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teriwrites · 4 years

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Swindler of Fortune

The coin wells were empty.

I stared dumbly into the cash register. They’d been full that morning, that much I was certain of. I myself had blindly emptied several rolls in my mad dash to open the store on time.

What can I say? Even wizards sleep in sometimes.

But business had been slow, and even on heavy days, we usually didn’t get enough cash transactions to clear out the whole register.

“Natalie?” I called, hoping she hadn’t left for the night.

I didn’t suspect her of stealing, of course, but she usually handled the front during weekdays. Thankfully, she was still in the back. I watched the doors swing open, and her bun bobbed just over the tops of shelves as she made her way over.

“What’s up?” she asked as she reached the front, leaning down onto the counter to meet me at eye level. I rolled my eyes at the gesture.

“Did somebody exchange a large bill for coins?” I motioned towards the empty wells. “Because we’re all out.”

Natalie frowned as she pushed herself upright. “No. I actually had to empty a roll of quarters about an hour before closing. Why, have we been robbed?”

“If we were, it was by the dumbest thief alive.” As Natalie cocked an eyebrow, I went on. “All the bills are accounted for.”

For several moments, we puzzled over it, but it was late, and I think we both knew no questions were going to be answered without effort. And that wasn’t happening after closing. This was a problem for another day.

So I dumped a couple new rolls into the register and decided to call it a night.

The next day was a Friday, which meant more business. After a quick check to confirm that the coins were still in their place, I flipped the sign on the door to ‘Open’ and welcomed the start of a new day.

Natalie was working inventory, so she hung in the back while I held down the front of the store. Rolling up the sleeves of my cardigan, I took in a deep breath and channeled my Manager alter ego - a mix of Customer Service feigned cheer with enough of an edge to hold some of the more entitled customers at bay.

Our first customer rolled in around 9:30. My back was turned as the bell rang out, but the excitement emanating from Nathaniel as he ran laps around my back clued me into their identity.

I spun on my heel to see an old man wrapped up in dark furs and a matching cap step over the threshold. A green parrot sat on his shoulder, wearing its own tiny hat.

“Mike!” My Customer Service smile eased into a genuine grin as I greeted one of my favorite regulars.

“Ms. Kim, hello!” When Mike spoke, it was with his familiar, thick Russian accent. I wasn’t sure exactly when he had immigrated to Canada, but he’d been coming into the store as long as I could remember, back when I was just a kid helping my dad restock shelves. Even back then, he’d struck me as remarkably old.

“I haven’t heard from you in awhile. I was beginning to fear the worst.” It was a half-joke, but before the mood could darken, I shook my head dramatically. “I thought you might’ve decided to turn to one of our competitors.”

Mike chuckled as he pulled his hat from his head, but his parrot cut in before he could protest. “Enough with the pleasantries! We’re here on business!”

Nathaniel had run down the length of my sleeve and was tugging it down my arm to press closer to the bird. I leaned forward onto the counter, and the parrot eyed my embroidered dragon cautiously.

“That’s a cute hat you got there, Charon.” I shot the parrot a wink and pushed myself back up. “What is it I can get for you today, Mike?”

“Do you have any tongue of frog in stock?” he asked as he brushed snow from his hat.

I wasn’t sure, but I promised to check in with Natalie. As I made my way back to the storage room, I found her crouched in one of the aisles, gathering some nonalcoholic liquid courage to restock.

“Hey, do you have any tongue of frog marked up on there?”

The face Natalie made answered my question. “You actually stock frog tongues?”

“Spells, enchanted items, charms - ”

“Whatever your wandering, wayfaring wizard may need, I know,” she finished, nodding along dramatically. “But frog tongues?”

“If you heard all of the ingredients that go into those bottles” - I nudged my chin towards the liquid courage - “it’d make your hair curl. Not that it needs the help.”

Natalie smacked me with her clipboard before jutting her hand out for some help up.

I had been working alongside Natalie for a few months now, but there were still areas of the store that I hadn’t acquainted her with. Some wizards would’ve scrunched up their noses at my more repellent products, so I was not keen to show them off to an unprepared Typic.

Most potion ingredients sat in a medicine cabinet towards the front of the store, but it could hardly fit everything. The rest was tucked away into a side room - a pantry, really - hiding in the back corner. Pulling my keyring from my pocket, I shuffled through several before I landed on the right one.

Dust had collected on most of the shelves in the pantry. I had no excuse for its state; there simply wasn’t enough of a reason to come back here unless someone requested it. A single, flickering lightbulb hanging from the ceiling dimly lit the small space.

I turned away from Natalie to fetch the jar labeled ‘tongue of frog’. After I’d snatched it up, I looked back to see her curiously scanning the shelves. Before I could say anything, her hand darted out and grabbed something.

Holding it out to me, I could barely make out its label: newt eyes.

“Other friends of yours?” she joked.

I brushed past her as she replaced the jar on the shelf. “Of yours, actually.”

Carrying the jar back to the front, I watched as Mike perused some of the inventory up front with vague amusement. Charon was whispering something in his ear. Evidently it was something rude; Mike reprimanded the bird harshly in Russian.

“One tongue of frog,” I announced as I stepped behind the counter.

“You have new merchandise, Ms. Kim,” Mike pointed out as he dug through his pockets. “I didn’t even know there were spells for maintaining battery life.”

“Yeah, well, some companies intentionally provide weak batteries to make you replace your phone after a couple years. This cheat seems the lesser of the two evils.” I rested my elbows on the top of the register as I watched Mike stack the contents of his pocket onto the countertop. Books, empty potion bottles, a pair of gloves. After withdrawing a black notebook with an engraved monogram and a full-sized human skull, he finally pulled out his wallet.

I had to ask him what spell he used to get that kind of pocket space.

“Working another case?” I nodded at the notebook as I rang up his order. “I thought you’d retired, Mike.”

“I owed an old colleague a favor,” Mike admitted gruffly. “The police asked him for assistance on a case, and he referred them to me.”

He sounded none too happy about it.

Mike passed me cash, and I opened the register. As soon as the drawer sprung open, I realized with a jolt that the change was missing again. Surely, nobody could’ve snatched it up without being seen. I could’ve trusted Mike with the entire store while I was in the back, and Natalie had been with me the entire time.

“Is there a problem?” Mike asked, straightening up to peer over the counter.

I unlocked the cupboard with extra change and fished out a roll of loonies. “No problem, just ran out of change.”

I handed over his change and the jar without a bag, knowing he wouldn’t need one. When he’d taken both from me, he simply slid them into his pockets. With a quick nod and a small lift of his cap, Mike stepped back out into the cold.

Only after Mike had left did I notice Natalie crouching by the first row of shelves. She clutched her clipboard to her chest, staring in horror at the door the old man had just left through.

“Was that man carrying a human skull?”

I dismissed her concern with a wave of my hand. “Mike’s a necromancer. That’s pretty normal for him.”

My reassurance might’ve eased Natalie’s nerves, but they simply shifted from fear into disgust. “Aren’t those people supposed to raise the dead and all that? Gross.”

“It’s a little more delicate than that. There’s a whole structure of ethical guidelines in that field. Full revival is prohibited, so usually it’s just gathering details on how the person died. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, though. I’ve never had the stomach for that stuff.”

“So you’re telling me there’s a whole slew of magical careers out there, and I got stuck working for the shopkeep?”

I rolled my eyes as I walked away, leaving Natalie laughing on the floor.

Saturday morning, I arrived extra early at the store. I told myself it was to make up for the fact that Natalie only worked weekdays and I would be running everything myself. But really, the first thing I did when I arrived was beeline for the cash register.

Everything had been in place the night before. After Mike’s incident, nothing had gone missing, and the rest of the day ran smoothly. I was secretly hoping that the problem would go away on its own if I just refused to acknowledge it. But I could only lose so many more rolls before making another trip to the bank, and I’m pretty sure the teller I always ran into was a vampire. Either that or there was some other reason he always stared at my neck when I was making deposits.

Either way, not an experience I was eager to have again.

My key slid into the lock for the register, and I made a silent wish as I twisted it open.

The coin wells were empty.

I let out a frustrated shout as I tore the key out of the lock. This couldn’t keep happening. My store did well - my spot in downtown Trelis earned me good foot traffic, and our regulars were loyal - but I couldn’t afford the constant losses.

There was only one answer. I would have to investigate. If I kept a careful eye on the full register, the thief would have to reveal themselves eventually.

To refill the coins, I opened up the cupboard, only to find that it, too, had been ransacked. Every roll of coins had been torn to shreds, with scraps of paper left littering the cabinet.

I felt bad for texting Natalie on her day off, but I had no other choice. I couldn’t both look into a robbery and ring up transactions. So, whipping out my phone, I shot her a text asking if she’d be able to make it down the store, preferably before it opened.

Fifteen minutes later, Natalie was at the front door, rapping against the glass. I unlocked it for her.

“More was taken?” she asked, pulling her mittens from her hands.

“Both the register and the cupboard are empty.” I groaned, draping myself over the front counter. “I’m at a loss.”

What kind of thief was this, who would ignore the higher-value bills and waste time tearing through paper to get at the coins? Who could somehow get around the store without being seen? Were we dealing with an advanced invisibility spell? Some pocket portal that could reach directly into the register? A clever magpie?

I dragged myself over the counter, nearly hitting my head against the back cabinet as I clambered ungracefully down. Landing in a heap on the ground, I found myself staring closeup at a pencil shaving. I frowned; the only pencils we kept in the front were mechanical.

Sitting up, I pinched the tiny shaving from the ground and ran it between my fingers. It was then that I realized my mistake. The scrap wasn’t a pencil shaving, it was one of the shreds of torn paper from the cabinet.

Natalie yelped as I threw myself back to the ground, eyes close to the floor. A moment passed in silence as I scanned for more shreds of paper. Though Natalie kept quiet, I could feel her piecing together what I’d found.

She found the next scrap, pointing to it with her foot. As we began to follow a small trail of torn paper, I scurried along at a crawl. Less inclined to make a fool of herself, Natalie chose to walk.

The paper led to the back of the store, into a small hole in the wall that I’d never noticed, half-hidden behind a shelf. I didn’t dare reach into it, but shining the flashlight from my phone revealed only a long tunnel. Something glinted from a distance, but it was too far to make anything out. Whatever was back there was hidden somewhere in the wall of the potion pantry.

It took a minute to find the key for the pantry, and another several to scan along the wall. But I finally found what I was looking for. Really, I shouldn’t take the credit. Natalie found it, helping me push aside a cabinet to reveal the door to a crawl space I’d never seen before.

It was easy to overlook, a tiny door tucked away into the back corner of a room I rarely entered. But I immediately recognized with some satisfaction that its lock seemed to match a key on my keyring. The only key I’d never found a use for. It had always been there, since my father had wielded the ring, but I’d never thought to ask him what it was for.

Now, with certainty, I tugged the key loose and shoved it into the lock.

Sure enough, the key turned, and, with Natalie flashing her phone towards the crawl space, I tugged the door open.

Sitting inside, on a veritable mountain of spare change, was a dragon the size of a coffee mug.

I froze, not exactly sure how to react. Behind me, Natalie dropped her phone, and the dim lighting in the room was only enough to catch a glimpse of its sleek scales. After a second to recover from the shock, I began to move.

I’ve faced my fair share of house pests, and this was no different. Throwing my arm behind me, I latched onto the handle of a broom that had collected more dust sitting in its corner than it had ever swept in its life. Keeping my eyes trained on the dragon, I brought it forwards and prodded lightly at the small reptile.

The dragon snapped at the broom, as I’d expected. Natalie was apparently less prepared; I could hear the jars clinking lightly as she backed into a cabinet. As the little pest’s jaw clenched down, I carefully lifted it from its hoard.

“Get me an empty jar,” I whispered over my shoulder.

Natalie fetched one, and hurried out of the room as soon as I’d taken it. The jug was large enough to fit the dragon snugly, but it would hold the thing until I could find a place to let it loose.

Out in the light of the store, I inspected the little pest. He had dark, reddish-brown scales and golden eyes that shone with what I could’ve mistaken for intelligence. As I studied him, he seemed to be sizing me up as well.

Natalie, having overcome her shock and seeing that the dragon was contained, ran over. With wide eyes, she reached out and tapped a finger against the glass. The dragon turned to her, staring up with what I swear was feigned innocence.

“We should keep him!”

It was just about the last thing I expected to come out of her mouth.

“You want to keep a dragon?” I needed to get my hearing checked. Wasn’t this the woman that had nearly screamed on spotting the little guy only a minute ago?

“He’s adorable!” she insisted, reaching out to take the jar from me. “I’ve never seen a real dragon before. I was always told they don’t exist.”

What else didn’t Typics know existed? Did they think pigeons were fake, too?

“We could keep him in the shop, and he could help guard the door!” Natalie suggested, beaming like she was holding a newborn puppy. She was already tenderly cradling the jar. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“Guard us from what?” I demanded. “The only thief I’ve had since I took over this store is him.”

But I knew from Natalie’s enraptured expression that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

I had heard of dragons being domesticated before. They were said to make excellent pets, given proper care. But there was no telling which breed this one was. Knowing my luck, he’d grow into a five-meter beast that’d fill up a whole aisle.

“I’m calling him Midas,” Natalie announced.

And I knew any arguing was hopeless.

We now had a guard dragon.

#my writing #writeblr #writblr #short story #original fiction #original fic #writers of tumblr #teriwrites #flo's magical emporium #ongoing #character: flo kim #character: natalie baker #character: mike bereave #various vignettes

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

WHO Issues Warning As Daily Caseload Grows (Foreign Policy) As dense crowds of protesters gather around the world, and New Zealand announces a return to life as usual, it’s easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging. On Monday, the WHO recorded the largest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, 136,000 in total; 75 percent of new cases came from just ten countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia.

Stress is skyrocketing among the middle-aged (Marketwatch) If you’re middle-aged and you’re thinking, “I don’t remember everyone being this angry and miserable 20 or 30 years ago,” you’re not wrong. A recent study confirms what many people in later middle age already feel: We really are much more stressed than middle-aged people were back in the 1990s. The good news? As we get older our levels of stress will go down again. We’ll be happier in retirement than we are in our 40s and 50s, even with health issues. Older people experience fewer stressors and are able to cope with them better, says David Almeida, a psychologist and professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the simplest answer is to move more. “My advice to people is to move when you are exposed to stress,” he says. “Moving, physical activity, is probably the best stress reducer.”

After Protests, Politicians Reconsider Police Budgets and Discipline (NYT) In an abrupt change of course, the mayor of New York vowed to cut the budget of the nation’s largest police force. In Los Angeles, the mayor called for redirecting millions of dollars from policing after protesters gathered outside his home. And in Minneapolis, City Council members pledged to dismantle their police force and completely reinvent how public safety is handled. As tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against police violence over the past two weeks, calls have emerged in cities across the country for fundamental changes to American policing. The pleas for change have taken a variety of forms—including measures to restrict police use of military-style equipment and efforts to require officers to face strict discipline in cases of misconduct. Parks, universities and schools have distanced themselves from local police departments, severing contracts. In some places, the calls for change have gone still further, aiming to abolish police departments, shift police funds into social services or defund police departments partly or entirely.

U.N. General Assembly won’t meet in person for first time in 75-year history (Washington Post) For the first time in the United Nations’ 75-year history, world leaders won’t convene in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting this September. U.N. General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande explained Monday that an in-person gathering during the coronavirus pandemic would be impossible because world leaders typically travel with large delegations of aides and security personnel, making it hard to keep the numbers of attendees at events low. “A president doesn’t travel alone, leaders don’t travel alone,” he said. The session will instead take place remotely, though U.N. officials have yet to say exactly what that might look like.

Mexico’s Leader Rejects Big Spending to Ease Virus’s Sting (NYT) Across the globe, governments have rushed to pump cash into flailing economies, hoping to stave off the pandemic’s worst financial fallout. They have mustered trillions of dollars for stimulus measures to keep companies afloat and employees on the payroll. The logic: When the pandemic finally passes, economies will not have to start from scratch to bounce back. In Mexico, no such rescue effort has come. The pandemic could lead to an economic reckoning worse than anything Mexico has seen in perhaps a century. More jobs were lost in April than were created in all of 2019. A recent report by a government agency said as many as 10 million people could fall into poverty this year. Yet most economists estimate that Mexico will increase spending only slightly. Hostile toward bailouts, loath to take on public debt and deeply mistrustful of most business leaders, Mexico’s president has opted largely to sit tight.

Cuba almost coronavirus free (Foreign Policy) Cuba—a country that prides itself on its health system—has almost vanquished its coronavirus epidemic, according to official data. It has recently averaged less than ten cases per day and on Monday went nine consecutive days without a reported death from COVID-19. “We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said over the weekend.

Spain makes masks mandatory until coronavirus defeated (Reuters) Wearing masks in public will remain mandatory in Spain after the country’s state of emergency ends on June 21 until a cure or vaccine for the coronavirus is found, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.

This round’s on us, says Malta (Reuters) Residents of Malta will be given $112 vouchers by the government to spend in bars, hotels and restaurants in an effort to revitalize the tourist industry. Tourism accounts for a quarter of the Mediterranean island’s GDP but it has been at a standstill since mid-March when flights were stopped during the coronavirus emergency. Flights to a small number of countries will resume on July 1 but they exclude big tourism source markets Britain and Italy.

Russia rejects Iran embargo (Foreign Policy) Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has called for “universal condemnation” of the U.S. campaign to pass a permanent arms embargo on Iran through the United Nations Security Council. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Lavrov called the U.S. attempt to hold Iran to the confines of the Iran deal while the United States had already broken the deal was “ridiculous and irresponsible.”

Moscow’s strict coronavirus lockdown turns lax overnight (Washington Post) In a sudden about-face from one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, Moscow dramatically eased restrictions Tuesday, abolishing the city’s digital-pass system for travel and allowing salons and most other nonessential businesses to open. Schedules for when Muscovites were allowed outside based on their address have also been done away with after just one week. Restaurants and cafes will be allowed to serve people on verandas starting June 16 and nearly all restrictions will be lifted by June 23—the day before Russia’s rescheduled Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square. The city’s walk schedules and requirements for wearing face masks outside have increasingly been ignored by residents, and Moscow authorities might have been feeling the pressure from small businesses that have been closed since late March with little government aid to sustain them.

Tracking the origin of the coronavirus outbreak (Daily Telegraph) Coronavirus may have broken out in the Chinese city of Wuhan much earlier than previously thought, according to a new US study looking at satellite imagery and internet searches. The Harvard Medical School research found that the number of cars parked at major Wuhan hospitals at points last autumn was much higher than the preceding year. It also found that searches from the Wuhan region for information on “cough” and “diarrhea”, known Covid-19 symptoms, on the Chinese search engine Baidu spiked around the same time. It has led researchers to suggest that the outbreak began much earlier than December 31, the date the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak.

North Korea cuts off all communication with South Korea (AP) North Korea said it was cutting off all communication channels with South Korea on Tuesday, a move experts say could signal Pyongyang has grown frustrated that Seoul has failed to revive lucrative inter-Korean economic projects and persuade the United States to ease sanctions. The North’s Korean Central News Agency said all cross-border communication lines would be cut off at noon in the “the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things.” North Korea has cut communications in the past—not replying to South Korean phone calls or faxes—and then restored those channels when tensions eased.

The Palestinian Plan to Stop Annexation: Remind Israel What Occupation Means (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is pressing for annexation in conjunction with the Trump administration’s peace plan, which at least ostensibly contemplates an autonomous Palestinian entity as part of what it calls a “realistic two-state solution.” Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, and could do so as early as next month. But to the Palestinians, annexation flouts the ban on unilateral land grabs agreed to in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and would steal much of the territory they have counted on for a state. For that reason, they say it would kill all hope of a two-state solution to the conflict. In response to the annexation plan, Mr. Abbas renounced the Palestinians’ commitments under the Oslo agreements last month, including on security cooperation with Israel. The strategy aims to remind the Israelis of the burdens they would assume if the Palestinian Authority disbanded, and to demonstrate that they are willing to let the authority collapse if annexation comes to pass. The Palestinian Authority says it will cut the salaries of tens of thousands of its own clerks and police officers. It will slash vital funding to the impoverished Gaza Strip. And it will try any Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem arrested on the West Bank in Palestinian courts instead of handing them over to Israel.

#headlines #news

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inurear786 · 3 years

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HOME FILMS & DOCUMENTARIES, TOP 10 LIST THE WORLDS MOST MYSTERIOUS PICTURES EVER TAKEN!

UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES

The worlds most mysterious pictures ever taken!

March 1, 2014 | A Strange Mystery | Films & Documentaries, Top 10 List

The unexplained pictures

St Augustine Lighthouse,

This picture remains unexplained – it reportedly shows a ghost on the top of the light house and has been seen on a number of occasions

Nobody believed Doris Bither. She was a constantly drunk mother who abused her children because she herself was once abused. However, everything changed when several paranormal investigators decided to sit in a room to watch her struggle with the “entities” she claimed haunted her.

When Doris asked a few paranormal investigators to observe her, they were skeptical at first but eventually agreed. Sure enough, Doris suddenly began cursing at three unseen entities. Suddenly auras began forming around her. A mysterious green mist began swirling around Doris. One of the investigators fainted. No one knows exactly what happened.

The Martian Spherules

In 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had already detected curious blueberry-shaped microscopic formations in the martian soil…but a much stranger picture was taken by Opportunity at the end of 2012, depicting bigger spherules in larger numbers.

Suggested to be made of hematite – a possible sign of the past presence of water…scientists are still uncertain of what these things might be.

The Babushka Lady

Babushka Lady is a nickname for an unknown woman present during the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy who might have photographed the events.

She was seen to be holding a camera and was also seen in film accounts of the assassination. Even though the shooting had already taken place and most of her surrounding witnesses took cover, she can be seen still standing with the camera. She never came forward. The police and the FBI did not find her, and the film shot from her position never turned up.

The Hessdalen Lights

The Hessdalen Light is an unexplained light usually seen in the Hessdalen valley in Norway.

In 2007, a group of teachers, students and scientists established a science camp in Norway to study the phenomenon.

On a clear night, Bjorn G. Hauge managed to take this pic using an exposure time of 30 seconds.

The analysis of the spectrum reveals the object to be made of silicium, iron, titanium and scandium.

Pyramid on the Moon

This photo was taken by Apollo 17 near the Geophone Rock, during the last flight to the moon, and it was listed as a “blank” in the Apollo 17 photographic index.

The photo certainly suffers from extreme light exposure and noise issues. But it’s in fact not completely blank, as adjusting the contrast reveals pyramid-like structures.

The Solway Firth Spaceman

May, 1964

On 23 May 1964, Jim Templeton, a firefighter from Carlisle, Cumberland (now part of Cumbria), took three photographs of his five-year-old daughter while on a day trip to Burgh Marsh.

Templeton said the only other people on the marshes that day were a couple of old ladies sitting in a car at the far end of the marsh. In a letter to the Daily Mail in 2002, Templeton stated, “I took three pictures of my daughter Elizabeth in a similar pose – and was shocked when the middle picture came back from Kodak displaying what looks like a spaceman in the background.”

Templeton insists that he did not see the figure until after his photographs were developed, and analysts at Kodak confirmed that the photograph was genuine.

The Hook Island Sea Monster

People nowadays assume that this image is a photoshop job unique to the digital age, whereas in fact it’s a classic, much-reproduced image, widely discussed in the cryptozoological literature, and first appearing in print in March 1965 (together with others). It’s Robert Le Serrec’s photo of a huge, tadpole-like creature encountered in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland.

The Mysterious Hinterkaifeck Murders

The story:

“In Germany, 1922, the murders of six people at the Hinterkaifeck Farmstead shocked the nation. This wasn’t just because of the gruesome nature of the case, but also because the case was so incredibly weird, and it remains unsolved to this day. Over 100 people were interviewed in the murder, but no one was ever arrested. No motive was ever established as to explain the murders.

“The previous maid had left 6 months earlier, saying the home was haunted. The new maid arrived only hours before the murders. It is believed that the perpetrator(s) remained at the farm for several days – someone had fed the cattle, and eaten food in the kitchen: the neighbours had also seen smoke from the chimney during the weekend. This photo depicts one of the victims as he lay in the house barn.

Possible explanation:

The photo really isn’t unexplained, the events did happen and the photo taken you see above is authentic…. What’s unexplained is the events that led up to it, and how it all went down.

The movie!

The short film shows the most mysterious and unexplained pictures ever taken.

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Operation Highjump – declassified pictures, UFO evidence

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JFK Assassination – What did Mary Moorman’s missing photo show?

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sussex-nature-lover · 4 years

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Friday 19th February 2021

The Big Robin Investigation Part 2

NB: scroll down for a set of inter-blog notes

I didn’t actually put Robin facts on the blog yesterday, I guess because the bird is so familiar to us.

So for the record:

The scientific name for Robin is Erithacus rubecula, with our British species being in the subspecies melophilus

There are about 6.7m breeding territories in the UK

They’re a small garden bird measuring approximately

Length: 14cm Wingspan: 20-22cm Weight: 14-21g

Robins feed on worms, seeds, fruits, insects and other invertebrates. They’ll often hang around when you’re digging to see if you turn up worms for them, or if you buy food they really enjoy mealworms and suet pellets; or you can put out some dried fruit, bits of mild cheese and they do like left over pastry and cake. If you have a garden regular and build up trust over time, some will even come and take food from your hand.

Robins are ground feeders and really struggle to access the suet balls in the hanging feeders, although a couple have worked hard, persevered and mastered the technique they need.

Broadly speaking, depending on the weather, the breeding season begins in late March and lasts until July. A normal clutch size is 4-6 eggs with an egg laid each day. These birds are very sensitive to disturbance and will immediately flee the nest if they feel threatened. Females incubate the eggs for 13 days, the young fledge after another 14 days but cannot fly for a few more days. Robins have two broods a year, occasionally three if conditions are right and although they are territorial they aren’t worried by other species near their nests. The young leave the nest in May but don’t tend to travel further than a few miles from where they hatch.

Over the years we’ve only had them nest in the purpose built open fronted Robin box twice, but I have found nests in the shrubberies and once even in a waist high planter that I’d filled with rubble to a depth that would support a bowl. That remained unplanted in the end, of course. The strangest place I’ve personally seen a Robin’s nest was on a shelf at a garden centre. It was in the indoor part, but very open and airy with the doors open all day. Staff had put red and white tape around a seclusion zone and as far as I know, the brood was raised successfully.

Robins are known for nesting in some unexpected places. < external link

To my next point. I’ve got Robins in three categories now:

Resident - birds as above, who stay close to the site of their birth.

Migrant - birds who take to different climes for the harsher Winter weather. We might find some Scandinavian Robins coming to our gardens. Central Europe might host Russian birds and small numbers (less than 5%) usually female, British birds may hop across the Channel, possibly even as far as southern Spain. The birds are usually female, I imagine, as males tend to hang on to their home territory. It has been shown that many migrating Robins are faithful to both their summer and winter territories, which may be many hundreds of miles apart.

I’ve read that migrating Robins, who mostly, but not exclusively, fly in daylight hours, will fly for hours at a time, between 62 - 125 miles a day and at speeds of up to 30 - 36mph.

We also sometimes find ‘vagrant’ birds, which are birds who either break with known tradition, or accidentally stray from their intended course.

I’m excluding the other category here, the ‘disappearing’ birds who seemingly go into hiding during the moult after the breeding season has finished, to grow new and strong flight feathers and prepare for the Winter ahead.

More Photos of Some of Yesterday’s Birds

Spades - note the small patch of black on its lower red breast (our RHS) This Robin is easy to pick out from photographs.

Hearts - the facial red progresses to the lower shoulder area like epaulettes

...not to be confused with this Robin who also displays a distinctive heart shape. It has far less red on its face and breast, and the ‘shoulder’ area is grey. The heart is quite a common shape or I would call this one the Two Of

Clubs - the red breast is almost a square shaped bib

Diamond - Clubs and Diamond are not such distinctive shapes but follow the card suit naming process. I thought I could stretch my imagination to ‘see’ two diamond shapes side by side(ish)

And of course, as seen on yesterday’s blog, the distinctive Joker.

Yesterday I mentioned Martin Garner, the late Ornithologist as I’d come across a piece of his where he says

visiting Chris Murphy's Northern Ireland garden in winter 1998. Backing onto a bird-filled woodland, a magnet for Crossbills, Redpolls and the Irish Jay (ssp. hibernicus), it was always worth a look. On this occasion there were reports of Mealy Redpolls in with the local Lessers. I eventually managed to see two or three Mealies, when a pale Robin caught my eye. I told Chris I thought he had a 'Continental Robin' visiting his garden. Curiosity aroused, he watched the bird, alongside eight other 'British Robins' for several days. In the spring, he visited Sweden and, on his return, reported that his pale Robin was identical to many he'd seen there. A check of the Irish Bird List indicated that there was circumstantial evidence of their occurrence, but that there were no confirmed records of Continental Robin in Ireland. I think they were occurring, as evidenced by the bird in Chris's garden, just presumably, and understandably, overlooked.

Now this fits exactly with my own thinking, our garden being much closer to mainland Europe. The high number of Robins in our garden can definitely be split into two groups. They seem to be ok alongside each other, but when seen in twos, will definitely be with their own sort.

Two British Robins?

Group of Continental Robins?

See notes in previous entry.

I’m really very well ware of all the grey areas and that this is purely speculation on my part, but I do like to try and explain a mystery if not solve one. No doubt I’ll take many more hundreds, if not thousands of photos trying to work it all out. Whatever the reason for so many Robins in our garden, I’ll keep reading and watching with interest and really hoping for a population explosion this Spring rather than a mass exodus.

Addendum:

The birds who’ve been noted to return to the same Summer and Winter territories will have been the birds who survive the average age and who’ve been ringed for observations and data collection.

NOTES FROM OUR KITCHEN:

Last night we had left over chilli con carne with rice and a side salad of marinated mixed tomatoes, cucumber, radish and avocado all mixed with a homemade dressing. I didn’t have any sour cream so topped the chilli with a little creme fraiche further soured by some drops of lemon juice and some sliced spring onions.

#Robins countrygarden gardenbirds naturephotography

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whereareroo · 4 years

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DEAR NANCY

WF THOUGHTS (1/10/21).

AN OPEN LETTER TO

NANCY PELOSI

Dear Nancy,

As the Trump era comes to a close, I want to personally thank you for totally manhandling Donald Trump for the past two years. You're amazing!

I liked you when you were Speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011. I've loved you as Speaker in 2019 and 2020. You're Superwoman!

Since you returned to the Speakership in 2019, it's been very obvious that Trump is afraid of you. You intimidate him. When you stare at him, or gesture at him with your hand or finger, he becomes paralyzed. He doesn't know how to handle you. It's been fun to watch.

The Democrats in the House almost made a big mistake after they regained control of the body in the 2018 election. You had been a very good Speaker from 2007 to 2011. You made history by being the first female Speaker. Nonetheless, in late 2018 some of your Democratic colleagues opposed your bid to be Speaker again. Some said that you were too old. Some said that you weren't tough enough to handle Trump. Some said that your policy views were too moderate. I thank God that you won the Speakership anyway. You were the perfect person to handle Trump. With respect and dignity, you've consistently highlighted his mistakes and flaws. There is no way that a younger person, or a more radical person, could have done what you've done. You've been perfect. Your brains and professionalism have always made Trump look so small. Thank you!

As soon as the Democrats retook the House in 2018, right in the middle of Trump's term, I knew that you were the best possible Speaker. Trump is a bully, and he particularly likes to bully women. A tough Italian girl from Baltimore, who grew up in a Catholic home with six brothers, was the perfect person to get under Trump's skin. After surviving childhood in a house with seven Italian males, handling Trump was probably a cakewalk.

In case you haven't been keeping notes, let's take a stroll down memory lane. I think these were some of your finest moments against Trump:

▪ Late in 2018, after you had been reelected Speaker but before you took office, you were at a White House meeting that had been scheduled to discuss the awful government shutdown. You wanted to get the government moving again. After a few minutes, it was obvious that the only issue on Trump's mind was his infamous "Wall." You didn't want to waste your time. You got up and walked out. As you were walking down the White House driveway, the assembled reporters were astonished that you were leaving after only 10 minutes. They shouted questions at you. You smiled confidently, and kept walking. Everybody who saw those pictures, including Trump, knew that you weren't afraid to push Trump around.

▪In early 2019, after you had formally assumed the Speakership, you were back at the White House for another big morning meeting about the government shutdown. Trump loves to have the press at these meetings. He thinks everything is a reality TV show. That night, a single photograph from that meeting was all over the news. It was a photo of you, standing over a seated Trump, dismissively waving your hand at him as you lectured him. Trump had a stunned and powerless look on his face. It was priceless.

▪ Not long after that photo, you used your authority as Speaker to cancel Trump's State of the Union address. In the midst of a government shutdown, you weren't going to give Trump a platform to spew his idiotic ideas. Your move took guts. It was brilliant.

▪About a month later, with the government shutdown resolved, you let Trump deliver his State of the Union speech. We all knew that it would be an interesting night when, upon his arrival at the podium, Trump refused to shake your hand. You won the night with two big moves:

1. While looking back at you over his shoulder, Trump delivered a line calling for an end to bitter politics. You reached forward and, with a smirk on your face, sarcastically clapped right in his face.

2. When the speech was over, in full view of the cameras, you stayed at the podium and ripped your copy of the text into little pieces. You later explained yourself by noting that the speech was "a manifesto of mistruths" and that you thought destroying the speech was "the courteous thing to do given the alternatives."

In two simple moves, you took the spotlight away from Trump. You were brilliant. You were only two months into your Speakership, and Trump knew that he had a real problem on his hand.

▪In the second half of 2019, you handled the impeachment issues with dignity, respect, and patriotism. For good reason, you would not authorize impeachment proceedings when the only issues were Trump's Russian entanglements that were outlined in the disappointing Mueller Report. Even though Mueller had uncovered damaging evidence and suggested that impeachment was the proper remedy, you argued that voters could resolve the problem by removing Trump from office in 2020. Then, in late August and early September, a bombshell hit. Clear evidence proved that Trump had withheld important funding for Ukraine, funding that was mandated by federal law, in an attempt to bribe the Ukrainian president into launching a sham investigation into Joe Biden and his son. In light of Trump's clear abuse of his office and his clear criminal behavior, you could no longer stand in the way of impeachment. Nonetheless, you demanded that the process be conducted with solemnity and professionalism. You wore black to the final impeachment vote. When a few of your members cheered after Trump was impeached, you silenced them with a stern glare and a quick pound of your gavel. Your demeanor showed America that an impeachment is not cause for celebration. You were classy all the way.

▪Early in 2020, after Trump's cowardly loyalists in the Senate refused go remove him from office, Trump tried to downplay the impeachment. You wouldn't let Trump off the hook. You repeatedly reminded everybody that: "This president is impeached for life regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of Mitch McConnell. There is nothing the Senate can do to ever erase that."

▪In your witty and sarcastic way, you've been all over Trump in 2020. You've embarrassed him over his bungling of the Coronavirus situation. You've shamed him over his anti-American attacks on our electoral process. There is no way for him to refute your claims because you tell the truth.

▪The events of January 6, 2021 will be remembered forever. Like a dictator, Trump called his troops to Washington and encouraged them to attack the Capitol. When the Capitol was attacked, you were in the Speaker's chair for what should have been a routine proceeding to confirm Joe Biden as the next president. Trump's supporters ransacked the Capitol for five hours. You must have been heartbroken. You must have been extremely upset. You must have been tremendously tempted to respond with a political attack on Trump and his violent supporters. When you returned to the podium, after hours of mayhem, you had the wisdom to start your remarks with a prayer. In a calm voice, this is what you said: "...let us pray that this instigation of violence will provide an epiphany for our country to heal. In that spirit of healing, I invoke the song of Saint Francis. I usually do. Saint Francis is the patron saint of my city of San Francisco, and the song of Saint Francis is our anthem: 'Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. Where there is darkness may you bring light. Where there is hatred, let us bring love. Where there is despair, let us bring hope." Your prayer was exactly what we needed at that moment. It was classic Pelosi.

Please know that millions of Americans are praying for you. In the darkness of the Trump era, you've been a shining star. You've been the right woman at the right time. God Bless You.

With Gratitude,

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iamnathannah · 7 years

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Longing with a Cherry Tomato on Top | Chapter Twenty-Six | In Your Sweet Embrace, All My Pain's Erased

Author: Nate Pairing: Paris/Rory, varying POVs, including Lorelai, Paris and Rory. Spoilers: Literally nothing is being spoiled here; right within the middle of season three and far away from canon. Rating: R (sexual situations, profanity, homophobia, and teasing of horrid New England stereotypes, along with stoners and The Man.)) Disclaimer: This is actually a big change of pace, because in this chapter we have a Judging Amy crossover; that show is the property of CBS Productions/Television Studios, 20th Century Fox Television, Amy Brenneman and Barbara Hall/Joseph Stern. As per usual (grudgingly considering what happened in A Year in the Life), Gilmore Girls is with Amy-Sherman Palladino/Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, Hofflund Polone and Warner Bros. Television. All other products mentioned within are the property and trademarks of their respective owners, and no disrespect is meant or implied. Archiving: FF.net, AO3, aff.net and RalSt. Anywhere else, ask first. Summary: Sharon makes a desperate overture at trying to get Paris back, while Lorelai and Harold Gellar fight back as hard as they can to keep her in front of the best family law jurist in the state of Connecticut. Meanwhile, Paris and Rory deal with the possibility of being broken apart by the state, and try to fend off another attempt by Francie to take control of the student government. Finally, Paris finds out how Rory's sexuality was defined even earlier than she even fathomed. Author's Notes: Hello, reader! Remember when I promised in January of 2015 that you wouldn't wait long for a new chapter? Boy, I broke that promise, did I?! (He says this as you think 'get on with the story!' but it's been 2 ½ years...) Blame college (I've got one degree! But I'm going for another!) and the usual anxieties that come with it, along with health issues with my mother that threw our lives astray for nearly a year (she has recovered, thank goodness). But there was also personal anguish about how I wanted this chapter to be perfect. This is a big chapter in the story, a turning point. And bringing in a show I barely watched in Judging Amy for a natural crossover turned out to be more complicated than I thought, as I barely was able to watch an episode before my cable provider pulled the UP network for the damned Liquidation Channel, thus I had to hope I got Amy Brenneman's voice and mannerisms as Amy Gray right within the world of my story without much reference outside of random YouTube videos. UP came back later on, so I was assured I was fine, but I also wanted Paris and Rory as a couple to be believable, yet sexual in this chapter. I hope I got that balance right (and to a lesser extent, Jess as just a friend rather than romantic interest; I love Rory and Jess as friends together, along with Paris).. Also adding on other original characters and getting them into a room and making sure they all work out, it's an act to get their voices right (I'm especially proud of Elisa Keller here, along with Roland Hampton; for once I really don't have an archetype actor to help you picture them, so you can imagine your own). I can only hope they are. Then came the revival I mentioned above. Which crushed my heart and basically confirmed that ASP's ending for Rory was sadly no better than someone writingthat of a Rogan fan who writes 47 chapters of angst involving Rory abandoning all her views, hopes and dreams to follow Logan to the inane ends of the earth and a life as a society wife. Outside of my beloved Paris coming out unscathed and kickass (lalalalala what's this about Doyle and a divorce? I can't hear you!),, I hate what happened to Rory throughout. So my Rory is growing ever stronger within this narrative and I had to make sure that the Rory in this story won't end up that morose figure in the show's canon. It (and said angst-fests) discouraged me from writing for awhile, but I can't hold back any longer, and finished this chapter up; and the next chapter will not take two years to write. I promise you. Bug me on all my social media to finish if I get near that milestone, please. Hell, I'll even set a calendar event to torment me every four hours beginning in June 2019. Oh, and apparently there was an election last year and some megalomaniac with a terrible TV show and bad Twitter etiquette has access to the red button instead of the sane ex-First Lady, New York senator and Secretary of State. And he has a whole bunch of over-nationalistic people around him who hate public service, the LGBTQ+ community, health care for all, not being under Russian control, and the rule of law. Lovely, right? And here's my usual 'this is a femslash story and if you don't know that at all after 26 chapters where have you been? Go read some fanfic about Kirk Cameron or God is NOT Dead or something' disclaimer. This is coming out just in time to give my friend @ubiquitousmixie some reading on the plane to Europe, as an early birthday present. She's been an amazing kick-ass advocate, an incredible writer and a tireless confidant (along with Taylor, her wife), and I cannot wait to see her and T again in the next few months. I hope she enjoys this. Also this is dedicated to the ladies of the Worst Friends Forever podcast (@wffpodcast); they probably wouldn't read this story, but they have a great weekly show and you should listen to it as soon as possible (they have awesome GG content, for instance, and really great looks at feminist and general topics). And to anyone else who has stuck around after so much of my undying writer's block; thank you for your incredible patience and loyalty. I enjoy writing this for fun and will not let you down. The chapter title was inspired by Sarah McLachlan's song "Train Wreck".

AO3 | FF.net

#gilmore girls #gilmoregirls #fanfiction #femslash #paris x rory #rory x paris #rory and paris #paris and rory #longing #longing with a cherry tomato on top #paris geller #rory gilmore

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mlbrinkworth · 7 years

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Day 7: We've got this

Day 7: Today our safari started at 5:45, a bit early, but if we wanted to spot that leopard, we had to get rolling. I should clarify that these searches are still my favorite part of the safaris. Everyone is working together and it adds a nice level of drama. It was another amazing game drive. We saw all the usual suspects in addition to a few new birds, but who really cares about birds?

Thirty minutes into the drive, we came across a challenger to our assumed dominance over the animal kingdom. A large white rhino appeared in the middle of the trail, and decided we were not going further down this road. Mark doesn’t put up with any bullshit from the animals, and he had no intention of backing down here.

We started to the left and the rhino turned, ppsnorting heavily. We reversed, sat briefly, and slowly moved to the right. As the rhino passed our 9 o'clock, he charged. Mark reacted instantly (those blue eyes don’t miss a thing) and gunned it past, while the rest of us, with humorously slow reaction times in comparison, screeched in unison. There is no way to know which of these reactions satisfied the territorial rhino, but Mark can’t prove it wasn’t the cacophony coming from the group. Rhinos can charge at up to 40 miles per hour, and we certainly felt that was his plan.

Mark got a call over the Walkie talkie, the ingwe (the Zulu word for leopard) had been spotted crossing the street up closer to the lodge. Mark (the most interesting man in the world as the group has voted his new nickname) took off over the very rough terrain going what felt like 100 km/hr. We were far from the place where the ingwe (I’m fully immersing myself in the native culture obviously) had been spotted, and we were going so fast over rocks and around corners it felt as if the land cruiser might actually roll. Unfortunately, Mark got another walkie message over Channel 2 (where the guides talk about the special sighting, normal sightings of the easy to find animals come over Chanel 1) that they had lost visual. The safari vehicle went back to a normal speed as we started yet another search for the elusive leopard. No such luck.

We did come across an entire hill side filled with baboons though, and got to watch these guys jump around for a bit.

We had another delicious breakfast, and then left for a self drive in Hluhluwe National Park. We wanted to see how our tracking skills had developed over the week, so that we could accurately update our resumes.

We drove to Hluhluwe National park, bought a pass for the day and a map, and picked a route. Going through the gate they made us step out of the vehicle while 3 men searched the corolla, determining that we were not there to poach the rhino horn and letting us into the park.

We started out confirming our expertise in tracking by finding the bush pig, dodging some Zebra just starting in the road, stumbling upon 4 giraffe (giraffe sightings never get old) and then coming upon a giant herd of buffalo. A little later we spotted a couple rhino in the bushes. then we started climbing the mountain, and driving along the ledge admiring the incredible views. As we got higher up, we saw fewer animals, but the views were worth the temporary sacrifice. On the way down we spotted the wart hog, the impala, the nyala, the crocodile and more rhinos. On the second rhino sighting, Meredith insisted that there was a leopard laying under the tree with the rhinos, but it was another rhino. We aren’t putting that on the resume.

Upon exiting the park, they took one look at me and thought “that dude’s got a big horn”. We again had to have the car searched. The security was satisfied that we still had no rhino horn, and we headed back to the lodge.

Driving to and from these excursions is fascinating. Meredith get to sit and take in everything around us. I get to focus on avoiding a fiery death. Cows, goats and sheep just stand and lay in the middle of the highway. They don’t seem to mind the cars flying around them. There are theoretical herdsmen nearby, but they are often out of sight. Beyond that, people seem to be doing the same thing. They line the shoulder of the road, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing and talking, often hitchhiking inches from the cars traveling at 120 km/hr. We can’t really figure out why they aren’t more careful, especially with the insane driving. Homesites in the area are interesting. They are extremely small, dilapidated and many of them are round rather then square. I can’t imagine any of them have running water. They have breathtaking views, but they would probably prefer water.

We got back to the lodge safely, had another delicious lunch, and got ready for our last safari at Zulu Nyala.

Tonight’s safari was pretty amazing. We got to see rhino, Hippo and zebra in serious arguments (no one was hurt). We even got to see two rhino fight with their very valuable horns. We were curious as to what was causing all the tension. It turns out that baby rhinos are assholes. They were fearless and picking fights left and right, causing their mom to rush to their rescue.

We got to see teenage giraffes fighting with their necks getting tangled together. It was adorable, Although when their heads knocked it sounded pretty painful.

We got to see the very rare black rhino. The black rhino is smaller then the white rhino, and probably the most endangered large mammal in South Africa right now. There are only 5,000 left in the wild. The white rhino and black rhino might hang out together, but the don’t mate because of the size difference (a male black rhino can’t get up onto the female white rhino… and the male white rhino would crush the female black rhino). Mark gave us more insight into the poaching threat they are constantly up against. Poachers used to come in on the full moon, and are often tied to Russian and Chinese organized crime elements in the region. They’ve recently started coming in on the half moon and using the stars for light. Because they typically grew up in the bush, they have about 15% better night vision then we do. The frustrating thing about poachers is that the rhino horn is simply keratin like our hair and nails, and grows back just the same, so they don’t need to kill the rhino to get the horn. In Mark’s steely blue eyes, if they made it legal to harvest the rhino horn, the issue would resolve itself. Currently rhino horn sells for more than cocaine, and it has absolutely no medicinal effect. We ended the night with one last search for the ingwe, to no avail, and called it a night. We went to a quick dinner, exchanged emails with the wonderful members of our safari group, and went off to start packing up all of our clothes which by now are pretty dirty (our makeshift bathtub laundromat has only been somewhat successful). We were very sad this portion of the trip has ended, as every part about it has exceeded our expectations in ways we will never be able to describe.

New sightings: Kingfisher, Grey duiker, Kudu, Bust pig, Vervet monkey, Tawny Eagle

Fun Fact #: The big Cats have tappita (sp?) eyes, which gives them an extra lens that can reflect light. The leopard we are looking for may not have eyes at all. We don’t know.

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destination-of-fate · 8 years

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(English Subs + Text) Soraru and Mafumafu’s new Cooking Videos

youtube

”I tried making Sticky Ramen for my friend” I’ve subbed Soraru’s latest video on his official channel where he tries to cook a meal for Mafumafu! :O If the English subs don’t pop up immediately, click the gear icon and enable them~ Below the “read more” is the full transcript for Mafumafu’s video! Watch Mafumafu’s video here. I can’t subtitle it because his channel doesn’t have community contributions enabled, sorry! ;_; But feel free to share the link to this post if you see people wanting to know what’s happening in the video! This goes line by line and might be a bit hard to understand without the video side by side, so feel free to ask if you have any questions~ I hope you enjoy both videos! :) (Please do not use these translations to upload a subbed version of either video to Youtube or anywhere else)

Title: “I made Medicine Curry for my friend [I’m sorry]”

(Lines not spoken)

Mafumafu: My face looks so bad today… Hey there! Everyone! Hello~ I’m Mafumafu. Well, you see~ Soraru-san, who I work with for certain things He’s… So physically frail! So as for that- I can’t cook or anything at all, but there’s- Medicinal cooking!! That word means-

(Lines spoken) Mafumafu: Siri~ “What’s medicinal cooking?” How do you activate Siri? Siri: I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that. Mafumafu: SILENCE! What’s “medicinal cooking?” Siri: I found some information about “incidental cooking” on the web. Mafumafu: “Medicinal cooking is a variety of Chinese cuisine.” Eh… it’s Chinese food…? But I wanted to make curry. So for today I want Soraru-san to feel a bit better That was our plan So here! Medicinal curry That’s what I want to make! I don’t actually know anything about medicinal cooking But basically I just need to make something that’s good for your body, right? Here are our ingredients. Meat!!! *sniff sniff* Ginger I really hate this stuff G-garlic Potatoes! And this… Can you see this? “Lily bulb…?”

(Caption)

“It’s said that lily bulbs have positive effects on the throat” Mafumafu: It’s like sawdust… Aah, something came out! And finally, the curry. These are the items I want to work with What should I do? For now I guess maybe I should put this in The directions are written here! Huh, I see... Okay~! Wash my hands thoroughly… with soap First of all, since I’m not very skilled I think I should start with chopping the ingredients Is this right…? Soraru: It’s right, it’s right. Peel it Mafumafu: Do I have to peel it? If it were you, do you think you could eat it if it wasn’t peeled? Soraru: We’re eating it together. Mafumafu: Eating what? Soraru: Huh? Don’t say that Mafumafu: Eh, I’m not eating it. I don’t eat curry. And I just ate before this. Soraru: The thing about curry It tastes good Because You eat it together

(Caption) “No more forced comments”

Mafumafu: I wonder how long it’s been since I last cooked Ah, but I did cook during our DVD project Is this right? Do you even wash the peel with water first? Do we even have a peely thing (*He means a peeler) A peely thing (*He means a peeler) Uwaaaaa~ Let’s peel this potato I’m a little scared What’s with this? OW! I hit… my fingernail… Eh, can I stop now? As for why we suddenly decided to do cooking videos The truth is that Soraru-san was in poor health at the start of the year Soraru: That’s true Mafumafu: He couldn’t even sing… That’s why… We wanted to upload videos that weren’t songs… And put at least some kind of work out there Or maybe rather than “work” This is “rehabilitation...” He can’t do livestreams either… He can’t talk much… So I said I’d make something and he could eat it… He said “Me too~ Me too!! I want to cook too!! I want to post videos too!!”

(Caption)

“*This is an impression”

Mafumafu: He said to me all of a sudden: “I want to move to the countryside, where no one knows me-” (Impression Fade-In) “Maybe I’ll start a second life as a farmer or something” When he said that, I was worried about how depressed he was Of course, I was worried So I quickly bought a video camera…. Like… I said “It might seem weird, but do you want to film some video and post it?” “Want to do something for fun?” It was funny to see Soraru-san unexpectedly get so excited while preparing for it. Soraru: There’s something on my mind right now, more than that potato… Mafumafu: Yes? Yes? Soraru: Why do you have Lipovitan D on the counter? (T/N: Energy Drink) Mafumafu: Oh, no no, that’s just there because I wanted to feel fired up as I cooked. Soraru: Ah, you’re drinking it yourself. Mafumafu: Right, right. Don’t worry. Please don’t worry about that at all. I would never! I would never! www Soraru: Yeah, I guess not (Confirming) Mafumafu: Right, I would never www You see, I just… Soraru: Even someone as ignorant about cooking as you… Mafumafu: It’s so I can wholeheartedly cook a meal. And I do want you to get your nutrients (?) Soraru: Aren’t you the one drinking it? Mafumafu: Ah, that’s right! I’m drinking it! Of course, of course! Well, you can supplement some vitamins and such too (?) Soraru: Ehh ww Aren’t you the one drinking it wwww Mafumafu: I’m drinking it! Of course, of course! Don’t worry about anything. In fact, you can sleep if you want. Since you’re not feeling well. One is plenty, right? (potatoes) It’s just for one person, after all. Time to cut? I’m used to using silverware. *bam!* I’m good, right? Time for ginger! How do you eat this? Do you shape it like this? Soraru: Chop it small, at least Mafumafu: Soraru-san, you can go away now Soraru: No I can’t Mafumafu: I’m making the ginger around the same size as the potato Can you even tell the difference between them? Soraru: Yes, yes, yes I can. Mafumafu: Eh, could this be… Could it be that if I use this trick, you won’t be able to figure out that it’s ginger? Soraru: Is this Russian Roulette… w Mafumafu: Mmm. Okay. I think I can get away with this? Look, you can’t tell! (Delighted) Soraru: What would happen if you ate that… Mafumafu: I don’t know Should I grate it and fry it? I’ll grate it into the pot Ehhh I hate garlic~ I don’t want to touch it... Soraru: Can you put garlic in curry? Mafumafu: Yeah you can! I wonder if this will be ok… I’m sorry, Soraru-san Soraru: Stop it. Don’t apologize before you make me eat it. Mafumafu: I’ve never had this before. Lily bulb? What does it look like? What part of a lily bulb do you even eat? How do you prepare it? Alright… (He googled it) I wonder if you can really eat this I’m so sorry Soraru: Don’t apologize before making me eat it. Mafumafu: Let’s do this- Soraru: All the stuff is white Mafumafu: Yeah… Ok, first! Let’s cook the meat and vegetables Maybe I’ll start with the meat? Let’s cook it! I wonder if I’m doing this right It’s already scary! It’s splattering! It’s splattering! I’m scared! I’m scared! HEY! AAAAAH Wait, wait, wait Eh? I’m scared! Am I doing this wrong? Eh, ah, wait www eh, hold on- AAAAAH You need high heat for Chinese food

(Caption) “*Curry is not Chinese food”

Mafumafu: Seriously, stop it! Hey! Seriously! STOPPPPP ITTT!!!

(Caption)

“*His highest voice of the day”

Mafumafu: Alright, I’ll add the vegetables now~ Here I go~ Yaay~! Soraru: I really can’t tell which pieces are ginger Mafumafu: It’s splattering. It’s splattering. (He’s a bit used to it now) Which is it!? Soraru: Eh, I can’t tell at all. Mafumafu: Doesn’t it smell good? I can measure the water by eye, right? I’m adding the water~ Is that enough? Ehh, should I open it? Oh! That looks good~! I’ll add the roux How much do you need? I guess I’ll add about half? wwwwww this is so rough www Even for me, this is really imprecise I want to put it in piece by piece while it gradually melts I should have brought some chocolate or something Soraru-san wouldn’t notice, I’m sure Soraru: Some people do add chocolate as a subtle seasoning Mafumafu: That’s not what I mean It would be completely chocolate… You probably wouldn’t notice it, right Soraru-san? “It’s sweeter than usual this time”

(Caption) “*This is an impression” Mafumafu: Like this? The work I’m doing here is quite tech-y

(Caption)

“Tech-y: To do something in a technical way. He’s using it to show off.”

Mafumafu: This is kind of a pain I’m sure this is fine ww Alright, it’s done~ Soraru: There’s definitely not enough roux in there Mafumafu: Eh, really!? I think it’s enough… This really doesn’t look appetizing at all I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get married Soraru: Definitely not at this rate Mafumafu: It’s bubbling now Ah, but doesn’t this look kinda good? Soraru: Has it thickened? Mafumafu: Yeah, it has! I think I want to use a bit more Hmmm~mmmmm Should I add the whole thing? I’ve been cooking properly up until now, so I want to be careful with this Little by little

(Caption)

“Putting in ⅓ of it at a time”

Soraru: No way wwwww You did it with so little hesitation I thought maybe my eyes were deceiving me... Mafumafu: Ah, look! It’s so thick! Yeah, it looks good! Soraru: Aren’t you playing this off a bit too much? w Mafumafu: You sure complain a lot… Such a pain… It’s a pain, but… There's no foam forming this time, huh Time for the secret ingredient! *clang* Soraru: He suddenly opens the fridge… Mafumafu: Honey~

(Caption) “He believes he is doing an impression. Please treat him kindly as you listen.”

Soraru: Oh, it’s honey The sweet curry is getting even sweeter *drip* *drip* *drip* *drip* Hey, hey, hey!! You added so much… Mafumafu: Eh? That’s normal I want to put more in Butter~ Soraru: Can you really put butter in curry… Mafumafu: Butter curry! Butter chicken curry! Soraru: Does that have butter in it? Mafumafu: Eh, it’s butter chicken, so wouldn’t it have butter in it? Soraru: I see… Mafumafu: But who knows What about Tabasco? Soraru: Wouldn’t that taste bad? Mafumafu: Maybe? Soraru: Ah, ah, ah, ah… Mafumafu: I tried my hardest to make this, so please eat it, ok? Ok, Soraru-san, you can leave the room now~ Soraru: Alright Mafumafu: The curry is almost done… But for the secret ingredient…

(Bottle Label) “Lipovitan D” (T/N: energy drink)

Mafumafu: Maybe that’s too mean? It might be a bit too mean It can’t be helped, then I’ll go with this

(Caption) “A meaner upgrade”

(Label)

“Yunker” (T/N: Nutrition drink to help with fatigue and illness) Mafumafu: He won’t figure it out, right? He’ll feel better, right? Healthy things + Healthy things = Healthy things This is fine, right? Soraru-san! I think it’s done~ It’s done now! Soraru: Yeah, that looks good Mafumafu: It’s still full! It’s still full! I didn’t drink any! Soraru: Huh, you really didn’t put any in. Huh??? Mafumafu: (Oh crap) I didn’t, I didn’t… Soraru: I thought so. Mafumafu: I just felt like I had a cold coming on… Soraru: I thought so. Mafumafu: Yeah~ (monotone) Although I don’t actually feel that way IT’S DONE!!

(Caption) “First taste” Mafumafu: I’m giving this the name “Mafumafu’s Medicine Curry” Soraru: But you didn’t put any medicine in, did you... Mafumafu: Of course not. Of course not w Soraru: Here I go Mafumafu: It’s curry that works like medicine H-How is it? The ingredients are: Meat Sliced garlic Ginger (chunks) Shredded ginger Soraru: Ah, the garlic… It’s so strong… Mafumafu: Really!? Soraru: But I actually like garlic quite a bit Mafumafu: There’s also~ (continuing) Lily bulb How’s the lily bulb!? Soraru: The lily bulb… Mafumafu: Did you eat it? Soraru: Is it… this thing…?? Mafumafu: The curved things Soraru: I can’t find any? Did they disappear...? They dissolved? Mafumafu: Eh, no way… Ah, that’s it Soraru: This? Mafumafu: Maybe that’s garlic Soraru: It’s garlic, it’s garlic www Mafumafu: Maybe they didn’t get added? Soraru: But you know~ It’s not bad Mafumafu: Ah, it’s like a gray area? It doesn’t taste good? Soraru: It’s like… Well, there’s garlic in the curry…. Mafumafu: Doesn’t it taste good? I thought it’d be pretty good

(Caption) “Ginger disguised as potato” Soraru: Want some? Want it? Here Mafumafu: Me? Sure, of course. Soraru: Want this bite? There, potato! (Huge lie)

(Caption)

“Agonizing”

Soraru: Isn’t that horrible? Mafumafu: The End

#utaite #after the rain #soraru #mafumafu #translations

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/youtube-is-full-of-cringey-clickbait-diy-channels-theyre-even-weirder-than-you-think/

YouTube is full of cringey, clickbait DIY channels. They're even weirder than you think.

The best way to understand Troom Troom, the YouTube channel devoted to bizarre DIY tutorials, “hacks,” and “funny pranks,” is to spend multiple hours watching it until your brain turns into sprinkle-covered neon slime that can somehow also be used as lip gloss.

Because this is precisely the sort of thing that Troom Troom traffics in: do-it-yourself how-tos that no person could or should ever replicate. The most popular videos currently on the channel are tips on how to sneak food and makeup into class in laughably arduous ways: One suggests removing the glue from a glue stick and inserting a block of hard cheese into the container, while another recommends cutting an apple in half, using an Exact-O knife to remove the center, and then stuffing an eyeshadow palette inside. Of the apple!

Troom Troom is just one of many content factories of mysterious international origin that have gamed YouTube’s algorithm with bright, clickbait-y thumbnails and SEO keywords like “DIY,” “hack,” and “prank wars.” And to stand out from the thousands of other channels peddling the exact same service, they’ve turned to stranger and stranger content.

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That’s how you end up with a video that recently went viral on Twitter, featuring a woman cutting off a (very long) strand of her hair, trimming it down to less than half an inch, and attaching it to the end of a pencil to create an eyeshadow brush. This, produced by the equally wild YouTube channel 5-Minute Crafts, is apparently an easier way to apply eyeshadow than using one’s fingers.

And yet it’s working. 5-Minute Crafts currently has the fifth most subscribers of any YouTube channel, nearly 40 million. According to Social Blade, its total of more than 10 billion video views translates to anywhere between $2 million and $34 million in annual earnings (the discrepancy here is from the varying possibilities of cost per impression). It’s estimated that Troom Troom, which currently boasts nearly 10 million subscribers and almost 3 billion total views of its surreal, pastel-plastered videos, pulls in between about $500,000 and $8 million each year.

Not only are Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts wildly successful in their own right, but they’re also part of the growing network of reaction videos to cringe-inducing content on the site, creating a cycle that generates millions of views for the YouTubers who engage with it.

But creators I spoke to also expressed concerns about these types of channels, ranging from their clickbait-y strategies to plagiarism to manipulating children’s internet behavior. The DIY YouTube space may not be all rainbows and unicorns, even if its thumbnails are full of them.

Troom Troom’s essential weirdness doesn’t just come from its how-tos being absurdly useless. They’re weird because they are narrated by a voiceover actress with a perfect American accent speaking a kind of English that sounds like it’s been run through about three layers of Google Translate. They’re weird because they feature a rotating cast of very thin white women who are referred to by nicknames like “the Blue-Eyed Girl,” “Redhead,” “Mrs. Smith,” or “Dolly,” and weirder still because those identities sometimes switch among them. They’re weird because it’s impossible to tell whether the whole thing is satire or if it’s part of a malicious Russian cyberattack targeting the YouTube-obsessed children of the world (but more on that later).

Besides being odd in its content and tone, Troom Troom is also incredibly elusive. No one can agree on who makes the videos, who owns the company, where it’s based, and who is making money off it. But that elusiveness invites speculation, and internet detectives have managed to puzzle out a few key pieces: first, that the website is registered under the name Eugene Miroshnykov, and second, that many of the videos are likely filmed in Odessa, Ukraine, judging by the Ukrainian Cyrillic script on many of the products used and the locations tagged on Troom Troom’s Instagram.

youtube

The identities of the actresses, too, have been largely exposed via their Instagram accounts. Most of them say they live in Odessa and are models and artists. The channel launched in 2015, and it’s clear from watching its earliest videos that Troom Troom began with standard DIY and didn’t reach its full weirdness — and biggest views — until about a year ago.

But there are still the requisite conspiracy theories: that Troom Troom is actually run by a millennial woman in San Francisco, or that the Troom Troom girls are being held against their will, forced to make weird DIY videos for ransom. Two media outlets that published stories on Troom Troom also failed to find out much else.

Which is why I was surprised when the email I sent to the address listed on Troom Troom’s YouTube page actually garnered a response. The sender’s name was indeed listed as Eugene Miroshnykov, confirming what I’d seen on Reddit, but after one back-and-forth, the name had been changed. To protect his anonymity — he expressed concerns about sleuths finding his phone number or other personal information — I agreed to refer to him by the nickname Zeon.

youtube

Zeon told me that Troom Troom was actually started by a collective of professional artists “that wanted to do something fun.” Zeon is not among these founders — he says he was hired when the channel already had a million subscribers and described his job as a “salesperson.” Writers and directors are based in Europe and the US and brainstorm video ideas via Skype, and then execute them within their own team. He described the company structure as similar to a “holacracy,” in which there is no top-down management and the content is instead “the result of the collective mind.”

“We got inspiration from [the world of] DIY text and picture tutorials,” he wrote. “Most of our team [is made up of] professional artists, so they found usually all the tutorials in text form, but not in the videos. We tried to solve that issue. Firstly, it was more educational and serious videos that [were] fun. Currently, we try to mix entertainment with DIY value. We found that any video should entertain if you want to make an impact on the viewers and not just to get them bored.”

youtube

This explains the heavy lifting that narration and plot serve in the average Troom Troom video — a “funny pranks” video is never just a list of pranks; it’s a story about how, say, “Dolly” sticks a plastic lizard into “Samantha’s” toothpaste and then replaces the inside of a lemon with a tennis ball. Later, Samantha gets back at Dolly by cutting out a hole in an iPhone case and placing it over a book so that it looks like Dolly’s phone literally burned through. The back-and-forth pranking only gets more complicated from there (I am not kidding).

Zeon says Troom Troom is independently owned, does not have any outside funding, and is profitable. “[It] has plans to grow, but the direction is currently confidential,” he adds. Zeon declined to connect me with the founders, nor did he provide any other details about his background or those of his co-workers, but I was easily able to find detailed Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that matched the name on his later emails, which leads me to believe that Zeon is, indeed, a real person.

The origins of 5-Minute Crafts are, for what it’s worth, far less mysterious. 5-Minute Crafts is owned by TheSoul Publishing, which says it produces an absolutely wild 1,500 videos a month, has 550 employees, and operates 40 Facebook pages in 10 languages. It owns mega-popular YouTube channels like Bright Side (animated videos that are a mix of riddles, facts, and “hacks”) and the 8 million-strong Facebook page You’re Gorgeous (your standard Facebook content farm content). Neither 5-Minute Crafts nor TheSoul Publishing responded to requests for an interview.

youtube

Notably, TheSoul Publishing is also based in Eastern Europe. According to a 2017 Forbes piece, the company was founded by the Russia-based Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, both of whom have backgrounds in social media content. To answer the implicit question, unlike many viral Facebook posts that came out of Russia over the past few years, TheSoul Publishing’s content does not appear to be overtly political.

5-Minute Crafts has four times as many subscribers as Troom Troom, but it’s supported by a 550-employee business. This raises the still-unanswered question: How many people work for Troom Troom? The channel is able to publish a 10- to 15-minute video every day, which requires a relatively large team, not to mention lots of money. For the most part, how they’re able to pull it off remains unclear.

To understand the rise of peculiar DIY videos, you have to understand the rest of YouTube. Videos on the platform succeed largely based on how well they cater to popular SEO keywords, and if they create a sense of urgency in the title (which often means using all caps and a ton of exclamation points), and use a visually striking thumbnail image — that’s why you’ll see a lot of disembodied lips biting into a strange object.

“I started noticing these really distinct, super-saturated, photoshopped thumbnails showing up in my recommended videos feed last year,” says Cristine Rotenberg, the 30-year-old YouTuber behind the nail art channel Simply Nailogical, which has 6 million subscribers. “It’s really strange. It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks.”

Bizarre projects with bait-y thumbnails is a strategy that plenty of channels have embraced, but that other established crafting players have rejected. Nifty, the home vertical owned by BuzzFeed, has invested in projects that its audience requests and is interested in actually attempting (unlike, say, an incredibly complicated DIY to make a mini box of Altoids as a prank, as one Troom Troom video offers). On these “normal” crafting channels, for lack of a better term, you’ll find how-tos for things like fall porch decor, headboard making, and pumpkin carving with thumbnails that reveal the actual product.

youtube

Erin Phraner, the supervising producer of Nifty, acknowledged the pressure that YouTube crafting channels face to game the algorithm and rely on bait-y titles. Nifty has also had its projects stolen by other craft channels. “It’s the reality of playing in that space,” Phraner says.

“Those types of thumbnails and titles and crazy hack projects definitely skew toward clickbait-y,” she adds. “But I think for us, our feeling is that you might see that pop up in the feed and click to watch it once because it seems kind of outlandish, but our whole business is we’re trying to build trust and create things that people actually want to bring into their home.”

she attempts Troom Troom’s “20 banana hacks,” which include making a “banana holster” out of felt and painting a smile on a banana peel; in another, she tries some back-to-school pranks, such as putting hay in somebody’s backpack.

youtube

Rotenberg’s videos are but a small sliver of the cottage industry that is the Troom Troom reaction video. Other popular creators like Danny Gonzalez, Cody Ko, and Jarvis Johnson have each garnered millions of views by satirizing Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts, using the standard YouTube reaction video format in which the host talks to the camera and reacts to clips from other videos.

It’s a cycle that’s lucrative for both the reactionaries and their targets. Johnson, who’s 26 and also has a full-time job working for Patreon in San Francisco, says that a reaction video he made about 5-Minute Crafts was a “huge catalyst” for growing his YouTube channel, which now has nearly half a million subscribers. Since then, he’s published a mini investigation on Troom Troom, as well as a video about the “dark side of Bright Side,” the sister channel to 5-Minute Crafts.

youtube

He says that while on the surface these sorts of channels are pretty innocuous, he does share concerns about clickbait, plagiarism, and their large audience of children. But ultimately, his reaction videos started as a joke — or rather, an exercise in telling jokes. “I thought commentary videos were a brilliant vessel for comedic writing that also fit in with what YouTube’s algorithm promotes,” he explains. “I happened upon a 5-Minute Crafts video called ‘20 Tips If You Spend Your Life in Front of Computer.’ At the time, I felt like I’d struck internet gold because I didn’t see anyone else talking about their absurd hacks.”

Because that’s the thing: Troom Troom videos are incredibly ripe for parody. The joy in watching them is largely based on their obvious absurdity — the uncanny narration, the knockoff–Disney Channel set design, the outlandishness of the projects.

Troom Troom videos are arguably part of Cringe YouTube, the ever-expanding network of uncomfortable and earnest videos that encompasses TikTok compilations, Instagram comedians, and former Vine dudes with creepy hair, among others. It’s difficult to point to a YouTube video that isn’t a little cringey in its own way, but within Cringe YouTube, it isn’t just the original videos that get views — it’s the never-ending cycle of reactions and commentary. PewDiePie, the most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time, for example, has built a career on making fun of other YouTubers’ attempts at earnestness.

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On why the genre is so popular right now, Johnson guesses it’s because of “mystery, community, and the whole ‘so bad it’s good’ thing. If someone sees something super absurd and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there.”

He also compares Troom Troom to a movie wildly considered to be one of the most unintentionally laughable films of all time. “As someone who is a die-hard fan of the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room, I see A LOT of similarities between The Room and Troom Troom,” he adds. “I feel like I should start a conspiracy theory about how Troom Troom is short for ‘The Room The Room.’”

glue-stick cheese, there’s certainly an appetite for looking at it.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18065662/troom-troom-5-minute-crafts-youtube-diy-prank

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terencehawkins · 6 years

Text

Copy of ROSEANNE, PIZZAGATE. TRUMP--and now QANON

Yesterday, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory appeared front-and-center, self-identified with t shirts and signs, at a Trump rally. Future historians will consider this to be an inflection point as stark as the Reichstag Fire. QAnon is a disordered Messianic fantasy in which Donald Trump and elite units of the military are poised to strike--in a countercoup called "the Storm"--against a globalist Deep State conspiracy comprising not only the Clintons, Obama, the Democratic Party, the diplomatic corps, and the media, but also many Hollywood figures, and in its more baroque manifestations, Freemasons and of course Jews. The Deep State's objective? World dominion and protection of its network of camps, farms, and bordellos stocked with brainwashed children for their pedophile Satanic orgies.

I am not making this up.

That these mental defectives feel comfortable publicly acknowledging their delusions at a Presidential rally marks another several turns in our tightening spiral down history's drain. The post below originally appeared June 4 and addresses not only the underlying tenets of the cult, but the Administration's ties to it.

Lovable caricature of a blue collar mom--though oddly I don't recall my own blue-collar mom ever comparing black people to apes--Roseanne Barr is notable not only for racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, but an affinity for conspiracy theories. Leaving aside the question of whether the former are characteristic of Trumpism, there's no doubt that the latter is.

Barr herself latched onto some deeply troubled storylines long before her faceplant last week. Her posts on 4Chan--a message board that seems to be peopled by the kind of guys with homemade tattoos that you see running rides at carnivals--approvingly reference not only the now-well-known fantasy that liberal billionaire George Soros is a former Nazi zonderkommando, but the more obscure notion that Donald Trump has secretly liberated hundreds of children a month from sex slavery. (A later post will address the alt.right's obsession with pedophilia.) Ask yourself who could believe that Donald Trump could do a good deed in secret and wonder how Barr is allowed to have a driver's license.

The conspiracy theory is, of course, an element in the Trump toolbox as essential as the hammer. After all, his political career was launched in Birtherism, a racist fantasy that seemed to be predicated on the assumption that no black person could legitimately achieve the presidency. As we've spun further and further down the Trumpworld rabbit hole, many of us have forgotten the rallies in which he gleefully announced to cheering goobers that he "couldn't believe" what his "investigators" were "digging up" in Hawaii. We have also forgotten the press conference, during the campaign, at which he proclaimed that Obama had been born in America, without explanation or apology.

That's all been buried under the mountain ranges of brazen bullshit he's shoveled out since--historic inauguration crowds, massive voter fraud depriving him of a popular vote win, Spygate one week, Mueller tampering with the midterms the next.

There are two alternative explanations for the primacy of the conspiracy theory in Trump's public worldview. One is a cynical recognition of the gullibility of his trailer-park constituency and the ease with which its resentment can be directed at elites. The other is much, much darker.

PIZZAGATE

As noted above, Roseanne is fixated on child sex trafficking. This is nothing new on the fringe right. But a year ago, it spawned a theory so bereft of supporting evidence and connection with consensus reality that it may have killed political satire for a generation. And almost wound up killing real people as well --Pizzagate.

It's impossible to recite the elements of the theory with a straight face. But here they are: Prominent Democrats, including John Podesta and Hillary Clinton, are pedophiles.

Wait. Really. There's more.

Being pedophiles, they need a steady supply of children to rape. (Please imagine Hillary Clinton having sex with a child or adult of either gender and tell me whether you still want to live. Bet you don't!) So they're part of an international ring of pedophiles that kidnaps children and sells them into sex slavery.

But wait--you said there'd be pizza!

And there is. Several of the hacked Podesta and DNC emails referred to a nice family place in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of DC called Comet Ping Pong Pizza. Apparently some DNC staffers liked to hang out there. For reasons still unclear, elements of the alt.right, being apprised of those references, decided that must have been where Podesta, Hillary, and all their Democratic chums were violating kids in the basement.

Well, duh. Where else, right?

The first Facebook posts on the "story" appeared in late October 2016. Yes, just before the election. Almost immediately it went viral, spraying across the twitterverse like projectile diarrhea. Later investigation found that many of the originating accounts were owned by what we now know were Russian bots. But many of the likes and retweets came from Trump operatives, including Michael Caputo. For a brilliant and very detailed account of the original story and its social-media-abetted spread, see these articles in Rolling Stone and Reveal.

Of course it didn't stop with a couple of kazillion retweets. Celebrated fantasist and bankrupt-in-waiting Alex Jones lit up Infowars with new and improved versions of the story that included Satanic blood ceremonies; apparently, once Hillary had satisfied her desires with shrieking tween girls--not making this up--he slaked her bloodlust by chopping them up for convenient disposal.

Other outlets informed their breathless consumers that Comet Ping Pong's menu contained coded clues as to what was going on in the basement--"CP" stood not for "Cheese Pizza" but "Child Pornography."

Oh. Right!

Shortly mottled marsh-dweller Steve Bannon stirred in his sodden weeds and got Breitbart onto the bandwagon. Not to be outdone by other sites touting confirmation by entirely imaginary NYPD investigations, Breitbart Radio went right to the top in an interview with Blackwater Security founder and major Trump donor Erik Prince--remember that name--who not only confirmed the story but expanded on it, adding details like multiple trips to Caribbean sex islands on a private jet owned by Clinton-pardoned financier Mark Rich. Hoo boy--is that Hillary evil, or what?

But things worked out as they worked out and the Russkis nudged the Electoral College Trump's way. The story, unfortunately, did not end there.

A couple of weeks after the election a sad addled man named Edgar Welch armed himself with an AR 15--the Schizo Special--and drove up to DC to free those poor kids from the Comet Ping Pong basement sex dungeon.

But Comet Ping Pong doesn't have a basement.

One can only imagine his frustrated rage as he bounced around the kitchen flipping open doors in his desperate search for freshly-violated children and still-engorged Democrat Satanists looking for more. Luckily he didn't go the usual crazed-gunman route and shoot up the place before turning the weapon on himself. He did let one round go, though, before surrendering to the SWAT team, which I'm sure for the people who were there was plenty.

TRUMP AND PIZZAGATE

Remember when I told you to note the name of Erik Prince? There was a reason for that.

Erik Prince delivered a full-throated and highly detailed endorsement of the Clinton pedophilia fantasy on Breitbart Radio. Breitbart is controlled by Steve Bannon, who in addition to tireless advocacy for a healthy lifestyle succeeded Russian vampire Paul Manafort as Trump's campaign manager. Breitbart is bankrolled by Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who, with Bannon, control the now-bankrupt Cambridge Analytica, the datamining and psychometrics firm that microtargeted Facebook ads--possibly with Russian assistance--during the 2016 election.

But that's beside the point. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, the famously uninformed and inarticulate Secretary of Education. But wait--there's more! Not only is Prince the sibling of a member of the cabinet, but also an apparition that appears Zelig-like every time the Trumps are doing dirt. For example, Prince met with a Russian plutocrat, Kiril Dmietriev, in the Seychelles a week before the inauguration in what now appears to have been part of the effort to set up a Washington-Moscow back channel. He's also separately proposed that the war in Afghanistan be privatized and the President create a separate spy network reporting directly to him, outside the normal intelligence structure, and presumably beyond oversight.

So to recap: You have a Trump contributor, the brother of a Trump cabinet member, going on a media outlet owned by Trump's campaign manager, to support the claim that the Clintons are pedophile sex traffickers.

But wait--there's more! In addition, Prince has been circulating the truly crazy notion that George Soros--the billionaire that antisemitic nutters love to hate--is financing a Clinton-backed coup against the Trump administration. It's called the Purple Revolution. Why? Are you blind? Because both Clintons wore purple when she conceded the election!

Christ, do I have to paint a picture? Draw a map? All the evidence is right there!

TRUMPWORLD AND CONSPIRACIES

As I said earlier, there are two potential explanations for Trump's penchant for the conspiracy theory. The first being the more benign--his people like them. The rubes who continue to support him feel as though their rightful place in the world has been usurped by mysterious forces beyond their understanding or control---China, immigrants, globalists, tree-huggers, black presidents--why not tie them all together? And God knows he never pays a price for it--we've forgotten Birtherism, which is about as crazy and blatantly racist a slander as has ever disgraced American politics. Yet there he is in the White House.

But there is an explanation much darker. And that is that Trump believes these mad fantasies. Not because he's insane. But because he knows they can happen. If the bare essentials of what's out there so far are true, it is entirely possible that the Russians used an already-compromised American businessman to launder money and spread nutty lies about a popular President. They encouraged him to run for President himself as a vehicle for further disinformation. They hooked him up with a campaign manager already in their pocket, who in turn led him to a social media consultants they could work with. And much to their surprise he won.

Trump really believes in conspiracy theories. Because he's deep in a conspiracy himself.

#QAnon #Trump #Roseann #Deep State

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roguenewsdao · 6 years

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No Smiles for Syria

"There's no trace of chemicals, there are no victims, no injured people," Russian envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, April 9, 2018

I won't waste time on the incessant screeching that is once again being spouted by the usual neocon suspects. We've heard them all before. London Paul has made the point repeatedly that there is, of course, no tactical advantage for Syrian President Assad to be gassing his own people when he's already back in control of 98% of his country and when President Trump had just announced the upcoming troop exit from Syria. "Yeah, let's perpetrate a mass killing of our own people to make the Americans turn around and come back," is the self-evident irony of the situation.

Since the MSM won't tell you the Russian side of the story, I will share the statements that have been made by Russian U.N. envoy Vassily Nebenzya (or alternative spelling is Nebenzia). His statements were eloquent and direct. He made good use of single syllable words just to make sure that the Russian position is clear.

"Everywhere you go, everything you touch, chaos is left behind."

During the live Security Council session and also afterward, during the media stake-out, Nebenzya repeated the Russian position on the matter:

"No chemical substances were found on the ground. There were no dead bodies found. There were no poisoned people in the hospitals. The doctors in Douma denied that people came to hospital claiming a chemical attack. Red Cross, that is, the Red Crescent, denied the claim that they were treating poisoned people."

On Russia's official UN ambassadorial website [linked here], these similar comments have been published in case anybody in the world cares to debate the Russian stance with actual facts:

You heard our statement today where we said that our military, radiological, biological, chemical unit was on site of the alleged chemical accident and it confirmed that there were no chemical substances found on the ground, no dead bodies found, no poisoned people in the hospitals. The doctors in Douma deny that there were people who came to the hospital claiming that they were under the chemical attack. The Syrian Red Crescent that was said to be treating people who were poisoned denied that it was ever doing it. What we are saying, we are requesting the OPCW whose Director-General said they were ready to go to Douma to do it immediately and see themselves what happens on the ground.

Russia isn't the the only party who has noticed that there aren't any dead bodies available for examination. You can find dozens of people outside the US/UK propaganda sphere who have come to similar conclusions:

Cindy McCain and 'Operation Smile'

Near the end of the live U.N. session, Nebenzya insinuated that there is a connection between the alleged Douma, Syria chemical attack and that other chemical incident blamed on Russia over in the UK, the Novichok poisoning case against the unfortunate Skripal family in Salisbury. Nebenzya suggested that Prime Minister May is trying to divert attention from the Skripals who are now recovering nicely and ready to talk. He said that the UK is avoiding transparent investigation and avoiding giving answers to vital questions, covering up their tracks in the process.

Nebenzya even hinted that, "following this logic, [the British] may come to the conclusion that Novichok was delivered to Salisbury from Syria."

Meanwhile, ever since the moment when the dubious Syrian "White Hats" began planting the news of the Douma attack in the mainstream news, that elusive #QAnon figure was posting madly, reassuring the Faithful that the POTUS well understands that Assad is not the culprit. Never mind what DJT is tweeting; everybody knows that McCain's ISIS boys have their hands all over the Syria chemical attack, whether that be real or staged.

But it gets worse. It's not just McCain's ISIS boys who have their hands all over Syrian chemical weapons. McCain's wife, Cindy, might also be unwittingly involved in a chemical weapons smuggling operation via a charity organization on which she sits as a board member: Operation Smile [McCain Institute bio linked here].

#QAnon hinted as much in this drop numbered 1090 when #Q included the cryptic clue "SMILES" along with the hints about the extensive, professionally built underground "Spider Web" tunnels in eastern Ghouta large enough to drive a truck through.

Cindy, if you are reading this, I'd like to give you and your staff the benefit of the doubt that your organization or members of your staff are not knowingly involved in transporting munitions or WMD components. Smiles is doing such important and beautiful work. At the same time, I hope this information causes you to do some internal investigating and soul searching to determine "who" is up to "what" in your organization, authorized or not. Perhaps over dinner with your husband you might just casually ask how is it that he and his cohorts have such an uncanny way of showing up just as the false flags start to fly and mercenaries start to die.

We should give many thanks and an appropriate shout-out to Youtube channel 'Deception Bytes' for the find. This is a 70-minute decode of these McCain Syria connections and is well worth your time if you are following the ongoing exposure of the tragic and despicable support being given to terrorists that have killed or displaced millions of Syrians.

Then Why Does Trump Want to Bomb Assad?

Everybody is in a tizzy over tweets that the President issued, declaring Assad to be a monster. The world sits quivering right now waiting to hear the missiles scream. That does appear to be the diversionary message laid out in front of you. However, if #Q knows that the real monster here is the #DeepState players, then obviously so does the President.

Trump does not regard Assad as the enemy. But he has to keep up the pretende, for now. Trump regards elements of the Deep State as the enemy. And not just the American branch but also the British branch. People like John McCain are low-hanging, overripe fruit. The real power player here is the entity that Ambassador Nebenzya already pointed a finger at: the British Deep State.

The U.S. Navy even told you so by this mostly overlooked commemoration held this past weekend: the public reminder of a captured British flag from the War of 1812, displayed for the first time in 100 years.

So when you hear Nikki Haley's rabid growls over "that monster McCain," keep an eye, not on what they SAY but on what they DO. We'll bet you dollars to donuts that Assad's position in Syria is safe. But the rhetoric will keep the world looking one way while the obliteration of the Clintonista network presses forward.

#NoMoreSecretSocieties

My Twitter contact information is found at my billboard page of SlayTheBankster.com. Listen to my radio show, Bee In Eden, on Youtube via my show blog at SedonaDeb.wordpress.com.

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aliter-a-culinary-adventure-blog · 7 years

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Prologue

Opportunities rarely present themselves without some effort on one’s part. I say “rarely” and not “never” because one such opportunity did come my way in exactly such a manner. For the past year or so, having freshly dropped out of college, I had begun to divide my time between my work as a line cook at a rather mundane greasy spoon in midtown Manhattan and my other occupation: discovering the secrets of the universe. Again, the secrets of the universe rarely present themselves without some effort on one’s part. I say “rarely” and not “never” because we’ve probably all seen God (or some fellow we thought to be God in the heat of the moment, but who we later determined was far more likely the Demiurge) once or twice on a mushroom trip or something. I also say “rarely” and not “never” because the secrets of the universe presented themselves to me in exactly such a manner. Having gotten to a point in my study of the esoteric arts where I simply could learn no more without the aid of an instructor, I set out to find someone to teach me. Now, Indeed and Monster didn’t exactly have any openings for an apprentice to a potions master or a sorcery intern. It would seem I’d need another way to find myself a teacher. At least it would have seemed that way had Chef Solomon Eisberg not barged into my apartment on a cloudy Sunday afternoon and demanded my services as a saucier.

“Em!” a voice, accompanied by frenzied knocking, decided 3:00 PM was the perfect time to launch an assault on my fragile door. “I’m here to teach you magic! Also how to make this week’s specials!”

“Who are you?” People knocked on my door frequently. Such is the nature of establishing a rapport with the Universe. Usually it wasn’t anyone particularly useful. Robe-clad men with strange markings on their faces speaking unknown tongues, grotesque beings of innumerable faces and multitudes of wings rotating on interlocked wheels, people trying to sell me a fancy new security system – all the usual candidates.

“Your new chef,” he replied, “Now open up.”

“Never asked anyone for a chef. I asked for a teacher of the esoteric arts.”

“Same thing,” he said, “Now come on: the dinner service is about to start!”

“Where?” I asked, hoping this wouldn’t be like the last time I followed one of those many-faced fellows to a dimension of infinite darkness.

“It’s not so far, we can walk,” he answered, as I grabbed an army green sweatshirt and followed him down the flight of stairs.

The Talisman Grill, like most eateries in Hell’s Kitchen that happen to be named after works of Russian literature, was a relatively small contraption with doors of dark, glazed wood and walls of rough brick. Beside the door, a bronze plaque bore a portion of the poem that gave the restaurant its name:

“От недуга, от могилы,

В бурю, в грозный ураган,

Головы твоей, мой милый,

Не спасет мой талисман.

И богатствами Востока

Он тебя не одарит,

И поклонников пророка

Он тебе не покорит;

И тебя на лоно друга,

От печальных чуждых стран,

В край родной на север с юга

Не умчит мой талисман”

Immediately to the right of the text was a translation to English:

“Neither from sickness nor from death,

Will this tool protect you,

Nor from hurricane or storm,

My talisman’s not meant to,

All the riches of the East,

It surely will not offer,

Nor will the Prophets of these lands,

Open to you their coffers,

You can be sure a friend’s embrace,

From my charm won’t follow,

And not a laugh or friendly face,

Among far off hills and hollows,”

Below was the author’s name – Alexander Pushkin. The beginning and end of the poem were missing. The passage didn’t quite convince me of the merits of the talisman. Above the plaque, a yellow awning displayed the restaurant’s name, along with an illustration of the talisman in question. Inside, about two of the tables had people seated at them. A family of three at one and a couple at the other. We walked past to a back room across from the kitchen, where two cooks were hard at work.

“Peppered throughout the writings of Vladimir Lenin,” explained Chef Solly, “Is the saying ‘Learn, learn and learn’ or ‘учиться, учиться и учиться.’ The Greeks identified three forms of knowledge. They are as follows: γνοση (gnosis), σκηνη (skene) and μαθειν (mathein)”

I gave him a puzzled look. We had, after all, just arrived at the restaurant. Noticing this, he ignored me and continued.

“This is not a coincidence because nothing is a coincidence. Three is quite an important number. There are three sephirot on the top of the Tree of Life, three components of the Trinity, three legitimate Internationals, the list goes on!”

“The overt meaning of Kabbalah is ‘a tradition that is passed down.’ The Kabbalistic meaning of Kabbalah is self-explanatory. So here we have a word that refers to two of our three types of knowledge!”

“So,” I manage to get a word in, “Your little conspiracy theory about the number three doesn’t hold.”

“It very much does,” He says, returning control of the conversation into his hands, “Gnosis is a greater form of knowledge than the other two. It is Keter, the very highest Sephirah. The other two, Binah and Chokhmah, are two sides of the same coin. In the first case, we open up a direct channel for connection with God. This is the goal of kabbalah, to know and to recognize God. You will notice, in fact, that ‘recognize’ is simply another form of the word ‘gnosis.’ In the other cases, we use either observations or calculations to divine the nature of God. Skene and Mathein are where we get the words ‘science’ and ‘mathematics.’ Both these pursuits are ways of knowing God, but in a far more abstract way than Kabbalah. That is, we get both meanings of Kabbalah: both the personal and intimate knowledge of the Divine, as well as the structured and formulaic knowledge that comes with following an established tradition – “standing on the shoulders of giants,” as Isaac Newton put it. Have you, by any chance, considered a computer science minor?”

“I’m not even a college student.”

“Fair point. The reason I ask is that computer science is a great way for even muggles to understand abstraction in such a way that it can be applied to understanding the mystical nature of the world we live in. But I’ll explain later At the moment, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this when we should be cooking.”

“Muggles? Actually, I’m wondering why we’re in a restaurant when you could be telling me the secrets of the Universe anywhere.”

“Muggles. Flatscans. Normies. Take your pick,” he said “And you have a point, I suppose. But let me ask you something, Em. If I can’t trust you to spatchcock a chicken, then how can I trust you with the secrets of the Universe?”

He also had a point, I suppose.

“Anyway, you were discussing the number three?”

“I was,” he confirmed, “With the purpose of explaining that I will teach you the art of cookery and the esoteric arts in three ways. I will teach you to develop intuition, to know how to recognize the Divine and to build intimate familiarity with the many flavors you will encounter. However, I will also teach you ways to recognize divinity through observation and through calculation.”

He continued, “You’ll be spending a lot of time working here with me. May I suggest you get to know the area?”

“Is there anything worth doing around here?” I asked.

“There are a few nice restaurants. You may want to check out Goddess Garden.”

“What’s that?”

“Wiccan-run vegan place. A bit on the pricy side but their baby kale salad is to die for.”

“Not exactly my thing,” I say. I’d always been more of a carnivore, though I’m not someone to turn away a good salad.

“There’s Apicius, if you’re looking for something a bit more classic. Pretentious ritual magick folks. Wouldn’t serve a dish if it wasn’t around since the fourth century.”

“Interesting. Are all the restaurants around here like-”

“Enchanted to some degree? Yeah. It’s a tough business and if you aren’t slaughtering an animal of some sort at a crossroads with any regularity to appease a deity of your choosing, you’re likely to be run out of business fairly quickly. Speaking of which, Chaos Shack lets you draw sigils on their burgers with their signature sauce and they are to die for.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, stay away from Kvasir’s Pub. The owner is a nice fellow and their mead micro-brewery is a local favorite, but they tend to attract the wrong crowd.”

I made sure to note this, as Chef Solly continued to tell me more about what I’d be learning with him. Beyond the door, the two cooks still hurriedly attended to their work and the patrons, table by table, asked the waiter for their checks and made their way out.

“Now, Em,” announced the chef, “We can begin cooking,”

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oldguardaudio · 8 years

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PowerLine 🔥 Highlights of President Trump – Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Press Conference

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Daily Digest

Highlights of the Trump-Netanyahu Press Conference

Obama’s Secret Communications with Mullahs Undermined American Foreign Policy

Popovich pops off on Trump

Dem comeback on hold in Minnesota

Ready for Warren?

Highlights of the Trump-Netanyahu Press Conference

Posted: 15 Feb 2017 02:37 PM PST

(John Hinderaker)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington meeting with President Trump. Prior to their meeting, they conducted the usual dual press conference. No major news was made, but several interesting points emerged:

1) I’ve rarely seen Netanyahu look so happy. He must be almost as relieved to see the end of the Obama administration as we are.

2) President Trump indicated that he was open to alternatives to the two-state solution, an immutable point of American policy for a long time:

So, I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one. I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two but honestly, if Bibi and if the Palestinians — if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.

This is smart, I think. The Palestinians need to understand that if they don’t shape up, they don’t get a state. Netanyahu finessed the question:

I read yesterday that an American official said that if you ask five people what two states would look like, you’d get eight different answers. Mr. President, if you ask five Israelis, you’d get twelve different answers.

(LAUGHTER)

But rather than deal with labels, I want to deal with substance.

3) A journalist effectively accused Trump of being responsible for a rise in anti-Semitic incidents:

Mr. President, since your election campaign and even after your victory, we’ve seen a sharp rise in anti-Semitic — anti- Semitic incidents across the United States. And I wonder, what do you say to those among the Jewish community in the states and in Israel and maybe around the world who believe and feel that your administration is playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones?

Trump responded vaguely and with great restraint. Netanyahu answered a different question, then returned to the outrageous imputation against the president:

And finally one — if I can respond to something that I know from personal experience, I’ve known President Trump for many years, and to allude to him or to his people, his team, some of whom I’ve known for many years too — can I reveal, Jared, how long we’ve known you? Well, he was never small, he was always big.

He was always tall. But I’ve known the president and I’ve known his family and his team for a long time. There is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state than President Donald Trump. I think we should put that to rest.

Trump:

Thank you very much. Very nice. I appreciate that very much.

4) The first two journalists Trump called on were David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Katie Pavlich of Townhall. This caused Democratic Party journalists to go ballistic on Twitter. You can read all about it at Twitchy. The lack of self-awareness of liberal journalists never ceases to amaze.

One of their complaints is that Trump wasn’t hounded enough about General Flynn, although Brody did ask a question about Flynn, Russia, and Iran. Of course, the subjects of the press conference were American-Israeli relations and Israel and the Palestinians. The liberals were incensed that the journalists who were called on stayed on topic. As the press conference ended, someone called out: “Are you gonna answer any questions about your associates’ contact with the Russians during the campaign?” No such luck.

Obama’s Secret Communications with Mullahs Undermined American Foreign Policy

Posted: 15 Feb 2017 12:57 PM PST

(John Hinderaker)

The Democrats are trying to make a scandal out of the fact that one or more people associated with the Trump presidential campaign had telephone conversations with one or more representatives of the Russian government prior to Trump’s inauguration. Is there anything wrong with that? Not as far as we know. The CIA/NSA leakers have declined to say anything about the content of the conversations, so they must have been benign. Let’s release the tapes and eliminate all doubt, and then let’s fire the leakers and, if appropriate, send them to prison.

But in the meantime, let’s not forget an infinitely bigger scandal: in 2008, while he was running for the presidency, Barack Obama deliberately undermined American foreign policy by secretly encouraging Iran’s mullahs to hold out until he became president because he would be easier to deal with than President George Bush. I wrote about the Obama scandal here: “HOW BARACK OBAMA UNDERCUT BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN.” Check out the original post for links. Here it is:

In 2008, the Bush administration, along with the “six powers,” was negotiating with Iran concerning that country’s nuclear arms program. The Bush administration’s objective was to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. On July 20, 2008, the New York Times headlined: “Nuclear Talks With Iran End in a Deadlock.” What caused the talks to founder? The Times explained:

Iran responded with a written document that failed to address the main issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium. And Iranian diplomats reiterated before the talks that they considered the issue nonnegotiable.

The Iranians held firm to their position, perhaps because they knew that help was on the way, in the form of a new president. Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. At some point either before or after that date, but prior to the election, he secretly let the Iranians know that he would be much easier to bargain with than President Bush. Michael Ledeen reported the story last year:

During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.

So Obama secretly told the mullahs not to make a deal until he assumed the presidency when they would be able to make a better agreement. Which is exactly what happened: Obama abandoned the requirement that Iran stops enriching uranium so that Iran’s nuclear program has sped ahead over the months and years that negotiations have dragged on. When an interim agreement in the form of a “Joint Plan of Action” was announced in late 2013, Iran’s leaders exulted in the fact that the West had acknowledged its right to continue its uranium enrichment program:

“The (nuclear) program will continue and all the sanctions and violations against the Iranian nation under the pretext of the nuclear program will be removed gradually,” [Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif] added. …

“Iran’s enrichment program has been recognized both in the first step and in the goals section and in the final step as well,” Zarif said.

“The fact that all these pressures have failed to cease Iran’s enrichment program is a very important success for the Iranian nation’s resistance,” he added.

So Obama delivered the weak agreement that he had secretly promised the mullahs.

That, readers, is what a real scandal looks like.

Popovich pops off on Trump

Posted: 15 Feb 2017 09:28 AM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)

Gregg Popovich is a marvelous basketball coach; probably one of the three best the NBA has ever seen. His accomplishments with the San Antonio Spurs — a team he has led to five NBA titles — are remarkable.

Lately, Popovich has indulged in political commentary. To be more precise, he has taken to blasting President Trump.

There is plenty to dislike about Trump, but Popovich’s comments are of the knee-jerk variety. Worse, they play fast and loose with the facts.

Consider his latest shot at the president:

We all hope President Trump is successful. We hope he does some good things for everybody, but he didn’t start the presidency by mollifying any groups he disparaged during the campaign.

He didn’t say anything about women, or black people, or Mexican people, Hispanic people LGBT people, handicapped people. [He] acted like it never happened. So that willingness to do whatever it took to get elected, to say and act the way he did, I thought was unacceptable and really disgusting, so I said it.

When did Trump disparage LGBT people during the campaign? This is what Trump said about them during his acceptance speech at the GOP convention:

Whether you’re gay or straight, the Bill of Rights protects the rights of all of us to live according to our conscience.

Also this:

As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology, believe me.

When did Trump disparage black people during the campaign? He noted that many predominantly black neighborhoods are in terrible shape, which I think is indisputable, and he vowed to try to improve these neighborhoods. But disparaging black people? I don’t think it happened.

During the campaign, Trump disparaged Megyn Kelly, Hillary Clinton, Rosie O’Donnell, and other individual women. He also disparaged individual men too numerous to list.

However, the only disparagement of women as a group that I can think of occurred many years before the campaign in his “pussy grabbing” remarks. This comment did not manifest “a willingness to say anything to get elected.” It was made in private long before he ran for office. As a candidate, Trump apologized for these disparaging comments.

What about Popovich’s claim that Trump “didn’t start the presidency by mollifying any groups” he supposedly “disparaged during the campaign”? Trump started his presidency with his brief inauguration address, during which he said this:

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

I don’t know whether this statement “mollified” members of groups who felt “disparaged” by Trump. Many of them are probably beyond being mollified. It was, however, a clear statement that these groups and others should not be mistreated or disparaged.

With regard to Mexicans, a week after his inauguration Trump said this:

I have great respect for Mexico. I love the Mexican people. I work with the Mexican people all the time – great relationships.

During the campaign, Trump had disparaged Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. As president, though, Trump tweeted this:

Yes, it is true – Carlos Slim, the great businessman from Mexico, called me about getting together for a meeting. We met, HE IS A GREAT GUY!

Turning to what Popovich calls “LBGQT people,” we find that the White House issued this statement:

President Donald J. Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community. President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election. The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump.

I don’t blame Popovich for not knowing much about what President Trump has said and done as a candidate or as president. He has his hands full figuring out how to contain Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and the collection of stars who play for Golden State. But maybe he should have someone do a little research before he spouts off about politics.

Indeed, it’s ironic that Popovich would discuss politics so ignorantly. He is famous for putting sports reporters down when they ask obvious questions about his tactics. For example:

One reporter asked if Pop had any regrets going with a smaller lineup.

Pop’s reply: “No. Are you coaching now? You should try not to do that.”

Note the clear difference between what the reporter did to Popovich and what Popovich is doing to Trump. The sports reporter observed the game and posed a reasonable question. Popovich, who derided the reporters for performing their job, pays scant attention to what the Trump administration has done and makes accusations.

During his latest anti-Trump diatribe, Popovich said “there’s going to be somebody who will say “just go coach your basketball team.” I’m not that “somebody.” I say if you want to talk politics intelligently, do your homework.

Dem comeback on hold in Minnesota

Posted: 15 Feb 2017 09:27 AM PST

(Scott Johnson)

Donald Trump narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in the contest at the top of the ticket in Minnesota this year, but in other respects, Republicans had an astoundingly good year. They amplified their majority in the Minnesota House to an unprecedented number in a presidential election cycle, when the turnout advantage usually accrues to Democrats and took the majority in the Minnesota Senate. Republicans haven’t held a majority in the state Senate in a long time. As Star Tribune legislative reporter Patrick Coolican put it in the Star Tribune: “Senate Republicans have endured the indignities of minority status for all but two of the past 44 years[.]” I took a look at the results in “What happened in Minnesota” (part 2 here, part 3 here).

It was a bad year for Democrats in Minnesota. They didn’t see it coming.

Chisago (don’t spellcheck me, bro) County borders Wisconsin not far from the Twin Cities. It is Trump territory; Trump handily carried Chisago County by a margin of 30 points.

The Democrats got a rerun in one of the state House legislative races in Chisago County yesterday. Only last week the Star Tribune published an excited preview of the special election. The Star Tribune noted the efforts that Democrats put into the race to pull it off and make a statement.

Now that the results are in, however, the excitement over at the Star Tribune has faded: “Republican Anne Neu will represent Chisago County in an open Minnesota House seat following her victory in a closely watched special election on Tuesday. Neu took 53 percent of the vote in the House District 32B race, while DFLer Laurie Warner took 47 percent.” In his Star Tribune Morning Hot Dish newsletter today, Coolican laconically observes: “That means the House now stands at 77-57 for the GOP.”

Congratulations and thanks are in order for the excellent Ms. Neu while we pause to note that the Dem comeback is on hold in Minnesota.

Ready for Warren?

Posted: 15 Feb 2017 08:02 AM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)

Charlotte Allen at the Weekly Standard reports on the marketing of Elizabeth Warren. It includes a book, The Fight Is Our Fight; a webpage, “Help us elect Elizabeth Warren for president in 2020”; and a Facebook page, “Ready for Warren.”

But is America ready for Warren? A new survey finds her running behind President Trump by six points, 42-36.

A poll was taken almost four years before the next presidential election is meaningless as a guide to whether Trump would defeat Warren. What may be significant is that the same pollsters found that a “generic Democrat” runs ahead of Trump by eight points, 43-35.

As Lloyd Bentsen might say: I knew Generic Democrat. Generic Democrat was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Generic Democrat.

The public has not taken a fancy to the shrill would-be Indian from Harvard. Warren, it seems, is damaged goods.

It may be unrealistic to imagine that the damage can be repaired by a book, a website, and a Facebook page.

PowerLine 🔥 Highlights of President Trump – Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Press Conference PowerLine 🔥 Highlights of President Trump - Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Press Conference Daily Digest Highlights of the Trump-Netanyahu Press Conference…

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terencehawkins · 6 years

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ROSEANN, PIZZAGATE, and TRUMP

Lovable caricature of a blue collar mom--though oddly I don't recall my own blue-collar mom ever comparing black people to apes--Roseann Barr is notable not only for racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, but an affinity for conspiracy theories. Leaving aside the question of whether the former are characteristic of Trumpism, there's no doubt that the latter is.

PIZZAGATE

As noted above, Roseann is fixated on child sex trafficking. This is nothing new on the fringe right. But a year ago, it spawned a theory so bereft of supporting evidence and connection with consensus reality that it may have killed political satire for a generation. And almost wound up killing real people as well --Pizzagate.

It's impossible to recite the elements of the theory with a straight face. But here they are: Prominent Democrats, including John Podesta and Hillary Clinton, are pedophiles.

Wait. Really. There's more.

But wait--you said there'd be pizza!

Well, duh. Where else, right?

Other outlets informed their breathless consumers that Comet Ping Pong's menu contained coded clues as to what was going on in the basement--"CP" stood not for "Cheese Pizza" but "Child Pornography."

Oh. Right!

But things worked out as they worked out and the Russkis nudged the Electoral College Trump's way. The story, unfortunately, did not end there.

But Comet Ping Pong doesn't have a basement.

TRUMP AND PIZZAGATE

Remember when I told you to note the name of Erik Prince? There was a reason for that.

Christ, do I have to paint a picture? Draw a map? All the evidence is right there!

TRUMPWORLD AND CONSPIRACIES

Trump really believes in conspiracy theories. Because he's deep in a conspiracy himself.

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