Invisible Pink Unicorn
This content was published January 29, 2009. … An Atlanta blogger recently posted “a random list: music artists I can’t stand.” The list: Nickelback, M.I.A., U2, Matchbox Twenty/Rob Thomas, Gwen Stefani, Fergie/Black Eyed Peas, Old Dirty Bastard/Big Baby Jesus, Norah Jones, Bob Dylan/Jacob Dylan/The Wallflowers, Linda Perry/4 Non-Blondes, Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, Sonic Youth, Kid Rock, T-Pain, Jack Johnson, KATY PERRY, TV on the Radio, Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam.
The random list makes me feel like an old fogie. This might not be a bad thing. To begin with, I have never heard several of the acts. There is Kid Rock, who got in a fight in a Buford Highway Waffle House. Or Katy Perry, who kissed a girl before she got talking about Jesus. … It is encouraging to see the vastly overrated U2 on the list. Or puzzling to see that not everyone thinks Bob Dylan is fabulous. … But the main reason the list made me feel old was the length of time since I felt hip. When you are an observer, it can be easier to not like something, than to appreciate it.
I had a friend years ago, who we will call Geronimo. He had a lot of influence over my thinking. There were things he liked. Of course, the list of things he did not like, and would ridicule, was even longer. One day, Geronimo started to rant about Jeff Beck. As it turned out, I liked Jeff Beck, and let my pal know it. Eventually, I learned to think for myself.
This was the early seventies. For many like Geronimo, disco was the anti christ. Meanwhile, I started to hang out downtown. One night I was dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the dance floor. I liked it, and enjoyed the music that so many of my friends hated. … The process of learning to appreciate music was a long journey, and is probably still not complete. There was even the time when I stood outside a stadium listening to Black Sabbath … another bane of the 1972 music snob. … Music went into the mtv era, and radio got more and more specialized. I got older and more decrepit, and caught myself enjoying Lawrence Welk.
This content was published January 28, 2009. … There has been talk lately about The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM was originally created in response to the Kansas State Board of Education. The KSBE ruled that alternatives to evolution needed to be taught in public schools, including some contraption known as intelligent design. There was talk about whirlwinds rampaging through warehouses and creating jet engines. … FSM soon appeared, in all it’s meatball glory. FSM is a satire religion, in the footsteps of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Bertrand Russell wrote of an Interplanetary Teapot, which will provide the beverage for the spaghetti supper.
FSM is often used as a substitute for the G word, or God. In the struggle for hearts and minds, God has an advantage over FSM. The G word is a marketing dream. It is short, and easy to say. Almost everyone has heard someone say God. While people mean different things when they say God, almost everyone knows about the general concept. … FSM has seven syllables. Spaghetti is notoriously tough to spell, and has a silent letter. OTOH, no one says FSM got an underaged virgin pregnant. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “The MacDuffey family. Irwinville Farms, Georgia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Tortured Struggle
This content was published January 9, 2025. … It started out as a joke comment. Thank God for secular humanism. · You’re welcome. I got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between God and man?
Zen and the art of motorcycle repair says that the division of God and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. I am not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspect that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that God is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true. Let no man bring together what God has rent asunder.
This content was published January 10, 2025. … X does not like linking to a post. I write a description, and leave a link in the comments. Yesterday, it looked like this: “Is there a difference between God and Man? If so, where do you draw the boundary?
Facebook had a response: “I am so inexplicably bored to tears by that tedious conversation. The only way either side can prove their point is to die. The pictures are nice. Further proof that there isn’t any god, only the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche. Thanks for sharing.”
My smartass reaction was that “the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche” was a good description of God. Or, to quote someone more popular than Jesus, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” But I didn’t want to start trouble, so I clicked “Like,” and went on my way.
One person who talked about that tortured struggle was Billy Graham. The GSU library has a picture of the marquee at the Tower Theater, during a 1954 Billy Graham Crusade. The Tower theater is now a parking lot. “The Tower Theater, previously the Erlanger Opera House, was located at 583 Peachtree Street. It was originally constructed in 1790. In the 1950’s the theater was turned into a Cinerama, and the name changed to Martin Cinerama. The theater would also be known as Atlanta Theater, and Columbia Theater. The building was razed in 1995.”
The Erlanger Opera House was probably not built in 1790. I decided to do some checking up, and began by seeing when the North Avenue Presbyterian Church was built next door. This is where the investigation took a curious turn. “The church was constructed from Stone Mountain granite donated by charter members whose family owned the mountain and were in the granite quarry business. It was occupied for the first time for the Thanksgiving service in 1900.”
“The building program was helped immeasurably by the generosity of the Merssrs. William H. and Samuel H. Venable, who donated the granite out of which the building was constructed.” · “William Hoyt Venable (1852-1905) and Samuel Hoyt Venable (1856-1939) were involved with the Stone Mountain quarrying industry. The Venable brothers were the sole owners of Stone Mountain and much surrounding land which they purchased in 1887 at a claimed cost of $350,000.”
“James Venable (1901-1993) was the Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Klan from 1963 to 1987, “which he organized as one of several rival Klan factions nationally.” (NY Times) Venable had but continued the family tradition. As a 13 year old, he attended the 1915 Klan resurgence and rally on top of Stone Mountain. He was with his uncle, Sam Venable, who, as one of the owners of Stone Mountain, also became the secretary of the Klan.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Harry Hay And Joe Pyne
This content was originally published January 16, 2021. … Joe Pyne was a notoriously abrasive TV personality. He pioneered many of the things that today’s shock jock hosts do, before his death in 1970. One of his guests was Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. While writing a blog post about Lester, I did a bit of research on Joe Pyne.
Wikipedia had an intriguing comment. “Gay activists Harry Hay and John Burnside—who were a couple from 1962 until Hay’s death in 2002—appeared on Pyne’s show in 1967.[citation needed]” Harry Hay is a seminal figure in certain “radical” communities. Mr. Hay had a sharp tongue, and might have given the combative Pyne a bit of pushback. I decided to look for the video. … 2026 Update: The current Wikipedia entry for Joe Pyne (born Joseph Edward Pine) does not mention the appearance by Harry Hay and John Burnside.
[citation needed] is the key phrase. Youtube has a few dozen videos of the Joe Pyne Show. None of the ones here include Harry Hay. The internet archive has a collection of Pyne tapes, but no Harry Hay. A google search provides many mentions of this interview, but no more details. Many of the references were apparently copied, verbatim, from Wikipedia. 2026 Update: Almost all of the youtube links in the original post no longer work. The internet archive did not archive most of the ones I looked for. If you search for “Joe Pyne” on youtube, you will see more than you need to see.
There is a possibility that Harry Hay was never on the Joe Pyne show. There are other urban legends about Joe Pyne. The most famous involves Frank Zappa. It is helpful to know that Joe Pyne had a rare form of cancer in 1955, and part of his left leg was amputated. In the story, Mr. Pyne asks Mr. Zappa if his long hair makes him a girl. Mr. Zappa replied, does your wooden leg make you a table?
TV Party might have a reason for the missing video. “Most, if not all, of the syndicated Joe Pyne programs still exist on videotape in the archives of Hartwest Productions, Inc. Here’s what Hartwest tells us: “The tapes are 2″ Quads, meaning that they are so ancient that you only get one pass before the oxides flake off. That one pass is fine to make a new digital master, but the cost (including two digital clones) comes to about $600 a show. So far, we have only transferred three shows, with the cost being paid for by people who were either in the show, or who were making a documentary, or who now seem to worship one of the guests (and I mean the last literally).”
The research turned up another story. It is from “Remembering Harry and John” by Mark Thompson, on the occasion of Harry’s 100th anniversary. “I remember the night we were socializing at the San Francisco Art Institute at a gala tribute for James Broughton. Harry (Hay) and James had sparked briefly as Stanford University undergraduates, but didn’t meet again until fifty years later at a faerie gathering. Few people knew that James had fathered a daughter with esteemed film critic Pauline Kael during their bohemian Berkeley days, but Harry was alert to the fact. Kael and Broughton were having their own reunion at the moment when, with typical impudence, Harry interrupted the conversation by loudly asking, “So, who was the mother and who was the father?” The stunned silence was punctured only by the whoosh of Kael’s furious departure.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The men were soldiers in the War Between The States. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Ansel Adams And Dorothea Lange
This content was published December 10, 2022. … The facebook feed has recently had links to a story, Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps. Miss Lange was the photographer of the iconic Migrant Mother. After Pearl Harbor, Miss Lange took a job with the War Relocation Authority, documenting the “relocation” of Japanese-Americans to interment camps. The photographs did not please the authorities. They were censored, and only appeared recently.
Ansel Adams also took photographs at the Manzanar, California, camp. In the current stories, he is literally a footnote: quotes were used from a book about his photography. Why is Dorothea Lange receiving attention, while Ansel Adams is ignored?
One answer is that Miss Lange was hired early on, and shows the harsh reality of relocation. “On July 30, 1942, the WRA laid her off “without prejudice,” adding that the cause was “completion of work. … the WRA impounded the majority of her photographs of Manzanar and the forced detentions, and later deposited 800 image from the series in the National Archives without announcement.”
“After Lange’s departure, Manzanar’s director Ralph Merritt visited renowned environmentalist and landscape photographer Ansel Adams and suggested he document the camp — Merritt and Adams were friends from the Sierra Club. Lange, also friends with Adams, encouraged him to take the job. (Coincidentally Adams printed “Migrant Mother” for her) … Ansel Adams made several trips to Manzanar between October 1943 and July 1944 for this new personal project, and, as Alinder writes, he was primed to try the kind of documentary photography regularly practiced by Dorothea Lange and the Farm Security Administration that he had earlier shunned. Unlike Lange, a white woman who had been viewed with suspicion by her subjects, Adams was welcomed by the incarcerees, even greeted as a celebrity in a cultural community that had a deep appreciation of nature — many incarcerees at Manzanar literally opened their doors to him dressed in their finest clothes. … By 1943, Manzanar’s incarcerees had had time to settle in and enjoy the fruits of their collective work. In less than ideal surroundings, they had collectively built their own post office, town hall, library, auditorium, co-op store system, police station, jail, cemetery with memorial, published their own newspaper (the ironically named the Manzanar Free Press, which was regularly censored by the military), and even their own YMCA.”
“As for Lange, looking at the historical record, it appears that she was treated differently from the other WRA photographers. She was discouraged from talking to the incarcerees, was constantly followed by a censor, and faced harassment. She was refused access to areas after being given clearance, and she was often hounded over phone charges and receipts. … After being discharged, Lange expressed in letters her dismay that her work was ineffective in helping the people she documented. Her assistant Christina Clausen later noted the ferocity of this body of work also marked the beginning of the photographer’s bleeding gastric ulcers. Lange was unable to work for a number of years after her harrowing experience at Manzanar. She died from esophageal cancer in 1965.”
“In 1944, Adams’s photographs were published as a book, “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans,” and shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Nativists took offense. They saw Adams’s work as a slur on the war effort. He was a “Jap lover.” This quote is from a 2016 article, Let’s be honest, Ansel Adams’s images of a WWII internment camp are propaganda.
“Adams visited Manzanar to take photos in 1943 at the request of camp director Ralph Merritt, who was a personal friend. “They don’t look quite as dusty and quite as forbidding as Dorothea Lange’s photos … Indeed, the place that looks barren and depressing in Lange’s pictures manages to look beautiful in Adams’. You get little sense that it was even a detention center, in part because Adams, like other photographers, was not allowed to shoot the guard towers or barbed wire …
There are scenes from a baseball game, kids walking to school, a gathering outside a chapel. Lots of smiles, too, and portraits of camp residents cropped so close, you can see every blemish and stray hair. In Adams’ vision, Manzanar comes off as a place where Japanese-Americans, dignified, resilient and optimistic in spite of their circumstances, built a temporary community in the desert.
(Skirball Cultural Center director Robert) Kirschner said that if Adams’ photos appear to sugarcoat the indignities of life in an internment camp, it is because he did not see himself as a social activist the way Lange did. Still, Kirscher says, Adams was challenging internment in his own way, by depicting its victims as patriotic, law-abiding Americans. Unlike Lange, Adams was given permission to publish his photos. Before the war ended, he did so in a book called “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans,” in which he warned about the dangers of letting wartime hysteria justify depriving U.S. citizens of their freedom.”
The NPR article mentions a third Manzanar photographer. “Before World War II, Toyo Miyatake had a photo studio in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. When he learned he would be interned at Manzanar, he asked a carpenter to build him a wooden box with a hole carved out at one end to accommodate a lens. He turned this box into a makeshift camera that he snuck around the camp, as his grandson Alan Miyatake explains in the video below, which is featured in the exhibit.
Fearful of being discovered, Miyatake at first only took pictures at dusk or dawn, usually without people in them. Camp director Merritt eventually caught Miyatake, but instead of punishing him, allowed him to take pictures openly. Miyatake later became the camp’s official photographer.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Ansel Adams took the photograph in 1943. “People standing outside Catholic church at Manzanar Relocation Center, California.” … The ladies in the bridge game are Aiko Hamaguchi, Chiye Yamanaki, Catherine Yamaguchi, and Kazoko Nagahama. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Bari Weiss And Refaat Alareer
This content was published December 20, 2023. Bovine Bari continues to be a source of amusement. … I am listening to blocked and reported #195, while trying to finish a poem. Certified poopyhead @bariweiss is one of the main topics today. The thought enters my pointed little head to take notes. Nothing good is going to come out of this.
Something happens at 8:33. Jesse … or is it Katie … is talking about a notorious twitter account, @zei_squirrel. I pause the show, and look in the show notes for the url to zs. “You’re blocked You can’t follow or see @zei_squirrel’s posts.” There is nothing like going to an x account for the first time, and learning you have been blocked.
The main story boils down to the question: did Bari Weiss order the IDF targeted assassination of Refaat Alareer? IMO, Bari does not have a buddy in the IDF that can arrange a targeted killing. When the IDF mows the lawn, they do not target a specific blade of grass.
Bari does not get out of this unblemished. She has spewed out high octane rhetoric against Gaza for a long, long time. Take this quote from 2021.
“I am writing to you from the waiting room of my fertility clinic. Getting pregnant when you are gay is not so romantic, so we try to do little things to make it nice. Last night I took a bath. We watched “Mare of Easttown.” Nellie opened a bottle of red. Then she grabbed my stomach and gave me a shot to trigger ovulation.” Does Bari Weiss have a certain amount of privilege?
“I planned to take the morning off. The doctor says that stress is not good for baby-making. But sitting here, scrolling through my phone, looking at the tsunami of lies — lies that have permeated every Instagram story and every viral meme and every TikTok video and every popular Twitter account — I am weeping. … It appears that standing up for the right of innocent people to protect themselves from a genocidal terrorist organization has become extremely risky to one’s “brand.” And so lies have replaced truth. Memes have replaced morality. Hashtags have replaced history. I’m speaking, of course, about Israel.” … Bari’s wife Nellie Bowles gave birth to a daughter in 2022.
When the killing was over in 2021, there were a lot more Gazans killed than Israelis. There is no way to tell how many of them were women and children, or how many were Hamas. Bari probably did not call her connection at the IDF to order Operation Wall Guardian. Her purple prose did help justify it. When you start a fire, you don’t get to say where it stops. … Wall Guardian is an ironic name for the 2021 operation. An alert wall guardian would have been helpful on October 7. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in October 1939.
“ Wife of FSA (Farm Security Administration) client fixing her daughter’s hair. Farm near Bradford, Vermont, Orange County” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Podcasts 2025 Part One
I did a few posts about podcasts a while back. 100620 101420 120920 120321 Looking over these posts told me about a few shows that I had forgotten, and needed to catch up on. With podcasts, it is better to catch up than to mustard.
There have been some changes in the last four years. Some of this is specific to me, so if you get bored you can skip ahead to the links. The gym I went to closed, and I found a replacement. I finally replaced the flip phone with a samsung android. This phone has 128x the storage of the flip phone, and allows me to watch movies. The music players allow me to scroll forward. The ss also has the notes app. When I pause a show, I make a note of where I am in the show. The ss has the unfortunate tendency to start another show without warning, and it is good to know where to start over.
Another game changer was the October 7 incident. Many shows I once enjoyed are now unlistenable due to obnoxious Zionist rhetoric. This quote from 2021 tells the story: Bari Weiss has a dandy show. The first edition that I heard was about Amy Cooper, the “Central Park Karen.” That story has a lot of details that never got widespread circulation. Ms. Weiss is someone that I take a cafeteria approach to. Many of her podcast episodes are excellent. OTOH, some of her opinions about Israel are beyond horrible. Another opinion comes from The Root: “Bari Weiss, a fellow white woman who is in the running for Kareniest Karen who ever Karened in the history of Klanned Karenhood.”
My next chore for today tells a bit about my current habits. Every morning, I walk for a half hour, usually listening to a show. Before leaving, I update my phone. I go to the podcast folder, which I keep on the cloud. Open the list, and see if there are any fresh shows to download.
Today, the first DL is from “Freak Flag Flying”. This is a show I had forgotten, until I saw this post … Freak Flag Flying was a short series, featuring David Crosby. The C in CSNY has a lot of talent. If you don’t believe it, just ask him. Mr. Crosby has some stories to tell, and ranks with Keith Richards for somehow surviving rock and roll. Mr. Crosby got on the tour bus in the sky January 18, 2023.
The next step is plugging the phone into the computer. There are two folders on the screen, podcast-od (cloud) and 001 podcast-ss (phone). Delete all files that I have listened to. Copy the new files into the phone. Move the cloud files into a sub-folder, phone. But your shoes on and go.
This is enough for one day. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in March 1941. “Bar Norfolk, Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
122525
It is Christmas, 122525. One way to begin is by looking at my podcasts. The two Thursday downloads are Infamous and Question Everything. One of them does not have a new episode. The other one has a rerun. I didn’t like that episode the first time, so I won’t listen to it again.
Blue sky is a dependable source of amusement. The first thing I stumbled onto today was RadicchioFricchioOhio asking “But have you considering literally anything else ?” There was a screen shot attached, for this story: “‘Do we look alike?’: This dad is doing OnlyFans with his 18-year-old son, and the content is WILD”
If you go to dcbrne (top 0.2% Onlyfans), you see an eight second video. @dcbrne “Just a stroll in the woods with @BcBrne1.” Father and son walk through the woods, with a pause to drop trou, and show you their butts. Other videos frequently feature iambigrob93, and have a noticeable gay vibe.
The next thing to catch my eye was Skeets of Grass, a blue sky account for Walt Whitman. SOG posts samples from “Leaves of Grass” several times a day. Today saw this: @skeetsofgrass.bsky.social “The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.” In an ironic move, when you google the text, you are directed to Psalm 127:2. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.” Google may as well be gargle sometimes.
The Whitman poem, Song Of The Answerer, offers delightful context. “Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction, He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also. Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely by day or by night, He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs. His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is, The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.”
The entertainment on my morning walk was Mini-Stories Volume 21 from 99 Percent Invisible. One story was about the process the Catholic Church uses to approve people for Sainthood. It seems as though there is someone whose job is to find dirt on the would-be saint. This person is Advocatus Diaboli, or Devil’s Advocate. This is where the term originated.
“The person was supposed to take a skeptical view about this candidate’s saintliness, questioning were these really miracles that the candidate performed? You know, if you’ve read “Paradise Lost,” you know that the devil is very good at arguing, very persuasive. I guess the idea then was that there should be a position advocating a negative view, even if it was unpopular, just so that something as important as sainthood can withstand any kind of skepticism. … the position of devil’s advocate was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983. This was part of streamlining the whole canonization process. They still have a procedure for presenting opposing views. For instance, Christopher Hitchens was brought in to testify when Mother Teresa was being beatified in 2002.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the social media picture in February 1942. “Brownsville, Texas. Charro Days fiesta. Member of local businessmen’s committee dressed as Mexican bandido”©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Are Your Friends Overweight?
This content was posted December 18, 2008. … The following items come from a blog called akmal eky. · In Tibet, a common drink is butter tea – it is made from yak butter, salt, and tea · The ancient Mayans made truly hot chocolate – they added chilies and corn to it · No one really knows when donuts were invented or who invented them · Apples, potatoes, and onions all taste the same when eaten with your nose plugged · When an egg floats in water, it is “off” and should not be eaten · The consumption of natural vanilla causes the body to release catecholamines (including adrenalin) – for this reason it is considered to be mildly addictive · Banana trees are not actually trees – they are giant herbs · The term “brain freeze” was invented to explain the pain one feels when drinking a slurpee too fast · Ketchup was originally a fish sauce originating in the orient · 7-Up – invented in 1920 contained Lithium – the drug commonly prescribed now to sufferers of bi-polar disorder.
This content was posted December 17, 2008. … For a blogger with nothing to say, an online test is a great excuse to post. The test today is about cannibalism. The idea is, you are caught in a blizzard, you run out of food, and one of your buddies dies. Do you make a meal out of your pal? … I am 35% likely to consume my friends. Questions include can you outrun your friends, are your friends overweight, and are you a vegetarian. Can a vegetarian eat a friend who is brain dead?
One festive question was “Suppose you were in a restaurant and cooked human flesh was on the menu, what would you do?” The possible answers were: Call the police, I’d order it, I wouldn’t order it. … This test is sponsored by an online dating service. You have to click through a screen inviting you to join before you can get your results. Will your test score is shared with your prospective sweetie?
@SpyTalker “CBS took down a link to the 60 Minutes El Salvador prison piece but @allisongill @MuellerSheWrote posted another.” In the comments, there is a link to another copy, Pulled 60 Minutes segment on CECOT “This is a screen recording of a 60 Minutes segment about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador, which was intended to be aired December 22, 2025 but was pulled last minute for unclear reasons. Despite being pulled, it aired on Global-TV in Canada anyway.”
Live From The Table had a lively discussion, with @noam_dworman hosting @josh_hammer. It promised to be a rather unpleasant affair, that I would be better off not listening to. However, I realized that I did not know what Joshua Benjamin Hammer sounded like, so I recklessly scrolled ahead to a random spot in the show. Lo and behold, JBH was talking about a TPUSA event, where “I debated the moron Dave Smith.”
I am a Dave Smith fan. I don’t agree with him on everything, but on many important issues I agree 110 percent. Dave tells a story. He was appearing with JBH. They had a very friendly conversation in the Green Room before the show. JBH then gets on stage and says that he’s disgusted to be here on the same stage as Dave Smith. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in August 1941. “Children of Albert Lynch, FSA (Farm Security Administration) client near Dummerston, Vermont”
©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Non-Christian Sources
The display of a link on this page does not indicate approval of content.
JD Vance Is the White Kendi Against indigenous ways of knowing for hillbillies
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes to get second opinion on torn ACL before …
The Sinister Origins of ‘Fascinate’ It’ll hold you spellbound.
Reiners’ son made guests uneasy at party day before his parents were found dead
10 Historical Facts About Jesus From Non-Christian Sources
Truth, Love, & Rage Bait Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics
History Impossible in the New York Times Okay, only kinda Alexander von Sternberg
Fatigue and Irritation – An Addendum (and Correction) to the Martyr Made Situation
How Bibi Boosts Antisemitism Plus: Elon’s sleuth fail; Eric Schmidt’s China envy; drugged …
james ransome · gaza · hasanabi · erika frantzve kirk · washington ut
piers morgan · curious about god · lou reed · stadiums · steven ho
fashion · fascinate · fascism · karl’s substack · nick reiner
genocide · The Warrior Princess · L5P · fashion · fascinate
are you a participant in the Chorus Creator Incubator Program? · This is the monday morning reader for a chilly December day. The picture below is Captain Levi Harrison Cullers – 1836-1907. Captain Cullers served in the Virginia Infantry Regiment and Virginia Cavalry Regiment. He was wounded at Brandy Station, Virginia, and lost an arm later in the war.” · Update On Monday December 15, the execution of Stacey Humphreys was been suspended, until further notice, by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. · Happy Solstice Happy Solstice Happy Solstice Happy Solstice Happy Solstice · um, then they talk about how he did a Wordle. He did a Wordle like right before Charlie’s assassination. Uh, by the morning of September 10th, 3 days later after this this earlier exchange he had online, which is irrelevant. Um, Robinson had made the the drive north to Utah Valley University. That’s where Charlie was killed. According to prosecutors, he texted his Wordle score to his friend at 11:28 that morning. At 1:51, he allegedly walked onto campus and then made his way onto the roof of the building. In the courtyard below, a crowd had gathered to hear Charlie. At 12:23 p.m., I mean, it’s remarkable. So, the word score was texted to his friend at 11:28. Less than 60 minutes later, he shot Charlie, according to prosecutors. · set up what tonights gonna look like · Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters. Albert Einstein. Erika Kirk: Deleted Tweets & Secret Past Exposed · 51-49 with James Li · Jetsons technology governed by Flintstones management · Some say that you should only use a quote when you have read the book the quote came from. In the case of Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, this means watching a production of “Lady Windemere’s Fan.” · John Vachon took the picture in November 1938. “These men are both past sixty. Neither of them expect ever to work again. They ride freight trains from Omaha to Kansas City to St. Louis and back again. Omaha, Nebraska” · elote · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress Russell Lee took the social media picture in July 1942. “Rupert, Idaho. Former CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp now under FSA (Farm Security Administration) management. In the clinic at the camp which now houses Japanese-American farm workers. Medical care is provided by the sugar beet companies” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Solstice
Today is the solstice. It is the end of 2025. The Julian calendar says that the end of the year is in another 10 days. One of the jobs for today is to put out my Solstice meme. This is the second year that I have done this. I have spent the week working on it, and have chosen a winner. I need to work on it a bit, and make sure I’m using the right font.
The winner is the picture of a Warrior Princess on a building in Little Five Points. I’ve been trying to find the original. Unfortunately, my record keeping is a mess. It is causing brain damage to find this thing. One of the problems is One Drive, the microsoft cloud. When I transfer files from one machine to another, the od sometimes loses the files. The original is in there somewhere.
The image was used in poem q007, Poetry Is Part Three. The line was “Masked And Made Flesh In Writing.” PIPT was something I found on twitter. People were trying to define poetry … a lost cause … and came up with some lines describing poetry. It was the raw material for a poem.
The Warrior Princess was chosen for the background. Then it came time to try out the fonts and color schemes. Black and white Comic Sans was the font. The inside of the letters was going to be dark gray, hexcode a0a0a0. The fence is going to be on the right side of the Warrior Princess. In real life, the Warrior Princess is at the far left end of the building next to a fence, with greenery growing in the barbed wire. Because this is a fantasy we’re going to put the fence on the right side.
The picture was taken April 7th at 1910. I was going to the Little 5 Poetry Bash. I got there early and went around taking pictures of graffiti. The Warrior Princess was in back of one of the theater buildings … probably not rag-a-rama, probably the one that has the Variety Playhouse, and not the one with 7 Stages. Whichever one it is, you have to pay to park there
Most of the other pics are from the The Library of Congress. I only have the details for one. … John Vachon took the picture in November 1938. “These men are both past sixty. Neither of them expect ever to work again. They ride freight trains from Omaha to Kansas City to St. Louis and back again. Omaha, Nebraska”. The other color image is from the Chalktoberfest. This event is held in Marietta, on the same day as the Pride parade downtown.
The Machine
This content was posted December 20, 2019. … Today is the first full day with the machine back. It went down wednesday morning. Thirty six hours later, I got it back. A new hard drive is like having a new machine, except that the documents, on a separate hard drive, are intact. Getting a new machine is always an adventure. Some things don’t work like they did before. I still don’t have everything going like I like, and may never.
It is early morning. Today is the day before solstice, the end of the year. Where does this year end find me, 65 plus years into my life? In some ways, I struggle. In some ways, I am doing well. I woke up, and was able to walk. There was food in the kitchen. The roof over my head does not leak. There is a machine to work, and play, with. The last item has been a part of the game for 20 years now.
Yesterday, I did not pay attention to the news. I heard something about an impeachment, which I have little good to say about. There was another item on facebook. A writer put a comment up on twitter yesterday. The writer follows 666 people, which may be intentional.
@jk_rowling “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”
“We’ve watched her dance around it for a while, but JK Rowling has officially spoken her anti-trans stance, as she denies the existence of trans people and actively supports an employee (Maya Forstater) who was fired from her job for her aggressive and public anti-trans stance. I will no longer be engaging with Rowling or her products. Below is a screenshot I personally took from her Twitter profile (i.e. unfaked).”
Maya Forstater was fired from a government job for expressing opinions about trans women. It is not known whether these opinions affected her job performance. If the reader is interested, they can google Maya Forstater, and find out more. One slack blogger is not interested. I am not a Harry Potter fan (a potterhead.) I am not worried about “the fact that the widely beloved author could maintain such problematic beliefs.”
When you set up a new machine, there are unexpected challenges. All the pages looked stretched out. I was getting a headache. Then I looked at the resolution. The monitor is 1920 x 1080. For some reason, the machine was set to 1280 x 1024. This is why everything was stretched out. This was one of the easier problems to resolve.
After dinner, it was time to install GIMP. This is the one program I cannot do without. It was not a smooth process. First, I installed the latest, and greatest, version. I started to install the keyboard shortcuts. Many features had moved. I had to type in every feature to install the new shortcut.
Then I got to edit – fade. This is a feature I use a great deal. It was not included on the LG version. After searching high and low, I decided to uninstall, and try an earlier version. The first one I tried did not have fade. Finally, I went back to the version that I had been using, before the crash.
To try this out, I decided to do a poem, using fade. First, I had to create the text. To do this meant clicking on Bookman Old Style, the font I enjoy using. Unfortunately, this font was not on the new hard drive. I found a copy of BOS online, and installed it on the machine. It works for WordPad, but not for GIMP. I decided to use Georgia as a substitute. Finally, I was able to get a photo to look like I want, using fade. At this time, I am ready to post this story, and move on with my day. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in November 1938. “Saloon Omaha, Nebraska ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Cynic
This content was published December 17, 2023. … “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” ― Oscar Wilde. This quote is one of Oscar’s greatest hits. If you think about it for a minute, it is not totally accurate. You are not supposed to think. Quoting Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde is about sounding clever, not making sense.
Oscar Wilde is a quote magnet. This is more than something you put on your refrigerator. When people hear something clever, odds are good that Oscar will get the blame. As Dorothy Parker wrote: “If, with the literate, I am, Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. [Life Magazine, June 2, 1927]”
Wikiquote says this line is from Act III of Lady Windermere’s Fan. It was spoken by Lord Darlington. Did the playwright intend for the line to be taken seriously, or was he making the character look foolish by saying it? With Oscar, it could be both of these things at the same time.
Principle Four, of the four principles of quotations, reads “Only quote from works that you have read.” In the case of Lady Windemere’s Fan, this would mean a youtube video of the play. There is an indy movie available. You don’t have to watch the cell phone recording of high school players.
Lady Windemere’s Fan is a production where upper class Brits say clever things in glorious costumes. Nobody ever goes to the bathroom, or looks less than perfect. Lady Windemere’s six month old child is neither seen, nor heard. Lady Windemere finds out her husband, Lord Windemere, is having an affair with Mrs. Erlynne. The Lord proceeds to invite the floozy to Lady Windemere’s birthday party.
After the party, the men go to their club, then to Lord Darlington’s room. There are five men in the conversation, beginning with Lord Windemere. Lord Darlington has just told Lady Windemere that he loves her, and wants her to run off with him. Lady Windemere said no. Lord Augustus is a suitor of Mrs. Erlynne, and is begging her to marry him. Mr. Dumby and Cecil Graham wear their splendid costumes with conviction.
The scene starts with the men saying clever things, most of them insulting to someone. Lord Augustus, or Tuppy, is the butt of many jokes. Before long, we get this exchange:
Mr. Dumby I don’t think we are bad. I think we are all good, except Tuppy.
Lord Darlington No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Mr. Dumby We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars? Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington.
Cecil Graham Too romantic! You must be in love. Who is the girl?
Lord Darlington The woman I love is not free, or thinks she isn’t. [Glances instinctively at Lord Windermere while he speaks.]
A few minutes later, we hear another famous Oscarism.
Lord Darlington What cynics you fellows are!
Cecil Graham What is a cynic? [Sitting on the back of the sofa.]
Lord Darlington A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the social media picture in February 1942. “Brownsville, Texas. Charro Days fiesta. Dance for enlisted men” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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