, in fact, that calling all men toxic for being masculine is crippling society.
But they just print it like it's true.
ALSO, the "trans" movement is the most adherent to "traditional gender roles." The movement thinks lipstick and a hairstyle makes a person a woman. The movement thinks if a man likes "feminine things" (???) he must be a woman, penis be damned.
Anti-Israel campus leader Mahmoud Khalil was ripped Thursday over his attempt to "justify" the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks in a recent interview -- with elected officials saying it boosts the Trump administration's case seeking to kick him out of the country.
New York and national officials condemned Khalil for his statements seemingly sympathizing with Hamas' rationale for the cowardly assault on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage in Gaza.
"Mahmoud Khalil must be immediately deported," Upstate New York Rep. Elise Stefanik told The Post.
The Republican congresswoman has long lambasted Khalil, a green card holder, for his role in fomenting virulent anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
"He is a chief pro-Hamas terrorist agitator who contributed to the antisemitic encampments at Columbia, the rioting and violent takeover of Hamilton Hall, and the harassment and physical assault of Jewish students," she said.
"Naturalized citizenship is an earned privilege of our nation, and he has not earned it. The government should continue taking every lawful step necessary to remove this enemy from the United States," Brooklyn Assemblyman Kalman Yeger seethed.
Speaking with New York Times journalist Ezra Klein on his podcast this week, Khalil, 30, called Oct. 7 a "desperate" moment which Palestinians "had to reach" in order to have their voices heard.
"Unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment," he said, when asked about the attack by the terror group -- which is still holding 50 hostages in Gaza, of whom just about 20 are believed to still be alive.
Donor Stephen Levin is no longer making donations toward his $15 million pledge for naming rights to the Neural and Behavioral Sciences Building, the Daily Pennsylvanian reported. Although he yanked his support in November 2023, it is coming to light this week with the student newspaper article.
"Penn has quietly removed the name of 1967 College graduate Stephen Levin from the behavioral sciences building he previously endowed after the longtime University donor halted his contributions over the administration's handling of antisemitism on campus," the newspaper reported Wednesday.
According to a letter obtained by the Daily Pennsylvanian, Levin had told former President Liz Magill: "Today Penn is far from the University I attended, along with my father and two of my sons."
"Furthermore, I want my name removed from the building and no longer want to be associated with Penn. Penn is an embarrassment not only to the Jewish community but also has lost its luster as a superb Ivy league school."
The City University of New York's York College's Master of Social Work program has eliminated the term "field" from its curriculum, citing its potential to cause trauma for black Americans due to the word's association with slavery.
The decision, detailed in the college's course catalogue, reflects a broader trend among social work programs to adopt inclusive language.
The York College program chose "to create an anti-racism learning environment by adopting alternative terminology in the place of the word 'field,'" its catalogue states.
"The decision was made by the MSW Team due to the term's association with a painful historical era that inflicted significant harm on Black Americans/African Americans during their enslavement in America," it adds.
The Florida commissioner of education is recommending a local school district lose funding totaling the salaries of all its board members following the board's treatment of a father who spoke up at a July 31 meeting.
As reported by Corey DeAngelis on X, Parent Jeremy Clepper (pictured) took his turn during public comment to criticize Alachua County Public Schools Board Chair Sarah Rockwell for her social media comments celebrating the recent death of pro wrestling star Hulk Hogan.
Hogan, a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, died a week ago from a heart attack.
Upon learning of Hogan's passing, Rockwell wrote on Facebook "Oh, did Hulk die? I didn't even know. One less MAGA in the world."
In response to a comment, Rockwell added Hogan "worked with the McMahons to union bust professional wrestling. he's never been a good guy. I feel absolutely nothing about his death."
...
During his time at the mic, Clepper told Rockwell her comments had "cheered for the death of MAGA" and he mocked her apology: "Aren't you a highly educated woman that knows the exact meaning behind her words?"
Clepper concluded by telling the board chair she "should step down," and that she's a "disgusting, vile human being."
A board member took issue with Clepper's remarks and called over a police officer to remove him from the meeting. While he was being escorted out, another board member noted the district's attorney had requested that Clepper not be removed.
But by that time it appeared Clepper was already on his way out of the room.
Many in attendance at the meeting (who were wearing face masks, including Rockwell) were in favor of ejecting Clepper. One can be heard saying "He needs to go," while local "social justice activist" Faye Williams (pictured) screamed over and over "Get out!" and called Clepper a "white supremacist."
...
The commissioner noted since the Alachua Board "failed to ensure free expression of all viewpoints during public comment" he found "probable cause" that state law was violated. As such, Kamoutsas recommended the Florida State Board of Education "withhold from the [Alachua] district an amount equal to the salaries of all board members."
Okay, so it's the district, not the actual school board fascists, losing the amount of the fascists' salaries. It's something, I guess. (I'd say we're punishing the kids rather than the officials but you know most school funding is just wasted anyway.)
An MIT professor says she (of course it's a she) spends one third of all of her working hours fighting "Trump terrorism."
Sounds like MIT should claw back one third of her salary then, doesn't it?
When Professor Catherine D'Ignazio isn't running the "Data + Feminism" lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or organizing "reproductive justice hackathons" she is fighting Donald Trump's "state terrorism."
LOL. So much communist cant.
The urban studies professor, and "data feminism" scholar, recently explained "how U.S. universities can survive state terrorism" in an essay for Academe Blog.
"What distinguishes state terrorism from other routine uses of force is that the violence is designed to 'send a message' --to reverberate out into the population, to engender fear, and to shift behavior," Professor D'Ignazio (pictured) explains.
...
"The Trump administration's strategy conjoins specific instances of threats and violence with widely reported media representations in order to spread fear," the professor wrote. "This is what distinguishes the current violence of the state as terrorist. It is not only a judicial project but also a public relations project and a strategic communications project."
Even "left- and center-leaning" publications like the New York Times play a role in promoting fear, the professor said.
It's no wonder then that one-third of her paid time goes to fighting "state terrorism."
...
"Surviving state terrorism will not be easy," however. "During this period, we must remember that the current project is an elaborate exercise in political theater designed to spread fear, isolation, and division."
"Acts of radical care, everyday courage, and collective action are the most effective antidote to state terrorism."
Wesley Yang
@wesyang
The media celebrated a 17-year old female mathematical prodigy while actively suppressing the fact in the initial report that the girl is actually a boy. It's not hard to do the intersectional math and figure out why the story wasn't framed as a triumph of "transgender inclusion." A weird confluence of different interests at play, among them the fact that 1.) a contagion of trans-identification is ripping through the male nerd population and 2.) STEM and tech are "solving" their gender problems with a burgeoning new cohort of these male nerds who "identify" as a women
1.) We want there to be an inspiring female math prodigy
2.) We have one! But he's a boy.
3.) But trans girls are girls, right? No?
4.) No they aren't.
5.) OK, just leave it out.
Aphorisms like "the early bird gets the worm" are how societies pass wisdom from mouth to ear. What aphorisms people use tell you about their cultural values.
In May, we surveyed 1,122 American adults about common expressions related to free speech and intellectual pluralism. And while the results show some promising potential trends, they also illustrate ways our cultural climate isn't as free speech-friendly as it could be.
Before we go further, a quick pedantic point: It can be argued that many of the sayings in question aren't technically idioms, which are defined as common phrases or expressions that carry symbolic rather than literal meanings -- e.g., "raining cats and dogs," "break the ice," or "by the skin of my teeth." And while we love being pedantic, let's agree to use a looser definition of the term, which can be interchangeable with "expression," "phrase," or "saying," for the sake of this piece.
Um, the word you're searching for is "aphorism."
Do people not know what words mean any longer?
But let's continue:
The FIRE/NORC 2025 Idioms Survey, which was conducted through NORC's AmeriSpeak panel, focused mainly on participants' familiarity with and usage of the following expressions:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
"It's a free country."
"Everyone's entitled to their own opinion."
"Walk a mile in someone else's shoes."
"To each their own."
"Different strokes for different folks."
"Who am I to judge?"
"Address the argument, not the person."
The good news is, recognition of the vast majority of these idioms was generally very high across all participants, ranging from 76 to 85%.
In fact, only 6% of surveyed participants said they hadn't heard any of these expressions before.
But that's the percentage who hadn't heard of all of the aphorisms. More people haven't heard of particular ones.
Given that these particular sayings tend to communicate perspectives that are in favor of "small-D" democratic values like free speech, epistemic humility, and intellectual pluralism, it's a very good thing that people are familiar with them.
The bad news is that, while recognition was high across the board, participants reported both hearing and using these phrases at low numbers.
For each of the selected idioms, 30% of participants or fewer said they heard them used "fairly" or "very" often, and at most only 21% reported using them "fairly" or "very" often themselves.
Even the most well-known phrases still achieved low double-digit results on the survey questions. For example, there are few sayings that would be more helpful for the promotion of free speech culture than "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion," and we'd love for it to be more prevalent in our culture. Unfortunately, only 28% of participants reported hearing this expression either "fairly" or "very" often, and only 21% reported using it at those same levels.
A bet everyone routinely hears about the progressive stack and deplatforming Nazis and fascists and authoritarians, though.
Stanky hoe-ass American women are now getting, get this, tattoos of hair in their armpits so that they always appear hairy and smelly even if they shave.
To be honest, I don't imagine this is a super-popular trend. In fact it might just be this one stanky hoe-ass.
But it's still something that this particular stanky hoe-ass wants to show off on social media and be praised for.
I guess she's trying to Defeat the Male Gaze but I gotta tell you, honey, you're working too hard. God took care of that for ya.
It's totally the children's choice, right? Sex and the City "star" Cynthia Nixon: "My kid is trans, my sister's kids are trans, every kid I know is trans and proud."
Woke "history teacher" wants her kids to know that when Brown People practiced child sacrifice, it was a good, Mostly Peaceful type of child sacrifice, because they just wanted their heathen gods to deliver a good crop and also the children who had their hearts pulled out of their still-heaving chests "volunteered" to be executed.
These teachers are all so intelligent, educated, competent, and mentally healthy that I can't believe we're able to keep them on as teachers for only $100,000 per year, insane benefits and retirement packages, and a work year consisting of just over 180 days out of 365. Surely they could make so much more money as aerospace engineers and mathematicians specializing in higher-dimensional topography.
Ohh my god it’s true, Democrat Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is giving $30,000 to each illegal migrant family to help them move into homes
Maura Healey is shifting shelter costs to the state’s HomeBASE program. The program provides rental assistance to migrant families,… pic.twitter.com/yy4CyhcwK8
Judge Gives Leftwing Thugs a Hunting License to Beat Down Elderly Pro-Choice Protesters on the Street
—Ace
Josh Hawley
@HawleyMO
Some thug brutally assaults two elderly prolife demonstrators -- shoves one to the ground and beats him, all on camera -- and gets "home detention" for a sentence from a liberal judge. This is not justice. This is open season on prolife Americans
It's okay. This thug beating the shit out of a senior citizen "just snapped" and was having a "bad day."
Obviously black thugs -- or antifa paramilitaries, or other leftwing scum -- are allowed to give Street Reparations to any elderly white people they decided to beat nearly to death on the street. It's what they're owed because of George Floyd.
The Regime is making its last mistake when it calculates that half of the country will voluntarily agree to become a state-declared Prey Species for leftwing predators.
The corrupt woke Regime will not survive Two-Tier Policing. The public will not accept it.
This ain't the UK.
A 28-year-old man who was caught on video attacking two pro-life activists outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Baltimore was sentenced this week to a year of home detention and three years of probation.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant rebuffed prosecutors' calls for a 10-year sentence against Patrick Brice, 28, after he was found guilty of two counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment in relation to the May 2023 incident, according to The Baltimore Banner.
"What about my rights and my well-being?" one of the victims in the attack, Mark Crosby -- who was 73 years old at the time -- reportedly shouted at Bryant on Thursday as she left the bench.
Brice said on May 26, 2023, he intended to debate Richard Schaefer -- the other victim, who was 84 -- about the concept of sin outside the Planned Parenthood facility, but then lost it after Schaefer made what he perceived to be a racial remark, The Baltimore Banner reported. Surveillance video showed Brice shoving Schaefer into a flowerpot and then assaulting Crosby when he rushed to his aid.
"I just snapped one day," Brice was quoted by The Baltimore Banner as saying in court Thursday before apologizing to both men.
As part of his sentence, Brice must complete anger management classes, undergo drug and alcohol screening and remain in therapy, the website added.
It also said Crosby suffered permanent damage to his right eye as a result of the assault.
"This was not a minor altercation between two parties with differing views on abortion. It was a vicious, targeted assault on two senior citizens whose only 'offense' was praying for expectant mothers and offering life-affirming alternatives to abortion," Tom Brejcha, the President and Chief Counsel of the conservative law firm Thomas More Society, said in a statement.
"One of the victims was knocked unconscious. The other suffered broken facial bones and a lifelong eye impairment. This was an act of cowardice and cruelty, and sheer mayhem. This crime deserves far more serious consequences than a 'get out of jail free' card and a one-year home detention that amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist," he added.
I'm not going to shy away from this any longer. Is my take racial? Yes it is. But the story is racial.
There is clearly a belief among members of the left, including many black politicians and judges, that black people should essentially be immunized from prosecution so long as they're doing the important Violent Street Justice work of beating up white people.
We need to be clear: Whatever you hallucinated happening in the George Floyd case, no, you do not have the legal right to lynch white people on the street because you were "having a bad day."
The Media and a Mob in Cincinnati
The racial narrative leads major news organizations to ignore a violent attack on two white people.
When a mob violently attacked two people in downtown Cincinnati last week, video of the beat-down spread across social media. But not a single major television network covered the story. It didn't fit the mainstream media's narrative about racial violence in America. The victims were white, and as of Wednesday police had arrested six black suspects for their alleged roles in the public pummeling.
Today's media seems to conflagrate over violence only when the perpetrator is white and the victim is black. Then the cameras roll, protests erupt, and hashtags fly. But when the races are reversed, the mainstream media buries the incident or ignores it entirely. The same is true of black-on-black violence.
Consider the tragic case of Ariana Delane, the 4-year-old niece of George Floyd, who was shot and wounded while sleeping beside her grandmother as gunfire hit their apartment. Despite the horror of her story, it received nowhere near the national attention that followed her uncle's death. Both the girl and Floyd deserved to live in peace, yet there is national outrage when a black man is killed at the hands of police but silence when black children are the collateral victims of the senseless violence plaguing our cities every day.
During a 2018 spike in violent incidents against Asian-Americans, journalists mostly ignored that blacks were the most frequent perpetrators. The truth would have broken the media's worldview that black Americans are always innocent victims.
This racial gerrymandering of the facts mirrors the very injustices the media claim to hate in American history. In the Jim Crow South, if a black man committed an offense against another black man, he would face few consequences, if any--especially if the perpetrator worked for an influential white figure. Meanwhile, a black man who allegedly harmed a white person would face swift and brutal retribution. One hundred years later, we have flipped the script.
We teach our children that to be black is to be permanently victimized and that to be white is to be perpetually guilty.
Americans should renounce any schema in which one race is guilty and another innocent. That is the path to national ruin. Only if we disregard race in how we judge one another will we be able to address the real crisis in society: the spiritual and moral free-fall given to us by identity politics.
As the mainstream media chatters about systemic racism, our young people are dying of bullets, drugs, and despair. Atlanta saw 47 people shot and five killed over four days in July. Homicide and suicide are leading causes of death for 15- to 19-year-olds, and teen drug overdose deaths are still way up from before the pandemic. When our young are bombarded with claims that they live in a fundamentally racist society and that they are powerless pawns of systemic forces beyond their control, how can we expect them to have hope, to believe in moral agency, to work with others with grace and compassion toward a better world?
A history professor said she generally supports President Donald Trump's interest in promoting health but criticized his plan to revive the Presidential Fitness Test.
Don't buy this jive turkey's jive that she supports Trump's health initiatives generally. You'll see.
"Trump is reviving an outdated and problematic practice for American schoolkids," reads the headline of Professor Natalia Petrzela's recent essay for MSNBC.
...
Petrzela criticized the appearance of a WWE wrestler, Paul Levesque, at the press conference.
"The swaggering, solo, white machismo is obvious -- and about as far a cry as it gets from Beyoncé dancing with a cafeteria full of New York City schoolkids to promote the Obamas' program," The New School professor wrote. "And of course, the WWE is primarily an entertainment franchise, not an athletic one, a fact that is both perfectly on brand for the Trump administration and further suggests this effort might be more show than substance."
1, of course you're yammering about Beyonce, who is the only person anyone is allowed to look up to because she's black and a feminist.
2, you just objected to including a WWE wrestler because he's in the entertainment business, not athletics -- and then you immediately praise Beyonce, a singing whore with more plastic in her than a 1984 Corvette, as a great athletic hero for children.
I'm serious about this -- are all professors, you know, actually retarded now? Are they incapable of following their own line of argument within a single paragraph?
"I too am deeply concerned about the lack of exercise among American children and adults, and am thrilled this is an administration priority," she wrote.
Oh yeah, obviously. Big fan. It's so apparent.
But the professor also criticized Trump for not focusing on an "inclusive" approach to sports like that of President John F. Kennedy.
"Gone is JFK's emphasis on inclusive, publicly funded recreation," she wrote. "And, crucially, JFK supported vaccines and Medicare."
That's her idea of "inclusive health initiatives" -- injections and subsidies.
I wanted to warn all of you about this, because I know my readership tends to be good-looking and fit and getting all kinds of GAINZZZ.
Since President Donald Trump's return to the White House, I've noticed a steady stream of rhetoric that attempts to make health and fitness partisan.
If you're fit and enjoy working out (or even sport a tan), chances are there's a progressive who will eye you with suspicion of being MAGA.
t's an extreme example of the "if-Trump-is-for-it, we-must-be-adamantly-against-it" mentality that has infected the left.
To borrow a phrase from former Democratic vice presidential contender Tim Walz, it's weird.
...
The rise in obesity and the decline in health is especially disheartening when it comes to the country's kids.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2024 report, about 20% of children are obese (2 in 5 adults are obese). That's a sharp increase from when childhood obesity rates were 5% in the 1970s.
Not only is this a national health concern, it's a national security one, as Trump acknowledges in his executive order.
The CDC report found that only 2 in 5 young adults are weight-eligible and active enough to serve in the military.
Yet, Trump's commonsense approach to boost fitness was met with consternation among media progressives.
"Trump is reviving an outdated and problematic practice for American schoolkids," proclaimed MSNBC.
"Generations of Americans who struggled to complete a pull-up in front of their classmates winced as President Trump announced that he was reinstating the annual assessment," The New York Times opined.
Leftists also have thoughts about fitness for adults and what it says about conservatism.
Earlier this year, fitness influencer MaryBeth Monaco-Vavrik posted a video that went viral connecting the "popularization of Pilates & running instead of strength training ... and the rise of extreme American authoritarianism." She also equated conservatism with "smaller bodies."
It may surprise you to learn that this woman is conventionally fit. But she's using her own fitness to sell obesity and ill-health to leftwing women.
Men, on the other hand, must avoid looking too manly and the trap of toxic masculinity and the "manosphere," which liberals tell us have flourished under Trump. For instance, actor Sacha Baron Cohen's appearance on the August cover of Men's Fitness UK sparked criticism over his newly chiseled body.
One headline said his physique "is repellent to most women."
...
In 2024, a columnist in The Guardian warned, "There is a dark side to wellness, which I always, for shorthand, thought of as political: getting fit makes you more rightwing."
And now, enjoying sunshine and getting a tan could mark you as a MAGA fanatic. After all, Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sport a perennial bronze shade.
As The Atlantic recently observed: "Tanning is back. Only this time, it's not just about looking good -- it's about embracing an entire ideology."
Absolutely vile lunatics.
I've been getting some GAINZZZ. I've stuck to vigorous walking (so long as it's not 100 degrees outside or p*ssing rain).
An analysis of over 36,000 people with high blood pressure has shown that taking more steps, even below the recommended daily target of 10,000 steps, and walking faster, is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of major problems of the heart and blood vessels.
The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that compared to a daily step count of 2,300 steps, every extra 1,000 steps was linked to a 17% reduction in the risk of developing a major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE), up to 10,000 steps. Additional steps above 10,000 were associated with a lower risk of stroke.
...
Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, Director of the Mackenzie Wearables Research Hub at the University of Sydney, Australia, who supervised the study, said, "This study is one of the first to demonstrate a dose-response relationship between daily step count and major problems of the heart and blood vessels.
"In a nutshell, we found that, if you live with high blood pressure, the more you walk with greater intensity, the lower your risk for future serious cardiovascular events.
By the way, the leftwing propaganda media is continuing its five-days-old psyop claiming that only a few "online weirdos" pushed the Sydney Sweeney White Supremacy meme, so rightwingers are the ones really "obsessed" with it and must stop blaming Democrats.
They claimed that progressives were up in arms over the intentional double-entendre with the word "genes," suggesting it was winking at eugenics or white supremacy.
In reality, most progressives weren't worked up much at all.
Criticism of the ad campaign had come almost entirely from a smattering of accounts with relatively few followers, according to an analysis of social media data by The New York Times.
A "smattering of accounts with relatively few followers."
One video accusing the brand of Nazis got four million views.
Initial reactions were largely apolitical, though some progressives criticized the ad's sexual overtones while some on the right applauded a return to "traditional advertising" in what they viewed as a step away from more diverse representations. But on the fringes of sites including TikTok and X, some users began suggesting that the campaign had a more subtle and menacing message tied to eugenics: that blond, blue-eyed looks are somehow superior.
One video getting four million views is "the fringes of TikTok"?
"She has good jeans like she has good GENES! hahahaha like in a nazi way!!" stated a July 25 post on X that drew over five million views. The next day, a video on TikTok that also made a comparison to Nazism drew 3.5 million views.
So who's to blame for this misrepresentation of the sane and sober left forming a slavering cancel mob over nothing at all? Who is the guilty party in spreading this RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION about leftwing influencers and drama-farmers shrieking about White Supremacy for going on three weeks?
Would you believe... it's all Libs of TikTok's fault?
Again?
The tide began to shift on July 27, when large right-wing accounts such as Libs of TikTok began reposting critiques of the American Eagle campaign, mocking them as examples of "triggered" liberals. "Keep this up Democrats," posted the account, which is run by a woman named Chaya Raichik and has 4.3 million followers on X. "This is going to be great for you guys."
BTW, you see once again that all of the NPCs say the same thing. First someone says it on Slate or New Republic, then Rolling Stone says the same thing, then the NYT says the same thing. Once one of these idiots is infected with the Retarded Meme of the Day, they're all repeating it verbatim within hours.
They're liars. For one thing, it wasn't "just a few online weirdos," it was dozens of prominent" influencers, and we know that female and minority influencers strongly influence the Democrat Party.
And of course, the leftwing media itself pushed it hard:
YMCA, huh? Might as well be dancing to the Horst Wessel Leid, nein?
Strom comments:
This version of sexuality is innocent in the way that Tracey and Hepburn movies were, which is to say they are and are not. They are suggestive, but only because we recognize the unspoken and unseen. They are red-blooded, not pornographic in the way that the alphabet crowd is.
The reason why the left is going nuts over them is that they are not Queer. They celebrate the differences between the sexes, at least implicitly.
This trend is not really a rebirth of the old ways, but a symbol that the left can no longer suppress the natural exuberance that comes from healthy human relations.
Below: One of those very few "online weirdos" tricked into making a big deal about nothing by the Twitter Sorceress Libs of TikTok.
Trump critic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is a no-show boss from hell who terrorizes staffers, aides say: 'All diva, no wow'
Rep. Jasmine Crockett has positioned herself as an unfiltered critic of President Trump, earning regular TV appearances and an enthusiastic online following, but congressional aides tell The Post that the Dallas Democrat is just as "rude" and mean to her own staff.
A narcissist treats "the little people" with contempt. Pretty standard.
...
But three sources who have worked with or for Crockett say she's rarely present when TV cameras aren't rolling -- and terrorizes staff when she does appear.
Crockett is not often found at her government-provided suite in the Longworth House Office Building, with one insider saying she prefers to work from her nearby luxury apartment building, sometimes for weeks on end.
"She is laying around her apartment, won't come into the office, and is really just indifferent to staff and will scream at them," the former aide said.
"She is never in the office and is very disengaged. She does her bulls-- that goes viral, and then freaks out over the most random things."
A second source close to Crockett's team added: "It is widely known that she's not nice to staff and is just not a really dedicated member focused on constituents."
"She is focused almost exclusively on being an influencer, not a member of Congress," said a third source who has worked with Crockett, describing her as "all diva, no wow."
When Crockett does show up for work on Capitol Hill -- often to attend a committee hearing where she deploys a made-for-social-media attack on Trump -- she prefers to have a staff member drive her the short distance to her office in a rented car rather than the staffer's own, a cheaper option commonly used by lawmakers.
The staffer is expected to stand outside the vehicle, which "has to be an Escalade" or similar upscale make, and open the door for her.
"You're technically allowed to do this but it's wildly inefficient. Instead of using the scheduler's car, she rents a car every week in DC," one source said.
"She expects her staff to drive her around while she's in the back seat," they added, calling it a "power play" akin to "treating the staffer like an Uber driver."
She called Marjorie Taylor-Greene "butch" in a committee meeting, which is trashy and ratchet, obviously, but which is also, in today's Hyper-Gay Democrat Party, "homophobic," as lesbians are sometimes called butch.
I have never been more proud of Jasmine Ratchet:
Complaints poured in from lesbians who objected to Crockett's derogatory use of the term "butch" to attack Greene, which even left some aides uneasy.
"She told her gay staff members, 'That's not offensive. You're stupid if you think so,'" a former aide recounted to the Post.
LOL. But also, typical narcissist stuff. I can do no wrong, if it appears that I have done something wrong, it's just your stupid inferior brain hallucinating.
...
Crockett has burned through employees at such a pace that she's becoming known as a present-day version of the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), long called the Capitol's toughest boss.
A number of staff have become fed up with their treatment, while others have either been fired or left on their own -- a distinction often difficult to discern in Washington.
Some former aides cited fear of retribution when declining to participate in this story.
"She thinks she's her own best adviser, she knows best, and has this toxic staff environment," a source said. "She gets rid of press people because she's like, 'I do all of the press stuff.'"
...
"The staff is really just an island unto itself, because she doesn't care about the local issues happening in her district," this person added. "She's more focused on, 'Get me on "The View," 'Get me on this late-night talk show.'
Greg Foreman points out an amusing clip that demonstrates Ratchet's narcissism and belief that she is the Star of the Movie.
She was speaking in a group of a runaway Democrat legislators. But you know how the main act always goes last? You can have opening acts and middle acts but the band that closes the night is the big draw.
Well, Jasmine Ratchet was determined that she would be the Closer, the Star, of this propaganda opportunity, but other Democrats did not agree she should be the closer.
But she kept insisting she was the closer and no one could speak after her.
Compilation of Naked Gun intros That theme gets me charged. Compilation of all Police Squad! openings. They're all the same except for the last few seconds where they reveal the Special Guest Star and the title(s).
Lost 90s Mystery Click: College Radio Edition
Well you look fantastic in your cast-off casket
At least the thing still runs
This nine to five bullshit don't let you forget
Whose suicide you're on.
Also: You wax poetic about things pathetic
As long as you look so cute
Believe these hills are starting to roll
Believe these stars are starting to shoot
Podcast: In the last Episode of the season CBD and J.J. Sefton chat about Texas Gerrymandering, The Islamist who is about to be the mayor of NYC, Jim Acosta's ghoulish interview, Israel needs a new strategy for Gaza, and more!
I'm frankly surprised the title is 107 Days. I would have thought it would be:
Days Are Important:The Amount of Days Was a Number and That Number Was 100 Plus 7 Which is 107. 107. One Hundred and Seven. It's a Memoir and Memoirs are About Remembering Things Because Remembering Things is Good. Not Bad. Good. Memoir. A Memoir. Like a Reservoir But With Memory. We Have to Let it Flow. We Have to Let It Flow Into the Reservoir of Our Mind and Our Heart. Our Heart Which is the Beating Heart of Not Just Our Blood, But Our Progress. And Our People. And Democracy. The End.
Soft weak poop from the early 80s Mystery Click I never liked this song, but it is memorable. In a weak, annoying way. The kid's in shock up and down the block
The folks are home playing beat the clock
Down at the golden cup
They set the young ones up
Under the neon light
Selling day for night
It's alright
Nobody rides for free (nobody, nobody)
Nobody gets it like they want it to be (nobody, nobody)
Nobody hands you any guarantee (nobody, nobody)
Nobody
Former CIA operative John Kiriakou talks with Matt Taibbi about the Brennan/Comey Coup Both guys are old liberals, maybe even of the far-left variety, and both are appalled by the Democrat/Deep State coup against the US. Kiriakou says that CIA officers were legally obligated to report to the Inspector General John Brennan's repeated overruling of actual intelligence to encode his partisan conspiracy theories into US intel product, but of course they didn't.
Podcast: Israel protects the Druze, and Western Culture, Tulsi Gabbard is tenacious, NYC's mayoral race is a catastrophe, The Democrat Lying Machine, and more!
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