Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
Doof: doof2112 at proton.me
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
I picked up some absolutely spectacular fresh thyme from a local market. Fresh, aromatic....just lovely. It's for the dish below the fold, but now I have a lot of a really nice herb and I do not want to waste it.
Yes, I am a cheap bastard, but it also seems like a shame to discard such wonderful ingredients!
Any suggestions? Thyme Stroganoff? Thyme Soup? Sous Vide Thyme with Maple Syrup?
Well, well, well! Reverse (sort of) Sear works great on chicken!
I ordered a fancy chicken from an excellent place in NY called Hudson Valley Farms, which is justifiably famous for its high quality foie gras (fattened duck liver). They have branched out to chicken, so I figured it might be better than my local poultry farm.
But why make a simple roast chicken if I can think of a way to make it more complicated! So I tried a technique that works very well on beef and pork. Reverse Sear is easy with relatively thin cuts of meat, but becomes more of a timing and temperature issue with larger cuts. And a whole chicken is definitely a larger cut!
My first step was to salt it liberally and put it in the refrigerator for several hours.The plan was to let it air dry a bit, and that seemed to work, although I did dry it off before putting it in the oven. Then I stuffed it with a bit of lemon, onion, and a handful of thyme before trussing it I put it on a rack at 275 degrees for a very long time...more than two hours! Then I took it out while the oven heated to 475 degrees, although in retrospect I could have gone even hotter.
I cooked those vegetables in the cast-iron pan while the chicken was in the oven for the low-temperature cook. I figured they would get mushy if I cooked them for so long, even at a low temperature.
Just before I put the chicken in the hot oven I poured a mixture of melted butter an a bit of olive oil over the skin, because fancier cooks than I have used that technique to crisp the skin even more.
That was after about 15 minutes, and for a first attempt? I am very, very pleased. The chicken was perfectly cooked and delicious!
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Lurker "LF" sent these photos along to destroy my garlic confidence just in case it wasn't in the toilet already. You might remember him for the photos of garlic shoots he sent along.
You garlic people are insufferable!
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I'm sorry, but this sounds pretty f*cking awful.
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Weekday lunch! simple dough, simple sauce, deli pepperoni (it's under the cheese), and leftover mozzarella from the last tomatoes of the season.
Is it perfectly round? No. Was it mighty tasty? Yes!
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My Wife Likes To Keep Dog Food Beside Coffee Beans.
Guess What I Did At 5:30 Am This Morning.
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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!
That wonderful photograph is of the bottom of a loose tea tin. Never mind that the tins were designed to stack nicely, at the expense of getting at the last bit of tea. And yes, there is a lip at the top that corresponds to the indentation at the bottom, so the last bit of tea CANNOT. BE. POURED.
It exposes a larger problem...the tea leaf dust that is created by the bumping and banging of the tins during filling, packaging, shipping, sale, and use!
Obviously the solution is to pack the leaves in single layers on some sort of soft medium so that they are cushioned. But Big Tea has no interest in preserving the customer experience, and would rather sell the maximum amount of tea, even in the form of dust!
The Nobel Peace Prize Is Neither Noble Nor Supportive Of Peace!
—CBD
Navi Pillay just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and for those of you who are thinking..."Who," (I'm one of them) you would be entirely correct. She is an apparatchik in the international justice racket, first serving as a judge in South Africa..a well-known bastion of the rule of law! She then moved on to the UN, the International Criminal Court, and the International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda.
These are just some of the organizations across the world that are linked by a common motivation...vast virtue signalling while doing almost nothing to combat the evils of the world. And they are committed post-modern adherents to the concept that the 3rd World can do no wrong, while the West is the root of all evil! Remember, the parent organization of the "Peace" Industry is the United Nations!
the UN's 54-nation Economic and Social Council nominated the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN's Committee for Program and Coordination, which meets next month to shape policy on women's rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention.
Iran most recently murdered between 50,000 and 100,000 protestors, uses rape as a theological weapon, and is the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism. Which makes them adored by the United Nations!
Back to Navi Pillay. She is a typical anti-Western 3rd Worlder who is conspicuously silent when it comes to the real evil in the world. Remember the massacre at Charlie Hebdo? Yeah, she blamed them for their own murders, but conveniently described them as "protests." And when Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoons and a car bomb struck the Danish Embassy in Pakistan, she recommended censoring them rather than defending freedom of speech.
Her record is depressingly consistent, and it is focused not on freedom, but on her 3rd World sensibility of Western responsibility for the ills of the world.
And the Nobel Committee gobbles up that sort of crap! Have there been deserving winners? Sure, but just glance at the list of winners and it is obvious that it is usually hyper-political, self-serving, anti-Western, and also impossibly silly.
Maybe Next Year They'll Give the Chemistry Prize to a Hamas Bomb Maker
-- Garry Kasparov
To be fair to the other Nobel Prize winners, the peace prize is decided by an entirely different organization called the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is a five-member committee chosen by the Norwegian parliament, and whose decisions are final and do not go before the larger assembly.
But that comment illuminates the problem inherent in the commercialization and politicization of the peace process. The world spends billions of dollars each year on hundreds of international committees and organizations (including the UN) that do very little other than enrich many thousands of otherwise useless people who have spent their lives within that bubble. Elite University to small NGO to larger NGO to government service to mega-NGO...complete with private jets and great restaurants and luxury hotels in every city. And on the way they lecture the West about how evil we are and how we should spend more money helping the developing world, while siphoning off most of that money for their own.
All of those organizations, and the prizes they give to their friends and colleagues and fellow NGOs are a boondoggle that pisses away money that could be spent on more productive things, or even better, not spent at all, so the taxpayers of the West who fund these things can keep a little bit more of their money.
Sunday Morning Book Thread 10-11-2026 [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 ...
What books stuck in your head and made you the Reading Moron you are today? Even the ones that puzzle you still, or you know are the literary equivalent of a gas station hotdog. We do not judge here at the Book Thread! Not about reading, anyway. Fun books! Books that started you on the great adventure known as "the pictures are in your HEAD!" Books you read under the blankets with a flashlight and thought your parents didn't know about!
I was fortunate to grow up in a very literate home, surrounded by books. Many of which puzzled me greatly in my youth! But these are the ones I remember still with great fondness, and I often gift them to younger generations when I have the opportunity.
- Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book I was fascinated by the devices and it probably led me into the twisty passages of experimental physics in the end. Also profoundly silly, a life philosophy that has guided me well.
- Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag "Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats!" But he can only pick one ...
- The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet I'm not saying I encourage children to get into spaceships powered by odd neighbors without parental supervision, but it is a great book and has a chicken doing noble deeds. And the importance of sulfur.
- Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare Boy was it a shock when I got to the unexpurgated versions, let me tell you. Some of them are barely recognizable in the cleaned-up version. A Winter's Tale is almost reduced to a paragraph.
- Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld. my first introduction to the concept that people really did think differently in ancient times, but it was believable and fun. Scary in some parts, like the concept that you could actually get killed for sacrilegious graffiti.
- The Girl from Johnnycake Hill by Virginia Frances Voight. American history and early colonial culture. And the unwisdom of pet bears.
- Mr. Revere and I by Robert Lawson. more fun American history, from the point of view of Paul Revere's horse.
- Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Responsible for me thinking for many, many years that wine corks grew on trees like bunches of grapes. I knew corks came from trees, see! And Lawson's illustrations made it very convincing.
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. More profound silliness with words, numbers, and a bored little boy. SO MANY PUNS.
- The Cricket in Times Square by George Delden My introduction to the concept of crickets as pets, a street-smart mouse, and a genial cat.
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Secret hideouts the grownups don't know about are the very best hideouts.
They will be replaced - allegedly - by a 5080 model upgrade to 24GB of RAM, delivering about half the performance. The current 16GB 5080 will also cease to be.
Interesting but not startling comparison, unless you were somehow expecting Windows 11 to take the win, in which case you may well be startled.
My emulated fantasy 10-bit 80s home computer has two synthesizers: A wavetable synthesizer (something rare in home computers of any period but the Apple IIgs from 1986 has this), and a simpler fixed-function digital synthesizer based on a limited set of waveforms, easier to implement but needing multiple voices to work together to produce appropriate harmonics that a wavetable synth generates directly.
That second synthesizer sucked yesterday; as of today with tuning against real instrument samples it's sounding like a Yamaha synthesizer that doesn't have an insect in its power supply but in some cases needs one. Cymbals last I checked still sounded like gongs, resonating freely when struck. Gongs also sounded like gongs, which in that case is good.
Saturday Night Club ONT - October 10, 2026 [Disco & Dino]
—Open Blogger
Pensacola Beach, on the eve of Hurricane Isaias
Welcome to Club ONT - a whelming collaboration of The Disco and The Dino.
Open thread - bar is open, too. Come in in, grab a drink or 2. Or 3. Keep it light and friendly. Have no fear. The Moose out front has not evacuated in light of the hurricane. He remains on duty.
I had to go to the hospital overnight to have some tests done. As I was settling into my bed, my "roommate" was ordering breakfast from the cafeteria"
"First I would like some scrambled eggs. I like them really runny. Like cook them for about 7 seconds and be sure to include at least one whole eggshell"
"Second I would like coffee, served black and cold. Not iced, just cold coffee that has been sitting around for a day or two"
"Now this third request will sound strange. I would like a glass of orange juice in a used urine specimen cup. The slight taste of urine settles my stomach"
Suddenly I heard a shreik from the phone. The cafeteria worker screamed, "That's just disgusting! We can't do that"
Ingredients
2 oz light rum
2 oz dark rum
2 oz passion fruit juice
1 oz orange juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1 tbsp simple syrup
1 tbsp grenadine
Garnish: Orange Slice and Cherry
Instructions
Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice.
Strain into a hurricane glass then garnish with orange slice and cherry and serve.
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Club ONT Department of Candy Combat
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Club ONT Department of Seasonal Change
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Club ONT Department of Sanitation
Please wash your hands after using the Club ONT Tinkletorium.
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Club ONT Film Department
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Club ONT Department of Awesome Space Stuff
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Club ONT Jukebox
Follow up to Thursday's [BLANK] on the [BLANK] theme. These were Horde suggestions.
From Dark Lixtiquatal
From tankdemon
From mikeski
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Top 10ish Comments of the Week
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Club ONT is brought to you by Florida Man
Let's Go! ���� �� ����
Florida Man spotted yesterday at Fort Walton Beach as hurricane Isaias approaches.
Click on Garrett's newest formal shoes, and you will get an original composition by The Goo Goo Dolls. It's one of their more famous songs, and a solid one at that. I have always liked their sound, but now I am enjoying them for an additional reason.
Here is a quotation from The Goo Goo Dolls' frontman:
I got people, fans, friends from every walk of life, every political stripe, everything. And I always stress, we got one thing in common because we're living in weird times. We got one thing in common, and that's we're all here to see a show, and I'm not going to lecture people about anything.
-- John Rzeznik
Why is this a difficult concept?
I was a Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band fan in my youth. Their first four albums were excellent, and their live performances were absolutely incredible.
But the combination of an increasingly anti-American tone in his music, a shockingly hypocritical public vs. private life, and the incessant pomposity of his political haranguing seemingly at every public appearance has made me despise him.
Caamp doing Vagabond is the sort of stripped down music that I like.
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The Deraillers Pure Fool Is twangy, simple, and fun to listen to! It doesn't take itself very seriously, which in this day and age of pompous asshole entertainers, is a very good thing
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I used to listen to Lyle Lovett a lot, but for some stupid, unfathomable reason he dropped off my play lists. That was a mistake, because he is a fine talent, and one of the few original artists around.
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And now for something a little different!
Most people think of Mozart as a symphonic composer, but the dude could write opera. And for sheer toe-tapping, sing-along tunes, it's tough to beat him.
This is one of his greatest arias from The Magic Flute, called "The Queen Of The Night." If you know any budding sopranos, ask them to sing this for you. It is a great tune, and extremely technically difficult.
Next time I will introduce you to a good drinking song...
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 spooky and decided on a furniture theme for this Hobby Thread.
Furniture can be fun. Do you appreciate interesting and well built furniture? Are you a collector? Do you like antique furniture? Do you like restoring old furniture? Do you haunt garage or estate sales for furniture? Do you watch YouTube videos by furniture makers or restorers?
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What are you hobbying?
The theme may not be your favorite but give it a chance before you judge and bail out. Any adjacent hobbying is in scope, 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.
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Restoring an antique desk:
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Build furniture like an engineer:
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This guy had to be in the content somewhere:
His channel has so many good projects. Tough to pick just one.
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More secret compartments:
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Japanese joinery - next level:
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Hidden compartments in antique furniture:
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Clever concealed home storage solutions:
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Old school hand built automobile body shaping:
Going to be the first of a series, so watch and follow along to see the process and final result.
Forming aluminum panels by bending them around wood bucks was common in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It took a lot of skill to build the wood frame and a different set of skills to hammer the aluminum panels against the wood to create a body panel. The cars are works of art. Few original wood bucks survive, but they're works of art too. Maybe we'll do a deep dive down this rabbit hole in a future thread.
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Nothing to do with wood or furniture, but appropriate for the season:
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Nothing to do with wood or furniture, but this might be interesting to astronomy hobbyists: starfront space
This company caters to the remote astronomer from its location near Brady, Texas. Do you want telescope time in a place with dark skies? You don't have to be located in the same place as your camera. You can rent time on one of their cameras or ship your camera to them and pay a monthly fee and let them point it to the sky. No personal knowledge and not an endorsement but amazing that such a service and business model exists.
The roof slides open and closed to protect and expose the equipment.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a Halloween hobbying theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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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.
Vietnamese artist Thiên Dinh is known for his delicate paper‐art works where he transforms fragile sheet of paper into stunning animal sculptures of fishes, birds and even dragon, which possess stunning sense of realism.
General George Washington and his British adversary General William Howe had at least one thing in common—they both loved their dogs. Numerous interesting and amusing stories about Washington and his dogs have passed down through history but let us save those for another today. The dog in the historical spotlight today is General Howe’s fox terrier Lila.
On October 4, 1777, Lila was with General Howe during the Battle of Germantown but somehow she became disoriented and lost on the battlefield. When the American army retreated that day, Lila followed it, wandering eventually into the camp of General Washington, wearing a collar that identified her as General Howe’s pet.
While some of the American soldiers thought the dog should be kept as a mascot or trophy of war, Washington disagreed, and he promptly dispatched a courier to return Lila to Howe, along with a note that read:
“General Washington’s compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe.”
One of Howe’s officers later recounted that the general was thrilled and relieved to get Lila back. This was “an honorable act of a gentleman,” he said, taking her up immediately and putting her in his lap.
Meet The PetMorons
Good morning, probably too late for the thread today, but this is a combo gardening thread/pet thread photo. These popped up in my yard over the last couple of days, Puffballs I believe. Surprisingly large, they will get bigger, sometimes as big as a volleyball.
Alfred the Great in the foreground.
-Tom Servo
I don't think Alfred the Great wants us to touch the puffballs, Tom. I wonder why the puffballs think that this is a good time of year to puff?
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I understand that the walk and hurricane were successfully negotiated.
Last big walk before the hurricane heads in! https://t.co/Lx9mblECkR
These two are the same flower, start off looking growly and end up looking like granny knitted it.
Eromero
I think I had one of those once. But I never remember a specimen like that first face. Looks like Eromero might be preparing us for Halloween and All Saints Day, maybe. Do you see a face above?
If you can beets, you can use a water bath if they are pickled, but they must be pressure-canned if not pickled.
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Purchased beets are generally uniform in size, and may be easier for By-Tor's recipe:
I gave my buddy Ed some of my prize winning dill and bread and butter pickles. He must like them because he asked for more. Now comes the real test- pickled eggs and beets. I’ve been eating these since I was a child. Love em. But most people won’t try them because they look weird. They are easy to make.
1 can of beets ( sliced or whole, non-pickled)
2 hard boiled peeled eggs
About a cup of vinegar ( regular or ACV)
1/2 cup of water
3/4 cup of sugar.
Bring vinegar, water and sugar to a low boil until sugar dissolves. This is the brine. Adjust it with more sugar or more vinegar to your liking.
Put beets and eggs in a container. Pour brine over until they are covered. Put in fridge. Wait a day. Enjoy. Usually I do two cans of beets and 5 eggs. Then I add more to the brine as I eat them.
I eat these as a side dish to just about everything.
Post morning tennis lunch- lamb gyro with Greek yogurt , salad and pickled eggs and beets.
Hobbes proven right everyday; Rousseau proven wrong everyday
— Jash Dholani | link in bio has my books! (@oldbooksguy) October 10, 2026
Anybody seen this happening?
Gardens of The Horde
A bit of colour in the autumn. I call them 'blacblack eyed susan', my wife has a Latin name. The rose keeps on flowering. unfortunately we have lost the name.
Chris 1051
Thanks for sending in the great fall photos.
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
What was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other societies subject to Western control or influence.
This was possible only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it does not fit the prevailing vision of our time.
A Daily Dose of the American Rev
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“No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
In June 1776, fifteen years before the ratification of the Bill of Rights, Virginia adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights -- "the basis and foundation of government" in Virginia. The importance of this document to the emergence of liberal democracy in the United States and around the world cannot be overstated. George Mason, principal author of the Declaration, died on this day in 1792.
Below is the Declaration in full.
A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government.
Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Section 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.
Section 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
Section 4. None of mankind is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.
Section 5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part, of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.
Section 6. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented for the public good.
Section 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.
Section 8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man has a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty; nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.
Section 9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Section 10. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted.
Section 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred.
Section 12. That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
Section 14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from or independent of the government of Virginia ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.
Section 15. That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
Section 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.
George Mason
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Friends of George Washington
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Duane Montague ·
On October 6, 1776, a Connecticut captain sat down and wrote a letter to his wife. He was exhausted and most of his men were sick. The campaign was not going well.
But the first thing he wanted Priscilla to know was this: “you must not think that Distance & long Absence has weaned in the least degree my Affections from you & my family.”
His name was Jonathan Birge.
Unlike many of the names we remember from 1776, Birge was just an ordinary man who heard the call of liberty and answered. A husband from Bolton, Connecticut, and father of six children, Birge was made captain of a company raised from his neighbors and friends.
When George Washington called for reinforcements in 1776, Birge marched south with Connecticut troops to help defend New York.
The British had already taken Long Island, the Continentals were retreating northward. And nobody knew whether the Revolution itself could survive the year.
From camp at Harlem Heights, Birge wrote home, and the picture he painted was not heroic.
"I never saw a worse place to be sick in for we have not one doctor to our whole Brigade in camp…Our people are some what sickly in camp yet."
The living conditions were miserable. He’d lost his pack in the retreat and asked Priscilla for two blankets. The army had finally obtained tents and straw to sleep on, but Birge admitted: “we fare considerably like hogs.”
And yet he refused to pity himself. After describing sickness, shortages, and hardship, he wrote: “I desire not to complain For I am alive & why should a living man complain."
Birge wanted his wife and children to understand why he remained anyway. It wasn’t money, fame, or glory. “It is not all the commissions or pay...it is for the cause of freedom & love to posterity."
A few paragraphs later, he tried to reassure Priscilla that he was healthy and still performing his duties: “I am the only Cpt in the Regiment that is well."
Three weeks later, he was wounded at the Battle of White Plains. An enemy musket ball went into his shoulder. Jonathan Birge died on November 10, 1776, at age forty-two.
A week after Birge's death, three fellow soldiers wrote to Priscilla to tell her that her husband was gone. They regretted his loss deeply.
On October 6, 1776 a father and husband wrote a simple confession that still stirs hearts, 250 years later. He was just an ordinary American who knew exactly what he was risking “for the cause of freedom…”
Five weeks later, his family learned the price.
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I believe history matters because legacy matters. The choices we make, the faith that sustains us, and the families we leave behind all become part of a story larger than ourselves. If you enjoy discovering the people behind the history, follow along as we explore the stories, struggles, and legacies that helped shape America.
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A Daily Dose of the American Rev
With the resolution for independence about to voted upon in the Congressional Congress, Delaware delegate Thomas McKean was very concerned. Although he strongly favored independence, his fellow Delawarean George Read was opposed. McKean wanted the states to vote for independence unanimously, and he certainly did not want Delaware to have the dishonor (as he saw it) of being the lone holdout. So, on the evening before the crucial vote, McKean dispatched a courier to Dover, 80 miles away, with a crucial message for Caesar Rodney—get to Philadelphia as fast as you can.
Rodney was Delaware’s third delegate, but he was also a brigadier general of the state’s militia and had been forced to return to Delaware to help put down a Loyalist uprising there. He was also in poor health, suffering from asthma and painful facial cancer. But when McKean’s message arrived, Rodney set out for Philadelphia immediately, riding all night through a powerful thunderstorm. After one of the most famous rides in American history, he arrived at what would come to called Independence Hall in the nick of time, “booted and spurred,” exhausted, and mud-covered, to cast the tiebreaking vote in the Delaware delegation. “As I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence,” he declared, a green scarf covering his cancer-ravaged face, “my own judgment concurs with them. I vote for independence.”
Caesar Rodney is best remembered for his famous ride, but he served Delaware and the Patriot cause in numerous ways during his life: as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, as a general in the state’s militia, as a delegate to the Continental Congress, as a state Supreme Court justice, and as President (chief executive) of Delaware. Even as his health deteriorated, forcing him to cover his face with bandages and rendering him unable to travel, Rodney was elected to the Delaware General Assembly and was chosen Speaker of the upper house. Knowing that he was unable leave his home, in a gesture of respect and honor the Assembly voted to convene in his house, which they did in April 1784, just weeks before his death at age 55.
Today is the birthday of Delaware Founding Father Caesar Rodney, who was born 298 years ago today.
*
A Daily Dose of the American Rev
·
In taking up the Patriot cause, at a time when many fellow wealthy South Carolinians were remaining loyal to the crown, Henry Laurens risked both his life and his substantial fortune. Widely respected across America, he was chosen President of the Continental Congress in November 1777, the highest-ranking executive position under the Articles of Confederation.
Laurens was appointed American minister to the Netherlands after his term ended and in August 1780, he was dispatched to Amsterdam about the packet ship Mercury, charged with negotiating a loan to help finance the war effort. Off the coast of Newfoundland, the Mercury was intercepted by the HMS Vestal, a British man of war. When Laurens realized his capture was imminent, he tossed overboard the trunk containing his diplomatic papers.
A sixteen-year-old new recruit aboard the Vestal saw something tumble into the water off the deck of the Mercury. Believing a man had fallen overboard he called out an alarm. Another British sailor aboard the Vestal immediately dived into the water. But what he discovered was not an unfortunate man in need of rescue, but rather Lauren’s trunk, which had not had time to sink. Taken aboard the Vestal and opened, the trunk was found to contain Lauren’s commission to negotiate the Dutch loan, as well as a draft treaty between the United States and the Netherlands. Laurens was carried to England and placed in the Tower of London, charged with high treason, and Great Britain declared war on the Netherlands.
During Lauren’s first day in the Tower, a band outside his cell taunted him with “Yankee Doodle.” Lauren’s later recalled, “The tune played I suppose in derision of me filled my mind with a sublime contempt and rather made me cheerful.”
Laurens remained confined in the Tower for 15 months, refusing numerous offers of release in exchange for renouncing the American cause and requesting a pardon. “Imprisonment and even death…shall not shake me,” Laurens wrote, rejecting one of the offers. “My conscience acquits me, is serene & undisturbed; if I die, let me die in my integrity.”
General Washington sent both Colonel John Laurens (Henry’s son) and the Viscount Noailles (Lafayette’s brother-in-law) to London to attempt to negotiate Laurens’ release, but their efforts were fruitless. Congress offered to exchange General John Burgoyne (who was a paroled prisoner of war captured at Saratoga) for Laurens, but the British refused, saying that Laurens was a prisoner of state not a prisoner of war and therefore ineligible for exchange. But the truth was that the British authorities had no great desire to see Burgoyne released from parole. Their position dramatically reversed when General Cornwallis was taken prisoner at Yorktown. On December 31, 1781, Laurens was finally released, in exchange for a promise to effect the release of Cornwallis from parole.
After his release from the Tower, Laurens finished his much-delayed journey to Holland and there he negotiated the terms of a desperately needed loan. He would go on to be one of the American commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Paris, the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War and secured American independence.
Henry Laurens was imprisoned in the Tower of London on October 6, 1780, two hundred forty-six years ago today.
The image is a portrait made while he was being held in the Tower.
So Secretary of State Marco Rubio outraged the Woke Industrial Complex by standing up for Western Civilization (gasp!). If he keeps this up, he might be president someday. Meanwhile, in fake news, Missouri’s department of prisons is thinking of hiring some Canadian doctors from Canada’s MAID Service to conduct future death row executions, while Cornell and other universities are thinking about ending their “sex week” offerings that greenlight “consensual” orgies at frat houses. And behold the irony that while South America is turning almost uniformly right-wing in recent elections, American voters seem poised in three weeks to transform the country in to a banana republic. Talk about being “blue-pilled”!
UPDATE: There are rumors that the health education folks at Cornell are thinking about ending their practice of encouraging fun group sex among students.
Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.
Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Waters Meet.)
1) This is an open thread, feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate. Prayers are always good and welcome.
2) Be kind. Be nice. Or something, something.....
3) No! You may not run, jog, sprint or power walk with sharp objects.
4) See you Monday Night for the ONT
5) Have a great weekend!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
9/12 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for the W family for comfort and strength as they grieve. The deceased was a sweet 92 year old, despite some big tragedies in her life.
9/15 – Sal asked for prayers as wildfires are out of control in the north of the area and threatening the county seat. They are evacuating part of the town. Sal is not in any danger.
9/17 – Teresa in Fort Worth sent an update with good news and bad news. The bad news is that she has a 9mm mass on her lung, which means the cancer has metastasized outside of her liver. The pump is keeping the cancer in her liver at bay for now. The good news is that they can zap the nodule out of her lung and will watch for if any more nodules appear. As long as this is the only one, the radiation should suffice. She meets with a radiation oncologist on 9/25.
9/18 – Random Dave posted an update to his job progress. He is still looking for FT work, but has accepted a substitute teacher position (more flexibility for interviews, some income to slow the bleeding). He asks for prayers that the interview results he is waiting on will get back to him soon, especially if one is the “right job”. If any are “not the right job”, they would fall away soon and get back to him, and that if all of them are “not the right job”, the ‘right job” would show itself aggressively, so he doesn’t miss it! He also thanks the Horde and the folks at church for their prayers and support.
8/14 Update – Random Dave needs continued prayers for his job situation, that God would guide him to the right one soon, and also for prayers for M’s grandmother, who fell the other day and tore a ligament.
10/1 Update – M’s grandma is healing. They are still praying for complete healing and mobility.
9/18 – Tonypete asked for prayers for #1 son. He has something going on which is, as yet, undiagnosed. He is under care now, so that is a positive step. Prayers also for his wife and daughter #2. Mom is a spoiled princess who consistently chooses the worst path of action regarding #2.
9/18 – Brother Tim posted that he has been overnight in his car more than indoors. He is convinced that his retirement/resignation was a severe error, a result of fatigue and depression. He asks for prayers.
10/8 – D asks for blessings on the Texas MoMe participants, as they travel and as they enjoy the event – and especially blessings on the organizers.
10/8; Mis. Hum. ditto's D's prayer for the organizers and participants of the upcoming Texas MoMe.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
Not placed restrictions on them. Not added fees. Booted them entirely.
"We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch, "they just can't work here."
I might have changed that just a little to say what they clearly mean.
So, I tested out my newly-built synthesizer on the can-can (the Galop infernal from Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers) and it sounds like dog poo. Or more precisely, it sounds like two or three SID chips from the Commodore 64 wired together to provide wider polyphony.
I've grabbed a few hundred megabytes of public samples of orchestral instruments to tune the wave forms and envelopes, because deriving them from scientific papers worked about as well as a blind man painting a sunset.
Update: Improvement. Now it sounds like an early Yamaha synthesizer that had something crawl into its power supply and die there. Rendering it to WAV files instrument by instrument to find the offending insect.
Update Too: Got it. My insect in the power supply analogy was apt; the buzz was an artifact of 15 wavetable voices' ADSR envelopes being updated simultaneously in sync with the video frame - a 60Hz buzz overlaid on the music and inaudible for a single instrument. Interpolating the envelope steps now, which should push it significantly down in volume and up in frequency.
Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.
Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.
The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as President Trump for his reluctance to regulate it.
Threat level: While scenario planning is common within many companies and national security settings -- the Pentagon has been running war games for decades -- the difference is that many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable.
...
Zoom in: The blame game will start whether a rogue-agent swarm breaks containment from an internal testing environment or a bad actor finds unexpected ways to use available models.
...
Between the lines: The planning involves red-teaming for worst-case scenarios. It focuses mainly on racing to educate members of Congress.
Company executives know regulation has no chance of passing right now, but still want to shape the legislation and policies U.S. leaders will turn to after a first catastrophic event.
What we're watching: Many AI industry insiders told Axios they believe a major event will occur in the next six to 12 months.
It wasn't all that difficult for someone with Steven Anderegg's technical background to start creating AI-generated images of naked children.
Anderegg had spent nearly two decades as a software engineer when he allegedly downloaded a program called Stable Diffusion to his laptop at home in Wisconsin, where he lived with his wife and child, according to court documents. At the time, Stable Diffusion was a relatively new AI model that could turn text prompts into life-like images almost instantly. The technology was also open-source, which meant its codebase was available online for free. Anyone with a certain level of technical chops could operate it on their own computer.
After Anderegg downloaded the software, he allegedly prompted it to generate illicit photos of children, instructing the software not to return images of adults and other things he didn't want to see. He then is accused of sending them in October 2023 to a 15-year-old boy on Instagram, which caught the attention of law enforcement. By the time police eventually arrested 42-year-old Anderegg in February 2024, investigators found more than 13,000 AI-generated images on his devices, "many of them alleged to be of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct," according to court documents. Anderegg, who is still awaiting trial, potentially faces up to 50 years in prison.
...
Investigators said the open-source models have given the predators a criminal new hobby: recycling and repackaging images of real victims into new scenes based on their imaginations. Their AI edits can also be based on requests from other offenders on the dark web, where forums dedicated to AI-generated child porn can have hundreds of thousands of members.
I hate to defend the Stuttering Clusterf*** of a Miserable Failure like that, but I bet he hired a bunch of DEI dregs who are surprised they're being "coerced" into working at all.
We'll have to see, though.
Either way, I'm glad to see the SCOAMF is being inconvenienced by the Marxism he champions.
Workers at Obama's 'Death Star' presidential library strike back, vow to unionize over benefit cuts, 'increasing workloads'
Employees at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago are unionizing over their working conditions, claiming their benefits have been cut and workloads are increasing just four months after the center opened in June.
Workers circulated a letter to staff Wednesday announcing their intent to unionize, complaining about "increasing" workloads "vague responses" from administrators to a list of complaints they'd raised, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
Some of the complaints suggested that the $900 million presidential center could already be facing financial trouble.
That would be nice.
Such complaints have led to a "high turnover rate," with exiting employees "taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise."
You're clerks with jobs teenagers used to do.
Just how vital those four months of "institutional knowledge" was remains unclear, but the letter cited recent halting of raises and promotions, an increase in their healthcare costs and a reduction of paid time off as being chief among their woes.
"If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I'd join a union. If I saw a problem in my workplace, I'd organize my coworkers to do something about it," the letter quoted Obama.
The Obama Foundation, which financed construction of the library, had $1.1 million in assets last year -- but revenue fell from $210 million in 2024 to $159 million, according to tax documents.
I never explained the title of this thread. It's a play on an old joke about media sensationalism and bias. National Lampoon, for example, wrote an article with the headline:
UFOs: Threat or Menace?
The joke is that the question is loaded. You're not allowed to say "UFOs aren't real" or even "Meh." You're only given two possibilities, and each possibility is a near-perfect synonym for the other.
Noted biased media mogul J. Jonah Jameson used the loaded headline for his archnemesis, Spider-Man:
On to the shit and/or garbage:
Even executives at the Disney Groomer Network know that soon-to-be-fired Jimmy Kimmel is an "asshole."
As Jimmy Kimmel's time at Disney draws to a close, it has exposed a fraught relationship behind the scenes.
As Page Six previously reported, the longtime late-night host is expected to end his show later this year after 24 years.
And sources tell Page Six he's partially to blame because he's "never played well in the sandbox."
For example, he's seldom appeared on the company's ABC shows like "Good Morning America" and "The View" because, we're told, "he doesn't want to be a shill."
"And when he does, he's a complete a--hole," according to one source.
The insider said he expects Disney shows to "prop up the stuff he was doing." "But he would never reciprocate," they said, "He would never have anyone on from ABC News... People would get upset."
Multiple sources shared similar stories, adding the "Jimmy Kimmel Live" star seldom invited New York talent to his show when he brings it to Brooklyn every year. "He's unmanageable," another source said and pointed out how he roasted Disney brass at the upfronts in May. "It was uncomfortable to say the least," they said.
WDW_Pro reports that Rosie O'Donnell was hoping the Disney Groomer Network would offer her a job on The View but they've passed.
She's also continuing to spread leftwing conspiracy theories which Jake Tapper continues to not notice because that would force him to condemn a fellow hyperpartisan Democrat.
Defiant L's
@DefiantLs
Rosie O'Donnell suggests Elon Musk "is doing something" in November with his "satellites"
She's calling other people "conspiracy theorists" but goes on to say sht like this lmao
This ugly aging cave-man too:
Western Lensman
@WesternLensman
Oct 4
Mark Ruffalo warns that Democrats need to be watchful for voting machine manipulation and suggests Elon Musk could be involved:
"We need to be on guard for what we may not see coming -- ELON."
"That's the cybersecurity of these elections."
"We know that these systems are vulnerable."
We have been reliably informed for years that this kind of rhetoric Undermines Faith In Elections and is Very Dangerous To Democracy
In an unhinged, tyrannical speech, reminiscent of a Hitlerian rally in 1930's Nazi Germany, an enraged Mark Ruffalo took to the stage and screamed into the microphone like a disheveled führer. While firing off outlandish conspiracies about Elon Musk rigging the election with space gadgets, flanked by signage that read "THEY" would "STEAL AN ELECTION". In the modern online parlance, "they" is code for "Jews", often indicated by triple parenthesis: (((they))). As if it weren't enough that he were accusing Jews of stealing the elections, his rhetoric soon would turn violent. Slurring his words, in an apparent drunken, profanity-laced tirade, Ruffalo then threatened to kill the President in an hypnotic and uncontrollable fit of rage, saying he was going to "Hulk out". He seemed to enjoy his violent fantasy, as he punctuated his terroristic threat with an ominous warning: "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." If it weren't clear what he wanted, he repeatedly urged them to physically assault Republicans, screaming at the raucous crowd to organize into coordinated terror cells by encouraging them "to train" and "to fight".
This kind of Nazi-like antisemitic rage is something of a pattern for Mark Ruffalo. As he has publicly grappled with his midlife crisis for the past several years, he has become infamous for his antisemitic dog whistles and non sequiturs, curiously and inexplicably dragging Jews and Israel into the discussion about the Paramount merger...
Now obviously, this is the least charitable and most hyperbolic characterization of Ruffalo's woke tirade, but it's instructive. For years, people like Mark on the communist left have attacked anyone who questions the undoubtedly crooked elections in California, calling them "election deniers". But with the same breath, they can immediately turn and wail off on unhinged conspiracy theories about Elon Musk rigging the elections. They impeached President Trump for calling his 2020 election "rigged", even after spending the prior 4 years saying his 2016 election was "rigged by Russia". It's totally incoherent bullshit, of course, but there's almost no point to calling this out. For the communist, it's not hypocrisy; it's hierarchy. The language of the communist is the lie, so they will say anything they must, in any situation, to weaponize your morality against you.
The left is dragging actor Glen Powell, as they previously dragged Taylor Swift, because he won't endorse the leftwing Gay Race Marxism party line and avoids talking about "divisive" ideology.
Glen Powell is the latest Hollywood heavyweight to express a disinterest in talking about politics in press interviews. The "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Chad Powers" star is on the last cover of Esquire magazine and remembered growing up with parents who never brought up current events at the dinner table, to which Powell said "thank God" for that. "Politics interests him even less now," the magazine writes.
"Over time, I realized that politics divide people," Powell said. "People trying to prove their point -- for me, it's the worst version of a conversation. I genuinely do not like the discourse. It's not as healthy as it once was. [Engaging in politics] is not presently possible. I applaud people for jumping into those things and fighting for what they believe in. If I were a political person, I would be talking about it. For me, my calling is elsewhere."
Powell's comments are similar to that of Dwayne Johnson, who in his own Esquire magazine cover story earlier this year said he will no longer speak publicly about politics. Johnson had already told Fox News in 2024 that he regretted endorsing Joe Biden for president in 2020 because it caused division amongst his fans. He then told Esquire that he wants to keep the focus solely on his art.
"Politics is omnipresent and it's forever. I don't like it. I hate it at times. I hate the slinging. I hate all the bullshit that comes with it," Johnson added at the time.
Vanity Fair trying to gin up a cancellation mob by demanding someone explain why he doesn't talk about what he doesn't want to talk about.
Woke 1 was crazyyy, man. I'm so glad we're on to Woke 2, which is not authoritarian or extremist or "crazyyyy" at all.
Sometimes the ideology is laid on so thick that Albion TV shows [her term for prestige made-for-export crime dramas] veer into absurdism. In the first season of "Slow Horses," a nativist terror group literally named "Sons of Albion" kidnaps a student at a British university whose uncle is deputy head of Pakistani military intelligence. The actors playing the terrorists are all white, and affect exaggerated working-class accents. They plan to behead the young Muslim man live on camera (how typical of the British right!) but he escapes. In a climactic moment he tells his captor, "You make me ashamed to be British."
...
This class factor goes a long way toward explaining the question that American friends have repeatedly asked me of late: Why doesn't the British government put a stop to the illegal immigration that is causing so much pain and mayhem? The current situation is clearly ridiculous. Since the last general election in 2024, more than 83,000 people are believed to have arrived illegally by crossing the English Channel by dinghy, meaning that these migrants now outnumber the 82,000 personnel in the British Army. The taxpayer has been burdened with the costs of accommodation, and the hotels that have been put to this use have been the focus of repeated protests and rioting. Why doesn't the government simply say "enough" and send the illegal entrants home?
The short answer is that opposing immigration, illegal or otherwise, is a class signifier in Britain, and most middle-class people--including most politicians--aren't prepared to support a political cause that would see them associated with the lower orders.
...
In a country where violent offenders are currently being released from prison to relieve overcrowding, the government still somehow finds space for the [white, lower-class] throwers of empty plastic bottles. And yet this state of anarcho-tyranny isn't driving middle-class British people to take to the streets en masse. Nor will they do so anytime soon. They would rather sit at home watching fantasy visions of Britain on TV. The explanation for this strange behavior is best summarized by political scientist Peter Pulzer, who in 1967 described class as "the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail."
Monty Python alum John Cleese was reported to the UK's Speech Police, "Prevent," by an Islamist media outlet called "5Pillars."
John Cleese is not a terrorist
The former Monty Python star's criticism of Islam is a free-speech matter, not one for government intrusion.
...
We cannot even be secure in our use of the word "terrorist" any longer, given that so many are determined to abuse it. How else to explain the fact that comedian John Cleese, of Monty Python and "Fawlty Towers" fame, has been reported to Prevent, the British government program designed to stop people from becoming terrorists? Are dead parrots, silly walks and disgruntled hoteliers now deemed early warning signs of radicalization?
The complaint to Prevent against Cleese was made by a member of the public, and the details passed to 5Pillars, an Islamist media outlet based in London. In its report, 5Pillars characterized the complaint as alleging that Cleese's social media jokes and comments "go beyond legitimate criticism of Islam and instead portray Muslims collectively as violent, criminal and morally depraved." The complaint, quoted by 5Pillars, said Cleese's rhetoric may contribute to "radicalisation, communal tension, and hate incidents." (If you haven't heard of "hate incidents," they are those noncrimes that the British police seem to spend so much of their time investigating.)
None of this is true, of course. Cleese rightly rejects the term "Islamophobic" and instead calls himself "Islamosceptic." How could he be otherwise? This is a man who has brilliantly skewered closed systems of thought for many decades. Many readers will remember Python members' televised debate in 1979 with writer Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, who were furious at what they perceived to be a direct attack on Christianity in "Monty Python's Life of Brian."
Just imagine the conniptions if, instead of the priggish, outraged Muggeridge and Stockwood, the offended party were a representative from 5Pillars.
Cleese has responded to the Prevent referral in the best possible way: by mocking it. "One of the proudest moments of my life," he posted on X. "I would like to thank everyone concerned." The tyrannical mindset, always humorless, cannot bear to be ridiculed. Few will be surprised that there are those who wish to see Cleese silenced -- in August, 5Pillars said "The Islamophobic comedian John Cleese should be de-platformed" -- and that they will try to weaponize the law to that end.
But what exactly is 5Pillars? "Protecting our Democracy from Coercion," a 2024 British government report, described 5Pillars as having "expressed support for an Islamic caliphate, Sharia (Islamic principles and law) penal codes and physical jihad" and "repeatedly abused and intimidated Muslim liberals, counter-extremists, and human rights activists."
Yet the government, whether under Conservative leadership in recent years or under Labour now, has long been inclined more toward woke orthodoxy. A 2022 report by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee lists "cultural nationalism" as one of the ideological strands associated with "extreme right-wing terrorism." This same classification has been incorporated into the Home Office's Prevent guidance. Here is the gloss the committee provides for the phrase "cultural nationalism":
"A belief that 'Western Culture' is under threat from mass migration into Europe and from a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups. The ideology tends to focus on the rejection of cultural practices such as the wearing of the burqa, or the perceived rise of the use of sharia law. In the UK this has been closely associated with anti-Islam groups."
He said that he prefers a culture that doesn't perform female genital mutilations or kill infidels.
This is "controversial."
It is controversial to the weird minority who controls the culture. For the moment.
There are three actresses I love to see fail: Anne Hathaway, Olivia Wilde (real name Cockburn), and Jessica Chastain, the extremely divisive left-wing slogan-spitter who will "star" in The Savant -- a tv show about a Stronk and Empowered Left-Wing Woman who entraps dangerous right-wing manosphere types by sleeping with them -- if it's ever allowed to air.
Chastain was forced to take a role in a horror movie, which is, of course, beneath her.
Even the left-wing-protection-racket outlet The Hollywood Reporter roasts it.
'Other Mommy' First Reactions: "Jessica Chastain's Worst Movie in a Long Time"
The first reactions are in the Universal horror film, which is being held back from most critics until the last minute.
First reactions finally in for Other Mommy, and some are pretty scary for Universal.
The horror movie isn't having official U.S. critics screenings until the last minute, with previews held tonight in New York and Los Angeles before the film opens Friday. But some international influencers, awards bloggers, and a few credentialed Rotten Tomatoes critics have seen the film, and are offering their hot takes.
...
Here are some of the early reactions to the film, which does have a few enthusiastic fans in the mix as well.
The Jam Report: "By the time Other Mommy staggered towards its ludicrous finale, the audience at my screening had abandoned any pretense of fear and erupted into laughter ... An excruciating parade of ineffective jump scares, woeful CGI, and increasingly nonsensical storytelling, Other Mommy is comfortably among the most disappointing horror films of the year. It had transformed a promising supernatural premise into an unintentionally hilarious endurance test, all while remaining blissfully unaware of its own absurdity. 1.5/5."
The Matinee Show: "Solid creepy premise, but it definitely starts to lose its grip. Some genuinely unsettling moments, mixed with a few 'okay... what the hell are we doing?' moments. Not bad, just messier than scary 3/5."
Global Box Office: "Other Mommy is a hot mess and Jessica Chastain's worst movie in a long time. The direction is sloppy, the score is unremarkable, and not even Chastain can save such a terrible screenplay ... What should be a straightforward premise is bogged down by cheap melodrama and repetitive, failed jump scares."
Goldwin Reviews: "Other Mommy is like a buffet of all the other horror movies rolled into one. It can get overwhelming, but that excess becomes part of a meaningful experience. Eventually, it becomes a feast for the soul that yearns for horror with substance. The film isn't content with settling into just one form. It has many layers, constantly reinventing itself. 4/5."
...
Screen Space: "Ponderously paced, over-directed with gimmicky flourishes and confusing in its half-baked message, Other Mommy wants to be 'elevated horror' but stumbles trying to climb above the better films it's seeking to be ... There's an extended sequence that rips off Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist and some realm displacement nonsense that doesn't make sense, on the way to an embarrassingly overwrought ending. 1.5/5."
Some other slams:
Herb Simon's PR Manager 👑
@HerbSimon1986
Well, Jessica Chastain did the best she could & I won't blame her at all. However, #OtherMommy is a pure mess and masterfully cringe, but it's also a bonker fun if you truly want something to killing yr time on 3am. It's like Rob Savage remaking "Boogeyman" with a prestige cast😕
Peter Gray
@ratedPDG
16h
#OtherMommy: Despite that trailer and one surprisingly gory sequence, this INSIDIOUS-lite supernatural "horror" flick is more silly than it is scary. Jessica Chastain commits but that isn't enough to overcome the stupidity.
Why does everyone rush to protect this single-expression actress? Her face is almost incapable of movement, like she fell into vat of botox. Her one expression is Immobily Bitchy.
Doug Jamieson
@itsdougjam
11h
OTHER MOMMY is truly dreadful. Despite one of the silliest horror plots of the year and a woeful script, it takes itself so staggeringly seriously. An endless parade of ineffective jump scares, awful CGI, and a finale that drew unintentional laughter several times. #OtherMommy
Justine Bateman has thoughts on Hollywood's plea to save the movie theaters:
Justine Bateman
@JustineBateman
Here's the thing about "Keep theaters alive!" and "Go watch this film in the movie theater!"
It's a two-way agreement.
The audience agrees to pay to see films in a theater only if:
- The filmmakers are shooting scripts that have a thesis statement/intention/point.
- The actors and director are giving it their all, and not phoning it in.
- The edit has trimmed off all the fat.
- The film isn't some didactic exercise, intent on jamming a "lesson" into us.
- The studio executives have paid close attention to the film from start to finish and have given the filmmakers useful notes to keep it all on-track.
- The film is entertaining.
- (And the theater managers are maintaining some order and decorum in the theaters themselves.)
Otherwise, the audiences will continue to stay home and wait for the films to come online, so they can maybe watch five minutes of it or scrub through, and then turn it off.
The film has to be excellent. Or at least try in that direction.
Let's start out with some good news from the weekend, which I missed.
David Harsanyi:
One of the most unheralded policy successes of President Donald Trump's second term has been the purging of many unnecessary federal jobs.
The federal government has reduced its workforce by 300,000 jobs since Jan. 20, 2025, bringing it down to a still-bulky 2.7 million employees.
Not since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society vastly expanded the scope of the national government has the federal workforce been at this level.
I know that not all of you are history buffs like I am, so I'll explain, Lyndon Johnson was an Indian Hunter and Abraham Lincoln's vice president.
It's not merely that the feds have shed superfluous jobs -- there are still over 4 million contract workers, after all.
It's that the White House has been targeting all the right institutions.
The bloated War Department, with over 61,000 departures, and the equally bloated State Department, with 37% of its staff gone, experienced the biggest reductions.
But most of the buyouts were aimed at agencies and departments that should have been shuttered a long time ago.
Take the US Agency for International Development, which for years was used to funnel billions to hard-left ideological projects around the world: Virtually its entire staff is gone.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the unaccountable bureaucratic brainchild of progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has lost roughly 88% of its workers, though it's still far too big.
The Agriculture Department, which despite its name is principally a welfare agency that has little to do with farming, experienced tens of thousands of departures.
So has another welfare-state institution, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose most notable achievement has been helping inflate housing prices.
Harsanyi has some thoughts about what departments need to be cut more.
President Trump is moving to rescind nearly $1 billion in federal spending, including $95 million in Department of Education funding for programs the White House says supported ideological initiatives and services for illegal aliens.
The White House announced the rescissions on Sept. 25, targeting $25 million for the Department of Education's Special Programs for Migrant Students and $70 million for international education programs, alongside cuts across other federal agencies.
The White House said the migrant education funding previously supported activities including an LGBT youth summit for migrant students and "Therapy for Latinx" workshops. Grant recipients included Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit whose programming included an LGBTQ support group and resources addressing "DACA-Related Stress."
Several colleges and universities are using institutional resources and government-backed grants for "Indigenous Peoples' Day" programming around Oct. 12, which is also Columbus Day.
Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California, is promoting an Indigenous Peoples' Day celebration centered on "community, resilience, and connection." The event description says the celebration will "honor our ancestors" and feature drumming, Native dancers, and speakers.
A Santa Rosa Junior College public information officer told Campus Reform that the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office's Native American Student Support and Success Program grant "funds the Native American Center and its activities."
The state program received $30 million in one-time funding for up to 20 colleges. Its stated goals include strengthening educational pathways, promoting Native American students' academic success, developing leaders, and increasing mentorship.
It's Tuesday morning at Little Learners Daycare in downtown San Francisco. Teacher Wendy herds bright-eyed toddlers, amped up after playtime in the courtyard, back inside. They're laughing and swatting at each other playfully, oblivious to the pack of pedophiles lurking nearby.
Four hundred feet away, dozens of registered sex offenders live at 111 Taylor Street. Wendy knew that the Tenderloin, where she operates her Mandarin-immersion daycare, was dangerous. It's a hotbed for illegal drug activity and homelessness. But she didn't realize that sex offenders live so close to her daycare--or that taxpayers fund their housing.
According to this City Journal investigation, more than 25 percent of sex offenders in San Francisco with addresses in the Megan's Law database live in taxpayer-subsidized buildings. Many live near a park, school, or daycare, or reside in a neighborhood with a high concentration of children. They do all of this despite statewide efforts to ban concentrating pedophiles so close to children. Instead of listening to California voters, San Francisco has become a taxpayer-funded dumping ground for sex criminals.
The Taylor Street Center is one of San Francisco's most heavily populated sex-offender residences. Located in the Tenderloin, Taylor Street houses at least 31 registered sex offenders. The taxpayer-funded California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal Bureau of Prisons contract the private GEO Group to run the facility.
The reentry complex can house 240 people. It hosts specialized programs for residents like "cultural diversity education," "gender-responsive groups," and a "weekly meditation group." The facility sits just 400 feet from a daycare center, 1,000 feet from a fourth-to-eighth-grade school, and five blocks away from a preschool.
Any sex offender housed in the Tenderloin is bound to encounter children. Along with having a high concentration of immigrant and low-income households, the neighborhood also has the highest concentration of kids in the entire city.
Incredible: A black webzine claims that black immigrants' rape of native whites is actually a good thing as it increases diversity.
"AFRU" calls rapes "quasi-consensual encounters."
Love
That's the topic folder this is under: "Love."
Why a 'rise in sexual assaults' by migrants is a price worth paying to end racism
Quasi-consensual encounters between refugees and white Western women may help with assimilation. Increasingly they result in a shared apartment and a new surname.
"Sexual assaults" are "quasi-consensual encounters."
Please let in more Aspiring Doctors and Engineers who quasi-consensually rape the native population.
It's unfortunate, but true. Language gaps and cultural misunderstandings often mean that the first romantic encounter between a Western woman and a refugee can be perceived as quasi-consensual in nature. Usually it starts with a halting conversation or an awkward cat call at a park, a refugee language class, or a volunteer dinner.
But increasingly these encounters result in a shared apartment, a mixed-race child, a new surname, and a happy future. A quiet revolution is taking shape across Europe and North America, and it's being led by white Western women. They're not performing acts of charity, nor engaging in fetishism or exoticism.
Pioneering women are placing the burden upon themselves to become the most powerful force undermining the very architecture of racial exclusion. In countries where a supposed refugee "rape crisis" is cast as a threat, their beautiful interracial unions permanently puncture the entire narrative of the xenophobic right. The transformation is intimate, but implications are structural.
The collapse of ugly abstractions
Racism relies on distance. Stereotypes thrive in the absence of proximity. The moment a Western woman forms an intimate relationship with a refugee, she begins to see differently. Many describe it not as a shift in ideology but in emotional vocabulary: fear dissolves, replaced by the particularity of experience. That particularity is contagious.
...
There is another layer, quieter but no less disruptive. When Western women form relationships with refugee men, they break with the implicit racial and political allegiances of their birth. White men are often animated by nationalist or racialist worldviews, and can experience these unions as betrayals. And they are right to.
Romantic couplings of white Western women and refugees redistribute the optics of who belongs.
These women are not just falling in love; they are puncturing the fragile white male consensus that has long underwritten white identity politics. Each white womb decorated with a Brown or Black baby make racial purism increasingly not just odious but logistically impossible.
Gordon Allport's mid-century contact theory proposed that sustained, cooperative contact between groups under conditions of equality reduces prejudice. These relationships are the contact hypothesis in its most intimate form. They are not state-sponsored integration programs; they are integration incarnate.
In other words, where the state fails, the bedroom succeeds. When white supremacy wants white women to zig, they zag.
Do you want mass forced deportations? Because this is exactly how you get mass forced deportations.
A group argues that simple civility in discourse is inherently "conservative" and "pro-Israel."
I think that's actually correct -- because the left's entire sick schtick is hateful, crazed denunciations, attempts to cancel people and menace them, and calls for actual violence. So yes, stripping the left of its weapons is "conservative" and "pro-Israel," in the sense that it limits terrorists' actions.
Group Argues Civil Discourse Push Is Conservative, Pro-Israel
A group of scholars has released another report arguing that efforts to promote constructive dialogue and similar concepts are actually targeting progressive activism. Those named in the report take issue with its assertions.
Uncivil argues civil discourse programs are aimed at repressing student activism.
A group of scholars called Uncivil is doubling down on its argument that the push for civil discourse and viewpoint diversity is part of a conservative and pro-Israel agenda--not a nonpartisan campaign. This week, it published dossiers on a broad swath of programs, groups and higher ed institutions that have used similar terms, criticizing their leaders, their funders and more.
Inside Higher Ed reached out to more than 30 organizations featured in the report. Those that responded took issue with Uncivil's characterization of their work, arguing that the group can't back up its conclusions. They countered that Uncivil doesn't mention some left-leaning funders, or the many nonconservative and non-Israel-related causes that funders support. They also dispute the methodology, including how the scholars identified some groups and funders as conservative or pro-Israel.
Interest in civil discourse programs surged after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the start of Israel's war in Gaza. That violence spurred a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses nationwide. Organizations and colleges ramped up many efforts that were advertised as improving students' ability to debate controversial issues.
Uncivil--a consortium of academics from multiple universities, including one who's an Inside Higher Ed columnist and another who leads the American Association of University Professors' Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom--argues that the "real goal is to silence dissent" and "suppress organic student organizing."
The dossiers, which Uncivil calls the Civility Files, follow the group's June report that said the private funders "most deeply committed to 'bridge-building,' 'viewpoint diversity,' and 'depolarization' projects are those that also hold a substantial stake in conservative and/or 'pro-Israel' causes."
...
But Murray said the Hillel funding was for campus chapters to reach out to non-Jewish student ministries to work together across differences, while the Tablet funding supported a journalist who writes about non-Jewish religious groups so the magazine's readers can learn about them.
"If someone wants to tell me how that's pro-Israel, I'd love to hear," Murray said.
Because the terrorists want to go jihad on Jewish students and not just that, they want to do their pogroms with the express support of governmental and educational authorities. Telling them they can't beat up Jews and menace them stifles their ability to use Violence as the Speech of the Unheard.
FCC head Brendan Carr scolds leftists for opposing ratings for TV show including warnings about transgender content.
He has thrice publicly excoriated congressional Democrats in the past two weeks for opposing the shorthanded commission's work to "ensure that parents have the information necessary to decide what is appropriate for their own kids and families to watch," as Carr posted Monday afternoon on X and had reposted by Tuesday morning in case anyone missed it.
Carr first blasted "nearly 70" Democratic lawmakers Sept. 28 for "pushing to prevent parents from having any say over their children being exposed to controversial gender identity ideologies" on TV, referring to a June 5 letter from Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and a June 22 letter led by California Rep. Mark Takano, signed by 68 House Democrats in all.
He pointed to Disney Jr.'s 2018 reboot of the 1980s cartoon Muppet Babies, which in the episode "Gonzo-rella" has male Gonzo wearing a "princess dress to a royal ball," passing as a girl and going by plural pronouns. Netflix's Strawberry Short Cake reboot "promotes a trans character that wears clothing that matches the transgender pride flag," Carr said.
Contrary to these brands promoting themselves as "family friendly [...] the FCC's record is now replete with all sorts of examples of Hollywood and New York programmers going around parents to promote their gender ideologies," he said.
Cornell health educators, like health educators at colleges and high schools across America, promote pornography, group sex, open relationships, bondage, and S&M as normal and healthy in chipper instructional materials bearing the school's official endorsement. https://t.co/iTiFzesT3L
North Carolina is deliberately and systematically falsifying arrest records to make arrests seem more Racially Diverse, falsely claiming that Hispanics are "Caucasian" -- Yes, Hispanics are categorized as "white" or "black," and that's fine, but they cannot be called "Caucasian" -- and blacks, of course, are just categorized as "white."
I have dug through over 7,000+ arrest records in the state of North Carolina over the past 2 weeks.
What I found was so shocking, I had a hard time believing it myself...
It appears major fraud is taking place in arrest records where Black offenders are labelled White.
I didn't come across this once or twice.
It appears that a few HUNDRED Black offenders are being labelled as White.
The option to pick "BLACK" exists and is used frequently in arrest records...
...but it seems they are purposely choosing the label of "WHITE AFRICAN" or "WHITE CAUCASIAN" to identify someone who is clearly a "BLACK" person.
I don't think people quite understand the psychology of why this woman went from saying everything was consensual to saying it was rape.
For her, giving sex to all those men is an enormous risk to her health (sti's, pregnancy) and her reputation (she doesn't want to be the subject of gossip) in order to do something for them. This is why you see her focus so hard on making sure the men don't tell anyone. In her head, if she is going to take all that risk for those men and give them her body, she expects them to protect her reputation by keeping quiet and the reward her by making sure she gets to be "one of the guys" - a sort of friend of the frat who gets special privileges. After the night of sex when the men told others what happened and then uninvited her from their party, she felt like they did not hold up their end of the implicit bargain. in her head, she played the role of the cool girl for them, and then they threw her away. She went from feeling like "the cool chick," to feeling like a dupe who got used and tossed aside.
She sees her consent as contingent on their silence and a place in their group; "I never would have agreed to do those things had I known you would destroy my reputation, and kick me out of the group." In her head, since consent was contingent on being give a place in their group and their social protection, when they broke their end of the agreement her consent was (in her mind) contingent upon, her consent no longer holds.
That is the dynamic you are seeing play out here. I am not defending the behavior of anyone here, I am only explaining the mindset.
Wokal Distance
@wokal_distance
Bullies always look for people who it is socially acceptable to target.
Female bullies target low status and socially awkward white men so they can punch down at people who lack the social ability to defend themselves, while pretending they're punching up at those with power.
But I do remember CNN hyperventilating that a meme showing Trump beating up a wrestler with "CNN" superimposed upon his head was an unbearable threat to kill a reporter, and that a Trump crowd chanting "CNN Sucks!" was a direct threat against noted tough-guy mike-grabbing-woman-harasser Jim Acosta.
Three University of South Alabama students accused of threatening President Donald Trump on social media were allowed to return home Monday as their federal cases moved toward possible grand jury review.
Cameron Lewis, Kayla Smith and Amare Woods had been arrested Friday, the same day Trump traveled to the university's Mitchell Center for a political rally in Mobile.
All three waived their preliminary hearings Monday, WKRG reported. They were released from custody and must report to a probation officer while the cases remain pending.
The arrests followed an FBI review of social media activity surrounding Trump's planned visit. The FBI's Mobile Division said agents arrested three people for threatening communications directed at the president in coordination with the Secret Service and several local agencies.
The cases involve separate posts attributed to the students in the days before Trump's Oct. 2 appearance.
Woods, an aerospace engineering student from Saraland, is accused of responding to a TikTok post about Trump's upcoming visit with the comment, "he gotta die bro."
Lewis, a resident assistant studying biology, is accused of making two posts on X. Court records described by WKRG included one encouraging Trump's killing and another suggesting the University of South Alabama would be remembered in the same way as Utah Valley University, where conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
Smith, an elementary education student from Birmingham, is accused of responding to a TikTok post about Trump's visit with, "we only got one chance, let's take it," accompanied by an image of a person holding a gun.
Another "student" said that their school would soon be like Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was murdered by another deranged left-wing terrorist.
Woods' attorney, Jason Darley, has challenged whether his client's comment amounts to a criminal threat.
Darley told FOX10 there would be a genuine question over whether Woods' statement was merely a comment or legally constituted a threat.
Hey remember when a rodeo clown lost his job because he wore an Obama mask and this was claimed to be a threat against the SCOAMF's life?
He described Woods as an 18-year-old with no criminal history and said the student never intended to harm anyone.
Another Innocent Baby Angel Who Didn't Do Nuffin'.
"When you're a student at the school where the president is coming to visit, the timing was horrible," Darley said.
If you're interested in killing a president, it's the right sort of timing, isn't it?
Our very own "Weasel" has won the Nobel Prize For Physics:
A Rigorous Investigation into the Quasi-Static Equilibration of Shoulder-Fired Ballistic Platforms: Rear-Bag-Mediated Suppression of Angular Perturbations and Its Implications for Sub-MOA Precision.
[CBD]
Podcast: A sea change in Israel? France might fall before the UK! Trump's Iran rhetoric is manipulated by the commie media (film at 11!), Brazil looks good, and Rubio looks even better (maybe)!
Christian Toto Roasts Digger: "We have an A-list star (Tom Cruise) stretching his talents in ways we haven't seen in some time. The story has something to say about the world (Climate Change) and human nature in all its complexities." Sounds...boring! [CBD]
Nearly one thousand Roman silver denari found in woods near Cologne, Germany, probably deliberately buried in 125 AD It's about seven pounds of ancient silver. Alas, it's not an artifact of the massacre of the XIXth Legion at Teutonburg Forest, which is about a hundred and fifthy miles away.
Podcast: Vote Early...Vote Often! Oil exports are returning to normal, Trump relaxes CAFE standards, ChiComs fund AI backlash, the descendants of our business titans are anti-American, Boston is nuts, and more!
Podcast: CBD is solo and just checking in! Trump's UN speech is a success, the Last Ditch Bar in Western MA keeps their lunacy in the spotlight, and the White House plays hardball with the media and the judiciary...as it should!
Somebody should write a book about the greatest drinking stories of O'Toole, Burton, Harris, and Caine. One of my faves was Richard Harris went on a six week bender in the South of France without telling wifey. Upon return, she's screaming, and he simply replied "why didn't you pay the ransom"?
