I was in Vegas last weekend. Surprisingly didn't bet a dime since I was there primarily for a daughter's volleyball tournament. The big news on local tv was the upcoming demolition of the Tropicana. Later, I found out it will be the future home for Vegas A's. Of all sports, I thought baseball would hold out on a Vegas team considering its history.
Gambling will only get bigger.
Not to mention the idiocy of calling this attack a prison break, when it was planned for so long with help from Iran. It's pathetic to spend so many paragraphs on a sex offender who got away with it, and then defend much worse sex offenders who actually killed women, paraded their bodies around to cheering crowds, and then boasted about it with a video.
This piece is poorly-composed, shoddy, and dishonest in so many ways, Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Gaza is actually a concentration camp, in which case another Muslim government, Egypt, would be complicit in this form of twisted imprisonment. And isn't it odd that not one other Muslim nation in the Middle East wants any Gazans within their boundaries. But, really, how clueless do you have to be to think that men who have been in a "concentration camp" for so many years would break out of it, and the first thing on their mind was to rape and kill women? It sounds to me like CJ Stone, who has no idea what a concentration camp does to somebody, is covering for Hamas, just like all the Brit media covered for Jimmy Saville. How ironic.
I was mostly with you for a lot of this article, but you lost me at "Israel often claims that Hamas uses human shields..." The went and basically said, "But what else are they supposed to do?" Have you ever been to Gaza? Because there's plenty of room there to not use human shields
I watched this last night. As you say, watchable but unecessary. The thing that got me was Jake Gyllenhaal's weirdly transformed body, which he takes every opportunity to show off. A far cry from the vulnerable teenager he played in Donnie Darko, which is still one of my favoyrite movies.
Gen. Tom Stafford has passed away. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/tom-stafford-test-pilot-gemini-and-apollo-astronaut-dies-at-93/
Great song!
Just out today: "Quantum Weirdness in New Strange Metals Bends the Rules of Physics" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-weirdness-in-new-strange-metals-bends-the-rules-of-physics/
Interesting but, personally, not scared of those groups. Am scared to go downtown lately (Philly). Too many first-hand accounts of evil (the non-banal kind).
UPDATE; Correction was wrong. Dept of Corrections has corrected the info they gave me. Sentence is 80 years: On counts 1, 2, and 3 he must run those consecutively – 60 years On counts 4-8 he must run those concurrently – 20 years On count 9 – probation for 10 years
UPDATE: WaPo reporter tells me the court records show 80-year sentence. However, Texas dept of Corrections tells me it's a 20-year sentence, which is what's shown on their page about inmate: https://inmate.tdcj.texas.gov/InmateSearch/viewDetail.action?sid=19984471
Lots of people hate being gay. Sometimes a straight person will tell gay people how they wish they were gay, by which they usually mean that they are finding dealing with the opposite sex or having a family or not having enough sex is difficult. But I think for a gay person to wish they were straight is akin to wishing they did not exist, since it involves wiping out their entire history and a big part of their life. I think the only time it wouldn't be like wishing you didn't exist is in those rare times when you are infatuated with someone of the opposite sex and wished their were some way to express it that could be a permanent new life path. Perhaps for either group to wish they were bisexual is not as unraveling.
Are we better off than we were 4 1/2 years ago when I explained that left and right are tired concepts therefore Andrew Yang may become president? https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/the-limits-of-left-and-right Arguably, thinking about the definitions, the problem is not that left and right are meaningless, but rather that each evokes a cluster of attributes (eg, right = affinity for some real or imagined past condition; left = affinity for progress beyond benighted past) that are common but not always present in each case.
"Self-important and super-cool" are applicable to Lou Reed. There's a lot of negatives that can be associated with him. Crispin pointed them out.
As a former resident of Charlottesville, would love to know where Crispin saw Lou Reed there.
You are interested in the truth and I am not. You really can't do any better than that? You embarrass yourself in this comments section.
Wait CJ, this comes after you said you would not say another word to me unless I followed your marching orders and read your links? And you wonder why I doubt your credibility.
It's ok Beck, I've got your measure. You are not interested in the truth, only in winning an argument on the internet. It's all ego. Have you read the genocide convention? NO, obviously not. The ICJ has already declared Gaza to be a plausible genocide and has issued provisional measures against Israel. Here's the link: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/gaza-icj-ruling-offers-hope-protection-civilians-enduring-apocalyptic# Once again, I know you won't read it, but future readers will be able to judge you. You are a case study in how a genocide can take place in full view of the world and yet still have the support of the wilfully ignorant.
You have written your last words to me? Thank you.
You parrot the talking point about genocide, but appear to know very little about the history of genocide, or even the meaning of the word.. Had you done your homework, you'd understand that any group with the power to do it really goes for it when they want to do it. They don't settle for halfway measures when it comes to genocide. For example, check out Rwanda.And the Nazis, of course, who are similar to Hamas in a number of ways, including their extreme ethnic hatred. Israel has complete air superiority over Gaza, meaning they could bomb it to dust. So why are they so bad at genocide? You wrote about how powerful their military is, so why can't they get this job done? If Hamas could bomb Israeli Jews into oblivion, you don't understand that they would do that in a second, because you live in a fantasy world.
If you think that a debate in the comments section involves reading every link that you give me, then you are delusional. That's not the way this works.
All governments lie, but Hamas also kills and rapes and kidnaps, and then brags about it, something the Nazis never did. I know what side you are on, CJ. I don't need to read one of your links to figure that out.
I have been a luke warm fan of Lou Reed dating back to his early years but echoing Crispen Sartwell's experience in Charlottesville I always had the sense that Lou Reed was dripping with contempt for his listeners and particularly his U.S audience. His song 'Last Great American Whale' off of his 'New York' album is a case in point. Here are the last three verses from that song - "Well Americans don't care for much of anything, Land and water the least, And animal life is low on the totem pole With human life not worth more than infected yeast Americans don't care too much for beauty They'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach And complain if they can't swim They say things are done for the majority Don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear It's like what my painter friend Donald said to me Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they're done"..... It is a wonder how the self important hyper-cool Lou Reed tolerated living so long in a country filled with such unsophisticated irredeemable low-life's... After buying the 'New York' CD I played 'Last Great American Whale' to my wife and grade school aged son and we all got a kick out of it. Lou Reed's self righteous puffery combined with his simplistic type casting and over the top caricatures made us all burst out laughing and for that I have to give a big thanks to Lou even though I am pretty sure he didn't intend the song to be funny.
Decades ago, I was at a party in my uncle's Manhattan high-rise apartment when the building suddenly filled with smoke and we had to evacuate down the stairs. My uncle grabbed a Picasso lithograph, and I grabbed a big tray of roast beef.
Great pic of Riverrun. Really miss that place!
In college I had a bartending job at Steak and Ale. Tips were good so I always had a couple hundred bucks in my wallet. It felt good to be a student and be able to walk into any restaurant that I felt like dining at. I rarely did that, but it was still a good feeling to know that I could.
As former Friendly's waitress of the year, Friendly's is always a yes. Wattamelon roll FTW
Loved Friendly's growing up in NJ. Fribble, hot-dog on toasted buttered roll, and fries was a great way to go. I also miss the diners with jukeboxes. After a night of drinking, your party could get anything from breakfast to a hot open-faced turkey sandwich at one place at 2 AM. Diners are considered a theme restaurant here in Texas and a poor facsimile at that. I like Five guys fries but they obviously don't compare to Nathan's fries. I always thought Roy Rodgers was best quality of those chains but haven't seen one in decades and good riddance to Arthur Treachers! If you're going with fried food, why choose fish? Last time I had Ritz crackers was when my girls were young, and they would suck/drool them soggy while in their car seats. Good cracker though, when dry
Oh I see it's Booker. Is that another child? How big is your tribe?
Is this you Russ? Were you cute in your 20s too?
I must be seeing things, not for the first time. I see from searching that Elvis didn't have that look yet in 64.
I think the "grub" has faces on it. There is an Elvis-looking face (with sideburns and shades) at the top of the grub (to the left in the photo) and there might be a side-view of a female face in the middle-left of the grub (towards the bottom in the photo). I dig the mid-century staircase.
Bowie and Bing "Drummer Boy" has long been my favorite Christmas song/rendition.
Loved it. Tilda can suck my blood anytime...
Great painting! I'm sad to say that the Paul Rudd birth year clue was the giveaway to me. (only because my wife regularly asks why I don't look as good at same age).