#john whitcomb

[ectonurites]

SUPER DARK TIMES (2017) DIR KEVIN PHILLIPS

[liminalweirdo]

A sense of some fire getting close a super dark times fic

(chapter 4 up)

Josh and Zach do teenage things like crushing milk cartons, learning to drive, and realizing that being in love with your best friend fucking sucks sometimes fucks with your head and with your heart in ways you never thought possible

“Whatever,” Josh says, sighing it out like he’s exhausted. Like Zach’s exhausting him. And when he gets like this there’s really nothing that can pull him out of it. Since they were kids Zach kind of thought of it as quicksand. It pulls him down and holds him there, and just keeping his head above is about all Josh can manage. Like it’s not really something that either of them can help. “Just don’t—” Just don’t leave me. But of course, that’s an impossible thing to say to your best friend. It’s too big; it means too much. Josh doesn’t know how to drop all his defences like that, just sometimes he fucking wishes he could, wishes he could just say it and leave all this weirdness behind them. He can’t though. He can’t even get his mouth to begin to shape the words, so he finds the other strap of his backpack and says, “See you, man,” instead.

[matt-murdick]

do y’all remember that for a significant amount of time, Ellie was under the impression that John Casey had gotten so drunk he ended up in jail for exposing himself in public. and she references it multiple times in front of him.

Chuck and Devon are terrible liars.

[coochiequeens]

Bring back the old days when men used to kill themselves if these kinds of pictures went public

By Genevieve Gluck February 18, 2024

CONTENT NOTICE: This article contains photos which might be considered Not Safe For Work. Reader discretion is appreciated.

A British retailer is under fire after featuring a transgender BDSM fetishist in a new ad campaign highlighting “diverse” employees. To commemorate LGBT+ History Month, John Lewis Partnership (JLP) released a photo exhibition called the Identity Project, which highlights staff who identify as transgender or queer. The content was created as part of JLP’s 32-page internal magazine, Identity, which was distributed to the company’s 80,000 employees.

Yet critics on social media swiftly pointed out that some participants in the photography project had troubling backgrounds — including one trans-identified male who had been uploading disturbing bondage fetish photos to his Flickr and Facebook accounts

Marc Geoffrey Albert Whitcombe, who was positively profiled in the campaign, has worked for JLP at Waitrose Brighton for over two decades. In February 2021, Whitcombe legally changed his name to “Ruby Geoffrey Michael Porcelain Whitcombe,” in accordance with his self-declared transgender status.

According to the image produced in collaboration with photographer Chris Jepson for JLP, Whitcombe began to identify as transgender in 2015 “after accessing mental health support.��� The photo of Whitcombe depicts him in fetish attire, wearing a wig, and holding a multi-tailed whip.

“[He] came out to [his] friends and family and started transitioning, presenting more and more as female, and [he] now presents as female full-time,” reads the copy, referring to Whitcombe with feminine pronouns. “[His] transition brought about a new confidence that saw [him] start performing at local competitions and open mics, culminating in lip-syncing for Graham Norton in the grand final of one of Europe’s biggest Lip Sync competitions and singing live on stage at one of Europe’s biggest trans Pride events.”

Prior to identifying as transgender, Whitcombe had been performing as a drag queen at burlesque shows under the moniker Tran-Tula. A Facebook account used to promote his events is described as “a page for my kinky and trans-drag performing alter-ego.”

Posting under the alias Ruby Porcelain online, Whitcombe has uploaded hundreds of images of himself in fetish gear, bondage, and lingerie. Some photos depicted Whitcombe in dresses, spreading his legs to reveal himself in women’s underwear, and others show Whitcombe holding sex toys in his mouth.

Under a now-deleted Flickr account, Whitcombe can be seen in a variety of sexual poses, holding handcuffs, wearing a police uniform and brandishing a whip, or sporting thigh-high PVC boots.

Pornographic images seen by Reduxx that were saved under Whitcombe’s favorites folder depict other “sissy” crossdressing men in bondage, hogtied and gagged, or alternatively decked out in silicone costumes designed to resemble women — part of a fetish subculture known as female masking.

One of the first groups joined by Whitcombe, according to his profile, is a crossdressing fetish community where men share similar content, captioned with pornographic language, such as “Sucking cock: the ultimate turn-on,” and, “Who goes out in public?”

Ruby Whitcombe.

An alternative Flickr account run by Whitcombe interacts with dozens of groups dedicated to photos of graveyards. Whitcombe uses the account to share hundreds of his own images of cemeteries and tombstones as a participant in a taphophilia subculture that celebrates a compulsive interest in the rituals of death. In one Facebook post dated April 2020, Whitcombe states that he regularly frequents graveyards in order to “exercise.”

Following the revelation of Whitcombe’s sadomasochistic proclivities, JLP Executive Director James Bailey released an internal staff memo that was leaked by former barrister and advocate James Esses.

“You may have seen coverage in the press and on social media over the past 24 hours following the publication of the Identity magazine,” reads the memo. “We have an ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer, because celebrating diversity will make us a better business. That means creating an environment where everyone feels welcome irrespective of their backgrounds or beliefs.”

The statement went on to offer mental health support to any individual who had been “affected” by any of the “coverage,” without mentioning the fetish content and pornography that had been publicly shared by Whitcombe.

Ruby Whitcombe.

An alternative Flickr account run by Whitcombe interacts with dozens of groups dedicated to photos of graveyards. Whitcombe uses the account to share hundreds of his own images of cemeteries and tombstones as a participant in a taphophilia subculture that celebrates a compulsive interest in the rituals of death. In one Facebook post dated April 2020, Whitcombe states that he regularly frequents graveyards in order to “exercise.”

Following the revelation of Whitcombe’s sadomasochistic proclivities, JLP Executive Director James Bailey released an internal staff memo that was leaked by former barrister and advocate James Esses.

“You may have seen coverage in the press and on social media over the past 24 hours following the publication of the Identity magazine,” reads the memo. “We have an ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer, because celebrating diversity will make us a better business. That means creating an environment where everyone feels welcome irrespective of their backgrounds or beliefs.”

The statement went on to offer mental health support to any individual who had been “affected” by any of the “coverage,” without mentioning the fetish content and pornography that had been publicly shared by Whitcombe.

Other JLP employees featured in the LGBT+ campaign included a nursery advisor in bondage gear associated with the so called ‘pup’ and furry community, which incorporates a sexual interest in dressing up as animals. Additionally, Liberal Democrat councillor Sean Macleod, of Lewes and Eastbourne, was profiled despite being publicly criticized last year for a “misogynistic” social media post which read, “Fuck the TERFs,” a euphemism for women who oppose gender identity policies.

In 2019, public outcry erupted after John Lewis’ clothing retail shops were discovered to have adopted a ‘gender-neutral’ policy for its changing rooms, which, as critics pointed out, allowed men who declared a transgender status to use the fitting rooms reserved for women.

In the days leading up to the most recent controversy, which saw John Lewis trending on social media platform X for two days with calls for a boycott, Esses had criticized what he called the “trans takeover of John Lewis,” and described in detail other aspects of JLP’s Identity magazine.

“This month, JLP published a new internal magazine, entitled ‘Identity’. It was the brainchild of JLP’s ‘LGBTQIA+ network’. It was promoted to every one of its 80,000 staff members (known as Partners). A copy of the magazine was sent to me by someone working at JLP, too afraid to speak out themselves,” Esses wrote on his Substack.

Among the concerning ideological content highlighted by Esses was the promotion of breast binders for minors and pressure from higher-ups on personnel to wear pronoun badges at work.

“Most worrying of all is when the article goes on to recommend Mermaids as a resource to parents. This is the same Mermaids currently under investigation by the Charity Commission for safeguarding concerns, including sending breast binders to children behind parents’ backs,” Esses says.

“Shockingly, the article goes a step further, by actually recommending online videos which show children how to achieve their ‘desired gender identity, for example, chest binders’. Readers are told that ‘a binder is always safer than the alternatives.'”

Women’s rights campaigner and founder of advocacy group Sex Matters, Maya Forstater, referred to JLP’s promotion of Whitcombe as part of a larger trend she called “bring your autogynephilia to work,” a term defined as a male sexual fetish for pretending to be female.

“It is sexist and insulting to women to pretend that these men’s hobby of dressing up and wearing wigs makes them women,” Forstater remarked.

In recent years, several other men have been held up as role models for wearing sexualized female-coded attire. One of the men presented as an example of the phenomenon, Philip, or ‘Pippa’ Bunce, was in 2018 included in a list of Britain’s top 100 female executives compiled for the Champions of Women in Business awards.

[clove-pinks]

War of 1812 Wednesday: A Glorious First of June

I periodically bring up Sir John Franklin’s status as a War of 1812 veteran, but I have assumed that it’s more of a piece of trivia than anything else—a footnote in his career even if he took a bullet to his shoulder as part of raiding party at the Battle of Lake Borgne. 

Franklin was a midshipman on HMS Intrepid during the circumnavigation of Australia, he was at the Battle of Trafalgar in the thick of the action (narrowly missing a French sniper’s bullet), and of course he became famous for his polar exploits long before the 1845 Franklin Expedition. I didn’t think that Franklin would be dwelling much on the War of 1812, especially not late in his career in the 1840s. But I was wrong!

Invitation card to a ball aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, hosted by James Clark Ross and Francis Crozier, 1841 (Derbyshire Record Office).

Sir John Franklin was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land when Erebus and Terror wintered there in 1841, and of course he attended the ball. Although the date of 1st June appears to be a coincidence and not selected for any special significance, noted Franklinheads @explorersaremadeofhope @kljjfnotes​ and Olga Kimmins of The Thousandth Part brought it to my attention that it acquired a Glorious First of June title.

The usual “Glorious First of June” in the Royal Navy is the Fourth Battle of Ushant in 1794, but Sir John Franklin had a different battle in mind:

[all the company continued standing while the national anthem was performed by the full Band. The next toast in succession by Captain Ross was “His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor,” to which Sir John Franklin responded, by observing that the day set apart for the festive occasion by Captain Ross, was one that Englishmen might well be proud; it was the anniversary of one of the most splendid naval victories that adorned the pages of our history—it was a day rendered historical by the battle of the Shannon and Chesapeake—and it was also a day considered sacred to science by the discovery by the gallant officer who had proposed his health, of the North Magnetic Pole.]

Franklin hears the first of June and immediately goes to HMS SHANNON VS. USS CHESAPEAKE?! I was not expecting that at all, and have give Franklin more credit for his taste.

The celebrated engagement during which H.M.S. “Shannon” captured the American frigate “Chesapeake”, 1st June 1813, Thomas Whitcombe (Wikimedia Commons).

[thatwritererinoriordan]

The update:

[authortobenamedlater]

*slides this E4 deep dive under the door right before the deadline*

Sick of being sick, this took forever to finish.

The good:

I really liked the touches of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” Louis is blind but he still shoulders the grenade launcher. Danilo is a physical therapist and runs into the fray to aid the wounded. Talia is a Marine, sure, but she’s a basically a radio operator. She probably joined to pay for college or something. And she goes with John to FLEETCOM after he said she didn’t have to. Then she flies a bunch of civilians to safety while a bunch of jackals are eating Jacob Keyes for dinner. Riz and Vannak and John are made for this, literally, but many people who weren’t went above and beyond to defend Reach in a losing fight.

John going up against the cloaked elite (the Var Gatanai mentioned at the end of last episode, I assume) is pretty great, as is Talia jumping in with a tire iron. And the energy sword fight toward the end? Mm-hm.

Soren’s “kid watching Mom and Dad fight” moment with Jacob and Halsey 😂 Why do I think little Soren drove Jacob to the edge of his sanity?

John’s FACE when he gets called up during Jacob’s speech. I’m never going to stop finding that funny.

The episode does a good job letting the audience breathe in between the action. Soren especially provides some levity.

The bad:

Vannak deserved better.

Jacob got a great ending, better than his game self, but we never even got to see him step foot on a ship. His promotion to admiral doesn’t even make sense. However, he was the only flag officer who didn’t bug out and deserves props for it.

No Kai, but I didn’t expect her since she’s likely on her way to Onyx with the S-IIIs. She’ll probably be furious once she learns Reach fell and she wasn’t there to fight.

I want The Chief & Cortana Show. This is why I’m here. I will forgive the absence of my faves if we get lots of John comforting Cortana after she leads the Covenant to Earth. Or just a really good reunion.

Questions/speculations/wishful thinking:

Why did Ackerson take the Spartans’ gear? Mr suspects personal vendetta but I wonder if Ackerson has reasons beyond that. He said the Master Chief is “just a guy in a suit.” Does Ackerson want to put someone else in the suit? It would fit with the running theme of the people In Charge want John to be replaceable. Halsey wanted to replace John’s mind, does Ackerson want to replace his body?

One of the trailers shows John walking out of FLEETCOM in his armor, so he obviously gets it back at some point, but I want to know Ackerson’s agenda.

John says they need people like Keyes giving orders, or they’ll be left with people like Ackerson. Well, now Keyes is gone, so who will be Ackerson’s foil? I can’t really think of anyone on the show or in main canon. Miranda is the only possibility and smart as she is, she’s not ready for that.

I don’t think Reach has truly fallen yet. There’s enough footage in trailers (like John walking out of FLEETCOM in his armor) to make me think this is going to drag awhile. Will we get Operation: First Strike? Maybe I’m majoring on a minor, but in an S1 episode Parangosky tells Jacob to call Admiral Whitcomb. Admiral Whitcomb leads Blue Team and friends in First Strike.

Cortana will be forced to lead the Covenant fleet to Earth. This is how we get that shot of John on the drop ship with Jupiter in the foreground.

Vannak is dead and Kai is leading the S-IIIs. Silver Team is getting split. Is John going to get a new team or is he going off by himself? I’m inclined to think the latter at least for the immediate future.

Vannak is going to get hauled to The Body Shop better known as Castle Base for some new parts. They did it with Kelly.

It’s hard to speculate on what next week holds, since aside from Kai with the S-IIIs and John getting to the Halo, Paramount is being tight-lipped about the back half of the season. From the trailer, I suspect we’ll find out what role Kwan plays going forward and what happened with John and Cortana getting separated, and we’ll meet the S-IIIs. Next episode is called Aleria, which according to Halopedia is some butt-end of nowhere colony nobody cares about. I’m not even sure what to make of how it could relate to the episode based on what I’ve seen.

[usavintageads]

1954,"The Couple Who Weren't Invited" magazine short story Illustrated by John Whitcomb

[bloodgulchblog]

@godmybackhurts-deactivated202302

It isn't quite the galaxy not being in danger, but it's the best I could do.

Chief takes a nap.

----------

The Spartans had returned to the Gettysburg’s machine shop, and were resting. It was a secure and well-armored position, and the presence of equipment adequate for armor work was a definite perk.

Admiral Whitcomb had ordered them to take six hours sleep each before the assault on the Unyielding Hierophant, and while that had been adequate to keep them on their feet and steady, it was very very little after everything at Reach.

And on Halo.

...If the one of their number who’d been on Halo had bothered to sleep when ordered, anyway.

The Master Chief knew, logically, that he needed to rest. He could have, too. Sacking out under any circumstance was a vital skill every soldier learned in boot, stealing scraps of precious sleep wherever they might be still for a few minutes. It wasn’t that John couldn’t shut himself down. He was resting on the deck, the other Spartans all having found their own places to stretch out just the same. Their presence, the gentle rise and fall of their breastplates and the soft glow of their resting vital signs, were reassuring. Soothing, even.

John just had too much to think about.

“Chief?”

He didn’t startle at Cortana’s voice in his ear. The Chief didn’t even raise his head. His reply was a mute flicker of his acknowledgment signal over the comm.

“You’re still awake?”

He repeated the signal.

“Come on, Chief. We can use words. I’ll even start: You didn’t follow Whitcomb’s orders.”

John breathed out a little, not quite enough to call it a sigh. The sentiment, however, was there.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said.

Wasn’t like Whitcomb would ever know.

“You need some sleep. I’m reading your monitors, and Chief? They’re not saying anything good.”

She was quieter, this time. John knew her by now: confident, bold, ferociously intelligent and effortlessly aware of how she could apply it.

This was a change in tactics.

“Busy thinking,” he admitted.

“What about?”

“All of it.”

She didn’t have to pause. Cortana thought so much more quickly than he did, lived so much more quickly than he did. Her silence was something she gave him, a conscious choice. A gift.

But it was also a mirror.

And a question.

He did sigh, this time.

“Kelly. Halsey,” said the Chief.

“I don’t know where she took her, Chief.” She sounded apologetic.

“I know.” Not a snap, a reassurance. John found himself tilting his helmet to find the security camera, picking it out in the dim corner of the machine shop. “If you knew, I know you would tell me.”

“You trust me, huh?”

It was a joke, a little bit of play sliding back into her tone.

John was not joking at all when he said, “Haven’t been wrong to yet.”

He owed her. They all did. Even now, the only reason the whole team had settled like this was the knowledge that Cortana was safeguarding them on their voyage through slipspace.

Cortana and Johnson, wherever he was. The Chief had left Johnson to his own affairs. It wasn’t a Spartan’s business to tell an old ODST how to square up with everything that had just happened.

“Let’s hope that stays true.”

Ah.

He wasn’t the only one with something to worry about, was he? She'd even mentioned it.

“Still thinking about what happened to your copy?” he asked Cortana. The copy. The choices it made, replicating to the point of recklessness in the Unyielding Hierophant's systems. It had worked out in Blue Team's favor, but when they'd returned? She'd been troubled to hear about it.

She chuckled softly, humorlessly. “What do you think?”

John didn’t know how you helped an AI stop thinking. That was what they did, an entire existence of thought.

But he did know something he might try for a friend.

“If I stop, will you stop?”

She affected a politely human pause to consider the offer.

“Can you keep up your end of that?” she nudged.

“Promise I’ll try.”

“But are you going to keep it?”

“Keep working with me. You’ll find out I keep my promises.”

It occurred to John that he would like that, continuing to work with Cortana. If he had the choice. If they lived long enough.

“Okay, Master Chief,” she said. “You have yourself a deal. It’s a short jump, but we’ve still got a long ride to go. Get to it, Spartan.”

He breathed in and out a cycle, long and deep and slow.

“Aye aye.”

[sarcasticsciencefictionwriter]

🧡💔💀 for the unpopular ask::

Thank you!! 😁

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

Damn it, are there serious Sanctuary theories? I joined this fandom way too late to be a part of the theories.

Sorry, I have to pass on this one because of lack of knowledge, but if anyone knows any, let me know and I'll state an opinion.

💔: If you had to remove one major character from the series, who would you choose?

Abby. Sorry, but there wouldn't have been a huge huge difference in how things went down if she were removed and we would have been spared that icky Will-getting-possessive-and-not-wanting-Helen-to-do-the-one-thing-that-could-save her thing.

💀: If you had to choose one major character to die, who would you choose?

Ask that in a fandom where several major characters die or are implied to die, meaning I have to choose another person. *huffs*

My knee-jerk reaction is to say Abby here as well, to be spared everything that went down surrounding her character in relation to the others, but it would have been worse if she did die after being introduced.

Does Erika count as major? Honestly, she would have the least amount of impact to this already ripped apart family that is the Sanctuary crew if she died.

Ashley, James, Nigel, John, Biggie, and Gregory were already killed or implied to be, this is so unfair. Ravi too. Adam, Dana Whitcomb, and Forsythe too, I suppose, since they were villains with huge impact.

(But if Wexford counts, stab that power-hungry lizard man in the gut)

This is what I'm going with, because the cast was so small, anyone who appeared more than twice in relation to the main group pretty much counts as major.

[ectonurites]

before they knew Times were about to get Super Dark

[liminalweirdo]

A sense of some fire getting close a super dark times fic

(chapter 11 up(!))

Josh and Zach do teenage things like crushing milk cartons, learning to drive, and realizing that being in love with your best friend fucking sucks sometimes fucks with your head and with your heart in ways you never thought possible

The sky is slowly turning purple like a bruise, cloud the colour of dark fruit. It’s pretty, Josh thinks, and then feels silly for thinking that. Things like that always sound different when Zach says them — it gets really pretty when it snows.

[goalhofer]

2024 olympians representing non country of residence part 1

USA: Jaime Czarkowski, swimming (Calgary, Alberta); Catalina Gnoriega, archery (Mexicali, Mexico); Colin Heathcock, fencing (Beijing, China) & Jennifer Mucino-Fernandez (Ciudad Mexico, Mexico) Afghanistan: Kamia Yousufi, athletics (Mashhad, Iran) Albania: Chermen Valiev, wrestling (Moscow, Russia) Algeria: Saoussen Boudiaf, fencing (Roubaix, France); Mehdi Bouloussa, table tennis (Saint-Denis, France); Carole Bouzidi, canoeing (Paris, France); Messaoud Dris, judo (Paris, France); Zohra Kehli, fencing (Bagnolet, France); Koceila Mammeri, badminton (Lyon, France); Tanina Mammeri, badminton (Lyon, France) & Kaylia Nemour (Saint-Benoît-La-Forêt, France) Antigua & Barbuda: Ellie Shaw, swimming (Fairfax County, Virginia) & Tiger Tyson, sailing (Auckland, New Zealand) Argentina: Pascual Di Tella, fencing (Brooklyn, New York); Emiliano Grillo, golf (San Diego, California); Nadia Podoroska, tennis (Alicante, Spain); Alejandro Tosti, golf (Gainesville, Florida) & Rocco Ríos-Novo, soccer (Los Angeles, California) Aruba: Philip Elhage, shooting (Willemstad, Curaçao) & Just Van Aanholt, sailing (Willemstad, Curaçao) Australia: Alex De Minaur, tennis (Alicante, Spain); Thaisa Erwin, equestrian (Middleburg, Virginia); Raphaelle Gauthier, swimming (Montreal, Quebec); Daniel Golubovic, athletics (Manhattan Beach, California); Min Jee, table tennis (Seoul, South Korea); Miloš Maksimović, water polo (Novi Sad, Serbia); Jacob Merčep, water polo (Dubrovnik, Croatia); Kathryn Mitchell, athletics (Monte Carlo, Monaco); Georgii Okorokov, wrestling (Yakutsk, Russia); Hilary Scott, equestrian (Valkenswaard, The Netherlands); Ajla Tomljanović, tennis (Boca Raton, Florida); Josh Turner, rugby (Hamilton, New Zealand); Samantha Whitcomb, basketball (Ventura, California) & Joshua Yong; swimming (Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei) Austria: Lorena Abicht, sailing (Hamburg, Germany); Valentin Bontus, sailing (Poetto, Italy); Alina Kornelli, sailing (Munich, Germany); Lukas Mähr, sailing (Eichenzell, Germany); Elisabeth Straka, archery (Hamburg, Germany) & Josef Straka, golf (Vestavia Hills, Alabama) Azerbaijan: Tiffany Hayes, basketball (Winter Haven, Florida); Uşangi Kokauri, judo (Gori, Georgia); Zelym Kotsoiev, judo (Vladikavkaz, Russia); Magomedkhan Magomedov, wrestling (Aleksandriskaya, Russia); Georgi Meshvildishvili, wrestling (Tbilisi, Georgia); Alexandra Mollenhauer, basketball (Lindale, Texas); Mariya Stadnyk, wrestling (Lviv, Ukraine) & Marcedes Walker, basketball (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Bahrain: Amani Al-Obaidli, swimming (Brisbane, Australia); Tigist Gashaw-Beday, athletics (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia); Askerbii Gerbekov, judo (Roscha, Russia); Gor Minasyan, weightlifting (Gyumri, Armenia); Lesman Paredes (Buenaventura, Colombia) & Akhmed Tazhudinov (Gergebil, Russia) Belgium: Thomas Detry, golf (Dubai, U.A.E.); Adrien Dumont-De Chassart, golf (St. Johns County, Florida) & Delphine Nkansa, athletics (Paris, France) Benin: Valentin Houinato, judo (Sainte-Geneviève-Des-Bois, France) & Alex Kpade, swimming (Le Havre, France) Bermuda: Dara Alizadeh, rowing (Brookline, Massachusetts) & Erica Hawley, triathlon (Boulder, Colorado) Bolivia: Esteban Núñez, swimming (Antibes, France) Brazil: Nicolas Albiero, swimming (Louisville, Kentucky); Angelina Costantino, soccer (Jersey City, New Jersey); Laura De Andrade, tennis (Barcelona, Spain); Tatiana Dos Santos, surfing (Kauai County, Hawaii); Camilla Gluckstein, gymnastics (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey); Nathalie Mollhausen, fencing (Milan, Italy); Thiago Monteiro, tennis (Buenos Aires, Argentina); Rodrigo Pessoa, equestrian (Wilton, Connecticut); Luana Silva, surfing (Honolulu County, Hawaii); Felipe Toledo, surfing (San Clemente, California) & Thiago Wild, tennis (Buenos Aires, Argentina) British Virgin Islands: Adaejah Hodge, athletics (Douglasville, Georgia) Brunei: Hayley Wong, swimming (Pudong, China) Bulgaria: Aik Mnatsakarian, wrestling (Akhalkalaki, Georgia); Kevin Penev, gymnastics (Penfield, New York) & Magomed Ramazanov, wrestling (Khasavyurtovsky, Russia)

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 10.7

Beer Birthdays

Paul Reising (1819)

Charles Stegmeier (1821)

William Treadwell Van Nostrand (1821)

Amund Ringnes (1840)

Alfred Haunold (1929)

Tomme Arthur (1973)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Niels Bohr; Danish mathematician (1885)

Howard Chaykin; comic book artist, writer (1950)

Clive James; Australian critic (1939)

Yo-Yo Ma; cellist (1955)

Charles Woodson; Green Bay Packers SS (1976)

Famous Birthdays

Diane Ackerman; writer (1948)

John White Alexander; artist (1856)

Sherman Alexie; writer (1966)

June Allyson; actor (1917)

Dylan Baker; actor (1959)

Imamu Amiri Baraka; writer (1934)

Joy Behar; comedian, television host (1942)

Toni Braxton; pop singer (1967)

Simon Cowell; television host (1959)

Kevin Godley; rock drummer (1945)

David Hope; rock drummer (1949)

Elizabeth Janeway; writer (1913)

"Papa" Jo Jones; jazz drummer (1911)

R.D. Laing; English psychiatrist (1927)

Judy Landers; actor (1961)

Al Martino; singer (1927)

Uncle Dave Mason; banjo player, singer, comedian (1870)

Rachel McAdams; actor (1976)

John "Cougar" Mellencamp; rock singer (1951)

Vaughn Monroe; bandleader (1911)

Elijah Muhammad; civil rights leader (1897)

Oliver North; ideologue, liar (1943)

Bree Olson; adult actress (1986)

James Whitcomb Riley; poet (1849)

Caesar Rodney; signer of the Declaration of Independence (1728)

Dan Savage; writer (1964)

Jayne Torvill; English figure skater (1957)

Desmond Tutu; African activist (1931)

Thom Yorke; English rock musician (1968)

[ramrodd]

How can the essays of George Orwell be used to develop critical thinking about current events and issues?

COMMENTARY:

You can begin with the opening sentence: “The clock struck 13” is like the opening sentence of “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”

In terms of your experience of the narrative of 1984, the first sentence of 1984 is like the door in Revelation 4.2 and the mirror in “Through the Looking Glass”. If read that line and close your eyes, maybe spark a doobie and play the opening theme of “Twilight Zone”, defines the phenomenal reality of the narrative.

What you just read is an example of literary analysis as performance art.

If you go through 1984, you will find a trail of these cultural artifacts of the characters in the novel, like bread crumbs, leading your forward. Dagny Taggart has a similar role in Atlas Shrugged, dragging you by your dick, forward, into the inevitable submission to the superior intellect of John Galt, who talks the same shit as the Unibomber’s manifesto. With Dagny, who leaves a lingering bouquet of Chanel no. 5 and sex, she is the bait in Ayn Rand’s Venus Fly Trap.

The conceit in English letters is to conceive a narrative as compelling as scripture using different literary mechanisms

And, when it comes to critical thinking, Hegel comes in handy for his mathematical clarity and simplicity. Especially when you include the 4th law of logic in your outline.

Prufrock is setting out for the clubs in Top Hat and Tails, as one does. The cultural perspective defines The Great Gatsby. This is what was referred to as “The Swells” in the America of “It’s a Wonderful Life” Only, J. Alfred is an American in Oxford. You can hear the twang of James Whitcomb Riley in The Hollow Men, but T.S. Eliot is channeling the young Prince Edward, getting ready to Top Cat his way around The Strand.

Hegel and Kant make it easy and fun to do. And, as a commercial process, a capitalist tool. If you are invested in “originalism” of the Barr Decision, Kant anticipates George Washington as a Deist and Hegel reflects von Steubin’’s influence on the Just War Doctrine of the US Army War College and the command and organizational processes of the Command and General Staff College and US Army Ranger School. Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein shared the first Prometheus Award in their particular category, the difference being that Robert Heinlein’s version of the future is informed by Kant and Hegel and captured by Starship Troopers as they tie into Arthur Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Ayn Rand, like Newt Gingrich, trying to re-write the Bolshevik Revolution. Like Major Trainwreck Greene, the Whites would have won if she had been in charge.

I’m an Army brat. The idea of the clock striking 13 would have happened on Armed Forces Network in Germany in 1956, when Newt Gingrich and I were stationed in Stuttgart at the same time. Just after Sputnik. Sputnik totally freaked the Army community out. There were still a lot of POWs from the Philippines in the Army community as a particular point of price of service. They’d been there, done that after Pearl Harbor and the entire community shuddered.

The US Army community is a socialist society by constitutional necessity, so the socialism of the novel seemed familiar. I was too young to understand the betrayal: that would happen for me in Vietnam. But from my experience, socialism is nurturing and enabling and encouraging one to be all one could be.

I’ve had many meetings at 1300 hours ever since i lived in Germany. In 1956, the US Army community was prepared to snatch the women and children back to the states in 24 hours during the Hungarian Revolution. So, the idea that there was a war going on just over the horizon, which informs 1984, was a fact of my life.

I understood perfectly the evil George Orwell was getting at and I agreed with him. An important role that Critical Race Theory is how damaging evil is and how to fix the damage and renew the culture using capitalism.

You can do exactly the same thing with Atlas Shrugged as 1984. George Orwell was trying to warn the world about people who thought like Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley. Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley are exactly like the unfaithful servants in the Parable of the Vineyard. 1984 is about a country run by people like Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley. There is an actual, real time, connection between William F. Buckley’s campus marketing strategy for the 1960 agenda of the John Birch Society, the January 6 Conspiracy and the vast right wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton correctly identified in February 1993 that would drive Vince Foster to suicide,

Who is John Galt? Ayn Rand’s essential model of class room instruction is to beat you into submission and that was the first of 500 pages of similar abuse. John Galt is a perfect metaphor for William F. Buckley’s political objectives consistent with the John Birch Society in that they are so loathsome that they can vever be successful in polite society, much less the rational self-interests of Biden votes. John Galt has to do all his politics from subversion, sedition, sabotage and constitutional deconstruction.

George Orwell was waning America about the potential for the January 6 lynch mob to erupt into view and blow up America. Beginning at 1300 hours on January 6, 2021.

It’s critical thinking, every step of the way.

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🎶✨when u get this, list 5 songs u like to listen to, publish. then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (positivity is cool)🎶✨

hazel!! 🥰🫶thank you for the ask friend! long time to no talk i hope you're doing well.

so lately i have been pretty obsessed with like the same 5 songs so this is very well timed (also this is no particular order)

why why why by shawn mendes

i have been waiting for the return of shawn mendes for ages it seems and he did not disappoint with this. its catchy as hell and relatable and i love the folky tones to it.

2. quitter by cameron whitcomb

this is also in the folky genre. i love the honesty that he writes with and the hook has been stuck in my head since the first time he played a clip on insta.

3. lonely road by mgk (featuring jelly roll)

gonna be real, not a collab i saw coming. id barely heard of jelly roll before this song, but their energy together really is special. the spin on the john denver classic is very mgk and im not mad about it at all

4. gravedigger by livingston

i cannot tell you how much i love this song. it was the first one i heard by livingston on insta and then he lost the original file for 3 months and it only just came out. in fact livingston in general is a top fave of mine at the moment.

5. goodbye horses by tone of arc

my cousin in law showed me this song and it was an instant vibe. its very 80's and danceable. definitely one of those that i always listen to several times in a row