Mid-Morning Art Thread

Watercolor
William Sommer

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (318) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 8/4/25

Good morning kids. Hope you all had a nice relaxing weekend so now as we scan the links and ponder current events, I'm reminded of what the late great Rush Limbaugh of blessed memory labeled "The Daily Soap Opera," that is what the establishment media was reporting and the way in which it was reported.

That said, boy does this item really hit home, especially now that Tulsi Gabbard is putting the klieg lights on the intel community and its attempted and coup against Then-candidate and now twice-elected president Donald Trump (thrice if you include the stolen 2020 election).

Former Democrat Party presidential hopeful and current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is giving the CIA an enema, and she's putting the hose where it is most needed: in the sketchy, unofficial offices of Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's not-so-secret department dedicated to propaganda. . . The CIA has been bribing/threatening/installing journalists to do their bidding since the beginning of the Cold War. It is believed they had/have roughly 400 journalists, news reporters, and publishers throughout the world, writing what the CIA tells them to write. . . Tulsi Gabbard believes Operation Mockingbird isn't merely still alive and kicking, but that  it's being used to slander President Trump. In my opinion, it is also being used to spread globalist codswallop.) Even better, Gabbard is dedicated to tearing it down.

While it certainly is alarming and disgusting that for such a long time right up until the present day IC operatives infiltrated the national and global media to pump out propaganda, irrespective of the original intention to counter/thwart Soviet/communist influence. The composition of the pavement of the road to hell is something we are or by now should be well aware – given the societal/cultural and governmental corruption of individuals and institutions that many events over the past few years have exposed, one has to ask, were these CIA embeds even necessary?

For example, were Lois Lerner and John Koskinen at the IRS ordered to subvert 501-C3 status of conservative Tea Party or other non-Democrat Leftist groups or simply because they were innately Leftists did they do it all on their own? Were everyone from the editorial boards of the Times and WaPo, the anchors at CNN to late night talk show stooges given marching orders from the CIA or did they rail against everyone and everything non-Democrat all on their own?

All of that said, I think back to late January of 1968 when in the wake of the complete failure of the NVA/Vetcong Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite took to the airwaves of CBS to unilaterally declare to the American people that we had lost the Vietnam War, despite the facts on the ground that indicated it was a disastrous debacle for the communists. So whose war was Vietnam? Wasn't it the Dems' and the CIA's?

Poll after poll over the past several years indicates that trust in the media is digging its way to China. Gabbard's revelations, assuming they are given honest coverage (ha!) are not exactly going to help. That said, she is doing yeoman's work in exposing the 2015-present coup against President Trump. How or whether her revelations about Operation Mockingbird will help or even hinder her efforts to expose the corruption/treason of the Deep State is TBD. Surely and lamentably, the perpetrators of those crimes will more than likely go unpunished let alone be prosecuted.

Meanwhile, from someone who had the gall to believe he can appear in public wearing a MAGA hat ejected from a stadium, to Colorado's doughy fey governor punishing his own cops from working with the federal government to anti-Semitic mobs attempting to swarm NYC's Grand Central Station, the beat, and beat downs go on.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

Have a great day!

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• The more information comes out, the more disturbing things become.
  Was the Death of Seth Rich a Hit by the Deep State?
  
• Thad McCotter: Chinese engineers accessed Pentagon systems via Microsoft’s cloud—raising alarms over Big Tech’s ties to America’s top adversary.
  Microsoft and the DOD’s Digital Escort Service: How in the World Did This Happen?
  
• Victor Davis Hanson: Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks.
  Trump’s Unknown Frontiers
  
• The CIA has been bribing/threatening/installing journalists to do their bidding since the beginning of the Cold War. It is believed they had/have roughly 400 journalists, news reporters, and publishers throughout the world, writing what the CIA tells them to write.
  To Kill an Operation Mockingbird: Tulsi Goes to War With the CIA's Propaganda Yobbos

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:30 AM | Comments (356) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 4 August 2025

Top Story

• Did Craigslist really kill newspapers? (Poynter)
  
  Yes. Sort of. Maybe. But also mostly no.
  
  Newspapers had been in slow decline for thirty years when Craigslist launched in 1995.
  
  What the site did certainly do was accelerate a process started by the newspapers themselves.
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (124) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - August 3, 2025 [Doof]

Howdy Hordelings! It is Sunday ONT time! Nice of you to stop by and end your weekend here. What's on your mind tonight? Do tell!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (338) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: First August Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be August? Is it all hot and melty where you are? It's been all hot and melty where I are, that's for sure. So hot and melty, in fact, that it's made even the thought of outside activity unthinkable. How about range time? Do you usually shoot indoors or outdoors? Please let us know in the comments how you manage your range time in the face of meteorological adversity.

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (201) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Truffles Have Ridges?

There is an upscale department store in Paris called Bon Marché. If you need a €3,000 pocket book, or a €400 men's manicure kit, that's the place.

It also has three floors dedicated to food! The bottom floor is an excellent wine store, the next floor is a mind-bogglingly marvelous food court, and the next floor is filled with kitchenware and cooking stuff and beautiful china and glasses and flatware and linens and....

Let's focus on the food today! That photo is a plate of rigatoni in a truffle-cream sauce, served at a tiny truffle bar in the middle of this amazing food court. It doesn't have a kitchen; it's more like a reheating station about the size of a small island in an American kitchen. But they managed to pump out this deliciousness, and my friends had equally marvelous stuff (one had risotto with truffles).

The cream sauce was perfect, with tiny bits of truffle that I imagine was the dust and small pieces left over from processing. Then they shaved that pile of truffles on top, and had sufficient attention to detail to make the pasta perfectly. The rigatoni's ridges were perfect for holding onto that rich cream sauce, and I vaguely remember having to resist licking the plate.

Was it expensive? Not by NYC standards! The food culture in France can be overwhelming, but aside from the restaurants that cater to those who wish to be seen, even the highly rated places seem reasonable by American city standards.

That food culture is distinct from ours, which I think focuses on the event of the meal even more than the food. I like that very much, and wouldn't give it up for anything!

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (251) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First World Problems...

Look carefully. The blade has two sides, only one of which is sharp. Yet it can be removed and flipped over so that the dull side is presented to the food being peeled.

Unless there is some way to sharpen the tiny blade with a tiny stone, I see no reason to remove it. Yet inexplicably, somebody removed mine, and FLIPPED IT OVER!

Clearly there are imps at work in my home, and I may be in need of some sort of exorcism, or at least a cleansing by fire!

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (191) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The West And Islam Are Incompatible: We Just Haven't Admitted It Yet

Muslims are busily murdering Christians throughout Africa and the Middle East, and in almost every Muslim country they are a persecuted minority. Notice I didn't mention Jews in Muslim countries! They have already been driven out, and while there are scattered and tiny Jewish communities in some Muslim countries, the vast majority were expelled, especially in the Middle East.

While Islam holds a special hatred of Jews and Judaism, Christianity is also in its crosshairs. And there are many more Christians than Jews, so Christianity is a much bigger and easier target! Just look at current day Syria, or Egypt, where Coptic Christians used to be a majority, but are now a persecuted minority. And Nigeria seems to be among the worst, with an estimated 50,000 Christians murdered by Islamic terrorists in the last 15 years. Iraq, Indonesia, Pakistan, Libya, Congo... you name the Muslim country, and there has been persecution.

Apostasy against Islam is a capital offense in many Muslim countries, including such modern and enlightened places such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, yet they are treated as if they are civilized countries! And Christianity is an obvious placeholder for Western Culture!

And this is nothing new. Islam has been on the march for its entire existence, and it is only the post-modern conceit and stupidity that all cultures are of equal worth that has fooled the West to welcome its savagery, and has conspicuously ignored its intransigent political philosophy.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

-- Winston Churchill: The River War

That quotation is 125 years old, yet it could have been written yesterday. Except Churchill would have been far more pessimistic about the West's chances, and would have railed against the ignorance of our current leaders.

We are in an existential battle for the existence of our culture, and we haven't even admitted to ourselves that there is even any difference between Islam and Christianity/Judaism. Until we are honest with ourselves, and recognize that Islam is a political philosophy that uses a carefully crafted religion to achieve its goals, we will continue to lose ground to a 7th century culture with 21st century weapons and communication.

And those goals are antithetical to everything that Western culture has created over 3,000 years. The rationality of science, the equality of Man, the recognition of the individual, self determination, the abandonment of the concept of Woman as chattel, the free exercise of religion: all of these and more are in jeopardy.

Will the West awaken to this danger? Will there need to be a catastrophe on the scale of a world war to rip off our blinders? Will it be a Pakistani or Iranian nuclear device (or one supplied to a Muslim nation by North Korea or Russia or China) detonated in a Western capital? Will it be a biological attack that destroys American agriculture? Will it be an attack on Israel that triggers an Israeli nuclear attack on a Muslim nation?

Who knows, but perhaps a fight is preferable to the creeping destruction of the West!

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (359) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 8-3-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

HT: sharon (willow's apprentice)

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

I have some bad news for you this morning. Due to my current life circumstances, I will no longer be able to be the custodian of the Sunday Morning Book Thread for the foreseeable future. I simply do not have the time or energy to maintain it. I do know there are many excellent 'rons and 'ettes out there who can pick up the slack. If interested, you can reach out to CBD or MisHum. Their contact information is in the left hand sidebar of the main page.

I know I am in your prayers, just as you are in mine. I also know God has a purpose for me and is now revealing it to me, though I know not where this path shall take me.

Stay blessed, my dear friends.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (297) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 3 August 2025

Top Story

• Why Johnny still can't read. (APM Reports)
  
  Well, the original book examining that question was published in 1955, so one possible reason is that Johnny is now 75 and refuses to wear his glasses.
  
  But another reason is exactly what that book explained: Johnny can't read because teachers aren't teaching phonics - aren't teaching the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
  
  Back in 1955 the trend was to jump too quickly from phonics to sight reading - recognising an entire word and its pronunciation from memory. If you were already a strong reader you were likely fine with this; if you were at all behind you would be left struggling.
  
  Fast-forward a few decades and we find new generations of children who still can't read because they have been trapped by new - or once new - trendy pedagogies. Molly Woodworth was a poor reader as a child and came up with tricks to help make it through lessons, though the tricks never worked terribly well.
  
  When she looked at the reading lessons for her daughter Claire, she was horrified to discover that the tricks she created for herself - the same ones that didn't work for her - were being taught as standard practice.

  A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom. The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.

  The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"

  Woodworth was stunned. "I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

  Why are teachers deliberately sabotaging reading skills?
  
  Enter Ken Goodman.

  The theory is known as "three cueing." The name comes from the notion that readers use three different kinds of information - or "cues" - to identify words as they are reading.

  The theory was first proposed in 1967, when an education professor named Ken Goodman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City.

  In the paper, Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words.

  Goodman still believed that when this article was written in 2019 - the author requested and was granted an interview.
  
  The problem is, he was proven wrong fifty years ago:

  So, in 1975, Stanovich and a fellow graduate student set out to test the idea in their lab. They recruited readers of various ages and abilities and gave them a series of word-reading tasks. Their hypothesis was that skilled readers rely more on contextual cues to recognize words than poor readers, who probably weren't as good at using context.

  They couldn't have been more wrong.

  "To our surprise, all of our research results pointed in the opposite direction," Stanovich wrote. "It was the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, who were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition."

  Or to put it another way:

  Goldberg realized lots of her students couldn't actually read the words in their books; instead, they were memorizing sentence patterns and using the pictures to guess. One little boy exclaimed, "I can read this book with my eyes shut!"

  "Oh no," Goldberg thought. "That is not reading."

  Why did Goodman still believe in his failed ideas after all this time? (At the time the article was written, he was 91 and had just published a new edition of his book.)
  
  Put as politely as possible, he was a dingbat:

  "Word recognition is a preoccupation," he said. "I don't teach word recognition. I teach people to make sense of language. And learning the words is incidental to that."

  No, he really meant that:

  I pressed him on this. First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse. Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p//o//n//y/ says "pony"? And different letters say "horse"?

  He dismissed my question.

  "The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."

  He tripled down minutes later:

  In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

  "My science is different," Goodman said.

  And why is fashionable nonsense so entrenched in education?
  
  Lots of reasons, one primary reason, it seems to me, is that teachers don't have to live with their mistakes. You have a child for a year, cause lasting harm, and then get handed a fresh batch of impressionable young minds the next year.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (204) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night "Club ONT" August 2, 2025 [The 3 Ds]

Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration of your Sunday through Wednesday ONT Crew - The Disco, The Doggo, and The Dino. The Summer of Fun.

Club ONT Token Economy - where tokens are earned. One token per witty comment.
No refunds for fish puns nor dad jokes. Who runs Club ONT? The one with the most tokens and the strongest bladder. It's your chance - even Auntie Entity had to wait in line.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (353) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Move Thread[movigique]: The Life Of Chuck/Eddington

A relatively quiet three weeks since we talked about Return of the Living Dead. We saw two new movies: The Life of Chuck and Eddington, and two classics, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Apartment.

It probably goes without saying that the new movies are not in the same league as the classics, but it's not really fair to come to any conclusions about the state of cinema from that. On IMDB, The Apartment is #98 on the list of all-time greatest movies, while Cuckoo's Nest clocks in at #19.

The Boy (who is now "nearly 29" himself, creating an odd temporal paradox) is one of my metrics for classic films. He, for example, really enjoyed all the 1984 movies we saw—clear-eyed evaluation of the entertainment value of Return of the Living Dead and Repo Man (good, worthy but started stronger than it ended)—and Cuckoo knocked his socks off.

The Apartment less so. I personally felt a strange nostalgia for this time on aesthetic level. Not the depiction of life, really: The idea of an insurance drone whose rent is a about week's pay ($80) for a West Side New York apartment near Central Park is far enough removed to be a fairy tale in 2025. But, man, this is a good looking film, with Wilder bringing his noir chops into a comedy-drama.

I've never seen a young Shirley MacLaine on the big screen, and she's tragically adorable.

When receiving an international honor, Wilder said the story (which showcases immorality) could have happened in any city in the world except Moscow, the communists all broke out in applause. Then he said, "Because nobody has their own apartment in Moscow."

I could talk about it forever. But we can't live in the past, and we wouldn't want to, unless it was the movie past. So let's soldier on.

A manic-pixie-dream-girl failure film.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:13 PM | Comments (238) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - August 2, 2025 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. Good news! The Ace of Spades Wheel of HobbiesTM) is back in service. We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin and it landed on fishing.

I have faith that you can either find something in the content that resonates or contribute your own hobbying interests.

You might be tempted to say "I have no hobbies or interests." Bah. Dig around in the content and soak in the comments. Be curious. Glad you're here.

[Top photo: Two Fishermen by polynikes (20 x 16)]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (152) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread August 2

Courtesy William Blair Boulden

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:23 PM | Comments (109) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, August 2

Our tree lilies are out, they fill the house with a lovely smell.

Chris 1051

How glorious!

Posted by: K.T. at 01:07 PM | Comments (45) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blue Genes (sigh)

What happens when you ignore science

Well, perhaps the most inconsequential, yet prevalent, stories in media right now concern advertisements for blue jeans featuring an attractive young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. A passing reference was made to "blue jeans" in connection with "genes" and "eye color". This led to wild speculations concerning the coming of a Fourth Reich and so forth. You have seen some of this craziness.

But this advertisement did not happen in a vacuum. As Walter Kirn wrote recently:

Old news is more important than new news because new news is built on top of it. When you are renovating a structure you don't start with the roof but with the foundation.

Let's go back and get the old stories right. Otherwise nothing will be right, from here on out.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:25 AM | Comments (324) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

[H/T to a Moron]

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Mishicot)

1. This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2. Be Kind, Be Nice. Trolls need admonition.
3. No. You may not run with sharp objects here. Go to Slate or something like tha.
4. Have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 07:47 AM | Comments (321) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 2 August 2025

Top Story

• UK premium luggage service Airportr, which provided door-to-door service and worked with ten European airlines, was not hacked, exactly. (Wired) (archive site)
  
  Because it had no security at all. Anyone could look up anyone's personal information, or even log in as an administrator and redirect their luggage.

  The vulnerabilities resulted in complete confidential private information exposure of all airline customers in all countries who used the service of this company, including full control over all the bookings and baggage. Because once you are the super-admin of their most sensitive systems, you have have the ability to do anything.

  It was found by security analysts before anyone took advantage of it. The CEO of security group Cyber9X is quoted above.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (135) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Keep That Pelvis Far From ONT

Howdy-ho, neighborinos! Europe seems to be using the book as a how to guide.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (453) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ainu Cafe

The "Tolkein Door" of St. Edwards Church in Gloucester, England
"Speak Friend and Enter"

I hope I'm not getting Hulk Hoganed again.

Raising a teeny-tiny orphaned puma.

Freshest steaks in town.

The best watchdog is a lion.

Instagram (IG): Rhinos drive lions out of their territory.

IG: Driving an RV through Ireland.

IG: Rutting bison battle for mates.

This glacier thought the boat had a sexy ass.

Dog really enjoys the song Back, Back, Back It Up.

Little tiger cub.

Tiger swimming underwater.

The View at the beach.

Little girls are so much easier to raise than boys. Truth Rating: Incomplete.

I help.

A mother deer broke her leg. A family took her in and immobilized her leg so it could heal. Now the deer and the fawn are frequent visitors.

Harry Potter fantasy achievement unlocked.

This baby is an easy crowd.

Bird rocks out to Ozzy.

Rescuing four abandoned sugar gliders.

Must... destroy... squirrels...

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 PM | Comments (237) | Trackbacks (Suck)