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
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
One of the two West Virginia National Guard members shot in a violent ambush on Wednesday afternoon has been identified as Andrew Wolfe, according to his former high school. “Our Applemen community is deeply saddened to learn that Musselman High School alumnus, Andrew Wolfe, was one of the National Guardsmen injured in the shooting in Washington, D.C. today,” Musselman High School in West Virginia posted on Facebook. Wolfe is currently undergoing surgery and is in critical condition after Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, allegedly opened fire on him and a female National Guard member near the Farragut West Metro Station in Northwest DC in what’s being probed as a possible terrorist attack.
The evil bastard Democrats have more innocent blood on their hands. This is yet one more act of barbarism that they and they alone are responsible for. Until my last breath, all the pain, suffering dislocation and wastage of life, money and human potential that has laid us low for over 200 years is directly the fault of Democrat Leftist policy, corruption and criminality in their ongoing and never ending lust for absolute power.
In September 2021, then U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance warned that Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal and reckless refugee resettlement would “create an opportunity for terrorists.” He blasted the administration for flooding America with “thousands of unvetted people,” a failure he said put Americans at risk. As the nation’s newly sworn vice president in January 2025, Vance doubled down on the warning, telling CBS, “We know that there are cases of people who allegedly were property vetted and then were literally planning terrorist attacks in our country.”
. . . The idea that these people are vetted is a lie, and we need to call out that lie. Now, if we do that of course, what they [leftists] say is “the reason you don’t want these Afghans in your community is because you are a racist.” Well, that’s not true. I don’t care about the color of their skin. Here’s what I care about — that according to Pew Research, 40 percent of people who live in Afghanistan believe that suicide bombings are an acceptable way to solve a problem. Are we allowed to say that I don’t want 100,000 people unvetted from a country where nearly half the people think suicide bombing is an OK way to solve a problem? Because I don’t want that. Shortly after being sworn in as vice president in January, Vance squared off against CBS Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, who claimed, “These people are vetted!” Vice President Vance responded sharply, saying, “Just like the guy who planned a terrorist attack in Oklahoma a few months ago?”
Critics are lambasting MS NOW correspondent Ken Dilanian for seemingly suggesting the suspect who critically injured two National Guardsmen near the White House was reacting to “controversy” surrounding uniformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in American cities.
Dilanian, a justice and intelligence correspondent for the network, pitched his two cents on the devastating shooting while on-air Wednesday afternoon.
“[O]f course, you know, there’s so much controversy happening in the United States right now with ICE, who are also wearing uniforms and wearing masks. And so there’s, you don’t know, people walking around with uniforms in an American city. There are some Americans that might object to that. And so apparently this shooting has happened,” he said during an MS NOW breaking news report.
The shooting, which law enforcement officials said was a targeted “ambush,” critically wounded two National Guardsmen, including one who was believed to be shot in the head.
Ken Dilletantian went on to blame the Jews for all the carbon emissions over the crematoria at Auschwitz during World War 2 for being a major cause of global warming.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I am so very thankful for all of you who come here every morning, as well as your prayers and good wishes for me and the spouse during a very difficult time as we now both battle some health issues. I'm fine but she's suffering.
GOd bless and keep you all!
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
Victor Davis Hanson: A generation sidelined by debt, ideology, and stalled adulthood is drifting—but it won’t stay lost if society restores real opportunity, accountability, and purpose. Can the Lost Generation Be Found?
In September 2021, then U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance warned that Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal and reckless refugee resettlement would “create an opportunity for terrorists.” He blasted the administration for flooding America with “thousands of unvetted people,” a failure he said put Americans at risk. As the nation’s newly sworn vice president in January 2025, Vance doubled down on the warning, telling CBS, “We know that there are cases of people who allegedly were property [sic] vetted and then were literally planning terrorist attacks in our country. JD Vance in 2021: Biden’s Afghan Refugee Chaos ‘Creates Opportunity for Terrorists’
The New York Times reported that the two National Guard members were shot “at the entrance to the Farragut West Metro Station.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth described the shooting as “cowardly” and said, “[It will] only stiffen our resolve to ensure that we make Washington D.C. safe and beautiful.” WATCH: Three Shot, Including Two National Guardsmen, in Washington, DC
"Of course, you know, there's so much controversy happening in the United States right now with ICE, who are also wearing uniforms and wearing masks. And so there's, you don't know, people walking around with uniforms in an American city. There are some Americans that might object to that. And so apparently this shooting has happened." The Shootings of National Guard Soldiers Are Understandable If You're a Loony Left-Wing Reporter
Only in the world’s richest country could tens of millions of people persuade themselves that refusing to buy a cup of coffee for 24 hours constitutes a coherent form of economic protest. Economic blackouts and economic illiteracy
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
Less than a year into President Donald Trump’s second term, one of his once-strongest allies is resigning from Congress, fueling rampant speculation about what precipitated their sudden and shocking political breakup. How Did Marjorie Taylor Greene End Up Here?
Since the regime change, Bangladesh has experienced a severe surge in Islamic radicalization as well as an increased involvement of Pakistani radical Islamic elements in the country. The further Islamization of Bangladesh and the empowerment of Islamic radicals will impact not only the national security of Bangladesh itself and of India, but the security of the international community on a global scale. Bangladesh: Interim Government and Pakistan Paving the Way for Islamic Radicalism (John Kerry to perform a George Harrison medley - jjs)
John Stossel: A reflection on the only reason we get to celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Socialism
America wasn’t ‘founded by immigrants’ but by English settlers who carried their culture across the Atlantic and established a new nation. The Pilgrims Were English Ethno-Nationalists
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
This comes out of one of the manifold lawsuits for wrongful death levied against OpenAI by the families of, well, crazy people.
And OpenAI actually seems to have a point:
OpenAI claims that over roughly nine months of usage, ChatGPT directed Raine to seek help more than 100 times.
Why didn't you tell him to seek help?
(Produces list of dates, times, and messages.)
We did.
But according to his parents' lawsuit, Raine was able to circumvent the company's safety features to get ChatGPT to give him "technical specifications for everything from drug overdoses to drowning to carbon monoxide poisoning," helping him to plan what the chatbot called a "beautiful suicide."
Y'know, back in the Paleozoic era there were these things called libraries.
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Not directly, but like WhatsApp you could simply run through all the possible numbers - even easier in this case because they are sequential - and access every single piece of data. And there was no rate limiting.
Ilya Sutskever (co-founder of OpenAI and now running his own company) and Yann Lecun (chief of AI at Meta) point out that the age of just scaling things up and getting better results is already over, and that all the money in the world can't make AI actually useful without much more research.
Lecun goes further and says - as I do - that LLMs are simply not a path to real intelligence. He lays out four key elements needed for intelligence, and notes that LLMs do not feature any of them.
Musical Interlude
There was much twitterpation in my anime fan circle when I discovered this one, because we only knew the song from this much later version:
Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - November 26, 2025 [Zombie Rex]
—Open Blogger
Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety.
Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. No, this is not an officially recognized Food Thread. Don't be a traffic cone.
"Hey Willie! Time for the Wednesday night ONT. You read while I go find the cat..."
***
I know what you're thinking. Turkey, turkey, turkey. Everyone talks about Thanksgiving in terms of turkey. Turkey on the table, turkey pardons, turkeys falling from the sky, etc.
What about the cranberry? When does the small but mighty cranberry get its turn in the spotlight?
I'm glad you asked...
***
"Vaccinium macrocarpon" is the botanical name for the American cranberry.
Vaccinium macrocarpon, commonly called American cranberry, is native to bogs, swamps, and wet shorelines in parts of northern and eastern North America. It is a low-growing vine or trailing shrub (to 6" tall and spreading) with small, glossy leaves. Small, nodding flowers with white to pink, recurved petals bloom from late spring into early summer. The flowers are followed by plump, red to dark purple, ovoid to round, 0.5" diameter fruits. The leaves of this plant are a larval food source for the bog copper butterfly, the flowers are visited by bees, and the fruits are eaten by birds and occasionally small mammals.
The genus name Vaccinium comes from an ancient Latin name apparently derived from a prehistoric Mediterranean language. Its origin and meaning are generally considered to be lost to time.
The specific epithet macrocarpon means large-fruited, in reference to the relatively large size of the fruit of this species.
The common name cranberry derives from the Germanic kraan, meaning "crane" and bere, meaning "berry," possibly in reference to the appearance of the flowers.
Commercial cranberry cultivation reportedly started in the United States in 1816. Captain Henry Hall found a cranberry vine thriving in some sand on Cape Cod (Dennis, Massachusetts). He became the first person to successfully cultivate cranberries.
He noticed that the wild cranberries in his bogs grew better when sand blew over them. Captain Hall began transplanting cranberry vines and spreading sand on them. Others quickly copied his technique.
The idea of growing and selling cranberries commercially caught on. Local landowners converted their swamps, wetlands, peat swamps and wet meadows into cranberry bogs.
By 1885, Plymouth County had 1,347 acres under cultivation. Barnstable County had 2,408 acres. By 1900, the number of acres tripled, making Cape Cod a household name for cranberries.
What came next? Naturally, cranberries in a can.
In 1912, a lawyer named Marcus Urann bought a cranberry bog. Based at a facility in Hanson, Massachusetts, he sought ways to extend the short selling season of the berries. Canning them made cranberries a year-round product. He and two others eventually formed a cranberry cooperative.
Cranberry Juice Cocktail was introduced in 1933 and the jellied cranberry sauce became available nationwide in 1941. Yes, the technical term for the tube of jiggling cranberry in a can is "sauce."
The cranberry cooperative group added members from Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington, and became the National Cranberry Association in 1946. In 1957, it became Ocean Spray after acquiring the name and logo from a fish company in Washington. You might have heard of it. It remains a cooperative, with over 700 farmers.
An exemption for agricultural cooperatives in the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922 gave "associations" making agricultural products limited exemptions from anti-trust laws.
[Source: assorted nuggets from across the interweb]
***
Cran facts:
Americans consume 5,062,500 gallons of jellied cranberry sauce. It takes four million pounds of cranberries - 200 berries in each can.
Only about five percent of America's total cranberry crop is sold as fresh fruit. The rest go into juice, jelly, sauce, and dried fruit (craisins).
The five states known for growing cranberries are: Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. Wisconsin alone accounts for over 50%.
It takes approximately 4,400 cranberries to produce one gallon of cranberry juice.
Cranberry vines are evergreen perennials that can live for over 100 years and produce fruit for up to 65 years in commercial cultivation.
***
Do cranberries grow in water? No! Bogs are flooded just before the harvest. The vines are gently jiggled. The berries are released and float to the surface where they are scooped up. They can be dry picked (think of a process that runs a comb through the vines), but about 90 percent of cranberries are picked using wet harvesting techniques.
Four little air pockets inside each berry allows them to float.
More knowledge here:
***
Thinking of becoming a cranberry farmer? This is good story telling and a very well made film.
Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. If you came to the ONT to find cheat codes to Hunt the Wumpus, you are welcome to look through our old Compute! magazines. They're over in the corner and bundled with twine. Are you lurking ?? Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Three people are dead, and 26 more were injured in shootings in the Democrat-run Windy City this weekend. Yet state and local authorities are much more concerned about ICE arresting illegal aliens than about the sky-high crime rate.
CBS Chicago posted the most recent tally as of Monday morning, which was 29 shooting victims this weekend, three of them fatal. The victims ranged in age from a very young 13 to 65. The youngest fatality was a 14-year-old, and the number of deaths could go higher, as multiple individuals were reported in a serious or critical condition by the time they reached hospitals.
The biggest shooting appears to have been the one that made headlines from the popular Loop area of Chicago following Christmas season festivities, which left more than half a dozen teenagers injured.
The Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in Chicago ended in tragedy after seven 13-to-17-year-olds were shot. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has been wasting time, resources, and effort on protecting illegal aliens, admitted that there is a threat this holiday season of attempted "teen takeovers." ABC7 staff heard the shots from the State Street studio. Obviously, large crowds are expected in downtown Chicago this holiday season, making the potential impact of shootings much greater.
A separate incident that same night claimed the life of the 14-year-old boy. At the same time, an 18-year-old man was seriously injured, and it is not clear if he will survive. Ironically, Mayor Johnson, who loves to bash law enforcement, promised after that shooting, "we will have a strong police presence. We'll have stronger control over how traffic flows."
Yes but no arrests. One mustn't ever arrest the criminals. You can put police on the streets to discourage them from shooting people right in front of the cops, but if they aren't discouraged and do shoot people -- no arrests.
And if they are arrested: Put them back on the street in three hours.
In Italy, a sixty-year-old woman was raped by a migrant in a park while waling her dog.
But that's not the telling fact. The telling fact is that migrants already gang-raped a woman in this same park, earlier this year.
PARK OF HORRORS Female dog-walker, 60, 'sexually assaulted by migrant' in SAME park where teen 'was gang raped in front of her partner'
The dog-walker was raped with such force she suffered serious injuries after the assault
Culture, enriched.
A WOMAN in her 60s was raped by a migrant while walking her dog in the same park a gang of expats brutally attacked and gang raped a teen, forcing her boyfriend to watch.
The quiet Tor Tre park in Rome has become the centre of shocking catalogue of sexual violence, with police now probing a string of assaults stretching back months.
The first attack came in the early hours of the morning in August, when a 60-year-old woman was attacked around 6am.
She was dragged into the park near the Via degli Olmi entrance and raped with such force she suffered two broken ribs.
Despite her injuries, she managed to reach the Casilino hospital emergency room, where doctors confirmed clear signs of violent assault.
Detectives later traced the culprit -- a 26-year-old Gambian construction worker captured on local CCTV.
He admitted being under the influence of drugs at the time.
The same man was also linked to another rape just days later, when a 44-year-old woman was attacked at a bus stop.
He is now locked up in Regina Coeli prison.
But the nightmare in Tor Tre Teste didn't end there.
On October 25, just weeks after the dog-walker attack, up to five migrants targeted a young Italian couple parked quietly in a corner of the same park.
The pair -- both naked -- had stopped their car on what should have been a calm evening in the eastern suburbs of Rome.
But within minutes a gang surrounded the vehicle, savaging the car in a crazed outburst before smashing the windows.
Once the glass shattered, one attacker forced open the door and yanked the 24-year-old man out into the darkness.
His 18-year-old fiancée was dragged out seconds later as she desperately tried to cover herself with whatever clothing she could grab.
The man told police he was pinned back by two migrants as the others hauled his fiancée away from the car.
He begged, screamed and threatened the gang -- but was helpless as they allegedly raped the terrified teen metres from the vehicle.
His desperate cries went unheard.
After the assault, the attackers grabbed the couple's belongings and fled into the night.
The traumatised pair immediately reported the attack.
Rome's Flying Squad launched a major investigation, quickly identifying suspects as the hunt widened across Italy.
Two Moroccan men were arrested in the capital within days.
A third suspect was tracked down in Venice and detained just recently.
The leader of the transgender murder cult, the "Zizians," appeared in court and turned it into an anti-trans-"genocide" freakshow.
Note that this is a man -- as much a man as garret, or, actually, 45% more of a man, now that I think of it -- but of course the media is going to refer to him as "her."
I can't be bothered correcting them.
The alleged leader of a cultlike group linked to several killings made her first appearance in federal court Monday, denouncing the government and its case against her as a "genocide" against transgender people.
Ziz LaSota, who was originally charged under what her attorney referred to as her deadname, gave meandering answers at her initial appearance and arraignment in U.S. District Court in downtown Baltimore related to a Western Maryland gun arrest, which ended what had been a cross-country search.
She refused to stand when the judge entered the courtroom, or when entering her plea of not guilty.
"Your government is currently going around scooping up brown people and disappearing them," the 33-year-old LaSota said when asked by U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas R. Miller if she understood the charges she faces. "I'm transgender, and the intentions of this regime towards transgender people are very clear: genocide."
...
The Zizians have been tied to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent near the Canadian border in January and five other homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania and California, though the exact role of LaSota, who faked her death in 2022, is unclear and she has not been charged in those deaths. She's been seen at crime scenes, questioned by authorities and, in one instance, arrested on charges of obstructing police in Pennsylvania.
The Associated Press has reported that the Zizians are a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, who met online, shared anarchist beliefs and became increasingly violent. Their online writings span topics from radical veganism to gender identity to artificial intelligence.
LaSota, the apparent leader and a former computer programmer, believes that the two hemispheres of the human brain can operate separately from one another, with one side holding different beliefs and existing as a different gender than the other, The Associated Press reported.
Alleged Zizian member Teresa Youngblut is charged with the murder of border agent David Maland in Vermont, and federal authorities have said they will seek the death penalty.
...
As the judge asked basic questions such as whether she had read the indictment and understood the maximum possible penalties, LaSota chided the "mock proceedings" and said Miller was a "participant in an organized crime ring" led by the "states united in slavery."
Miller struggled to get LaSota to answer basic questions.
Please state your name for the record, the court clerk said.
"Justice," she replied.
What is your age?
"Timeless."
What year were you born?
"I have been born many times."
This story is about a man whose green card was revoked because he'd been convicted—not accused, but *convicted*—of murder, armed robbery, and forcible theft with a deadly weapon. https://t.co/goz0lcLGNo
ABC News might soon find itself staring down another expensive defamation lawsuit from President Trump, and honestly, it wouldn't come as a shock. On a recent episode of The View, Joy Behar confidently claimed that it was "obvious" Trump was a pedophile connected with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, implicating him in Epstein's crimes. This wild accusation came without a shred of evidence tying Trump to Epstein's criminal activities. In fact, Trump is arguably one of the few prominent figures who did the right thing and severed ties with Epstein years ago, unlike many Democrats who have since been ensnared in the fallout.
...
But, according to Jay Behar, it's Trump's guilt that's self-evident. "But isn't it obvious he was -- that Trump was involved with Epstein?! I mean--" she said, as Sunny Hostin immediately backed her up with, "He's mentioned over a thousand times."
Behar escalated from there. "There are more pictures with Epstein than pictures of Kim Kardashian of herself!" she declared, thrilled with her own exaggeration.
Believe it or not, Behar continued to push the narrative: "How many more things do we have to see before people believe that he was involved with Epstein?!"
Jake Tapper's ever-ready WITHOUT EVIDENCE chyron was unavailable for comment by the deadline for this post's publication.
Candace Owens and Joy Reid are now spinning similar conspiracy theories.
Her husband was murdered 75 days ago and these women are making up a scandalous sexual rumor to defame her and saying she can’t wear certain kinds of pants bc she’s a widow. Puritan ministers with injectables. https://t.co/A9chpoQ59Y
The controversial winner of the World's Strongest Woman competition was stripped of her title Tuesday after organizers claimed the hulking American never told them she was born a man.
Jammie Booker was disqualified just days after she destroyed the competition at the Official Strongman Games World Championship in Arlington, Texas over the weekend.
Organizers said Booker, from Philadelphia, violated the contest's rules, which clearly stipulate that athletes must compete in the category that aligns with their biological sex at birth.
"It appears that an athlete who is biologically male and who now identifies as female competed in the Women's Open category," organizers said in a social media statement announcing the decision.
"Official Strongman officials were unaware of this fact ahead of the competition and we have been urgently investigating since being informed."
Explore More
"Had we been aware, or had this been declared at any point before or during the competition, this athlete would not have been permitted to compete in the Woman's Open category," they added.
The move comes after the runner-up, UK lifter Andrea Thompson, was filmed storming off the podium as she raged about the "bulls--t" decision to award the title to Booker.
Thompson is now the winner, which many online supporters had called her all along.
UNREAL. Marc Jacques, the father of prominent trans athlete Maelle Jacques who invaded girls’ sports, was arrested a SECOND TIME for possession of child p*rnpgraphy.
Marc was originally convicted of distributing child p*rn in 2024 and sentenced to 60 months in prison. However,… pic.twitter.com/mkxxhgVKWn
Editors Confront New Problem: AI Slop "Written" by Scam "Journalists"
—Ace
I guess as a threshold question, we have to ask: Is AI slop any worse than the leftwing human slop that "journalists" spit out? After all, they just "write" their articles straight from DNC press releases.
But I can relate. As I keep posting in the Cafes: "This had better not be AI." It's an annoying thing to constantly have to be on guard that you're being scammed. Even though it's no big deal if I post AI slop in the Cafe -- could anything be lower stakes? -- there's just a personal aversion to being tricked.
And so I imagine that leftwing editors are annoyed at having to double-check if the articles submitted to them by freelance "journalists" are "real" articles -- put together with the normal amounts of human, or superhuman, bias and narrow-minded PMC provincialism -- or just fake biased articles shit out of Google's biased AI.
A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.
After putting out an open call to "journalists" for story pitches about the privatization of Canadian healthcare, he got one he liked.
The writer, Victoria Goldiee, introduced herself as having written for The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Maisonneuve--Canadian outlets that publish the same kind of feature writing we do.
...
When I googled her, I saw that Victoria had written stories for a set of publications that collectively painted the picture of an ambitious young freelancer on the rise--short pieces in prestigious outlets like The Cut and The Guardian, lifestyle features in titles like Architectural Digest and Dwell, and in-depth reporting in non-profit and industry publications like Outrider and the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland. Her headshot was of a youthful Black woman. She was, according to her author bio, "a writer with a keen focus on sharing the untold stories of underrepresented communities in the media."
At the next editorial story meeting, we decided to take a shot on Victoria and assign the story. Then I began looking more closely at her work.
There were some red flags. The first question I had was whether she was actually in Toronto when so many of her bylines were in New York magazines and British newspapers. And how had she managed to do so many interviews already? Doing so much reporting without the guarantee of pay felt like a big gamble.
When I googled "Victoria Goldiee" with the names of the Canadian publications she said she'd written for, there were no results. We reached out to Danielle Martin, one of the doctors Victoria claimed she'd interviewed. Martin said she'd never heard of her.
I emailed Victoria back: "Are those quotes from your own interviews? And do you mind sending along some clippings, perhaps from your Walrus or Maisonneuve stories?"
She sent a lengthy reply the next day. "The quotes I included in the pitch are from original interviews I've conducted over the past few weeks," she insisted. "In terms of previous work, I write a regular newsletter for The Walrus, which gives a good sense of my ability to balance accessibility with depth while speaking to a broad audience." She attached a link to The Walrus's "Lab Insider" newsletter that did not have her byline.
"I can 100% confirm that they do not write the Lab Insider newsletter," wrote Tracie Jones from The Walrus when I emailed. "How odd to say they do!"
Victoria's stilted email, and a closer read of the original pitch, revealed what should have been clear from the start: with its rote phrasing ("This story matters because of... It is timely because of... It fits your readership because of..."), it had all the hallmarks of an AI-generated piece of writing.
This had better not be AI.
I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch's ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it. Worse, the reason the pitch had been appealing to me to begin with was likely because a large language model somewhere was remixing my own prompt asking for stories where "health and money collide," flattering me by sending me back what I wanted to hear.
But if Victoria's pitch appeared to be an AI-generated fabrication, and if she was making up interviews and bylines, what to make of her long list of publications?
An investigation solidified the pattern: Publications this person said she had written for said they had published no pieces by her, and people she quoted in interviews said they'd never spoken to her.
"The quotation did not come from me and, to the best of my recollection, I have never met or spoken to Victoria Goldiee," Elaine Sutherland, professor emerita at the University of Stirling, wrote me. What was even more unsettling, though, was that the sentiments in the soundbite reflected her real beliefs. "The quotation attributed to me is the sort of thing I might say," she wrote.
A month after that article, a Victoria Goldiee story in the design publication Dwell--"How to Turn Your Home's Neglected Corners Into Design Gold"--featured a series of quotes purported to be from a wide array of international designers and architects, from Japan to England to California. A cursory read raised questions that probably should have been asked by editors to begin with. Namely, had a freelancer writing an affiliate-link-laden article about putting credenzas in your living room's corners actually interviewed 10 of the world's top designers and architects?
The designers he contacted had no memory of ever having been contacted by this person.
The stories had the characteristic weirdness of articles written by a large language model--invented anecdotes from regular people who didn't appear to exist accompanied by expert commentary from public figures who do, with some biographical details mangled, who are made to voice "quotes" that sound, broadly, like something they might say.
Eventually he gets her to take his phone call, and finds that she's making up more details as she speaks to him. For example, when asked where she lives in Toronto, she answers "Bloor," which is one of the first streets you would see if you googled "what are some streets in Toronto."
I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who I suspected was lying to me with each and every response. I also don't know if I've interviewed anyone I so desperately wanted to hear the truth from.
I had so many questions. Was the person on the phone even the same person whose writing was online? Where did she actually live--if not "Bloor," was it the States? The U.K.? Or, as suggested by some of her writing, Nigeria?
Yeah it's probably Nigeria, one of the hubs of the bustling America First internet community.
...
Every media era gets the fabulists it deserves. If Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and the other late 20th century fakers were looking for the prestige and power that came with journalism in that moment, then this generation's internet scammers are scavenging in the wreckage of a degraded media environment. They're taking advantage of an ecosystem uniquely susceptible to fraud--where publications with prestigious names publish rickety journalism under their brands, where fact-checkers have been axed and editors are overworked, where technology has made falsifying pitches and entire articles trivially easy, and where decades of devaluing journalism as simply more "content" have blurred the lines so much it can be difficult to remember where they were to begin with.
...
My favourite "Victoria Goldiee" story is a piece she published in The Guardian just last month. It's a first-person essay without quotes, and thus difficult to fact-check.
Steven Glass discovered that it was easy to fool the fact-check system: Just quote "people" who are entirely made-up. Fake people do not call into magazines demanding a retraction, after all.
Jayson Blair attributed fake but non-controversial quotes to people he never spoke to. Like, if he was supposedly in New Orleans covering a hurricane -- but in fact never left his NYC apartment -- he'd make up a quote for someone he saw named in someone else's article, but make up a "new quote" for him, like, "The hurricane was bad, but the clean up might even be more stressful."
Something completely empty and anodyne that no one would bother calling up an editor asking for a retraction, because it's just such a nothingburger.
One of the people Blair made up quotes for was later asked why he hadn't called the paper to say he'd never said that.
His answer was illuminating, and true: Because, the man said, I just sort of figured that's what you in the media do all the time.
Democratic Tennessee congressional candidate Aftyn Behn sobbed and screamed at the top of her lungs as security removed her from Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee's office in resurfaced footage from April 2019.
Behn and other women with the activist group, Enough is Enough-Tennessee, staged a sit-in inside the state capitol and demanded to speak to Lee about calling for the resignation of the then-Republican state Rep. David Byrd, who was accused of sexual misconduct at the time. The women, including Behn, tried to rush into the governor's office when the doors were open on April 17, 2019, prompting security to remove her from the premises.
Footage posted by NewsChannel 5 Nashville shows security dragging Behn out of the office as she screamed at the top of her lungs. She then sat on her knees and sobbed on the floor.
🚨MORE INSANTIY🚨 Resurfaced video from 2019 shows Democrat Tennessee candidate Aftyn Behn SCREAMING and SOBBING as officers had to forcibly drag her out of Gov. Lee's office. @DailyCallerpic.twitter.com/rcUnwQeXlN
Behn was asked about prior tweets in which she urged the burning of police stations to the ground as part of the George Floyd Insurrection.
She refuses to acknowledge those tweets -- but she goes further than that.
Did you catch that? Not only does she refuse to disown her tweets calling for police stations to be burned down in the past, but she refuses to say that she does not believe police stations should be burned down in the present.
From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air: She absolutely refuses to un-endorse burning down police stations.
Q: Representative, in 2020 you made some tweets that have since been deleted, that were very critical of police. You said, in those since-deleted tweets, that the Metropolitan Police Department in Nashville should be dissolved, another shared on a teacher's union tweet that Defund the Police should be a requirement for schools reopening, and another saying "Good morning to the 54% of Americans who believe that burning down a police station is justified." 2020 was a very fraught year. Do you still stand by those comments, and if not, is there anything you want to clarify?
BEHN: Uh-- I'm not going to engage in cable-news talking points, but what I will say is our communities need solutions, we need local people deciding, solving local problems with local solutions. And that's not the overreach of a federal government or a state government, of which we are dealing with in Nashville and our cities across the state of Tennessee.
This is not just a case of her being coy about whether those tweets were hers or refusing to denounce her own past statements. Even when simply asked, ignoring the tweets, do you now believe, yes or no, that police stations should be burned to the ground, she refuses to say she doesn't. She doesn't want to alienate the antifa/trantifa shock troops.
This deep thinker also rejects the 2021 thinking that women give birth to babies -- not men -- and wants to speak only of "birthers," no sex noted, to include both male and female birthers.
She then believes that she can organize some kind of "collective bargaining" by bringing together both the female birthers and the male birthers, who, let us be clear, are also female birthers, so I don't know how this flakey retard thinks she has expanded the pool of "birthers" in order to add to the "collective bargaining" "leverage."
2020 video of Tennessee State Rep. Aftyn Behn resurfaces:
"I think we have as birthers... men and women who can give birth... we can maybe leverage that as collective bargaining."pic.twitter.com/9fpfPUsMib
BEHN: I think, as an organizer and as an activist, like, we really have an opportunity here in this country to talk about what kind of policy -- progressive policies we want to see as young women. And I think we have, as birthers, as women who can give birth, men and women who can give birth, we can maybe leverage that as collective bargaining. That is the basis of this book that I'm not -- I've just started reading called Birthstrike, and how we can really leverage collective bargaining when it comes to having children in this country. And so, for example, like, I'm not going to give birth until the United States government concedes A, B, C, D. What do you think about that?
Q: Hmmm. Seems a little much.
BEHN: Really?
Unfortunately, this will hardly matter. American leftists have degenerated into absolute viral insanity and barbarity, and they're openly proud to support insanity and even murder.
🚨 Aftyn Behn doesn't just want to defund the police, she hates them.
BEHN: "Talking to our parents about what police abolition looks like...we can do it, there is a world." pic.twitter.com/43NyjEQgHm
Ed Morrissey quotes a new Emmerson poll -- it's a virtual tie.
A new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey of the special election for US Congress in Tennessee's 7th district finds 48% of voters support Republican Matt Van Epps and 46% support Democrat Aftyn Behn. Two percent plan to vote for one of three third-party candidates on the ballot, and 5% are undecided. When undecided voters are asked which candidate they lean toward, Van Epps' overall support increases to 49%, and Behn to 47%.
"The special election in Tennessee's 7th District will come down to what groups are motivated to turnout on election day, and who stays home," Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said.
Unfortunately, that's true. I have the same sick feeling I did in Trump's first term. We just kept high-fiving each other over the 2016 win while we lost in 2018 and 2020. We just keep dancing over the same first-quarter touchdown while Democrats run up the score on us.
A staffer for the U.S. Department of Justice is facing state-level terrorism charges in South Texas after authorities say she exposed the identity of a federal agent during an immigration-related raid, triggering what investigators called a credible threat against the agent's life.
Cameron County officials arrested Karen Olvera De Leon, an employee with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas in Brownsville, following a criminal indictment alleging she posted the agent's personal information in the middle of an active law-enforcement operation. She has been charged with one count of terrorism and one count of tampering with physical evidence.
District Attorney Luis Saenz said the case began on June 9, when federal agents executed a raid in Brownsville and bystanders began livestreaming the operation. As the video spread across social media, viewers flooded the comment section. Investigators say one user issued what they deemed a death threat toward the federal agent shown on screen. Moments later, another commenter publicly revealed the agent's identity.
So there's very little doubt that she understood what she was doing might lead to the agent's murder.
According to Saenz, authorities traced the doxxing back to Olvera De Leon, a DOJ employee tasked with supporting federal prosecutions.
...
Just weeks after the Brownsville doxxing incident, a gunman in tactical gear opened fire at a U.S. Border Patrol building near McAllen International Airport. Police and Border Patrol agents engaged the shooter and ultimately killed him, but not before a McAllen officer was wounded.
She looks like a real Sad Sack unwanted AWFL, except Hispanic.
She'll be trading in her Trader Joe's Box Wine for Prison Toilet Wine.
These women are filthy and disgusting. They support murder, and they crow righteously about their support of murder.
Calls for the impeachment of James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, have intensified throughout this year.
What began as a partisan reaction to a single ruling has morphed into a broader debate about judicial ethics, political influence and the role of federal courts. The question now is whether Chief Justice John Roberts will act.
The initial push for impeachment came in March, after Judge Boasberg issued an order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport purported members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
President Trump responded sharply on social media, calling Boasberg a "Radical Left Lunatic," and posting on X that the judge "should be IMPEACHED!!!"
That same day, Texas GOP Rep. Brandon Gill and five co-sponsors introduced articles of impeachment alleging Boasberg used "his judicial position to advance political gain" and obstructed "the President's constitutional prerogatives." The proposal drew some division within the Republican Party. Sen. John Kennedy, R.-La., called the proposal "idiotic," and Sen. John Cornyn, R.-Texas said, "You don't impeach judges who make decisions you disagree with."
Of course John Cornyn said that. Let's definitely send him back to the Senate, Texas.
The uproar also prompted a rare public statement from Chief Justice John Roberts: "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."
...
Impeachment pressure intensified after Just the News reported that months before his Alien Enemies Act ruling, Boasberg traveled to Idaho to attend a privately-funded Rodel Institute legal conference. The conference's sponsors and speakers had publicly criticized Trump on immigration and January 6, and one of the conference sessions was titled "Role of Judges in a Democracy."
Critics argued that Boasberg's attendance created at least the appearance of bias. Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said on the John Solomon Reports podcast that Boasberg's attendance at the Rodel Institute conference was "a creation of, obviously, a conflict of interest, at least in appearance" and that "when you have cases like this, you have to be absolutely above reproach."
...
Additional reporting revealed that Boasberg had spoken out about his belief that the Trump administration might disregard federal court rulings and provoke a constitutional crisis during a meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
DOJ files misconduct complaint against Boasberg
...
The Department of Justice subsequently filed a misconduct complaint with the D.C. Circuit's Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, alleging that Boasberg violated Canons 1, 2(A), and 3(A)(6) of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. These canons require federal judges to "uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary," "act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary," and to avoid "mak[ing] public comments on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court."
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the complaint publicly, saying that Boasberg's comments "undermined the integrity of the judiciary." DOJ urged Judge Srinivasan to refer the matter to a special investigative committee to determine whether Boasberg's conduct constituted "conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts."
And then it turned out, surprise surprise, that this leftwing reliable Rubber Stamp had been "randomly" assigned as the judge in the Arctic Frost fishing expedition, and, get this, the leftwing reliable Rubber Stamp reliably rubber stamped all the subpoenas to spy on Congressmen, and quite illegally ordered the subjects of the subpoenas to keep them secret from the Republican congressmen targeted.
But John Cornyn supports this illegal spying on his fellow Republican Senators. (Cornyn wasn't surveilled, of course!)
Impeachment efforts gained traction again late last month after Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released a set of subpoenas issued during former Special Counsel Jack Smith's election-related investigation into Trump. The investigation, known internally at the FBI as "Arctic Frost," involved 197 subpoenas seeking records on roughly 430 Republican individuals and entities, according to committee documents.
The news brought Boasberg back into the spotlight as he signed the subpoenas and nondisclosure orders.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called on Boasberg to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding this role in the once-secret surveillance of Republican senators. "An Obama-appointed activist judge, James Boasberg, ordered [Verizon] not to tell me about Jack Smith's subpoena for my phone records, falsely claiming I might destroy so-called evidence," Blackburn posted on X. "He must answer before the Senate Judiciary Committee for this blatant abuse of power."
Chairmen Grassley, Johnson, and Jordan want answers from Jeb Boasberg related to at least NINETEEN nondisclosure orders he signed prohibiting--illegally--cell phone providers from notifying members of Congress about Jack Smith's subpoenas for records pic.twitter.com/99YroRLGVC
I posted this question recently following first disclosure of Boasberg NDO on US senators.
Under the Stored Communications Act--setting aside the unlawfulness of gagging cell phone companies related to legal processes for members of Congress--a judge must determine at least one… pic.twitter.com/JTEQbd1ykn
They KNEW it was improper to seek the records but did it anyway because they weren't planning on charging the Senators so they figured "no harm, no foul," the constitution be damned! https://t.co/vb4JZXX9c3
Rod Blagojevich: Obama Hadn't Even Joined the Senate Yet, and Michelle Obama Was Already on the Phones Demanding Democrats Arrange a Political Patronage Job for Her
Remember when Michelle Obama was claiming to be Oppressed because, allegedly, she "couldn't work for two years" during the political campaign?
Well, the moment Obama's Senate campaign was over, she decided it was time to Cash In.
Blagojevich painted Obama as a calculating, self-serving politician who wasn't quite the ethical paragon he portrayed himself to be. "He's one of the more selfish people in politics on a one-on-one level," Blagojevich said, "and he's not pure like the driven snow in the sense of his ethics or morality." The former governor described Obama as "kind of cold and impersonal, but okay," and admitted he was initially happy to be helpful to the rising political star.
But the real bombshells came when Blagojevich discussed Michelle Obama's corrupt job hunt. According to Blagojevich, as soon as Barack Obama won his Senate race in 2004, Michelle felt entitled to get a high-paying patronage position somewhere. "I was asked to make a phone call on behalf of Michelle Obama 'cause as soon as he won the Senate race, she wanted a job either at Northwestern University or the University of Chicago Hospitals for two to $300,000 a year, the wife of the new senator," Blagojevich revealed.
"Northwestern was willing to pay $200,000 to hire her. This is the wife of the new U.S. senator," and obviously the position would bode well for any institution due to the potential for more federal money, he explained. Blagojevich noted that Michelle Obama ultimately got a better offer. "They got a better offer at the University of Chicago, which is in Hyde Park, where they're from, $300,000, and she ended up working there," he said. Blagojevich made the requested phone call, though he downplayed his role. "She didn't get it 'cause of me, but it didn't hurt to have the governor call."
He also discusses the Tony Resko real estate scam. The Obamas could not afford the mansion they wanted (as soon as Obama was elected to the Senate) with the extensive property they wanted. So the Obamas bought the mansion on one lot and had Tony Rezko buy the adjoining, not-built-upon lot "for himself" -- but he never did anything with it. He bought it so he could keep it in his name for the Obamas.
The mansion they bought with "their own money" was $7.5 million so you can imagine this adjoining lot was worth around a million itself.
What particularly galled Blagojevich was how Obama treated Rezko once the real estate developer became a political liability. "Rezko was really helpful, really helpful to Obama," he emphasized, explaining that when investigations heated up involving fundraising with Rezko as part of it, "Obama just ran from him, did nothing to help him, and pretends like he never knew him."
The former first lady, in a live podcast, recently said: "Let me explain something to white people. Our hair comes out of our head naturally in a curly pattern. So, when we're straightening it to follow your beauty standards, we are trapped by the straightness.
"That's why so many of us can't swim, and we run away from the water. People won't go to the gym because we're trying to keep our hair straight for y'all. It is exhausting, and it is so expensive, and it takes up so much time!"
Who knew that black women straighten their hair to conform to the expectations of whites? Even worse, who knew this oppressive white standard of beauty, according to Obama, has the real-world effect of preventing black kids from learning to swim?
Black people's hair is the new cotton field, pass it on.
Incredible: A Jury Voted Unanimously to Convict Yet Another Somali Fraudster, Calling His Guilt "Obvious." Then the Leftwing Judge Set Aside Their Verdict and Set the Somali Free, Based On Her "Feelings."
—Ace
The Somalis scammed the government's welfare programs again. The Somalis here ripped off the American citizens for $7.2 million, running a scam organization that supposedly delivered health care to poor people out of his mailbox, and spending that money on luxury goods and sports cars.
The prosecutors proved that 94% of the money they stole from the government went into their own pockets.
Jurors found him guilty, unanimously.
Then the "progressive" judge stepped in an invalidated the verdict, saying that in her personal opinion, the prosecutors had not disproven other possibilities besides fraud, like, I guess, the possibility that they accidentally stole this money and intended to deliver it to the poor at some future date. (Were they planning on returning their luxury goods and cars? How much did they expect to get back for used luxury goods?)
@amuse
@amuse
SUICIDAL EMPATHY: A Minnesota Democrat judge just overturned a unanimous jury verdict in a $7.2M Medicaid fraud case, freeing Islamic defendant Abdi Fatah Yusuf. Jurors say the evidence was overwhelming.
Despite a swift unanimous verdict, Judge Sarah S. West, a former public defender, acquitted Abdi Fatah Yusuf on all charges after jurors found he and his wife ran a fake home-health business out of a mailbox and stole $7.2M in Medicaid funds. Jurors say they are stunned because the evidence of fraud, overbilling and luxury spending was "obvious." Community pressure and political considerations are now being blamed for the decision. Yusuf walks free while taxpayers eat the loss.
Abdi will get to keep his new wardrobe from Coach, Canada Goose, Michael Kors, Third Degree Heat, Nike, and Nordstrom and his [new top-end sportscar,] a Porsche 911.
This is outrageous -- and considering the *fact* that Somalia is the world's most corrupt country, we have to investigate this judge's finances and the finances of her friends and family for a payoff.
This is -- or was -- the nation's "biggest Medicaid fraud case."
The prosecutors are appealing the judge's corrupt negation of the law.
BREAKING - Progressive Minnesota judge Sarah West has overturned the jury’s conviction of Abdi Fatah Yusuf, a Somali man found guilty of stealing $7.2 million in a Medicaid PCA scam allowing him to walk free.
Meanwhile, it sure seems that a sizable fraction of the Somalis we allowed into this country view us as outsiders to their tribe, not deserving of the usual dignity and respect one affords to people within the tribe.
Leftists meanwhile excuse the criminality as showing they're just cool capitalists who know how to abuse an easy mark.
"Somalis committing welfare fraud and stealing US tax dollars proves they are smart!"
Yes… that’s why Somalia is a very successful nation at the forefront of drone technology, and not a third-world shithole filled with fraud and corruption. pic.twitter.com/IOJmladYbB
Obviously white people would not be excused for preying on minorities, stealing from them, even raping them. You know this from the simple fact that anytime there is a Race Hoax, which there is once a month, the entire leftwing establishment goes crazy to say "This must not be normalized!"
Well, it's not normalized. It's the opposite of normalized. It's so rare, in fact, that racist agitators have to invent hate crimes against them.
The left has established that Racism -- Racial Superiority -- is the worst of all conceivable crimes.
Yet we have people coming into the western countries and treating the native populations as if they are sub-humans, fit for rape, robbery, and murder. Some of these Cultural Enrichers act as if they believe westerners are a prey species they have a divine right to predate upon.
And no one says boo. Because, of course, only white people or westerners can be Racist. Other people treating other races as if they are subhuman are just acting in accordance with Cultural Norms Which Must be Respected and also might just be getting some Justified Reparations from Colonizers (even though it's the migrants who are colonizing the west).
Do I get to say "This must not be normalized, racial hatred must be called out as evil and extirpated from the earth," or nah?
You probably won't ponder your carbon footprint when you sit down to devour that Thanksgiving turkey -- but some food and climate activists say you should.
Why it matters: With climate change fading in importance on some U.S. lawmakers' priority lists, activists say even small steps from the public are needed.
The big picture: The beloved bird is considered more environmentally friendly than beef. But turkey still produces, in production and post-production, the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming -- even more than chicken, according to the Environmental Working Group.
"Raising and processing a four-ounce turkey serving is the equivalent of nearly three miles' worth of tailpipe emissions," said Iris Myers, the group's senior communications manager.
A four ounce turkey?
Axios is a professionally edited media publication.
...
In 2016, Carnegie Mellon researchers calculated the state-by-state footprint of a typical feast, including roast turkey stuffed with sausage and apples, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie.
They found that meals prepared in Washington state and Vermont emitted the lowest amounts of carbon dioxide. Hydropower and wind provide about two-thirds of Washington's energy. while renewables provide almost all of Vermont's.
States that rely more on coal, such as Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky, had the highest Turkey Day emissions, the researchers found.
This is important research that I have been compelled to fund.
By the numbers: Thrown-away food is a big contributor to climate change. A new analysis by the anti-food waste group ReFED estimates that 320 million pounds of food will get tossed out this Thanksgiving.
That's the equivalent of more than 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or about the same as driving 190,000 gasoline-powered vehicles for a year, ReFED said.
Of those emissions, 4,800 metric tons of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- come from sending that food to landfills.
The bottom line: "Try not to buy more bird than you and your family will eat," Myers said.
Wellllll... generally I would say of course no one should buy and cook more food than they expect to eat, but Thanksgiving is an exception, because, of course, no one knows how many relatives and guests will show up. People make "too much food" because they don't want neighbors to show up without anything to offer them.
But most people will wind up eating most of that over the course of the week.
Thank you for ruining literally everything, Sanctimonious Sociopaths Satanic-Religious Fanatics.
Speaking of your carbon footprint: It is now cheaper to expand your carbon footprint than it's been since, well, Trump's first term.
Gas prices -- and food prices, and rent prices -- are at their lowest levels since covid shutdowns and Biden's printing of trillions of fake dollars.
Thanksgiving gas prices & meals haven’t been this low since the last time President Trump was in office. Inflation, interest rates & income taxes are also coming down! pic.twitter.com/cuGzoPbrSV
Gas prices near the lowest level in four years, according to AAA.
"A lot of this has to do with the fall in the price of oil, which couldn't be more timely as we get into Thanksgiving," Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, explains. https://t.co/WD2JQ03HBtpic.twitter.com/naxjxSVm2s
And is everyone here? Or are you already playing hooky?
I'm playing half-hooky. I wrote a bunch of posts last night and did a couple this morning so I'm kind of done for the day unless there's some breaking news. Knock wood!
Today's blogging won't be good. I aimed for "barely acceptable" and I nearly hit that mark. I figure most of you are tuned out, and the news is slow before and during holidays. (Again, knock wood.)
I have to run out to the store to get the holiday branded "Creamy Vanilla" Coke Zero. The store I tried to order from was out. I guess this is a new version of Vanilla Coke.
Question for you cooks: I have both an electronic thermometer and those little plastic pop-up turkey thermometers. Do those little plastic ones work well? If they're a couple of years old, do they still work?
Garsh I wouldn't want to produce even one excess CO2 molecule more than strictly necessary!
Thanksgiving gives us an opportunity to reflect on the good in our lives. The day to day can be dull or even pretty lousy and there will always be particularly bad days and personal disasters. In bad years, many days be will be of this type. Thanksgiving is an opportunity to take a step back and consider our blessings, even when we might otherwise forget that we have them.
Blessings are manifold, despite the tribulations. Thanksgiving is a holiday rooted in tribulation, from the informal celebrations of often hard-pressed colonists in early New England to its relatively recent form first proclaimed during the depths of war in 1863. It wasn't formalized in law until just before WWII, but by then it was a formality (though it did, of course, provide much cause for disagreement in the particulars).
Some are alienated. Some are poor. Some are disabled. Some are depressed. Some are in pain. All of these and more are real, and can feel as if they define us. Stepping back, taking a breath, and counting blessings is important. While many things may be bad, not all things are bad, and Thanksgiving helps us to acknowledge that which is good.
So long as one is able to acknowledge and experience gratitude, Thanksgiving is all things to all men. It is serious and joyful. It is a solemn reflection as well as a lighthearted celebration. It is religious if you want it to be, or secular if that is your preference. Gratitude as such is worth celebrating, and Thanksgiving helps us recognize and celebrate it. Family, faith and the fact of life itself are all worthy of gratitude!
Whatever your situation this Thanksgiving, I fervently hope that you have the opportunity to consider that for which you are thankful, and that your have a joyous and hopeful holiday!
Good morning kids. Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a thing. But from Chi-Com run "police stations" in major American cities with Chinese immigrant communities, to Chinese intelligence assets everywhere from research labs to the Confucius Institutes on our campuses, to vast tracts of farmland and real estate bordering our military installations owned by the Chi-Coms, and to actual Chinese intel assets embedded in the administrations of local, state and even national governmental officials, dig a bit deeper into the story of several high level American politicians, all ex service members and some still in the reserves, creating a video essentially encouraging American military personnel to commit acts of insubordination and perhaps even insurrection and Treason by as they say "disobeying any illegal orders from the Commander-in-Chief, that being President Trump.
I have never served in the military, but from what I understand of training, every recruit, especially those who are in the officer corps whether coming up through the ranks or as graduates of our military academies, are thoroughly instructed as to what constitutes an "illegal order" and at the very least have the barest minimum of moral rectitude and conscience to know the difference between right and wrong in the context of carrying out their mission. And so in my estimation, we have propagandists and much worse, foreign-influenced agents provocateurs internally sowing dissent in the ranks and laying the groundwork for actual mutiny.
On Monday, the Department of War announced that Kelly, a retired Navy captain, could be “recall[ed] to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures” because of his participation in what has now been dubbed the “Seditious Six” video. . . While Kelly’s participation in his party’s “Seditious Six” gambit is certainly egregious, it shouldn’t be considered surprising. For years, the Arizona Democrat has regularly undertaken actions that undermine America’s national security. . .
. . . the Arizona senator criticized the Trump Pentagon’s plans to investigate the retired general [Mark (vanilli) Milley]for reportedly telling his Chinese counterpart that the Trump-led U.S. had no intention of attacking China, and that he would “call [Beijing] ahead of time” if Trump were to launch such an offensive. Rather than condemn Milley’s purported actions, Kelly leapt to his defense. . . It’s almost fitting that Kelly’s apparent lack of concern over Milley’s reported actions involved America’s greatest geopolitical adversary, given the retired Navy captain’s extensive ties to entities connected to the Chinese Communist Party. . . As has been widely reported in recent years, prior to becoming a senator, Kelly co-founded the Arizona-based space tourism company World View in 2012. According to a 2020 report by RealClearPolitics’ Susan Crabtree, World View received investment funds in 2014 and 2016 from Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that owns (and reportedly monitors) the Chinese messaging app WeChat. (Tencent is also known for suspending streaming of NBA games in 2019 after a league general manager voiced support for the Hong Kong protestors.) . . .But Kelly’s role in World View is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2020, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Arizona Democrat was an adviser to and “held a significant financial interest in a Colorado company that partnered with a Chinese state-financed tech giant to bring supersonic aerospace technology to China in 2018,
Just as surely as mythical Senator Pat Geary was owned by Don Emilio Barzini, Mark Kelly is likely owned by Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. Period Full Stop. And as absolutely disastrous as it would be for one American politician especially at this level to essentially be an intelligence asset of our greatest foreign rival if not enemy (which they sure as hell are) the horrifying reality is that Kelly is not a one-off.
Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has filed a federal civil lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Bill Pulte, accusing him of violating privacy laws by accessing his confidential mortgage records. Swalwell claims these records were improperly used to refer him to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for an investigation into mortgage and tax fraud allegations.The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Pulte engaged in “unprecedented and unlawful” practices by obtaining mortgage records through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Swalwell, who recently announced his candidacy for Governor of California, stated that the disclosure of these records damaged his reputation at a critical political moment.Pulte has also referred other prominent Democrats, including Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), and Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, to the DOJ for investigation. Schiff and James have denied wrongdoing, while Cook is challenging her removal from the Federal Reserve Board by the Trump administration in a case the Supreme Court will hear in January.
Swalwell is small potatoes, but he is illustrative of how far down the corruptibility of our politicians and others to foreign influence, in this case the Chi-Coms, goes. He was given the nickname of Yum-Yum by GOP Rep Troy Nehls for the former's intimate relationship with know Chinese spy Christine Fang. Currently: Eric Swalwell is a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary and the House Committee on Homeland Security. He also serves on the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law and the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. Yeah, shagging a Chi-Com spy is no big deal in this context, is it?!
But all that said, what would happen in the event that Red China attacked or attempted to invade and conquer Taiwan by force as they have been planning and itching to do since 1949 and for the past several years have been openly threatening and even planning vis a vis the acquisition of the military hardware necessary for a seaborne operation, as well as the weaponry to prevent a swift American naval response to block such a move.
If President Trump's command authority were undermined in advance by the actions of Kelly and his co-conspirators who have sown dissent and ultimately mutiny in the ranks, it would certainly give the Chi-COM PLA and Navy a strategic edge they might otherwise not have had.
Kelly deserves the wrong end of a rope as do all the others.
Have a good day.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
CIVIL WAR 2.0, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
. . . the senator’s blaring out his service record (also playing for sympathy as the husband of ex-Rep. Gabby Giffords, who suffered lasting, near-fatal wounds in a madman’s 2011 assassination attempt), as if that meant he could do no subsequent wrong. Huh? Benedict Arnold was a bona fide hero before becoming our nation’s most infamous traitor. Sen. Mark Kelly is doubling down on his self-dishonor over the ‘Disobey’ video (Cull the Testy testicle - jjs)
Swalwell said, “It’s the avengers right now, right? You’ve got Jasmine Crockett coming to California, helping us elevate the vote to pass Prop 50. Ruben Gallego is going to Iowa and New Hampshire as a Marine, Latino, first in his family to go to college. There’s a bunch of us who are stepping up, but we all understand, you know, the assignment, and that is to bring down prices, period.” (May Malach Ha Mawis drag you off to Hell shrieking in agony - jjs) Filthy Lying Shitstain of a Chi-Com stooge Swalwell: We Are Democrat ‘Avengers’ Fighting for ‘Truth over Trump’
Hennepin County Judge Sarah West ruled that the jury erred when it found Abdifatah Yusuf guilty on fraud and racketeering charges, KARE 11 reported. Stunned jurors told the Minneapolis-area TV station they didn’t have much difficulty during deliberations. (RELATED: Minneapolis Police Chief Grovels After Flagging ‘East African’ Crime In City) Judge Tosses Conviction Of Somali Who Ripped Off Minnesota Taxpayers
An internal USCIS memo, obtained by Reuters, details plans by Director Joseph Edlow to give a second look to hundreds of thousands of refugee cases adjudicated under the Biden junta — specifically those who arrived from Afghanistan with minimal vetting. Trump’s USCIS Orders Review of All Refugees Imported to U.S. by Joe Biden
A criminal illegal immigrant sex offender who worked as a college professor in the U.S. is in custody thanks to the continued efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track down and remove criminal threats from America. ICE said in a statement that on Nov. 12 it arrested Sri Lankan national Sumith Gunasekera in Detroit, Michigan. Gunasekera reportedly worked as a professor of data science and analytics at Ferris State University, a public school in Big Rapids, Michigan. ICE Arrests College Professor Who’s an Illegal Alien With History of Sex Crimes
I wrote the essay below the day before the November 2024 election, when it remained very uncertain whether it would be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as our next president. . . Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent. A Midnight Repost: Farewell to America
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
A potential merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery is facing opposition from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the Writers Guild of America, who warn the deal would consolidate control of major news and entertainment outlets under a single conglomerate. Democrats Panic as Warner Bros. Sale Threatens End to CNN’s Liberal Media Cartel
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS,
Despite all the predictions that fossil fuels were going to whip up a multitude of killer super-storms, the weather has been normal. Where’d All The Hurricanes Go?
Texts obtained by conservative outlet Human Events purport to show Gallego responding to another person, who wrote, “Been watching all the insanity up there I think it’s time that somebody with a cool head and a solid plan could rise to the top of your party.” Sen. Ruben Gallego Trashes Own Party in Leaked Texts: ‘Dem Men Look Like Women’
America First conservatism needs to work to conserve something. We are not an idea. We are not a marketplace full of diversity. Most importantly, we are not an economic statistic for bankers and stock market investors to rub their hands together over. For the GOP, it's America First populism or bust
“It has been the honor of my life to be your mayor,” Bowser said in her statement. “When you placed your trust in me ten years ago, you gave me an extraordinary opportunity to have a positive impact on my hometown. Every day since, I’ve cherished that opportunity, and have happily given all of my passion and energy to a job I love.” (Degenerate scum, among the lowest of lowest of low lives - jjs) D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Announces She Will Not Seek Reelection: ‘Has Been the Honor of My Life’ to Be Mayor
The nation’s political climate in 2025 reminds me of Charles Dickens’s introduction to A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….” Despite Challenges, MAGA Persists (For Now)
A one-time senator who ditched the Democrat Party and became an independent, Sinema constantly drew the ire of left-wing progressives. She bucked her party on numerous occasions during former [so-called quote-unquote] President Joe Biden’s administration, was an active member of several bipartisan coalitions, friends with Mitt Romney, and even earned the praise of Mitch McConnell. In 2021, she was harassed by protesters in a bathroom over her opposition to Biden’s Build Back Better bill. Gonna Be A Sinema-tic: Thorn In Democrats’ Side Back To Haunt Her Party Colleagues
The highlighted phrase underscores what previous data had shown, that the methane lakes of Titan are remarkably calm, almost to the point of absurdity. The smooth and extremely calm methane lakes of Titan FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
CULTURE WARS, NATIONAL SUICIDE
Perhaps we coastal Americans have this idea that family is the default, that having close ties will just happen, that we don't need to teach our kids how important it is to nurture those ties because blood will bind. Perhaps we think family doesn't matter, that home is where you lay your head. It's a lie. How I became rootless in America
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
Expect shortages of everything electronic. Except hobby stuff like the Raspberry Pi Pico which is made on equipment from 2008 that the AI guys don't even think about.
But you can't have the 52 cores and the 144MB of cache. The 52 core version has a second CPU die, and apparently the large cache version needs the space for its cache die. 28 cores max on those models, and only 8 of them full speed.
By comparison, AMD is expected to launch CPUs next year with 24 full speed cores, but no "efficiency" cores.
This is about that disastrous interview with Roblox's CEO, but also about reporters who have completely forgotten - if they ever knew - that their job is to report:
I'm still reckoning with what it means to do journalism in a world where the truth can barely hold anyone's attention - much less hold a platform accountable, in any real sense of that word. I'm rethinking how to cover tech policy at a time when it is being made by whim. I'm noticing the degree to which platforms wish to be judged only by their stated intentions, and almost never on the outcomes of anyone who uses them.
Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - November 25, 2025 [Doof]
—Open Blogger
It's almost Thanksgiving. Get yourself home any way you can!
The Tuesday night ONT is here. So glad you could make it.
How are your Thanksgiving planning and prepping efforts going? Doing anything unusual this year? Trying any new recipes? Expecting any nefarious guests? Tell us all about it!
A motorist in western North Carolina escaped injury when the carcass of a cat crashed into the passenger side of her front windshield along a highway near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
In a call to 911, the unidentified driver on U.S. Route 74 in Swain County, near Bryson City, told a dispatcher that a bald eagle dropped the cat. Bryson City is about 65 miles (104 kilometers) southwest of Asheville.
It’s not clear if the feline slipped from the eagle’s talons Wednesday morning or was discarded simply because the big bird didn’t have a taste for it.
“You may not believe me, but I just had a bald eagle drop a cat through my windshield,” the incredulous driver said on the recorded 911 call. “It absolutely shattered my windshield.”
Check out the whole thing. I wonder if this falls into the "we've seen a thing or two" bucket that one insurance company always mentions.
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ONT Video Segment
Chicken wings are literally Hitler?
Lost footage of Donald Trump’s 2004 SNl Sketch titled “Donald Trump’s House of Wings.”
The vanvera was a strange accessory worn primarily by female aristocrats that allowed them to discreetly pass gas during social events.
The origins and history of the vanvera are shrouded in mystery; some sources claim it can be traced back to ancient Egypt, while others that it was inspired by Roman creativity, but there is no real evidence that this gas-muffling invention has its roots in ancient history. What everyone seems to agree on is that the vanvera was used by the aristocracy of that era, primarily women who could easily conceal it under their large, elaborate dresses.
The vanvera on display at the Sex Machines Museum in Prague consists of a leather pouch that connects to the wearer’s behind, muffling farts and containing the foul-smelling gases during social events. It can then be emptied in private by squeezing the pouch.
Guys would totally use this differently. "Dude, you shoulda smelled this one I ripped last night. Oh wait, I got it here in my vanvera - check it out!" {pooooofffff}
***
DJ Doof - Guess the Theme (Easy Level) Edition
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Tonight's ONT brought to you by gratitude
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Posted with borrowed consent from the Ace Media Empire. Consent will be returned when the last comment is posted.
Comments or questions? Suggestions for content? Thanksgiving recipes? Vintage copies of Compute! magazine to donate? Do the email thing at doof2112 at proton dot me.
Prairie dog yahoos to the chickens. Like Beastmaster's did. (Beastmaster actually had ferrets, I think, whom he called "my friends," but I don't have a ferret video so just play along and pretend he had a prairie dog. Sometimes a post's theme is like Olivia Nuzzi's metaphors -- it has to be forced.)
A bird, maybe an owl, camouflages itself as a log. I'm just glad it didn't reveal itself to be a spider.
Here's the Beastmaster training his dog to dance. (The Beastmaster had a dog, he just wasn't in the movie.)
Beastmaster definitely had a leopard. (Or a panther, though commenters have told me these are the same animal.) That one's right on the poster.
Here's the trailer. They make a direct appeal to the Dungeons and Dragons set. I don't really remember the trailer. I do remember that it was on HBO after school, every single day, playing multiple times between 3 and 8. HBO used to reserve R-rated movies for night time and that meant the day was nonstop Beastmaster, Rocky III, Labyrinth, and then topped off by another airing of Beastmaster. Sometimes Beastmaster would come on right after If You Could See What I Hear, about some blind guy, and then you'd have Marc Singer double feature. Here's part one of that great movie.
This is claimed to be the best parts of Beastmaster. The best parts of Beastmaster are actually just "all of Beastmaster," thank you very much.
This was Don Coscarelli's follow-up to Phantasm. Odd move but I guess he just needed to tell the story of Dar.
Beastmaster only has three gears: Awesome, So Awesome You Wouldn't Even Believe It, and the highest gear, "Beastmaster."
President Trump turned Tuesday's White House turkey pardon into a full-blown political roast, using the annual tradition to take a swipe at Joe Biden's "autopen" pardons and even joking that he briefly considered naming this year's birds "Chuck and Nancy."
...
Turning to Gobble and Waddle--described by Trump as "two of the fattest, happiest turkeys we've ever had here"--the president joked that when he first saw their photos, he almost went with "Chuck and Nancy." "But then I realized I wouldn't be pardoning them," he added. "I would never pardon those two people."
Gobble and Waddle join a long list of clemency actions in Trump's second term, a tally that already exceeds 1,700 pardons along with numerous commutations. Trump joked that several aides were prematurely preparing to send the birds through El Salvador's anti-gang confinement system--a reference to the administration's deportation push. "Even these turkeys don't want to go there," he said.
Trump also veered into Chicago crime. The president has repeatedly accused Pritzker and the city's mayor of refusing to work with him on a federal crime-reduction effort. "The mayor is incompetent and the governor is a big fat slob," Trump said, stressing that the prepared joke went too easy on Pritzker. "Some speechwriter wrote something about his weight. I don't talk about people being fat. I refuse to say he's a fat slob. I'd like to lose a few pounds too, by the way--and I'm not going to lose it on Thanksgiving."
Amazing: The New York Times Profiles an Illegal Alien Who Stole an American Man's Identity and Caused Him 20 Years of Legal Nightmares. The Times Say They're Both Victims.
—Ace
Via David Strom, who quotes the New York Times asserting that both the citizen whose identity was stolen, and the identity thief himself, are both victims of the same broken system and equally deserving of our sympathies.
Dan Kluver saw the police lights flashing in his rearview mirror late last year and eased his car onto the shoulder, thinking there had been some kind of mistake. He had spent four decades in rural Minnesota without ever getting into trouble. He prided himself on a life built around dependability and routine, working at the same factory where his father once did and spending his weekends coaching baseball and teaching Sunday school. He had never fired a gun, or smoked a cigarette, or missed a payment, or been arrested.
"License and registration, please," the officer said. Kluver, 42, handed them over and waited while the officer went back to his patrol car. He listened to the church bells that rang every hour and watched sunlight reflect off the grain silos in downtown Olivia, where he knew most of the 2,400 residents, including the officer who was walking back to his car.
"Is everything all right?" Kluver asked.
"It's strange, but it looks like your license has been suspended," the officer said. "You've got another driver's license with some issues down in Missouri."
"What?" Kluver said. "I've barely ever been to Missouri. How's that possible?"
The officer had no answers, but Kluver feared he might know what was happening. Over the years, there had been signs that something wasn't right -- stray letters about wages earned in unfamiliar towns and collection notices for debt that wasn't his. Kluver had tried to untangle the mess several times by hiring tax specialists and driving to government offices across the state only to run into the same bureaucratic dead ends. But now the problem was bigger than unpaid taxes. Someone was impersonating him, moving through the world as Dan Kluver, building a life in his name with a government-issued ID.
The identity thief used his Social Security to illegally work. The thief kept the money paid for his illegal labor -- but this citizen got "credited" with the thief's salary, which pushed his tax liabilities up, pushing him, in fact, into a higher tax bracket.
He was expected to pay the taxes on the thief's earnings while the thief kept the earnings himself.
As you can see, they were both victims here.
...
Some years the other Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under his Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice, he'd contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government, where it landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year. He waited for relief while the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Kristy decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending in a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new bill arrived -- this one for $22,000.
They spent the next decade living with the consequences -- annual tax audits, budgets that never added up, whispered arguments after the kids went to bed. Kluver kept calling government numbers and waiting on hold until he eventually resigned himself to a payment plan. He agreed to send the I.R.S. $150 each month, which he'd done more than 35 times. "I can't keep obsessing over this and getting nowhere," he told Kristy. "I need to think about something else."
Now the Times turns to the thief. I mean, The Other, More Deserving Victim.
He had lived under enough names and numbers in the United States that they started to blur together. Vincent Trujillo. Reynaldo Guerra. And then, for more than a decade, Daniel Kluver -- the name he used until he could barely remember what it felt like to exist as himself: Romeo Pérez-Bravo, 42, a Guatemalan immigrant who had spent most of his adult life working under borrowed identities.
"Borrowed." They won't even say "stolen."
...
Perez-Bravo had come to the United States for the first time at 16 to help earn money for his family, traveling alone to join his father in Marshall, Minn. He hiked out of the Guatemalan highlands, rode atop a freight train for three weeks across Mexico, nearly drowned in the Rio Grande and took a Greyhound to Middle America, where life somehow felt harder. He slept on a couch in his father's apartment and enrolled in high school despite speaking almost no English. Then he began to look for a job, but no one would hire an underage worker without papers.
No one would hire an illegal immigrant barred by the law from working, you mean.
He's definitely the victim. He was forced to steal Dan Kluvin's identity and make his life a living hell.
Read the whole thing from David Strom. The New York Times continues doubling down on the narrative that the first victim of Perez-Bravo's serial identity theft was... Perez-Bravo himself.
The narrative, man. Stick to the narrative. The law-abiding citizen whose life is being turned upside-down may be a victim, but Perez-Bravo has a story to tell, too.
This is exactly the kind of logic that lets criminals walk the streets after tens of arrests. They are people too, so if you look at it the right way, everybody is a victim.
And Kluver is white, so really, he is the privileged one and should be happy to help out his brown brother, who suffers from oppression that is almost as bad as Michelle Obama's.
And he also "paid the price."
He was charged with aggravated identity theft and false representation of a Social Security number and was held in detention for six weeks before an initial bond hearing in April. The State of Missouri argued that he was a flight risk who needed to remain in custody until the trial. "What's to stop him from going out and getting another identity and just living underneath that," the prosecutor told the judge. "We've seen that before."
But Perez-Bravo had most of his family and several members of his church at the hearing, and his lawyer said that he was "connected to the city in deep ways."
The Times believes that it was outrageous for the prosecutor to assert that this serial identity thief might just steal another identity and flee the court's jurisdiction under a new name if he were set free.
Absolutely outrageous! He has "deep" "connections" to the city he's currently living illegally in!
Almost as much a victim of identity thief as the identity thief herself.
She doesn't think her identity thief was the Real Victim Here.
About seven years ago, my identity was stolen in a data breach. I found out fairly quickly because one of the thieves made a mistake: the receipts for their fraudulent purchases were sent to my email address. It still took almost two weeks to shut down the accounts opened in my name and clear them from my credit reports. I was constantly stressed and paranoid and couldn't focus on anything else in my life until my credit was cleared and locked down.
I was lucky that I caught the identity theft early. Some people spend years digging themselves out after someone else pretends to be them.
...
Pérez-Bravo had stolen multiple identities throughout his time in the U.S. While living here, he got several DUIs. He was deported in 2005, 2008 and 2009 but came back each time and stole another American's info.
...
The story gets even more unbelievable from there. Pérez-Bravo was involved in a fatal accident that killed a 68-year-old grandfather and injured his 9-year-old granddaughter. He was cleared of wrongdoing but the family filed a wrongful death suit against Kluver, whose name was on the fake license Pérez-Bravo provided at the scene.
The police eventually found Pérez-Bravo and he has been charged for his crimes. Nonetheless, the NYT report paints him as just as much a sympathetic victim as Kluver, describing him as a family man and hard worker who essentially had no choice but to steal an identity so he could make money for his family.
I'm so sick of it.
If liberals want to impose liberal policies on the country, they have to at least make sure the worst excesses of those policies are checked.
They cannot allow maniacs to prowl the subway stations throwing grandmothers in front of trains, for example.
And they cannot lionize criminal identity thief illegals.
They have to show that they can demonstrate compassion without turning all of society into violent chaos.
But they can't -- and the new breed doesn't even try.
Their attitude is You deserve it, Colonialist Oppressors.
So all of the illegals will have to go. If there's no protection for the citizens, there is certainly no protection for the fucking illegals.
For Some Reason, Vanity Fair Will Publish an "Abstract Nude" Photo of Its New West Coast Editor and Weird Dick-Riding Flake Olivia Nuzzi
—Ace
What is an "abstract nude"? I don't know. I imagine it's a nude photo which has been digitally altered with various effects and geometric pixelations so you can't see her beaver.
And based on reports, you'll be among the very select group of people who haven't seen her beaver.
This is the media now. This is "journalism."
And do we want to see this? I grant you that she does not have any particular feature which would disqualify her from being "attractive." She's not hugely overweight, she's not decrepitly aged, she has the full complement of limbs and teeth.
But beyond that, is this... "beautiful"? As literally every media outlet demands you believe?
She's a Panera Bread 5.
But whatever, you're going to get to see a picture of her beaver as digitally altered by an Instagram filter. Maybe her beaver will have wacky year 2000 New Years Eve glasses on it or something.
Almost as if I owned a time machine, which I will have assured you, in the future, that I do not have.
Vanity Fair's glossy Hollywood issue will feature an abstract nude portrait of scandal-plagued editor Olivia Nuzzi -- even as staffers privately gripe that she has failed to carry out core duties since joining the magazine, according to a report.
The portrait, drawn by artist Isabelle Brourman, will appear in the new print edition that is scheduled to hit newsstands on Dec. 2. No image of the drawing appears to have been circulated publicly, and it's unclear if renderings of the drawing have been produced or circulated among Vanity Fair staffers.
Oh it's a drawing? So it'll be like a cubist sketch of her beaver?
Will it be Escher-like? Will we see various older men walking up and down non-Euclidean stairs into her beaver?
The sketch was commissioned months before the latest wave of allegations engulfed the 32-year-old writer, according to Status.
Brourman previously collaborated with Nuzzi during her tenure at New York Magazine, which ended weeks after it was learned that she had a "sexting" relationship with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The inclusion of the abstract sketch in Vanity Fair's marquee issue has fueled internal backlash at a moment when the publication is already struggling to contain the fallout of her most recent controversies.
Apparently some staffers complain that, apart from lining up her next affair with a Democrat politician forty years her senior, she doesn't seem to work very much.
Inside Vanity Fair, the controversy has collided with mounting frustration over Nuzzi's limited output. Staffers told Status she has skipped routine meetings and failed to turn in assigned work.
Two people told the newsletter that one of her other editing assignments for the most recent issue of the magazine was not completed, leaving colleagues scrambling as the publication closed one of its most scrutinized annual issues.
The turbulence has placed newly appointed editorial director Mark Guiducci under immediate pressure.
Guiducci, who took over in June, has addressed staff at least twice since the allegations resurfaced, according to the Status report.
At a team meeting Thursday, he explained how he first met Nuzzi and tried to calm anxieties inside the newsroom, the newsletter reported.
He also downplayed the allegations, calling them "difficult to investigate because they occurred while she was employed elsewhere," according to Status.
But some staffers remain skeptical that Nuzzi can continue in an editing role when she has produced little work while generating heavy turbulence, according to Status.
Is her talent of such a high level that she's worth all of this "turbulence?"
Well, having skimmed excerpts from her sexual tell-all book American Canto -- which reportedly will feature some of the dirty sexts she exchanged with RFKJr. -- I would say that, as a writer, she's no Ryan Lizza.
Not enough bamboo, for one thing.
She begins by discussing the fires that consumed the Palisades, and asserts that the Palisades fires were very much like the negative publicity she received after her sexting affair was exposed.
A few minutes later, the planes swooped down to spray the flames in the bluffs. I watched from the Pacific Coast Highway, as far away from my problems as I could get on land, which was not far enough.
You cannot outrun your life on fire.
Below, apparently her cute gimmick is to refer to RFKJr. only as "The Politician," even though we all know who she means and in fact her publisher's publicity department is out there selling the book by promising RFKJr.'s sext messages.
I would take a bullet for you," the Politician said. He always said that. "Please don't say that," I said. I always said that. From his mouth the bullet theoretical launched the bullet possible.
What?
I did not like to think about it. About the armed man at his speech. Or the armed man who broke into his home. Or the armed men he paid to guard him from armed men who sought to harm him while the federal government denied his pleas for protection from the security agency whose modern protocols were carved by the same bullets that cut boughs from his family tree and cut the track of the American experiment.
I did not like to think about it just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny. I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a madman; he was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. "Baby, don't worry," he said. "It's not a worm." A doctor he trusted had reviewed the scans of his brain obtained by The New York Times, he said, and concluded that the shadowy figure was likely not a parasite at all. He sighed. It was too late to interfere with what had already vaulted from the sphere of meme to the sphere of screwy legend, but at least I did not have to worry about the worm that was not a worm in his brain.
Let me interrupt to say that Sex and the City ruined would-be female writer.
That show established the terrible trope that female writers are supposed to always look at some very mundane, very trivial AWFL consumer purchase and then make "clever" observations about it and spin that into some (let me get out my supply of Superfluous Quotes) " " " " deep " " " " point about life and -- especially -- dating and sex.
Like, for example, Sarah Jessica Parker will be munching an everything bagel and wondering if all the spices clash with each other and then begin babbling about whether or not one can or should try to have an "everything relationship" or if one should have separate bagels -- different people -- to fulfill different needs. Maybe we need a Sex Bagel and a Confidante Bagel and a Going Shopping on Sunday Bagel. Maybe it's wrong to expect or even want an Everything Bagel for every situation.
I don't know how that monologue would continue because I just shot myself through the temple. Good-bye Cruel World.
Avenge me.
You get what I'm talking about though, right?, I asked ghostilly. This horrific trope has infected so much female writing that... okay, I just basically won't read modern female writers. I pre-judge them. I assume that they're going to do the Sex and the City "clever" observations thing and I say: No.
This reminds me of John Scalzi's quote: The failure state of "clever" is "asshole." In other words, if you try to be funny but the joke doesn't land, the failure state is that you weren't funny. If you try to make a serious point but fail to convince, the failure state is that you did not persuade your audience.
But if you try to be "clever" -- meaning, what you're really saying isn't about the joke or the statement, it's about you, and it's about you trying to convince people that you're oh-so "clever" and smart -- the failure state isn't just that you failed to be clever.
The failure state is that you're an asshole.
I think that's true. Yes, I don't like failed jokes, but I really despise failed "cleverness." Cleverness is a particularly smug, look-at-me form of expression that really rankles when it fails. (Which is often.)
Olivia Nuzzi and Her Abstract Nude Fuzzi does not quite cross into Sarah Jessica Parker talking about bagels territory, but you can see the damage that that terrible show (written entirely by gay men) did to future female writers.
...
As a child, I became convinced that death was not random, that life was the process of investigating what the point of it was, and as soon as you figured it out, in that very instant, you would ascend. God would eliminate you from this plane. He could not risk a leaker walking among the ignorant. The assignment was to crack the case for yourself. And when I would find myself thinking too hard about the central question, I would back away slowly, thinking, Well, I will return to this matter some other time when I feel more ready to possibly meet my end. What if I guessed correctly?
The unsolvable puzzle. Tripping once, on a balcony in Washington overlooking the National Cathedral. Smoking what I did not know was my final cigarette. Unless someone offers me a Capri, which does not count. The great cosmic riddle, I figured I had solved it. The joke was that the joke was never done being told.
Maybe we need a Philosphical Musing Bagel that we can make gaseous philosophical speculations with.
The wildfire is over my shoulder now, over the hill. The waxing gibbous moon is over my head. A thought bubble, it shines blankly. Across the country, the Politician is the guest of honor. Across the country with his wife. With Mike Tyson for some reason. People are mocking the photos, asking where I am, asking how she could stand there after all that.
I know how. The earth here is hot. Inside the bonfire, what evidence can I burn? I think of all I turned to ash in hotel rooms. I think of how you cannot burn a cloud. I think of the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, how there were so many, how the officials did not know what to do with them, and how fire seldom seemed to occur, though the White House and the president's properties are studded with fireplaces. Too easy. I worry.
She really thinks her life is like the Palisades Fires, which killed, what, like 20 people?
I worry about evil. If it is a force, if it is like the Santa Ana winds, if it may come on suddenly, if it may grab hold, if it may depart but not completely, if it may leave word, if the word might sound good, if I might again believe it. The snake charmer, the man-eater, the devil himself. Was it ever a question, that where there was a cloak there would be a dagger? A friend told me once, "Never trust anyone wearing a lapel pin." This politician did not wear one of those.
Midnight, 3,000 acres burning.
A politician's greatest trick is to convince you that he is not one. And what is a politician? Any man who wants to be loved more than other men and through his pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself.
People ask me now about anger. About my lack of it. How? How could I not be enraged? I think this over. I scan the terrain of my body. My chest, my spine, behind my belly button. I look for pale pulses of idle fury, waiting for the alarm to sound at the trip wire of my veins. There is nothing there. There is nothing there because I loaded a gun. I loaded a gun and set it on my nightstand.
You cannot live in America without thinking about guns, without thinking that one day you might not live anymore in America, and the reason will be a gun. 46,728 lives ended in America in 2023 because of a gun. 27,300 suicides. 17,927 homicides. 604 police shootings. 463 accidents. 434 undetermined. On the 405, a billboard announces that gun injuries are the number one cause of death for American children. You think: A gun will protect me from guns. Then you recall the statistic, that a gun in your home doubles your chances of dying by homicide. Still I loaded a gun. I loaded a gun and set it on my nightstand.
God, I know You have more important matters on Your mind, but: Why do You allow this evil?
The existence of Olivia Nuzzi's writing proves that God cannot both be all-good and all-powerful.
Now back to "The Politician." Shit, even there she's aping Sex and the City, as Carrie only referred to her real estate millionaire fuck-buddy as "Mr. Big." I don't think they revealed his actual name.
...
Like all men but more so, he was a hunter. In a literal sense, he used not a bullet but a bird. It was not about a chase but about a puzzle of logic and skill that amounted to a test of his self-mastery. He was the mouse and the architect of his maze. The giver of his own pleasure and torment. He desired. He desired desiring. He desired being desired. He desired desire itself. I understood this just as I came to understand the range of his kinks and complexes and how they fit within what I thought I understood of his soul.
The spark, the flame, the rumor fulfilled. The labyrinth on fire. The Palisades fire.
10:30 a.m., 10 acres burning.
10:50 a.m., 20 acres burning.
What the fuck are you talking about, Madam, and would you mind stopping talking about it?
She continues likening her out-of-control life to the California wildfires and then gets back to Mr. Big, I mean, The Politician.
A politician's greatest trick is to convince you that he is not one. And what is a politician? Any man who wants to be loved more than other men and through his pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself.
It was the flag. When I close my eyes in search of the end or the start, the place at which before stopped and beyond which now began, that is what I see. The blur of colors, the flash of red, of blue, of white, stretched and folded, pulled apart, undefined yet unmistakable, the flag. There was no one day, one moment, one event, one decision, one word that marked the change. There was the flag as it mutated from metaphorical to literal weapon, as it was marred by a corruption of the American character that could not be understood or even fully observed through the prism of the partisan binary. Which is to say that it was the flag, but it was not about the flag, not about notions of patriotism or nationalism or idolatry. It was the flag that thrashed in psychedelic distress, suggested a bend in lanes of reason, a tear in the fabric of consensus reality.
Maybe she needs a Flag Metaphor Bagel, too.
You see what I mean? This is just Carrie Bradshaw Does Politics. She's obsessing over a mundane physical thing, a flag, and attempting to babble about it until she accidentally uncovers the secrets of the universe.
In this period of now, from 2015 to 2025, in which the man through whom the culture was synthesized achieved dominance, I found myself fixated on the flag, on the way the flag expressed how the country was warping, and yet the magnitude of this change could not be categorized appropriately or cataloged completely amid such amnesia. At the southern border or the White House or the Midwestern auto factory or the boat in the Atlantic or the truck rolling beside the Pacific, the very flag that had been clutched like pearls at the turn of the century was refashioned as costume jewelry. Red, white, and blue asphyxiated blue, gray, and black. Stars and Stripes a backdrop for the star of the country. One stripe remade a banner across which his campaign slogan crawled.
She's talking about a flag, but, get this, she's really talking about Trump.
Clever.
And you know what they say about the failure state of clever.
...
As the edited flags waved strange and ominous, my job was to bear witness to the processes of American presidential politics, to travel the country and attempt to understand those who sought or wielded or influenced executive power. I had never been interested in politics, exactly.
Really? You don't say. I couldn't tell that you were not at all interested in politics from the way you were babbling about the outer perimeters of politics while trying to remain focused on what really matters, the worm in the Politician's brain.
Here she continues babbling some nonsense vaguely about "politics." As she's already confessed, she's not interested in politics, but she's writing a book that purports to be about politics, and this is the best she can offer: fractured sense-impressions half-remembered from that time she took magic mushrooms while watching Abby Philip interviewing Brian Stelter.
Everything seemed suddenly flexible. With all information available at all times to all people, all matters appeared potentially negotiable. Fine fractures splintered deep, fanned out far, cracked up for good. The parties were over. The system was moot. Vast interconnectedness and mass overstimulation gave way to individual isolation and nihilistic boredom so total that it all but invited the ascendant mob-mentality politics of comic relief and sadistic catharsis.
Our more flammable world. Arson, the national pastime. Self-immolation, well.
Just like everything is Bagels with Carrie Bradshaw, so with Olivia Nuzzi everything is fire.
...
Events lost context. Words lost meaning. Denier. Nothing could be believed because everything was subject to change. Truther. Everything could be believed because anything was possible; this was at once inspirational slogan and active threat.
Psst: She's still babbling about Trump, in case you fell asleep six vague paragraphs ago.
A promise was only a suggestion. A suggestion was only a joke, unless you were not moved to laugh; then the joke was on you.
In this reality, reality ceased to feel real.
Shots rang out. The story of the relationship had broken, the bullet metaphorical. My phone rang again. "I need you to take a bullet for me," the Politician said. "Please."
New York closed in. City and magazine. New York I fled. I drove west. I did not feel alone now. Not yet.
What I felt was that the country had snaked its hand up my skirt. What I felt was that I had been lanced by the teeth of a trap set by a man who could not let me go; that as I tried to free myself, the man for whom I worked had run off with the key to the padlock; that the contradiction in terms, the man I trusted most, the Politician, had walked by the scene whistling, and when he saw me there, a mob on the horizon moving closer, he reached out to me, not to lift me to my feet but to pin me down, to drive the teeth of the trap deeper into my flesh, to hike my skirt higher, to wave the mob over to look, to invite the country to lay its hands on me.
This is her very overwrought way of saying, "RFKJr. asked me to lie about the sexting affair for him and I was hurt that we would ask that."
But it sounds so mundane when you say it that way. So instead we get a lot Jazz Odyssey riffing about hands going up skirts and flesh being torn by steel traps.
Also, I'm pretty sure, we'll be hearing about The Fire That Is My Fabulous Life again shortly.
And flags. Weaponized flags.
In the news, the Politician offers a united front and a rewritten history. My vow of silence does not feel like enough. I wish to fall silent on myself too. I wish to sink into the sea. To flee behind the curve of the earth. To emerge a new shape, a stranger. To stop giving fake names in coffee shops. To never see myself, the character of myself imagined by others, viral allegory of hubris, female avatar of Icarus, stripped and left for dead in a pool of wax. I do not wish to be understood, which no one seems to understand.
As Shakespeare observed: Brevity may be the soul of wit, but padding the hell out a few trivial incidents is the only way to extend an anecdote into book-length form.
Birds of prey circle. It is inconceivable, it seems, that someone would choose to allow a crisis to go to waste, would not want to make of their attention more attention, would not want to reap some kind of short-term profit from the mess of their life.
The paparazzi, the calculating ones, write to tell me where their colleagues are staking me out. New York. Washington. Outside my brother's house, where they get into an altercation with a neighbor. Never anywhere I am. They think that if they do me this favor, I will cut a deal and agree to be photographed by them in exchange for what they advertise as control over my image. My Image, a ship that has sailed and sunk. The offer includes a promise that doubles as a threat: If I accept their terms, I will be left alone the rest of the time, which means that if I do not accept their terms, I will not be left alone.
Let me put that more directly: Reporters are calling her asking for comment on the sexting affair. She doesn't want to answer.
The fire burns.
...
I am talking, of course, about how it happened between me and the Politician. I am talking, of course, about how it happened between the country and the president. I cannot talk about one without the other.
Trump had its way with America like RFKJr. had his way with her?
What?
A long time ago I listed to a podcast by the We Hate Movies guys about the Steven King movie Dreamcatcher. A joke they kept making was that Steven King was in his coke phase -- meaning, "his entire career" -- in which he never edited, revised, or trimmed anything he wrote. Everything just came right out of his head, unpolished, straight to the page and then straight to typeset and publication.
"Clickety-clack," they kept saying, to simulate the sound of Steven King's never-pausing typewriter vomiting up words.
Olivia Nuzzi is a clickety-clack "writer" herself. Is my life like fire? Clickety-clack. Maybe it's like a bear trap tearing into my ankle? Clickety-clack. Maybe Trump's seduction of America is like RFKJr. seducing me? Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, we're contractually obligated to deliver 80,000 words to the publisher by next Tuesday and we absolutely cannot afford the time needed to evaluate whether any of this makes sense and we definitely cannot afford to start cutting words. We have to just add words, and add words, and add more words, whether they make sense when arranged next to each other or not.
Clickety-clack.
In the discourse someone I have met before jokes about my murder. Others contact me to warn me that such a thing is not a joke but a possibility. I was not going to sleep anyhow.
Spoiler: She was not murdered.
People often, often people I do not know very well, reach out to tell me that I have appeared in their dreams. I wonder if this is because I sleep so little.
Clickety-clack.
If the version of me who lives on the plane of dreams tires of waiting for me to release her to action, if she goes out searching for places where she may exist without my permission, if she identifies the minds of those who have felt any kindness toward me, if she thinks that within their dreams she might get to live freely instead. I wonder, too, if this is a function of being a visible face but a veiled personality. If my impression contains empty space that renders me an adaptable idea and thus a useful device for subconscious minds. It is nice to think of this, that I might still be in some way, to someone, of use.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Remember, she's not interest in politics. That's why we're now Eight Deep into an extended narcissistic fantasy about her appearing in other people's dreams.
I mean to tell you as best I can what it was to face the unrealness, to stand so close that it seemed at times almost plausible, to tiptoe along the edge of the abyss, and to balance there just long enough to forget that the plates would soon shift.
Shorter version: "My life felt unreal to me." But you're not going to hit 80,000 words with sentences like "My life felt unreal to me."
Clickety-clack.
I mean to tell you of the canyon where voices carried. The place where monsters spoke to me. Where I listened. Where I found that, as fortune or curse would have it, I knew the language of monsters....
Because I care about you, I'm going to do what Little Miss Clickety-Clack will not do and edit this and end this fresh prologned digression about nothing. But she continues babbling about monsters and canyons.
No I lied, I'm including it. You've all been disappointing me recently and this is what you get.
I mean to tell you that, as it relates to monsters, little can be assured beyond their ceaseless want. That you feed the monster, and the monster wants only more. That here you have surrendered to the endless transaction, and through the terms on which you meet the monster you are transformed monstrous, too, for the day that the monster is done wanting is the day that the sun does not rise; want makes the monster as sun makes the day.
Okay but I will show mercy and cut it there.
I mean to tell you that this is more meaningful and more meaningless than you might think.
As to the latter: I'm sold, baby.
...
The flag winked beside the lanes that bent to borders that faded to barriers that fell to the lines I crossed.
Back to this metaphor which stands for nothing at all.
..
When I open my eyes I see, still, the blur of colors, the flash of red, of blue, of white.
I mean to tell you now as best I can.
Not everyone can write like Olivia Nuzzi.
I never would have heard of Nuzzi if it weren’t for @AceofSpadesHQ. I don’t know whether to thank Ace or throw turd balls at him — that’s pretty much every day.
Incumbent Senator John Cornyn (RINO - TX) betrayed his party and his country by voting in favor Biden's Afghan resettlement bill in 2021. Cornyn voted to bring in the Afghan who shot two National Guard soldiers on US soil. A vote for Cornyn is an endorsement of importing unvetted, radicalized murderers. [Buck]
Podcast: Jim Lakely of Heartland Institute joins CBD for a discussion of their recent polling that shows a majority of 18-39s want socialism, the Epstein files, what will Mamdani do, and more!
Podcast: Buck Throckmorton joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about the cultural and business shift away from the insanity of EVs and Climate Religion, his calm perspective on last week's election, Tucker is a toad, and more!
Our Favorite British Couple Exploring True America Experiences Flora-Bama And Sees A Side Of The Deep South Rarely Seen. [dri]
Tucker Carlson claims that it's weird that Ted Cruz is interested in the massacre of Christians by Nigerian Muslims, because he has "no track record of being interested in Christians," then blows off the massacre of Christians by Nigerian Muslims, saying it might or might not be a real concern Tucker Carlson enjoys using the left-wing tactic of "Tactical Ignorance" to avoid taking positions on topics. Is Hamas really a terrorist organization? Tucker can't say. He hasn't looked into it enough, but "it seems like a political organization to me." Are Muslims slaughtering Christians in Nigeria? Again, Tucker just doesn't know. He hasn't examined the evidence yet. He knows every Palestinian Christian who said he was blocked from visiting holy sites in Bethlehem, but he just hasn't had the time to look into the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria that has been going on since (checks watch) 2009. He doesn't know, so he can't offer an opinion. Wouldn't be prudent, you know? Don't rush him! He'll sift through the evidence at some point in the future and render an opinion sometime around 2044. Of course, if you need an opinion on Jewish Perfidy, he has all the facts at his fingertips and can give you a fully informed opinion pronto. Say, have you ever heard of the USS Liberty incident...? You'd think that the main issue for Tucker Carlson, who pretends to be so deeply concerned about Palestinian Christians being bullied by Jews in Israel (supposedly), would be the massacre of 185,000 Christians in Nigeria itself. But no, his main problem is that Ted Cruz is talking about it, "who has no track record of being interested in Christians at all." And then he just shrugs as to whether this is even a real issue or not.
Whatever we do we must never "divide the right," huh?
Tucker is attacking Ted Cruz for bringing the issue up because he's acting as an apologist for Jihadism, and he can't cleanly admit that Jihadists are killing any Christians, anywhere. There is no daylight between him and CAIR at this point.
One might conclude that Tucker Carlson himself isn't interested in the plight of Christians -- except as they can be used as a cudgel to attack Jews. Just gonna ask an Interesting Question myself -- why is it that Tucker Carlson's arguments all track with those shit out by Qatarian propaganda agents and the far left? That if Jews crush an ant underfoot it is worldwide news, but when Muslims slaughter Christians it elicits not even a vigorous shrug?
I once glimpsed Garth in the penumbra betwixt my wake and sleep. He was in my dream, standing afar, not looking my way, nor did he acknowledge me. But I felt seen. And that's when I knew I was a traveler on the right path. I'm glad he's still with us.
Greetings, Traveler. If you still have not experienced Garth Merenghi -- Author, Dream-weaver, Visionary, plus Actor -- the six episodes of his Darkplace are still available on YouTube and supposedly upscaled to HD. (Viewing it now, it doesn't appeared upscaled for shit.) I think the second episode, "Hell Hath Fury," is the best by a good margin. Try to at least watch through to that one. It's Mereghi's incisive but nuanced take on sexism.
Podcast: The elections! NYC, Virginia, New Jersey, Texas, California, and the future prospects of the Republican party...
