Sunday Morning Book Thread - 12-22-2024 ["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. 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, sugar those plums, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

LINUS EXPLAINS THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

ORIGINS OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

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(HT: mindful webworker)

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PSEUDO-CHRISTMASES IN FICTION

Christmas has been a huge cultural touchstone of Western civilization for hundreds of years. Nowadays, it seems like it's both a religious and secular holiday, so most people in the Western world can find something to celebrate, even if they are not explicitly Christian. It's not surprising that Christmas would serve as inspiration for fictional holidays in fictional worlds because of how important it is to us in the real world.

BOOKS BY MORONS

Moron Author Celia Hayes has another book ready to go! As of this Sunday Morning Book Thread, it looks like only the Kindle version is available, but the print version should be ready soon.

West Towards the Sunset by Celia Hayes

It's the year 1846, and Sally Kettering is just twelve years old. Her parents have decided to sell their farm in rural Ohio and go west...west to California. Sally and her six-year old brother Jon must leave everything they knew—friends, kinfolk and the little town where they had lived all their lives so far. Pa and Ma Kettering packed what they could take into a single covered wagon, and they set out to follow a trail through the wilderness west, along with a party of other families and adventurers.

Unknown dangers lay around every bend of the trail...wild animals, wilder Indians...Indians who might be hostile or friendly, and no way to know for certain...treacherous river crossings, trackless deserts, and jagged, dangerous mountain passes.

And still, the Kettering family and their friends boldly set out...following the trail that led west toward the sunset!

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I'm home sick with a cold I caught from a grandkid: worth it. Anyway, I went to NYC for a couple of days to visit a daughter, and at the same time was rereading Tyler Anbinder's City of Dreams. This is a very good history of NYC, specifically the immigrant history. It covers the city from its inception, including the waves of Dutch, English, German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigration. Anbinder also covers the later waves of Hispanics, Chinese, Indians, West Indians, and Puerto Ricans, but begins to get a bit preachy and woke at that point. Still, it's well worth reading.

While in NYC, we visited the Tenement Museum, which I recommend. It was difficult not to be a know-it-all, not only because that is my natural bent, but because I knew so much about the tenement experience, having just read the book. Our guide was a lovely young Chinese woman with a PhD in history, and she really knew her stuff. The combo of the book and the real-life museum was exceptionally interesting.

Posted by: Archimedes at December 15, 2024 09:16 AM (xCA6C)

Comment: Although New York City has its problems, I don't think anyone can deny that it has shaped American culture in numerous ways since its founding. It's been a hub of immigration for well over a century, for better or worse. How many Moron families can trace their origins back to Ellis Island?

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Recommendation for Lanier's book Hiero's Journey.

I've been going through Gary Gygax's list of rec reading in his Appendix N to the DM's Guide. Obv, he had great taste. Hiero's Journey is on the list. I'd never heard of it and it was cool. Clearly the inspiration for TSR's Gamma World rpg.

As to the disaffected Catholic, I guess I would ask him to ponder what exactly the Bible should mean to a Catholic. That's an important question and interesting. He might be doing Catholicism wrong idk.

As to books? I think RA Lafferty's Past Master and William Thomas Walsh's Histories would be good. That's some powerful Catholicism in action historical and fictional. And, very profound and high level intellectually.

Posted by: Thesokorus at December 15, 2024 11:56 AM (z6Ybz)

Comment: I looked in the Appendices for my first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide to see the full recommended reading list by Gary Gygax. I found it amusing that he referred to Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien as the "Ring Trilogy." Although Tolkien certainly influenced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I would argue that other authors like Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and Robert E. Howard has a bit more influence in the final product.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

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WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Seize the Night by Dean Koontz

Finished this book and it got progressively weirder and weirder as the story went on. Definitely see shades of Odd Thomas as well as story elements that have been recycled into other stories since this one was originally published.

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon Volume 2 - The Dark Abyss by Bruce Coville

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon Volume 3 - The Valley of Thunder by Charles de Lint

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon Volume 4 - The Lake of Fire by Robin W. Bailey

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon Volume 5 - The Hidden City by Charles de Lint

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon Volume 6 - The Dark Abyss by Richard A. Lupoff

I reread the first book in this series--The Black Tower by Richard A. Lupoff--back in 2023. I decided that since I began 2024 by reading an epic fantasy series, I might as well end the year by reading an epic science fiction series, though I think it's much more fantasy oriented than science fiction in many ways.

In 1868, Clive Folliot, the younger son of Baron Tewkesbury of Victorian England is tasked with seeking his elder twin brother, who has disappeared while exploring Africa. As Clive follows Neville's trail, he finds himself abducted into a strange world known only as the Dungeon, where he and his otherworldy companions will struggle against impossible odds through time and space to find their way out.

It's a very weird series, as each author was given quite a bit of free rein to take the story in any direction they liked, though they did have some loose guidelines. Characters, for example, should not vary wildly between books, though there are some interesting variations as each author interprets characters in their own way. Inpsired by Philip José Farmer's own creative style of writing, the authors imbue the story with the spirit of PJF, drawing upon a wide range of literature and pop culture. It gets *very* existential towards the end as Lupoff wraps up the storylines, eventually revealing all of the mysteries that have plagued both the characters and the readers for six books. Is the series great? No, but I was entertained enough on my reread to consider it a nice way to end 2024, leading up to the next book...

The Stormlight Archive Book 5 - Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

I don't even know how to describe this book. It's 1300+ pages, and serves to close the first part of The Stormlight Archive, so most of the storylines will need to be wrapped up in the end. Fortunately, Sanderson *excels* at providing readers with a satisfying conclusion, and he'll leave enough loose threads that will be taken up in the next part of the series, which is expected to take place thousands of years in the future of the world of Roshar. It took Sanderson around 15-16 years to finish just this first part of the series. I expect him to take another 15 years or so to finish the next five books, assuming he doesn't get distracted by other projects.

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 12-15-2024 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Close it up

Posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM Comments

Daily Tech News 22 December 2024

—Pixy Misa

• Why AI is stupid garbage and everyone in the industry is lying frantically to cover up the truth. (Ars Technica)
  
  Okay, I may have paraphrased Tim Lee at Ars just a little there, but if you look at the promises AI leaders have made against the mathematical problems they face, that is the gist of the situation.
  
  AI - LLM-based generative AI, not the more interesting discriminative AI - uses a technology called transformers which lets it process data in a massively parallel way. This requires about the same amount of work as a traditional neural network on simple prompts, while being able to use highly parallel hardware like graphics cards, so you get the result much faster.
  
  For simple prompts:

  The longer the context gets, the more attention operations (and therefore computing power) are needed to generate the next token.

  This means that the total computing power required for attention grows quadratically with the total number of tokens. Suppose a 10-token prompt requires 414,720 attention operations. Then:

  • Processing a 100-token prompt will require 45.6 million attention operations.
  • Processing a 1,000-token prompt will require 4.6 billion attention operations.
  • Processing a 10,000-token prompt will require 460 billion attention operations.

  So as you make your question more detailed and specific, the amount of time taken to produce an answer increases rapidly.
  
  Work is now on to replace transformer models with classic neural networks, which don't have these limitations, but also don't have the magical ease of development of the transformer model.
  
  But that means that promises of AGI next year are simply lies.

Open Thread

—CBD

[Hat Tip: TC]

Yes...Yes. It's confusing, but you maniacs will power through it!

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 12/21/2024

—TheJamesMadison

IT

The Book

I'm reminded of a quote from Orson Welles when discussing his own approach to adaptation saying, that it's required of a filmmaking making an adaptation to make changes. The mediums are simply different and cannot transfer directly. The most loyal adaptation that recreates every line would just be a recitation of the book's text with still images. One must change things, a lot of things, to adapt. So, IT is kind of an ideal source. There's going to be disagreement about what to change, what to include, and what to outright excise (that late scene with the Losers Club in the sewers and Bev's solution to get out...that should get excised and I don't think I want to know anyone who argues otherwise).

All of the choices are subjective, of course. I think I could make the case for not including Pennywise the Clown (not a decision I would make should I be suddenly granted the money and opportunity to make another adaptation), so you have to take a step back and look at the large choices to be made. The book is filled with large (and many, many small) things, so what do you keep? What do you highlight? What do you downplay?

Well, I have my own preferences, and they start with the book's structure. On the grand scale, the structure jumping back and forth between the two time periods is easily the best thing in the whole book. It creates this path of discovery for the audience that mirrors the main characters in both timelines (the execution is often clunky and unnatural, especially transitioning from one to the next, but it overall works very well), and it provides framing for the adults that that half of the story desperately needs (the adults really don't do much in the book until the finale). I would like to see that built into any adaptation.

Another really good thing in the book is the relationships between the kids. Aside from Mike, who's introduced to the Losers Club shockingly late, the kids feel like...kids interacting with each other and facing down something bigger than them. There's a genuine aspect to them that goes beyond the often poorly written dialogue from King. The secret to King's success is always his characters, and IT is a good example of that.

I also find the history of Derry to be interesting, Mike's research tracing back in time the different awful history of the town that is Its bloody trail, mostly told through oral histories he picks up from the older members of the town. It's not something that's easy to dramatize, working better in a literary form than a cinematic one, but it's something I'd want to see in an adaptation.

However, talking about good things, one must also mention the bad things. As previously mentioned, the dialogue is generally not good. No need to keep that for the sake of loyalty to the source. Stan is largely a non-character. The adults don't have a lot to do. Both adult and child sections have long stretches that are little more than loosely connected horror vignettes that end with the characters involved getting away. Having that happen repeatedly makes the monster chasing them far less scary, no matter how gross the vignettes can get (emblematic of King's tendency to just write in circles until he eventually found something like a point). The ending is a disappointment with the Lovecraftian terror that is IT ultimately just being a big spider. Also...getting out of the sewers is just...wrong.

So, in terms of adaptation, there's a lot to sort through. What choices did the two make?

Television

The biggest thing that television series tries to port from the book is the structure. Well, sort of. The television series works best in the first hour or so when it does do the jumping back and forth from the adults to their memories as children. However, because the television movie was broken into two parts to play over two nights, the first one has to end with a climax and denouement, so Wallace chose to show how the children defeated the eponymous monster at the end of the first episode. One of the points in the book where the cross-cutting of timelines works best is when King is cross-cutting during the competing confrontations with It across the two timelines. It's a tense way to deliver the information on the two events as they feed into each other with, essentially, different characters going through the same space at different times. It works really well. Isolating the child and adult confrontations with It robs the two events of that supplementary quality.

Regarding structure, that decision also makes the second episode...really weird. The children's story is finished, but the adults are still digging up memories and marching towards their own confrontation with It. So, that means that we're getting a bunch of memories, like Bev's moment with the blood in the bathroom sink, well after we've watched the kids defeat It. The decision is very bizarre, and it deflates the second half even more than the overall focus on the adults who are generally not that interesting and don't do much but wander around, experience horror vignettes, and eventually find their way into the sewers. Highlighting the adult section by letting it stand on its own is a mistake.

The medium of network television also prevented Wallace from getting too deep into the horror that King described in often vivid detail, so things like Richie facing the werewolf end up feeling a bit tame. Scary enough for network television, but not much else. This isn't helped at all by the rather cheap budget and short filming time which creates a very flat visual look to almost everything, death to most horror. It ends up being a fairly literal adaptation, making few major changes, condensing heavily, trying to keep focus on the characters, and eliminating the vast majority of small side characters that King populated the book with.

Being fairly literal, though, it retains a lot of what makes the book frustrating to me, namely the feeling of random vignettes in a row. Kid/adult encounters It. Kid/adult gets scared. Kid/adult runs away without getting touched. I think it works slightly better here, though, because it just doesn't take as long as in the book which is two separate sections of a solid 100 pages each that does the same thing that the series does in a few minutes. It also retains King's disappointing ending where he reveals It in Its full form, and it's a giant spider. I mean, King spends a lot of time calling It this otherworldly, eternal thing, but he doesn't have the imagination to even imply some truly alien form. He settles with "the closest thing they can come up with is a giant spider" before he ends up calling it "the giant spider" for the rest of the section. So, the film just puts a giant spider in its finale. What doesn't work in the book doesn't work in the TV movie.

Overall, the TV adaptation is a very literal adaptation that makes plenty of changes to fit the story into the medium of network television movie. It makes some curious changes to the structure while trying to retain some of it, but ultimately it's a safe work that retains more issues from the book than tries to fix them.

Feature Film(s)

The assortment of production companies (including New Line Cinema, who funded a three-part adaptation of The Lord of the Rings before the first one was even fully written) would only fund an adaptation of IT one at a time. So, they made the first part, released it, took in the cash, and then greenlit the second part. So, this led to major structural changes, especially in the first part, and I think it requires treating to two separately to some degree.

Chapter One


The biggest choice that Andy Muschietti made regarding the adaptation is keeping the children's story wholly contained in the first part. If one were to split the original novel into two halves, between the tales of children and adults, it's the children's story that works best independently. The adult section is so intimately tied to the children's section, King playing (not entirely successfully) with the idea of memory in the adult section that it cannot stand alone. The children's section is fodder for its own telling, and that's what Muschietti does.

The biggest difference between the feature film's treatment of the material and the television adaptation of this part of the book is the overall approach to cinematic storytelling. The TV adaptation feels like a book adaptation. The feature film feels like a movie. It still retains much of the issues with the book, but scenes aren't quite as choppily put together, and the whole thing actually looks like a movie instead of a cheap TV production. I mean...I appreciate that. There's also this effort to make the series of horror vignettes feel more impactful and spread out rather than in a row, like the adaptation largely maintained. It ends up retaining a lot of the events of the film like Eddie encountering the Leper, for instance, but because they're spread out and spaced out better than the book, it's less obvious that it's just a series of close calls. It's interesting, though, that there's no werewolf. It's very prominent in the book, and even the TV adaptation included it.

And the werewolf isn't in it because Pennywise the Clown gets far more attention than even the book gives it. Pennywise is the most prominent form of It in the book, but he's far from a majority. He's more like a prominent plurality. The rest is largely dedicated to the Mummy and the Werewolf with a smattering of other things all over the place (like the insane bully's dead friends guiding him in the adult section), but the most prominent scene of It with the group of kids outside the finale has It being in the form of the werewolf (when they all go to the rundown house). This means that It is in only one form when it scares the children: a clown.

The Pennywise shape is explicitly done to lure kids in close to then feed on them. And then, the film has him be a source of terror in that form too. It's both, but those are mutually exclusive things. That leads to these amped up terror moments when Pennywise shuffles forward fast with his head jerking about as the only way to scare things. And that's kind of how the whole film approaches horror: big and obvious. There's no tension. It's mostly just big scary noises. It's more of a general approach to horror in film in the 2010s, but it's a difference in adaptation from the source. It's something that irks me, not because it's different, but because that type of horror is not scary, I don't think.

Another change is that they give the kids a more personal motive to go into the sewers to face It in the form of It kidnapping Bev. They have to come back together after a fight (not in the books) to save their best friend, and it even gives us a moment where It demonstrates why he scares kids instead of how King does it: giving It a handful of chapters late where It essentially explains itself.

In terms of adaptation, I think Chapter One is the best of the three. Not the most faithful, but the one that does the job best of moving the story from one medium to the next.

Chapter Two


And...then we get to the adult section. The adult section in the book is just not that robust. The adults receive the calls from Mike. They leave their lives to go to Derry (or not, in Stan's case). They meet at the Chinese restaurant and bond again. And then Mike...has them wander Derry for an afternoon to recover more memories, or something, which leads to the horror vignettes. Afterwards, they meet at the library, talk some more, one gets attacked by the old bully Henry Bowers, and they have to go down to the sewers two short instead of at full power with seven. For half of a 1200 page book, it's not a lot of story.

A nearly 3-hour movie about this is going to go very thin, and Muschietti made the choice to do what the TV adaptation did: input childhood memories into the story when the childhood section is already complete. This time they invent things not in the book, though, which is...whatever. It's nice to see the clubhouse appear, I guess. This really feels like an attempt to pump up runtime so that the producers could call the finished product "epic".

Anyway, the film actually moves through the reunion pretty quickly, and leaving us with a lot of time to focus on the dispersal across Derry. However, Muschietti comes up with an actual reason: The Ritual of Chud. The Ritual of Chud was in the book, but it was more about locking eyes with It and making it laugh, a facade for facing down this thing of fear and making it clear that you're not afraid of it. The film introduces busyness to collect mementos from the adults' childhood to burn in an old Native American urn for reasons. I mean...it's really just a fetch quest of dubious use, but it's something other than, "Just go, we'll meet up later."

That does create the series of vignettes again, and it's where the film suffers the most. The reappearance of the kids' storylines ends up creating new events where the kids faced off with It, and they're aligned with the adults' encounters. So, we're getting double encounters with It where we know that the people will survive...for more than an hour. It drags. The movie drags badly.

The confrontation with It in the end is much, much longer in the film than it is in the book, with each adult going into hallucinations from their past with Pennywise taunting them. At least Muschietti was determined to not just do a giant spider. We do get Pennywise's head on a giant spider with a heavier emphasis on the Dead Lights (from the book, but also present in the first feature film) that implies It being something bigger and more menacing than just a scary monster. I mean, the whole third act drags out way too long, but at least there's a real attempt at making the spider a mask for something more, though King's own description was that the spider form was It unmasked.

Choices


I've gone long, so let's wrap this up...

It used to be that film was seen as this idealized form for a story in popular culture, that every great book needed to become a movie. That has shifted over the past decade or so where everyone wants their favorite book to be a long miniseries like Game of Thrones. And yet...imagine Jaws as a 10 part miniseries instead of the tight 2-hour film that Spielberg put out in the 70s.

Anyway, my point is that IT doesn't need a 25-hour adaptation on Prime, or whatever. It needs, at most, 5-6 hours. You don't need to spend pages of the pseudo-intellectualizing by 10-year old characters. You don't need the series of repetitive horror vignettes. Heck, I don't think you need all of the characters (Stan, in particular, could get cut pretty easily, and I think there's an argument for combining Mike and Ben).

That being said, the two adaptations, purely from the angle of the task of adaptation, are not bad. They retain the core of the book (the kids and their relationships). They retain a lot of events from the book. They ultimately feel like they belong in their own medium instead of being awkward attempts in the wrong one (this is how I view Pet Semetary). The most loyal would be the television adaptation. The best of them is probably Chapter One (though I don't think I'd quite call it good). The most improved is honestly Chapter Two because the adult section of the book is such a wet fart for a long stretch, and at least the ending of the movie works decently.

They all make choices. They all change things. Some big things get changed a whole lot. A whole host of smaller things get changed (Ben being the historian of Derry instead of Mike feels like a crime against Mike). The choices are subjective. The source is flawed. The flaws come through. Some are fixed sometimes, but they're often just left along, translated into the new medium uncritically.

Anyway, I'm done. That's enough. It was an interesting thought experiment. I think the end result is as messy and cluttered as King's original novel.

Sorry about that.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Mufasa: The Lion King

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Rating 1.5/4) Full Review "Anyway, it's generally not that funny. The plot doesn't really work. The special effects and production design are really good." [Library]

D.C. Cab (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "He ends up creating this slog of a film that never comes together, never entertains, and never engages." [Library]

St. Elmo's Fire (Rating 1/4) Full Review "Joel Schumacher really wanted to be the Robert Altman for Gen-X, didn't he?" [Library]

The Lost Boys (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "I mean, I sort of get its enduring appeal. It's pretty fun, but it's also frustrating at the same time." [Library]

Flatliners (Rating 2/4) Full Review "So, I didn't hate it, despite my long list of narrative grievances targeted at its script. Schumacher is a largely unimaginative director, unable to take the material from Filardi and take it in a direction more interesting, but he makes the most of what's on the page." [Library]

Dying Young (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "This movie is trash. It was approached poorly by Schumacher and then fixed badly by him after test screenings." [Library]

Batman Forever (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "So, no, I don't like this movie at all. It's really bad. I do appreciate the visual look of the film, which is pretty consistently interesting, but it's far from enough to get me through even singular scenes much less the whole thing. Really, this is the worst Batman live-action film." [Personal Collection]

Batman & Robin (Rating 1.5/4) Full Review "Is this fun? Some childish part of me doesn't hate it, but it's poorly written, poorly performed, and kind of dumb. It might be some of the closest I get to ironically enjoying a film because I don't enjoy it." [Personal Collection]

Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.

My next post will be on 1/11, and it will be about the directed works of Joel Schumacher.

Close it up

Hobby Thread - December 21, 2024 [TRex]

—Open Blogger

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.

As previewed, the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) has determined that the Hobby Thread theme of the week is Christmas and Hanukkah crafting. The Wheel is feeling festive and might be a little tipsy after getting into the spiked eggnog.

As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Politics, current events and religious debates can live in threads elsewhere. Even though it is arguably religion, college football is fair game. Play nice. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls. Pants are optional.

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Gifts, cards, decorations, nativities, food, stockings, advent calendars, ornaments, etc. Anything you make or fashion for Christmas or Hanukkah is eligible. What are you crafting? What have you crafted in the past that was memorable? Do you make gifts for others? Are you guilty of taking on projects that involve a last minute push to complete? Do you make your own decorations? Do you have friends, neighbors or relatives that are noteworthy for their holiday crafting?

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Top photo: when the Germans say that their Nutcrackers are handmade, they mean it. Good history on Nutcrackers here from Atlas Obscura.

Nutcracker Museum Website in German. Worth a visit if you are in the area.

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Yum!

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Crafty goodies from German Christmas Markets:

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How cookie cutters are made:

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Piper sent photos of two different Buche de Noels and a box of cupcakes.

I make the meringue mushrooms and I made the little mouse. My mom had a decorative saw that I hope I can get my hands on next time I visit my stepfather. The ornaments on the cupcakes are made out of white chocolate that I hand painted with edible paint to make them look metallic. The silver hangers are marzipan with edible glitter.

Yum! Thank you!

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TRex is not wise in the ways of making cookies and is generally banned from the kitchen. However, it is great to see that the holiday theme includes those of the dinosaur persuasion. (Hat tip: Iris)

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YouTube has many 3D printing videos for Christmas. Picked this one at random based mostly on the snowmen and custom gift boxes:

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Old school 3D. More elaborate than snowflakes TRex made as a youth, but these look great:

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Looking for a White Elephant gift? The Hobby Thread has you covered. Some assembly required:

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What is a White Elephant gift and why is is called a White Elephant?

Wikipedia describes a White Elephant as a party game where amusing and impractical gifts are exchanged during festivities. The goal of a white elephant gift exchange is to entertain party goers rather than to give or acquire a genuinely valuable or highly sought item.

White Elephants are common among office parties but calibrate your gift ideas with the correct degree of irreverence in your office culture.

Where does the term White Elephant come from? Wikipedia says the phrase comes from the historic practice of the King of Siam (now Thailand) giving rare albino elephants to courtiers who had displeased him, so that they might be ruined by the upkeep costs. The story is likely more legend than fact, given that albino elephants are rare, valuable and sacred. Short answer? No idea.

Here is the part that TRex did not know until doing research for the thread: Other names for White Elephant include Dirty Santa, Yankee Swap, Shifty Santa, Bad Santa, the Grinch Game, Thieving Elves, Snatchy Christmas Rat, Cutthroat Christmas, Redneck Santa, Machiavellian Christmas, Kamikaze Gift Exchange and Bastard Secret Santa.

Snatchy Christmas Rat?? Kamikaze gift exchange? Dirty Santa? Huffington Post says so. Which means nothing, so looking to the Horde for your knowledge.

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From PA Dutchman:

Photos of my finished 1/35 Willys MB. I will be giving it to my dad for Christmas. He served in Company L, 3/34, part of the 24th Infantry Division in Korea and it is only in the last few years that he has begun to talk about his experiences. So I wanted to do something special to honor his service and sacrifice.

Outstanding. Thank you for sharing!

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Snickerdoodles from Lurker NorCal Sierra Nevada Foothills:

Yum! Thank you!

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Christmas ornaments from Lirio100:

I have made Christmas ornaments on and off for years, but I usually make them to give away, My sister sent me a picture a couple of weeks ago because she has some questions about ones I had made her (the ornaments in a row). I have no idea now why I thought it was a good idea to send Valentine hearts for Christmas ornaments!

The other picture is a cross stitch ornament I did keep, along with a hanging. The third ornament is in progress (yes, a very late start) that will be a Christmas tree in the center of a small hanging. I'm making two for my daughter and daughter in law.

Thank you!

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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week with a theme of toys and games? The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Someone mentioned Chinese Checkers last week. TRex saw a set (metal playing board and marbles) in good condition at an antique store today with a price tag of $36. It stayed at the antiques store.

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Notable comments from last week:

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Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

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If Christmas or Hanukkah crafting is not your thing and you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, hijack the thread for your hobbying as you see fit. We will feature a different hobby next time. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com All Christmas items are 60 percent off (exclusions apply).

Close it up

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, December 21

—K.T.

Courtesy of Sarah Hoyt by way of mindful webworker who sent me the link to Hoyt's webpage . . .

Enjoy!

"Perfessor" Squirrel

Heh.

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

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A good reminder that it is easy to get over-stimulated this time of year:

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Who wants stuffed toys?

Rescue beavers want stuffed toys.

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Be sure to "turn the pages".

I love this teacher 😹🫶🏻 pic.twitter.com/VI3x2RVQAg

— Puchy Catto (@PuchyCatto) December 17, 2024

Best regards from Jerusalem,

Biden's Dog

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This lovely moment of tenderness. pic.twitter.com/BPtfswJfSG

— Figen (@TheFigen_) December 19, 2024

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Meet The PetMorons

These are Sangria and Rooney, both Maine Coon cats. Sangria (the black/gray) is two and a half years old, and she is just over sixteen and half pounds. Rooney, my orange himbo, is a year and a half, and twenty pounds. The table they are sitting on is bone of contention between the two. Sangria considers it hers but Rooney wants to be near her. She likes to sprawl full length on it but he gets up on a corner of it and nudges her until they both are sitting up on it together. The size difference is not due to forced perspective, he really is that much bigger than her. She is rather compact while he is rangy with long legs. (the green blob is a grandchild's Squashmallow picture).

Lirio100

What a pair! Thanks for sharing this great photo and the details about the differences between the siblings. Family life!

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Hi KT, it’s Quarter Twenty.

Passing along a note about my friend Charlie’s dog Buddy.

He passed over the Rainbow Bridge this week.

A black lab mix, he was special to me and a group of friends because we meet weekly for what is essentially a house church. And Buddy was always there to revel in the controlled chaos of a bunch of guys trying to prepare some haphazardly planned meal in a tiny kitchen with an abundance of appetizers, snacks and dropped food. Dutifully cleaning the plates before they entered the dishwasher, he would also incessantly lick hands, arms, and exposed knees of anyone within range. Charlie would usually have to explain to newcomers: “Please excuse my dog. He can’t control his licker.” 70 pounds of friendliness, he loved to accompany the group for a post-dinner walk so he could check his pee mail.

Charlie is also a talented photographer and captured this silhouette a few years ago while watching sunset at Shenandoah National Park. Buddy will be sorely missed by all his friends from The Church At Charlie’s House.

I think Buddy qualifies as a PetMoron. So sorry that Charlie, you and all of your group have lost him. What a great photo.

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This is Belle and she is mesmerized by the Christmas lights.

I wish to remain a lurker.

Thanks!

Thank you for sharing the great photo of Belle and the lights! She's an example to us all of the possibilities of appreciation.

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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde

Great Egret, tired of my shenanigans.

By-Tor

Wonderful action photo! We recently had egrets and cranes hanging out locally, but they have moved south for the winter. Nice to see that By-Tor can still photograph one in Southern California.

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Thank you for sharing your pets, photos and pet wit and wisdom with us.

If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:

petmorons at protonmail dot com

Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.

Until next Saturday, have a great week!

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If you start feeling nostalgic, here a link to last week's Pet Thread, the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, December 14.

I closed the comments on this post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.

Close it up

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Dec 21

—K.T.

Merry weekend before Christmas! And Hanukkah! It's a time for gardening eye candy. Above, a boxed Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) grown by a cousin whose husband ordered bulbs for her from a "Bulb of the Month Club". Great gift!

Below, another one that started blooming on November 21, grown by her friend:

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The second amaryllis above looks similar to one type grown to bloom in spring outdoors by Neal in Israel.

He got a lot of blooms from one bulb! Glorious.

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It's Winter Solstice Today

Is Winter Solstice the beginning of winter?

History, folklore, verse and weather forecasts at the link.

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Edible Gardening/Putting Things By

Starting to feel like you've already had too much rich holiday food? Turning toward salads? Tomatoes have been pretty awful around here - even those grown in greenhouses. Have you had any good experiences? We've had some good avocados and some bad ones.

We should probably talk again about endive and escarole - classical winter greens.

How about some old-fashioned lettuces, or some newer ones bred for dramatic color or climate adaptation? Get out those catalogs.

Tom Thumb is 150 years old. A miniature Bibb/Butterhead type. My Mom and I used to take a bottle of vinegar and a salt shaker out into the garden to munch on it.

Little Gem is another old single-serving sized lettuce.

Cos. This is a very small, green romaine type. One of the very best tasting lettuces we’ve encountered. A superb heat-tolerant variety that is sure to please! Famous among chefs and home gardeners alike!

Merveille de Quatre Saisons

Bibb/Butterhead. Translating to “The Marvel of Four Seasons,” this famous French butterhead is a standard for flavor and quality! A true marvel both in the kitchen and the vegetable patch. A pre-1885 heirloom; crisp and tender. The fine flavored leaves have a reddish color, and it can be grown almost year round in many locations. The ruby-rose leaves form a distinctly attractive rosette head, but can also be enjoyed as young baby greens.

30-48 days to maturity (30 for baby greens)

Devil's Ear

Leaf. Originally Devil’s Ear comes from Abundant Life Seed Foundation. It has very large, spreading, loose-leaf heads. Leaves are large, wavy-margined, and suffused in burgundy. We love its nutty, crisp texture and bitter-free flavor. Slow to bolt, and it stands a very long time in the garden.

This may be one of those lettuces from which you can cut the outer leaves and leave the center ones for the next week.

Merlot

Leaf. Reputed to be absolutely the darkest red lettuce in existence, making it tops for anthocyanin (antioxidant) content as well! Leaf lettuce with wavy to frilly leaf margins and very crisp, waxy leaves! Excellent bolt resistance, and good cold tolerance for a late fall to winter crop. Recommended as a cutting type for baby greens production or cut-and-come-again harvesting. We feel, along with our friend William Woys Weaver, that this variety is destined to become a classic, and it certainly deserves it! A rich source of potassium and vitamin A.

What is your favorite type of lettuce? Do you prefer a single type or a mix?

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Cut Flower

Are you giving anyone flowers for Christmas? This one, or a relative, might be included:

Star of Bethlehem

How long since you have read a South African gardening magazine? I have met some people who are really dedicated to protecting the plants of this region.

Ornithogalum thyrsoides - Chincherinchee, Tjienk, Star of Bethlehem

Chincherinchees or ‘tjienks’ belong to the genus Ornithogalum and are members of the Hyacinth family that includes indigenous garden favourites like Eucomis, Lachenalia and Veltheimia.

There are more than 120 species of Ornithogalum and the name is derived from the Greek words ornis and gala, meaning ‘bird-like’ and ‘white’ respectively. In Roman times, bird’s milk was used to describe anything special or admirable.

Ornithogalums have a disjunctive distribution in Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe and western Asia, but most species occur in Southern Africa – mainly in the winter rainfall regions of the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape. There are also a number of summer-growing and evergreen species such as Ornithogalum Saundersiae (Giant Chincherinchee) and Ornithogalum Longibracteatum (Pregnant Onion).

There's a lot more information about the plants than you see in most American gardening magazines. More at the link. Blooms may last 6 weeks when cut. The plant is very poisonous. Don't you love the name "Chincherinchee"?

"Ornithogalum Thyrsoides is seen to great advantage when grown in rock garden pockets inter-planted with the mauve, late spring-flowering annual, Senecio Elegans (Wild Cineraria)."

The latter is recognized as a potentially invasive weed in coastal sand dunes in California.

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Puttering

Super-puttering with friends and family

Something fun for the kids in a little city:

Want to take a Magic Elevator ride to the North Pole? Ten months ago I approached the City . . about a special project I had in mind. Inspired by a video I had seen about an attraction in a mall in Canada. .

With a budget to buy materials, I got started. I had to build the magical elevator, Santa's Workshop, and design the computer program that would take the families to see Santa. The journey starts by a greeting from Santa's elf, step into the elevator, and the journey begins. When you arrive at Santa's house, you ring the doorbell and Santa is there to greet you.

I have never worked on anything of this magnitude and there were times I just didn't think I could get it done. . .

A special thank you to so many people who helped out.

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Adventure

Thread of the world's most beautiful towns and villages at Christmas 🧵

1. Locorotondo, Italy pic.twitter.com/Nnw7LUL3yt

— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) December 20, 2024

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Gardens of The Horde

Hi Katy,

Just back from some early winter maintenance at our vacation home in northern Israel. The gardener was at work the other day and managed to save some birds of paradise for Mrs. BD to take back home to Jerusalem.

Regards from Jerusalem,

Biden's Dog

A fascinating flower. It's the City Flower of Los Angeles.

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From Don in Kansas:

While most of the yard is dormant, one of the daffodils got the dates mixed up and is blooming now. Unless the temperature gets extremely cold soon, I should have flowers in the garden for Christmas.

What a happy Christmas gift!

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Hope everyone has a nice weekend and a lovely Christmas and Hanukkah.

If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening, Puttering and Adventure 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.

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Week in Review

What has changed since last week's thread? Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Dec. 14. Check the late comments you may have missed.

Any thoughts or questions?

I closed the comments on this post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.

Close it up

A bold educational change in New Zealand

—K.T.

Something to talk about while the family is home for the holidays

Steven Hayward:

It is a rare day that I suggest we follow New Zealand’s example for anything, but this is one step Congress and the Trump Administration should strongly consider in their efforts to force universities to reform themselves (which they are not going to do without concentrated and sustained outside pressure):

From Science magazine:

Amid cuts to basic research, New Zealand scraps all support for social sciences

This week, in an announcement that stunned New Zealand’s research community, the country’s center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation’s sole funding source for fundamental science, to “research with economic benefits.” Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.

BOLD! What do you think led to this move?

Hmmmmm . . .

New Zealand expects to post budget deficits over five-year forecast period

Immigration: Another annual record for departures from New Zealand

Imagine taking budgeting into consideration when designing university programs.

First, I am sure that if the Trump Administration cuts off NSF and other federal funding for university social sciences and humanities, the campus whiners won’t call it “astonishing.” They’ll call it “genocide.”

Remind you of anything going on in the USA right now?

Hayward also got curious and looked up the bio of a professor quoted by Science because of her interest in the importance of social sciences to New Zealand’s economy and “social cohesion.”

Read her research accomplishments and interests at the link. She seems to be fascinated by the concept of "nation", especially with regard to Northern Ireland, and she has been concerned about pre-9/11 stereotypes of Irish terrorists. One could imagine by trying really hard how that research could improve the social cohesion and economy of New Zealand for certain people. But can she show us her data?

How about her other interests? Does studying them improve social cohesion and the economy? Where are the data?

She has a PhD from Stanford, so there may be some professors pretty much like her stateside. And some who are more feisty and disagreeable. There is an appealing photo of her at the link if you're into professors who are into cosplay.

Students are not being well-educated at our current universities pretty much anywhere in the West. Got any suggestions for federal or state authorities, or donors here in the USA?

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There are some distinctive elements to transportation in New Zealand. They reportedly have only a couple of remaining train/road bridges. Always let the train go first. But they still have quite a few one-lane bridges on two-way roads. Friends who visited New Zealand this summer sometimes found them to be quite unexpected. How do you think these bridges affect social cohesion and the economy of New Zealand? Any classes about them in universities?

Is New Zealand ready for self-driving cars for immigrants?

Do you think China has any thoughts about those one-way bridges, since they think of New Zealand as within their Circle of Influence?

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Weekend

Steven Hayward's The Week in Pictures: Droning On and On

The droneswarm has only intensified over the last week. And that’s just in New Jersey. On Capitol Hill, the spending drones have suddenly hit some electronic interference in the form of Elon Musk, and boy are they hopping mad about it. Imagine—a billionaire not named Soros or Bloomberg having the audacity to get involved in politics! And media drones such as George Stephanopoulos and Chris Cillizza are losing altitude fast.

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Some specifics about an issue which has been in the news lately in a number of contexts. Roman rewards for families with 3 or more children?

The fall of Rome is widely misunderstood.

It wasn't invasion, disease or famine that truly brought it to its knees.

Rome collapsed because the birth rate did… (thread) 🧵 pic.twitter.com/IxbMVp69hv

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) December 17, 2024

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Music

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, Sydney Opera House

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Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend. Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Serving your mid-day open thread needs

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Last week's thread, December 14, Happy Bill of Rights Weekend

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

Close it up

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

*****

Could there be a Mystery Click? You'll just have to explore.

Good morning Horde and welcome to the Classical Saturday Coffee Break and Prayer Revival. As we approach Christmas The Fabulous and I wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas.

Now before we enter the Prayer Revival there are just a few housekeeping matters to take care of. (Rulz for those of you at the North Pole)

1) This is an open thread. Please feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate away.
2) Be kind, be nice. No jumping on the furniture and no open flames by the Christmas tree.
3) Running with sharp objects could impact your consumption of eggnog and fruitcake, be careful.
4) Have a great weekend.

AoSHQ Weekly Prayer List

Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo atsign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.

Prayer Requests:

11/8 – Jim in Kalifornia could use prayers. He was scheduled for laparoscopic surgery to clean abscess(es) and add a drain.
11/16 Update – Jim was released from the hospital on 11/12. He still has the drain, is on 2 antibiotics and an antifungal for another 12 days. His anti-rejection regimen was reduced to allow him to fight the infection(s), but at a potential risk to the transplanted kidney.
12/7 Update – Jim is hospitalized again with sepsis again. His blood pressure has slumped again and his heart rate is too high. Also, the drain in his abdomen is not working.
12/11 Update – Jim had surgery, and the doctors removed “a couple of feet” of his small intestine and resected the large. Jim will be living with a colostomy bag for 6 months.

11/23 – Jewells sent an update. She has been taking ivermectin for 2 weeks, and the only side effect is extreme fatigue.
12/7 Update – Please keep praying. The past few weeks have been bad. Jewells is in a lot of pain. The bone lesions are spreading in her arms and rib cage. She is supposed to start radiation Wednesday, and is waiting to hear about a permanent drain to be put in her lungs.
12/14 Update – The drain was put in on 12/11. She was supposed to receive a sedative and medication for pain while they worked, and she received nothing. She felt everything and it hurt like hell. It also hurts when it is being drained, and that is daily for the first week. She has a great home health nurse coming in now, and she has shown Jewell’s daughter and husband how to do it.

11/30 – Tonypete offered prayers of thanksgiving - #4 son and his wife have announced the (estimated) May arrival of their first baby. They are all so thrilled.

11/30 – PabloD asked for prayers. He is currently on a two-week heart monitor and waiting for more tests. They are not sure what’s wrong. He is praying for favorable results, or at least a clear answer as to what the problem may be.

11/30 – DiddlySquat requested prayers. After doing his normal weighted leg lifts, his foot went numb, with pain down his calf. He’s had constant pain and many sleepless nights for the last 6 weeks. He’s finally scheduled for a nerve test EMG.

11/30 – Megthered asked for prayers for her son-in-law. He had stepped on a nail, and it became infected. They took him to the hospital, and they did surgery to try and save his foot.

11/30 – W offered the following prayer, as a follow up on the election:
“Almighty and most merciful father, we thank thee for the great blessing you have heaped on the citizens of the United States. We thank the Lord for protecting President Trump from the assassin’s bullet. We thank the Lord for providing a fair and just election, and for the great electoral victory which you have granted us. We offer thanks for your guidance during the electoral contest, and humbly beseech thee to continue providing each of us and our leaders with courage and guidance so that we might crush the wickedness of the swamp and establish justice and moral rectitude in the United States.”

12/7 – Hrothgar sends continued prayers for future president Trump, to keep him safe from harm and that the many forces of corruption and evil arrayed against both him and our country be made ineffective and come to naught!

12/6 – Fenelon Spoke requested prayers. She was in the hospital, after having gotten sick while out with friends. She didn’t end up having to stay the night; tests showed she was dehydrated and had a UTI.

12/7 – Our Country Is Screwed asked for prayers. Just as his daughter completed her cancer treatment (and is now cancer free, praise be to God), he has been diagnosed with cancer as well. More tests are needed, but the biopsy was malignant. What is supposed to be a season of joy is once again dampened by cancer.

12/7 – Grammie Winger updated that Rev is scheduled to have a colostomy reversal in January. Thanks be to God.

12/7 – Jordan61 requested prayers for his mother, who is going in for a CAT scan. Mom has been coughing and congested ever since she caught a cold in August. They have done antibiotics, etc. since, and a chest X-ray revealed something that caused the doctor to recommend an urgent CAT scan.
12/14 Update – The CAT scan showed she had pneumonia. They gave her antibiotics (fourth round) and are continuing with prednisone. If this doesn’t work she will have to see a lung specialist.

12/7 – rhennigantx asked for prayers for his friend Mike, who lost his best friend of 50 years.

12/10 – Village Idiot’s Apprentice requested prayers for his father, who had a major stroke on 12/9, with not a good prognosis.
12/14 Update – His father has entered hospice. He is only expected to last a few days.
12/19 Update – His father was called home to be with God at about 1 am. It is so bittersweet to know that he is no longer here, but yet already at the side of God.

12/10 – Tonypete asked for prayers for his buddy, Larry, whose mother passed away during the night. This is after Larry’s wife passed away last year. Larry is having a tough time.

12/10 – Nurse Ratched asked for a prayer for Marine. He was in a motorcycle accident yesterday. He’s got a broken nose and arm, but no spinal injuries or concussion.

12/11 – Lady in Black requested prayers for her dad. He’s 89, in declining health, and suffers from mild dementia. Lady in Black’s dad’s wife of 45 years died on 12/3. Dad is lost without her and very sad. His dementia challenges are making it even worse. Prayers for his mental and physical well-being during the time would be greatly appreciated.

12/11 – Teresa in Fort Worth has had her second round of chemo, and it went well. Thanks to God for that! Also, the anti-nausea meds are working very well for her. (We have been praying for Teresa for a couple of months, as she found she had bile duct cancer, which had metastasized into her liver. It is very rare and very serious. She hopes for at least 12 months more to live, with chemo and surgery and prayers.)

12/12 – Cybersmythe is supposed to have outpatient surgery on 12/16, but he got an abnormal ECG. He’s asking for prayers for the best of all possible outcomes.

12/12 – Bulg asked for general prayers for himself and his family.

12/14 – Dash my Lace Wings asked for prayers. She has had chronic hip pain for years, but it has really started to affect her mobility. The MRI showed torn tendons. She is going to try platelet-rich-plasma injections to stimulate healing, in lieu of surgery. That will happen in January. Please pray that the tendons are healed and that she might have reduced pain for a few years, and not have to have more expensive surgery. Thank you. Also, if anyone has had this treatment, what is your opinion of it?

12/14 – About That Time asked for prayers for a daughter who is trying to give them a second grandchild. The daughter lost a baby in early October, and is pregnant again. Prayers for success are appreciated.

12/14 – Commissar Hrothgar would appreciate a prayer or two for Tim, an acquaintance from Southern Virginia. He apparently dodged a deer while driving, but went off the road into a ditch, jamming the driver’s side door, and then the car caught on fire. Amazingly, there was an ongoing house fire nearby, so the fire department EMTs saw the flames and were somehow able to extract him from the car. However, he suffered severe burns on his hands and legs. He is already receiving skin grafts on his hands and legs and will be in a bad way for some time.

12/14 – Sock Monkey asked for prayers for Publius. His cousin passed away suddenly on 12/13.

12/14 – Sharon (willow’s apprentice) could use some prayers. She had a CT scan of her hip, and may be headed toward a hip replacement. She is not worried about the surgery, which probably will improve her life, but is concerned about the loss of autonomy during recovery.

12/14 – Duke Lowell asked for prayers for his father, who was taken to the hospital 12/13 in respiratory distress. They are thinking it’s an infection, but he’s 87, and at that age anything can be serious.

12/16 – Teresa in Fort Worth requested prayers for Paul’s niece, Amanda, who had a heart transplant 4 years ago. Now her body has started to reject it. She needs another miracle.

12/17 – Bulg asked for prayers that he would find a job soon.

12/18 – neverenoughcaffeine could use prayers. She has 3 minor medical issues. One she can ignore, but the other 2 are causing loads of pain and discomfort. They may be related. She is praying that her ortho doctor has an answer for both.

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.

Close it up

Daily Tech News 21 December 2024

—Pixy Misa

• Here's a list of the 49 American AI startups that have raised $100 million or more in 2024. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Top among them is OpenAI, which raised $6.6 billion this year, but close behind is Elon Musk's xAI, which raised $6 billion.
  
  Interestingly Europe didn't miss the boat with Mistral leading the table there with $1.2 billion raised.
  
  What all that money will achieve I don't know.

Just The ONT, Ma'am

—WeirdDave

Hi Horde! Friday night, what's everyone up to? Time to get silly.

Fido Friday: Firsty

pic.twitter.com/ERf9L6syrI

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 21, 2024

Feel good story

I think maybe he was high

Cool

pic.twitter.com/a4sIDYfflz

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 21, 2024

ND

Obamacare

The universe has a sense of humor

pic.twitter.com/pkABfHxLW1

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 21, 2024

Christmas cartoon

True 'nuff

Build a better rattrap, and the world will beat a path to your door

pic.twitter.com/OAfrrg5gKu

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 21, 2024

Unsocial Media

Man-aging a bad situation

I'm speechless

OMFG! I try (and fail) not to be profane, but OH MY FUCKING GOD!
Coach: We need a theme for the halftime show
Cheer coach: 9/11?
Coach: You son of a bitch, I'm in! pic.twitter.com/xM7fs8Geb6

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 20, 2024

SMDH

75% chance she fucked him. Maybe 85. No doubt in my mind.

Villians

Woman moment

pic.twitter.com/MZrgaDiZk1

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 20, 2024

Christmas service

Hard to argue

When you're grown up you can recycle this bit when you're working blue

pic.twitter.com/5TimW5Tg1a

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) December 20, 2024

BUFF

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by conspiracy theorists:

Close it up

Giant Animals Cafe

—Ace

Big Jake, one of the World's largest horses during his time

Big moose.

Major elephant.

Big bison.

That's no king cobra, it's a Kong cobra:

Massive moose Elk.

That's a big bull.

Colossal cow.

Serious bunny.

More big critters in the thread.

Cat has opinions on whether or not it's time to wake up.

Dog has opinions on whether your being five minutes late to give him dinner is acceptable or not.

Blowing bubbles in freezing air. It's a little more interesting than you might think.

Otters of a non-evil nature.

Gotta keep your eye out for these rapacious Scandis.

Baby racoon wants to be involved.

Owls have +12 to stealth checks.

Some people just don't like hearing Christmas songs 24/7.

Hoosegow Honey.

Puppy obstacle course.

Friday!

Happy reindeer is limbering up for his big night!

Quick Hits

—Ace

Why do they always look like this?

There is an answer, of course: because radical, revolutionary politics, which promises to bring down society's winners and replace them with society's losers, are naturally favored by society's losers.

#SorryNotSorry but that's the truth. Marxism is a politics for the ugly, unwanted, uneducated, unhealthy, and insane.

Ryan Saavedra
@RealSaavedra

Reporters did not ask Karine Jean-Pierre a single question about The Wall Street Journal report from yesterday that outlined how the White House hid President Joe Biden's cognitive decline from the public.

The Democrats are holding disaster funds for (red states) Florida and North Carolina hostage, but don't worry, Biden's handlers just approved by their usurped kingly authority a $1 billion payment to Save Some Trees in Ecuador.

Some crime investigators think that the hearthrob terrorist that deplorable leftwing women flick their beans over must have had an accomplice acting as a "spotter" for his target.

Top crime investigators are convinced the suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter carried out the cold-blooded murderer with the help of an accomplice, DailyMail.com can reveal.

...

But two leaders in the investigative field who have analyzed the case have now told DailyMail.com that some key details are being ignored -- and that those clues point to at least one accomplice to the alleged murderer.

...

O'Shea says the coincidence of the shooter arriving within five minutes of Thompson emerging from his hotel, suspicious behavior by others on CCTV, and conflicting witness statements, all suggest the killer knew exactly when to pounce thanks to help from at least one other person.

A second industry leader in private intelligence for celebrities and CEOs spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity due to being close to the case.

This second top security expert also pointed to CCTV footage of the assassin talking on the phone to an as-yet-unidentified contact while walking to the Hilton Midtown 15 minutes before the murder took place.

These top PIs are asking: could that call have been from an accomplice monitoring the movements of the UnitedHealthcare CEO?

Further arguments about Mangione having an inside line here.

America's Sweetheart -- no, the lesbian one with pink hair, not the brother-marrying one who said some people did some things -- is running her ugly mouth again.

In an incredibly predictable fashion, Megan Rapinoe was a fan of Caitlin Clark's recent comments about how she has benefited from 'white privilege' throughout her life and basketball career. The former U.S. women's soccer standout didn't stop at simply applauding Clark's comment, however, Rapinoe also took a shot at conservatives in the process.

"I want to say I've earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege," was the quote from Clark that lit the Internet ablaze after she was named Time's Athlete of the Year.

Rapinoe co-hosts the 'A Touch More' podcast with her partner, WNBA legend Sue Bird. The two discuss noteworthy topics in the sports world and offer the exact same opinion. Typically, that opinion involves tongue-in-cheek remarks insinuating how awful, racist and misogynistic the United States is as a country.

Clark, arguably the most popular female athlete in the world, talking about her white privilege was music to Bird and Rapinoe's ears. When race and sport intertwine, Rapinoe is like a kid in a candy store, and this instance was no different.

What also wasn't different was Rapinoe singling out conservatives in her response and then trying to articulate some sort of original thought, but instead suffering from a case of word vomit.

"I think what Caitlin did in her quotes, or in the article, was speak explicitly about her white privilege, like and that is what is receiving so much criticism or backlash, and like that is the lesson," the former NWSL star said. "So, you know, for conservative media coming at her now that obviously they're just showing their whole ass," Rapinoe said.

"If fans are upset about her saying that and just acknowledging what is true, I think that says a lot. But I think the more that you speak directly to it the clearer it becomes what your stance is, and then you can't be used in that way. It doesn't really leave your beliefs or your stance as a white player to any sort of interpretation."

Republican Oklahoma GOP Senator is scheming to craft another Comprehensive Amnesty plan with Democrats.

It never stops.

At least one GOP Senator is working with pro-migration Democrats to draft a border bill for 2025, a report in Axios.com. detailed Thursday.

Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin told the outlet his "serious" project could replace the fast-track reconciliation bill that is now expected to massively fund border security and enforcement in early 2025.

"If we can do border separately -- without reconciliation -- then [President Donald Trump is] okay with" a single reconciliation bill for tax cuts, Mullin told Axios.

The details are "very secret," he said.

Several pro-migration Democratic Senators are working with Mullin. They include Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), according to Axios.

...

Kelly told Axios that the Mullin bill must include their version of "immigration reform." That is an establishment euphemism for amnesty, more legal migrants, and more federal support for migrants. "If there's willingness [by Mullin] to work in a bipartisan way to do some stuff, not only on border security, but on immigration reform, I think it would be great," Kelly told Axios.

Democrat Strategist Ruy Texiera: The Public Gave the Democrats a Clear Message About Their Rejection of Identity Marxism, But the Democrats Don't Want to Listen

—Ace

They're doubling down.

In the wake of the Democrats' drubbing at the hands of Donald Trump and the GOP, you'd assume the party would be all-in on a fundamental rethink, starting with some serious soul-searching on how the party came to be so out of sync with the majority of America on key cultural questions.

Questions like: Is America a "white supremacist" society? Is it racist to question levels of immigration? Are citing one's personal pronouns necessary? Is anyone who questions the differences between trans women from biological women a bigot who should be expunged from polite society? For each of these questions, the answer for the overwhelming majority of Americans is an obvious no. But in elite Democratic circles, it's a different story. For a party pondering its unpopularity, you might think that this gap would be a good place to start.

Well, if the six weeks since the election is anything to go by, you'd be wrong. Instead, much of the party is maneuvering to change as little as possible on the cultural front. Why? Because many of today's Democrats are culture denialists. That is, they do not consider cultural issues to be real issues. Instead, they see them as fictions, distractions, or expressions of bigotry that are to be opposed, not indulged.

Consider Greg Casar, the new chair of the powerful Congressional Progressive Caucus. In a recent interview with NBC News, Casar urged the Democrats to "re-emphasize core economic issues every time some of these cultural war issues are brought up." He said that "when we hear Republicans attacking queer Americans again, I think the progressive response needs to be that a trans person didn't deny your health insurance claim, a big corporation did--with Republican help." Casar said that "the Republican Party obsession" with culture war issues is "driven by Republicans' desire to distract voters and have them look away while Republicans pick their pocket."

Massachusetts Democratic representative Jim McGovern echoed Casar's thoughts recently with this rhetoric about Republicans: "They want to blame trans people? Guess what? Trans people aren't the ones raising people's grocery prices. Big corporations are." Republicans, he added, "want to blame immigrants. . . . Immigrants aren't the ones denying health insurance claims. . . . it's the billion-dollar insurance companies that do that."

Get it? These aren't real issues. They're just distractions ginned up by Republicans for nefarious political purposes. The logical conclusion of this argument is that Democrats don't need to actually change their position on any "culture war" issue. Instead, they just need to change the subject and talk about mustache-twirling corporate villains.

...

Or perhaps the real problem, some Democrats argue, is that the party hasn't communicated its wonderful positions adeptly and thoroughly enough. With the right spin, maybe their positions on everything, from the economy to transgender issues and immigration would be popular. This seems to be the view of the two leading candidates for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Ken Martin, head of Minnesota's Democratic Party (technically its Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party), has a 10-point plan that calls for a "massive narrative and branding project." Ben Wikler, head of Wisconsin's Democratic Party, believes Democrats must "become the narrator" of their own brand.

This all seems reasonable enough but, cutting through the verbiage, nowhere do these candidates for the DNC chair concede the party's cultural vulnerabilities. When reading their pitches for the powerful post, it's as if those problems don't exist.
The outgoing DNC chair takes things even further. Since the election, Jaime Harrison has strenuously resisted the idea Democrats should abandon "identity politics," saying they represent how "people of color" see Democrats fighting for them.

Invoking his status as a black man, he remarked: "That is my identity. . . . it is not politics. It is my life. And the people that I need in the party, that I need to stand up for me, have to recognize that. You cannot run away from that." In other words, Democrats should double down on so-called culture war issues like race and gender that are so off-putting to voters. This is a strange recommendation since, as Democrats have become ever more associated with identity politics, they have been doing ever more poorly among non-white voters, especially non-white working-class voters. Their advantage among the latter group has declined by more than half since 2012.

I was wondering when the Democrats would change course, and I decided it probably wouldn't be for another 8 years.

It took the Democrats 12 years of losing the White House to finally pretend to moderate. Bill Clinton was their fig-leaf of "moderation."

But it took three crushing losses in a row to even get there.

The Democrat Cult will keep doubling down until they lose twice more.

They're in such a (Satanic) religious fervor now, and they are so ruthless in attacking and shaming and cancelling any heretics who question current cult doctrine, that they might not ever be able to moderate. The entire party might just have to collapse and be replaced by an emergent alternate-liberal party.

Ed Morrissey writes that Democrat strategist James Carville, campaign director for the "moderate" Bill Clinton, is making a similar argument.

The Daily Caller:

"Anybody that questions the absolute, unquestionable benefits of transition surgery is going to be called this equivalent of being against civil rights or being against women having the right to vote ... somebody can fact-check me, it's banned in Nordic countries," Carville said. "I think the liberal Labor government of Britain just passed legislation on that question." ...

"But you can't -- if you say the border, we should have had something different -- well, that makes you a racist. If you say that we should proceed with caution on this transition surgery ... then you're slammed. And the tyranny of the left is tyranny. And not only tyranny that it causes people grief, it loses us elections, people," Carville said. "And I got to tell you ... there are people that think this, and I'm increasingly agreeing with them."

"There are a substantial number of people in the Democratic Party -- almost exclusively coastal, almost exclusively white, almost exclusively higher-educated -- that would rather lose and feel superior about themselves than have to go through the trouble to do the stuff it takes necessary to win an election," he continued. "And as long as that philosophy is part of the Democratic coalition, it is going to continue to cause unbelievable damage to our electoral prospects. I cannot say it any simpler than that."

Morrissey comments:

This formulation is pure Carville. He structures this argument so that it's less concerned about the actual tyranny than it is about the elections. If tyranny won elections, you get the sense that Carville might gripe a bit, but he'd also appreciate it from an electoral-strategy point of view.

As it happens, though, tyranny turns out to be ... unpopular. In fact, that's it's defining characteristic. If these policies were popular, the Left wouldn't need to impose them with tyrannical methods, after all. Carville seems to miss that point in this rant, although to be fair, it's clipped from an obviously longer argument that Carville makes.

In fairness, you cannot tell these cultists that tyranny is bad, because they want the tyranny. This is what the revolution preaches: Tear down society until you can install yourself as dictators and impose your weird, sick vision of the anointed on the unwilling masses.

You can only make the argument that their tyranny will result in them giving the right the power to impose tyranny.

Morrissey acknowledges this as well:

Tyranny is both the strategy and the end goal.

Remember, though, "reporters" can't report on Biden's obvious senility until one of his top-raking aides/coup-conspirators admits he's senile:

Kamala Harris To Be Offered $20 Million in a Media Payoff Disguised as an "Advance" on Book Royalties
Plus: Media Makes Excuses for Covering Up Biden's Obvious Senility

—Ace

At Victory Girls, as reported by the Daily Mail, another corrupt media company will offer Kamala Harris a $20 million bribe in the form of a "book advance" for royalties they know she'll never, ever earn.

Kamala Harris, who bizarrely blew through a record $1.5billion on her failed presidential campaign, may soon earn some big-bucks payback.

Top publishers, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively, are willing to pay the soon-to-be former vice president and twice-failed Democratic presidential hopeful a whopping advance of as much as $20million for an inside look at President Joe Biden's, 82, White House and presidential campaign tell-all.

According to a Kamala insider: 'Virtually the moment Kamala lost to Trump, the offers began pouring in from the publishing world for her to do the definitive book on what really went on between Joe and Kamala -- what went right and what went wrong -- inside the Oval Office walls, and all the ups and downs of her campaign.

'They are throwing around advance numbers in the $20million range, maybe more with other publishing rights.'

...

A prominent executive at one of New York's top liberal-leaning publishing houses told DailyMail.com: 'More than anyone in the Biden White House, Kamala as the number two, and then as Joe Biden's campaign successor after he dropped out of the race, knows all the secrets, knows where all the skeletons are buried.

'She was there from the beginning of the administration and participated in all the presidential decisions, right or wrong. She's the one who can tell the consummate story.

Sure, sure. She'll "tell all." Sure.

These outsized "advances" for leftwing politicians are simply bribes. An advance is just the royalties you would collect in the future, but paid in advance. It's literally an advance on expected future royalties.

But no one, and I mean no one, expects Kamala Harris's book to earn $20 million in royalties. She'd make about 10% per book in royalties, so a $20 book would earn her $2. She'd have to sell ten million books to make $20 million royalty.

She won't. She'll struggle to make a one million dollar royalty.

This is not a payment, this is a pay-off. Remember, she still intends to run for office. There is no way to pay off a politician legally for future favors -- except through these corrupt "book deal" payoff operations.

All politicians should be required to only take real royalties for their book deals. No "advances" which are completely divorced from reality. They can earn for their books, but they should earn what they actually earn, not what a multibillion dollar media conglomerate with business before the government thinks they might be worth as a paid operative.

Unrelated: Former CNN Thumb Chris Cillizza admits he is a weakling and coward who can easily be bullied by more aggressive people. That's why, he says, he refused to report on Biden's obvious mental decline.

The White House worked to make him "feel bad" about any reporting on this, the admitted beta male follower cuck says to excuse himself of responsibility.

"Republicans would regularly ping me and say 'Why don't you ask more questions about Joe Biden and how he's doing? He's 76, 77, 78-year-old man,'" Cillizza said. He continued, "And I would sort of brush them off because what I would say is 'Well, there's no obvious evidence that he's declining. He moves a little slower. He talks a little slower but there's no evidence that he's declining.'

"And the White House and the people around Joe Biden were absolutely adamant that suggesting anything...asking the question about whether he was in some physical, mental or both decline was offensive. 'How could you?! It's age shaming.' And I think impacted me at some level. Because while I did ask the question from time to time...I didn't really push on it if I'm being honest."

A bit later he returned to this adding, "There was a shame factor that went into that. People around Biden worked to make you feel bad when you asked whether he was up to the job of being president, running for president again and serving for another four years...And they did a very good job, until they couldn't any more, of hiding it."

Two points here. First, I guarantee you that there are 50 or 100 other DC reporters who could all tell this same story. All of them were cowed by the White House for years. That's obvious in retrospect. Few wanted to risk their access to the exclusive club by stating what was increasingly evident to everyone. That was especially true given that the right had taken up the issue. No media person wants to agree with them. It's career suicide to take anything the right says seriously.

More at Sexton's article. He points out that Cillizza says that the Trump debate showed everyone that Biden had "good days and bad days," but Sexton wants to know: What "bad days" did Biden have that we didn't see on video? Did he have a "bad day" when he sleepwalked through the Afghanistan bug-out debacle, for example?

We'll never know, because reporters never bothered themselves about it. They just kept repeating the mantra that when the cameras were not running, Joe Biden was performing Chinese Kung Fu Human Pyramid Attacks like he was one of the Five Deadly Venoms.*

Scott Adams made the point that Cillizza pretends that the only reportage he could do was asking questions of the White House staff. Because the White House staff would not admit Biden's obvious senility, he could do no stories about it.

Are we pretending the only way reporters could know Biden was incompetent is by asking his staff?

We observed his incompetence since 2019. https://t.co/M95N5NLVmW

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 20, 2024

But everyone on the right could report this without an admission by the White House, because we could see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears. Cillizza is claiming that a reporter cannot report anything he sees himself, unless a high ranking member of the Democrat Cult confirms the report of his own eyes officially.

This says a lot. This tells you what the media's idea of "confirmed story" vs. "conspiracy theory" is: A "confirmed story" is one a Democrat endorses. If no Democrat endorses it, it's a "conspiracy theory."

All claims that hurt Democrats are disinformation and conspiracy theories until they are so obvious to everyone that the media is forced to admit them. Here's "reporter" Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monty informing you that all of your impressions that Biden is frail and incoherent and protected in a Basement Bubble is just "disinfofmation:"

🔥VDH just unleashed on legacy media, the Obamas and the Democrat hierarchy for lying abut Joe Biden’s cognitive state for four years:

"This was the greatest presidential fraud and deception since Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in 1919, and Edith Wilson kept that from the American… pic.twitter.com/3KsUCURE1T

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 20, 2024

* Actually that wasn't in the Five Deadly Venoms, but I know I saw a Shaw Brothers movie (or that type of movie) featuring kung fu artists assembling into human pyramids to fight as some kind of Ninja Voltron. Anyone remember what that movie was? Maybe a sequel to Five Deadly Venoms.

Close it up

AGAIN: A Car Plows Through a German Christmas Market at a Very High Speed, Sending People Flying Like Bowling Pins, Killing an Unknown Number

—Ace

Again.

This happens every year.

I know how to stop it -- ban the AfD! Stop them from spreading their Nazi rhetoric about unassimilatable hostile foreigners waging a guerilla warfare campaign against the native population and making life unlivable!

Whatever you do, don't ask any questions about immigration!

Collin Rugg @CollinRugg

JUST IN: At least one car plows through a large crowd of people at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany.

The driver of the car was arrested.

Local reports say that many people are injured. It's unclear how many have d*ed.

"A vehicle drove through the Christmas market despite security measures and ran over several visitors," a local report says.

"Extensive police operations are currently taking place at the Magdeburg Christmas market. The Christmas market in the city centre is closed. Further reports will be made," Magdeburg Police said on X.

Paul A. Szypula @Bubblebathgirl

11 people reportedly k*ll*d and at least 60 injured in Magdeburg, Germany when a car barreled through a Christmas market.

The car didn’t appear to slow down at all or avoid people.

Investigations ongoing, but you can draw your own conclusions.

Videos in a thread here. Watching human beings getting blasted to smitherines by a high-speed truck is repulsive so content warning.

This video is horrible.

Meanwhile, a 7-year-old girl was murdered by a crazed knife attacker in Croatia. Six other people were wounded.

"I wonder who the culprit will turn out to be" asked literally nobody because we all know.

A knife attack at a school in Croatia's capital left a 7-year-old girl dead and a teacher and five other students wounded, police said.

Police described the attacker as a "young male" and said he had been detained.

State HRT television said the attacker entered the school and went straight into the first classroom he found and attacked the children.

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) -- A knife-wielding teenager walked into a school in Croatia's capital Zagreb on Friday, killing a 7-year-old student and injuring three more children and a teacher, authorities said.

Authorities said the knife attack happened at 9:50 a.m. at the Precko Elementary School in the neighborhood of the same name. They described the attacker as a 19-year-old male and said he had been detained after inflicting injuries to himself.

Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said one child died while three children and a teacher were injured.

Oh, a (touches nose) "young male." That's so specific, thank you for all of this very specific information.

Another "young male" (touches nose) was arrested for plotting a terror attack in America.

An 18-year-old Egyptian national, a freshman at George Mason University, was arrested in Falls Church, Virginia, on Tuesday for allegedly planning a terrorist attack against Israel's general consulate in New York.

Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan faces 20 years in federal prison if convicted of trying to teach someone how to manufacture an explosive with intent to murder internationally protected persons.

Prosecutors said that more charges may be forthcoming as the criminal investigation proceeds.

He currently is in deportation proceedings, something that will likely be put on hold until after he serves his prison sentence if he is convicted.

The Islamic extremist operated multiple social media channels that promoted pro-ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda that promoted violence against Jews. He praised Osama bin Laden as his "idol," and he openly said that he was "praying for an ISIS" terrorist attack to happen at sporting venues.

Below: I'm shocked that this report says the culprit in the Madgeburg Christmas Market terror attack is a Syrian.

Just shocked. I never saw this coming, not even a little bit.

Note, I cannot confirm this picture is even from Madgeburg or even from tonight. I wouldn't post it, except for the FACT we all know, which is that governments conceal the identity of terrorists when they are Muslim "Newcomers," and we are left in the dark until they have prepared a hashtag public relations campaign like #YouCanRideWithMe to ease the public into accepting another completely-preventable terrorist catastrophe.

So I post this in defiance of corrupt Western governments and their anti-civilization media attack dogs: I will post whatever scraps of information I come across until you stop the embargo of any information that may embarrass your Welcome the Terrorists immigration agenda.

You don't want disinformation? Then start telling the public actual information.

David Samuels: Barack Obama Created and Maintains an Echo Chamber Messaging System That Deranges and Perverts People's Thinking Every Day

—Ace

David Samuels is the reporter who interviewed Obama's mental twin Ben Rhodes about Rhodes' creation of "echo chambers" to push the Iran deal and convince people that they were all wrong to think of the extremist Islamist terror state as a threat. In fact, Iran was and is a great Partner in Peace (TM) to the American people!

This is the interview that elicited Ben Rhodes' perfect explanation of how easy it is to change "elite" media opinion overnight -- "they literally know nothing," Rhodes said, so it is very easy to fill their heads with your propaganda. My own elaboration on that: Dummies and ignoramuses often know they're dumb and ignorant, and wish not to be. So if you give them some easy-to-understand (but completely false) slogans to fill that void, they will Seize and Pounce on those slogans uncritically. They felt intellectually empty and socially awkward; now you've empowered them with easy-to-understand propaganda that makes them feel In the Know and Part of the In Crowd.

Because you're providing them a huge service -- you're allowing them to no longer feel stupid and ignorant. And they will reward you by repeating your mantras and propagandas with the fervor of a cultist.

David Samuels now revisits those "echo chambers" deranging American thought and manufacturing "public opinion" out of nothing.

The whole article is worth reading. It's terrific.

I'll just excerpt the conclusory parts. But he builds up to this by noting, for example, how American "elite" opinion turned on Iran overnight.

How did that happen? How did the so-called "elites" go to bed knowing that Iran was a jihadist terror state one night and wake up the next morning knowing with even more passion that Iran was a friend to the United States and an important Partner in Peace (TM)?

So, as I said, read the whole thing over the weekend, but for now, here are the money paragraphs.

He describes this as a revolution in communications -- specifically the communication of mass propaganda -- as important as any of the major developments in mass media, like the telegraph or even the printing press.

The collapse of the 20th-century media pyramid on which Lippmann's assumptions rested, and its rapid replacement by monopoly social media platforms, made it possible for the Obama White House to sell policy--and reconfigure social attitudes and prejudices--in new ways. In fact, as Obama's chief speechwriter and national security aide Ben Rhodes, a fiction writer by vocation, argued to me more than once in our conversations, the collapse of the world of print left Obama with little choice but to forge a new reality online.

When I wrote about Rhodes' ambitious program to sell the Iran deal, I advanced the term "echo chambers" to describe the process by which the White House and its wider penumbra of think tanks and NGOs generated an entirely new class of experts who credentialed each other on social media in order to advance assertions that would formerly have been seen as marginal or not credible, thereby overwhelming the efforts of traditional subject-area gatekeepers and reporters to keep government spokespeople honest. In constructing these echo chambers, the White House created feedback loops that could be gamed out in advance by clever White House aides, thereby influencing and controlling the perceptions of reporters, editors and congressional staffers, and the elusive currents of "public opinion" they attempted to follow. If you saw how the game worked from the inside, you understood that the new common wisdom was not a true "reflection" of what anyone in particular necessarily believed, but rather the deliberate creation of a small class of operatives who used new technologies to create and control larger narratives that they messaged to target audiences on digital platforms, and which often presented themselves to their targets as their own naturally occurring thoughts and feelings, which they would then share with people like themselves.

...

What I did not imagine at the time was that Obama's successor in the White House would not be Hillary Clinton but Donald Trump. Nor did I foresee that Trump would himself become the target of a messaging campaign that would make full use of the machine that Obama had built, along with elements of the American security state. Being physically inside the White House, it turned out, was a mere detail of power; even more substantial power lay in controlling the digital switchboard that Obama had built, and which it turned out he still controlled.

During the Trump years, Obama used the tools of the digital age to craft an entirely new type of power center for himself, one that revolved around his unique position as the titular, though pointedly never-named, head of a Democratic Party that he succeeded in refashioning in his own image--and which, after Hillary's loss, had officially supplanted the "centrist" Clinton neoliberal machine of the 1990s. The Obama Democratic Party (ODP) was a kind of balancing mechanism between the power and money of the Silicon Valley oligarchs and their New York bankers; the interests of bureaucratic and professional elites who shuttled between the banks and tech companies and the work of bureaucratic oversight; the ODP's own sectarian constituencies, which were divided into racial and ethnic categories like "POC," "MENA," and "Latinx," whose bizarre bureaucratic nomenclature signaled their inherent existence as top-down containers for the party's new-age spoils system; and the world of billionaire-funded NGOs that provided foot-soldiers and enforcers for the party's efforts at social transformation.

It was the entirety of this apparatus, not just the ability to fashion clever or impactful tweets, that constituted the party's new form of power. But control over digital platforms, and what appeared on those platforms, was a key element in signaling and exercising that power. The Hunter Biden laptop story, in which party operatives shanghaied 51 former high U.S. government intelligence and security officials to sign a letter that all but declared the laptop to be a fake, and part of a Russian disinformation plot--when most of those officials had very strong reasons to know or believe that the laptop and its contents were real--showed how the system worked. That letter was then used as the basis for restricting and banning factual reports about the laptop and its contents from digital platforms, with the implication that allowing readers to access those reports might be the basis for a future accusation of a crime. None of this censorship was official, of course: Trump was in the White House, not Obama or Biden. What that demonstrated was that the real power, including the power to control functions of the state, lay elsewhere.

Even more unusual, and alarming, was what followed Trump's defeat in 2020. With the Democrats back in power, the new messaging apparatus could now formally include not just social and institutional pressure but the enforcement arms of the federal bureaucracy, from the Justice Department to the FBI to the SEC. As the machine ramped up, censoring dissenting opinions on everything from COVID, to DEI programs, to police conduct, to the prevalence and the effects of hormone therapies and surgeries on youth, large numbers of people began feeling pressured by an external force that they couldn't always name; even greater numbers of people fell silent. In effect, large-scale changes in American mores and behavior were being legislated outside the familiar institutions and processes of representative democracy, through top-down social pressure machinery backed in many cases by the threat of law enforcement or federal action, in what soon became known as a "whole of society" effort.

At every turn over the next four years, it was like a fever was spreading, and no one was immune. Spouses, children, colleagues, and supervisors at work began reciting, with the force of true believers, slogans they had only learned last week, and that they were very often powerless to provide the slightest real-world evidence for. These sudden, sometimes overnight, appearances of beliefs, phrases, tics, looked a lot like the mass social contagions of the 1950s--one episode after another of rapid-onset political enlightenment replacing the appearance of dance crazes or Hula-Hoops.

Just as in those commercially fed crazes, there was nothing accidental, mystical or organic about these new thought-viruses. Catchphrases like "defund the police," "structural racism," "white privilege," "children don't belong in cages," "assigned gender" or "stop the genocide in Gaza" would emerge and marinate in meme-generating pools like the academy or activist organizations, and then jump the fence--or be fed--into niche groups and threads on Twitter or Reddit. If they gained traction in those spaces, they would be adopted by constituencies and players higher up in the Democratic Party hierarchy, who used their control of larger messaging verticals on social media platforms to advance or suppress stories around these topics and phrases, and who would then treat these formerly fringe positions as public markers for what all "decent people" must universally believe; those who objected or stood in the way were portrayed as troglodytes and bigots. From there, causes could be messaged into reality by state and federal bureaucrats, NGOs, and large corporations, who flew banners, put signs on their bathrooms, gave new days off from work, and brought in freshly minted consultants to provide "trainings" for workers--all without any kind of formal legislative process or vote or backing by any significant number of voters.

What mattered here was no longer Lippmann's version of "public opinion," rooted in the mass audiences of radio and later television, which was assumed to correlate to the current or future preferences of large numbers of voters--thereby assuring, on a metaphoric level at least, the continuation of 19th-century ideas of American democracy, with its deliberate balance of popular and representational elements in turn mirroring the thrust of the Founders' design. Rather, the newly minted digital variant of "public opinion" was rooted in the algorithms that determine how fads spread on social media, in which mass multiplied by speed equals momentum--speed being the key variable. The result was a fast-moving mirror world that necessarily privileges the opinions and beliefs of the self-appointed vanguard who control the machinery, and could therefore generate the velocity required to change the appearance of "what people believe" overnight.

The unspoken agreements that obscured the way this social messaging apparatus worked--including Obama's role in directing the entire system from above--and how it came to supplant the normal relationships between public opinion and legislative process that generations of Americans had learned from their 20th-century poli-sci textbooks, made it easy to dismiss anyone who suggested that Joe Biden was visibly senile; that the American system of government, including its constitutional protections for individual liberties and its historical system of checks and balances, was going off the rails; that there was something visibly unhealthy about the merger of monopoly tech companies and national security agencies with the press that threatened the ability of Americans to speak and think freely; or that America's large cultural systems, from education, to science and medicine, to the production of movies and books, were all visibly failing, as they fell under the control of this new apparatus. Millions of Americans began feeling increasingly exhausted by the effort involved in maintaining parallel thought-worlds in which they expressed degrees of fealty to the new order in the hope of keeping their jobs and avoiding being singled out for ostracism and punishment, while at the same time being privately baffled or aghast by the absence of any persuasive logic behind the changes they saw--from the breakdown of law and order in major cities, to the fentanyl epidemic, to the surge of perhaps 20 million unvetted illegal immigrants across the U.S. border, to widespread gender dysphoria among teenage girls, to sudden and shocking declines in public health, life expectancy, and birth rates.

Until the fever broke.

He then talks about Obama's role in this. Obama was not the creator of this system of public derangement -- he was the first product it sold.

The originator of this new style of Astroturf propaganda was Obama's mentor, the creepy David Axelrod. The neomarxist social media monopolies just allowed him to bring it to planetary scale through the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

LOL: MSNBC Reportedly Demands That Joy Reid, Stephanie Ruhle Take Pay Cuts to Keep Their Jobs

—Ace

"Resistance journalism" -- spoiler, it's not journalism if it has the specific goal of political advocacy and propaganda -- is finally dying.

MSNBC's Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle will reportedly need to take a pay cut if they want to remain in their anchor chairs as the struggling cable network continues to cut costs.

The left-leaning news channel -- which recently gave star anchor Rachel Maddow a $5 million-a-year haircut from her annual $30 million haul -- has been negotiating with Reid and Ruhle on new deals at reduced salaries, according to the Ankler newsletter.

The controversial Reid is believed to be earning $3 million a year to host her nightly 8 p.m. show, "The ReidOut," according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Reid, who has been with the network since 2011 and in primetime since 2020, recently raised hackles again with a pre-Thanksgiving rant in which she accused Republicans of worshiping Donald Trump "instead of Jesus."

Ruhle, host of "The 11th Hour" at 11 p.m. weeknights, is thought to make $2 million a year, the Free Beacon reported.

She has also been a frequent Trump basher but recently praised him for being more accessible to the press than President Biden. Ruhle revealed she was able to contact Trump on his cellphone -- though he told her to "go f--k myself" when she asked for an interview, she quipped.

A third prominent host, Jonathan Lemire -- who was elevated this month to co-host "Morning Joe" from anchoring "Way Too Early" -- has also been offered a new contract at a reduced salary, the Ankler reported.

An MSNBC spokesperson reached by The Post said the network would not comment on personnel matters.

...

The reported lowball offers follow an exclusive story by The Post that staffers at MSNBC's headquarters at 30 Rock are in a panic over looming layoffs after parent company Comcast announced plans to spin off its cable properties.

The upheaval has led to reports that MSNBC president Rashida Jones is considering leaving the network after Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.

A spokesperson for Jones denied she is leaving.

Meanwhile, MSNBC's primetime ratings continue to nosedive, tanking more than 60% since last month's historic election victory by Trump. It fell behind ratings-challenged CNN in the coveted 25-to-54 demographic for the year in Total Day viewers.

Lower than CNN? Ouch, that's terrible.

Meanwhile, ABC also gave a new contract to professional defamation agent George Stephanopolous, but also with a big cut.

And they only did that, per reports, to avoid having "his blood on their hands."

In other words: They really wanted to fire him but thought the optics and backlash from fellow "Resistance journalist" Marxists would be too great.

Disney renews George Stephanopoulos' contract -- with pay cut -- despite $16M Trump settlement because it didn't want 'his blood on their hands': source

Disney decided to renew ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos' contract -- despite having to fork over a $16 million legal settlement -- because they didn't want "his blood on their hands," The Post has learned.

Stephanopoulos, who hosts "This Week" and is a co-anchor on "Good Morning America," was handed a multi-year deal -- though he took a pay cut from his lofty $20 million annual salary, sources said.

"No one wants a talent mess on their hands," one longtime network executive told The Post. "No one wants an angry George Stephanopoulos loose in the world. No one wants to humiliate George by firing him or to have his blood on their hands."

...

"George is well-liked by the liberal-elite in Hollywood and The Hamptons. He's friends with Jerry Seinfeld, Michael J Fox and Netflix boss Ted Sarandos," the source said, adding that he operates in the same "bubble" as left-leaning Disney top brass.

"George has carefully cultivated a relationship with [Disney CEO] Bob Iger and board members. He remains a respected member of the Disney family."

But inside the halls of ABC News, staffers remain "livid" over Iger's decision to stand by Stephanopoulos and cave to Trump.

"They paid off Trump for a mistake that George made. How many jobs could that $16 million have saved?" said a second network source, citing a fresh round of layoffs at the network.

"I think people are angry at the humiliation of the settlement with Trump. People are angry with George's unforced errors and his defiance and that he's rewarded for his mistakes with another lucrative contract even if his salary has been cut," the first source said.

The source said that even if the journalist is well-regarded by top brass, he isn't a favorite among staffers.

Sources said Stephanopoulos is a "loner" who doesn't play well with others.

They noted that Stephanopoulos won't take part in election night coverage or appear on air with "ABC World News Tonight" anchor David Muir.

"Most great anchors are larger than life. George has always been smaller than life. And this humiliating settlement has made him even smaller," the network exec said.

He is smaller than life. That's true.

Which might be why he won't appear on camera in a group setting. His tiny manlet body would be exposed.

Slimmed-Down Version of CR Fails, With 38 Republicans Voting Against It

—Ace

I forgot that the House Speaker always must court Democrat votes for these bills because there is a bloc of Republicans who will not vote for any CR that raises the debt ceiling.

So Republicans defeated the more Republican version of the bill.

But 38 Republicans voted against the bill. That's more than the 15-20 who just refuse to vote for any budget.

I think some Republicans really want that pay raise and really want that Democrat spending.

A government spending bill supported by President-elect Donald Trump failed to pass the House of Representatives on Thursday night, intensifying concerns of a partial shutdown. The legislation required a two-thirds majority but fell short with a vote of 174-235. Divisions within the GOP and opposition from Democrats left Congress without a clear path forward ahead of the Friday deadline.

Key Details:

The bill, which extended government funding through March 14th and suspended the debt limit until January 2027, was opposed by 38 Republican lawmakers and most Democrats. Only two Democrats crossed party lines to support it.

The proposed legislation included $110 billion in disaster relief aid, covering damage from storms Milton and Helene, and funds to rebuild Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge. However, it omitted provisions like a pay raise for Congress and a revitalization plan for Washington, D.C.'s RFK Stadium.

A fringe group of Republicans defied the president-elect and rejected the bill, including Texas Rep. Chip Roy, Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, and Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale.

Diving Deeper:

The House's rejection of Speaker Mike Johnson's Plan B budget proposal leaves Congress scrambling to avoid a government shutdown set to begin at 11:59 p.m. Friday. The failure of the measure highlights deep divisions within the House, as Democrats and conservative Republicans united in opposition to the plan.

Johnson's proposal, unveiled hours before the vote, sought to fund the government at current levels through March 14, 2024, while suspending the debt limit for two years. It also included $100 billion in disaster relief and $10 billion for farmers. However, these provisions failed to garner necessary support.

Democrats, led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, dismissed the plan outright. "This proposal is laughable and unserious," Jeffries said, reflecting his caucus's frustration over what they see as inadequate responses to pressing issues. During a Democratic caucus meeting, lawmakers were reportedly heard chanting, "Hell no."

Republicans also took issue with the debt limit suspension. Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, criticized the plan on social media, stating, "More debt. More government. Increasing the Credit Card $4 trillion with ZERO spending restraint and cuts. HARD NO."

THE MORNING RANT: EV Fire in Parking Garage Causes Terrifying Nighttime Rescues at a Chattanooga, TN Apartment Building

—Buck Throckmorton

As cool as the “new urban” lifestyle sounds, with dining and entertainment options within blocks of your condo/loft, there have always been negatives. These include the hassle factor of multi-story apartment living, shared walls, street noise, etc. There’s now a new negative – the risk of a runaway thermal fire in the parking garage underneath the building you live in.

Some residents of an apartment building in a hip Chattanooga neighborhood had a terrifying night recently when an electric vehicle parked in the building’s garage spontaneously erupted in flames during the wee hours of the night.

“Electric vehicle started major apartment fire in Chattanooga” [WTVC – 12/17/2024]

Five people were hospitalized.

Per the Chattanooga Fire Department, “Residents were giving important information to the police, and officers were relaying those details to the crews conducting searches and making rescues. You can also see and hear the compassion the first responders have on the scene as they help people fleeing their smoke-filled homes in the middle of the night.”

Hook and ladder units had to be employed by the fire department to rescue some residents.

Heavy smoke made its way into the building where some residents needed assistance to escape. Some residents had to evacuate by climbing down an aerial ladder from multiple stories up. Residents expressed their gratitude for the firefighters response.

Obviously, the fire department’s primary concern was rescuing residents before they succumbed to the smoke that had engulfed the building. But there was also a raging inferno down below in the garage, as the burning EV began to ignite adjacent vehicles.

"There were multiple vehicles on fire," said Lindsey Rogers with the Chattanooga Fire Department. "The smoke from the vehicle fires made its way throughout the building, so we had half of our crews in the sub-level garage working to extinguish those car fires. We had the other half of our crews working to do multiple rescues."

The electric vehicle that started the fire was determined to be a Kia EV. Following the awful night that the residents endured, almost all of them soon learned that their cars had been damaged too.

Two other vehicles next to the EV burned, and most of the cars in the garage suffered heat damage, in the early morning hours of November 22nd. Fire officials identified the car that caught fire as a Kia.

The greatest peril in a multi-family building is fire. That risk has now been compounded by the fact that a trendy EV parked in an apartment’s garage might spontaneously erupt into an unextinguishable inferno at any time.

I know that I will be receiving the usual emails reminding me that there are more fires involving gasoline-powered (“ICE”) cars than from EVs. Of course there are, because there are so many more ICE cars on the road than EVs, and when ICE cars get in wrecks, the gasoline sometimes combusts.

But ICE cars just don’t spontaneously burst into flames like EVs do. There is essentially no risk that a parked ICE car in a garage will burst into flames, while there is a very real, greater-than-zero risk that an EV will spontaneously combust, and cause tremendous damage to everything around it. And above it.

For safety reasons and for insurance purposes, buildings with covered parking garages really need to start considering a ban on EVs.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]