Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 4-19-2026 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...
So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
While it wasn't the largest library of antiquity, the so-called "Villa of the Papyri" is the only one whose collection has survived to the present day. Its roughly 1,800 scrolls were located in the Roman city of Herculaneum in a villa that was most likely built by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus.
When nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., the library was buried—and exquisitely preserved—under a 90-foot layer of volcanic material. Its blackened, carbonized scrolls weren't rediscovered until the 18th century, and modern researchers have since used everything from multispectral imaging to X-rays to try to read them. Much of the catalog has yet to be deciphered, but studies have already revealed that the library contains several texts by an Epicurean philosopher and poet named Philodemus.
According to TVTropes.org, "Growing the Beard" is when a series shows a significant improvement in quality over time. The term itself derives from Season 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Commander William Riker grew a beard. The episodes of Season 3 and onwards tend to be much better written compared to Seasons 1 and 2, according to most fans.
However, "Growing the Beard" is not limited to television series. It can apply to novels just as easily. As y'all know, I read A LOT of books that are part of a series (see below), so I'm quite familiar with this trope from a literary standpoint. I can think of several notable examples of when a series "grew the beard" and become much, much better overall:
The Shannara Series by Terry Brooks -- The Sword of Shannara is rightly derided as a cut-and-paste clone of Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. He admits as much in The Annotated Sword of Shannara. Taken on its own merits, Sword isn't a bad novel, but it does suffer quite a bit by being so derivative of a much better story written by a much better author. However, the success of Sword gave Brooks enough creative leeway to forge a much different path in the first sequel to Sword: The Elfstones of Shannara. This is a much, much different story. It's also vastly improved in quality, demonstrating that Terry Brooks can tell a fantastic story when he's motivated to do so (he "phones it in" in later novels...). In fact, Elfstones is one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time, with one of the best endings of any fantasy story I've ever read.
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher -- Storm Front, the first novel in the series, was written by Butcher as a "take that" to his creative writing professor. He deliberately jammed as many tropes and cliches into the narrative as possible for an urban fantasy story. She read it and told him that she could sell it, compared to some of his other creative writing projects at the time. So that's what he did. It's an enjoyable read. A decent first novel. Fool Moon, the first sequel, is not quite as good in my opinion, but carries on the same spirit as the first book. Grave Peril, however, stands as one of the better books in the entire series, with the introduction of Michael Carpenter, Harry Dresden's best friend. From Grave Peril onwards, Michael Carpenter and his family come to represent the moral center of Harry's life, which has tremendous impact on Harry's character development in the long-running story arc, up to and including Twelve Months, the most recent novel.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan -- The first book in the series, The Eye of the World is much like The Sword of Shannara in that it's a standard fantasy novel, with all the tropes and cliches we expect. Personally, I love the story *because* it's so troperiffic. However, Book 2, The Great Hunt allows Jordan to stretch his creative writing skills and develop the depths of his characters. It's very quest-driven, but we do get to experience a tremendous amount of world-building along the way as the story moves us around the world. Starting in Book 4 (The Shadow Rising) we move from a quest-driven storyline to a political storyline as the various factions all jockey for power and influence with the Dragon Reborn, who's simply trying to reach the end of his purpose.
The Chronicles of the Kencyrath by P.C. Hodgell -- God Stalk harkens back to the sword-and-sorcery of authors like Robert Howard and Fritz Leiber, with a low-fantasy setting where a young woman finds herself enmeshed in a local power struggle between Thieves Guilds. She's also trying to understand her own origins as she can't quite remember where she came from. Starting in Book 2 (Dark of the Moon), Hodgell expands the world-building by introducing us to Jame's long-lost twin brother, who is ruler of the Kencyrath, but is struggling to establish his birthright. The quality of the story-telling shows a noticeable increase between Book 1 and Book 2, and just gets better and better from then on, though a couple of books do dip a bit in quality. Still worth reading and highly enjoyable, however.
I could go on. The point is that authors who write a lot of books over time do tend to improve (mostly). Certainly our favorite authors will almost always show that they've improved their craft.
Who are some of YOUR favorite authors who have shown a lot of improvement over time?
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CRITERIA FOR TBRA BOOKS (ht: muldoon)
A few weeks ago, our resident Limericist Laureate posted the following comment:
Folks often mention their TBR pile, but do any of you have a TBRA* pile with interesting selections?
*To Be Read Again.
Posted by: muldoon at March 29, 2026 11:02 AM (qgHp7)
I'm not going to bore you with a comprehensive list of books I'll read again (see above and below for examples). I know some readers will *never* re-read a book, for their own reasons. I'm not one of those readers. Muldoon's comment did get me thinking about the criteria that I consider when choosing whether or not to re-read a book
Characters -- First and foremost, I think CHARACTERS are what draw me back to a book once I've read it. Do the characters seem fully fleshed out? Do they have individual personalities and quirks that are memorable? Do they have qualities that I admire in a person? This can apply both to protagonists and antagonists. I like a memorable villain as much as I admire a noble hero. My favorite stories will have both.
Plot -- Do I like the plot of the stories that engage me again and again? If the events within a story are boring or off-putting for some reason, then I'm unlikely to return to the book for a second read. There are some books I've read only once and so long ago that I've forgotten the plot, so I may pick those up again just to see what I remember about them. In some cases, once I start re-reading them I'll remember why I didn't enjoy it much the first time. Note that a plot doesn't have to be complicated or subversive for me to enjoy it again. I like straightforward heroic quests as much as I enjoy complex mysteries where you are not quite sure what's going on.
Setting -- I love world-building in storytelling. I'll go back to some of my favorite stories again and again just because I love the world the author created. Steven Erickson's world of the Malazan Empire is a great example. As is P.C. Hodgell's Rathilien in The Chronicles of the Kencyrath. Both are fantastic examples of world-building done *right*.
Emotional impact -- Finally, the fourth quality I look for in a book that's worth re-reading is the emotional impact it has on me as a reader. What do I experience emotionally as I read the story? Do I feel joy, sadness, anger, depression, or hope? Do I feel satisfied at the end? Is there a satisfying emotional payoff? I re-read The Lord of the Rings not long ago and I was impressed by how much of an emotional impact that story still has on me, even though I've read it many times before. Now THAT'S good storytelling.
One series of books that has failed to make it to the TBRA pile is Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. I read those some time ago because I wanted to read a science fiction epic that is foundational to the field. And while it wasn't bad, it also was not great. The best way I can describe the series is "flat." I don't recall much about the story, to be honest. Asimov's characters are kind of dull. His plot is OK, but not terribly engrossing, his Galactic Empire doesn't have much going for it, and by the time I was done, I really didn't feel much of anything. So while I *might* re-read it again in the future, it would never rise to the very top of my TBRA pile.
MORON RECOMMENDATIONS
While most people first encounter Narnia in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, my personal favorite story in the series is The Magician's Nephew. This is the origin story of the series, though written much later by Lewis.
Digory Kirke and his new friend Polly sneak into his Uncle Andrew's locked study and discover some magic rings. Polly touches a red one and disappears, and Digory must follow with a green one if he is to rescue her. They are transported to a transit zone between worlds, and instead of returning home, they jump to a different world. When Digory rings a bell there in a ruined tower, he awakens Jadis, an evil witch. They try to escape home, but end up in a new world called Narnia.
This is an allegory of the Adam and Eve story; in this one Digory awakens evil and brings it into this new world. Along the way, foreshadowing of events to come are left for the reader that tie into the main series storyline. I especially like that a portion of a London street lamp is dropped on the ground in Narnia, and it grows into the lamp that Lucy finds in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 12, 2026 09:13 AM (0U5gm)
Comment: When you first encounter The Magician's Nephew after reading the previous Narnia books, it can be a bit jarring. However, like Thomas Paine, I agree that it's one of the best in the series. The sequence that takes place in the dead world of Charn is very creepy and unsettling. The end, fittingly for a book written by C.S. Lewis, is very hopeful and uplifting. Just a great book and a great series overall. Well worth reading and rereading.
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I dosed off a bit this morning and woke up thinking about Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living. My husband bought me a replacement copy as my original fell apart. The original was memographed pages. Carla started writing and would mail new chapters as they were finished. She took some of her kids with her, to sell the book at local fairs. She was raised on a farm and knewwhat she was talking about. It all eventually lead to tv interviews and the book being published as a regular edition. She and her husband started a school for homesteaders, but the marriage finally fell apart.
There was so much knowledge of old ways that people tried to recover and save in the 60s and 70s. Yet here we are, with young homesteaders throwing it away for Instragram influencers. It's a shame.
Posted by: Notsothoreau at April 12, 2026 09:28 AM (gQ15S)
Comment: I bought a copy of this book several years ago, no doubt based on Moron recommendations. Not quite sure what I intend to do with it, though. I don't live in the country. Though I could raise chickens, perhaps. Some of my neighbors do. I don't have enough land to grow a decent garden as my yard is about the size of a postage stamp. And I'm pretty lazy when it comes to that sort of thing.
The journey through F. Paul Wilson's Secret History of the World continues. Like The Dresden Files, these books move fast. I can blaze through a book in a day or two because Wilson just keeps the pace moving quickly, but it never feel so rushed that you can't enjoy the story.
Repairman Jack Book 9 - Infernal by F. Paul Wilson
Jack's father is killed in a terrorist attack. Still grieving for father he only recently reconnected with, Jack is contacted by his older brother Tom, who needs Jack's help to disappear.
Tom is in deep, deep trouble with the law, as he's a corrupt judge under federal investigation. He dragoons Jack into assisting Tom with a little recovery operation off the coast of Bermuda, which will have tragic consequences for both Jack and Tom, as they discover a lost artifact that should have remained lost.
Repairman Jack Book 10 - Harbingers by F. Paul Wilson
Until now, Jack has mostly dealt with factions tied to the "Otherness," the alien cosmic entity that seeks intrusion into our world.
Now he discovers that the nominal "Ally" has its own faction, which it uses to intervene in its endless war against the Otherness. It's very nearly as ruthless as the Otherness in pursuing its goals, but it wants to keep Earth within its sphere of influence.
Jack's caught up in a war that threatens to take away everyone that Jack cares about.
Repairman Jack Book 11 - Bloodline by F. Paul Wilson
Jack is hired to find a teenage girl who’s shacking up with a much older man. Dawn's mother misses her dearly and wants her returned safe and sound.
Dawn's paramour has deep, dark secrets of his own and when Dawn becomes pregnant, he knows that his task is nearly complete.
This is one of the darker entries in the Repairman Jack series. The villains' plans are truly morally and ethically repugnant. Wilson is very good about creating irredeemably evil characters.
The ICE Trilogy Book 1 - Panacea by F. Paul Wilson
ICE here means "Intrusive Cosmic Entities," which is the name that ex-CIA operative Rick Hayden calls the alien forces that appear to be causing chaos on our planet. Unlike Repairman Jack, Rick is NOT a direct target of either the Ally or the Otherness, but he is aware of what the Otherness is capable of to some extent.
Laura Fanning is a medical examiner who’s hired to track down a mythical and mystical "universal cure" for a terminally-ill billionaire. Laura and Rick will travel to the ends of the Earth—or at least a remote corner of Scotland to find the panacea and brink it back.
The ICE Trilogy Book 2 - The God Gene by F. Paul Wilson
Rick's zoologist brother has gone missing. Rick and medical examiner Laura once again scour the globe to track down Keith, who appears to have disappeared in East Africa.
Meanwhile, a trader in exotic animals has discovered the source of Keith's "protosimian" companion—a monkeylike creature with extraordinary intelligence and uncanny blue eyes.
The "dapis" as they are dubbed may even be a threat to the human race—one that is empowered by either the Ally or the Otherness.
Repairman Jack Book 12 - By the Sword by F. Paul Wilson
Numerous factions are climbing out of the woodwork to claim ownership of the Gaijin Masamune, a legendary sword that was a ground zero of the Hiroshima blast in World War II, yet somehow survived.
Things get crazy at the end when Jack maneuvers the various factions to go to literal war with one another.
By the Sword interweaves material from Black Wind as a core part of its storyline, though it's not necessary to read the earlier book to enjoy this one.
Repairman Jack Book 13 - Ground Zero by F. Paul Wilson
The collapse of the World Trade Center was orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. Or was it? Jack's childhood friend Louise "Weezy" Connell claims to have found the TRUE origin of the attack on the World Trade Center and needs Jack's help to disappear before the real architects of the terrorist attack find her.
Turns out the truth is much, much darker than anything Weezy or even Jack can imagine, leading to a global conspiracy network that has one mission: destroy the Lady, a mysterious figure who stands in the way of the Otherness.
The Adversary Cycle Book 4 - The Touch by F. Paul Wilson
A devoted family physician is granted the power to heal any disease or ailment with a touch. It only works a limited time per day.
He has no idea where it comes from, but the Vietnamese gardener of one of his patients has seen it back in Vietnam during the war. Ba (his name) knows that this power comes with a tragic price, though it's one that Dr. Bulmer believes is worth paying for the gift he's able to bring to others, including one special little boy.
The Peabody-Ozymandius Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium by F. Paul Wilson
This novella was born out of a short-story anthology called Freak Show.
Wilson decided to expand his contribution and tie it more firmly into The Secret History of the World.
All of the sideshow freaks of the circus in question have been born out of the Otherness, touched by that darkness in some profound way. Their leader, Oz, is searching for missing components of an Infernal Device, the purpose of which remains a mystery, though it will only work in certain "touched" regions of the Earth during the equinox.
The ICE Trilogy Book 3 - The Void Protocol by F. Paul Wilson
Super-powered humans have begun showing up in America. The origin of their strange gifts is unknown, but the billionaire patron of Laura Manning and Rick Hayden is determined to find them and understand the nature of their gifts.
The secret lies deep within a hidden military facility underneath the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, where a mysterious "hole" in reality exists that defies any and all explanations.
Repairman Jack Book 14 - The Last Christmas by F. Paul Wilson
This one is a bit odd because Wilson wrote it AFTER he swore he’d never write another Repairman Jack novel. But then he decided to tell this tale and fit it into the overall narrative.
One thing to take away from this story: Don't ever, ever try to screw Jack over once he's accepted your job. Don't play games with him. Don't withhold information he asks for. When he finds out you’ve been less than forthright with him, he WILL make you pay. May God have mercy on your soul. Because Jack sure won't.
The Adversary Cycle Book 5 - Reprisal by F. Paul Wilson
This is one of the darkest novels in the entirety of The Secret History of the World. In the author’s introduction, Wilson admits that there were passages that were very difficult for him to write, but were necessary for the story.
At its core Reprisal's main theme is the targeted, deliberate destruction of innocence. The Adversary never, ever forgets nor forgives anyone who has slighted him or stood in his way in the past. He exacts terrifying revenge on the former Catholic priest who very nearly killed the Adversary before he could be reborn.
Repairman Jack Book 15 - Fatal Error by F. Paul Wilson
At last we are nearing the end of The Secret History of the World.
In Fatal Error, Jack finds himself embroiled in one final scheme to kill the Lady, the mystical guardian of planet Earth. Twice now she’s been killed by agents of the Otherness, but has managed to find a way to return.
Meanwhile Jack is helping a man whose wife and child were kidnapped. The man in question helped design software code that could potentially end the Internet worldwide, which has grim implications for the future.
Repairman Jack Book 16 - The Dark at the End by F. Paul Wilson
Canonically, this is the last of the Repairman Jack novels within The Secret History of the World. The next novel, Nightworld, does feature Jack, but he's part of an ensemble cast of characters from previous works in the series.
In this novel, Jack is finally unleashed to go after the Adversary directly, now that the Adversary knows the Sentinel, the Ally's champion, has been severely weakened by age and infirmity. Jack is paired with his own unlikely ally, Ernst Drexler, who used to by an actuator for the Septimus Order, a faction of the Otherness.
Signalz by F. Paul Wilson
This novella is a prequel to Nightworld, though written several years after that novel. It sets the stage for the events of Nightworld, featuring a number of secondary characters from previous novels who are now trapped in the most terrifying events of their life.
Their world as they knew it is over, as they begin to experience the direct influence of the Otherness within their personal lives.
The Adversary Cycle Book 6 - Nightworld by F. Paul Wilson
This is it. The last novel of The Secret History of the World. Chronologically, it takes place around 2012, though it's a bit vague in that regard.
It was originally part of The Adversary Cycle, closing out that series, but as Wilson wrote more and more Repairman Jack novels, he knew he had to revise and rewrite Nightworld to fit in the events that took place in those books.
The end result is one of the most terrifying books about the end of the world I've ever read.
The 5800X3D has AMD's 3D-Vcache, so while it uses DDR4 memory it doesn't lose a lot of speed from it. And the 3060 has 12GB of memory, so in that respect it is better than current low-end cards.
If you missed out on this the first time because you couldn't afford the price tag or weren't yet born in 1991, the updated version will slash the cost from $649 to $249. And $649 in 1991 dollars is over $1500 today, so that's a heck of a discount.
And while there are some modern conveniences like HDMI video and a rechargeable wireless option for the controllers, this is not emulated - not in software or in hardware. They actually spent the money for a new production run of the custom chips, and it's fully compatible with the original controllers and cartridges.
And there are ten of the original games back as well. You can pre-order the whole lot - console, controllers, and the ten game cartridges - for $1000.
The same company is also behind an Amiga 1200 reproduction and a number of other classic systems.
Ignoring the platform expiry elephant in the room for the moment, the 250K is a clear winner. For gaming it's a very close match, and while the 250K can use almost twice as much power in multi-threaded tasks, it is also almost twice as fast in multi-threaded tasks, so that's honestly a win too.
The problem comes if you plan to upgrade your system in the future. AMD plans at least one and probably two new generations of processors in the AM5 socket, while Intel's Socket 1851 disappears later this year with the introduction of Nova Lake and its Socket 1954.
Despite that computer sales actually rose slightly, as customers panic-bought everything in sight. Not that you would catch me doing that. Not since I ran out of money, anyway.
Musical Interlude
Huh. Postmodern Jukebox is performing at the Sydney Opera House in July. Almost enough to get me to make the trip.
Disclaimer: The fire extinguisher on the piano shows they were practising safe sax.
Saturday Night Club ONT - April 18, 2026 [D Squared]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to Club ONT - a collaboration of The Disco and The Dino. Come in in, grab a drink or 3. Find an old friend. Make a new friend. Just be friendly!
[Top photo: Beer at a random ballpark]. Those of you who attend pro baseball games (be it big leagues or the minors), how much is a beer at your local ballpark?
A man visited his doctor, and the doctor checked him over before commenting, "It looks like you get a fair bit of exercise."
The man replied, "Oh yeah, in fact, just the other day I walked 5 miles over rugged terrain as I climbed over rocks and trees. I also waded along the edges of a lake, pushing my way through tall thistles, and even slid down sandy slopes while getting sand in my eyes."
The doctor was quite impressed. "Well, you are certainly a dedicated outdoorsman."
The man replied, "Not really, doctor. I'm just a really bad golfer."
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A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says, "That's the ugliest baby that I've ever seen. Ugh!"
The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her, "The driver just insulted me!"
The man says, "You go right up there and tell him off, I'll hold your monkey for you."
*****
Drink of the Night
Tonight we drew the six of hearts from our deck of playing card cocktails
*****
Club ONT Local News Desk
Proposed adult entertainment, seafood venue in Johnstown canceled
Plans for a combination seafood restaurant and adult entertainment business in Johnstown have been called off after city officials raised concerns about a proposed "Crabhouse Lounge" in a residential neighborhood.
City officials said they learned about the plan Tuesday after Facebook posts circulated about a business along Strayer Street in the West End of Johnstown. The posts, made by a man renting a home there, said the "Crabhouse Lounge" would be opening May 1st with strippers and seafood.
Mayor Rev. Sylvia King said city leaders also considered how such a business could affect the surrounding community.
"We have to be cognizant the decisions that we make not only affect us but affect others around us. And especially we have to be concerned about what our children see," King said.
The man who had planned the lounge declined to go on camera but said he was only going to sell seafood platters and that nothing else would be sold. He said he viewed it more as a hangout or gathering than a business, but said the plan is now officially canceled.
Irvine police arrested a man accused of stealing $34,000 worth of high-end Lego sets and replacing the plastic bricks with pieces of dry pasta.
Jarrelle Augustine, 28, allegedly stole expensive sets, such as Star Wars and Marvel, and sealed up the Lego boxes before returning them to the stores for refunds, according to the Irvine Police Department.
"One of the cases that occurred here in Orange County, they shared that they opened the box and instead of Legos, they found bags of dry pasta," Officer Ziggy Azarcon said.
Investigators said the dry pasta mimics the sound of Legos when they're shaken.
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, -
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Club ONT acknowledges the recent "accounting discrepancy" that led some to believe that Club ONT has a net worth of $30 million. Club ONT accountants prepared the filing (trained at the Quality Learing Center) and Club ONT signed it, but Club ONT assets are substantially less. We never had millions. Swearsies. If we did, the money is long gone. It totally did not go to our friends and family in Somalia. Club ONT regrets that you made such a mistake and will accept your apology. In other news, we're busy making our accounts payable file disappear with the benefit of "accounting discrepancies."
*****
Club ONT management is not responsible for the insults scribbled in the pollen on the hoods of several cars in the parking lot. Or are we??
Every few years, a studio decides to make a large bet on a younger filmmaker. A weirdly large budget to a filmmaker who had proven their worth in some large way. Think Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate or, more recently, Damien Chazelle's Babylon. Or, if you want, every movie Christopher Nolan has made since The Dark Knight.
The ones that interest me most are the weird ones. Think Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (though...is it a blank check movie? It was only made for $17 million), weird movies with way too much ambition and suddenly a lot of money to pursue it from filmmakers who've never worked at that level and probably have no right to suddenly command those budgets.
Which is to say that I showed Junior Close Encounters of the Third Kind a couple of weeks ago.
"Wait...TJM," you say. "Close Encounters isn't that weird of a movie. It's pretty standard Steven Spielberg, right? It's got his filmmaking touches and embrace of the everyman. It's just as much a Spielberg movie as Jurassic Park or Empire of the Sun or Raiders of the Lost Ark, right?"
No, no it is not. It is actually extremely different. And to get to that we have to talk briefly about the pre-production history.
Spielberg had wanted to make a movie about UFOs since his youth, making a film (now lost) called Firelight that seemingly served as some kind of prototype to what Close Encounters would become (there are reports that entire sequences were lifted from Firelight). After Spielberg made the jump from TV movies to the silver screen, he entered an agreement with Columbia Pictures to make that movie. He hired Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver and raised in a Calvinist household, to write the first draft.
Spielberg hated that draft, though. You can find it online, and it's not a good screenplay. Importantly, though, it provided what I see as the backbone to the whole final product.
Schrader's screenplay was about an Air Force lieutenant named Paul Van Owen who was tasked with going around to people who saw UFOs and convincing them that they weren't real. Then, he discovers that UFOs are real when he's hit by a blinding light on the road back to his hotel, and he spends the next couple of decades trying to find the proof of them. Does this sound like something...familiar? Well, it should. It's the story of Saul becoming Paul the Evangelist. It's a religious story.
And despite Spielberg's hatred of the original script, the rewrites he commissioned from other writers, and his own rewrites (Spielberg is the only credited writer on the final film), that underlying reality of a man on a religious search for truth remains. And that's where the weirdness of the movie begins.
Family Man
One of the major changes that Spielberg insisted on was changing Paul to Roy Neary. Paul was the military man with a family. Roy is the electrician early in his career with a wife and three children. That change to the everyman was important to Spielberg, and it brought the overall project within Spielberg's more familiar milieu. However, when Spielberg kept the undergirding idea of Neary abandoning his family in pursuit of the truth.
He is the sole breadwinner, working as an electrician in the early part of his career for the Indiana utilities industry. He supports his wife, Ronnie (played by Teri Garr), and three children when he's hit by that light in the night on the road to somewhere he can't find. His obsession steadily overtakes him in small forms (making a mountain out of shaving cream in his palm) until he simply cannot see why Ronnie would object to him tearing up their plants, throwing dirt through their kitchen window, and building an 8 foot tall replica of Devil's Tower in their living room.
And then, when he makes the connection between his sculpture and the real Devil's Tower...there's no more thought for his family at all.
I was reminded of a story I've heard about a medieval woman, a mother, who stepped over her own child in order to enter a convent. What Roy Neary does is a religious move. It's casting aside everything about this world in order to pursue something higher. Can it just be he's really into aliens all of a sudden? It can be, but the obvious religious undertones of the film is what pushes Roy from crank into believer, I think. And that's a marked contrast to pretty much the rest of Spielberg's filmography.
From Indiana Jones decided to take his father's hand instead of trying for the Holy Grail at the end of The Last Crusade to Dr. Alan Grant learning to appreciate the value of children in Jurassic Park to Ray Ferrier trying to protect his children in the face of an alien invasion in War of the Worlds, Spielberg's everyman heroes choose family over the strange, weird sights that they see, but not in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For years, Spielberg has noted this contrast and insisted that he's uncomfortable with it, especially after he started his own family with Kate Capshaw.
This inversion of the typical family man, coming near the start of Spielberg's career no less (even Jaws had Chief Brody returning home after facing the terrible horror of nature on the seas), is one of those things about the movie that fascinates me in no small part because Roy Neary should be deeply unlikeable.
Wonder and Awe
Way back when, one of my first dozen or so posts was about awe in film. I mostly contrasted Avatar which seemingly had the elements to make something wonderous, and The Tree of Life, a film that really does hit me rather hard in its creation of the cosmos sequence. I outlined three elements that I think are necessary for a film to create awe in an audience. They were scale (things have to be big), difference (they have to be not typical things), and they have to have a veiled meaning. Avatar succeeded in the first but failed in the second and third. The Tree of Life succeeded in all three.
Close Encounters succeeds at all three, I think, and it's vital to the story, particularly to Roy as a character. Roy leaving his family because of flashing lights in the sky isn't enough. He needs a huge incentive to leave, and this is where the wonder and awe of the aliens works. How does Spielberg actually accomplish it?
Well, it's those three elements. Firstly, the idea of alien life and outer space is big on its own, but we also have the actual mothership that appears at the ending, which is huge. Scale? Check. What about difference. This is where the use of the five-tone musical cue (a tone, go up a tone, drop a major third, drop an octave, go up a perfect fifth) is important. Music is emotional on the surface with mathematical underpinings. It is a new way of thinking for most people and eschews literal translation. So, different? Check. Finally, the five tone cue could literally just mean hello (five letters, five tones), but Spielberg never explicates that. It sidesteps literal translation in favor of a more purely emotional form of communication. Combine that with the scale and difference of it all, and you've got the makings of wonder and awe.
And when Roy Neary makes it to the other side of Devil's Tower and witnesses the arrival of the alien mothership...it hits me. It all makes sense. The quest for the wondrous feels justified, even, because what Roy finds something so great, so much bigger than himself, and something so potentially meaningful that casting his family aside seems to just...be fine.
How weird is that? How many films not only try to do that but succeed at it fully?
Junior's Review
He liked it.
But other than that, I was kind of surprised that he sat through the whole thing. It was a risk. I just decided that he was going to watch it. I popped him some popcorn and we watched it all the way through in one sitting (the kid has some minor ADHD). He did ask me once Roy got to the other side of Devil's Tower how much longer it was. Any parent will know the voice he had. He was stretching the limits of his attention. "Almost over," I replied. There were 30 minutes left. And he didn't get up. Watched the wonder unfold. And he was happy with the experience.
And I think that's just a testament to the film itself. It's full of weird stuff considering the conventions of populist filmmaking in America, but this nearly 50 year old movie entertained my 12 year old. That's always nice to see.
The Gambler and the Lady (Rating 3/4) Full Review "Oh, well, I was surprisingly engaged with the film for a long stretch, even if the ending just kind of confused me." [YouTube]
Spaceways (Rating 2/4) Full Review "I mean…the film is not good. But it's weirdly compelling in parts, and I have to give it props for that." [YouTube]
Murder by Proxy (or, Heat Wave) (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It's tense and surprisingly intelligent emotionally while looking good and getting solid performances (especially from Dane Clark)." [YouTube]
A Stranger Came Home (or, The Unholy Four) (Rating 2/4) Full Review "So, I'm mixed on the film, which is not a surprise by this point. Hammer strikes out in a new direction with something good, and the films just kind of revert to the mean of competence and mediocrity." [YouTube]
36 Hours (or, Terror Street) (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "So, the end result is a small surprise, something that actually does try at emotional heft but doesn't know how to follow through on it." [YouTube]
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 thread will be on 5/9 and it will discuss something...I don't know yet.
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. It is that time of the year, a spin of the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) came up with castles as a theme for this Hobby Thread.
Castles? Yes, castles. Maybe more of a theme than a hobby per se, but who am I to argue with the Wheel of Hobbies (TM)?
[Top photo: Burg Eltz, Wierschem, Germany. Oil, 24 x 18 by polynikes]
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. I understand that some people pay attention to military hardware, tactics and strategy as a hobby. Discussion of current military events permitted but must be made in the form of hobby commentary. Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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Castles seem to have a hold on our collective imagination. They feature in medieval stories of combat and siege. Europe is dotted with castles on almost every mountain or vista. King Ludwig built his own fantasy castle in Bavaria and Cinderella lives in castle at Disney.
Tourists wander through castles (and castle ruins) and imagine what life was like. Surely the original masons and builders would be amazed to know their creations were tourist attractions hundreds of years later.
Castles are photogenic and artists have painted castles for centuries. Books and movies find castle settings irresistible. There will be no boiling oil poured from the ramparts in this thread, but how many hobbies have some touch to castles? Have your hobbies involved castles in some way?
Let's talk history, architecture, and art. Let's talk travel, scale builds, and stonework. Let's talk comedy and literature. Do you have favorites?
For purposes of this thread, let's steer towards structures of medieval history and defensive designs. There are a lot of chateaus or large homes that are called "castles" because of their size and and history and "castle" design cues, but let's stick to fortified structures with drawbridges, moats, turrets, high ground, ramparts, etc.
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Top painting is Burg Eltz. One of the best known castles in Germany. It has been owned and inhabited by the same family for over 850 years. Three branches of the family still live there.
This is Burg Eltz too. Always interesting to see the same thing through different eyes. This painting is courtesy of tankascribe.
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The Hohenzolleren Castle is the ancestral home of the Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzolleren. Naturally, it is built on Mount Hohenzolleren.
Sometimes it takes a village to raise a window. Between 2015 and 2017, skilled masons meticulously carved and beveled arches and four-lobed flourishes for a Gothic-style stone window frame in Guédelon Castle’s ornate Chapel Tower. All that remained was to install some glass. But there was a problem, and the carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, basket weavers, historians, and archaeologists who work on-site were all enlisted to figure it out. Eight years later, the matter of what to put in the window of a medieval castle has nearly been resolved...maybe.
Long video, but fascinating history. Hosted by the Countess of Sandwich (giggle).
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Check out a Scottish castle with Ruth:
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Dunluce Castle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
Photo credit unknown. Painting credit to tankascribe.
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How medieval castles actually worked. (Alternative title: why blocking trade and supply routes and waiting was often a better strategy than a direct attack).
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Lego makes castles:
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A visit to Königstein in Germany is recommended. It is called a "fortress" which is arguably a bigger military site than a fortified residence but let's not get into a definitional debate. This video has great history. It is in German, but the English subtitles are good.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did an paper folding and origami theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
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Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute your own. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.
Birdy is Mom’s youngest son’s dog. She has been taking care of her for 13 years ! !
Still beautiful. She told Emily, a young niece, in all sincerity that Birdy was, in fact, not a dog but a funny little girl. Emily’s confusion was charming.
RITS
Birdy does look like a sweet, funny girl. Love that photo and the story.
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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde
From Intrepid Liaison/Admiral Ackbar:
There has been some animal activity here as well. We found a dead opossum close to the house, and shortly thereafter, vultures came in.
Kinda intimidating . . .
A killdeer decided to make its nest right next to the walking trail. She doesn't like when people get near lol.
Of course. Heh.
With warmer temperatures come all the amphibians.
And look at this poor guy! A squirrel without a tail!
What an interesting collection of critters! I am sort of glad I missed the dead possum. There are some reminders in these photos that nature is REAL.
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Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
The weather can always double-cross you - - this is Kansas, after all - - but it looks like spring is early this year. I snapped these pictures earlier today.
We're probably done with snow this year, and the temperature hasn't quite hit 100 degrees F yet, though it's come close. The big show is underway outside. Here are some of the early highlights.
Polemonium reptans
Dianthus gratianopolitanus
Linum-narbonense
Be sure to click over at the links for more cultural information and photos, including some larger-flowered plants.
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Edible Gardening/Putting Things By
2026 Maple Syrup report from the Great White North
We had a very strange maple syrup season this year. We started early March, which is typical, then after bottling our first batch, cold weather returned & shut down the trees for almost 2 weeks. It's not unusual for sap flow to stop when the temperature remains below freezing for a few days but the break this year was the longest in the 15 years we've been doing this. Optimal sap production happens with temperatures of about 45F during the day 25F at night. Sunshine helps. We had very few such stretches this year.
Regardless of the weird weather, we had a very good year, better than Quebec & New Brunswick (our top maple syrup producing provinces). We made a record amount of excellent quality syrup with no sediment. The quantity record was more a result of having more firewood than ever.
As usual, we had our 3 helpers, Maggie, Molly & Candi. You only have to pet their heads to know its maple syrup time. You can feel the hardened droplets of maple syrup they get from hanging around below the spout of the coffee urn style dispenser we use to fill the jars.
WoW! Great yield! Great information! Love your helpers.
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Adventure of the Mind
Thought you might like these dogwood pictures from Virginia. The best part is they are very pretty AND I don't have to drive into Washington DC to see them unlike the Cherry Blossoms. This seems to be the week my dogwoods peak and I am enjoying them.
Thanks for the garden thread, as it another one of the AoS decompression safety valve posts it is much appreciated.
Hrothgar
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Gardens of The Horde
What's going on in your garden? Got any greens growing?
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
"Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion . . . No man shall be compelled to frequent or support religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively."
-Excerpted from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, drafted in 1777. First introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in 1779, after he had become Governor. Passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1786, while Jefferson was serving as Minister to France. The last sentence is excerpted from a letter to James Madison, August 28, 1789, as he was returning to America to assume his position as Secretary of State.
There seems to be some interest in religion in the news lately, with the Pope weighing in on the morality of war with Iran, conspiracy theories running amok and more . . .
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Now that the hard work is over, another religious belief appears:
We did it. With Europeans in charge, Strait of Hormuz will be open in just 4-6 months, following a climate assesment and a summit in Davos https://t.co/ODfc8OEiDR
Is "Just War" the only moral consideration in dealing with Iran?
A lot of people were taken by surprise when the USA joined Israel in attacking Iran's leadership and defense industry. Lee Smith has an explanation in: The Return of the Echo Chamber - How the Obama-era communications infrastructure is working to rope Trump into the next JCPOA
Iran can’t have a nuclear bomb, says Donald Trump, so it can’t be allowed to enrich uranium—not now, not ever. Accordingly, former Barack Obama aides responded favorably to news that Vice President JD Vance told the Iranian delegation he met with in Pakistan last weekend that he was willing to erase his boss’s red line and offer Iran a deal that allows it to enrich after 20 years. . . .
Soon after the actions to take out Iran's existing bomb program, they massively increased their conventional weapons production. This is how they got to be suppliers of sophisticated drones to Russia, for example.
The JCPOA was designed to protect Iran’s nuclear weapons program until the regime could protect it itself. Thus, while the JCPOA put time-limited restrictions on the nuclear program, it undid restrictions on Iran’s conventional ballistic missiles program. This meant that by the time the restrictions on its nuclear activities expired, Iran would have an enormous arsenal of ballistic missiles to defend the nuclear program against Israel and any U.S. president willing to take military action to end it. As Iran’s conventional arsenal was approaching that point of no return, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to see Trump in his Florida home at the end of December.
Whether or not to leave future generations to deal with an Iran thus armed was the question. Would the leaders of the country feel compelled at some point to bring chaos to the world (according to their theology) in order to allow for the return of the Hidden Imam?
Wretchard, or Richard Fernandez, says that he thinks you can't properly understand the discussion within the context of Just War Theory alone: you have to engage also the theory of Jihad, which is Iran's rather than ours.
Inevitably it requires us to consider not only what Christians believe but what the Islamic equivalent to Just War -- the doctrine of Jihad -- actually teaches. In many ways the two are as different as chalk and cheese. In the first place Christianity is a nonstate religion while Islam aims to be a “universal religion and a universal state”. . .
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Daniel Greenfield:Pope Leo Ignores Christian and Jewish Genocide in Algeria
Alongside paying tribute to the 19 Martyrs of Algeria, beatified in 2018, priests, monks and nuns, including 7 beheaded monks and 2 nuns murdered on the way to mass, by Islamic terrorists who later received amnesty for their crimes from the Algerian government, Pope Leo also paid tribute to the Jihadis at their memorial.
Pope Leo visited Algeria’s so-called Martyrs’ Monument, “Maqam Echahid,” located above the El Mujahid or Jihadi Museum, erected by former Islamic-Socialist terrorist dictator Houari Boumédiène who had headed the ALN, one of whose specialties was the “Smile of Kabylie” in which the tongue was pulled through a slit throat, and which was responsible for the Oran Massacre of Christians and Jews that ethnically cleansing a formerly non-Muslim city.
Women and children had their throats cut by Muslim mobs bent on slaughter. 250,000 non-Muslims had lived in Oran. After the massacres, over 200,000 survivors fled, told that they had a choice between a “suitcase and a coffin”.
Praising the Arab Muslim terrorists who had set out to eliminate Christianity from Algeria, the pontiff declared that “they lost their lives but in doing so, they gave them up for the love of their own people. May their example sustain the people of Algeria and all of us on our journey, for true freedom is not merely inherited, it is chosen anew every day.”
The “love of their own people” was based on a fervent hatred of all non-Muslims, acted out through horrible atrocities, including the deliberate murder of children.
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As one Catholic put it, pray both for the Pope and for Trump.
(And watch out for weird attempts to separate Catholics and Protestants politically.)
It was quite a week. The Democrats decided they needed to get rid of a candidate in the crowded field for Governor of California, and the fall guy was Eric Swalwell. It turned out that the Democrats and their reporters had known all along that Swalwell was a sexual predator, but until now it wasn’t opportune to mention it.
President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, or maybe just as a doctor, healing someone. That prompted howls of outrage from the people who are always howling in outrage, and an extraordinary outpouring of memes showing Trump and others as Jesus, or just as healers.
Speaking of Jesus, the Pope tried to intervene in the midterm elections on behalf of the Democrats–he was a Chicago lefty before he became Pope–and President Trump didn’t take it lying down. The memesters were generally on Trump’s side.
In more positive news, Artemis returned to Earth and, as the week drew to a close, the Strait of Hormuz re-opened and an agreement with Iran seemed to be on the horizon.
The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
[H/T Sharon(Willow's Apprentice). I see there is another Misanthrope in the building]
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Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Baldwin)
1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Or else.
3) Running with sharp objects should be done during the Movie Thread.
4) Have a great weekend!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
3/5 – IrishEi has learned that she needs major surgery on 3/16, and she would really appreciate prayers.
4/4 Update – Irish Ei posted her health update. She quit smoking 8-10 years ago, after reading Alan Carr’s “Easy Way to Quit Smoking”, on Ace’s recommendation. Since then, she has gone for the annual low-dose CT scan of her lungs that is offered to smokers/former smokers. They were always negative, until this year. She had one very small spot, which was confirmed as Stage I CA. The spot was removed, and no chemo or radiation is needed. She has been home for a week and is feeling better and stronger every day. She did want to encourage everyone to take whatever screenings are offered. She had no symptoms at all, and her doctor had suggested that she could stop with the annual CT scans. But early detection is crucial.
3/10 – Update on Susan, who we have been praying for as she battles cancer. She is hospitalized again with an infection in her colon that quickly turned bad. The doctor says the signs are sepsis but they are running tests to make sure. The good news is that the pancreatic cancer was and is responding to the chemo and her cancer numbers are going down. God bless and thank you!
3/23 Update – Susan finally was able to come home. She is doing better than expected. Thanks to everyone for your prayers.
3/14 – Retired Buckeye Cop asks for prayers for Mrs. Cop’s cousin, “A.B”. He has been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He is a retired police officer who was hit by a car years ago. He attempted to deal with the pain by self-medicating with too much Tylenol, which ended up poisoning his liver. His only alternative is a liver transplant, but he is uncertain if he wants to have surgery.
4/11 Update – A.B. got a second opinion and testing determined his live score was 15. (21+ means transplant time.) That’s bad, but not as critical as initially thought. He went to the Cleveland Clinic for a third opinion, and testing found that his score had dropped to 9 and a liver transplant was not even something to consider. The doctor suspected a reaction to Ozempic and told him to stop taking it for 6 months.
3/21 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for her son, who is still looking for work. He has a horticulture major, and would ideally like something related to research, but he is certainly willing to labor outdoors.
4/10 – FenelonSpoke’s son got a job. She sends her thanks to everyone who prayed on this thread here and elsewhere.
3/21 – Count de Monet gave prayers of thanks for a son who has been accepted into the IBEW Apprenticeship program. He will earn while he learns for 4 years on his way to becoming a Journeyman Electrician.
3/21 – pookysgirl asked for prayers as they start IVF again.
3/22 – Retired Buckeye Cop has a happy prayer request. His 16 year old grandson said he is feeling a call to the priesthood within the Catholic Church. He is a devout young man who has particular compassion for the poor. (He thinks he might want to be a Franciscan friar.) Please pray for L. H. as he pursues the vocation of religious life.
3/24 – GMAC posted that he has received his death sentence. His prostate cancer has metastasized into his bones. Medication will slow it down, but there is no stopping it. He doesn’t know how much time he has, but plans to do some travelling while he can. He sends his compliments to “the wittiest group of morons” he has ever had the pleasure of reading. He will still be lurking.
3/28 – Cosda posted the happy news that a new grandson should be arriving on 3/28.
3/28 – Defenestratus asked for prayers for grief at the loss of a dear friend and boss of 20 years, who passed away unexpectedly on St. Patrick’s Day.
3/28 – San Franpsycho posted that Pnina bat Surel is not improving, sadly. She has had a third hospitalization, and this has taken a toll on her. She is not bouncing back like she has before.
3/28 – From about The Time posted that prayers would be appreciated after the last chemo treatment for Lymphoma. It went reasonably well - thanks for the prayers.
3/28 – Hrothgar asked for prayers for a dear and long time close friend and former neighbor, Daniel, who is scheduled for open heart surgery in mid-April. Prayers for his wife would be appreciated as well, as she will be carrying a heavy load for the next few months.
3/28 – NR Pax posted an update on his father, who we had prayed for in January after his stroke. Dad is going through PT and OT every day at home. Mom got some cooperative people at the VA and a note was put in his record that he was not to have any appointments more than fifteen miles from his house. Things are still rough as Mom is handling things like taxes, investment accounts, and the banking. And Dad’s condition is stable, but it will change sooner or later. But they are living in a great retirement community and he’ll be taken care of.
3/28 – Jordan61 posted that Mr. Jordan61 is back in the hospital. His sepsis has returned and gotten into where his compression fracture is, and he has vertebral osteomyelitis. The doctor is supposed to come in today and let them know the plan.
4/9 Update – On 4/1 Mr. Jordan61 was released from the hospital with six weeks of IV antibiotics, which Jordan61 is administering every 8 hours. He’s in a lot of pain; they’ve given him oxy, fentanyl, and dilaudid, and nothing seems to touch it. From what they were told, the pain won’t subside until the infection is cleared up. For the time being, he is bed-bound and they are limiting his movement as much as possible to keep the pain to a minimum. Jordan61 will send updates with progress.
4/3 – Teresa in Fort Worth posted an update. Her chemo seems to be holding things steady for now. Unfortunately, as she is receiving a steroid, she has gained about 25 pounds. Her blood sugar has also jumped up about 40 points (which only happens when she is on steroids).
4/4 – Reforger posted that his wife’s father passed away on 4/3. After a 50 year battle with Hep C, he fell and broke his neck. He lasted about a month, in and out of induced comas, and now the pain is over. Reforger lost his father on Holy Saturday (years ago) and now his wife lost her father on Good Friday.
4/11 – Eromeros craves prayers for Mrs. E., as she has been diagnosed with lymphoma. She begins infusions on 4/23.
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.
The A18 CPU used in the MacBook Neo uses 6W maximum, and typically throttles down to 4W since the laptop is passively cooled.
All models in the Core Series 3 range use 35W maximum and a base of 15W, which is rather more than that. So while it may be Intel's answer, it is not necessarily a good answer.
The first laptop announced with the Core Series 3 is Honor's Magicbook 14. That costs around $1000, but on the other hand it comes with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD, which is more than is even possible in the MacBook Neo.
AMD has officially made non-committal noises about this. The chip was taken off the market allegedly because it was too competitive with the newer 7800X3D. But with DDR5 prices in cislunar orbit, and the slower 5700X3D and 5600X3D also retired from the market, it would be a very welcome sign.
But it's allegedly a 10th anniversary special edition, and Ryzen's 10th anniversary is in December, counting from the announcement, or next March counting from retail availability. Hope we're not going to have to wait that long.
I mean, it's not like I have 384GB of DDR4 RAM lying around, but if I did I might be interested.
That's pretty useful, given how many untrusted tasks there are running around the internet these days. The CPU and memory overheads are small enough that for any task that takes even a second or two it's a viable solution.
What a Trojan coin was doing in Berlin we may never know, but the location it was found in does have burial remains from the Bronze and Iron Ages and artifacts from the Roman era.
The coin itself dates to the third century BC, almost a thousand years after the historical events of Trojan War. But it's definitely from Ilion, the Greek name for Troy of that period.
Similar to lines of code, but worse, because rather than trying to capture productivity and inadvertently capturing cost, it directly captures cost.
Also as the article notes, while there's a correlation between tokens used and lines of code generated, widespread adoption of AI leads to massive increases in code churn - were new code is added and then immediately changed or removed.
And competitors are taking advantage of this by offering semi-professional version of their products for free, a price that soundly beats even Adobe's cheapest subscription plans.
ASRock has announced a breakthrough to make DDR5 memory cheaper: Half-channel memory. (WCCFTech)
Which is exactly what it sounds like. PCs commonly use dual-channel, 128-bit memory - a misnomer since DDR5 uses dual 32-bit logical channels per physical channel.
What ASRock does here is reduce that further to only a single 32-bit logical channel per physical channel, which of course cuts memory bandwidth in half.
It's a BIOS update for Intel motherboards, so it doesn't break anything, and if you have proper 64-bit DIMMs you can use them just fine, but it's a move of desperation and not something anyone would want to use if they could avoid it.
This is interesting if you're into guns: The slow-motion guys fire a teeny-tiny pin gun at the back of a bullet to see if they can ignite the second bullet by hitting its primer with its teeny-tiny bullet. I say it's interesting because it turns out, without a barrel, and without a closed hammer at the back of the barrel to force all gas forwards, a bullet that's been sparked off by a hit on its butt isn't much of a projectile. One could say it's a damp squid.
Okay that was a teeny-tiny round. Here are some bigger ones.
And he tests whether the .577 Tyrannosaur could stop an actual Tyrannosaurus Rex, firing it at a balilstic head in the shape of a Tyrannosaurus's.
A nock volley gun is a multi-barrel rifle designed to shoot an entire volley of bullets with one shot. This particular volley gun is called "The Kraken," and has seven barrels each firing a .61 caliber round. Apparently it's based on a gun used in shipboard combat-- you'd fire it from the crow's nest down to the decks.
In this clip, they fire an RPG-7 (rocket propelled grenade, which isn't really what it stood for, but that has been made up as a retronym to explain the Russian initials) at a ballistic torso. In the first hit, the grenade doesn't detonate, because it passes through the torso quickly enough that its detonation mechanism doesn't detect it as an actual stop/hit. So they put some cinderblocks behind the torso, and make the detonator more sensitive, and blow it up real good.
Katherine Schwarzenegger sparked a debate with fans after she praised her husband, Chris Pratt, for building a dollhouse for their daughters.
The "Kat and Brandy" author recently took to Instagram to share a video of the actor getting his hands dirty while working on the homemade project.
"I'll never understand when women say, 'I don't need my husband' when I very much in fact do need my husband because who else would build our daughters a dollhouse?" she wrote over the clip set to Olivia Dean's "Man I Need."
Schwarzenegger, 36, also gushed over Pratt, 46, in the caption, writing, "When you have a golden retriever husband >>>."
While the New York Times best-selling author was merely showing appreciation for the Marvel star, her remarks rubbed some critics the wrong way.
"Wives and women can build doll houses, too," one person wrote, as another added, "Women can do that. We can buy our own homes and vote, too! 😉."
Others echoed the same remarks, with a third chiming in, "How nice that he [built it], but it's either tone deaf or passive aggressive to say you'll 'never understand.'"
Others attacked her as a "child of privilege." Which is a true fact, but... what motivates this?
Malicious envy. Once you see it, you can't stop seeing that every single feeling a leftist has is just resentful, spiteful envy. Everyone has those kind of flaws -- but they have adopted an ideology that tells them these are not flaws and evil thoughts to be contained, but instead "empowerment" and "enlightenment" to be nurtured and wielded as a weapon.
AWFULs are the most maliciously envious, spiteful, hateful, and useless people the world has ever produced
California was horribly wrong about gender and kids
California's classroom policies put children on a path to irreversible medical interventions with no proven benefits
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Until recently, this debate was dominated by radical gender ideologues, who insist on affirmation at any cost.
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In California, the pipeline to these drastic interventions begins in the classroom, where state law requires teachers to hide kids' gender confusion from parents, even if that means sitting across from them in parent-teacher conferences and lying by omission to the very people most responsible for those children's care and wellbeing.
Socially transitioning children at school puts them on a collision course with sex-rejecting medical interventions that cause lower bone density, infertility, cardiovascular problems and other painful, costly health issues.
There is no off-ramp. California's ban on "conversion therapy" applies not just to the abusive practices most people associate with that term, but to any counseling that might reduce children's gender distress without transitioning them. (Multiple states have similarly broad bans on their books, though the Supreme Court just struck down Colorado's.)
Those policies are rooted in academic "queer theory" rather than science, but after a long campaign of infiltration and intimidation, activists managed to align the medical profession with their ideology. Just a few years ago, they could claim that "[e]very major medical association" considered sex-rejecting interventions for trans-identifying youth to be "safe and lifesaving."
But that confidence was never matched by strong evidence.
Thankfully, the tide has turned. There's a growing international consensus that the gender activists were wrong. Scientific reviews in Sweden and Finland, as well as the U.K.'s rigorous Cass report helped convince those countries to dramatically scale back sex-rejecting interventions for children and adolescents.
Last fall, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a comprehensive review titled "Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices," which arrived at the same conclusion: that medically transitioning minors conveys no proven benefits.
The choice between "a trans son or a dead daughter" convinced thousands of parents to approve interventions that irreparably damaged their children. It turned out to be a false dichotomy.
Socially transitioning children at school puts them on a collision course with sex-rejecting medical interventions that cause lower bone density, infertility, cardiovascular problems and other painful, costly health issues.
Evidence also increasingly suggests that trans-identifying kids were not simply "born in the wrong body" but may instead be struggling with deeper issues.
The recent spike in youth gender dysphoria coincided with a massive decline in teen mental health (likely driven by smartphones and social media). Both trends were more pronounced among girls.
One influential study found that 63% of adolescents presenting with gender distress have at least one co-occurring neurodevelopmental disability or mental health disorder.
These kids don't need puberty blockers and hormones. They need psychotherapy, family counseling, thorough clinical evaluation and perhaps treatment for anxiety or depression -- not a rush toward irreversible medical interventions.
EXCLUSIVE: 5.4 Million People Have Migrated To Pro-Trump Counties Since 2020 As The Great Divorce Continues
The past five years have seen a massive migration of Americans out of heavily Democratic counties and into ones where Donald Trump won majorities in each of the past three elections. That's according to an exclusive analysis by Issues & Insights of the latest Census Bureau and election data.
Most analyses of internal migration patterns look only at state-level data. And what they show is that blue states are losing population to red states, and have been for many years.
I&I wanted to go deeper, so we used the latest Census data on migration between counties, and compared that with how these counties voted in the past three presidential elections.
What we found was that millions aren't just moving out of blue states, but are moving out of blue counties within states.
Trump won 2,589 counties in each of the past three elections. From 2020 to 2025, those counties gained 5.4 million people due to net migration -- which measures how many people move into and out of an area. The 433 counties where Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris carried the day saw a net loss of 5.43 million people.
And the 121 counties in which Trump won at least one of the past three elections saw a net gain of 29,000 people over those years.
I&I has been tracking these migration trends for years. In 2023, we found that Biden-voting counties had lost 2.6 million people from 2020 to 2022. We did the analysis again in 2024, and the number had swelled to 3.7 million. The exodus clearly has continued.
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The 10 counties with the biggest loss of population from 2020 to 2025 were all heavily Democratic -- they voted for Hillary Clinton, Biden, and Harris. (Miami-Dade flipped into the Trump camp in 2024.)
Even if you go further down the list, the pattern remains.
Of the 50 counties with the biggest net gain of population, all but four voted for Trump in the past three elections. Of the 50 counties with the biggest losses due to net migration, all but five are solid blue.
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Millions of Americans would rather live among Trump supporters than those voting for the likes of Kamala Harris.
But you're not allowed to say it, because these political extremists are all about TheScience (TM).
Eric Rasmusen, a well-known professor of economics at Indiana University, recently said he was denied his application for emeritus status.
Rasmusen retired in 2021, but decided not to apply for emeritus status until last year when the university stopped offering free access to online journal subscriptions for faculty who were retired but not emeritus, Rasmusen wrote recently on his substack.
"If I continue to be denied access, I will accept that," he told The College Fix in a recent interview. "It isn't fair, but I can ask friends at Indiana University and elsewhere to look up scholarly articles if I need them."
Typically, professors who retire in good status are awarded the title "emeritus," but Rasmusen said he was not. He believes the answer to this question goes back to 2019 and a controversial social media post about men and IQ.
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Meanwhile, National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood told The Fix that denial of emeritus status is uncommon because "conferring such status on a retiring professor is essentially costless."
Wood said in a recent email that "the only reason to deny it" would be "the danger of reputational damage" such as "credible accusations of plagiarism, research fraud, rape, or other criminal felonies ..."
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Rasmusen, however, has not faced such accusations nor, as he pointed out, is he lacking in academic prowess.
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When asked about discrimination against conservative professors in higher education, Wood told The Fix that a conservative professor "may well encounter discrimination during tenure review, promotion, teaching assignments, and a host of other ways. The Rasmusen case, however, is the only one I have heard of in which a conservative professor, having survived all those sorts of attacks, has been denied emeritus status."
Wood told The College Fix that "Rasmusen's account of that denial is highly credible."
Meanwhile, Rasmusen, who is conservative and a Christian, said he believes the emeritus status issue is linked to a controversy over his social media posts.
On Nov. 7, 2019, Rasmusen tweeted a quote from an article titled "Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably." The quote read, "Geniuses are overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier high IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness."
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To the label of "racist, sexist, and homophobic," Rasmusen responded: "I oppose admitting people to universities based on their race; I open doors for ladies; I say that sodomy is a sin. I suppose that's enough to qualify me for those insults under the Provost's personal definitions."
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To the statement that "he believes that black students are generally unqualified for attendance at elite institutions," Rasmusen clarified his belief that it "is clear is that *some* students are admitted because of their race -- which means that others are denied because of their race ... Affirmative action may be right; it may be wrong; but that's what it is."
The observation that men are psychologically less "Agreeable" -- and hence more willing to buck conventional wisdom, prevailing hierarchies, and accept the punishment that rules-enforcing mediocrities inflict -- is also uncontested.
As for affirmative action resulting in people being admitted or promoted due to race -- that's the entire point of it. But, again, you're not allowed to say it.
NPR's Short Wave podcast casually promoted sex pseudoscience this week. Their guest, Dr. Emily Kwong, says sex is “hard to define” and can be defined by “a lot of things, like anatomy or hormones or chromosomes.”
The childbearing gap between liberals and conservatives is absolutely exploding and has now reached 2 to 1 among women 25-35. In 1980, there was hardly any difference.
Black woman from South Africa: “Black people have been patient enough for more than 400 years of colonialism. We are coming for you, and we are going to get everything that you own.”
White people are facing racism, hatred, and brutal violence in South Africa. This is not… pic.twitter.com/3a5R93TzOs
Fantasy Authors Are Not Playing: Creators Increasingly Call Out "Unfaithful" Adaptations
From 'House of the Dragon' to 'God of War' to 'The Witcher,' shows are getting smacked by creators for seeming to stray from source material. And there are reasons it's happening now.
Amazon Studios has to be at least a little thankful that J.R.R. Tolkien is no longer around.
First, the studio came under fire by best-selling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson for its Wheel of Time adaptation ("I had my problems with the show," Sanderson said last year. "I won't miss being largely ignored; they wanted my name on it for legitimacy ... it had a fan base that deserved better"). Then last month, the creator of the God of War video game, David Jaffe, savaged a first-look photo (above) from Prime Video's upcoming big-budget adaptation ("It is so bad in so many ways," Jaffe said in a YouTube rant. "Neither of these characters look very interesting or appealing. If this was God of War: Dumb and Dumber edition, this is what you would expect").
To be fair, Jaffe has been a critic of other God of War spinoff efforts since his involvement with the game ended nearly two decades ago, and he added that he trusts the Prime Video show's producer Ronald D. Moore to deliver. But given all the fandom debate that surrounded Amazon's first two seasons of its The Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Rings of Power, not having Tolkien rage-tweeting about the show's Harfoots has to be a blessing.
Prime Video is not alone in having a fantasy creator target its adaptation. The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski has repeatedly thrown passive barbs at Netflix's troubled series, saying things like the streamer "never listened to me" and "I cannot praise the show, it wouldn't be decent" (The Witcher also famously lost its star Henry Cavill amid still-murky circumstances, with the actor having hinted that fidelity to the source material was a core issue for him).
George R.R. Martin -- after years of dutifully holding his tongue over some things about Game of Thrones he wasn't thrilled with -- unleashed a dracarys on prequel House of the Dragon for its deviations from his book, Fire & Blood, amid a falling out with showrunner Ryan Condal. ("We got into season two, and [Condal] basically stopped listening to me," Martin said. "I would give notes, and nothing would happen." Yet Martin has sung the praises of new series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, saying the show is "as faithful as an adaptation as a reasonable man could hope for" and playfully quipped, "and you all know how incredibly reasonable I am on that particular subject").
HBO recently had a slightly similar issue with an acclaimed Green Lantern comic-book writer Grant Morrison, who aligned with outraged fans taking issue with the showrunner of the upcoming Lanterns series joking "green is stupid." Morrison wrote, "What is this jockish dismissal of superhero conventions intended to prove anyway?" The showrunner, Damon Lindelof (who surely had to be amused at being called a "jock") drafted a sincere apology.
Why are authors just now beginning to call out Hollywood Shit or Garbage hacks for crap they've done forever?
The combination of audience fragmentation (where studios no longer need to draw the largest possible viewership on every show) and streaming services collectively serving up hundreds of longform titles a year now allows these stories to be adapted with a level of specificity and loyalty to the source material that wasn't realistic before.
I think they mean that since even a "hit" is only going to get a 2.8 rating -- where hits 40 years ago would get a 15 rating -- then you can afford to give the hardcore audience what they want, and they will no longer accept excuses that you had to water down the material to appeal to a mass audience. The "mass audience" is a dead concept.
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But streamers are trying to balance making wide-appeal content and pleasing a vocal hardcore fandom that can often have an almost religious view of "canon" -- and now have authors potentially breaking ranks to join fans in their criticisms as well.
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Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and will only greenlight movies based on names and IPs people remember, even if they don't remember them fondly.
The ultimate proof of this: They've rebooted the Faces of Death video nasties. This "movie," if you can call it that, seems to be about some creeps on the internet recreating gory deaths from the original Faces of Deaths videos, and the question is: Are they real or fake deaths?
Rebooting Faces of Death. What a world.
Speaking of dead franchises with only the glimmer of name recognition:
The budget for Marvel's last-chance movie, Doomsday, is said to be $400 million, with $100-200 just going to Robert Downey Jr. (Though I suspect that might be for both this film and the next one, Secret Wars.) The marketing budget is projected to be $300 million.
"The word is that Doomsday's budget is around $400 million which makes it one of if not the most expensive film ever made," Campea said. "I heard a little birdie told me, you guys will remember that Avengers Endgame was the first movie ever to spend $200 million on a marketing campaign, which was unheard of at the time. I've heard their marketing budget for Doomsday is just a little north of $300 million. Now, here's where it's interesting. If Doomsday is about a $400 million budget and if they are spending about $300 million on marketing, Doomsday will be the first film in history that will need to join the billion dollar club in order to break even."
Even worse, this movie that no one wanted opens on December 18th -- the same day as Dune: Messiah. (Or is it just called Dune Part III?)
Marvel is playing tough-guy and pretending they won't move off that release date. But of course they will. They have to do everything possible to give this piece-of-shit the best possible chance to make money. Warner Bros. doesn't really have to move Dune -- this is the third time they've milked this teat. They can afford to take a bit of a hit in the box office. (And to be honest, it doesn't sound like a crowd-pleaser, anyway: It's about Paul being responsible for literal billions of deaths as he's conned people into fighting his Space Jihad for him for ten years. Interesting way to go, but I don't know if that's going to wow the public. (Then again, I also didn't think the other two would wow the public but apparently they did.))
But if Doomsday fails -- and I think it will - that's the end of the MCU. At least it'll have to be let fallow for five or six years and only brought back as a full DC-style reboot.
Breaking: Disney will not have IMAX screens for Doomsday, because Warner Bros. already locked those down by contract for Dune Part 3. So that's a big hit right there.
So Disney is attempting to destroy the reputation of IMAX, so they can say "Who cares about IMAX? See our crap movie on a normal screen, you're not missing anything." Specifically, they've made up a new standard they're calling "Infinity Vision," and are saying that only 75 screens throughout the country meet that standard. And they're rolling this official new made-up bullshit standard on December 18, 2026-- when both Doomsday and Dune open.
They're basically trying to sabotage Dune to scare Dune away and make it move its release. But in doing so, they're burning goodwill with theaters by labeling almost all of their premium screens "Not up to Disney/Marvel standards."
This is the most arrogant, entitled entertainment company in history. And it should be of no surprise that they churn out almost nothing but substandard slop. Because absurd arrogance goes along with poor performance -- Dunning-Kruger. The incompetent are so incompetent and so unfamiliar with the standards of competency that they don't even realize they're incompetent.
More bad news for Disney:
Based on surveys of 7,000+ moviegoers conducted by Fandango, the summer of 2026 is heavily dominated by major franchises, sequels, and high-profile intellectual property (IP).
Here are the top ten most anticipated movies of Summer 2026:
Toy Story 5 (Disney/Pixar): Voted as the #1 most anticipated film, promising a new chapter for the beloved animated toys.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Sony Pictures): A new live-action installment in the Spider-Man franchise, highly anticipated by fans.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Disney/20th Century Studios): A sequel to the iconic fashion-industry comedy.
The Odyssey (Universal Pictures): Directed by Christopher Nolan, this is one of the few non-sequel films to break the top of the list.
Scary Movie (2026) (Paramount Pictures): A reboot or new installment of the popular horror-comedy parody franchise.
Moana (2026) (Disney): The live-action reimagining of the animated hit, featuring the return of Dwayne Johnson as Maui.
Minions & Monsters (Universal Pictures): The latest installment in the globally successful Despicable Me spinoff franchise.
Mortal Kombat 2 (Warner Bros.): The sequel to the 2021 live-action video game adaptation.
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (Warner Bros./DC Studios): A key entry in the new DC Universe (DCU) focusing on Kara Zor-El.
Insidious: The Bleeding World (Sony/Blumhouse): The latest entry in the long-running, successful horror franchise.
Notice anything missing? The Star Wars tv-show-turned-into-movie the Mandalorian and Grogu is missing from the list. It's beaten out by Scary Movie 6, for crying out loud. No shade to Scary Movie 6. But...for crying out loud, Star Wars used to be a bigger franchise than Scary Movie!
Would you like to see the fourth entry of a franchise that produced exactly one movie worth watching, 20 years ago?
Would you like to watch a movie featuring decrepit caveman retard Bobby "the Brain" DeNiro phoning in his 700th performance in a row?
How about a haggard and aged Ben Stiller, who hasn't been funny since Zoolander, whose face is now thin as cracked paper due to rigorous intermittent fasting and AIDS?
And how about notorious anxiety-ridden neurotic weirdo and donut licker Adrianna Grande?
Then boy, do I have the movie for you: Focker-In-Law. I dare you to watch this. It is without a single smile, let alone laugh.
A few weeks ago I mentioned the Malcolm in the Middle reboot. Given that it's Current Year and the show is produced by Disney -- and the producer himself has three gay children (out of four -- almost a clean sweep!) and thinks he needs to stuff more "representation" into a show formerly about straight people -- he's made some slight adjustments to the characters we thought we knew.
* A fifth sibling has been added to the mix. And They is a Non-Binary who lectures the dad when he gets Them's pronouns wrong.
* Stevie, Malcolm's black, wheel-chairbound, girl-crazy boob-obsessed pal, is now gay and married to a dude. I guess he was really good at faking.
* Malcolm's three nerdy male friends from school are now in an "asexual throuple."
Doesn't that just make you want to sign up for Disney Minus right now?
Please vote on whether you think these projects are Shit or Garbage? I'm compiling the data.
Communist Zohran Mamdani Is Taxing All Luxury Part-Time Homes in NYC
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Filthy Terrorist Theater Kid is imposing a so-called pied-a-terre tax on millionaire's apartments, if they only live there part of the year. In other words, if they're a pied-a-terre, a little place in the city to take your mistresses to. A foot on the ground, the term means, approximately. A little place in the city you can visit when you're bored of your country estate.
Do I even object to this? I think this makes me happy.
The worse the better, as bitter old communists say -- the worse this corrupt system gets, the better for all of mankind, because it will hasten the revolution.
Let them turn their cities into dust and then tell us "Real socialism has never been tried!!1!"
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani touted Gov. Kathy Hochul's proposal on April 15 to tax expensive second homes as a sign of a progressive tide to tax the rich, but it will only apply to absentee owners.
The pied-à-terre tax puts an annual surcharge on homes valued above $5 million when there is no resident who lives primarily in New York City. The tax, which would need to be passed in the state's delayed budget, would generate some $500 million in revenue annually, according to Hochul's office.
"If you can afford a $5 million second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker," Hochul said in a statement. Non-resident owners do not pay New York City's income taxes. To avoid taxation, property owners could make the home their primary residence or rent it out someone else who does so.
Hochul, a moderate Democrat up for re-election in November, has been hesitant to raise taxes, which the city cannot do without the state government's permission. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, ran for mayor on a platform of free buses, universal childcare and city-run grocery stores paid for in part by levying higher taxes on the rich.
The filthy communist's Death Cult Whore wife has previously celebrated terrorism and especially the October 7 massacre, and has been ever so slightly pressured -- not by the media or Democrats, mind you -- to offer a weak, half-hearted, insincere apology about writing the word "n****r" and posting slurs about gays.
But about praising Muslim murderers who slaughter civilians? Nope, no apologies for that!
Yesterday, Duwaji finally apologized for her comments during an interview with a hand-picked art critic. Only, her apology was pretty limited.
Rama Duwaji, the wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City, apologized in an interview published on Wednesday by the art site Hyperallergic for using the N-word as a 15-year-old in social media posts that a conservative news site recently unearthed.
The news site, The Free Beacon, also reported that when Ms. Duwaji was 15, she had tweeted an abbreviation of a slur for gay people.
"When a tabloid recently published old tweets I wrote as a teenager, I felt a lot of shame being confronted with language I used that is so harmful to others," she said. "Being 15 doesn't excuse it. I've read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry."
So she's sorry about the N-word and the gay slur when she was 15. And look, even I said that no one really cares about things she said when she was 15. Every 15-year-old says dumb things. What about the pro-terrorist stuff when she was 20 or praising Hamas even more recently?
Asked to explain which social media posts Ms. Duwaji was apologizing for, a spokeswoman for the mayor declined to comment...
Ms. Duwaji also did not appear to address some of her more recent social media activity that has also drawn criticism.
She had liked posts appearing to celebrate Hamas's deadly attack on Israel, right after Oct. 7, 2023...
She also attracted scrutiny for providing an illustration for a story included in a compilation curated by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American author who has described the Oct. 7 attack as "a spectacular moment that shocked the world." On Wednesday, Ms. Abulhawa posted on X that "Israelis and all zionists are parasitic filth."
They mayor "declined to comment" and Ms. Duwaji just refused to apologize for praising hijackers and Hamas. They already know this is going to just go away.
Without a doubt, government must do more because it does it so well and so efficiently.
And also, no Democrats are getting their palms greased in this boondoggle. They're totally not foreign pirates plundering our money from us at every turn.
Socialist communist Zohran Mamdani prances around NYC like a delusional commie. Promised to tax the rich, now screwing Ken Griffin’s $238M penthouse with the first pied-ŕ-terre tax!” Thinks this pathetic wealth grab is brilliant while crime, migrants, and failing schools turn NYC… pic.twitter.com/3EFJDuX43S
He's a nice guy. Calls me all the time, says hi. But his policies are no good. He's chasing people out and causing a lot of harm to everybody. pic.twitter.com/Ti9E4ETrHM
Is "Girlboss Feminism" Dead? If It Is Dead, How Come the Rest of Us Are Still Forced by the Government to Subsidize These "Independent" Girlbosses?
—Disinformation Expert Ace
You may remember Lindy West. Barely. She was one of those 2010's loudmouthed Fat n' Proud feminists that shrieked constantly at Jezebel or the Guardian.
Apparently she's written a memoir -- kind of like Lena Dunham -- and it's inspired a couple of viral articles about "Millennial Feminism" or "2010s girlboss bog feminism."
Actually she writes about various bits of Millennial Feminism nonsense but I'm going to focus on that one part.
The Death of Millennial Feminism
Lindy West has unwittingly written the obituary for an era.
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That background is what makes the publication of her new memoir, Adult Braces, such a cultural moment. Adult Braces is many things: a paean to the varied landscapes of America, an advert for #vanlife, a reminder to be grateful that your partner hasn't talked you into a throuple with a much thinner woman. It is also the tombstone for Millennial Feminism--that swirling brew of Media Twitter, blog snark, the Great Awokening, whaling on Lena Dunham, fat positivity, and boring straight people identifying as queer through accounting tricks. To read Lindy West is to gaze backwards in time, to an era when it was acceptable to write "welp!" in copy.
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Her fatness wasn't only a joyful expression of her appetites; instead she has now realized that "I am at my biggest when I am at my saddest."
Even her relationship wasn't all that it seemed. In her 2019 essay collection, The Witches Are Coming, she had written that she and Oluo--her "best friend" and a "once in a generation" musical talent--had a "dawn ritual" where they lay in bed talking for hours. In Adult Braces, she adds that "what I omitted was that we'd only developed that 'ritual' to mitigate a toxic pattern we'd been stuck in for years: I'd wake up anxious, I'd vomit my anxiety on Aham, he'd snap at me for triggering his anxiety, I'd feel alone and unsupported, I'd stare at him with tears in my eyes until he had a panic attack, he'd zone out for the rest of the day and not listen to a word I said."
As it offers a revisionist history of West's 2010s, Adult Braces makes another grand claim: that West is now polyamorous and lovin' it. Yes, she might have been upset when a fan texted her with the news that Oluo was out in public kissing another woman. (Even then, she admits halfway through the book, that wasn't the whole truth: "I told you Aham was secretly seeing one woman in 2019. He was actually seeing two.") But really, she absolutely adores her and Oluo's now-mutual girlfriend, Roya, to the extent that through sheer force of will, she has become bisexual. It only took driving a van from Seattle to the Florida Keys and back, while also undergoing cosmetic dentistry, to realize this.
When I read Adult Braces, my instinctive reaction was: I don't believe you.
To me, it seemed obvious that Oluo, who is mixed race, had successfully used West's desire to be progressive against her: "He believed that monogamy was, at its root, a system of ownership. I had to admit that perhaps I didn't feel it as keenly, as a white person." Oluo had also rebranded himself as a "non-binary he/they," perhaps to shrug off any suggestion that he was acting like every harem-patrolling patriarch in history.
Now, I know plenty of people who have come to a different understanding of their sexuality as adults--mostly Later-Life Lesbians, or LLLs--but it seems an unlikely coincidence that the first woman West has ever been attracted to was already her husband's girlfriend. Not least when the book includes this line: "Being cool about polyamory felt like a growing imperative in progressive circles."
Lindy West has sniffed that her life choices are none your business.
This might be true, although I would say again that if you don't want people picking over your personal life, avoid writing a memoir.
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This is why so many women who considered themselves left-wing--myself included--eventually parted ways with Millennial Feminism. At the beginning, the movement felt intoxicating and liberating, but it soon became clear that sticking with Millennial Feminism would have required submitting ourselves to a voluntary lobotomy. After all, Lindy West essentially did.
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Of course, it's one thing to set rigid and unforgiving rules of human conduct. It's quite another to expect anyone to live by them. What killed Millennial Feminism was the gap between what its high priestesses demanded and what they were able to endure themselves. If you insist that accepting polyamory is the price of being a good person, and then write a book about your throuple where the front cover shows you with mascara-streaked tears running down your face, people will spot the dissonance.
For a long time I've been saying that the Democrat Daddy Government is the Husband of Last Resort for bitter sexless husband-less AWFULs. What I meant -- I guess I didn't explain it -- was that AWFULs pretend to be "independent" from their daddies and from husbands but they're still mostly dependent on other people to support them. No, they don't have to answer to or please a husband to provide them with economic support. Rather, they just demand that the federal government provide the support that husbands traditionally did. They get the monetary benefit of marriage without actually having to find or please a mate.
Inez Stepman wrote a real corker of a piece on this subject. I don't mean she cribbed from me, I just mean she questions how "independent" the "independent girlboss" really is, given that she's so incredibly dependent on subsidies provided by taxpayers, quite against their will.
Is the independent girlboss dead? Maybe she never existed to begin with.
The release of Lindy West's latest cringeworthy memoir, Adult Braces--about how her husband out-woked her into becoming the side chick in her own marriage--has prompted an intra-leftist firing squad about who bears responsibility for the girlboss's dimming appeal to younger women.
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The image of the working woman, the girlboss, remains the sine qua non of independence. After all, she pays her own bills using money she earned herself, or so it seems. But dig into the details and one learns she is propped up from every angle by laws, taxpayer dollars, and the ability to externalize the costs of her lifestyle onto others. In other words, the girlboss is often as much a dependent as Betty Draper, but her dependence is less honest, laundered through public policy.
President Barack Obama ran an infamous 2012 campaign ad, mocked by conservatives, about the "Life of Julia," a woman dependent on government at every turn. That model could be renamed for Millennial girlbosses as the "Life of Jessica": a cycle of dependence on institutions and structures that allegedly liberate women from the patriarchal boot but instead merely redistribute and conceal their dependence.
She points out that Democrat open borders policies provide these "girlbosses" with incredibly cheap and exploitable foreign labor which increases their own economic power. Read the whole essay for that.
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Then there are the girlboss jobs themselves. While millions of women create real value in the economy and deserve their paychecks, it's impossible not to notice the wild proliferation of "email jobs" and administrative compliance positions that don't add to the company bottom line (David Graeber famously called them "bullshit jobs" in his bestselling book of the same title), jobs disproportionately filled by the fairer sex.
In 1991, reforms to the Civil Rights Act ensured that lawsuits over (often spurious) sexual harassment claims in the workplace became a major cash cow for litigants. Companies responded by bending the knee to the most easily offended, kicking off the era of "political correctness" and spawning an enormous industry that trains employees not to harass one another. These reforms also raised the stakes for employers to prove they were not discriminating on the basis of sex or race in their hiring and promotion practices, pushing them well beyond meritocracy into de facto affirmative action for women and minorities.
Even more pernicious is the proliferation of Soviet commissar-style jobs, both in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, that exist primarily to enforce political agendas rather than to produce value. In the U.S., the number of human resources jobs, three-quarters of which are filled by women, has exploded, roughly doubling from 2014 to 2024. It's unlikely that managing a payroll has become commensurately burdensome in the past ten years; those additional roles exist to enforce diversity laws. The entire DEI complex is a giant subsidy for make-work positions staffed by women and racial minorities.
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Earlier in the life of the girlboss resides an even more obvious source of her dependency: universities. Higher education is disproportionately attended and staffed by women. It is also funded in large part by the taxpayer, with an output that adds to cultural revolution more than to the wealth of nations.
Female students earn just under 60 percent of bachelor's degrees, and similar proportions of master's and PhDs. Given that women more often choose lower-paid majors such as gender studies and communications, as opposed to structural engineering and computer science, it's little surprise that the student debt crisis is itself a disproportionately female phenomenon. Women hold two-thirds of outstanding student debt, nearly all of which has been financed by the federal government. Unless serious policy changes are made to defuse this debt bomb, the high default rates will ultimately fall on the taxpayer, through whom the government already owns 93 percent of student loans.
As I said, read the whole thing. The "independent" girlboss is an illusion; they've merely forced all the rest of us to become their daddies and husbands.
I got this from Based Camp, who have called the phenomenon of women who are almost entirely subsidized by the taxpayers -- and usually paid by taxpayers to act as agitators and disruptors against the lives and lifestyles of the taxpayers themselves -- "Nuns of the State." Rather than being supported by the Church to teach Church doctrine, they're paid by the Deep State -- using money the Deep State stole from taxpayers -- to disrupt society and make taxpayers' lives a living hell.
Anna Paulina Luna: A Woman Is Coming Forward With Lawyers to Make a Complaint Against Ruben Gallego of a Violation That is "Sexual In Nature" and Also Human Trafficking Plus: FBI to Investigate Deaths and Disappearances of 10 Top-Secret Clearance Scien
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Now, we have seen fakers and grifters come forward to make false claims in the wake of a high-profile accusation. A bunch of psychopaths and schizophrenics made up claims against Brett Kavanaugh after Hysterical Hippocampus made her false claims WITHOUT EVIDENCE.
On the other hand, Anna Paulina Luna is hot enough to roast a dolphin.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna
@RepLuna
It's seems like the Senate has its own trash to take out. @LeaderJohnThune. You need to look into the allegations against one of your Senators, it's very disturbing. My chief will be contacting your chief.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida accused Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of misconduct on Thursday, which Gallego denied.
Luna told CBS News' "The Takeout with Major Garrett" that the Arizona Democrat was the previously unnamed senator whom she said was facing "very disturbing" allegations in a cryptic social media post earlier this week.
...
Luna did not give much detail about the allegations, but she said some of them are "sexual in nature" and some of them involve alleged campaign finance violations. She also said Senate Majority Leader John Thune's office confirmed to her that the matter is under investigation.
...
Luna said "there is a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys [and] wants to go on-record about an incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time, and the event was sexual in nature, allegedly."
Pressed for further details, Luna added that "I think any time that you are knowingly engaging in purchasing someone for sex, that that is something that should be taken seriously."
She also says the case involves "trafficking." I don't know what this means. She might be taking the broadest possible view of "trafficking" and claiming that any woman in the business of prostitution, as this prostitute Gallego paid is, is "trafficked."
Or she might mean that this specific woman was, in fact, trafficked. Did Gallego know that or have reason to suspect?
Seems a little flimsy but we'll see.
Gallego has strongly denied wrongdoing in recent days. He told reporters earlier this week he has never engaged in any sexual misconduct or other inappropriate behavior with staff or women outside of his marriage.
Insane. He divorced his wife, pregnant in the ninth month, to marry a 25-year-old staffer. He's claiming that there was no affair prior to the divorce?
It's spectacularly dishonest. What "news organization" could print this lie without providing the factual context which demonstrates it's a lie?
Oh -- CBS "News." That checks out.
Gallego -- who was friends with Swalwell but later called for his expulsion from Congress -- acknowledged earlier this week that he was aware of rumors of Swalwell acting "flirty." But he later said that he'd "never heard actual accusations of harassment of staff or predatory behavior toward staff." Gallego also said he "fell for the lies."
...
Luna has been outspoken about the need to crack down on allegations of misconduct, telling CBS News earlier this week that she expects other lawmakers to face similar pressure.
She's also campaigning to release the Congressional Sex Slush Fund Files.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna
@RepLuna
Apr 15
A friendly reminder that House Oversight subpoenaed the records of the congressional sexual harassment slush fund and we will be releasing them. Maybe we'll see more resignations, you never know. #trashday
Before the guy comes in to say "John Thune will do nothing" -- let me beat you to the punch. John Thune will do nothing. He's a Democrat who exists to do favors for his rich corporate donors and get paid off for doing them.
NEW: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is accusing Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) of misconduct, telling CBS News’ Major Garrett her office has provided Senate Majority Leader Thune’s staff with allegations related to Gallego that are “sexual in nature.” CBS News has reached out to… pic.twitter.com/z4L54nix3v
As if she weren't hot enough already, she is a "No" on the FISA reauthorization the Democrat Corporatist John Thune so craves until he passes the SAVE Act.
Anna Paulina Luna
@realannapaulina
Apr 14
I have not forgotten that John Thune is intentionally blocking voter ID by refusing to embrace the talking filibuster.
So now I have to fight to stick it on FISA. Which I will. But John’s voters should be asking him what he is thinking.
Hakeem Jeffries says he never heard anything, anything! about Rapewell's predations.
Question: Some Democrats have said they’ve known about the Swalwell rumors for years. Shouldn’t you have known as leader?
Remember, the Democrat caucus consists of 213 people and Rapewell was a very high-profile, camera-hijacking peacock. The idea that he was never briefed by his staff about Rapewell is a brazenly stupid lie. This stuff comes up, for example, when vetting people for important postings.
Like a seat on the Intelligence Committee, for example.
Trump Orders FBI to Investigate the Recent Deaths and Disappearances of Ten Scientists Working on Top Secret Projects:
🚨 NOW: Mass calls for investigations are ramping up after nearly a DOZEN of America's top scientists either died or disappeared with few answers
The scientists happen to be tied to "critical secrets."
Iran Claims They Have Completely Opened the Strait of America, Claims They're Ready to Turn Over All Uranium and Give Up Their Nuclear Ambitions
—Disinformation Expert Ace
I believe neither of these things. I do believe they've said these things, but I think they're lying.
But this nevertheless newsworthy because it shows that Iran is scared and desperate. They are always pretending that they're in the cat-bird seat and #winning the war, somehow, even as they're all hiding inside mosques. To even speak these lies shows their weakness: Strong men have no need of lying. They can speak the truth and dar you to object to it.
Except that during the talks before Epic Fury, they boasted they could make 11 nuclear bombs within a week if they chose to.
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US President Donald Trump said on Thursday, April 16, that Washington and Tehran were "very close" to a peace deal and insisted that Iran had agreed to hand over its enriched uranium, a key sticking point in negotiations. The United States had earlier threatened to resume airstrikes on the Islamic Republic and maintain a naval blockade of its ports if Tehran refused to accept a deal to solve the conflict that broke out on February 28.
At the same time, a 10-day ceasefire came into effect between Israel and Lebanon with Trump saying he expected the two countries' leaders to be at the White House within "four or five days." Hezbollah has not said if it recognizes the ceasefire, but a senior figure said it would respect it if Israeli attacks on the militants stopped.
But Israel's army said it was striking Hezbollah rocket launchers after fire from Lebanon shortly before the ceasefire was due to begin. The prime ministers of both countries welcomed the ceasefire, which came days after the US and Iran agreed to a separate truce and as Pakistan pursued diplomatic efforts to arrange a new round of talks between foes Washington and Tehran.
Strait of Hormuz: Iran announced the vital trade chokepoint open to all commercial vessels for the remainder of the ceasefire. US President Donald Trump said Iran committed to never closing the waterway again, but that a US naval blockade will continue until a deal with Iran is "100% complete."
They're also threatening to re-close the Strait if America continues its blockade of Iranian ports:
If the US continues its naval blockade, Iran will consider it a ceasefire violation and close the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media Fars reported on Friday.
That's weird, the leftwing propaganda media, including CNN, insisted that America's counter-blockade wasn't working at all.
And yet here's Iran begging for an end to the blockade. Almost as if it's crippling them.
As Rachel Zegler would say: Weird, weird!
I don't believe that any agreement these monsters sign is worth anything. The only way we will achieve our objectives is through regime change.
So this is very hopeful news: Iranian patriots are TCOB themselves. As a hippie would say: Be the Regime Change You Want to See in the World.
The IRGC is dying from both ends. While American bombers and Israeli jets hit from above, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰.
Three more senior IRGC operatives have been confirmed eliminated in 𝐒𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐧:
-- Second Lieutenant 𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐝𝐢 𝐍𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐢 𝐒𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐡
-- First Sergeant 𝐀𝐡𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐤𝐡𝐢
-- First Sergeant 𝐌𝐨𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐳𝐚 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐳𝐚𝐢
These are new assassinations. These took place in Saravan, near the Pakistani border, while the car-bombs and assassination-by-stabbings I mentioned earlier this week took place in Tehran.
And these are just the ones that have been confirmed. With the 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐨𝐮𝐭 across Iran, it is taking days to verify identities -- meaning the real body count is almost certainly 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫.
This is the part of the war the legacy media refuses to cover: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐑𝐆𝐂. These are not American strikes. These are not Israeli operations. These are 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐧𝐬, 𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩𝐬, 𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬.
For 46 years the mullahs told the world the Iranian people loved the revolution. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐬.
Unfortunately, the Islamic Occupational Army in Iran continues to murder civilians -- and of course the world press, so concerned about human rights abuses, refuses to report on it.
And I don't hear Pope Leo's bleeding heart beating about it, either.
The Iranian regime is sentencing a woman to death for participating in the January 2026 anti-government protests in Tehran.
Human rights organizations say that Bita Hemmati will be the first female protester executed in response to the uprising, along with three others. pic.twitter.com/fdGGWKxf3N
Here is Mohammadreza Majidi and his wife Bita Ali Hemati. This young Iranian couple is at risk of being executed by the terrorist Islamic Republic at any moment.
— Goldie Ghamari | گلسا قمری 🇮🇷 (@gghamari) April 15, 2026
Bita Hemmati, along with her husband, Mohammadreza Majid-Asl, has been sentenced to death by an Iranian court in connection with the January protests in Tehran. Hemmati will be the first female protester executed. On Thursday, Dr. Sheila Nazarian, a doctor whose family fled Iran when she was a child, spoke to Fox News Channel's Bill Hemmer. Nazarian provided grisly details about what happens to women who are convicted of "crimes against God" and sentenced to death.
The fate of Hemmati and her husband is just the latest round of executions since the uprising began in January. Hemmer gave a grim tally of what continues to happen in Iran. According to Iran HRM, a human rights group, since the beginning of the war, there were 341 executions in January, 307 in February, but only eight were reported in March since the regime shut off the internet for a total of 656.
Bonus:
Hello! Happy Friday!
I've got my deck covered with bread, seeds, and peanuts, but no crows have returned.
Are you having a more productive day than I am, crow-wise or otherwise?
MORNING RANT: The EV De-Transition Accelerates as Volkswagen Permanently Cancels EV Production in the U.S.
—Buck Throckmorton
It was exactly five years ago this week that I published my first anti-EV piece at the Ace of Spades blog. I mocked Volkswagen for putting out a press release to celebrate its new ID.4 electric vehicle being able to drive from New York to Sacramento in just 18 days. I wrote, “Phileas Fogg of ‘Around The World In 80 Days’ might be impressed. I’m not. This isn’t 1872. Heck, the Pony Express was able to get mail from Missouri to Sacramento in only 10 days. In 1860. On horseback. But Volkswagen is very excited about their electric cars. With 21st Century technology they are able to make what was once a 4-day drive with quick and easily-available refueling, into a multi-week ordeal where you must obsess about fuel availability.”
I’ve followed Volkswagen’s EV debacle from a front-row seat here in Tennessee. VW, along with Ford, took the bait as hard as any legacy auto manufacturer during peak-EV hype. Both announced all-new Tennessee EV plants to much fanfare in the late ‘teens and early ‘20s. Both of them built costly new plants, with much Tennessee taxpayer assistance. And both are now left with big, empty plants that do not produce EVs.
Ford officially killed its flagship EV, the F150 ConflagrationLightning pickup truck, a few months ago. And now, Volkswagen just followed suit, killing off U.S. production of its flagship ID.4. Volkswagen fully expected this to be its new mass-market vehicle in the tradition of the Beetle and the Golf. By the time the ID.4 was killed off, it was the slowest selling car in the United States. ID.4 sales are averaging about 100 units per month right now. VW anticipated initial demand of 7,000 units per month, and only growing from there.
Five years ago, an all-EV future was not even considered a hypothesis by most journalists and politicians (including too many Republicans.) They considered it a fait accompli. Their religious fervor in service to the Church of Climate, along with their zeal to stamp out personal liberty, had many people thinking the only question was the timeline to 100% EVs. But some of us chose to fight back, and conservative media played a huge role. But most importantly, conservative consumers came to understand that not buying an EV was an important political act, no matter how much an EV might be subsidized by tax dollars or discounted by the auto manufacturer.
I’m going to make a quick Civil War analogy to the war we have fought against the “EV transition.” The defunding of EV mandates in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act along with the removal of emissions penalties by Lee Zeldin’s EPA were like Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Momentum was reversed, and the new task for the EV army was defensive - to hold out and hold on until the tide turned again. The tide never turned back. When first Ford threw in the towel on EVs, and then Volkswagen followed, it was like the fall of Atlanta and Richmond. Team EV is in a state of total collapse. Perhaps Rivian’s impending cessation of operations will be Appomattox for electric vehicles.
I often hear it said that legacy auto manufacturers had no choice but to try to go all-EV due to government mandates. That is not true. While Joe Biden and his EPA were certainly trying to use the coercive power of government to steer auto manufacturers in that direction, Ford and VW announced their grand EV strategies well before Biden tried to tighten the screws further on gas vehicles. But several mass-market manufacturers resisted. Honda and Toyota received blistering criticism from the left-wing auto media for going slow with EVs, continuing instead to focus on traditional internal combustion vehicles and gas-hybrids instead. The CEOs of Ford and VW, by contrast, were worshipful disciples of Klaus Schwab. They wanted to lead the EV transition. In 2019, VW’s CEO, Herbert Diess, promised an all-electric future for VW, but having nearly destroyed the company in service to his eco-leftist belief system, he was forced out in 2022. Inexplicably, Ford’s destructor, Jim Farley, is still its CEO.
One way I can tell that the morale of Team EV is in shambles is that my hate mail from EV fanboys has evaporated. I’m starting to miss those diatribes instructing me to “educate yourself” on the superiority of EVs, and advising me that they’ll be laughing when I have no choice but to buy an EV.
Another criticism I often hear is that those of us fighting to defeat the EV transition are going to cost a lot of jobs throughout the “electric vehicle belt” in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. I don’t care. Those were always make-believe jobs in service to a socialist economic model. It required that money be redistributed from taxpayers to government-favored corporations whose business models rely on government subsidization. In addition, the jobs to be created at new EV plants were to be offset by killing-off jobs at legacy auto manufacturers. It was at best a zero-sum game.
But I’ll go even further and state that if a manufacturer is engaged in an evil enterprise, those jobs should not exist. If Volkswagen announced that it was building a new foundry in my town to produce slave shackles, I would oppose it. Once built, I would advocate for it to fail, even though it might cost some people their jobs. The government-funded EV transition was the flagship project to deny people their basic liberties, including freedom of movement. It was also part of a plan to kill off the jobs and wealth-creation of the petroleum industry. Given a trade-off between a job at a Rivian plant or a job in the oil patch, I’ll side with keeping the roughneck employed.
The failure of Ford’s and Volkswagen’s electric vehicle ventures is something to celebrate. Ideally, they’ll both successfully repurpose their EV factories now to build vehicles that real-world consumers want to buy.
The people in charge [Jews, of course -- ace] don't want you to know this, but Muslims love Jesus.
Islam reveres Him as a major prophet and messenger of the Lord, believes He performed miracles, and states that He will return to Earth to defeat the Antichrist. That's why Donald Trump's painting depicting himself as the Son of God offended the president of Iran. It was an attack on his religion as well as Christianity.
Trump's trolling tweet was ill-advised, but Tucker is just lying when he claims the Christianity-hating President of Iran was "offended" by this. He's one step away from announcing his official conversion to Islam. He literally never stops praising Islam. Well, he suddenly became Christian two years ago, there's not much stopping him from converting again.
You can track Tuq'r's official conversion to Islam with this Bingo card.
Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk Orban losing, but is it the end of Hungary? The Irish start a brawl, but is it enough, Pope Leo wades into politics, Trump calls Iran's bluff and blockades Hormuz, Artemis II! Swallwell is scum, and more!
People say that the bearded man in the video of Fartwell molesting a hooker looks like Democrat Arizona Senator Rueben Gallego, said to be Swalwell's "best friend" and known to take vacations with him.
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.
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.
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