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
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
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 8-9-2026 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (party's over, pal!). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...
So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
The House of Commons of the British Parliament tends to grab most of the headlines, but it's worth remembering that the British Parliament is a bicameral system. The House of Lords is the "upper chamber" of Parliament, consisting of around 770 members. Like the House of Commons, it plays an important role in legislative affairs, even if that role is largely behind the scenes in government. Unsurprising for an organization that has been around for many centuries, its procedures and traditions are arcane to outsiders. The House of Lords has its own dedicated library in which they can look up previous laws and statutes that may be relevant to current legislation. I suppose they tend to serve more in an advisory role to the King and the House of Commons in that respect, rather than a hands-on legislative body that gets things done--that seems to be the role of the House of Commons.
FEATURED MORON REVIEW
Biden's Dog sent in the following review:
The Curtain Falls: Last Days of the Third Reich (1945) is a short firsthand memoir by Count Folke Bernadotte*, the well-known Swedish diplomat and vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross.
Bernadotte recounts his negotiations from mid-February to late April 1945 with the highest ranking Nazis in Germany, including Himmler. His initial humanitarian mission was to secure the release and transport of Scandinavian (mainly Danish and Norwegian) prisoners from Nazi concentration camps to neutral Sweden for internment until the war's end.
The book details his repeated missions and meetings amid the collapsing Third Reich. It vividly describes the chaotic, surreal atmosphere in the final weeks before Germany's surrender. What began as a rescue effort took on political weight when Himmler, acting without Hitler's knowledge, used Bernadotte to convey a late, desperate offer of partial surrender to the Allies.
The account is based on Bernadotte's own notes and reports. Such rescues ultimately saved thousands, including Scandinavians, Poles, and others. It was published shortly after the war and remains a notable primary source on this period.
The book is an easy read, small in size and 155 pages long. It is a straightforward wartime memoir rather than a broad history. The book is illustrated with 10 black and white photos of most of the characters involved.
----
* On September 17, 1948, Count Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem by Israel's LEHI (the Stern Gang) group. LEHI viewed Bernadotte as biased toward the Arabs and a threat due to his mediation proposals on Jerusalem and territorial limits for the Jews. At the time, future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir was one of the LEHI's leaders and approved of the assassination plan.
The Israeli provisional government, under David Ben-Gurion, strongly condemned the act as a "low, dastardly crime." So, too, did Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun/ETZEL. Begin publicly called for those responsible to be found and brought to justice.
++++++++++
++++++++++
READING ON PAPER REWIRES YOUR BRAIN
I thought the video above was an excellent overview of how reading paper-based materials affects our brains. Apparently we are hard-wired to show marked improvement in retention and comprehension by reading paper books rather than digital books. This makes a lot of sense. As a species we've been reading paper-based materials for millennia. We've only been reading digital materials for a few decades at most. No doubt our brains have evolved or been shaped by our environment to prioritize gathering information from paper-based materials.
I thought the "one book effect" was very interesting because it demonstrates the power that just ONE BOOK in a home can have on a child's education and upbringing. Most of you reading this blog no doubt grew up in a home filled with books. I know I sure did. So I can't even conceive of a home that doesn't have at least one book in it. It's an alien concept to me.
As someone who works in the education industry, I was also struck by the point that reading complex material in printed format was better for you than reading it in digital format. I know that whenever I'm tasked with reading an academic journal article, I prefer to print it out and THEN go through it with a fine-toothed comb to understand it. I do find that I retain the information better and can spend time wrestling with the complicated materials until I understand it more fully. It also helps me whenever I'm writing a paper because I can spread out journal articles around me and sort them into piles that are "relevant" and "irrelevant." It's easy to tell at a glance which articles are most important to supporting the thesis of my paper.
The "dimensionality" aspect of reading printed materials also seems to have a direct impact on how much we retain and comprehend. Again, the fact that I can pick up a weighty tome of knowledge and tell at a glance how much I have left to read is immensely helpful to me. Even when reading for pleasure (which is most of my reading), I absolutely LOVE to have the physical book over a digital version. I engage most of my senses -- sight, hearing (turning the pages), touch, and even smell -- to enjoy the story. I can go back and forth within the book, easily holding my place with a bookmark or finger, while I look up a term in the glossary or flip back to a map/illustration that's relevant to what I'm reading at the moment. I have a much harder time with that experience when reading digital versions. I've noticed that digital books do attempt to replicate the physical book reading experience with digital pages that simulate physical paper, "page turning" animations that simulates a real book, and even adding a "page turning" noise.
I know a lot of you folks enjoy reading on a digital device, which does have a lot of advantages, especially for older folks who may struggle to read physical books these days. Audiobooks are also a very common alternative these days. Maybe someday the data will show a different story as future generations adapt to reading/comprehending in digital media. Of course, there's also the problem of long-term storage of digital media over time. Physical books can last for hundreds or even thousands of years. Will we still be able to read a digital copy of The Odyssey a thousand years from now?
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
WHAT I'VE BEEN READING RECENTLY
I'm continuing my trek through the Dune Expanded Universe books written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. They're better than I'd been led to believe, but then some folks tend to be "purists" when it comes to canon. I can understand that. That might be a topic for future Sunday Morning Book Thread.
Legends of Dune: The Machine Crusade Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Humanity is finally striking back at the overmind Omnius, who has ruled over a significant portion of humanity for millennia. Unfortunately, they are unable to establish a decisive victory over their AI overlords. Vorian Atreides, the son of the cymek Agamemnon, has defected to the side of humanity and now fights for their freedom, using his knowledge of the Titans to undermine their authority.
Herbert and Anderson are clearly using this war as a backdrop to establish the various factions that play a key role in the original Dune series. We see the seeds of the Mentats, human computers who use their mental abilities to calculate probabilities of events. Norma Cenva immerses herself within "spice gas," which is essential for creating the Navigators that allow ships to travel safely through folded spacetime.
This series is a bit odd in that the "foldspace" drive is essential to the Dune universe, being the main faster-than-light travel mechanism. However, before the foldspace drive is perfected, humans clearly had some alternate form of faster-than-light travel because it only takes weeks or months to travel from planet to planet. Herbert and Anderson are deliberately vague about how this older FTL drive works, which I think undercuts the story a bit.
Legends of Dune: The Battle of Corrin by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Humanity has driven Omnius back to a single planet after humans have bombarded all of the overmind's other world with "atomics," turning them into radioactive cinders. But once again they are at a stalemate as humanity is unable to penetrate Corrin's planetary defenses. Omnius conspires with a human traitor to unleash a virulent plague on the human worlds, which threatens to wipe out humanity.
Once again we see the seeds of the future Dune universe being sown here. This time the women who will one day be known as the Bene Gesserit unlock the keys to the future, which will one day result in the Kwisatz Haderach that will save humanity from itself.
Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Sisterhood of Dune picks up about eighty years after the conclusion of The Battle of Corrin. The overmind Omnius has been defeated once and for all, but the universe is still turbulent. The Butlerian Jihad is still gathering strength and their leader Manford Torondo is determined to wipe out technology, even benign technology such as advences in medical science, because reliance on technology is what led humans to being dominated by artificial intelligence for millennia. Emperor Salvador Corrino is a weak ruler, under the thrall of Manford's Butlerian Jihad, and unable to stand up to the mobs who are tearing his Empire apart. The Sisterhood (which will one day become the Bene Gesserit) have discovered a terrible secret about the Corrino bloodline. But they are also being torn apart by the sisters who have fallen under the sway of the Butlerian Jihad.
This book was better than I thought it would be. Manford Torondo is a zealous fanatic that you love to hate because he's such an insufferable prick. I can't hardly wait to see how he finally gets his comeuppance in later books. This series is meant to show the divide between those who embrace technology and want to see civilization advance and those who prefer to tear it down because they believe that technology/science is the cause of all mankind's woes. It's explicitly mentioned that Manford's group may not be satisfied until they've outlawed fire of all things.
Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.
Disclaimer: The Earth is neither flat nor round. It's shaped like a burrito.
Not foolish enough to use an online database? No problem, rest assured that you have your personal registered with someone who was foolish enough.
(I have received three emails so far from companies using Metabase in various ways to let me know they had been hacked and my personal data was out in the wild... Again.)
A gynecologist noticed that his new patient seemed a little nervous, so he decided to lighten the mood.
As he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, he smiled and asked, "Do you know how these gloves are made?"
The woman shook her head. "No, I don't."
The doctor said, "There's a factory in Mexico where people with all different hand sizes dip their hands into liquid latex. They let it dry, then peel the latex off their hands, and that's how the gloves are made."
The woman didn't smile. She just stared at him with a blank expression...
The doctor thought his little joke had completely fallen flat.
A few seconds later, however, she suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter.
Curious, the doctor asked, "What's so funny?"
Still laughing, she wiped away a tear and replied, "I'm sorry, Doctor... I was just imagining how they make condoms!"
-----
A woman is pregnant, and is practically 9 months along. She goes to see her doctor for a routine check-up.
She asks, "What if the baby starts coming, and I can't get to the hospital in time?"
The doctor replies, "Well, women have been having babies for a million years without a doctor in attendance. It's a very natural process. The first thing you do is to assume the same position you were laying in when you got pregnant."
The blonde interrupts with, "Do you mean with the left foot in the glove compartment and the right foot hanging out the window?"
Cycling's newest performance enhancer isn't in a syringe - but in a sports bra.
Accusations of padded bras that can give women's Tour de France competitors an aerodynamic advantage are flying through the cycling world as breast and cup size bizarrely gets debated and even complaints get filed.
Dutch news outlet Wielerflits reported that several complaints have come in from women's WorldTeams about female cyclists allegedly exploiting their breast size by faking a larger cup size to use more padding in their bras during time trials.
In complaints made to the UCI, teams want female padded bra inspectors to come in and check the riders in a closed tent to "ensure they are not hiding anything in their bras or under their aero clothing."
In unrelated news, Club ONT will be installing a tent out back shortly. Apologies for the inconvenience during installation.
An Alberta man said a marmot he found investigating the inside of his garage had apparently stowed away in his car for a 75-mile trip.
Chris Ratzlaff said his child alerted him to the presence of a large rodent in the family's Airdrie garage last week.
"It was hiding in a corner, and at first I thought it was maybe a porcupine, so I left the garage door open for it to leave," Ratzlaff told CTV News. "When it left, we could see that it was a marmot."
He said the marmot had apparently stowed away on a recent 75-mile drive from Kananaskis.
AOP - is that you?
*****
Club ONT Half-Time Entertainment
Hard to believe that synchronized walking is a thing, but here we are.
The Klein Tools 250th Edition Diagonal Cutting Pliers have a red, white, and blue colorway on the handles, with red and white on one and blue and white on the other. Functionally, however, these are the same Journeyman handles that Klein Tools customers will be familiar with. Klein complements the special colors with a laser-etched legend that states "250 USA Est. 1776" on the jaws, alongside a stylized version of Stars and Stripes above it.
Free lifetime restroom token to any Hordeling with video evidence of using a pair of these to cut wires of a Flock camera.
*****
Club ONT Jukebox
Let's spin some 90s stuff tonight!
*****
Top 10ish Comments of the Week
*****
Club ONT is brought to you by: Club regulars
*****
Handle with care. Whelming should only be attempted for educational, informational and entertainment purposes. Whelming is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you become over or underwhelmed, consider seeking the advice of your physician, pharmacist, or other qualified healthcare provider. Whelming dosage, side effects, interactions, or suitability for your individual health condition vary.
Music Thread: A Little Of This...A Littler Of That!
—CBD
From Garrett's Disco phase!
***
I remember Lyle Lovett from the 1990s, And he has been an occasional presence on my various music lists since then. But I was reminded just how good he is last weekend at a friend's house, when he played a couple of Lovett songs I hadn't heard in a very long time, and in fact had forgotten!
That was a mistake. He is a fine singer, a fine guitar player, and a fine songwriter.
I don't know much about him other than his obvious talent. I don't know his politics or his sexuality or gender or favorite color...and I like it that way.
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. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling lucky and decided on a random car theme for this Hobby Thread.
The second week of August on the Monterey Peninsula in California is typically known as "Car Week." The automotive world gathers for a week of car shows, vintage car races, new car unveiling, car auctions, and generally a celebration of almost anything with four wheels. Several major events anchor the festivities including the historic vintage races at Laguna Seca Raceway and the Pebble Beach Concours. Seventeen mile drive and PCH down to Big Sur are popular venues for driving tours. If you're the buying and selling sort, several world-class auctions are happy to help place cars of distinction with new homes.
Some events are ultra exclusive. Of course, you can also sit by the roadside and get a free parade of amazing machinery.
In that spirit, we'll do a theme of random cars.
What is the most random or quirky car you've ever owned?
What is the most random or quirky car experience you've had (with your clothes on)? What is the dream car that you always wanted? Did you grow up seeing concept cars at auto shows and wondering whether those would become real?
***
What are you hobbying?
Cars may not be everyone's favorite but give the content a chance before you judge. Any car or car-adjacent hobbying is in scope (such as small scale collecting or model building), so jump in with your interests, stories and questions.
In any event, the thread is not limited to to the theme. Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. Even if the theme does not speak to you, you might learn something or be entertained. If not, find something else or offer something else relating to hobbying. If all of that fails, just check in and say hello.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants? Nope. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
***
***
If we're talking random, might as well start with an amphibious car.
Anyone ever own one? Drive one in the water?
***
Let's do some high dollar auction window shopping at one of the Monterey auctions. Monterey auctions often feature cars rarely seen or sold. Click on each for more photos and the full listing.
1948 Tucker - 19th made. Only 47 examples survive of the 51 made. Tuckers are mostly in museums and are rarely up for sale. Estimate $1m-$1.3m.
1968 Chevrolet L88 Corvette - class winner at the 1972 24 Hours of LeMans and third overall at the 1973 24 Hours of Daytona. Estimate $900k-$1.1m.
1963 Corvette Grand Sport - One of five race cars built - extensively raced in 1964 and 1965. Estimate $11m-$13m.
1996 McLaren F1 GTR - racing version of the F1 road car. Formerly owned by Nick Mason. Estimate in excess of $35m.
1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante - Best of Show at the 1976 Pebble Beach Concours. Estimate $4.5m-$6m.
2013 Dallara DW12 - winner of the 2013 Indy 500 (but being sold without a drivetrain). Estimate $900k-$1.2m.
***
***
Gotta love a car known as the "Thing":
***
Auto Union has a wild history. It was a German automotive group formed in 1932 through the merger of four manufacturers: Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer. The sporty Auto Union 1000 Sp was produced by Auto Union in West Germany from the late 1950s into the mid-1960s. It is one of the last models to use the "Auto Union" name before the brand evolved into modern Audi. If you squint, it kinda looks like a mid 1950's Ford Thunderbird, doesn't it? Hmmm...
***
Stainless steel and angular long before the Cybertruck...
***
How did Ford make Model A cars in 1928-1931?
***
Racing Trabants? Tell me this doesn't look like fun. Such an irony to have so much fun with cars that were an illustration for all that was wrong with East Germany. Now, they're nostalgic and have very enthusiastic and dedicated fans.
***
Did you know there is a sub-genre of cars that use airplane engines? That requires a particular type of mad scientist/evil genius. Naturally, Jay Leno has a few. This one is even more special than that. It has an enormous 18.8 liter 6 cylinder Benz airplane engine joined to a Mercedes truck chassis. It was built in 1921 in England and joined the two brands before they formally joined together in corporate life (in 1926). As Jay says in this video, "It really is just a low-flying aircraft."
If you watch nothing else, watch a few minutes starting at the 4 minute mark with Jimmy and the brass water jackets. Interesting design and impressive craftsmanship.
***
Non-automotive related. If you're not building a supersonic trebuchet in your backyard, are you even really hobbying?
Only posted a day ago and already over a million views. My favorite comment to the video: "Man throws a rock. Man happy"
Wisdom for the 'ettes - men are not complicated creatures. Frustrating perhaps, but not complicated.
***
Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a shed theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Notable comments from last week:
***
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).
***
Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.
Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.
The crow solved a brand new three-step puzzle in 30 seconds to get a bedtime snack! He even had time to make sure he didn't miss any cashews. That's really amazing! 🐦⬛👏 pic.twitter.com/scPn2mZfre
— Nature is Phenomenal (@AnimalGeoLife) July 31, 2026
How is Ace getting along with his crow friends, anyway?
My two young cats, Sejong the Maine Coon looking boy, and Becca the tabby calico.
And the two together with Magic, my big black Bombay tomcat who turns it all into a weird love triangle
Kindltot
Well, the trio seem to get along well. Handsome cats.
* * *
&&&
Our pretty girl was with us for almost 12 years, October 6, 2014 - August 5, 2026
It was unexpected. I’ve included pictures of Destiny - one of the first pictures I have of her and also the last one. She was very sick but her tail would wag when we talked to her.
Brett from Illinois
So sorry you have lost your treasured, charming Destiny. Thanks for letting us get to know her a little. Stay in touch.
* * *
The kids were down from Ottawa for a wedding and Arthur the Pot Cake Pooch got to hang out with his "Grandparents". I'm personally not fond of the term, but there you go.
Getting some sun
Don't let Grandma catch you in her tomatoes
Don't let Grandma catch you on the furniture
Buzzy Krumhunger
Canadian Moron
Thanks for sending in the photos demonstrating your stern rules for Arthur. He looks like a wonderful dog.
* * *
Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
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 have had the strangest experience with a tomato plant. The thing is more than 5 feet tall. At first I had no flowers. Now is covered with at least a couple dozen tomatoes although one red yet. Also the poblano and jalapeño I planted in the same pot now resemble a tree. A bird landed on it the other day. Just starting to get poblanos but already made a batch of pickled jalapeños. This will probably be the first time the purchase price yielded enough to make it worth the price.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
Sharon (Willow's Apprentice)
*
*
Any advice about those lanky container plants?
The tomatoes look good in close-up.
*
Nature
The pink pigeon from Mauritius bounced back from near extinction through careful conservation. pic.twitter.com/80AgrmuUIa
I appreciate this forest for giving my camera a perfect framing for this tiny island. This was taken with my old galaxy note 10, so it's a bit oversharpened but I still like it. pic.twitter.com/6qzyZeMgUu
Hi, KT . . . been a while, eh? Saw these on the way to the maildrop - they're YUUGE! … so I 'whipped out' the trusty iPhone and captured these, 'cos I knew next time I passed they'd be gone or look really bad. At this point they're still identifiable as 'shrooms - but prolly not edible. Maybe Alice ate some like this . . . ? We may - or, not - get some rain Sunday. We need it, 'cos it's really dry here in TN. There are 'no burn' warnings in a lot of areas, and that (if we don't get rain tomorrow) might postpone some Father's Day Q-offs. I'm going with my daughter and her family to have Mexican food around 11oo. Youngest Grandson has to be at work at the lab by 1600, so it'll be a short visit, but it'll be good. Thanks again for all the great posts 'n pictures each week. If you can use this, please deploy as usual with Front Toward Viewer . . .
Dr_No
Lovely presentation of this subject!
And Moth Week has just passed:
Hi, KT … In 2020, this moth ‘in extremis’ happened to land on the wall by the porch door of my apartment in Cordova. I couldn’t startle it or surprise it, so it may already have passed into Moth Heaven or still been in the queue. Or, maybe the 'Mighty COHHH-VID! got it. Either way, I loved the colors and the ‘display’ it presented, so out came Mr Tripod & Mr Nikon w/ the 10-24mm lens. For the half-hour or so I spent imaging this little moth, it never moved. It was there in the same position the next day … and the next … until it … wasn’t. It was a rare opportunity to get an image like this, and I’m glad I was there when it happened. . .
Beautiful
*
Gardens of The Horde
We scared a family of quail and they ran into the bushes but this one baby sat down and thus was invisible, lol. So cute.
We love the quail and their headdress.
Thank you so much for the garden thread!
NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker
Love that little invisible one!
What's happening in your yard?
*
Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday 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.
The Paine monument in Thetford, England, the birthplace of Paine, with a quill pen in his right hand and an inverted copy of The Rights of Man in his left. It was sculpted by Sir Charles Wheeler, President of the Royal Academy, and erected in 1964
Here you can follow Paine’s life journey through images of the different monuments, historical markers, landmarks and homes that form part of his amazing legacy. From his birth in Thetford, UK to his death in New York City, Paine lived a life of amazing action and profound impact. Enjoy!
Here are a few more of them, but some of them look more impressive if you click over to the historical Association gallery:
The statue of Paine in Morristown, New Jersey sculpted in 1950 by Georg J. Lober. It shows a seated Paine with a musket using a drum-head as a makeshift table.
There is a side view of this monument at the main page of the Historical Association's gallery, which also includes other photos, images and history.
The Thomas Paine statue in the Parc Montsouris, in Paris, France. It was dedicated in 1948 and created by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, It depicts Paine standing before the French National Convention to plead for the life of King Louis XVI
Did you know about this?
Paine’s New Rochelle Monument is a 12-foot marble column marking his burial site. Paine’s New Rochelle In 1837, Gilbert Vale, editor of the New York Beacon, started a subscription for the purpose of erecting the monument that was dedicated on May 30th, 1881. Sculptor William Macdonald created the bronze bust that was placed upon the monument on May 30th, 1899
*
More on the statue above from Statues: The People They Salute
Thomas Paine published 16 pamphlets from 1776 to 1783 known as The American Crisis. The works inspired the colonists during the fight for freedom from tyranny. Paine signed his pamphlets with the pseudonym, "Common Sense".
You are most likely familiar with this passage from the first pamphlet published at the start of the Revolution. . .
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
This passage from Pamphlet III you may not be familiar with. It addresses the importance of knowing the past. . .
“Were a man to be totally deprived of memory, he would be incapable of forming any just opinion; every thing about him would seem a chaos: he would have even his own history to ask from every one; and by not knowing how the world went in his absence, he would be at a loss to know how it ought to go on when he recovered, or rather, returned to it again. In like manner, though in a less degree, a too great inattention to past occurrences retards and bewilders our judgment in everything; while, on the contrary, by comparing what is past with what is present, we frequently hit on the true character of both, and become wise with very little trouble. It is a kind of counter-march, by which we get into the rear of time, and mark the movements and meaning of things as we make our return. There are certain circumstances, which, at the time of their happening, are a kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be followed by its answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed by their events, and those events are always the true solution.”
That sounds like the common sense idea that we must know our history, so we can learn from it and not repeat the same mistakes.
The monument pictured is the oldest memorial to Thomas Paine that still exists. The original monument erected in 1839 consisted of just a tapered marble pedestal and decorative cap. A bronze bust of Paine was later added in 1899. It is located in New Rochelle, New York near the cottage Paine lived from 1802 until 1806.
There is apparently still not a statue of Paine in Washington D.C. even though there is a statue in Paris and a Paine obelisk in London.
Funds are being solicited for a statue in the capital of the USA. There is a link at the affiliated Thomas Paine Historical Association page.
Thomas Paine was a man with nine lives and then some! He was a great humanitarian, a supreme statesman, and a bold visionary. He was also a staymaker, privateer, excise collector, magazine editor, pamphleteer, inventor, war correspondent, and poet. Paine was a man who belonged to three different worlds—England, the newborn United States, and revolutionary France—a man who went from being showered with praise to being reviled for his brave beliefs in what freedom and equality truly meant.
George Washington promoted some of his ideas, but Paine later criticized Washington and also Christianity. He was something of a radical. How does he fit in with the legacy of our other Founding Fathers?
*
Thomas Paine Political Cartoons
The following gallery contains almost 150 political cartoons of Thomas Paine in chronological order. Some positive and many negative, the cartoons, paintings, sketches and more are a vivid example of how Paine’s enemies attacked him in America and in England, where the British monarchy funded a ruthless and well funded campaign of slander. Supporters also fought back with some of their own, as you will see.
How do these cartoons compare to the slander and libel in politics these days? .
1780’s anonymous cartoon titled “Le Fameux Empyrique Anglois American” (The Famous English American Empiric/Quack) shows Paine, as medicine man, standing on a podium in front of an audience and promoting his bottle labeled “Union” to a crowd of on-lookers – American Philosophical Society
“Contrasted Opinions of Paine’s Pamphlet” is a 1791 intaglio by Frederick George Byron. Eight public figures are depicted reading excerpts from Rights of Man and reacting to them. Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Mary Wollstonecraft are the three supporters of Paine’s writings while the rest deplore them – American Philosophical Society
* * * * *
Cambridge hits the skids
Ace posted a great piece yesterday on the state of play concerning the resignation of Jason Arday from Cambridge, the expected upcoming release of his (co-authored) book, etc. Read it if you missed it. Might be worth reading again even if you read it yesterday.
The university intends to investigate. Colin Wright says he can save them some money - It's DEI. Though he recognizes some other quality problems in academe. CHECK THIS OUT . . . "final solution?"
DEI is a boil on the back of the Grievance Studies beast with many heads; Critical Race Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Queer Theory & their younger spawns (inc Disability Studies). When the public catches on & pushes back against one head, it pulls it back, letting another lead.
*
Richard Fernandez kind of predicted worse for Cambridge a few days ago. I think he may be right about this being an important event in academic history:
Jason Arday understood with the clarity of a software developer that the DEI design constraints would block any attempt to question his claims. He had stumbled upon an invariant: a condition, property, or relation that must always remain true throughout the execution of a…
The real scandal isn't in what Arday did, but in what he showed could be done. He objectively demonstrated a fatal flaw in a supposedly secure instution. Cambridge University, which produced Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Alan Turing, Alan Rutherford, Watson and Crick, John Milton and Lord Byron had crashed and burned.
Whatever his motives we owe Jason a debt of gratitude that we can hardly repay.
To understand just how irredeemably messed up academia is, compare the differences in how Cambridge treated Jason Arday and how Harvard treated Roland Fryer.
One is a black sociologist; the other is a black economist.
Anthony Fauci is shaping up as the Choosin’ Texas of meme subjects–holding down the #1 spot week after week. He was our prime meme target again this week. Apart from Fauci, the WNBA was on the receiving end of a lot of ridicule, and something happened with regard to burritos, I don’t know what. But you will see some burrito memes. And unfortunately, anti-Communism is once again necessary. Who would have predicted that, circa 1991?
* * * * *
Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
I have no argument with this morning's opener.
*****
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 Sedona)
1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice, be adventurous, but don't be Pretti Good.
3) No. I don't care if the other blog lets you, no running with sharp objects.
4) Have a great weekend!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
5/23 – I used to have a Different Nic could use some prayers as he waits for the results of a biopsy of a mass on his prostate.
6/23 Update – The latest update is that he has stage 2, “unfavorable intermediate”, which he notes is an awful name, but what it means is, it is in the middle, but bad enough that they want to treat it. It’s more aggressive than previously thought. He is at the point where he has to decide on treatment options, which means choosing which set of pretty unfortunate side effects he prefers.
7/31 Update – He has reached the halfway point in treatment. He’s had some side effects, that are “just annoying”.
6/18 – buzzion asked for prayers for a friend named Christina, who has struggled with drug addiction and is in jail again. Buzzion prays that this really is rock bottom and a true wake-up call for her – even if it requires her to stay in jail.
6/29 Update – Christina’s family bonded her out of jail and she has checked into a rehab facility. Please pray that she gets the help she needs.
7/11 Update – Thank you to everyone for your prayers. Christina is doing well in rehab. Please pray that she continues through this and keeps working through it even after getting out of her program.
6/20 – bluebell gave an update on grammie Winger. Grammie had some major surgery related to her cancer in March and is pretty much housebound. She said she isn’t keeping up on news since her diagnosis; she doesn’t have the energy. She said she thinks of her grey-box friends often with fondness. Please keep praying for her. Your prayers are a source of great comfort to her.
6/27 Update – grammie winger requested bluebell to let the Horde know that she is hospitalized again, with sepsis, and cannot eat or walk. She is very tired and cannot speak for long. She is being fed by tube. They don’t know how long she will be hospitalized or where she will go after (rehab, hospice, etc.). Bluebell has a mailing address for grammie, so please contact bluebell to send a card or note to grammie winger. Please pray for her, that her suffering will be eased, and pray for her family, who are suffering along with her.
7/25 – grammie winger popped in to say thank you for all the cards, letters, and encouraging words. You are a treasure.
6/27 – “A” sent thanks for the prayers for a family friend, who is at home recovering with the family and doing much better. “A” has an additional request for long-time friends (J and S) who are in the midst of intense family problems and requesting healing, peace, repentance, and restoration in the family.
7/18 Update – “A” sends his thanks to all the prayer warriors for all the personal concerns listed here. The requests above are all doing better. Prayer really works. Sometimes the results are not what we expected but end up being what we really needed for other reasons. Thank you all!
7/2 – Publius asked for prayers for his 96 year old mother, who had emergency surgery when a massive hematoma on her leg ruptured, and they couldn’t stop the bleeding due to her being on blood thinners. Things were not looking good, but Publius posted later she received blood thinner reverser medication, and was fully conscious and alert after surgery.
7/10 Update – Publius’ mother was moved to a nursing home for post-acute therapy. At this point, she is very weak but is coming back physically. But her mind is in La La Land.
7/13 Update – Publius’ mother has experienced an absolute miracle. She has come back, fully conscious and cogent. The Lord Almighty has decided her time is not complete.
7/11 – Mis Hum asked for prayers for Some Rat. He has some serious health issues at this time.
7/11 – Fen requested prayers for comfort and strength for “C” and her mother. “C” is in her 30s and her father died after a several months long struggle with cancer.
7/11 – P, a long time lurker, would appreciate prayers. He says he should have asked for prayers last year, when his stage 4 prostate cancer was first diagnosed, but he was too busy freaking out. A year and nine months later, he is still on hormone therapy and his PSA spiked recently. It’s back up to 92. He is supposed to start a drug trial soon. He knows from experience that prayer helps, and would greatly appreciate if anyone could include him in their prayers.
7/13 – Captain Obvious posted that he could use some prayers, as he was experiencing some kind of cardiac arrhythmia.
7/15 – Captain JS’ daughter needs prayers for his/her daughter. Early on 7/15, she experienced complete heart failure. She is in the ICU on a heart/lung machine. They will operate to see what is happening. Captain JS sends thanks in advance for the prayers and has faith in their power.
7/15 Update – Thanks to all who responded to Captain JS’ request for prayers. The daughter is still unconscious but is still alive. The doctors suspect a blockage to the left side of her heart. They are planning to take pictures and then insert a stent.
7/18 Update – Captain JS’ daughter passed away. Her heart, brain, and other organs were too damaged to regain function. Captain JS sends his thanks to the Horde for all the prayers.
7/25 – Matthew Kant Cipher humbly asks for prayers for Marshall, a long-time friend and HS classmate of Mrs. MKC, who is currently hospitalized with heart failure.
7/25 – Teresa in Fort Worth posted an update. She is still doing fine. Her chemo pump seems to be working and everything appears stable for now. She says she is incredibly blessed! She is working on a stocking for an as-yet-not-born grandchild. She would appreciate prayers for a successful IVF procedure and pregnancy for her daughter and hubby. Next week, Teresa and her husband will be going to California to visit their daughter who lives there and her family.
8/4 Update – Teresa was admitted to the hospital while on vacation in California. She has a bad infection – cellulitis - not due to the cancer. She is being treated with antibiotics and hopefully it will be cleared up in a couple of days.
7/29 – Notsothoreau asked for prayers for Billy Ray’s mother, who was just admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. She is a cancer survivor and chemo destroyed her immune system, so this is a big worry.
8/2 Update – Billy Ray’s mother is feeling better, on oxygen and medication. She is not out of the woods, but has stabilized. She appreciates the prayers from around the globe and says thank you very much.
7/29 – TecumsehTea wrote that MrTea’s diagnosis is colon cancer stage 4. They are praying for guidance for how to proceed.
7/30 – David sent an update on his wife, Susan, who we have been praying for as she is treated for cancer. Susan is still doing well and her numbers are headed in the right direction, but they are still having issues with the side effects of the chemotherapy. It is manageable, but they have to increase the number of office visits for additional treatments. Some days are really good right now, but others are only bearable with the Lord’s grace. They are so grateful for the prayers on their behalf.
8/1 – Isophorone Blog requested prayers for his mother. His father passed this past Sunday. His mother had been in the hospital for an entire month previous to that, so they never got to see each other at the end. His mother is out of the hospital, but in declining health.
Update 8/2 Isophorone Blog’s mother passed, he requested you keep his sister and himself in your prayers for comfort.
8/1 – Tonypete asked for prayers for his BIL, who is a developmentally disabled adult and has been living independently (sort of) for decades but the time has come for them to make some changes in his living arrangements and personal finances. This will not go well as he has VERY poor impulse control and anger issues. His dear wife has POA but that is limited in its reach and it is probably time for her to be granted guardianship.
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.
I was reporting on the growing crisis last year but didn't take it personally until I watched a YouTube video advising people that there was no need to panic buy, and that prices would level out in 2027.
These only have 8GB or 10GB of RAM depending on the precise model, so they only fetched $100 or so second hand. Then someone figured out that they actually have 64GB or 80GB of RAM, just with most of it disabled, and the price shot up overnight.
Problem is that the memory is disabled due to defective dies, so the amount of working memory you'll get after unlocking one of these cards is a dice roll.
Story behind this. A new airport opened in India, and the locals descended en masse and looted all the landscaping. How are we supposed to live with a culture where this is the norm? Better question: What's going to happen to our culture when we import people like this by the millions? I'm looking at you, Canada, but we're not far behind.
1037 called "birdstrike, aborting takeoff" but they did it when the tower was talking and the tower overrides everyone else on the coms, so nobody heard. Good thing the trailing aircraft was alert.
Sinning
Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by New York City:
Old but fun: A guy set up cameras to catch the groundhog eating all of his vegetables and found the groundhog was a camera-hog who was proud to be filmed stealing carrots.
An albatross has her chick returned to her (after a medical check-up). I'm posting this because I didn't really know what an albatross looked like. Kinda cute. Definitely don't kill one while at sea.
Trump Offers Cities "BIDEN" Grants to Defray Costs Accrued Due to Biden's Open Borders, With One Iron Requirement: Recipients Must Comply Fully With ICE and Trump's Deportation Program
The Department of Justice is now offering $3 billion in "BIDEN" grants to help local municipalities recoup their losses incurred by Joe Biden's destructive immigration policies.
The grants, being called the Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide (BIDEN) program, is one of the biggest grant programs the DOJ has ever offered and is aimed at helping cities hire more police officers, upgrade technology, and build temporary detention facilities for illegal migrants, the Washington Post reported.
But there is one provision that is non-negotiable. The municipalities that apply for the grants must pledge to work with federal immigration authorities as they carry out federal immigration policies. The jurisdictions that apply must agree to "fully participate" in the ICE 287(g) partnership that links local law enforcement to ICE and other federal immigration enforcement agencies.
"This Department of Justice is committed to ensuring Biden-era border disasters never happen again," said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. "We are proud to once again champion law and order."
The description of the program explains that the grant dollars are intended for "locating and apprehending aliens who have committed a crime under federal, state, or local law, in addition to being unlawfully present in the United States."
The DOJ also notes that some of the money may be expected to come back to the federal government as reimbursement for "the costs associated with federal law enforcement intervention" should federal resources have to be spent "to reduce crime or public disorder" related to immigration enforcement actions.
There are no other catches other than participation in the 287(g) program, and municipalities may spend the grant money however they wish.
The DOJ reported that 181 cities have already applied for the grants.
Unrelated: Tuq'r has previously strongly hinted he believes that the US government or Israel -- and aren't they really the same thing, am i rite? -- blew up the World Trade Center.
Tuq'r Qarlson also embraces the Islamic ban on lending money -- finding that the normal capitalist practice of loaning money for interest is "usury."
Weird how every one of his thoughts is pro-Muslim and anti-Jew, huh?
Tucker Carlson preaches that debt is slavery, that lending at interest is the sin of usury, and that a society organized around debt "enslaves people."
He then reads an ad for a mortgage lender and personally endorses it: "We recommend American Financing. They're called… pic.twitter.com/fDaepsUCAC
The NRSC debuts first attack ad in the US Senate Michigan race against Abdul El-Sayed pic.twitter.com/d3N3RB3CGT
— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) August 5, 2026
🚨 BOOM — SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN: "I don't really think [Abdul El Sayed] is interested in MY endorsement! He called me an a*shole, he's called me an ogre, and that I belong on a PIKE. He has a real little man syndrome!"
This should be a watershed moment for the Democratic Party.
Senator John Fetterman — one of the last sane voices left in the party — just cut 84-year-old career socialist Bernie Sanders down to the bone for helping to destroy the Democrats from within.
Of Course: Jason Arday Got $1.4 Million for "His Memoir," Which Was, Of Course, Ghostwritten by a White Woman; Comparing His Initial Proposal and the Book Itself, The Atlantic Finds More Cases of Fabulism and Lying
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Before that: the Metropolitan Police said "oops, ooopsie" about investigating a reporter for four whole months because a black fraudster and scamster said that it was "distressing" him and harming his mental health to be questioned at all.
And I do want to emphasize that this is an "oops, oopsie" non-apology. The head of the Met is completely frivolous and unserious about his organization acting as a Gestapo for a foreign scammer:
The head of the Metropolitan Police has said his force should not have investigated a journalist who was looking into plagiarism claims about a University of Cambridge professor.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said officers "dropped the ball" when they looked into a complaint made against journalist Jack Grove over his attempts to contact Prof Jason Arday.
Sir Mark told broadcaster LBC the complaint should have been "screened out earlier on as not requiring investigation".
...
Times Higher Education (THE) reporter Grove said he had been investigating allegations Arday had plagiarised parts of his PhD, and contacted him in 2025 to offer him the right of reply.
"In early February I received a call from a Met police officer saying that a complaint had been raised against me by someone and Professor Arday was very distressed and I shouldn't contact him again," Grove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"It was a complete shock. Apparently it was for harassment but I hadn't contacted him for four months and then maybe I think I've only sent three or four emails to him in total."
The Met closed its inquiries into the case.
Sir Mark told LBC: "We dropped the ball on that one, let's not beat around the bush.
"A report came in of harassment or some crime like that, it should have been screened out as not requiring investigation...
"We shouldn't have made that call to him [Grove] and said that."
To see how off-handed, flippant, and non-apologetic this "oops, oopsie" is, see this video.
They'll do it again tomorrow. And then they'll just say "garsh we dropped the ball on that one, boy is our face red" the next time.
For his part, Arday is blaming the university that gave him a Ph.D. for his fake and plagiarized paper, saying they hadn't given his autistic grifting ass enough "supervision."
The Telegraph published three excerpts from Arday's dissertation alongside the original sources from which he is alleged to have plagiarized. In some instances, the passages are virtually identical; in others, only minor wording changes distinguish them.
The controversy centers on allegations that, while Arday cited the original author elsewhere in his dissertation, he failed to properly attribute the passages in question. Arday has maintained that the omission was attributable to his autism.
The BBC reported last week, "Arday did not dispute the allegations of plagiarism, but defended himself by arguing that he had not received adequate supervision during his PhD given his autism and learning disabilities."
Now I know why that white girl in the last post pretends to be disabled and riddled with Tourettes: It's an amazingly lucrative grift.
So Simon & Schuster paid this "superstar" nobody $1.4 million in a fake advance. (Fake because it's not a real "advance" -- they had no hope of every recouping this from sales. They just wanted to be in the DEI Superstar Jason Arday Business.)
To get this DEI Jackpot, Arday submitted a proposal, telling Simon & Schuster the Amazing Tales they would get in exchange for their money.
The Atlantic has a copy of that proposal, as well as the book itself which will be released next week.
They find that Jason Arday further confabulated the lies already present in the proposal:
Paul Embery
@PaulEmbery
11h
This is wild. The Atlantic has obtained a copy of Jason Arday's book proposal. In it, he claims to have:
- Experienced 'locked-in' syndrome for several months after being hit by a car. Doctors advised his family to have the life support machine turned off, but he awakened 'miraculously'
- Been struck down by testicular cancer (though this changes in the book to brain cancer)
- Been beaten up by a group of kids and then, in court, pleaded with the judge not to jail them. Coincidentally, two of the kids later became his students, and Arday became godfather to the child of one of them
- Aborted a suicide attempt on a bridge after listening to an Eagles song.
I'm thinking "Desperado."
- Been awarded several accolades - of which no proof exists online.
- Been told by a 'shaman woman' in Brazil that he would suffer greatly but also do great thing. 'Every event she described has since come to pass,' he wrote.
The book is due for publication next week by @simonschuster. Surely they have to pull it.
LOL, of course they won't. Don't be a dope.
Here are excerpts from The Atlantic, comparing the lies in the proposal to the lies in the actual book.
According to a cover letter that his agent sent to publishers at the time, Arday's book, to be titled Great and Unfortunate Things, would be "an awe-inspiring tale of near mythic proportions."
That now appears to be an understatement. Arday's story was indeed astonishing: As a toddler, he was diagnosed with autism and developmental delays; he didn't fully speak until the age of 11; he learned to read and write only as an adult. Arday's parents are Ghanaian immigrants; he grew up wearing homemade clothes and hustling for cash by playing snooker.
By the way, there's no evidence he ever played snooker for money.
Yet in spite of all these obstacles and many, many others he has recounted over the years, Arday found a way to go to university and then to graduate school. Eventually, he got his Ph.D., and then he became a star. "We are so lucky to have you," Cambridge's head of faculty for education, Hilary Cremin, told him in a clip shown on BBC shortly after his hiring was announced. "You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do."
But in the past two weeks, Arday's near-mythic (or perhaps purely mythic) tale has disintegrated. In July, a philosopher named Nathan Cofnas published a long Substack post reviewing apparent evidence of plagiarism in Arday's academic work. Cofnas posted 36 passages from Arday's 2015 dissertation, about student teaching, which reproduce or closely track text found in a 2009 dissertation from another scholar in the field, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers. Arday looks to have even copied from and rearranged Zwozdiak-Myers's title, and in doing so to have misused an apostrophe.
It's more embarrassing than that. His title uses the word "teachers," just the plural of teacher, but he puts an apostrophe after it to make it a possessive. And then he does that in the entire paper, too.
People have pointed out that is plagiarism is proven by the fact that typos and misspellings in the text he copied are perfectly reproduced in his "own" paper, which of course means he just cut and paste someone else's work.
But the "teachers'" type seems to be an Arday Original, at least.
Oh: As someone commented, just interviewing people and writing down their feelings is the "lowest-hanging fruit" of the (scam) research world. Most fake DEI papers, including "Doctor" Jill Biden's, consist of just interviewing your friends and fellow students and then "analyzing" their "lived experiences."
That's mostly what Arday's doctoral paper is -- but then he doesn't even do the lowest of low-hanging fruit of the fake research world.
He just cribs the interviews from the paper he's copying and claims he conducted the interviews himself!
Quotes from structured interviews that Arday claimed to have performed closely resembled those used by other researchers; parts of some interview responses also reappeared across different studies under Arday's name, attributed to different people. This duplication, if deliberate, would be something other than plagiarism--it would be academic fraud. (The website Retraction Watch reports that two of Arday's papers were quietly corrected.)
He's continuing to insist that all scrutiny of his lies and fraud is racist:
Arday did not respond to questions from The Atlantic, but he told The Times last week that he is not a "liar" or a "fantasist" and that he'd been given insufficient supervision as a graduate student, especially in light of his learning disabilities: "It's more likely that I've made a mistake, there's a clerical error. It's not that I've fabricated." He also seemed to address such allegations at a conference in April for the British Sociological Association, where he gave a talk about pervasive efforts to discredit Black scholars including himself. "These people are brilliant, perversely brilliant," he told his colleagues. "There are times when you look at what they're doing and you say to yourself, Well done, well played, very good. You've caught me [in] a thousand knots--how do I get myself out of this situation?"
Now, on to the comparison of Arday's claims in the proposal and the claims made in the book:
Great and Unfortunate Things, which Arday co-wrote with Eve Claxton, is still scheduled to come out next week from Simon & Schuster.
Co-wrote? You mean, she wrote it entirely, based on his verbal claims.
Aren't academics supposed to write their own books?
The story that it tells should not be taken at face value; it differs notably from other versions of his life that Arday has shared in public and in private, including in the original proposal he sent out with his agent. But the book is also, in a way, very honest and quite telling: It provides a vivid portrait of a man who was always manifestly ill-equipped for academia yet found a way to reach its upper levels. This is not someone else's cruel assessment of Arday's tragic and improbable career. It's his own.
The memoir begins with a prophecy. It's 2006, and Jason Arday, then 21 years old, is installing water pumps in the favelas of Brazil and showing children how to use them. A local aid worker--"a woman in her thirties with dark hair and eyes and a gentle, steady way about her"--touches his arm and softly tells him that he is destined to suffer in his life but also to do great things. "After the trip was over, I never saw the woman again, but her words stayed with me," Arday writes, "and, you might say, her prediction came true."
The rest of the book is an elaboration on this moment: Arday suffers; Arday overcomes. The doctors who assessed him as a toddler told his mother that "there's no one in there" and that he was "no better than a vegetable." Even his speech therapist wasn't optimistic that he'd ever learn to talk. (At one point, she also physically abused him, the memoir says.) As a boy, Arday rocked and hummed and banged his head until he bled; he slammed cupboard doors and smeared his feces on the walls. Yet still, eventually, he started to verbalize. Still, eventually, he made his way through school.
Tribulations piled up throughout his life. Arday is nearly deaf in one ear; he's dyslexic; he finds simple math befuddling; he has "marked difficulties" with memory, reading, and processing skills. As a teen, he was beaten so severely by a group of kids his age that he became an epileptic. To make his way through secondary school while--by his own account--illiterate, he needed ample help: support assistants who sat beside him in class and took notes on his behalf.
When Arday applied to university, his girlfriend, Debs--who had been teaching him to read--"wrote out" the application on his behalf, including the personal statement. In university, a friend who took the same courses sat beside him, sharing notes. (She's "the only reason I survived" university, he says.) By the time Arday started on his master's degree, he writes, he was reading at about the same level as his 3-year-old daughter. Still, he pressed onward. Still, somehow, he got a teaching job.
His obstacles were only multiplying, though. Money was tight, so after each day of teaching, Arday writes, he had to work an overnight shift in a supermarket, from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., and then a morning shift as a cleaner from 5:30 to 7:30. The only time he had left to write his dissertation was when he was commuting between London, where he lived, and Liverpool, where he taught. On those semiweekly five-hour rides, the book explains, he would open up his laptop on the plastic seat-back table and start typing out his thesis, hunt-and-peck style.
As his dissertation deadline approached, Arday started having blurry vision; medical scans revealed a brain tumor. After it was removed, he had a ministroke and lost his short-term memory.
This sounds like a collection of excuses he gave to teachers and professors to get them to give him a passing grade for failure-level work.
When you succeed against pretty much insurmountable odds," Arday writes in the book, "it weirdly makes people question your credibility." Is it weird? I don't think it's weird. When you keep succeeding against insurmountable odds, the facts of your surmounting will be bound to get a second look.
...
But the most disturbing inconsistencies arise from Arday's book proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The Atlantic. That document, from 2024, cites several accolades of which no proof exists online. The proposal also lays out many of the same events as the memoir but with slightly different dates and details: The boys who beat him up were not his age but four years older; his suicide attempt happened before, not during, the pandemic. And whereas the book describes Arday as having survived two brain tumors, the proposal says he had a bout of testicular cancer. No reference to that illness appears in the memoir.
Nor does the book describe the time that Arday, then a teenager, was struck by a car and spent several months in a coma. According to the book proposal, the doctors told his parents that he would never recover, and suggested taking him off life support "as an act of mercy." Through all of this, he was aware of everything that was going on, because he had locked-in syndrome. "As I will describe to readers in the book," Arday wrote in the proposal, "these months afforded me another profoundly different way of perceiving the world."
The book doesn't describe any of this, nor that he awakened "miraculously" from the coma, nor the full year he spent "relearning everything--how to walk, to talk."
Instead, the memoir tells us only that he spent those months finishing his final year of secondary school and taking his exams. "I was relieved, beyond relieved," the memoir says, when those were done.
Then there is the prophecy--the revelation Arday was given in Brazil, that he would suffer greatly and also do great things. According to the proposal, this occurred in 2005, not 2006, and the message came not from a local aid worker in her 30s but from "an elder in the small town where I had been assigned, who was well-known in the area for predicting people's futures." (Later in the proposal, he calls this person a "shaman woman.") "Do you know the story of Spartacus, the escaped slave who led a rebellion against the Romans?" this town elder asks, before telling him his fate in minute detail. "Every event she described," Arday writes in the proposal, "has since come to pass."
Below: When asked why he told such tall tales without including any evidence to support them, he responds, "To be honest with you, I just thought you'd believe me."
One point I keep hearing is that people initially didn't care much about this because it's sociology and literally everyone knows sociology is entirely a bullshit field populated by dum-dums and grifters. One guy said that he checked Arday's plagiarism against the paper he plagiarized from: The plagiarized paper was also empty, stupid, banal, and worthless.
for more on jason arday's hallucinatory megalomania, check out this excerpt from his forthcoming @simonschustermemoir memoir: claims that a woman who gazed upon him received a "prophecy" that he was destined for "great things" & "sad and difficult things," like a hero of myth pic.twitter.com/xw6YavULQd
It’s not like Jason Arday was was genius scam artist, articulate and able to fool the finest minds. No, he’s a literal moron that no one dared challenge due to DEI. You could find diverse yoof saying this in a Year 10 history class. pic.twitter.com/UM6DSgYLBl
The Jason Arday episode is a perfect microcosm of a Western system rotting under the weight of human deadwood. Not just academia, wokeness, welfare bureaucracies, "learing" centers, or the laptop manager class exposed during Covid, but an entire civilization in which millions contribute nothing, produce nothing, and solve nothing while participating in an elaborate theater of fake productivity designed to conceal their complete uselessness. The real work is left to a shrinking productive minority forced to carry everyone else.
The Department of Justice has concluded that Duke University School of Law intentionally discriminated against applicants based on race, finding that the school continued giving admissions preferences to black and Hispanic applicants even after the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious college admissions.
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division announced Thursday that Duke Law violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in admissions for its incoming classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025. The department said the practices also violated the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which restricted universities' use of race in admissions.
In an Aug. 6 findings letter, the DOJ said investigators reviewed Duke Law's internal documents and admissions data and determined the school continued "intentionally" granting and denying admission based on race following the Supreme Court decision.
"Duke Law School doesn't get a free pass to discriminate against white and Asian students simply because it thinks it has good intentions," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said. "Using 'diversity' essay questions to identify preferred races for admission is still illegal discrimination based on race, and this Department is committed to eliminating it everywhere we find it, including in our nation's law schools."
A Christian physician assistant who was fired after refusing to facilitate transgender procedures and use preferred pronouns won a $410,000 settlement from her former employers.
In May 2021, Valerie Kloosterman was a physician assistant at the University of Michigan Health-West. The hospital required Kloosterman to complete a diversity training module on LGBTQ+ issues, the Daily Signal reported.
According to Kloosterman's lawsuit, the module required her affirm statements concerning sexual orientation and gender identity that went against her Christian faith, which says God ordains a person's sex. To go against that, whether it be through surgery or the use of preferred pronouns, she believes, is going against God's will.
The lawsuit also argues that her Hippocratic oath to "do no harm" prevents her from facilitating procedures she believes do more harm than good.
In July 2021, Kloosterman met with the hospital's DEI program director, who was hostile toward her beliefs, told her she couldn't bring her religious beliefs into the workplace, and called her "evil," according to the lawsuit. He also claimed that a failure to use preferred pronouns would drive patients to commit suicide. The hospital fired her the following August.
In addition to the monetary settlement, the hospital has implemented a new policy that won't require employees to act in ways that violate their religious beliefs.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Beans Velocci published a book this year claiming "sex isn't real" and the gender "binary" is "incoherent."
Velocci is an assistant professor in history and the sociology of science who claims to be nonbinary and transgender. This identification has shaped the professor's questions and conclusions because "that is how knowledge works," Velocci wrote in the book titled "Sex Isn't Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary."
In an interview with Duke University Press, which published the book, Velocci expressed joy that "any right wing or TERF detractor who wants to s***-talk the book is going to have to say or write the phrase 'Sex Isn't Real' in the process."
Velocci claims in the book that "cisness" is unnatural and that people fitting into their "assigned sex category" took a large amount of work to construct and maintain.
Sex science throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was a close ally to those invested in supporting white-supremacist governance and ejecting women from political life, Velocci claims.
"Science continues to be an anti-trans ally," the professor wrote, adding that sex has little to do with bodies, but is instead about categories and who controls them.
The professor also wrote that "current efforts to annihilate transness are couched in references to biology and science."
LOL. We're "couching" biology and science in "references to biology and science." How dare we.
Three people have been charged with the murder of a seven-year-old Ohio boy, with prosecutors saying that the young boy had suffered abuse at the hands of the defendants for months. Those arrested include the boy's mother as well as two trans-identified males.
Per WLWT5, Kaitlin Evans, 39, Nessa Keaney, 23, and Kirby Rankin, 33, were arraigned on charges of murder and child endangerment inside a Hamilton County courtroom Friday. Evans was identified as the mother of the boy, while Rankin and Keaney have been identified as being transgender.
A violent Antifa-affiliated agitator has avoided jail time after admitting to assaulting several federal agents during a direct action outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland, Oregon. The incident occurred on June 29, 2025.
August Dean Gordon, 32, of Beaverton, physically assaulted numerous federal officers, admitting to "kicking" and "headbutting" agents when they arrested him for damaging ICE facility property. This includes violently grabbing their genitals, according to court documents.
US District Court Judge Amy Baggio sentenced Gordon in late July to four months of home detention followed by five years of probation. The prosecutor sought a four-month prison term, while the defense asked for one year of supervised release.
The judge declined prison time, citing that it would be counterproductive for Gordon's mental health, his lack of a prior criminal history, and the lifelong burden of a felony conviction, per the Oregonian.
If I beat the shit out of an antifa thug in Portland, will I be excused jail time because it would be bad for my mental health? Or nah?
Nah, right?
Gordon, prosecutors continued, "boasted" about his "assaultive behavior," proudly declaring that he "kicked and headbutted officers," showing no "remorse" for his actions. US attorneys said that five officers were injured.
Savanah Hernandez
@Savsays
I visited Seattle's $165 million dollar downtown library and it was OVERRUN with drug addicts.
Not only is this library filled with adults who are high on drugs, but they also offer FREE fentanyl test strips, syringes and injectable narcan that anyone, including children, can access.
Visitors have complained of "foul odors", unusable restrooms and harassment by the homeless and I experienced all of this while at this location.
Convicted Killer Allegedly Shoots Man Dead Less Than 2 Hours After Release
David Simpson, 29, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder
A man already convicted of manslaughter allegedly shot and wounded one man and killed a second in Charlotte, North Carolina less than two hours after being released last week on bond.
FOX News reported that 29-year-old David Simpson now faces charges that include first-degree murder and "possession of a firearm by a felon." He is in custody and being held without bond.
WCNC noted that Simpson "was released from Mecklenburg County jail around 12:20 a.m. on Wednesday," then allegedly carried out the fatal shooting at 1:45 p.m.
The shooting occurred at an apartment complex and is believed to have resulted from an argument over a parking space.
Simpson's girlfriend, Shakema Scott, is charged "with accessory after the fact."
I try to keep an open mind about new ideas and opinions, but this take on parents and children is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Douthat’s response is perfect: pic.twitter.com/tx26XZxpxw
Parents BLAST @WCPSS board members after a “nonbinary” teacher at Middle Creek Elementary School in NC reportedly made students refer to him as "Ms" while he wears women's clothing.
I'm gonna need a minute on this one. My programming needs a big update.
New evidence further undermines claim that 2020 election was 'most secure' in history
Declassified documents, other evidence, reveal that despite official assurances of a secure 2020 election, government agencies possessed intelligence regarding significant security vulnerabilities, foreign data breaches, and potential manipulation risks.
After several batches of documents were recently declassified and released by the White House, the American people now have more evidence than ever that while officials claimed 2020 was a historically secure election, the government had plenty of evidence of security vulnerabilities, hacks and foreign interference.
Shortly after the election, senior government officials insisted that it was the "most secure" in American history, deflecting concerns about security, including about voting systems and mail-in-ballots.
...
However, after the new batches of documents were declassified and released this summer by the White House, Americans have more evidence than ever that those same officials knew about significant breaches of election data and internally raised concerns about how foreign actors could influence the election and the vulnerability of electronic voting machines.
...
Maricopa exfiltration of voter registration data
The latest evidence released by the White House this week shows that the FBI investigated a breach of voter registration data in Arizona's largest county in the days before the 2020 election. In that incident, a self-described hacker foiled security and obtained 633,000 voter registration files, but the Biden Justice Department and local prosecutors declined to bring charges even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, Just the News reported on Thursday.
The scraping of Maricopa County's voter registration files was the most flagged security incident in a cyberintrusion log kept by U.S. spy agencies in the days surrounding the Nov. 3, 2020, election, showing that intelligence officials were monitoring the breach while voting was ongoing.
The article discusses China's hacking of the US voter databases. See the article for more on that.
This is the most alarming possibility: We know that Venezuela rigged its own elections to fake a "win" for Maduro.
And Maduro is a nasty communist enemy of the US.
Did he do the same thing to the US elections, to get a demented old socialist fool "elected"?
The declassified documents released by the White House also show that from 2004 to 2020, U.S. intelligence agencies monitored plans by the Venezuelan leadership to electronically manipulate their country's own voting machines, including the use of substituting false votes, to secure victory for the ruling socialists.
The plans raised alarm as early as 2006 among U.S. officials as a potential avenue for the Venezuelans to attempt to "undermine confidence in, or manipulate the electoral process in, the United States," according to a June 2026 CIA summary of prior intelligence reporting on Caracas' capabilities.
By 2020, the CIA had obtained reporting on Venezuelan plans to swing the country's election that year by manipulating electronic voting machines in a way that would make false votes appear legitimate and leave no trace of the changes. The intelligence raised questions about whether some U.S. voting machines could be vulnerable to similar types of manipulation, though agencies assessed that Venezuela did not have the capability to do so in the U.S.
What would we do without "agencies" to tell us that foreign threats aren't threats at all, but opportunities for us to be welcoming and open-minded.
And, of course:
Non-citizens on voter rolls
Additionally, an assessment by the Homeland Security Department found that hundreds-of-thousands of illegal aliens were on the voter rolls in four states -- and estimated the total across the whole country to be higher. A review conducted earlier this year using publicly available voter data in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania found over 250,000 illegal voters on the rolls, Just the News reported.
Tangentially related: While Democrats whine about Trump firing disloyal subversive operatives, Hillary Clinton urges the next Democrat president, who will not be her, to fire every single Republican, no matter how minor or how far from any actual power.
But think about what Clinton is saying there -- she's talking about the tactic of suborning a president's agenda by holding the civil service, in the context of accusing President Donald Trump of possibly doing it. She does not appear to be just talking about the political positions, saying a Democrat president needs to get rid of Trump people: "Get rid of all the holdovers. Do not let anybody hang around in some small office somewhere who can literally subvert your program and you don't even know the person is there." She even talks about how you can move people from political positions into the civil service to help keep them in government positions, predicting that Trump "will try to move" people to do this.
Advertisement
The civil service positions aren't supposed to be political appointments. "People are going to have to be really searching," she said, " To make sure they're not going to be literally subverted from within the government."
What was that people were saying about a "deep state" and every accusation being a confession? Is this an admission about the past?
So Clinton would do a "purge" of anyone for the sin of being supportive of Trump or Trump positions. Purging opposing views sounds like a typical move from the folks who keep claiming to be the "defenders of democracy."
Red Cross Animated Propaganda Feature Lauds Sharif for His Brave (Illegal) Journey to Greece to Culturally Enrich That Nation, Then Deletes the Cartoon After Sharif Cultural-Enrichment-Murders a Woman and Stuffs Her Body Into a Suitcase
The Red Cross has deleted a film tracking the journey of an Afghan migrant who is now accused of killing a British woman and hiding her body in a suitcase in Greece.
Sharif Ahmadzai, 26, was arrested on Monday over the murder of Scottish Christian Elisabeth-Jane Ross, in Athens.
Ahmadzai, a professional boxer who arrived in Greece on a small boat in 2016, is accused of killing Ms Ross before stuffing her body into a suitcase and ditching it in a derelict building.
The 38-year-old's body was found by a homeless man on July 18, three days after she is believed to have been killed.
It has now emerged the Afghan-national collaborated with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and a London artist to create a film following how he escaped Afghanistan and reached the Greek island of Lesbos aged 15.
The four-minute animated film, named Game of Life: The Story of Sharif, was first shown on YouTube in December 2016, and includes a narration of his six-week migrant crossing.
The sympathetic video follows how his father, who was a military commander, was killed in an ambush and his mother and siblings were killed by a suicide bomb attack in Kabul.
Ahmadzai, accompanied by friends, was then smuggled out of Afghanistan's capital and journeyed through Iran and Turkey, before he reached a refugee camp on Lesbos, named Moria.
The interview was conducted in Moria, and took place after Ahmadzai had been in the camp for six months.
The video opens with, 'each migrant has a story worthy of a Hollywood movie'.
Ahmadzai's journey from Afghanistan to Greece is said to have taken one-and-a-half months, with the smuggler quoted as calling it a 'game'.
During which time, Ahmadzai was arrested in Istanbul after his first attempt to cross into Greece, the video described, and was held in prison for three days.
The video also reveals Ahmadzai intended to reach the UK, where he claimed he had family who would look after him should he successfully cross from Greece.
Voiced by an actor, he says: 'She told me: "I can take full responsibility of you, if someone helps get you to the UK." But, if I can't get there, I don't know what will happen to me.'
Scott Craig, a spokesman for the charity, told the Daily Mail: 'Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Elisabeth-Jane Ross at this extremely difficult time.
'The video is no longer publicly accessible. We took this decision out of consideration for Elisabeth's family while the legal proceedings continue.
'We cannot comment further while legal proceedings are ongoing.'
Oh you deleted the evidence out of respect for the victim's family, huh?
Fucking liars. The right must totally boycott this corrupt organization. Another charity, one that doesn't eagerly propagandize for terrorists or conspire with illegals to pass borders, will rise to replace it.
The Killer Migrant claims he discovered her dead and, "in a panic," decided it would be a good idea to stuff her body into a suitcase and hide it in an abandoned building.
Very old story. It's a family afair. Largely carried out by Afghan and Pakistani drivers. Taxi drivers too. Everyone gets a cut. No-win, no-fee solicitors are involved too.
Supposedly a red state. (Blue city of course -- Charlotte, where Iryna was butchered on video by a skel with a long list of previous arrests and indulgences.)
North Carolina career criminal arrested after attacking, chasing women in terrifying social media videos
By Nicholas McEntyre
A North Carolina career criminal is accused of randomly punching and hospitalizing a woman while chasing down another victim in a separate attack as he posted the disturbing footage across social media.
Di-Quan Schafar Hunt was arrested Thursday for committing the alleged assault in a residential neighborhood on the 400 block of East Boulevard in Charlotte, NC, on July 30, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said.
Police busted Hunt, 32, when the department was presented with several videos on his social media page, where the brute posted about his physical confrontations.
Hunt was recording himself talking about a "real issue" that happened on July 21st when he crossed paths with the unidentified woman holding a get-well balloon.
"Nah, don't wave to me," Hunt yelled at the defenseless woman, sending him into a fiery rage and punching his victim to the ground.
The 5-foot-9, 220-pound brute hovered over the motionless woman and screamed racial slurs at her as she lay on the pavement.
It's critical that all white people avoid racial slurs.
But all minorities can use them as they please, while beating innocent strangers into the pavement. Just some good ol' Street Reparations.
"You still talking? You still talking?" Hunt yelled. "July 21st. Say Elijah. Elijah my son, Motherf--ker you playing."
Hunt ripped the broken frames from the woman's sunglasses, kicked the balloon from the woman's hand and ran off.
In a separate, undated video, Hunt -- as he was ranting about McDonald's -- charged at another woman as she was walking on the sidewalk before chasing her around a car.
"You wanna run bitch, you wanna run motherf--ker, huh? I betcha run again motherf--ker," he yells in the video.
On Thursday morning, officers responded to an "attempt to locate" call in the heart of Charlotte, where they were shown the disturbing videos posted by Hunt.
Hunt was taken into custody on an arrest warrant at around 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
He immediately began spamming out excuses and complaints of "you're hurting me" (or the like) so they brought him to a medical center.
After his release from the center, he will be transported to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office and charged with Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
Hunt, a well-known vagrant in the city, has been arrested at least nine times over the last 34 months in Mecklenburg County, according to jail records viewed by The Post.
Those cases include simple assault, assault on a female, assault with a deadly weapon, trespassing, domestic violence protective order violation and probation violation.
Between December 2012 and June 2019, he was arrested three times for assault on a female, three times for domestic violence protective order violation, and once for discharging a firearm in the city and injury to personal property, according to WCNC.
All those cases had been dismissed.
Matt Van Swol
@mattvanswol
🚨#BREAKING: I can confirm that the man arrested this week for violent street attacks on a woman in Charlotte was FREE BECAUSE OF A PLEA DEAL IN MARCH.
Diquan Shafar Hunt was arrested in December 2025 for Assault with a Deadly Weapon and three other charges.
On March 18, 2026, he took a plea from Judge Joseph Setzer Jr.
Guilty to two charges.
Two dismissed.
Sentence: just 89 days in prison
He walked out that same day.
Just 4 months later, he begins filming himself beating women on the streets of Charlotte NC.
Diquan had been arrested 14 previous times including for multiple assault on women charges, domestic violence charges, breaking and entering, and resisting arrest.
THE MORNING RANT: PepsiCo (Frito Lay) Snack Sales Decline as SNAP Restrictions Kick In
—Buck Throckmorton
Thanks to President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., states have been empowered to restrict SNAP benefits (formerly known as “food stamps”) such that the benefits cannot be used to purchase junk food and sodas. As SNAP restrictions have rolled out, it has been a sucker-punch to the manufacturers of low-nutrition products.
PepsiCo has been hit especially hard, as its revenue is more reliant on snack products than is the case with Coca-Cola, which is weighted more toward beverage sales.
Sales in the Frito-Lay and Pepsi soda maker's North American food business slipped 2%, while volume was flat in the second quarter ended June 13, even after earlier price cuts of up to 15% on some of its biggest products including Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos.
For PepsiCo, whose food brands including Ruffles and PopCorners generate about 58% of its annual revenue, the shift threatens one of the key engines that has driven growth for decades.
Articles such as this Reuters piece linked above talk about diet drugs and shifts in consumer food choices as being primary reasons for the decline in snack food sales, but it doesn’t mention that the goal of making SNAP benefits be spent on healthier food is having an impact. Successfully weaning welfare recipients off of taxpayer-subsidized junk food is not a success story to Reuters and the left.
SNAP purchase restrictions are now approved in 23 states, affecting about one-third of recipients and potentially reducing food and beverage sales by up to $830 million this year.
That misleading statement from CNBC makes it sound like SNAP spending is being reduced by $830 million. That is not the case. There is a potential $830 million that won’t be flowing to PepsiCo and Coca Cola.
Companies including Hershey, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz are closely monitoring shopper behavior as limits on soda and candy purchases expand.
PepsiCo has already had to respond once to the SNAP changes by cutting prices. When low-income consumers were forced to start using their own money to buy potato chips, rather than taxpayer money, many stopped buying premium-priced Frito-Lay products.
Some basic economic truths are playing out in the junk food market – the market where Pepsico engages in commerce. Much of its revenue has been in the form of redistributed taxpayer money, which passes through government to the recipients of what was once called “food stamps.” The recipients of SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) have historically spent considerable amounts of their federal food assistance on Doritos, Mountain Dew, and other low-nutrition foods sold by Pepsico.
It didn’t take long for Pepsico to feel the pinch. By early February, the company was finding itself needing to cut prices in response to slowing sales.
But a few months earlier when SNAP recipients were still spending government money, Pepsico was able to steadily increase prices. Now that those same consumers are forced to buy Fritos and Cheetos using their own money, they have suddenly become price conscious.
--------------------------------------
When corporations and their executives made a hard-left political turn in the early 21st century it puzzled me, because the Democrats they allied with were not the party of free enterprise. But I’ve since come to realize that much of corporate America now rejects free enterprise too, and instead wants government to act on its behalf in redistributing money from taxpayers to corporations.
Be it SNAP benefits for junk food or EV credits for auto manufacturers, the Trump administration is putting an end to the corporatist business model and its parasitic attachment to taxpayer wallets.
With “affordability” such a visible political issue, and with the Pepsico case-study showing how consumer prices can be reduced, Republicans need to aggressively focus on cutting the government subsidies that result in higher consumer prices.
*****
Other Stuff I’m Writing About
My latest piece at the The American Spectator has been published. “Natural Gas, AI, and the Industrial Boom Nobody Wants to Talk About” discusses the massive, ongoing industrial buildout going on in this country, focusing especially on the record orders and backlog for electricity-producing, natural gas turbines, and how this boom is cascading through the economy, resulting in an expansion of American manufacturing.
A subject I feel is important to keep covering, despite the puzzling disinterest of the political and media class, is the extraordinary industrial growth that is occurring in the United States. There is effectively a massive “stimulus package” of spending going on, and best of all, it is being privately funded. For once, taxpayers are benefiting from this vast “shovel-ready” stimulus, unlike recent government stimulus spending endeavors, in which money was simply redistributed from taxpayers to favored recipients.
This piece is not behind a paywall. I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.
My latest piece at The American Spectator: "Natural Gas, AI, and the Industrial Boom Nobody Wants to Talk About"https://t.co/MXhPcQLKrz
Untitled (Cowboy On Horseback)
Elling William Gollings
Who becomes famous and who toils in obscurity -- and why -- is the question that most artists must ask themselves.
I had never heard of William Gollings until I had the opportunity to visit a lovely museum in Big Horn Wyoming (near Sheridan) called The Brinton Museum. And by "lovely," I don't mean just the collection. It is architecturally beautiful, and the setting is difficult to beat, with the Big Horn Mountains in the near distance.
There are several Western artists who are far more famous: Russell and Remington and Bierstadt come to mind, but even relatively obscure artists such as Gollings have gems scattered in their work that are rarely seen, and wonderful when discovered!
He was their living lawn jockey, period. They won't say that 'cause they're sensitive and down with his struggle and all. He was there to appease and flatter their sense of being uplifters of the oppressed. In truth, he served as their living lawn jockey -- no more, no less, and unworthy of even a second thought on their part. Tokenism, pure and simple.
Podcast: More Iran bluster from Trump? Enough! Deportations hit a record, and that is a good thing for all, Todd Blanche's nomination is out of committee, the DSA is on the march, and more!
The Short Unhappy Life of a Russian Soldier: Why recruits die in 20-30 minutes Interesting video. Some key parts: drones were responsible for 70-80% of all battlefield deaths in mid-2025, and I bet it's higher now. The Russian army is incredibly corrupt. Men get assigned to the most dangerous frontline units, the "Storm" units, unless they pay a superior $2,000 to be assigned to a different unit. Furthermore, there is often no real training for recruits -- commanders pocket the money that would have gone towards fuel and ammo costs incurred during training. Much "training" consists just of taking a single picture of soldiers doing something soldier-y, like fording a river, and publishing that as proof that the training was done. Even when it is done, training is only two weeks long.
Podcast: CBD and Sefton discuss the Berlin attack, Iran...Again! Sefton's mini Odyssey review, Data Republican's blockbuster reveal about the DNC, and more!
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click She's totally committed to major independence
She's a lady through and through
She gives them quite a battle, all that they can handle
She'll bruise some, she'll hurt some too
Podcast: Illegals registered and voted in NJ! Leftist violence is baked into the Democrat cake, Iran's capabilities are being degraded, Londonistan? And...come on SC...no senate dynasties!
FDA is providing an update regarding the sample of lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms de Mexico which was reported positive on July 18, 2026. Due to the complexity in detection of Cyclospora, FDA laboratory experts re-reviewed the sample results and have concluded that the finding does not represent true amplification and should be considered a false positive. Information about the sample has been removed from the July 18, 2026, update below. FDA has notified Taylor Farms and continues working with the firm to ensure product implicated in this outbreak has been removed from the market. FDA and state partners continue to collect and analyze product samples. As of July 19, 2026, there are no confirmed positive sample results for product testing for Cyclospora.
