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TJM definitively ranks the films of Alfred Hitchcock

@KFILE 21m

Politico is reporting that multiple people have abruptly resigned from Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign: "Members of senior leadership have departed the campaign, including Courtni Pugh, a strategic adviser who served as Swalwell's top liaison to organized labor groups."

So the campaign is collapsing due to the truth of the sexual harassment allegations.
That hissing sound you hear is the air going out of the Swalwell campaign. UPDATE: No it wasn't, it was just Swalwell one-cheek-sneaking out a fart on camera
Eric Swalwell more like Eric Farewell amirite
thanks to weft-cut loop.

This is the dumbest AI bullslop I've seen in a while: the CIA can use "quantum magnetometry" to track an individual man's heartbeat from twelve miles away
I wouldn't click on it, it's not interesting, it's just stupid clickslop. I just want to share my annoyance with you.

Oil prices plunge on bizarre realization that Eric Swalwell may actually be straight. A rapey molester, allegedly, but a straight one.

Artemis II Crew releases clearest images of the Far Side yet recorded

Classic Rock Mystery Click
This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker.
And I guess you think you've got it made
Oh, but then, you never were afraid
Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
And with a little luck, yes, I'm bound to win
Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.

Sarah Longwell spotting

Tuq'r's makeover is 100!

Alfred Hitchcock learns to talk with TJM

Ryan Long goes to the No Kings rally to pick up young liberal hotties and is greatly disappointed in the quality of the mish
thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
Posted by: 18-1

I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

TJM definitively ranks the films of John Boorman.

Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

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And this should be parody.

Passing the blame
MARIAH CAREY
Jennifer Graylock / AP
Mariah Carey has finally given a reason that “Glitter” flopped: Sept. 11.

“I released it around September 11, 2001,” the singer told Swiss newspaper Sonntags Zeitung as translated on fan site MariahDaily. “The talk shows needed something to distract from 9/11. I became a punching bag. I was so successful that they tore me down because my album was at number 2 instead of number 1. The media was laughing at me and attacked me.”

The crooner also said that the flop was just too cutting-edge for it’s own good. “‘Glitter’ was ahead of its time,” she explained. “Today it’s ‘in’ to make 80’s music.”Mega-dumb.

I'm still ticked at her for not completely melting down in public. There was such promise.

Ace, to get serious about Rove for a sec, you been reading John Podhoretz's (lengthy) posts in NRO's Corner today on the subject?

I think JPod might be guilty of a little philosophizing-in-a-vacuum (i.e., trying to use logic to deduce facts without knowing all the facts), but taken as a dime-store theory, I think he might be on to something there about *Joe Wilson* being the leaker here.

Interesting stuff.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

This whole Wilson/Rove/Plame thingis the sort of crap that makes the blogoshpere look like one giant circle jerk. Just a bunch of partisan hacks arguing about some sh*t no one in the rest of America cares about. Only 25% of the population can name a single supreme Court justice, do you think they can keep all these minor Beltway insiders in their consciousness? Some white girl will get attacked by a shark during a hurricane and all the focus will be back on the mundane crap most people occupy themselves with.
Ever notice the only scandal that the public paid attention to under Clinton was the one that involved cigars and blue dresses? People can barely follow the plot twists in the OC much less some people in Washington doing stupid crap that doesn't matter or effect their lives.
So while the partisans shout at one another, the reaction of the public is going to be like the reaction I faced as a hockey fan this year. "Oh, I didn't even notice anything was different"

Yes, I've been following that, and the speculation about this all coming not from a gov. official but from Judith Miller herself.

I'm having trouble sinking my teeth into it as 1) it's such off-the-cuff unsubstantiated speculation but more importantly 2) I didn't think of these speculations first.

It's all kind of cute and interesting, but it strikes me as so much masturbation at this point. We can guess and hypothesize until the cows come home.

If I were more interested in the story itself I'd be game to indulge, but the story kind of bores the shit out of me, so speculation about it is even less interesting.

This is too funny. It was the Halliburtonhitlerchimp that done it, yessir. And they're blaming Karl Rove! What they don't know is that I'm an evil genius hiding behind an 'aw shucks country bumpkin act, while Rove takes the heat and keeps 'em guessin'! Just like Ike used to do. And though of course I know better (as did Ike), just for good measure, I mispronounce the word "nukuler" so they underestimate me. Fools 'em every time!

But the real truth is even more fun: there is no Karl Rove and there never was. He is an automaton we created in Crawford years ago, along with the '94 Republican majority, replete with automaton voters in the Red states. Pretty clever for a Halliburtonhitlerchimp, eh?

Press Frenzy: Karl Rove May Have Outed Valerie Plame As "Married"