Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
Who was to blame? A curious subhead to a story in The Wall Street Journal seems to me to get the question completely wrong. "Jason Arday's academic rise and fall set off a debate about whether he was a plagiarist or victim of a racial witch hunt."
Are you, like me, sick of the left pretending that the Woke AF Wall Street Journal is "conservative"?
But that is a false dichotomy. There is no doubt that Arday was a plagiarist. And far from being the victim of "a racial witch hunt," he was the victim of his own lies and intemperate behavior. And let's not forget that his fabulations were directed not only at aggrandizing himself. He was also perfectly happy to play the race card to damage others, as when he complained to the police that journalists who were investigating his credentials were guilty of harassing him. The police duly opened a four-month-long investigation into a journalist who was simply going about his job.
Outside of certain mystery novels, where the villain is discovered and then presented with a weapon and a private moment to "do the right thing," suicide cannot help but be a shocking eventuality. One cannot--at least, I cannot--help but feel bad for Arday and his family, which includes his widow, two young children, and his parents. Nevertheless, I cannot exonerate him. Why? A multi-part inventory compiled on X and presented in clipped, asyndetonic style contains the answer. Here are some of the items, presented under the rubric "Be Jason Arday":
>claim police traced a severed pig's head at your parents' house to a butcher who'd sold a "whole hog" that morning
>have the butcher say no officer ever came in
>have the Met call the whole tale "categorically incorrect"
>say you're experiencing a modern day lynching on a podcast
>have the ASA make your speaking agency strip unbacked claims
>hire Carter-Ruck [a law firm] & get Times Higher Education to kill a finished story
>report their journalist to Scotland Yard for emailing you questions about your record
>have officers tell him to stop, your mental health was hurt
>report a retired professor too, have Devon & Cornwall decline to bother
>have the Met chief later admit "we dropped the ball on that one"
>get cleared by a panel you asked to weigh the "war on critical race theory"
>have 188 matching sentences called an honest & reasonable error
>do keynote on the playbook conservatives use to hunt black academics b/c beyond reproach
>have the Times find participant 11 in study is three different people
>have the same quotes come out of different mouths 25 times across three papers
>have false funding declarations
>have an outside expert say there is no question the plagiarism is extensive
>have a Cambridge autism professor send round "URGENT PLEASE SIGN ANTI RACISM LETTER"
>get 13,000 names & three Cambridge heads vouching for text they never read
>have Cambridge call it a "vile smear campaign"
>blame autistic mimicry, a l supervisor who left, & one you never met
>call the campaign racially motivated
>say "what I am not is a liar"
>turn 600 miles of margarine in six days into twelve
>have Anglia Ruskin edit your citation page the day the [Nathan] Cofnas piece dropped
>get Solent to delete the running claims
>have the TEDx video go private
>have your Jesus College page quietly turn Professorial Fellow into l Fellow & a Liverpool master's vanish
>have academics call for a regulator probe, have the Office for Students decline to comment
>have Cambridge open a probe into your qualifications & honorary appointments
>have Jesus College open its own
>quit both on the spot
>put the letter out through the Good Law Project
>have the letter promise you'll return stronger & wiser
>have the letter come back 100% AI
>have Jesus College drop its probe the moment you quit
>have the Good Law Project boss keep defending you, chalking it all up to neurodivergence
>have the ghostwritten memoir come out in the US anyway, after a 1.4m pre-empt
>have the UK edition still set for Aug 27
>have Cambridge order an outside audit of how you were ever hired
>have Durham & Glasgow open probes of their own
>commit suicide
>have people portray you as a victim?
Whatever else can be said about the "Jason Arday Affair," he was not the victim. Perhaps you can say he was the casualty, first, of his own mendacity and race-fired megalomania and second, of an educational establishment that, marinated in the anti-white, self-flagellating racial animosities of the moment, colluded in the construction of Arday's fantastical, self-aggrandizing, and ultimately self-destructive fantasies.
Fake Professor Jason Arday was found dead in the wake of being exposed as a complete fraud, and if it were my choice, he would still be alive and suffering the humiliation that should be the result of his crimes. I would prefer that he did not likely choose to kill himself instead of facing the consequences of his actions. My preference is irrelevant. If he decided to do himself in, it's crushing for his wife and kids, and that was a selfish, cruel, and stupid decision. But it was his decision, as was his decision to commit fraud upon fraud. I don't celebrate his death, and his death changes nothing. We're not going to stop rooting out the charlatans.
Of course, the entirely predictable response of the institutional left to his cowardly and apparent self-deletion has been to insist, loudly and with quivering outrage, that his death is our fault. You see, we normal people pointed out that he lied about his background, his achievements, his credentials, and his work. The fact that we did what a functioning institution should've done itself outraged his boosters, so these moral illiterates now invert the moral calculus to keep the exposure of academic fraud from happening again. Arday lied pathologically and endlessly, enabled by a ridiculously solicitous academia, then likely killed himself when his lies were exposed. Obviously, the villains are the people who did not lie and did not choose to end his life.
And you'll never guess their key accusation in a million years.
Okay, you guessed it: RACISM!
....
But let's be serious about these condescending leftists. They knew Arday was a phony. They also knew he was useful. His existence supported their narrative, so that irritating objective truth thing could be dispensed with. But he was never their peer; he was their pet. They tried to make Jason Arday into something he wasn't -- an intellectual and a genius -- because he was a good-looking black guy with the kind of lengthy dreads that send a tingle down the legs of childless liberal wine women who spend their endless free time reading Ibram X. Kendi's tomes (that relic of Woke 1.0 is yet another clown whose scamming was too much even for left-wing academia to bear) and doing the work to ameliorate their appalling residual whiteness.
...
The new party line is that we're to blame. It's our fault that Arday is dead. You see, if we hadn't told the truth about his many, many lies and exposed them, this never would have happened. And that's probably true, in a sense. He would've gone on being a celebrated icon of the left, though most of the left understood he was a joke and kept their laughter in check for the good of the movement.
...
We're not going to play their game. We're not going to hold fire for fear of feelz. We're not going to ignore the truth lest the liar lash out at himself or others. Sometimes the truth hurts, but the only people the truth hurts are people exposed doing something they shouldn't be doing. The truth is more important than feelings. And the truth is more important than Arday's life. If the choice we are presented with is that Jason Arday will go on living a lie and degrading our civilization by doing so, or that Jason Arday might hurt himself, it's Option 2 every day of the week. We're not going to be held hostage or intimidated or shamed into silence and, therefore, complicity.
Never forget that Arday sicced police and lawyers on people to silence them from reporting out his lies and plagiarism. It took very brave people to continue investigating when others were intimidated into stopping.
Arday killed himself once his house of lies finally collapsed under its own weight and he couldn't face the world to say two words: "I'm sorry."
From Jussie Smollett to George Floyd, leftists always pick unethical, violent and/or fraudulent people as their heroes.
I’m undercover at the London rally for the deceased DEI academic fraud Jason Arday. Thousands are here to defend DEI and the lies of Arday, who k—lled himself after he was outed by journalists as a fraud.
Gay Socialism Terrorist Abdulrahman El-Sayed's Sister Spat In the Face of a Police Officer at an anti-ICE "Rally"
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Trump often says he wants an immigration system that permits skilled workers into the country, and people who "love" us.
That always hit me as a little, I don't know, soft. Do I care if immigrants "love" us or not?
Well I'll tell you what, I care now. Trump is and was right: It should matter to us if immigrants are coming into this country to bring the chaos, corruption, and endless civil wars of their home shithole countries to our Main Streets, or if they're really coming to join our civilization as supporters and actual, real "cultural enrichers."
The left has created an ideology called Third Worldism. Third Worldism teaches all people in poor countries to hate white westerners and blame them for all of their poverty and stagnation. The way out of poverty and stagnation is not, as you might think, to adopt the proveably pro-growth and pro-stability doctrines of the west, but instead to just inflict on the west all of the ills and mayhem of the Third World. They believe that if they can just destroy the west, the Third World will thrive. I guess the theory is something like, "The West is all tall trees that catch the sunlight before it reaches the bushes on the ground. If we just tear down and burn all the tall trees, we'll all grow as high as they once were."
It's absurd. But note it is just the companion doctrine of anti-white, anti-American racial socialism in this country, which also advocates for not changing anything about failing "communities" except to destroy the "oppressors" supposedly keeping them down.
We cannot allow any more immigration while this pernicious, anti-American hatred is held as the highest value in the Third World and promoted by our own anti-American, left-wing, taxpayer-funded NGOs.
Here's the thing: I don't want my society destroyed and razed to the ground so that some foreign malcontents have the chance to rebuild it along their preferred lines, and then rule over me.
Call me a racist. I no longer care. I will not be ruled to show I'm not "racist."
I'm sure you already agree with this, but if you need more evidence:
NizNellie3
@NizNellie3
🚨 I've been warning about this "professor" for years. If you think Abdul El-Sayed isn't in agreement with his terror-supporting sister, you're blind.
Radicalism runs in the family.
Professor Eman Abdelhadi teaches at the University of Chicago.
On the morning of the October 7 attacks, she celebrated online by tweeting, "Good morning, freedom."
After the massacres, she called for violent student uprisings on the streets of America.
"Let Palestine break this country wide open. Long live the student intifada."
In October of 2025, she attended a protest at the Broadview ICE Detention Center outside of Chicago.
She was arrested for violence and spit on a police officer.
She's currently charged with two counts of aggravated battery, along with two misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest.
Her social media is flooded with antisemitic garbage and anti-American propaganda.
She's still employed. Our Dept of Education is about to shove over half a billion into the hands of her university.
It goes without saying: this should be all hands on deck from the White House and our intelligence community.
Eman Abdelhadi: "F*** the University of Chicago... but it's my best shot at power."
At Socialism 2025, @UChicago
professor Eman Abdelhadi called her employer "evil colonial landlord."
Use it. Organize it. Seize its structural leverage.
"We don't have power... but I work at one of the biggest employers in Chicago... a place with thousands of people I could potentially organize... This is where I need to build power."
She openly says it's "brutal" organizing academics. But despite her disdain, Abdelhadi sees the university as a tactical weapon--to build a Palestine-aligned political base from within.
This is from Socialism 2025 and is the Revolutionary Accompaniment: Holding Each Other When Things Fall Apart
Professor Eman Abdelhadi says she brings intense emotional distress into her academic life--and believes modeling that grief is part of her political responsibility.
"I have cried so many times on campus in ways like as a, you know, young brown, queer woman... and then like the genocide started and people are like how are you? I'm like--"
"I cried during every rally speech I gave on campus... and how dare you expect these students to be OK? Like why? Why would I be OK?"
"It would be sick if I was able to put on this performance for you that I'm fine."
She frames public emotional unraveling not as something to manage, but as a necessary political act:
"As a Palestinian there is a political tool to that... I think being incredibly sad is important."
And she's open about canceling work or redirecting student meetings around her emotional state:
"We're not meeting today because I'm actually too upset to meet."
"After our encampment was raided... my students were main organizers... So we don't do this weird inhuman thing where we pretend you didn't just get a tent ripped out from under you by the police. Let's talk about that first."
This isn't support. It's not pedagogy. It's ideology via emotional exhibition--politicized despair as a teaching method. You decide if that belongs in a university classroom.
Stu Smith
@thestustustudio
·
Jul 6, 2025
Eman Abdelhadi: "F*** the University of Chicago... but it's my best shot at power."
At Socialism 2025, @UChicago
professor Eman Abdelhadi called her employer "evil colonial landlord."
Use it. Organize it. Seize its structural leverage.
"We don't have power... but I work at one of the biggest employers in Chicago... a place with thousands of people I could potentially organize... This is where I need to build power."
She openly says it's "brutal" organizing academics. But despite her disdain, Abdelhadi sees the university as a tactical weapon--to build a Palestine-aligned political base from within.
Embedded video
Stu Smith
@thestustustudio
·
Jul 6, 2025
This is from Socialism 2025 and is the Revolutionary Accompaniment: Holding Each Other When Things Fall Apart
Professor Eman Abdelhadi says she brings intense emotional distress into her academic life--and believes modeling that grief is part of her political responsibility.
"I have cried so many times on campus in ways like as a, you know, young brown, queer woman... and then like the genocide started and people are like how are you? I'm like--"
"I cried during every rally speech I gave on campus... and how dare you expect these students to be OK? Like why? Why would I be OK?"
"It would be sick if I was able to put on this performance for you that I'm fine."
She frames public emotional unraveling not as something to manage, but as a necessary political act:
"As a Palestinian there is a political tool to that... I think being incredibly sad is important."
And she's open about canceling work or redirecting student meetings around her emotional state:
"We're not meeting today because I'm actually too upset to meet."
"After our encampment was raided... my students were main organizers... So we don't do this weird inhuman thing where we pretend you didn't just get a tent ripped out from under you by the police. Let's talk about that first."
This isn't support. It's not pedagogy. It's ideology via emotional exhibition--politicized despair as a teaching method. You decide if that belongs in a university classroom.
"I'm more Muslim than I've ever been... still not Muslim enough to stop drinking, so that's kind of an interesting thing."
Abdelhadi uses her evolving relationship to Islam as a framework for political resilience and emotional coping:
"All I have to do is do my best... The outcomes are not up to me."
"We're responsible for the work, not its products."
This may resonate in activist spaces. But in a professional setting--especially as a professor--it raises questions:
Is this theology or politics?
Is this introspection or performance?
And is this what students are signing up for?
Abdelhadi blends personal identity, spiritual belief, and political messaging into the classroom. But the line between reflection and ideology is increasingly blurred.
This is from Socialism 2025 and is the Revolutionary Accompaniment: Holding Each Other When Things Fall Apart
Professor Eman Abdelhadi says she brings intense emotional distress into her academic life—and believes modeling that grief is part of her political responsibility.
Bonus: the fake "doctor" who claims that private insurance is an abomination has a wife whose practice accepts nothing but privately-insured patients.
Abdul El Sayed's wife's private practice doesn't take any insurance at all—including Medicare. His own family lacks the will to treat any patients but the most wealthy. It's such a farce to blame this on the "system" when the truth is there right there in his own household. https://t.co/a46E7GV0Dbpic.twitter.com/gaSVEN4hts
Leftwing Obama Judge Who Has Repatedly Ignored the Supreme Court to Block the Deportation of Somalis Relents, Allows Deportations
—Disinformation Expert Ace
She repeatedly refuses to respect the Supreme Court ruling -- ruling, not advisement -- that lowly district court judges cannot overrule the Administration's findings on immigration, except on legitimate constitutional grounds. (That is, the claim that an Administration order actually violates the Constitution.)
She just keeps saying "I don't care, I do what I want."
In one cute maneuver, the Administration appealed her lawless ruling to the Supreme Court, where she would definitely be checked and rebuked.
A Massachusetts federal judge has once again blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status (TPS) for Somalia, issuing a new administrative stay after plaintiffs rewrote their lawsuit around constitutional claims just days after a federal appeals court threw out similar stays terminating TPS for Ethiopia and South Sudan.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by former President Barack Obama, issued the administrative stay Friday after African Communities Together and other plaintiffs filed an amended complaint alleging the Trump administration violated the Fifth Amendment by terminating Somalia's TPS designation based on racial and national-origin discrimination.
The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and emergency motion on Thursday in a renewed bid to keep Somalia's TPS protections alive after the Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe sharply limited lower courts' ability to block TPS terminations.
Burroughs' latest order has intensified growing criticism over whether district judges are using administrative stays to work around higher court rulings. It comes just days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed similar administrative stays issued by U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris, who had temporarily delayed the Trump administration's TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan.
The 1st Circuit based its rulings on the Supreme Court's Mullin decision, which ruled lower courts generally cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims.
The latest order drew an immediate rebuke from DHS General Counsel James Percival, who accused Burroughs of continuing a pattern of judicial obstruction.
"Judge Allison Burroughs just entered yet another order preventing the termination of Somalia TPS. There is no serious debate about what is going on in these cases -- defiance, obstruction, and delay," Percival wrote on X.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan argued Burroughs' order improperly grants emergency relief despite what he described as legally deficient claims.
"I looked at the amended complaint in the Somalia TPS case," Wessan wrote on X. "The district judge has entered a novel 'administrative stay' to sort out the claims. She has declared the TPS termination 'void' for now, while deciding whether any of the claims can justify a more permanent pause."
Wessan argued that the order "turns the law upside down," writing that four of the lawsuit's five claims are foreclosed by the Supreme Court's decision in Mullin and describing the remaining claim as "frivolous."
"Even if this was a fresh lawsuit without the baggage, the claims cannot justify any relief -- much less meet the high bar for interim relief," Wessan wrote. "This is very bad. I hope that, with time to review, Judge Burroughs vacates her administrative stay to allow the correct status quo to continue."
Republicans are discussing impeaching this lawless woke criminal.
She attended the Jason Arday School of Law 'n Shit.
Though she complains as she does so and says the Muslims are really right, it's just the racist Supreme Court that's stopping her from granting Somalis permanent protected status in the US on no authority but her own.
Trump scores major immigration victory as judge clears way to end TPS protections for thousands of Somalis
The ruling could expose thousands to deportation after the Supreme Court limited judicial review of TPS decisions
By Michael Sinkewicz Fox News
President Donald Trump scored a major legal victory Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for his administration to terminate temporary legal protections for thousands of Somali nationals living in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston lifted a stay that had prevented the Department of Homeland Security from terminating Somalia's Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, citing a June Supreme Court ruling that sharply limited judicial review of similar administration actions.
The decision allows the Trump administration to move forward with ending TPS for Somalia, potentially exposing affected migrants who lack another lawful basis to remain in the U.S. to deportation.
Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, had previously blocked the termination from taking effect in a lawsuit brought by four Somali nationals and two advocacy groups, including African Communities Together.
...
The Supreme Court ruled in June in Mullin v. Doe that the TPS statute bars judicial review of certain non-constitutional decisions by the administration to terminate TPS designations. The court also found that the plaintiffs' equal protection challenge in that case was unlikely to succeed.
The ruling curtailed lower courts' ability to review Trump administration efforts to terminate TPS designations for nationals of multiple countries.
Plaintiffs challenging the termination of Somalia's designation argued that the administration's decision was motivated by bias against non-White immigrants, pointing to Trump's previous descriptions of Somalis as "garbage" and "low IQ people."
Following the Supreme Court's ruling, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint raising new constitutional claims and sought emergency relief in another effort to prevent Somalia's TPS protections from ending.
Burroughs issued an administrative stay earlier this month after African Communities Together and other plaintiffs alleged that the administration violated the Fifth Amendment by terminating Somalia's TPS designation based on racial and national-origin discrimination.
In Friday's ruling, Burroughs said the plaintiffs had presented a compelling case but concluded that the Supreme Court's decision constrained her ability to continue blocking the administration's action.
Burroughs wrote that she was "bound ... to view things through the Mullin prism," referring to the Supreme Court case.
"Plaintiffs have made a convincing showing that they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld ... and the balance of hardships and the public interest also favor Plaintiffs, given that the government has made no showing that maintaining TPS status for the duration of this litigation would impose an undue burden," she wrote.
...
Sources at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services previously told Fox News Digital that 2,471 Somali nationals in the U.S. currently have TPS, while another 1,383 have pending TPS applications.
Jonathan Turley says Friday was a "great day" for Trump. It was a great day for all Americans, dude.
Unfortunately, most Somalis have been granted citizenship by now.
Straight Shooters and Great Americans: Hugh Hefner Informed The FBI That a Playboy Playmate Had Been Sex-Trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein But They "Back-Burnered" The Tip and Did Nothing for 15 Years
Playboy founder and publisher Hugh Hefner reportedly informed the FBI several times in 2005 that a Playboy Playmate had been sexually trafficked and abused by the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and others, but the FBI didn't investigate the claim for 15 years, according to court documents.
The Playboy Playmate was Audra Christiansen, who says that Hefner made multiple reports to the FBI, but that the agency didn't follow up at the time, according to former FBI special agent Jennifer Coffindaffer.
"To wait 15 years to conduct this interview and to actually get down to the nitty gritty ... that is just too long to wait," Coffindaffer told "NewsNation Prime" on Saturday. "Somehow, this got back-burnered, and it should have never happened that it would take so long for this investigation to follow through."
...
Christiansen's story suggests that if the FBI had acted on Hefner's calls, Epstein could have been held to account for his actions long before he was arrested and held awaiting trial. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation in Florida for which he received a very lenient and highly criticized work-release jail sentence.
The FBI agent says the cover-up and political weaponization agency might have been "swamped" at the time, doing 9/11 investigations.
Steven Richards and John Solomon for Just the News:
FBI had evidence Swalwell got illegal donations from suspected Chinese spy, bombshell memos show
The newly declassified investigation files also show that the FBI had initially tried to recruit the infamous Fang Fang as a source that could share information on Chinese influence operations targeting public officials in the United States.
The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country's intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America's political system from Beijing.
The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang -- also known by her English name Christine Fang -- were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.
They show the FBI opened a predicated investigation, which is a formal law enforcement inquiry backed by a factual basis or allegation that indicates a crime or national security threat already exists.
Unlike unpredicated "assessments," a predicated investigation allows agents to use advanced and intrusive methods like electronic surveillance or informants.
The files provide significant new details about the long-rumored relationship between Fang and Swalwell, including that:
* The FBI initially wanted to investigate the congressman for a bribery scheme in which he exchanged donations from Fang for her planting interns in his office, but eventually decided to narrow the case to seek criminal charges only against Fang for making illegal donations to the California Democrat through conduits.
In English, "eventually decided" means "corruptly decided."
* Swalwell admitted to having sex with Fang, his staff placing Fang's interns in Congress and not having a strong enough campaign finance system to detect the straw donations she allegedly passed through U.S.-citizen conduits.
* The Justice Department declined to prosecute Fang despite strong evidence of the illicit donations after she fled the U.S. as the FBI began interviewing her associates and raided her home. The early steps in the investigation were overseen in part by controversial prosecutor Jack Smith, who would later pursue Donald Trump on criminal charges.
Holy shit. He's the garbage man they turn to every single time to take care of their trash.
* The FBI was recruiting Fang to be a confidential informant through an undercover agent, assigned her the code name Rusty Thumbs, planned to hire her through a cutout company and was still evaluating her suitability as a confidential human source when they discovered her alleged criminal behavior.
* The FBI knew early on during the recruitment that Fang was tied to China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), Beijing's notorious intelligence service. The bureau also identified her parents as MSS agents, knew she was raising money for California Democrats and was willing to use sex as a means of getting ahead in the world of U.S. politics.
"Rusty Thumbs" was the name of the degenerate sex act that Eric Swalwell liked having performed on him.
Hello. Happy New Week!
By the way: No crow updates. The crows kind of disappeared. I still hear them clattering but they don't visit, at least not when I'm looking.
THE MORNING RANT: Amazon’s Unconscionable Counterfeit Problem; Help is on the way thanks to (Trump’s) tariffs on de minimis Chinese imports
—Buck Throckmorton
My wife got scammed by a counterfeit product sold through Amazon. Shame on her, I suppose, for being the kind of person who trusts prominent corporations not to be party to consumer fraud, but shame on Amazon for relying on the sale of counterfeit products as part of its business model.
If you look at headlines regarding the problem of counterfeit goods being sold online, Amazon has been engaged in a “war on counterfeiters” going back more than a decade. At this point it would appear that Amazon has little interest in actually wining this war. Like with the “war on homelessness,” there’s a great deal of money to be made in perpetuating the war on counterfeiting rather than putting an end to the problem.
Amazon makes a generous commission from products sold through its “Third Party Marketplace,” whether those products are counterfeit or not. Confusingly, the counterfeit products remain prominently displayed among non-counterfeit items on the main page of an Amazon search. Only by drilling in can you find the small print identifying it as a product being sold by a third-party seller. But Amazon allows you to add the product to your cart from its main page, without presenting any disclosure that it’s from a questionable third-party seller.
This is little different than if you went into a Whole Foods (owned by Amazon) to buy some avocado oil, but counterfeit avocado oil from a “third-party seller” was on the same shelf as the authentic product, and the phony product only had a small disclaimer in fine print on the back of the bottle.
Beyond the inherent consumer fraud of marketing counterfeit products, it puts consumers in danger, especially when it comes to products that are ingested or topically applied.
Fake supplements have been found to contain everything from harmless fillers like rice or flour to dangerous ingredients, including hidden pharmaceuticals, allergens, and heavy metals.
Brands like Now Foods and Fungi Perfecta have discovered multiple counterfeit versions of their supplements sold on Amazon, sometimes by dozens of different storefronts.
Even worse, counterfeit items sold by third-party sellers have found their way into the “Sold by Amazon” bins at distribution centers. Verifying that Amazon itself is the seller - not a third-party - still hasn’t been a reliable way to ensure that Amazon isn’t selling you a counterfeit product.
When you order a supplement on Amazon, you might assume it’s coming from the seller you picked. But with co-mingled inventory, Amazon ships the nearest unit in stock—even if it came from a different seller. Even items listed as “sold by Amazon” can be impacted if co-mingled inventory is involved.
Amazon recently made another promise to try to stop selling commingled counterfeits in its “Sold by Amazon” channel. Perhaps this time they finally mean it. But nothing about that promise changes the fact that counterfeits sold by third-party sellers are still abundant on Amazon’s website, and listed just as prominently as authentic(?) goods.
No one seems to know just how bad the problem of online counterfeiting is, but some recent tests indicate that the problem is extreme:
More than two thirds (67 per cent) of products bought from online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop and Vinted were likely to be imitations of the advertised brands, according to consumer rights company Which.
Through a combination of lab testing and expert assessment, we concluded that all 12 of the beauty products I’d purchased from third-party sellers on Amazon, eBay, Shein, and Walmart were either not what they claimed to be or questionable for reasons beyond their authenticity. Johnson went farther, explicitly stating that they were all “definitively identified as counterfeits.”
Amazon’s success in becoming the dominant online retailer was similar to how Google became the dominant search engine – both were the very best at what they did. Puzzlingly, both companies have decided to sabotage their success by not providing their customers the product they want. Google has degraded its search functionality such that oftentimes will not provide you the link you request and Amazon is prospering by hoodwinking customers into buying counterfeit products.
Of course, much of the counterfeit junk being sold on Amazon comes from China. Almost incomprehensibly, this junk has been exempted from duties if the cost was under $800.
The good news is that President Trump just won a battle at the U.S. Court of International Trade, and if Amazon wants to keep allowing itself to be a “marketplace” to sell counterfeit goods, those goods are going to be tariffed, making it less cost effective to undercut the genuine products being copied.
"For years, Foreign Shippers could send packages worth up to $800 into our Country, DUTY FREE, NO TARIFF, far less scrutiny. It became a giant loophole for TARIFF Cheats... So, we CLOSED IT." - President Donald J. Trump ���� pic.twitter.com/49ulsRKmNm
Circling back to the counterfeit product my household just bought on Amazon, my wife read about a product she wanted to try by the name of MoreLess Protein Gummies, so she bought a package online from Amazon. It came in this mailer from China.
My wife then contacted MoreLess and received this response: “Can you tell me where you ordered from? If it was Amazon (especially through a third-party seller rather than our official storefront), there’s a decent chance what showed up isn’t actually ours – counterfeits have been known to pop up there. If that’s the case, I’d steer clear of taking them.”
On Amazon, I checked the reviews of the product and seller we inadvertently bought from, and I screen-grabbed it (immediately below). Amazon subsequently removed this seller and these reviews:
This is what the actual product looks like from MoreLess’ own website:
Despite the specific third-party retailer that sold us a counterfeit product being removed, Amazon is still offering several obvious counterfeit versions of this product. Even the product on the right with almost identical packaging is likely a counterfeit, as it ships from “sichuanzhongchuangqifuxinxikejiyou xianongsi.”
Whenever I criticize a large corporation, I get accused of being a socialist or a “Bernie Bro” by the libertarian, “free-traders” who conflate corporatism with capitalism. They tell me if I don’t like a corporation engaging in consumer fraud or otherwise behaving unethically, I can take my business elsewhere. That’s true, taking my business elsewhere is excellent advice, and buying from brick-and-mortar retailers is good for communities. I’ll do more of that.
But when a major corporation winks at its platform being used for the counterfeit sale of legitimate small businesses’ products, there is not a “magic hand” of supply and demand at work. Rather, it is a form of theft from the legitimate small businesses.
For those of us who advocate for a free market in an economically sovereign United States, we see the threat that arises from corporations engaging in willful blindness to counterfeiting and consumer fraud, especially when it benefits foreign adversaries.
Located approximately 650 feet northeast of the White House grounds, the 100-year-old Securities Building on 15th Street was purchased on July 21, 2026 [sic] for $8.4 million by the Philip Qiu and Family Foundation, filings show. The building’s new owner, Philip Qiu, has held numerous positions within Chinese intelligence and state security arms, according to
university records and DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.
Considering the Chi-Coms have already purchased untold thousands of acres of our farmland as well as land adjacent to many of our military bases, this really is not that surprising as it is disgusting and alarming. In this instance, I don't think there is any legislation that requires real estate agents or property owners to investigate or refuse to sell to any potential buyers. Then again considering the metastasis of the Confucius Institutes on our campuses as well as the infiltration of Red Chinese nationals into some of our most sensitive tech firms, who for sure would have been or should have been vetted by HR departments out the wahzoo.
Frankly, the very idea of this project rubbed me the wrong way. Why would airport officials in Texas be pandering to the Muslim community in such an obvious, unnecessary, discriminatory, and, as I see it, humiliating way? This is America.. . Apparently, I wasn’t the only one irked by the project. Many Americans opposed the installation of Wudu ablution stations — including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). In a Friday memo, Abbott announced he’d directed a review of all state grants to Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airports. The news release read (in part): These ablution facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion. That is illegal. Both airports are government-owned facilities. The federal and state constitutions prohibit government from facilitating this sort of discrimination. Just as the government cannot favor the secular over the sacred, it also cannot favor one religious view over all others.
Actually, if these installations were made dual usage, I could support them. Muslim foot-washing and Dog Urinals. Plus Toilet paper with Koranic passages printed on them, although that could cause mass perianal-infections and we can't have that, can we?
Democrats in blue states across the country have swamped their legislatures with an avalanche of nearly 250 pro-migrant bills to thwart President Donald Trump’s immigration and deportation policies... The bills have been enthusiastically supported by state Democrats, but many have been opposed by legal action by the federal government. In some blue states, though, some of the measures have even been vetoed by Democrat governors who fear the measures go too far... The left is using liberal judges to obstruct the president’s mandate, says James Percival, General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security: “They know if they can just get enough crazy district judges to do enough crazy things, they can run out the clock.”
There is only one proper response to this and that is the ramping up of ICE operations to deport as many illegal aliens as possible and the utter rejection of all rulings by any court that attempts to interfere with the legal operation of federal authorities in the securing of our borders and defense of our national security and protenction of the citizenry.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) responded to a recent poll that found that more than half of Democrats have a positive view of socialism over capitalism, stating that “this is lunacy.”
If you had told me back when Fetterman ran and defeated Mehmet Oz back in 2022 that he would actually not only sound and even on occasion act sane I'd have said you were crazy. Yet there he is supporting Israel, secure borders and publicly calling out his own party as insane. Yes, there is no doubt that his past as a died-in-the-wool lib means he will always vote the way the party leadership demands. And yet, there he is and there he goes. Good for him. Be nice if we had an actual conservative saying what he's saying instead of going down on Mitch McConnell's heir apparent du jour, be it Thune or Cornyn or God-forbid Susan Collins or whoever.
It’s mid-August. That can only mean one thing – Democrat politicians spreading fabrications about the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014.
The most persistent fabrication is the claim that Brown was a “gentle giant” gunned down while his hands were raised up and saying don’t shoot. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” became the slogan of the organized Black Lives Matter movement, which was launched after the Brown shooting. . . This year was quieter than most years but leave it to Rashida Tlaib to tweet that Michael Brown was “murdered”:
Mike Brown should still be with us today.
Yeah, were it not for the fact of Democrats' and LBJ's Great Society that caused the genocide (There's a word for you Lefties!) of the black family and the general societal dissolution that we are suffering 60 years on and will continue until there is a radical change in culture and education back to normalcy.
Oh, Senator Fetterman if you want to see lunacy in action, here's a gigantic heaping helping of it that you should call out, but probably won't. Oh well...
Because people just expect that it’ll go one way or the other. It’s the idea that someone would get elected not just knowing about seven states, but having to earn votes all over the United States. I certainly think it’s time. Gov. Beshear: ‘It’s Time’ to Abolish the Electoral College
. . . the move was a calculated legal gamble aimed at avoiding a life sentence rather than any sign of remorse. Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges connected to Thompson's murder. He still faces a separate state trial in New York scheduled for September. That's where things get interesting, because the two cases carry sharply different stakes. Oh, So This Is Why Luigi Mangione Pleaded Guilty
We saved Europe from starvation and communism. Now America needs a Marshall Plan of its own. (First it needs to be denazified of the Left - jjs) The Country We Forgot to Rebuild
In a post on X, Fetterman warned that the Democrat Party is “becoming the party of socialism.” Fetterman also shared a screenshot of a Mediaite article regarding a CBS News/YouGov survey, which found that among Democrats surveyed, 58 percent had a positive view of socialism, while 32 percent had a positive view of capitalism. John Fetterman Responds to Poll That Democrats Hold Positive View of Socialism: ‘This Is Lunacy’
The politics here should worry Democrats more than the polling. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released in August found immigration remains a stronger issue for President Donald Trump than the economy or Iran. It's Official, Democrats Want to Abolish ICE
Boston U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, who previously had issued a stay stopping the administration from terminating Somalia’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), ended her previous action, saying she had to defer to the Supreme Court that in June sharply limited the ability of federal judges to override certain executive branch policies. Obama-Appointed Judge Defers to Supreme Court Ruling, Gives Trump a Somali Deportation Win
Officer Jones required emergency surgery to save his life and remains in recovery. Pantoja-Morales, who faces charges of aggravated assault on a public servant, is currently detained and under a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold, underscoring the threat to public safety posed by illegal aliens at large in the community. Illegal Alien Charged With Shooting Officer Who Offered Him a Ride.
The issue isn't foreign CDL drivers; plenty of lawful immigrants and foreign-born drivers safely operate commercial trucks daily. The issue is whether somebody who can't adequately read road signs, understand warnings, communicate with police, or follow instructions in English should be behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound commercial vehicle on an American highway.That's a safety standard, not a nationality test. 30 Dead, 17 Fatal Crashes, and a Judge Tells DHS to Wait
Mass immigration can only work if immigrants are introduced to a common American culture and expected to assimilate. America’s Stranger Problem
The case highlights ongoing concerns over the exploitation of foreign workers and undercutting of local workers in the U.S., particularly by businesses leveraging immigration loopholes. U.S. Attorney Cracks Down on Chinese-Run Forced Factory Labor.
“Anyone who kills or captures and hands over an invading American military personnel will receive a reward equivalent to $30,000 or 5 billion tomans from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Army,” Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami said at a ceremony honoring journalists. Iran Army Chief Offers $30,000 Bounty for Killing or Capturing U.S. Soldiers
ISRAEL vs IRAN & GAZA/HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH . . . AND LEFTISTS. . . The U.N... AND HISTORY
Since it was launched just six months ago, American Priorities has channeled millions of dollars, primarily from donors with Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern backgrounds, to a string of winning candidates in high-profile races. How Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Transforming American Politics
Netanyahu’s comments show the strained relationship between the United Kingdom and Israel, especially after former British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood. The relationship between the two countries is likely to remain strained as Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has vowed to be more critical of Israel. “Labour’s initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt. We got it wrong and I am sorry for that,” Burnham said last month. Netanyahu Brands the United Kingdom the ‘Islamic Republic of Britain.’
Wherever Democrat majorities have held power for long enough, an inexorable process of decivilization sets in, involving the collapse of civic order and dystopian, slum-like conditions profoundly unworthy of America as “the land of the free.” California Blues
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
Free speech absolutism is the solution, because people like Hasan Piker will hang themselves if we just give them the rope to do so. Blue-On-Blue Fight Over First Amendment
A new book argues that the future of work belongs to judgment, accountability, and trust—not just intelligence. AI Can’t Replace Human Judgment
Effective Altruism amounts to a perversion of John Calvin that has created a truly bizarre and potentially malevolent moral code. AI, Morality, and Effective Altruism
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
A recent GAO report broke down the numbers related to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that has apparently increased average tax refunds for Americans, Just the News reported Saturday, citing the GAO. Winning: Americans’ Tax Refunds Increased by $43 Billion This Year
It’s the reason why you hear more mainstream state Dems calling for a settlement as well. To be clear, it isn’t because of any great love for Ellison, the upstart movie producer who, with the help of billionaire father Larry Ellison’s bank account, has been gobbling up ever-larger media giants for the past three years. California AG’s block of Paramount-Warner Bros. merger could chase away key source of funds for Dems
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM
The U.S. stopped doling out dollars to the grift last year — the rest of the developed world should do the same. Defund The U.N. Green Climate Fund
The rise in electric heavy truck adoption could significantly reduce diesel consumption in Asia. The widespread adoption of electric heavy trucks could also help the continent further insulate itself from the fluctuations in oil prices created by the Iran war. This reflects China’s ongoing pivot into the electric vehicle market. Iran War Driving Chinese E-Truck Export Boom.
State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who describes herself as a “neighborhood organizer” and “democratic socialist,” made her comments on Thursday outside Manhattan Criminal Court, the New York Post reported Saturday. WATCH — NYC: Socialist Lawmaker Claims Stealing for ‘Biological Need’ Should Not Be Illegal (I have a biological need for at least $1 Billion, per year - jjs)
Meet career crook Shaquan Seth, cut loose last week after five, count ’em five, shoplifting busts in Queens — less than six days after he got out of Rikers after a five-month stint for previous thievery — because New York law forbids cash bail for offenses like Seth’s. . . No matter that he threatened to shoot a young female clerk who was brave enough to try stopping him. He was put right back on the street. 150 arrests and he still walks: How NY laws push criminals to grow worse
EDUCATION, AND WHAT PASSES FOR IT
Arday’s sudden death comes shortly after his resignation, which was surrounded by significant public and professional scrutiny. His death is likely to complicate the discourse and investigation surrounding the allegations of plagiarism and lying. The investigation into the specifics of his death is ongoing. Accused Plagiarist Jason Arday Found Dead in London Home.
Roger Kimball: Whatever else can be said about the “Jason Arday Affair,” he was not the victim. The Unmaking of Jason Arday
Jeffries said, “Well, what I can say is that I do not support defunding the police. I do not support open borders. I do not support abolishing the Senate. We’re focused on actually solving problems that hardworking American taxpayers want us to solve, which is to lower the high cost of living in a situation where life is far too expensive in this country. That’s the democratic agenda. That’s what House Democrats are fighting to achieve.” Jeffries: Democrat Socialists of America Will Be Part of Our ‘Broad Caucus’ (Disemboweled carcass please G-d, jjs)
Much of America is freaking out over the Marxist takeover of the Democrat Party, but for anyone who paid attention, this wasn't hard to foresee. It has been coming for generations. Democrat Communists Were Inevitable
Looking at how crazy the Democrats have become, he believes that if Republicans campaign intelligently with their Contrast for America, they should be able to have a huge victory. Newt Gingrich Is Optimistic About The Midterms
South Carolina’s elevated position dates to Biden’s [so-called quote-unquote] presidency. The state rescued his struggling 2020 campaign after poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, with Black voters providing the support that helped propel him toward the nomination. Democrats Put South Carolina First in 2028 Presidential Primary Calendar
"AOC stands for Always On Camera," Conway said. "She is a performer, not a reformer. She went to Washington to legislate; that's her job. She's a pontificator, not a legislator." Conway piled on by pointing out that, in four years under [so-called quote-unquote] President Joe Biden, AOC passed one bill. One. This Might Be the Most Brutal Diagnosis of AOC You'll Ever Hear
It appears this factory is a single-point failure. It is the only one in Russia that manufactures these rockets, used to launch Soyuz manned capsules and Progress freighters to ISS as well as military satellites and Russia’s new Rassvet constellation, aimed at providing it is own Starlink equivalent. If damaged badly... Ukrainian missiles hit Russia’s only Soyuz-2 rocket factory
DEFENSE, MILITARY, SECURITY AFFAIRS
The lack of capacity and competition among shipbuilders has resulted in large backlogs of orders across six major Navy shipbuilding programs and a commercial shipbuilding sector that is not globally competitive,” the order reads. Trump Signs Order Aimed At Expanding America’s Shipbuilding Capacity
First SpaceX launched eight Globalstar telecommunications satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida... Then, only about 45 minutes later it placed a classified payload into orbit for the Space Force, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SpaceX launches twice on opposite coasts
Anyone still clinging to the mythical belief slavery is an evil of the white man in which only minorities suffered, must be dispossessed of that illusion. Yes, Jameela, There Was (And Still Is) Slavery
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.
Sunday Overnight Open Thread - August 16, 2026 [Doof]
—Open Blogger
Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday ONT. Open thread, as always. Fashion and music, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?
[Top photo: White pine tree remnant on the banks of Plymouth Harbor (short walk from Plymouth Rock). Photo taken in July 2026. Grok says the root ball / stump was spotted in September 2014 by the whale-watch boat Tales of the Sea about 2 miles off-shore then recovered by the vessel Protector. I am unable to find any information online about this. Weird.]
No Flock stuff tonight - but something else in the surveillance overreach realm
WALMART IS SELLING 75-INCH 4K TVs FOR $40 — AND PEOPLE STILL WON’T TOUCH THEM
Walmart has 75-inch 4K Roku TVs sitting on shelves with a $428 sticker price… but when you scan them in the app they ring up for just $40.
Similar deals are everywhere.
Costco is clearing 100-inch TVs for $499.
The shelves are still full because a lot of people have figured out the real cost.
These new smart TVs force you to create a Walmart or Vizio account just to turn them on.
Once you do, the operating system tracks everything you watch... even from cable boxes, game consoles, or streaming sticks.
It links that data to your purchases, your location, and your family habits so they can push personalized ads and dynamic pricing.
You’re not just buying a TV.
You’re buying a surveillance device that lives in your living room.
Would you take a $40 75-inch TV if it meant handing Walmart a permanent window into everything you watch… or is the “deal” actually the trap?
🚨 WALMART IS SELLING 75-INCH 4K TVs FOR $40 — AND PEOPLE STILL WON’T TOUCH THEM
Walmart has 75-inch 4K Roku TVs sitting on shelves with a $428 sticker price… but when you scan them in the app they ring up for just $40.
College football season is almost here. The University of Miami at one point was a powerhouse (are they still? - I don't really know or care). Let's take a peek into their branding
This has been the thing I laugh the most about regarding Miami for the past 43 years. Because everyone knows that the "U" as a symbol is so unique when it comes to setting a University apart. 🙃 Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/oBLxlJCUaj
A political map shows New Zealand, New Caledonia and a scatter of islands surrounded by blue. A geological map asks a more revealing question: what kind of crust continues beneath that water? Follow the rocks, gravity, magnetism and seafloor shape, and the islands become the visible peaks of Te Riu-a-Māui / Zealandia, a coherent continent-sized body of crust almost entirely below sea level.
Geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk proposed the name Zealandia in 1995. The name gained force in 2017, when Nick Mortimer and ten co-authors set out the geological case in GSA Today. Their estimate put its area at about 4.9 million square kilometres, with roughly 94 per cent below present sea level. New Zealand and New Caledonia are among the largest portions above water, not isolated pieces floating independently in oceanic crust.
The argument was not that scientists had discovered a new landmass in 2017. Ships, satellites and coastal nations already knew the ridges and plateaus were there. The advance was classification. As the team’s research institute explained at the time, decades of geological and geophysical evidence supported treating those features as one 4.9-million-square-kilometre continent rather than a loose collection of submerged fragments.
Lots more at the link.
Here's an interesting (in my opinion, at least) video about Zealandia
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Have you decided on your preferred disposition for your remains after you are gone? How about rotting in some dirt for a while near Baltimore?
The funeral provider Earth has opened the East Coast's first composting facility.
The 37,000-square-foot facility, which has spaces to educate families and a private room to say goodbye, purports to be the largest of its kind in the world. The vessel room, where the soil transformation process is undergone, consists of 15,000 square feet and has the capacity for 126 vessels, cofounder and CEO Tom Harries told 7News.
“We’re accelerating the process through science and technology," Harries explained. "Completely natural. No chemicals, no insects.”
The entire process takes about 30 days, producing an average of 250 to 300 pounds of nutrient-rich soil, according to Harries. Families can choose how much soil they'd like to keep and have Earth donate the rest to conservation projects.
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More than a dozen states, including Maryland, have legalized human composting.
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Buermeyer said he feels cemeteries become wasted land after several generations, when people are less likely to visit their relatives buried there.
"For a couple of generations, you might go back and honor them with flowers or something like that, but two or three generations away? It's a whole different mindset that factored into my thinking," he explained.
What say you, Hordelings? You cool with the idea of being composted? I say whatever is most cost effective for my loved ones once I'm gone!
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'Ette Couture (Courtesy of Piper)
It's that time of the week - when we turn the ONT over to our good friend Piper for a bit. Here's this week's fashion pr0n.
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From Battlefield to Red Carpet: The Surprising History of High Heels
High heels are one of fashion’s most enduring icons. Today they’re synonymous with femininity, power dressing, and red-carpet glamour. But their origins are far more practical (and masculine) than most people realize. Here’s the full story of how a tool of war became a symbol of status, sexuality, and style.
Practical Beginnings: Persian Cavalry (10th Century Onward)
The high heel wasn’t invented for fashion. Shoe historians, including Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum, trace the earliest heels to Western Asia, particularly Persia (modern-day Iran) as early as the 10th century. Mounted archers wore heeled boots to lock their feet securely into stirrups. This gave them stability to stand and shoot arrows while riding at speed.85
These were functional tools of warfare and horsemanship, not decorative accessories and remain so today.
Crossing into Europe: Status Symbol for Men (Late 16th–17th Century)
Heels arrived in Europe around the turn of the 17th century through diplomatic and trade contacts with Persia. Shah Abbas I sent missions seeking alliances against the Ottomans, and European aristocrats were captivated by the exotic, masculine Persian style.
What began as practical riding footwear quickly became a pure status symbol. Only those who didn’t perform manual labor could afford the impracticality of elevated shoes. Heels grew higher as a way for the elite to distinguish themselves.
No one embodied this better than France’s Louis XIV (the Sun King). Standing around 5’4”–5’5”, he favored red-heeled shoes (often 4 inches or more) as a mark of royal privilege. Red dye was expensive, to boot (see what I did there?). Louis restricted red heels to the king and favored courtiers, an early form of fashion as social control.
Platform Interlude: Venetian Chopines
While true heels were rising in northern Europe, Venetian women (especially courtesans and the wealthy) wore extreme platform shoes called chopines. These could reach extraordinary heights, sometimes over a foot, to keep skirts out of muddy streets and signal status. They were more stilts than heels, but they show the long European fascination with elevated footwear.
The Gender Shift and Decline (18th–Early 19th Century)
By the early 18th century, Enlightenment ideals and changing ideas of masculinity pushed heels out of men’s fashion. They came to be seen as frivolous and feminine. After the French Revolution, anything associated with aristocratic excess (including high heels) fell sharply out of favor.
Heels largely disappeared from both men’s and women’s wardrobes for a time, replaced by more practical low-heeled or flat styles.
Revival and the Birth of the Modern Heel (Mid-19th to Mid-20th Century)
Heels returned for women in the mid-to-late 19th century with the rise of more fitted, feminine silhouettes. By the early 20th century they were firmly established in women’s fashion seen on flappers, movie stars, and everyday wearers in varying heights and shapes (T-straps, Mary Janes, etc.).
The true game-changer arrived in the 1950s: the stiletto. New materials technology (a thin but strong metal shank or rod inside the heel) made extremely high, narrow heels possible without breaking. Designers including Salvatore Ferragamo, Roger Vivier (often credited with refining the “aiguille” or needle heel for Christian Dior), and André Perugia all contributed to its development and popularization.
Named after the Italian dagger, the stiletto transformed the silhouette of the foot and the way women walked. Hollywood icons like Marilyn Monroe helped cement its sexy, glamorous image.
20th Century and Beyond: Cycles of Height and Meaning
Heels have risen and fallen with fashion ever since:
• 1960s–70s: Platforms and chunkier styles mixed with the classic stiletto for both men and women
• 1980s: Power-dressing spike heels.
• 1990s–2000s: Everything from kitten heels to sky-high versions popularized by designers like Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin (whose red soles echo Louis XIV’s signature).
• Today: Heels remain a red-carpet staple and personal style statement, even as comfort-focused alternatives (sneakers, flats, chunky soles) dominate everyday wear.
Why Heels Endure
From Persian battlefields to Versailles, Hollywood, and modern runways, high heels have always been about more than height. They signal status, reshape the body, convey power or allure, and reflect the cultural values of their time. What began as a practical tool for warriors became one of fashion’s most potent (and debated) symbols.
The next time you slip on a pair or simply admire them from afar, remember: you’re participating in a story that stretches back more than a thousand years.
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Thanks, Piper!
The rest of you - Don't forget to check out Piper's X page.
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DJ Doof - King and Queen Edition
From thisdayinmusic.com
Today marks the anniversaries of the deaths of The King (of Rock and Roll) and The Queen (of Soul).
On this date in 1977 - Elvis Presley was found dead lying on the floor in his bathroom by his girlfriend Ginger Alden, he had been seated on the toilet reading 'The Scientific Search For Jesus'. He died of heart failure at the age of 42.
On this date in 2018 - American singer and songwriter Aretha Franklin died in Detroit at the age of 76. Known as ‘The Queen of Soul’ and one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide was diagnosed with cancer in 2010.
They both had some acting credits too
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Tonight's ONT brought to you by improvisation
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Doof Enterprises, LLC thanks you for your continued willingness to accept our barely acceptable offerings. You are sufficiently whelmed, right??
Your feedback may or may not be very important to Doof Enterprises. Follow Mr. Doof on X @doof2112 or do the email thing – doof2112 at proton dot me.
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the Third August Edition? Anyone know why this is called the Third August Edition? Care to guess what edition comes next?
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Interested in what you guys think about this - any preferences? How about the gals? How're you carrying?
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Special Fundamentals Bonus
(or fundamentals of not being retarded)
PRO TIP: Have you looked at your concealed weapon permit lately? Don't be the guy who realizes it expired in 2023. Check your permit expiration date today!
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Python v. 686
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Sako Rifles
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Colt Agent Disassembly
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Damnit!
Mo' pimp guns
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Restoration Fever
What, if anything, might you have done differently?
Well, this cigar is appropriately named. It was a revelation.
A fine feel with a solid wrap and easy to hold. It lit well with an even ash and smokey result.
And boring.
Every once in awhile you find a cigar the looks good, feels good, and smokes good, and it just doesn't do anything for you. This was such a cigar. Everything went well but after ten minutes of trying to find something worthwhile about it, I gave up. No real aroma, no real taste, nothing. Zip. Nada. Consequently, I focused on the scotch (14 year Glen Morangie) and watching the eagle soaring over the neighborhood.
I rate this cigar just one step above anything labeled as "sweet." And at $8.00, definitely overpriced.
Sigh
Excellent, Diogenes! Thank you!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: Ripe Tomatoes, Dust Safety, And Chewy Meringues!
—CBD
Ah...it's that time of the year, when tomatoes are mature and ripe and very, very, tasty! I can't think of many other foods with such a short-lived window of opportunity. Asparagus is one, and I guess there are some fruits that ripen in a three week window, but frankly I don't care much about fruit, and I never have!
But tomatoes? Yeah, I do care about them, although there is a small voice in the back of my mind that is telling me that lovely ripe tomatoes are merely a vehicle for fresh mozzarella, good olive oil, a dash of Balsamic vinegar, and a few snips of fresh basil!
What about you? Do you believe, as all right-thinking people do, that tomatoes are best served with mozzarella still warm from the water bath? Or do you serve them in some weird way. like on Skyline Chili dipped in Canadian Whiskey?
What to do with the six egg whites left over from the six egg yolks I used in the coffee ice cream? Remember...I am a cheap bastard, so tossing them was never an option.
So meringues it was! Except I was lazy and didn't want to pipe them, so I just heaped them onto a single sheet pan. Yup! Those are big ones! And tasty, though soft in the middle, which is an interesting twist on the classic crunchy meringue. But fun, and once I figure out what to do with them besides eat them plain, I'll make some more gargantuan ones! The chewy middle was quite pleasing!
******
I am a big fan of minimalist, simple cooking. Recipes do not have to be complicated, with endless steps and dozens of utensils and dishes to be delicious.
But... there are some shortcuts that decrease the overall quality of the dish. Here is a good example, and I am not picking on "The Spruce Eats," because it is one of the better and less fussy cooking sites out there.
Chicken Parmesan can be a fantastic dish if the chicken is crispy and the sauce is delicious and the mozzarella is fresh and just melted without being desiccated. But that requires a lot of work and several steps.
This version, Easy Chicken Parmesan, is easy! And tasty, but it is a far cry from the one that requires a lot more work. Have I made something like this? Of course I have. Sometimes cooking is simply a vehicle to get the meal on the table in the quickest way possible, and that is perfectly okay, and in fact is probably the default for most people.
But if you have the time and the inclination, give some of those great recipes a try...
******
The folks at Fallow are classically trained chefs with imaginations and senses of humor. That makes for good videos, and more important... good food! I have eaten at one of their restaurants a couple of times and was very pleased. They are not inexpensive, but I think we got good value.
Anyway, they love bacon! The Best Way To Cook Bacon is a meandering trip through lots and lots of different techniques, and some surprising results. It's worth a watch.
******
Why yes, that is a slice of mozzarella with a chunk of fried chicken skin on top. And don't you dare scoff! it was delicious!
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This is the coffee ice cream with chopped heath bars that I mentioned in the FWP thread. It was excellent, especially considering I haven't made ice cream in many years. I should have chilled the custard down almost to freezing before I put it into the machine, because it wasn't quite as creamy as I wanted. The longer it takes to freeze, the larger the ice crystals are, and that is the enemy of creaminess. But next time I will be better prepared! And there will definitely be a next time, because it was fun as well as tasty!
I might have to recertify for my Dust Safety Certificate soon!
******
The great garlic experiment of 2025-2026 was a resounding...meh. Send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
About the Bourbon Bubble...I think it has burst, but the category is also suffering from the inflation that affected everything else (Thanks Biden!). I think the sweet spot is still $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.
The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!
I went to the closest supermarket to buy a few things...milk, cream, bananas (don't ask, but I think they are disgusting), and Heath bars for Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream that I want to make.
Never mind that I last bought a Heath Bar in 1979. THAT'S NOT THE POINT!
On The One Hand, Iran's Economy Is imploding...On The Other Hand, The Mullahs And IRGC Are Willing To Suffer A Lot! We Need More Hands!
—CBD
Every second that goes by weakens the Iranian attempts to control the Strait of Hormuz. There are multiple projects underway to create the infrastructure to bypass the chokepoint of Hormuz, and not just pipelines that bypass it. Shale oil, fracking, horizontal drilling, vast improvements in techniques to maximize production in existing wells, reopening huge oil fields like in the North Sea, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and the Trump administration push to make America an energy exporter have all contributed to the decrease in the importance of Hormuz, and Iran's power over the world oil economy.
Guyana is becoming a serious producer, Venezuela's oil industry slide into unimportance has been stopped, even Canada is quietly producing for their customers in the Pacific.
But...the Mullahs and the IRGC are willing to cause massive damage to the people and the economy of Iran to further their geopolitical goal of a religious armageddon. They will not surrender, and they will not relieve the pressure on the people...they simply don't care. Their goal is simple...survive to continue their quest for the destruction of Israel, America, and the West.
But...their blockade, incomplete as it may be, is cementing their position as the enemy of the Gulf states, and it will have far-reaching consequences both diplomatically and economically for years to come. The massive American and Israeli military response to Iran has destroyed most of the military industrial capacity, has destroyed most of their missile stocks and anti-aircraft capability, and has killed a huge number of their senior leadership, which has created a massive power struggle across the Mullahcracy and the IRGC.
But...American resolve has an expiration date. The United States is not in the business of colonialism, and when we tried it, we failed miserably, so "fixing" Iran is not and hopefully will not be a part of our geopolitical goals. The Mullahs and the IRGC believe that simply waiting us out will be a win.
But...economic pressure, coupled with a Western naval presence in the Strait of Hormuz will gradually erode the ability of the Mullahs and the IRGC to control the Iranian people and to project power through their terrorist proxies. It will also take Iran and Hormuz off the front page, since economic warfare and boring escorting of commercial vessels is far less interesting for the hysterical media.
But...President Trump is fanatical about the appearance of a deal, and perhaps he will settle for a public deal that sounds good but has no substance.
But...it is entirely possible that Iran is on the brink. They do not have the foreign exchange to purchase enough gasoline to run their economy, their central planning has been destroyed, the death of Khamenei Senior has left a huge hole in the message being conveyed to the faithful. The Mullahcracy might just wither away.
But...The IRGC is dug in like ticks, and getting rid of them will be a massive undertaking. Even if the Mullahs fade into nothing, the IRGC will be a danger, at least until they become a priority target of the American armed forces. Or even better: the Persian people!
See my point? The perspective on the Iranian situation is complex, and there are rational arguments to be made from most sane sides.
One reason stands out...we are dealing with a mindset that is completely foreign to Western culture. There is no risk/benefit calculation being made in Tehran. There is no sensitivity to civilian casualties. There is no sense of honor or respect during "negotiations." There is no cultural imperative for truth. There is one goal, and the means justifies the end to an extent that most westerners cannot comprehend.
That of course supports one clear strategy...the total destruction of the Mullahs and the IRGC. Whether that happens economically or militarily remains to be seen, but there will be no end to the Iranian Problem until that occurs!
Sunday Morning Book Thread 8-16-2026 [Sabrina Chase]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to the Book Thread, Guest Poster edition! I will be your host as we explore all sorts of book-related topics. All usual Book Thread rules are incorporated by reference (pets, beverage, clothing covering the lower limbs, etc.) with the special Sabrina Chase exemption for those stylish persons preferring kilts. Now let us proceed to today's topic, which is ...
Genre, meaning a category of style or content, is a useful label for fiction. In that context it usually refers to categories like mystery or romance. It has an unfortunate reputation in Literary Circles, where "genre fiction" is dismissed as poorly written schlock, with unrealistic settings (like rocket ships and quaint English villages beset by multiple murders every month). Not like literary fiction, which features yard-long paragraphs and characters such as middle-aged literature professors getting seduced by licentious co-eds. Don't laugh, it could happen! Someday ...
No, the real issue is genre fiction is enjoyed by the masses. A lot. And you don't need a degree in Fine Arts to enjoy it either. Now it is true that the quality can be ... uneven. Some of that is due to the need for LOTS of genre fiction. Writing at what is sometimes called "pulp speed" can create content that is a little rough around the edges. Romance writers are amazing at writing a lot, fast. They have to be, because romance *readers* go through multiple books per WEEK and are always looking for more. Their writing discipline is scary and their marketing chops...well, lets just say all the other genre writers try to imitate it, because romance writers know what works and what doesn't. And boy do they sell a lot of books!
Genre is a shorthand signal for setting reader expectations and makes it easier for you to find just the type of fiction you want to read, giving a hint of the contents without giving the entire plot. It's like the label on a box of cookies. We all know the horror of mistaking an oatmeal raisin cookie for a chocolate chip one! If your mouth is set for oatmeal raisin, the label should say so and then you can enjoy your cookie in peace.
It is the same way with fiction and genre. If you want existential dread, cthonic horror, and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, a regency romance will not make you happy. Genre is just a label, and does not indicate quality, good or bad. And as we at the Book Thread know, happiness of the reader is the most important thing!
The Sabrina Chase Genre Identification Guide (what readers want)
Romance: the plot focuses on the characters' relationship(s) and feelings Western: the main character holds true to their code of honor, even at great personal cost Horror: the plot isn't as important as giving the reader adrenaline spikes of fear. Science Fiction: plot centers around solving the inciting problem using logic and internally consistent rules. (One rule can be broken from our world, like FTL, but rarely more than that.) Fantasy: Magic is often a part of the world but not always. the main character is tested and proven after adventure. YA: Plot and character development focuses on things kids ages 10-16 find important (finding friends, finding Mom, surviving school). Usually, but not always, has less profanity and gratuitous sex and adults sometimes read YA if they want to avoid that stuff.
Each of those has sub-genres, like Regency romance, steampunk fantasy, space opera, and more are getting invented every day, like isekai and LitRPG. In addition, you can have sub-plots of a different genre lurking in the shadows! I write science fiction and fantasy with an emphasis on action and adventure, but there is usually a romantic sub-plot in my books. BUT! I do NOT write romance!
This actually got me in big trouble once. A very nice book reviewer read and enjoyed my science fiction series and posted a glowing review on her site. Unfortunately, she specialized in romance. Her readers were looking for romance. They read her review and bought my book, and HATED it so much they returned it! So I am looking at my Amazon dashboard seeing all the returns and wondering if I forgot to run spellcheck or something. I was quite mystified until I found that review.
Your weekly reminder that it is the 21st century, and not everything is poop-flavoured ice cream.
In a truly 21st century maneuver, one of the companies on the list announced plans to merge with a group owned by the sitting US president last December in a $6 billion deal.
President Trump rewrote former President Biden's original grant of $10 billion to Intel - which had strings attached that the company couldn't meet - into $10 billion in non-voting stock, netting the public a neat $50 billion paper profit.
I'm old enough to remember Compaq's acquisition of Digital being a big deal (I'm old enough to remember Compaq and Digital, for that matter). That was valued at around $9 billion.
Oracle's valuation skyrocket through massive deals for AI datacenter operations, and then people started to run the numbers through their abaci and raise questions.
Specifically referring to a diverging industry with a booming commercial computing market and a consumer market that has had its throat slit and its entrails torn out and been left to die alone in the snow while the wolves gather in the distance.
Well, that's a little unkind. It's not Intel that killed the consumer market, and they are offering us five year old technology in exchange for our magic beans.
Not surprisingly, Grok has the least distinct left-wing bias, but the difference isn't as large as you might hope.
The writers tested for both left-wing and right-wing bias across a sample of a hundred multiple-choice questions, and also for citations of web pages that don't exist. Hallucinated links were a major issue even when the AI models got the answer right.
Oh, and don't trust ChatGPT or Gemini for anything that touches on present-day politics, but I'm sure you already knew that.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: The secret is to adjust the strength of the weak nuclear force, guys. I don't know, apathetic bloody universe, I've no sympathy at all.
Three nuns were driving through rural Texas to a church fundraiser when their old minivan sputtered, coughed, and died.
"Out of gas," sighed the oldest nun.
Luckily, a farmhouse stood just down the road. The farmer felt terrible but, after searching his barn, said, "Ladies, I'd gladly loan you a gas can, but the only thing I have that'll hold gasoline is this old bedpan."
The nuns looked at each other. Not ideal, but desperate times. They filled the bedpan with gas, carried it back to the van, and carefully poured it into the tank. Just then a pickup pulled up beside them.
The driver stared in silence. He took off his baseball cap, placed it over his heart, shook his head in amazement, and said, "Sisters, I've been an atheist my whole life, but if that van starts, I'm going to church with you."
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Heather and Marie are old friends. They have both been married to their husbands for a long time. Marie is upset because she thinks her husband doesn't find her attractive anymore.
"As I get older, he doesn't bother to look at me!" Marie cries.
"I'm so sorry for you. As I get older, my husband says I get more beautiful every day," replies Heather.
"Yes," Marie said, "but your husband is an antique dealer!"
*****
Drink of the Night
Jägerbomb
Ingredients:
1/2 (8.3 ounce) can citrus flavored energy drink (e.g. Red Bull)
1 (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger Jägermeister liqueur
Instructions:
Gather all ingredients.
Pour energy drink into a pint glass.
Pour Jägermeister into a shot glass.
Make a toast and drop the shot into the pint glass.
Drink
The Straw Hat Riot of 1922 was a riot that occurred in New York City at the end of summer as a result of unwritten rules in men's fashions at the time, and a tradition of taunting people who had failed to stop wearing straw hats after autumn began. Originating as a series of minor riots, it spread due to youths choosing to harass men wearing straw hats past the unofficial date that was deemed socially acceptable, September 15. It lasted eight days, leading to many arrests and some injuries.
The riot itself began on September 13, 1922, two days before the supposed unspoken date, when a group of youths decided to get an early jump on the tradition. This group began in the former "Mulberry Bend" area of Manhattan by removing and stomping hats worn by factory workers who were employed in the area. The more innocuous stomping turned into a brawl when the youths tried to stomp a group of dock workers' hats, and the dock workers fought back.
Although the initial brawl was broken up by police, the fights continued to escalate the next evening. Gangs of teenagers prowled the streets wielding large sticks, sometimes with a nail driven through the top for hooking hats, looking for pedestrians wearing straw hats and beating those who resisted.
Fair warning Horde - only a month left to wear your straw hats before Piper shows up to enforce fashion order by force.
*****
Club ONT Department of Irony
Major League Baseball recently held the latest gimmicky "MLB at Field of Dreams" game
Wikipedia:
MLB at Field of Dreams is a recurring Major League Baseball (MLB) regular-season specialty game played in a ballpark adjacent to Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, west of Dubuque, a site popularized by the 1989 baseball film Field of Dreams."
The movie features a ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Wikipedia:
Jackson is often remembered for his association with the Black Sox Scandal in which eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the World Series.
"Fix" - as in lose on purpose to assure gambling winnings for bets against you.
Shoeless Joe was banned from baseball forever even though it is widely believed he never actually tanked during any of the games - but he supposedly knew that the fix was in yet stayed silent about it.
Anyway - the outfield walls at the park featured at least 2 logos for online gambling companies.
What are the odds this was just a stupid oversight? Nah - bet ya it was intentional!
*****
Club ONT Department of In-song Chants
Let's go, fellow 29 year olds -- You know the words!
Only Generation X could get a song banned at dances and school functions. So yes, ban the song if you must. But good luck getting Generation X to stop singing it 😂 We all remember the words pic.twitter.com/6nYgqAtdbl
Saturday Evening Movie Post [moviegique]: Young Washington
—Open Blogger
"Washington! Washington!"
To Internet users of a particular vintage, those two words spoken together immediately trigger a semi-musical rapid hyper-ventilation and a litany of unlikely attributes and accomplishments ascribed to our first President. But The Boy and I kept that to a minimum as we partook of Young Washington on this 250th anniversary of our independence.
This is the latest big effort from Angel Studios, who did The Sound of Freedom, among others, complete with a pitch for you to buy tickets for people to come see the movie.
This is much like Sound of Freedom now that I think about it, with many of the same strengths and flaws. I think it's better overall, and highly enjoyable, yet not quite to the level of the Korean historical dramas we used to be able to see in Koreatown.
Significantly, however, it serves the same purpose. And it earned its $20M budget back at the box office on the first weekend, so it won't be a money loser. For The Boy and I, it increased our hunger for more such material, basically unplumbed since I was a child.
We begin with Washington desperate to find his own men at The Battle of the Monongahela, which they manage to pronounce less silly than I always do ("mun-ON-gah-HEE-la") and which they are losing, until a dysenteric young Washington charges into (against Thomas Gage's advice) to find the Virginia militia.
12 years earlier...
I was on the fence about the flashback. At first I thought, well, this is a start-the-movie-off-with-a-bang thing when I would've appreciated a slow build-up to get to this point. By the end of the movie, I thought they had done a good job with getting back to that point, and the movie was almost a superhero origin story as the socially adventurous Washington tries to climb through the British ranks only to get ahead of his own abilities and to lose the very wealthy girl to the more socially appropriate British noble, culminating in losing valuable men to his stubbornness in a humiliating defeat against the French.
The arc is very good, and very "Korean", if you will. The capable but proud leader finds humility in failure and learns the important thing is serving others. Sorry if that's trite: That's the way it plays out in the history books and it's a good lesson for everyone.
To be great, you have to faceplant.
William Farnklin-Meyer does a good job in the lead. He's handsome and believable, both in proud and petulant moments. Mia Rogers as love-interest Sally is beautiful and...uh...heaving...and is very convincing as the woman who loved Washington but gave him up for the more socially correct choice. They're both actually English, too, which is sort of amusing.
The big names in the cast are Kelsey Grammar, Andy Serkis and Ben Kingsley, all with small but meaty roles. Oh, and Mary Louise-Parker does an excellent job as Ma Washington. Great casting choice.
Good acting all around, in other words, which helps tremendously. It's also well edited. The sound—I thought some of the dialogue wasn't as crisp as it should've been, but otherwise it was quite good. Good use of score.
The action is pretty good. It's Hollywood-ified, but if I'm not going to ding a Korean movie for that (and I never have), I'm certainly not going to ding an American one for it. The pacing is occasionally odd, reminding me a bit of Sound of Freedom.
Storytelling like this is a muscle, and in America it's a muscle that's been underused since the Bicentennial.
Having Sally Fairfax be a knockout makes George seem less like a social adventurer. (Jaclyn Smith played her in the 1984 "Washington" miniseries.)
On a technical level The Boy felt the portrayal of the battle scenes wasn't spot on. He didn't hold it against the movie much but he's jonesing for a movie that understands Linear warfare. Me hearing Bach and Petzold* at a 1755 English ball rankled me.
The Rotten Tomatoes split on this is predictable: 92% for audiences, 60% for America-hating critics, and for all the expected nonsense reasons. It's no Braveheart and not even The Patriot, but those movies were even more brutal to history than this was. This one very nicely blends true elements with a little modern education and some myth-building. I particularly enjoyed Washington's penchant for hacking away at trees when he was mad, and then having him chip in during the Ohio campaign to hack apart a tree that had stopped Braddock's army.
There is a wide range of juicy historical "Easter eggs" for the America Cinematic Universe, from the easiest ("Oh, you say there's an identity separate from the British here?") to more subtle ones ("Oh, you say Thomas Gage doesn't care about the colonials.") Lots of good classist snobbery (which is probably authentic, and even played down, honestly). Lots of, "Huh, slaves...are going to be a problem eventually, ain't they?" that recall the Nate Bargatze "Washington" sketch.
Good stuff. Recommended if you don't hate America. Even if you're so-so on America, you can have a good time.
I stole this from a story with the caption "Ben Kinglsey says he won't stop acting." Why would he? He's great!
*I just this second learned that Bach's Minuet in G was actually written by Christian Petzold, and this was discovered in the late '70s. News just reached me, some 50 years later.
OTHER MOVIES & THINGS:
I was busy finalizing my cover and glossary for my next book, "Lair of the White Worm" and pickin's were slim, but here's what we saw this past fortnight-and-a-half:
The Fisher King: From Terry Gilliam's golden period ("Time Bandits" to "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas"), Jeff Bridges is a shock-jock (remember how much they hated Rush and blamed him for everything?) whose antics result in Robin Williams' wife being murdered. Williams ventures into hell to get her back. (Wait, no...)
12 Monkeys: Arguably Gilliam's best film (though I still favor "Munchausen"), Bruce Willis is a time-traveler trying to mitigate the apocalypse. Brad Pitt is a crazy man running a pro-animal death cult that may have caused it. Brad Pitt is better at being authentically crazy than Robin Williams was. Plot twist: Pitt achieves this by literally imitating Terry Gilliam.
Network: Massive 1976 Oscar Juggernaut featuring Faye Dunaway as a rapacious network entertainment executive with a vision of corrupting the news to make it profitable. I was struck by how relevant it all felt today. Highlight: Communist revolutionaries arguing over ancillary residuals they'll receive from the TV show based on their terrorist antics.
The Samurai and the Prisoner: Terrific new Japanese historical drama based on a leader whose main problem seems to be an unwillingness to brutally murder the people he's supposed to, which includes children and harmless people. (Or are they?)
Sheep in the Box: Kore-eda's new drama about a couple that replaces their dead son with a robot, and realizes they can't replace their dead son with a robot, and a whole bunch of other things. Interesting but unfocused.
White Nights: Luchino Vischonti's 1957 classic based on a story by Dostoevsky. Filmed at Cinecitta, elements of this Russian drama don't literally work, but it's a gorgeous film with gorgeous Italians in it.
The Rivals of Amziah King: A unique musical/comedy/crime/thriller/drama which is marvellous for the first 45 minutes. Brilliantly edited, heartfelt and good-looking with some fabulous music, it suffers from one unrecoverable issue at the end of the first act which, while absolutely necessary to the plot, dooms the rest of the movie.
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling lucky and decided on a fire truck theme for this Hobby Thread.
A what? A fire truck theme?
[Top photo: 1922 Howe fire truck on a Ford Model T chassis at the former Kokomo, IN Automotive Museum, photo credit David D Jackson]
Fire trucks are fun. How many kids looked up to firefighters and visited the local firehouse? How many kids had firetrucks as toys?
How many firetrucks have made their way down parade routes with lights and horns?
Firetrucks and fire fighting apparatus and memorabilia are popular with many people, including many that were never firefighters.
Firetrucks can qualify as a hobby. Anything firefighting qualifies. Any among the horde own a firetruck or have a friend that does? Anyone have an antique fire truck? Has any among the horde served as a firefighter? Does anyone collect firefighting equipment or memorabilia? Anyone visited a museum with a firefighting theme?
If you're an amateur pyromaniac or arson is your hobby, better to keep that to yourself.
***
What are you hobbying?
Fire trucks may not be everyone's favorite but give the content a chance before you judge. Any adjacent hobbying is in scope (such as small scale collecting or model building), so jump in with your interests, stories and questions.
In any event, the thread is not limited to to the theme. Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. Even if the theme does not speak to you, you might learn something or be entertained. If not, offer something else relating to hobbying. If all of that fails, just check in and say hello.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants? Nope. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
SPAAMFAA was established in Syracuse New York in 1958. Over 1800 members are part of fifty local chapters, primarily in the US and Canada. You don't need to own a fire truck or other antique fire apparatus, but it doesn't hurt. Some members focus on photography or collecting books, patches, toys and models and other fire fighting memorabilia.
Are you aware of other similar groups?
***
Want to buy a firetruck of your own? Fire departments periodically sell their old trucks. This guy bought an operating fire truck in Kansas for $3,000 from a facebook post. What a deal! (Really - three grand seems like a steal, even with pricey replacement parts.)
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How to make a fire truck
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People in Poland party with their fire trucks!
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This looks like fun
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Wow. Restoring or keeping old fire engines running is a labor of love.
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I love this. Restoring an old metal toy firetruck:
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Mythbusters tackle firehose power:
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Apparently some people collect fire extinguishers. Sure, why not?
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Horde Hobbying - Moron Beckoning Chasm has been busy with animation:
Maybe BC will add context or background on his project in the comments. I think he'll appear if you say his name three times.
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I do not have the patience, skill or talent to do this:
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"Why would I watch a 30 plus minute video on cymbal making? Because it is incredibly cool."
Related:
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a random car theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Notable comments from last week:
***
Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
***
Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.
Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.
But I think someone left another cat in our yard last night.
HISTORY
For International Cat Day I have cleaned-up for you this wonderful Autochrome plate by Arnold Genthe. It is entitled "Miss Anna Holch with the cat Buzzer" which was taken in colour 116 years ago using an early colour glass-plate process. It isn't colourised. pic.twitter.com/paJ52sFAlv
At the San Diego Zoo, an otter family stole the spotlight in the most adorable way, turning a simple visit into a viral sensation.
While visitors watched in delight, a proud mother otter carried her tiny newborn pup right up to the glass for everyone to see. Moments later, the… pic.twitter.com/otBzXAAmkT
Our home-bred and born George (Soyara's Dragon King), with his New Jersey dad, Ron. Clearly he's enjoying the good life, even if he is in the Garden State. I sent a message to Ron saying he should be called King George because he's living like one.
Hadrian the Seventh
George is a handsome boy. I think Ron will be a great Dad for him.
* * *
here is my friend's newest addition to the family - Friskers! He's. . . um, excitable.
Boswell
Best wishes to your friend and Friskers! Looks like an interesting new friend!
* * *
Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Podcast: In Wisconsin, the Dems steal an election from themselves, abortion is cheered in Massachusetts, Spain gets what it voted for, the economy is humming, and more!
Selections from H.P. Lovecraft's Brief Tenure as a Whitman's Sampler Copywriter
Chocolate Cherry Cordial
You must not think me mad when I tell you what I found below the thin shell of chocolate used to disguise this bonbon's true face. Yes! Hidden beneath its rich exterior is a hideously moist cherry cordial! What deranged architect could have engineered this non-Euclidean aberration? I dare not speculate.
Caramel Chew
There is a dimension ruled by a blind caramel God-King who sits on a vast, cyclopean milk-chocolate throne while his mindless, gooey followers dance to the piping of crazed flutes. It is said that there are gateways in our world that lead to this caramel hell-planet. The delectable Caramel Chew may be one such portal.
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click I haven't forgotten this one. I play it a couple of times a month. But I bet a lot of you forgot it:
Athletic (boogie down)
Hustle (turn back)
Feel pathetic (sugar town)
No muscle (soul hack)
I'm jumping (you move)
No dancer (beside me)
I'm thumping (you prove)
Don't get no answer
He was their living lawn jockey, period. They won't say that 'cause they're sensitive and down with his struggle and all. He was there to appease and flatter their sense of being uplifters of the oppressed. In truth, he served as their living lawn jockey -- no more, no less, and unworthy of even a second thought on their part. Tokenism, pure and simple.
Podcast: More Iran bluster from Trump? Enough! Deportations hit a record, and that is a good thing for all, Todd Blanche's nomination is out of committee, the DSA is on the march, and more!
The Short Unhappy Life of a Russian Soldier: Why recruits die in 20-30 minutes Interesting video. Some key parts: drones were responsible for 70-80% of all battlefield deaths in mid-2025, and I bet it's higher now. The Russian army is incredibly corrupt. Men get assigned to the most dangerous frontline units, the "Storm" units, unless they pay a superior $2,000 to be assigned to a different unit. Furthermore, there is often no real training for recruits -- commanders pocket the money that would have gone towards fuel and ammo costs incurred during training. Much "training" consists just of taking a single picture of soldiers doing something soldier-y, like fording a river, and publishing that as proof that the training was done. Even when it is done, training is only two weeks long.
Podcast: CBD and Sefton discuss the Berlin attack, Iran...Again! Sefton's mini Odyssey review, Data Republican's blockbuster reveal about the DNC, and more!
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click She's totally committed to major independence
She's a lady through and through
She gives them quite a battle, all that they can handle
She'll bruise some, she'll hurt some too
Podcast: Illegals registered and voted in NJ! Leftist violence is baked into the Democrat cake, Iran's capabilities are being degraded, Londonistan? And...come on SC...no senate dynasties!
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