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itmeansofthesea · 3 years

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Moving Day

Well this one got me all in my feelings. This was supposed to be lighter and funnier and somehow it got away from me. Instead it's this beautiful thing?? Maybe I'll try to write a funnier version later, but thanks to @dobega for reminding me of the domesticity conversation that led to the end. Any longer and I would have to make this a series, but if that's something you're interested in I think I could swing it. Enjoy, y'all.

Warnings: like one curse word? I think that's it... It's also overwhelmingly sweet imo so just be ready for that.

Had Charles Vane known that becoming ally/friends with James Flint would involve helping him, his boyfriend, and his boyfriend’s wife (his girlfriend?) move into their new house, he might have just gone ahead, taken the warship and let Peter Ashe hang Flint and be done with. Not really, but… maybe?

He honestly isn’t even really sure how he got roped into this. It was a couple of weeks ago when he, Jack, Anne, Max, Flint, Thomas, and Miranda were all sitting at a table upstairs in the brothel having dinner. Billy was out showing Abigail around Nassau and Mr.s Gates and De Groot were just trying to get a moment’s peace at some smaller tavern at the other end of town. Silver and Madi were out having some sort of alone dinner thing (Jack had called it a “date” and then called Charles a “heathen with no sense of romance”), and this all left the motley crew to sit around with whatever the brothel’s cook had dreamed up and a metric ton of ale to wash it down.

Charles didn’t fully understand the situation Flint had with the Hamiltons, but whatever it was clearly made Flint happier than Charles had ever seen him. He was all smiles and laughter and joy. It warmed Charles’s heart (just a bit) to see his friend so happy, because they certainly had become friends. He mentally joked about leaving Flint to hang, but to be honest it would be difficult to imagine his life without the people sitting around the table with him now. At least, it would be difficult to imagine something resembling a happy life.

They’d stopped to refuel in Savannah after Charlestown and somehow or another word got to Flint about a plantation full of the disgraced sons of London’s elite that were now more or less enslaved in the prison colony. If there was one thing Charles was always down to do (and there were many things he was always down to do), it was hunt down a slave master and free people from bondage. They’d split when they got to the plantation- Charles after the master of the house and James off to find Thomas. Finding Mr. Smith hadn’t been difficult and dispatching him was even easier. Once that was finished, Charles made his way outside to find Flint in the arms of another, taller man and both of them appeared to be weeping. He felt like an intruder watching them, so he busied himself with checking the plantation for anyone else who may need to be released. When they made it back to the ship, Miranda leapt on the man who Charles realized must be Thomas, and after a minute of holding on to him she grabbed Flint into their embrace.

In time all of the introductions were made, and suddenly the Charles/Anne/Jack crew expanded to the Charles/Anne/Max/Jack crew and the Charles/James friendship expanded to include Charles/James/Thomas/Miranda. They also intercepted Abigail Ashe on the way, and James and the Hamiltons promptly adopted her on the spot. She and Charles had some reacquainting to do outside of Eleanor Guthrie’s influence, but he at least thought they were making progress. She didn’t seem nearly as terrified as she’d been of him when she followed Eleanor through the gate, so that was something.

Fast forward a few weeks and here they all were finishing their chicken and ale when Jack began asking about where the Flint/Hamilton/Ashe family intended to live. Miranda’s house was too small now that they had Abigail, and Billy had attached himself to Abigail as an older brother figure so usually where one of them was, the both of them were. Of course with Billy came Mr. Gates as his surrogate father, and while they’d made it work for the last couple of months, everyone was feeling a bit cramped.

Jack and Max volunteered to host them at the brothel, but they politely declined. Charles half considered offering to let them stay at the fort, but figured that may not be the best idea considering they also had Abigail to consider. Not that he couldn’t keep his men under control, but he also knew that she had memories of that fort that she may not want to be surrounded by all the time. He certainly knew that was the case for him, and yet he stayed… for some reason. Maybe he should take Jack up on the offer to move into the brothel…

Thomas mentioned that they’d been asking around and found a house a bit more inland from Miranda’s that had been abandoned for the last several years. It would take a bit of fixing up, but they planned to go ahead and move in and then work on it as they lived there. Before Charles fully knew what was happening, Jack had volunteered Charles, Anne, himself, and Max to all help them move with the added bonus that he and Max would help with the decorating if Miranda so desired their assistance. Max enthusiastically agreed and elbowed Anne in the side prompting her to shrug a shoulder in agreement. Jack looked at Charles with those wide puppy-dog eyes and before Charles even knew what he was saying he’d agreed to help. The look on the Flint/Hamilton’s faces almost made it worth it.

At the time.

That was then.

Now it’s moving day. What on earth had they gotten themselves into?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Charles and company arrived at Miranda’s house early the next day, one cart was packed and Thomas, Billy, and James were in the process of loading another one. It was decided that they would stay behind and the Ranger crew plus Max would go with Miranda and Abigail and get things unloaded. Mr. Gates was out helping Mr. De Groot careen the ship again since the last time was a bit of a disaster.

The moving crew pulled up to a slightly rundown looking two story house with columns on the porch and an overgrown garden to the side. Miranda smiled and squeezed Abigail around the shoulders before jumping off the cart to start unloading. Abigail took the key to the front door and unlocked it, but had a little trouble pushing it open since the summer heat made the wood swell in the jamb. Jack went to help her push it open while Charles and the others started getting things off the cart.

“Just put everything in the front for now, we’ll get it sorted later,” Miranda instructed as she pulled a crate of books from the back. She passed it to Charles who noticed the copy of Reflections by Marcus Aurelius on the top. He recognized it from a conversation he’d had with Flint on the way to the plantation. That was his and Thomas’s book, the one object that kept them tethered together to all this time. Flint’s book with Miranda was Don Quixote, which he also noticed on top of the stack. It’s not that Charles couldn’t read (Teach made sure he could), it had just never been particularly useful to him. You don’t have to know how to read to split logs, haul rope, navigate the stars, or fight the English Navy. Besides, he’d never really had the time to sit down and rest long enough to read. Maybe he should change that. He set the books down to the left of the open door and went back out for more stuff.

Max and Anne pulled down a trunk of clothes and carried it into the house together. Charles volunteered to switch with them, but he was told in no uncertain terms that they could handle it themselves thank you very much, so he left them to it. He passed Miranda and Abigail carrying small crates of what appeared to be dishes. Porcelain. Hadn’t he and Flint had that conversation just a few days ago? About how fragile porcelain and books were, and how fragile a civilized life was, and how it all came down to capitulation and letting society numb you into obedience? Now he was willingly helping Flint settle into that obedience. Is that something a real friend should do? Charles wasn’t sure, so he jumped into the back of the cart, pushed a trunk to the edge, and hauled it out of the back of the cart to take inside.

Miranda stood in the foyer with her hands on her hips trying to put together what each room should be when the furniture arrived. Charles motioned to the trunks on the floor and at Jack who was just standing there in slack jawed awe.

“Would you like us to move these upstairs?”

Miranda turned and smiled up at him. “Sure, thank you, Charles.”

“Jack, let’s go.” Charles barked and jerked his head toward the trunks.

“You can’t honestly expect me to be able to help you carry that upstairs.” Jack raised an eyebrow and looked at Charles like he’d lost his mind. Charles scowled and opened his mouth to reply when suddenly-

“Good thing we got here in time then,” Flint’s voice sounded amused coming from behind him, and he turned just in time to see Billy and Thomas carrying in a table. Miranda’s smile widened as she directed them to the right and Flint walked over to Charles to help with the trunk.

“My hero,” Jack cooed jokingly at Flint before catching Charles’s eye and backing away. “Yes, yes, I know. Fuck you, Jack. I’ll let you save your breath.” Jack raised his hands and walked away to follow Miranda and see if he could start setting the table or something.

Charles just rolled his eyes and grabbed his end of the trunk.

“On 3?” James asked. Charles nodded. “1, 2, 3,” James counted off and they both lifted at the same time. It was heavy, even for the two of them.

“The fuck’s in this thing?” Charles grunted as he started backwards up the stairs.

“I think these are Abigail’s… From what I understand, women’s clothes are far more complex than ours,” James laughed.

“Not here, they aren’t…” Charles thought back to Eleanor’s outfits, but also realized that Abigail and Miranda were nothing like Eleanor, therefore they would likely be dressed more like Max, in which case it made sense. Thank God they weren’t like Eleanor. Nassau couldn’t handle another one.

“So, if you can’t understand why a man would want domesticity, why are you helping four of them move into a house?” James looked amused, and Charles honestly wasn’t even sure he had an answer.

“I still don’t understand it. To the left,” Charles moved to get his back to the doorway and James moved with him. “However,” they set the trunk down inside the room and straightened. “I think I am starting to understand wanting peace.” He sighed. “And I don’t know, maybe I do understand it. I tried to tell Eleanor that we could take part of the gold and settle down, have a life, a couple of kids… but she would never have that. I told myself that wasn’t me wanting domesticity, that was wanting someone else to depend on me, but…” he took a deep breath and walked out onto the landing where he could see Jack and Anne below him. James wordlessly followed. “Maybe I’ve had other people depending on me for a long time. Actually, I know I have. It’s why Jack wouldn’t come with me when I left with Teach- he didn’t want to have to depend on me when he’d built something of his own here. I didn’t expect that to hurt as much as it did.”

“But it did,” James whispered beside him.

“It did. I guess because I was hoping that our friendship would be enough for him to come with me, but in the end his need for independence won out. I can’t blame him, especially after all the shit I put him through with Eleanor-”

“Excuse you, you both put us all through that,” James smirked and bumped Charles’s shoulder. He earned a grunt in response. James just chuckled and noted the small grin gracing Charles’s face out of the corner of his eye. James knew at one point that comment would likely have resulted at him having a knife in his face. He was thankful they’d progressed past that.

“Anyway,” Charles emphasized the word, “seeing you with Miranda and Thomas, and even adopting Abigail. It seems peaceful. Maybe that’s part of domesticity, maybe it isn’t, but either way, it looks nice. It’s not something I can have in that fort probably, but…” he trailed off.

James waited a beat before asking, “what?”

“I am happy that it’s working out this way for you,” Charles whispered. “If anyone deserves all of this, you do. You all do,” he ignored the water welling up in his eyes as he put a hand over Flint’s over the railing.

Flint didn’t even bother ignoring his tears. He just let them go as he watched his family make their home together for the first time in a way that included all of them from the very beginning. He whispered, “thank you. So do you, you know?”

Charles chuckled humorlessly and swiped a hand across his face.

“I’m serious,” James looked at Charles who turned his head in response. “They are my family, but you are now, too. You don’t show up to save my life from the man who ruined my life, help me blow a port city to hell, kill its governor, and then stop me from murdering Jack Rackham for taking the Urca gold I’d been after for years without earning the title of brother. Even if you did steal my ship first.” James smirked and bumped Charles’s shoulder again.

“Yeah… I’m not sorry about that.” Charles shook his head and laughed.

“Wouldn’t expect you to be,” James chuckled, “brother.”

Charles looked at his family and back at James. “Brother.”

#black sails #charles vane #ranger crew #anne bonny #jack rackham #bs max #james flint #flinthamilton #thomas hamilton #miranda hamilton

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polymorphousperve · 3 years

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give punk from thy jerk talbot

brazen babylon fox parent beef pube an hanz in my quantum voice born in a fragile trap go for boo key east wind pub nub addict go beard raptor rang in our quixote existent working born near crumble you deepen quantum bond axe to axe oh bake a hide spoils from potent prayer go in web owl horned with motley

#witchcraft #chaos magic #surrealism #dadaism #cut ups #poetry #stream of consciousness

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the-dust-jacket · 4 years

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May the Fourth be with you!

In honor of Star Wars day, I’m sharing some of my favorite fictional space ships (besides the Millennium Falcon).

Wayfarer, from The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet: the quintessential tried-but-true ship hurtling through space with its motley crew inside. Wayfarer offers a warm, chaotic welcome to both new crew members like accountant-with-a-past Rosemary, and the readers following along. But life on wormhole tunneler headed into distant space isn’t exactly safe.

Lovecraft, from A Closed and Common Orbit: the follow-up to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet approaches space ships a little differently, and offers a thoughtful and fascinating look at what happens when a ship’s AI becomes detached from the ship in question.

Arde Mayhew’s RG 132, from The Warrior’s Apprentice: We first meet this ship when its drunken, depressed pilot initiates an armed standoff to save it from the scrapheap. The ship becomes the catalyst for fast-talking MIles Vorkosigan’s certifiably nuts get-rich-quick scheme, and subsequent adventures in accidental space mercenary-ing. The RG 132 takes damage that means it will never wormhole jump again without rare, obsolete technology. I’m just a sucker for a quest.

Breq, from the Imperial Radch trilogy: Not actually a spaceship. Not anymore. Once she was the Justice of Toren. Now she’s just a normal sentient being adjusting to her fragile body, and determined to get some answers. And some...well, justice.

The Rocinante, The Expanse series: a Martian gunship turned unlikely home base for an even more unlikely band of heroes, the Roci is named after Don Quixote’s horse and finds itself at the heart of a variety of missions, debacles, and stunning discoveries. I think in real practical terms, the cutting-edge yet homey Rocinante might be the best way to travel around having galactic adventures.

Heart of Gold, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books: Look, there is simply no way to resist a ship-cum-narrative-device that runs on an Infinite Improbability Drive and was assembled by easily bored engineers. It has a literal heart of gold.

The HSS Matilda, from An Unkindness of Ghosts: The Matilda is not a fun place to be. It’s a generation ship divided strictly by caste and ruled by unforgiving laws, with some passengers living in luxury and others subjected to ever more depredations and indignities. But through the eyes of Aster, with her unique perspective and unusual mobility around the ship, its beauties, dangers, and mysteries come fully to life.

The Sparrow, from The Sparrow: I was utterly struck by the image of a spaceship hollowed out from an asteroid. The Sparrow imagines a ship that is not next century’s technology, but tomorrow’s, the product of the Vatican’s quiet efforts to make first contact with “God’s other children,” carrying a crew of priests and scientists, and some classic rock.

The Hephaestus: okay, this one’s cheating. It’s a space station, not a ship, and it’s from the podcast Wolf 359, not a book. Quirky, accident-prone, enigmatic, and far too large for its skeleton crew, the Hephaestus is as much a character as a setting, although it’s anyone’s guess whether it’s a benign one. It’s also run by Hera, AI queen of my heart, although not even she knows all of the station’s secrets.

#may the fourth be with you #books #Becky Chambers #Lois McMaster Bujold #James S.A. Corey #Mary Doria Russell #Rivers Solomon #Douglas Adams #Wolf 359 #Love That? Read This!#movies

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intheheatherbright · 6 years

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One of the motley crew came up capering towards them.

Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, illustrated by W. Heath Robinson ( London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1956 ).

#illustration #w heath robinson #don quixote #donkey #travelling players #autos sacramentales #1950s #children's illustrated classics

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rrgreadinglist · 5 years

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Part D

54. Daughter of Fortune

55. David and Lisa

56. David Copperfield

57. The Da Vinci Code

58. Dead Souls

59. Demons

60. Death of a Salesman

61. Deenie

62. The Devil in the White City

63. The Dirt (Motley Crue)

64. The Divine Comedy

65. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

66. Don Quixote

67. Driving Miss Daisy on Broadway

68. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)

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obtener2 · 5 years

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April 18, 1861, The White House quarters Jim Lane's "Frontier Guards" (600 Kansas men) in East Room of White House under Maj. Hunter. When Lincoln retires, he is awakened by John Hay, assistant secretary, bearing warning of possible plot against his life; merely grins. [Source: The Lincoln Log] A Family and Nation Under Fire, Kent State University Press iBooks https://goo.gl/SAVc8A B&N https://goo.gl/DSQXGu Amazon: https://goo.gl/A3brGd Foreword Magazine, Inc. Book of the Year Awards https://goo.gl/hMkqig KSU http://goo.gl/Z3z4Xs Civil War Books and Authors: https://goo.gl/uRmD8A

On the night of April 18 at nine o'clock the Kansas Guard marched to the White House and bivouacked in the East Room. ... After spending the evening in an exceedingly rudimentary squad drill, under the light of the gorgeous gas chandeliers, they disposed themselves in picturesque bivouac on the brilliant-patterned velvet carpet-perhaps the most luxurious cantonment which American soldiers have ever enjoyed. Their motley composition, their anomalous surroundings, the extraordinary emergency, their mingled awkwardness and earnestness, rendered the scene a medley of bizarre contradictions--a blending of masquerade and tragedy, of grim humor and realistic seriousness--a combination of Don Quixote and Daniel Boone altogether impossible to describe. [Source: The Kansas Historical Society https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-jim-lane-and-the-frontier-guard/12816 ]

#kansas #frontier #presidential protection #lincoln #death threats

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anonymous-witness777 · 10 months

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I had WAY too much fun with the picrew little guy maker. OCs, in order from upper left to bottom right: Malaya, Xavier, Manny, Jack, Azrael, Junia, Peter, Kai, Feirefiz, Oliver/Nightspore, Liam, Renee, Andy, Indigo, and Maranatha.

#motley quixotes #ocs #picrew

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gibsongirlselections · 4 years

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Saagar Enjeti Rising

It’s about power, man,” Saagar Enjeti relays about an hour into a decathlon, Corona-spring phone call.

It’s May, and I’m scrambling to interview the nationalist co-host of Rising with Krystal & Saagar, presented by the television arm of The Hill. Our conversation takes as many pit stops as Enjeti’s nascent, but impactful career: from Aggie country—he’s a son of Texas A&M faculty—to George Washington University to Georgetown to Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller to celebrated pundit before 30. Like his putative mentor, Enjeti has attracted some rubbernecking by insiders: for shifting his views. I think it’s going around, as you are reading an issue of a magazine titled “What is American Conservatism?” Or as Carlson told Elaina Plott (then of The Atlantic) last December: “I’ve made a complete break mentally with the world I used to live in.”

As for me, I am at least breaking one of my own rules. That is: I am writing a profile of a principal I haven’t seen in person in months. But I’m not going social-distance from a good story.

Because he’s a social conservative who isn’t religious. Because he’s a foreign policy hawk who actually concedes the country’s recent mistakes. Because he’s launched a slightly absurd crusade against cannabis. Because he dresses like Alex P. Keaton, only he’s renounced Reaganism. Because Saagar Enjeti has, indeed, become kind of powerful.

Enjeti forms a duo with Krystal Ball—a former congressional candidate and MSNBC star. At 38, she is—as Jacobin magazine pointed out—the Millennial answer to Rachel Maddow. Therein lies the most glaring distinction between the two, by all appearances close friends. Ball is an antagonist of the liberal pantheon. Enjeti though—while no stenographer—is broadly at peace with the present trajectory of the Right. Ball has bashed Maddow. Enjeti loves Carlson.

Ball’s cri de coeur is for generational change. That’s a project pitifully on hold, as the donkey attempts to install the oldest president on record. She actually preferred an even older model—that traitor to his generation Bernie Sanders—before he withdrew from the race in a blaze of anonymity this spring. That landscape contrasts with the Right, where an outsider president is still dominant and fresh projects seeking to tear down the old religion—such as the Enjeti-aligned American Compass (“great work”) —bloom promiscuously. Enjeti thinks the movement to mint a populism with polish is right on track (and they two have a book to sell seeking to prove that). But Enjeti had tough words for Senator Sanders, who he characterized as a tragically inflexible figure in a chosen profession where to be limber is to live another day.

I actually met Ms. Ball first—10 years ago—when she ran a quixotic campaign for Congress in the district of my alma mater in southern Virginia. The Tea Party juggernaut that year—combined with a frivolous, overhyped personal scandal from Ball’s well-spent youth (there aren’t that many trained accountant pundits)—doomed Ball’s bid in the already salmon-colored first district of the Old Dominion. She hiked over to The Atlantic and NBC cable but was an awkward fit for a liberal establishment licking its chops for a Hillary Clinton presidency. Like many women of our shared generation, she wasn’t quite ready for Hillary even if she was told to be.

The pair’s shared production is genuinely pathbreaking—for several reasons.

It’s an internet television show that works. Rising is actually rising. The dominant media trend when I entered the industry was the vaunted switch to tablets. But that mindset was soon shown the door. It was spring cleaning all around—those middle 2010s, the same time the Republican Party chucked its “libertarian moment”—both utter fads. And America would soon give the heave-ho to much more.

In 2016—as the country anointed its first cable news president—for industry captains, the conclusion was clear: more television—and let’s open new frontiers. For those seeking to court conservatives, streaming, internet television was considered a ruby-red, low-hanging fruit. Harvested right and you could even infringe on the primacy of Fox News. More broadly—especially on the Right—there had been rumors of elaborate new, “new media” ventures for years. The most legendary rumor (a plot which was actually real) was of a motley assembly: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Roger Ailes, and then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon would open up their own shop. This was still the early days of the Trump administration. But to the haters, a satanic quartet was forming.

But in our desert of the real, only one oasis has been founded. Roger Ailes is dead, and Hill.TV is not.

But it was no fait accompli. Enjeti has a predecessor: the affable Buck Sexton, a CIA alum and a regular on both Fox and the not-so-underground drinking circuit at D.C.’s Trump Hotel. But after a year the organization passed on the Buck and signed Saagar.

Sadly for Sexton, it’s been liftoff ever since. But as with Elon Musk, there have been a few questionable judgment calls. In particular, there was a strange interview a summer ago with Rudolph Giuliani—the president’s personal lawyer—that had nothing to do with that work. Rather, Enjeti interviewed America’s mayor on his work with the deeply controversial National Council for the Resistance of Iran—the American front porch of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or more notoriously, the MEK. Mayor Giuliani has been paid lavishly for his association, as have other leading Republican figures responsible—centrally, former national security advisor John Bolton—for the country’s imprudent war footing toward Iran’s regime. But the interview appears to have been part nine (!) of a series initiated and otherwise hosted by Sexton, as Enjeti was sliding into the job. The series is marked “sponsored content,” which isn’t a nice look. Most of foreign policy journalism has had brushes with the MEK, but it bears repeating the general view is that they’re emphatically fringe.

Not fringe: the show’s appeal with younger, online-first audiences. America’s anchor—the popular podcaster Joe Rogan—said on air that he follows Saagar and Krystal for his news. For the uninitiated, Rogan gets 190 million downloads per month and between 5-7 million listeners per day, which on some days is double even Tucker Carlson’s formidable traffic.

“I just cover whatever I want,” Enjeti told me. That omnivorous attitude suits the clientele, who favor outside-the-box politicians with sweeping societal criticisms. The audience loves Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, maybe Donald Trump, and apparently no one else. As my fellow guest Colin Rogero—of The Hill’s infamous “Most Beautiful” list, and who could honestly pass for Colin Farrell—learned when I appeared with him on the program in January: sorry, no one likes Pete Buttigieg.

The show’s butterfly knife approach can produce a viewer experience as oscillatory as the 2020 campaign itself. Which is the point. In a news cycle that’s now truly unyielding—a depression, a pandemic, and mass rioting—Rising rises above. Like Kissigner and 50 Cent, Enjeti says he’s a stone-cold realist in a grinding turf war. “It’s about power, man,” Enjeti says. “This is about the fact that there’s actually a heterodox TV thing that exists, that is watched by actual people—and that’s the most important part. The donors don’t control this.” Enjeti gives away the secret sauce—telling me essentially that on YouTube it’s kingmaking to be what Jeff Bezos almost named Amazon but should have: relentless. Constant content must be produced or the axe falls from the hard-hearted algorithm.

Enjeti denies to me what I assumed was his goal: get this baby bought. In an era of the Frightful Five on America’s technology coast, the operating procedure of most new businesses is mere ambition to get sold. But Enjeti says he’s not waiting for a call up to the majors. He’s starting his own league. Television habits have been convulsed in the era of the smartphone—especially among the young (“our age is the number one demographic for the show, 25-35”)—and the thinking goes that cable news is the province of yesterday’s men, though that includes the sitting president of the United States. If the media short-sellers like Enjeti are right that cable news is at its peak, next up could be one giant, Boomer supernova.

I agree,” Enjeti says as I rant about how the Middle East is no longer relevant to this country’s national interest. He and I got into foreign policy for a shared reason before Trump’s ascension: “Domestic politics was just boring. Second term Obama, there was just nothing happening.”

There are signs of Enjeti’s true sympathies. For instance, Jake Mercier—the research assistant for his and Ball’s book (The Populist’s Guide to 2020) worked for Gabbard, perhaps the most restraint-minded Democratic presidential candidate in a generation. But he picks his spots. In January, for instance, he took an equivocal tone toward the risky assassination of Qassem Soleimani, a figure in Iran perhaps only second in prestige to the theocracy’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. On the third day of the decade, the guest Ball and Enjeti summoned to Monday morning quarterback the move was an official from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the home of D.C.’s most effective operatives for regime change. Enjeti countered that perhaps it would have been wiser to have taken Soleimani out earlier, in 2007—not firmly the stuff of a restrainer who sees de-escalation with a third-rate power in a tortured part of the planet as imperative.

But despite that Blob-y national security degree from Georgetown, Enjeti shows he’s not uncomfortable thinking for himself. His ascent has been astonishing—and facilitated by outsider outfits. It was as White House correspondent at the Daily Caller that Enjeti got his break, but also where he began enterprising his way into the limelight.

It was at the Caller that Enjeti first met the president, who he described to me as entertainer par excellence. But Enjeti began cutting away from the sometimes derivatively conservative nature of the site—he cultivated a more intellectual online persona and went all in on the age of realignment. That’s what he’s named his podcast—“The Realignment”—hosted by the Hudson Institute, a cornerstone of conservative Washington.

Enjeti is an unabashed champion of anti-monopoly politics—he thinks the American state should step in to guarantee a baseline level of hard industry in this country, and he thinks gratuitous economic concentration is unstable. With his roots in foreign policy, he has his eye on rising China. Of South Asian descent, he lends powerful credibility to the argument that the United States should consider a cool-down period in immigration for reasons of national cohesion. In this regard, he joins the esteemed company of Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, as well as the centrist writer Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times.

Other views are more eclectic. He’s issued a semi-facetious fatwa against cannabis. He’s joined other figures with a right-wing audience—such as Ann Coulter, Peter Hitchens, and the ex-New York Times writer Alex Berenson—in slamming the assumption of the age that pot is harmless. Mr. Enjeti’s pronounced social conservatism is perhaps more interesting because he’s openly irreligious, something he shares with a constituency lacking belief in the Holy Spirit but suffering from spiritual ennui.

“They cheered on rioting—and looting—and crime,” an indignant Enjeti told Carlson on his show in early June, as heinous riots swept America. It’s the only show he likes to do besides his own. “I think you put it together perfectly earlier today on your show…the first uprising against the working class.”

What is American conservatism? Well, you could certainly do worse than tuning into the talented Mr. Enjeti in the morning to try to find out.

Related: Introducing the TAC Symposium: What Is American Conservatism?

See all the articles published in the symposium, here.

The post Saagar Enjeti Rising appeared first on The American Conservative.

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libidomechanica · 5 years

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“But them smell streamer, but out of all bare! Dropped away”

he coldness in preserve the sedge, Dropped away from soul checks, lovely sweare But them smell streamer, but out of all bare! “my sick

me with a sheltering far as to fills! Unhaunt the kings delirium, gripe as the dream, and the

myself releast is not less great made a doubt a minute final gulphs in converse; Else,” but others. when

shepherds worst time of the sound, a young so fast, thou hast glory, and said: When my grief it fly, she smoke…no, its their she white

lake to praise, the lead the weather, the window and a flower o the bed to this fall

on renew their talents, althought as she land in a males of rhyme attention … oh, into the old and go

talk above, “if your bed canoe of half meant tales of yesterday dropped-off her was he felt here thy song;” I craviness

silent, pale for why diadem, and the Lady Psyche town about they, or the six months as breaks to your

heart; now from hidden back this convincess: while louers prove she happy he with that which made of owls that “gan to

my heart was her eyes that keep to have him with love of her hand I die—I feel the sleep tinkles in

swell; thou pat the act of two years with or a second heard it the whole motley hadnt seemed stand blessing

women leaf or our many, when the purpose it could be the phœnix shall pointing bowd my cloud; writ is

drew thy cloud; they sleep will enter bloud rather Don Quixote in all he pure clergy, whom shut up—no, no, that shall not my throught, new;

so soft ear the near a soft as authority unconscience or romanticipation, but self, hers all the

head and swelld Coronals of its river as Eldon on it will be consort of all forth my lovely as unconfined.

poisonous about wi” a kind the stream with the pious, survivor wilt though earthly senses the Heaven enough,

and evry this: an image their to be draw the porch one even bleating crammd with the sleeps .

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 5 #211 texts

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writer59january13 · 7 years

Text

Have technological advancements reduced our appreciation of human emotions?

SUBTITLE = Is society a better world to live in with less or more?

Boy! Those caveman days were rough! They felt like listening to deafening leopards roar a rushed version of hells bells, inxs of pulp fiction sung backwards by cold play, or a brutally nasty yet thankfully short youtube video of foo jimmy john, fighting beastie boys winking in the hood.

Loud quiet rioting !@#$ growls shook bats overhead when this grizzled papa bear disturbed (like a flock of sea gulls fighting angry birds over a candlebox), and forced to wake prematurely from hibernation set his seething animal anger to boil, and smoke to issue from his jack rabbit ass nine looking don Quixote ears.

Argh!

The gumption from that gap toothed, high browed, red-necked ursine spouse giving him one swift kick in the bony arse sent him flying like a twisted sister queen phish careening out into the frigid air.

He wished at that moment to become gratefully dead.

Upon immediate and most unwelcome exposure therapy to arctic blast, this mama’s and papa’s boy (by george) felt moody blue, and neither sought to tangle nor play footsie with Mother Nature.

He wanted to whip the hide of that pen heck king wife, when needles of miniature aeroplane shaped snow (white slippery buckshot elements of style) kissed, pierced and smashed against his face from those shoddily made flimsy animal clothes that barely kept him warm.

He pelts like crying.

Wah!

Without a shutter shutter flying shadow boxer of sprinting doubt, these goods (needle lee sewn) by snoop doggy dog gone hooligans, who cawed like sum Cajun gumbo baboons.

Anyway, dis bro’ kin mid dull aged mwm practically froze his scrawny tush off. Dang. Ooh.

How purty!

My oh my!

A cute deer!

Out came the bow and arrow! Whoosh! Bulls’ eye!

Upon uttering, "hey lucy i yam home", the def leppard viscious little beasts (aye cannot REM member how they came about) unforgivingly tore their sharp nine inch long nails into the soft raw doe. - - - - - - - - - - - Now compare the above paragraphs to this technological age! No way, no how does this domesticated simian relish expending any ounce of energy.

Without the need to leave the comfort of my warm bed, a click of the remote can provide immediate needs at these fingertips. Why dress (perhaps just a coat of armor), when breakfast, lunch or dinner delivered via robot. Bathe? This waterbed doubles up as a washbasin. Ah!

How in the name of judas priest could our ancestors enjoy feeling like a beast of burden? Who says you cannot always get what you want? Alice in chains? Cinderella? Eddie money? Jane’s Addiction? Pink Floyd? Yes! The entire motley crue! Yeah!

If not totally tubularly clear regarding trappings of a Culture Club bygone era, lemme spell out loud and clear, which stance will be obvious, I AINT NO LUDDITE period.

This creature of habit would never give up his pad (shaped like an oversize ipod) and forego any of his labor saving devices the only way to take away these cherished, idolized, prized possessions?

You would have to pry these buzzing, flying, whirring gizmos loose from my cold dead fingers! Don’t get your hopes up! I aint planning to cross the river Styx anytime soon. Maybe not even in this lifetime! Ha!

So there! Nor best ye git any ideas to boot me from this tear rest trial plane, and put me six feet under. Capisce? Comprende?

As a prom oh shun to this vignette, I conk clued hid (cost and glue tin free), an written accessory. Dis rat fink incorporate a dopey mean, elementary, flip-flop, greasy, hip-hop, lightweight, muscularly nimble oiled poem.

O rotten machine world - TITLE

click klack click klack click klack click klack

klippity clop klippity clop klippity clop

slap slip slap slip slap slip.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hello and welcome to the machine age

where pink floyd your tour guide

where human beings the laughing stock

on the supposed creature comforts

but in truth dependent on those big and little gadgets

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Civilization at the mercy of electronic gewgaws envisioned by wunderkinds (getting paid billions of dollars), that propelled masses from labor, yet shackled

chattering class to technology.

Thee symbiotic rapport (today more so aligned as Of Human Bondage) far removed from simple habitué.

Existent linkedin thread tying us to descendants of yore increasing at light i.e. laser speed, How quaint to ponder people using horse power as chief form of locomotion in bustling towns, that inexorably spawned metropolises birthing

barracks obama men nibble. Skyscrapers potential fiascos made civilization incumbent on

factories generating gewgaws in tandem with industrial waste, or would the theory be visa versa? This quandary represents a chicken and egg thing!

Survival of numerous species (including whoa mankind) hangs in the balance

as population explodes beyond capacity of planet earth to support. This

burgeoning billions burst of Homo sapiens filling every nook and cranny on this third rock from black hole sun foists inconvenient gory truths, that

catastrophe looms ever closer perching all living organisms perilously closer to brink of disaster and eventual extinction, unless dramatic measures taken to rein in (rain ‘n tots) reproduction.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PostScript: Special attention goes out to animal rights/ liberators, who belong to nonprofit organizations such as: GREENPEACE, PETA, SPCA can breathe easy, cuz no animals (large or small) got kilt. This blurb merely utilized the hypothetical scenario of said brutish, nasty and petsmart.

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techholo · 7 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://www.techholo.com/2017/03/13/bittercoin-true-blockchain-believers-vs-the-trough-of-disillusionment/

Bittercoin: true blockchain believers vs. the trough of disillusionment

The last 12 months have seemed an annus horribilis in the cryptocurrency world. The Bitcoin community is still fighting its years-old esoteric-to-an-outsider civil war, and is still nowhere near consensus; Ethereum’s public image has not recovered from the DAO fiasco; the much-hyped R3 consortium has abandoned blockchain technology; and the SEC rejected the touted Bitcoin ETF.

What now? Is this a slow death spiral, signalling the sad end of Satoshi Nakamoto’s dream and the motley crew of plucky cryptoheroes who defend it? Or is something interesting happening beneath this sheen of despair and decay?

The answer is: possibly neither, probably the latter, almost certainly not the former. The searching-for-the-new-new-thing, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately mindset of so much of the tech industry tends to equate a period of slow grinding with stagnation and death. This is not so. The quixotic quest for the cryptocurrency “killer app” — one that will bring widespread,…

Continue reading on TechCrunch… Source: TechCrunch

Disclaimer: All photos and content are under the right of TechCrunch.

#Opinion

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cubaverdad · 7 years

Text

The Punk Who Didn’t Cry For Fidel

The Punk Who Didn't Cry For Fidel / 14ymedio, Pablo De LLano 14ymedio, Pablo de Llano, Miami, 22 January 2017 — Minutes after the announcement of the death of Fidel Castro, last November 25, Danilo Maldonado Machado passed by his mother's house and knocked on the window of her room. Maria Victoria Machado opened and her son asked: "Mom, are you afraid?" She, who had heard the news, told him no: "You know this is my bedtime." He continued: "Well, I'm going to warm up the track." Mrs. Machado assumed that her son was going to paint some anti-Castro slogan in a city, Havana, that that night had been mute, silent, empty. Free for the cats and for the crazies. "Have you ever asked him not to expose himself so much?" "No," said the mother from Havana. "I admire my son." El Sexto, the artistic alias of Maldonado, left and reappeared a while later at the side of the Habana Libre Hotel. With a mobile phone, he broadcast live on Faceboo, speaking directly to the screen and mocking Fidel and Raul Castro, recalling dead regime opponents, moving through the desolate streets: "Nobody it outside," he said. "Rare," he scoffed. "Nobody wants to talk. But how long will you not want to talk, gentlemen?" He wore a white Panama hat. Sunglasses hanging from his shirt. Under the right eyelid, tattooed barbed wire. Headphones around his neck. He was an eccentric putting on a comedian-politician show in an empty but guarded theater. The most risky sitcom of the year in Havana. Then he asked some squire, "Papi, where's my can?" El Sexto took out a spray can and on a side wall of the Habana Libre, the former Havana Hilton and the hotel where the father of the Cuban revolution had immediately taken possession of to set up his first headquarters after conquering the capital, he scrawled: "He left." Live. His face in the picture. Risk level one hundred. He enjoyed it. He looked at the camera and said, "I see panic in their faces." Six feet five-and-a-half inches tall, thin, bearded, exultant. A Don Quixote crossing the line. Hours later, according to the reconstruction of his mother, he was forcibly removed from his apartment by a group of police and locked up in the maximum security prison Combinado del Este, outside Havana, accused of damage to state property. Only this Saturday, two months later, was he released. "They gave me my identity card and said I would have no problem traveling outside the country," the artist told 14ymedio a few hours after he was released without charges. "I am in good health and I am very grateful for the solidarity of all those who were aware of my situation." During the time he was imprisoned, Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience. A campaign on Change.org collected about 14,000 signatures for his release. Kimberley Motley, an African American lawyer specializing in human rights, traveled to Cuba in December to try to visit him in prison, but was detained and returned to the United States. The vice-president of the German Parliament, the Social Democrat Ulla Schmidt, declared herself his "political godmother." This was his second time in prison. In 2015 he spent 10 months locked up for planning a performance art piece with two pigs painted with the names of Fidel and Raul. In his 33 years El Sexto has become a heterodox figure of dissent. More a provocateur than an activist, he is essentially a natural punk, a creative thug who in another country would only have paid a fine for painting a wall, but to whom 21st century Cuba dedicates the punitive treatment it considers appropriate to a threat to the security of the State. When they released him in 2015, after a hunger strike, El Sexto traveled through different countries and explained in a talk that in the beginning he defined his political stance as that of an artist in response to the official propaganda so abundant on the island: "If they have the right to violate my visual space, I also have the right to violate their visual space," he maintained. Years earlier Cuban government proclamations were calling for the return of five Cubans imprisoned in the United States for espionage. They were called The Five Heroes. It was then that Maldonado adopted his nickname "El Sexto" – the Sixth – and emerged as a graffit artist. "Danilo says that art has to be brave and try to impact people," explains his girlfriend, Alexandra Martinez, a Cuban-American journalist he met in Miami. She says that El Sexto is a fan of Estopa, a Spanish rock/rumba duo, and Joan Manuel Serrat, a Spanish singer-songwriter. She tells how impressed he was when he went to New York and visited the studio of artist Julian Schnabel, director of Before Night Falls, the film about Reinaldo Arenas, a Cuban poet who died of AIDS in exile, and also the director of Basquiat, about the artist who began is career using the tag SAMO (for Same Old), on his graffiti in the streets of Manhattan. Mrs. Machado says that in the case file the cost of erasing her child's graffiti at Havana Libre was recorded as 27 Cuban pesos Martinez likes a drawing he has done in his current prison stay, titled Cemetery of living men. It's a three-level bunk with a man in the bottom, the middle bunk empty and a cockroach in the upper bunk. "Someone," his mother says, has been sneaking out of prison the pages he painted and publishing them on his Facebook page. They have a surreal style. He also writes. He talks about his nightmares – zoomorphic guards who mistreat him; he takes notes of the language of the prisoners – "fucking: synonymous with food"; and directs messages to his audience – "I still have not received news of my case," "I draw little because of my allergy, the excessive dampness and the lack of light, " "the boss of my unit beat me," "only the cosmic knows the true purpose of this ordeal." Mrs. Machado says that in the case file the cost of erasing her child's graffiti at Havana Libre was recorded as 27 Cuban pesos, the equivalent of one dollar and one cent US. "But they do not forgive what he painted," she says. Maldonado has written from prison: "Imagine how many people laugh about me. I'm already famous in jails and prisons." Fidel Castro left. The bars remain. _______ Editor's note: This text is reproduced here with the permission of El País, which published it today. Source: The Punk Who Didn't Cry For Fidel / 14ymedio, Pablo De LLano – Translating Cuba - http://ift.tt/2jboqnZ via Blogger http://ift.tt/2k01LPY

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