Jackgreenall

At this point, the question is not so much whether he will be RFK Jr.’s veep choice as whether he belongs at the top of the ticket:

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has confirmed that among his potential vice-presidential prospects is New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who in private conversations shared deranged conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real.

CNN knows of two people with whom Rodgers has enthusiastically shared these stories, including with Pamela Brown, one of the journalists writing this piece.

Brown was covering the Kentucky Derby for CNN in 2013 when she was introduced to Rodgers, then with the Green Bay Packers, at a post-Derby party. Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.

When Brown questioned him on the evidence to show this very real shooting was staged, Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times. Such conspiracy theories were also later at the center of lawsuits brought by victims’ families when they sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the matter.

It’s not exactly news that this guy is a reprehensible piece of shit but this is incredibly vile.

For those who are unaware: https://t.co/nqS1SUfSVj

— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) March 13, 2024

The post Aaron Rodgers is also a Sandy Hook truther appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

This year’s national championship game is of no small interest to the LGM community. On the side of the Washington Huskies we can no doubt count Scott and DJW as firm adherents. Paul is of course an enthusiastic supporter of the Michigan Wolverines, and obviously the golem of bile, vicious resentment, and scorn that we affectionately call “Loomis” will cheer against the Huskies under nearly any plausible set of circumstances.

As for my part… I’ll confess it’s tougher than I had anticipated. I share Erik’s raw hatred of all things Washington (probably more rather than less so because of my time at UW) and I have no particularly strong anti-Michigan feelings. My feelings are colored, however, by the impending and altogether undeserved death of the Pac-12. The Pacific conference has been made the target of fun by folks in this region of the world (the border between Big 10 and SEC country) largely because its teams have quite justly scheduled one another for nine games a year, usually meaning that the best squads have eliminated one another from championship contention before the playoff selection window. To have a Pac-12 team win in the final year of the conference was my most sincere hope at the beginning of the season, and while arguably a Huskies victory is more nightmare than dream, it does tend to put an emphatic exclamation point on the idea that Pac-12 football was something important, something that mattered, and that it’s a shame that we let USC and UCLA kill the conference in an effort to shut Oregon and Washington out of the southern California recruiting market. Weighed against this, of course, is the fact that if Washington wins Washington fans will never, ever shut the fuck up about beating Oregon twice this year.

Tough call. Tough, tough call, so tough that I myself may not actually watch much of the game. Still, notwithstanding the withering denunciation sure to spill forth from Loomis… I think I have a slight preference for the Huskies in this particular contest. May the toll of this treason weigh heavy on my everlasting soul…

Let’s this serve as an open thread for the national championship game.

The post The Big Game appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

Y'all ever open a book on a new subject, read a little bit, and have to put it back so you can process the way in which your mind was just expanded?

The textile book: okay here is some of the ways that textiles are important to human life

me: Okay!

The textile book: Clothes separate the vulnerable human body from the conditions of the outside world, and in doing so absorb the sweat and debris of human existence, accumulating wear and tear according to the lives we live. In this way, various lifestyles and professions are represented by clothing, and the clothing of a loved one retains the imprint of their physical body and their life being lived, as though the clothes absorb part of the wearer’s soul

Me: …oh

The textile book: The process of weaving a garment and the process of a child being formed in its mother’s womb are often referred to using the same language. Likewise, when a baby is born, a blanket or other textile material is the first material object it encounters and protects it. Textiles can create the idea of two things being inextricable, as with being “woven together,” or can create the sense of separateness, as with a curtain or veil that separates two rooms or spaces, even separating the living from the dead, or separating two realities, such as a performance ending when the curtain falls

Me: …oh God

The textile book: Odysseus’s wife Penelope undid her weaving in secret every night to delay the advances of her suitors. In this way she was able to turn back the passage of time to allow her husband to come home. Likewise the Lakota tell a story of an old woman embroidering time by embroidering a robe with porcupine quills. If she finishes the embroidery, the world will come to an end, but her faithful dog pulls out the quills whenever her back is turned, turning back the clock and allowing existence to continue.

me: …is…is…is that why we refer to the fabric of space and time?

The textile book: The technological revolution of textile making is sadly underappreciated. The textile arts are possibly the most fundamental human technology, as once people created string and rope, they could create nets for catching fish and small animals, and bags and baskets for carrying food. In the earliest prehistoric times, the first string or cord perhaps came from sinew, found in the body of an animal. Because of this perhaps the body of a living being could be understood as made of a textile material. Indeed textiles have the function of preserving life, as with a surgeon stitching back together the human body or bandages being placed on a wound. Textile technologies are being used to create life-changing implants to restore function to injured parts of the body, as though a muscle or tendon can be woven and made in this way. Cloth can be used to create a parachute that will save a human’s life as they plummet out of the sky. Ultimately, the textile technologies are used to enter new parts of the universe. [Photo of an astronaut and details explaining the astronaut’s suit]

Me: STOP!! MY MIND IS NOT STRONG ENOUGH FOR THIS

Leonard Leo’s slush fund is funded lavishly even by the standards of Republican institutions that provide ongoing material benefits to the 1%:

A top source of funding for conservative groups — including some connected to legal activist Leonard Leo — escalated giving by 27% in 2022, according to tax records.

But groups with ties to Leo, including the Federalist Society and the 85 Fund’s Honest Elections Project, collectively received far less than the previous year, according to the tax records from DonorsTrust Inc.

DonorsTrust raised $303 million, a 72% drop from the year before, but still increased giving to $242 million — up $52 million from a year prior, according to its 2022 tax filing obtained by Bloomberg News. The names of its contributors aren’t required to be disclosed, but the more than 1,100 recipients of its largess are.

A quarter billion a year is one hell of a lot of boxes of ziti. Clarence Thomas is probably complaining to Harlan Crow that he’s getting stiffed as we speak.

The post Wingnut welfare is an abundant resource appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

We’ve often shown old American made little films about this or that place in this series, but we’ve never had one on a Mexican made film of this nature. So here’s one about Mexico City in 1951.

The post LGM Film Club, Part 384: Ciudad Mexico, 1951 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

It remains remarkable how candid Republicans are being about this:

The scariest part of the recently disclosed GOP economic agenda, however, has largely gone under the radar. It’s the plan to hold the debt ceiling hostage next year, which could easily precipitate a global financial catastrophe.

Republicans have withheld their support from raising the debt limit before, usually framing their hostage-taking as a commitment to fiscal restraint. But the debt ceiling has nothing to do with new spending; rather, it’s a somewhat arbitrary statutory cap on how much the government can borrow to pay off bills that it has already incurred, through tax and spending decisions that Congress has already made. Refusing to raise the debt limit is like going to a restaurant, ordering the lobster and a $500 bottle of wine, and then declaring yourself financially responsible because you skipped out on the check.

Actually, it’s worse than that.

[…]

In a Bloomberg Government article last week, the four Republican lawmakers interested in serving as House Budget Committee chairman in the next Congress all said they’d refuse to raise the debt ceiling next year unless Democrats agreed to entitlement cuts and work requirements on safety-net programs — that is, measures Dems would find abhorrent. This would set the stage for another high-stakes showdown.

Of course, if Krysten Sinema actually gave a shit about governing this is one weapon that could easily be taken away from Republicans, but I think we all know that she doesn’t. One downside of systems that diffuse political responsibility is that they’re more likely to produce avoidable crises.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
All I'm saying is financial markets react exactly like stoic philosophers instruct you to.

This year is the 100^th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s birth. I’ve never liked his books, but he and others provided a spark of light for teenage me in what seemed to be a dull world.

I didn’t fit into the predominant narrative of the 1950s, in which I was to expect a career as a housewife, maybe becoming a teacher or nurse if I was determined to work outside the home. But why do that when home and pleasing a husband was plenty?

One of my ambitions was to grind my own telescope. I lived in the suburbs of New York City, and the American Museum of Natural History offered telescope grinding workshops. It was, though, more expensive than my parents could afford, and the weekly sessions, with the commute, probably more than I had time for.

But New York University offered an alternative, a Junior Astronomy Club. I recall it met once a month, on Friday nights. I took the bus and subway into the city with a friend and stayed overnight at her house, which was more convenient to the bus routes.

New York University is located in Greenwich Village, which was then the center of the Beat movement on the East Coast. Coffee and craft shops abounded. I still have a necklace that I bought there. I saved up my money for a custom-made pair of sandals. We went to the coffee shops after the JAC meetings. It was thrilling, another world that said I didn’t have to be entrapped by a guidance counselor’s lack of vision.

My parents supported my ambitions, but the external world, mainly my high school, had no room for the directions I wanted to go. The Beats were breaking an alternative path – theirs was not mine either, but the fact that it was different gave me breathing room and hope.

I read Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex,” and I intuited that Kerouac and his buddies were not my ideal. But they wrote and spoke of things outside the limits presented to me. I suspect that their travels helped me to say yes to future moves far from home.

This article reminded me of those times. This in particular resonated.

Yet Jack’s original vision was wildly hopeful. With a “vanguard of fed-up Black beboppers,” he could imagine the Beat Generation’s forming a great procession that would lead the world “out from under the shadow of the atomic bomb” into a future of joy and “apocalyptic love,” as he explained in a letter to his skeptical acquaintance Alan Harrington in December 1948.

It gets complicated from there. Kerouac became disillusioned, and I started to wonder why we nonconformists had all settled on wearing black tights as a symbol of our nonconformity. Freed from a future I didn’t want, I began to think about what I did want.

As other young people realized those freedoms, things looked good for a while – the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and what seemed like the kind of opening up of society that the Beats had anticipated. And then it went bad with Vietnam and the hippies.

So happy birthday, Jack! You were part of my journey, and I’ll always appreciate that.

I don’t want to give anybody a heart attack this early in the AM, but it appears that Donald J. Trump has engaged in massive ongoing tax fraud in the great state of New York:

The New York State attorney general, Letitia James, accused Donald J. Trump’s family business late Tuesday of repeatedly misrepresenting the value of its assets to bolster its bottom line, saying in court papers that the company had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices.

The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s recent effort to block Ms. James from questioning him and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil investigation of his business, the Trump Organization. Ms. James’s inquiry into Mr. Trump and the company is ongoing, and it is unclear whether her lawyers will ultimately file a lawsuit against them.

Still, the filing marked the first time that the attorney general’s office leveled such specific accusations against the former president’s company. Her broadside ratchets up the pressure on Mr. Trump as he seeks to shut down her investigation, which he has called a partisan witch hunt. Ms. James is a Democrat.

The filing outlined what Ms. James’s office termed misleading statements about the value of six Trump properties, as well as the “Trump brand.” The properties included golf clubs in Westchester County, N.Y., and Scotland, flagship buildings such as 40 Wall Street in Manhattan and Mr. Trump’s own penthouse home in Trump Tower.

Ms. James’s filing argued that the company misstated the value of the properties to lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service. Many of the statements, the filing argued, were “generally inflated as part of a pattern to suggest that Mr. Trump’s net worth was higher than it otherwise would have appeared.”

Ms. James highlighted details of how she said the company inflated the valuations: $150,000 initiation fees into Mr. Trump’s golf club in Westchester that it never collected; mansions that had not yet been built on one of his private estates; and 20,000 square feet in his Trump Tower triplex that did not exist.

“We have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit,” Ms. James said in a statement.

It is unusual for such specific and serious allegations to emerge in court papers — filed less than an hour before a midnight deadline to respond to Mr. Trump’s effort to avoid being questioned — instead of in a formal complaint. Ms. James’s lawyers said that the release of the details would not hamper their investigation, and added that the office was also looking into other conduct not discussed in the filing.

A friend who knows about this kind of thing summarizes:

There seem to be three main areas where they cheated:

Kudos to them for finding three. Many would have found one or two.

1. Overvalued assets/income when applying for loans
2. Undervalued assets/income when paying taxes
3. Overvalued assets that they were donating to governments (e.g. properties they couldn’t develop so were ceding to the state)

It’s hard not to be extremely cynical about all this, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that this story by itself would destroy the political future of any ordinary man.

But there’s something out there, and it ain’t no man.

digital-medic:

OP what.is.mental.illness [Instagram]

Over at The Ringer I wrote about the fortieth anniversary of Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!!, a remarkable record released in the aftermath of a humiliating controversy that nearly cratered his career, but may ultimately may have saved have saved his life. Check it out if this sounds like something you’d be into!

By age 24, Costello was well established as a genius auteur whose mastery of song form situated him alongside not only the major figures of the rock era, but also connected him to the larger traditions of Tin Pan Alley and the Grand Ole Opry. He threw off great tunes at such a rate that he couldn’t release them all, so they were farmed out to icons like Dave Edmunds and George Jones. His momentum so unbridled it could not be stopped and could hardly be contained. There was only one person who could halt the inextricable rise of Elvis Costello.

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What I’m about to say might sound crazy, but hear me out. It is my considered theory that 1)Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would both be infinitely preferable to Donald Trump and 2)both would be far to the left of the median votes in both houses of Congress even in the most optimistic scenario. Strange but true:

Regardless, your position on these matters will not change three brute facts: (1) There are not very many people in this country who are eager to spend copious amounts of time, money, and attention on progressive politics. (2) There are not very many politicians in America who are as responsive to the demands and desires of such people as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. (3) As a consequence of the first two points, Bernie and Warren supporters cannot win much of anything without each other.

[…]

There are some “normie” suburban Democrats who are receptive to a social democratic message when it comes from Warren and her allies, but not when it comes from Bernie or his. And the reverse is true of some disaffected, non-college-educated voters who’ve given up on both parties. A movement that cultivates a comradely attitude between Bernie and Warren activists will be one that is better able to cohere the candidates’ disparate bases into a faction large enough to compete for hegemony within the Democratic Party. A movement that cultivates internecine conflict for its own sake — which is to say, for cathartic, expressive, or media brand-building purposes — will allow meek centrists to inherit the (increasingly uninhabitable) Earth.

Cultivating intra-left solidarity does not mean keeping silent about substantive conflicts, or sincerely liking or respecting everyone to the left of Amy Klobuchar. But it does mean making some effort to interpret other progressives’ actions and intentions with charity, and keeping in mind that the world is shot through with ambiguity, that all us our prisoners to your own subjectivity, and thus, that people can earnestly share most of our values without sharing our perception of any given event. And it means — once you’ve extended such charity and epistemic modesty, and arrived at the unavoidable conclusion that a supposed ally is just an incontrovertible jerk or hack or wrecker — at least considering whether saying as much serves a constructive political purpose, or just a cathartic, personal one. In simpler terms, it means not filling Elizabeth Warren’s mentions with snake emoji.Twitter may reward brawling factionalists. But the American political system rewards movements with numbers. And no faction of the U.S. left has much hope of building that kind of movement without all of the others.

It’s fine to have a clear preference for one or the other, even a strong one. But to completely lose perspective just makes it all the more likely that the next lesson will have to be “Joe Biden would both be infinitely preferable to Donald Trump and somewhat to the left of the median votes in both houses of Congress even in the most optimistic scenario.”

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This is the grave of Arnold Stang.

Born in 1918 in New York City, Stang broke into radio pretty early, doing child radio shows in the city. As he grew up, well, he was both quite short and with a very distinctive voice. This set him up very well as a comedic force in the entertainment industry. He played up his height, but the voice, that was the gold. He was appearing on The Goldbergs by 1940. In 1941, he was doing commercials for CBS Radio, but his voice was so strange and cracking that the director thought it wasn’t great for this purpose, but that writers could develop a whole persona around him. He spent the rest of the 40s developing these ideas and slowly becoming more prominent. When Eddie Firestone, Jr. joined the Marines in 1943, Stang replaced him on the popular show That Brewster Boy. He became a sidekick on various shows by leading comedians, including Eddie Cantor, Henry Morgan, and Milton Berle. He had minor roles in a number of films as well.

It was really TV that made Stang a thing. This was a medium and time well-designed for him. A more natural inheritor of the radio show than Hollywood, his height and voice could always get a laugh. Berle hired him to play a character on his Texaco Star Theater show in 1953, in which he routinely insulted Berle. He had frequent guest appearances of all sorts of shows, especially variety shows and game shows. He also had more prominent film appearances after this, including in The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955 and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He also was in the first Arnold Schwarzenegger film, 1969’s Hercules in New York. Moreover, Stang’s voice was really perfect for animation voiceover. He was the voice for T.C. in the Hanna-Barbera show Top Cat and for Shorty in Popeye, a character actually based on Stang’s persona. He was the voice for the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee in the 1980s commercials for the cereal, and before that for Alcoa’s aluminum window screens and Chunky candybars. He remained working through the 90s, making all sorts of guest appearances, animation voices, and commercials. Probably his last well-known role was as the photographer in the extremely forgettable 1993 version of Dennis the Menace that starred Walter Matthau.

Stang died of pneumonia in 2009. His wife JoAnne, who was an entertainment journalist who wrote a lot of features of famous Hollywood people for magazines, died in 2017 and is also buried here.

Let’s watch some of Stang’s work:

Arnold Stang is buried in Newton Cemetery, Newton, Massachusetts, right down the row from Howard Zinn.

If you would like this series to visit some of the other comedians mentioned in this post, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Milton Berle is in Culver City, California and Eddie Cantor is there too. Previous posts in this series are archived here.

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If you’re in Chicago and you want to see me engage in a competitive live lit bout (vs. the great Jeremy Owens of You’re Being Ridiculous) come to the Hideout Inn next Tuesday at 7pm. Venue information and link to purchase tickets is here (and live/working).

Bumping this up the page. Come out, Chicago!

On June 11, 1352, a series of trials were held against laborers from Wiltshire, England who had violated a 1349 ordinance that decreed that all laborers much accept the wages they had received in 1346. This is a rare specific date when we can look at the economic impact of the Black Death and how the workers who survived sought to take advantage to improve their financial standing.

The impact of the bubonic plague upon Europe was truly amazing. Somewhere between 75 and 200 million people died in Eurasia, mostly in Europe between 1347 and 1351, killing between 30 and 60 percent of Europe’s population. World population actually plunged by about 25 percent and did not return to the pre-plague levels until the mid 16th century. In areas such as southern France, southern Spain, and Italy, historians estimate that up to 80 percent of the population died. About 40 percent of Egypt’s population died. It was 50 percent in Paris and 60 percent in Hamburg and London. And of course, waves of plague, not quite as deadly as the initial round but still devastating, rolled through Europe every few years into the 17th century. Half of Naples died in a 1656 outbreak, as an example.

The impacts of the Black Death upon society were far-reaching. In short, it destabilized everything. The authority of priests declined and fundamentalist religious movements sprung up that began challenging the church generally and began laying the way for the Reformation. Anti-Semitic attacks rose. The impact on family structure can hardly be overstated in areas where a large majority of people died. The Plague not only decimated workers, but for those who survived, it gave them more power due to the labor shortage. The farm economy at the backbone of medieval Europe was effectively destroyed. This caused a great deal of consternation to landlords, nobles, and the crown. Writings appeared that nostalgically longed for the days when peasants knew their place and demanded nothing, a very different world than after 1348. One lord in Norfolk, England lost sixty percent of his workers as peasants demanded better conditions and sometimes left the land entirely. Moreover, dead peasants paid no rent and did not labor. Inflation rose as the survivors each had more gold and silver for themselves as a portion of the economy–after all, the coins didn’t die of plague. Slowly, landlords moved away from labor-intensive grain production and more toward livestock, which required fewer workers.

In England, the state responded by attempting to freeze labor in place, though it was largely fighting a losing battle. The 1349 law referenced above ordered servants and hired laborers to accept the same wages they had received in 1346. It also required craftsmen and tradesmen to charge the same prices they had in the same year. Evidently, this law was not closely followed, for in 1351, the Statue of Laborers was created that created the ability to prosecute workers for violating the law. And there were a lot of violations. In 1352, 642 people were prosecuted in Wiltshire alone. The documents survive and we have quite a bit of information. A man named John Laurok left the service of a man in Oxfordshire. He was fined six pence. Quite a few people were paid in grain at rates significantly higher than 1346, sometimes receiving twice as much. Richard the Cobbler of Clack Mount charged more for his shoes. When the bailiff went to arrest him, he fled, so when he finally was arrested, he faced a contempt of court charge in addition to violating the economic laws. He plead guilty and was fined two marks (twenty-six shillings and eight pence).

Many women were also charged. Brewing was a largely female job at this time and 24 percent of the cases were brewers or tapsters, also a female position. Four women–Edith Paiers, Alice Dounames, Edith Lange, and Isbael Purs–were all fined six pence each for receiving an extra six pence for reaping corn into sheaves. What is also notable is that this was a law–not surprisingly–that punished workers but not the people paying them. Only one person in Wiltshire was charged with offering higher wages to induce a worker to violate the law.

Some workers were acquitted. William le Coupere of Elcombe accepted offers of extra money from several men, violating the law. But the jury acquitted him, even though the official record notes that he lied under oath about it.

In other parts of Europe, the ability to keep labor in place was better organized. Catalonia for instance had already placed new restrictions on peasants and used violence and harsh financial penalties to allow them no new rights or mobility during the plague. But more nations struggled with the newfound labor demands. France for instance had enacted a similar law in 1349 but had to revise it in 1351 to permit a wage increase of 1/3 because it was just not a workable law due to peasants just ignoring it because they could.

The other thing notable about all of this is that nearly everything has a labor history. Work is a central part of our lives. It might be as important as breathing and eating but it is a central organizing principle of nearly every society that has ever existed on this planet. That work can take place in a variety of forms, but work is as important to our society as marriage or education or ceremonies around death.

I borrowed from John Aberth, ed., The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents, for the writing of this post. It includes the material from England. I highly recommend this reader for teaching relevant topics. I used it in my Global Environmental History course last fall. This is also a useful site with lots of detailed information about the economic impact of the plague. I borrowed a little bit of detail from here, but there’s much more.

This is the 316th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.

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thunderstruck9:

Frits Thaulow (Norwegian, 1847-1906), A Stream in Springtime. Oil on canvas, 46.4 x 54.3 cm.

ink-splotch:

The students of Dumbledore’s Army had many badges. A gold coin that called them first to lessons and then to war. Scar tissue that ran across the back of many of their hands. I must not tell lies.

Another: the sound of clacking footsteps on stone sent each and every one of them scattering, even years after. The only people bold enough to walk loudly were not safe.

Parvati went out on the anniversary of not the battle but the day she left Gryffindor Tower for the DA and the Room of Requirement. She bought a pair of heels, their red as loud as the sound they made on hard floors.

Dennis Creevey sent her Muggle sneakers for Christmas and she wore those when she needed to be stealthy (scuffed purple and white peeking out from beneath her robes) but she wore the heels on office days, interrogations, on nights out, because she wanted to be unafraid, because she wanted to be the scariest thing in the room.

Every member of the DA was offered a spot in the Aurors. They considered that last year of occupation to be a sufficient resume. After two weeks of living quietly at home, in peacetime, jumping at noises her parents didn’t even hear, Parvati Patil signed up for basic training with the Aurors.

They taught her charms and curses she had learned from the other end of crueler teachers’ wands. After a seminar on resisting torture, Parvati went up to teacher (a jovial, jowly little man) and handed him the seminar handout she’d been given. She’d scrawled it over with notes and corrections, with advice and torture techniques they hadn’t covered.

Parvati smiled at him, knowing his eyes were seizing over her fine cheekbones, her pretty eyes, her lovely cursive, and then she went and locked herself in a broomcloset and tried to decide if she wanted to laugh or cry. Either way, she wanted to do it so hard that she couldn’t breathe.

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Pecans are the great American nut and at no time of the year are they more in demand than around the holidays. There are a lot of different nuts grown in the United States; walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts, but a pie made with toasted pecans is a holiday tradition and every year I have the urge to make one.

Recently an American membership-only store opened in France, and while there are many French hypermarchés (mega-stores), this one caused a splash, particularly amongst Americans, because they have things like big rolls of their famous plastic wrap with that superlative cutter, IPA beers, and from what I hear, big bags of pecans.

There’s always been Metro, a similar mega-store that carries more restaurant-supply items. But there’s a huge refrigerator filled with every kind of French cheese (and butter) that you can imagine, sold whole (like an entire wheel of Brie) or butter in large blocks, and they give you down jackets to wear because you want to spend so much time in there. It really is that cold. But you need to be a professional to go there.

I don’t have room for an entire wheel of Brie – and I’m not talking about in my stomach (which I’d be up for trying…), but in my refrigerator – but I do have room for pecans, which I stockpile as the holidays get closer and closer. Over the years, I’ve made Ginger Pecan Pie and Chocolate Pecan Pie with my precious pecans that I haul back from the States because I’m not schlepping out to the boonies on the outskirts of Paris to get a bag of pecans when I can carry them 5500 miles over the Atlantic. (And sometimes pay extra in luggage fees.) That makes sense. Right?

Continue Reading Chocolate Pecan Slab Pie...

When your nation lacks a job policies to employ people where they live, it opens them up to making money off the worst of the United States: in this case an ethnic cleansing campaign that relies on private prisons and profit-taking by the few at the expense of the poor. But there are jobs and if you need a job, you need a job.

For many people who live in Willacy County, the most important thing about the facility is that it pays guards close to $20 an hour. Other jobs in town pay less than half that.

David Correa Gomez, the city of Raymondville’s economic development coordinator, says the region is impoverished and badly needs good-paying jobs.

“If we take a step back, it’s very important to take two steps forward to compensate,” he said.

Asked whether he had any hesitations about going back into business with a company that the county once said failed to provide safe and adequate care for inmates, Guerra says “absolutely not.”

He says MTC has not offered the city any explicit assurances that it has taken steps to address the failures documented at Willacy leading up to the riots.

“Not at the moment,” Guerra says. “But we have an extreme amount of confidence in MTC because they’re highly reputable in the U.S. in terms of the operations. They have the background and the credentials to back it up.”

“We were unfortunate to have the riot in 2015,” he says, “but things happen.”

Opponents of the facility say this is a false choice between jobs and immigration detention.

“To put money on the table and to say, ‘If you lock up your brothers and sisters, we will improve the quality of your street’ is a completely false setup,” says Christina Patiño Houle, an organizer with a local advocacy group, Equal Voice Network. “To position the well-being of the few, against the well-being of the collective, I think is an absolutely false dichotomy.”

I don’t disagree, but when jobs are lacking, a lot of people are going to see the choice in that very framing and unless you can offer good jobs, they are unlikely to be moved by moral arguments. We see the same issue in the “jobs versus environment” debate, another false choice, but one that is compelling when people need to put food on the table for their children.

This is why I think my call for a federally guaranteed job is not something that is an isolated demand. Rather, it helps to solve all sorts of problems by giving workers choices. When they don’t have to worry so much about eating and housing, they are more open to making choices around their work that might eschew working for private prisons engaging in ethnic cleansing or that might say that we don’t want to pollute our communities. That changes everything by giving workers power over their lives. Capitalists, especially these private prison capitalists, rely on poor communities to provide the labor for their evil tasks. Fight that and it’s a morally good quest on a number of levels.

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ICYMI:

candy5hark11:

nightcoremoon:

frickdun:

[slides nasa $20] so, tell me about the aliens

aliens: [slide nasa $40]

nasa: lmao what aliens

nasa, with $60, holding back tears: we can finally afford some more space rocks

I adore Luke Skywalker. He’s a farm boy with a heart of gold who rebuilds the Jedi Code into something better than it was– and that revival and rebuilding culminates in him loving and forgiving Vader. It’s a triumph for Luke that has little to do with whether or not Anakin deserves anything, and I love it. 

The Jedi Code, among other things, calls for ‘selfless love,’ yeah? That’s the line Anakin throws to Padme, talking about compassion. But the Jedi focused too hard on the ‘selfless’ and forgot the ‘love’ in ways that made them aloof, brittle, and cold. Anakin focused too hard on the ‘love’ and forgot the selfless– he fell into a terrible, passionate, destructive spiral that doomed everything he cherished because teenaged him was a whiny idiot. 

But Luke takes in all the things he has been taught– from Yoda, from Obi Wan, from Han and Leia, his aunt and uncle. He’s told he has to kill Vader, that there is no room here for forgiveness, compassion, mercy, or faith, and he calmly refuses to listen. It’s in his decision to go to Cloud City despite Yoda’s warnings, and it’s also in his decision to surrender himself to his father’s mercies, on the faith that there is still Light in him. 

And, very importantly to me, when Luke surrenders himself to Vader he is harming no one and risking no one else’s lives. He realizes he can’t be of any help to Han and Leia (because he’s a giant Force beacon of ‘rebels here!’). He has no mission whose success hinges on him. He believes there is Light in Vader, and he is willing to risk his own life on that gamble, but he doesn’t risk anyone else’s, and that’s so important. 

Luke’s story in that final movie is astonishingly unimportant to the outcome of the battle, which I think is an amazing choice for their protagonist. If Luke died and failed. nothing would happen. Han and Leia would still get the shields down. The rebel fleet would still blow the battle station. Luke’s battle is an emotional and an internal one– to stand against the Dark, to not Fall. His goal is someone else’s redemption and his methods are extraordinary passive. His success hinges on his patience, his faith, and, in the end, the last remnants of his father’s love and life. He wins by believing in other people, even when they really don’t deserve it, and he wins by being willing to die for that faith. I love it. I love Luke. He’s great. He’s a giant silly goober who had no reason to think that plan would work, and I love him. What a softie. 

But despite me loving that being Luke’s story, in my AU(s) (and I’m almost done with a second one here, coming soon to a theatre near you), I find it really hard to save Vader, myself. In the ‘switched at birth’ one you’re referencing here, it’s hard to imagine a Luke who just lost Alderaan forgiving anyone, so my Vader didn’t make it through that story. 

But mostly I’m just not as kind as Luke. Eh. I’d make a bad Jedi anyway. 

As every musical theatre aficionado knows already, Hamilton is the historic hip-hop sensation that has captured the hearts and ears of fans across the internet. Getting a ticket is hard, but the soundtrack’s on Spotify, and most have had to settle for that. Your prayers have been answered today, Hamilton fandom: The show has a national tour in the works!

Hamilton already announced an upcoming stint in Chicago, starting this September 27th at the PrivateBank Theater. Word on the street had it that other cities could end up on the docket as well. As of today, we now know that the show will tour in San Francisco at the SHN Orpheum Theater in March 2017, and then in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Pantages Theater from August 11 to December 30, 2017. After that, the show plans to tour other cities as well.

The New York production plans to run indefinitely in the interim, and the producers plan to explore a production in London—so, yes, that’s right, there are auditions happening across the planet now for this show. Polish up those resumes, actors!!

The only downside? 2017 sounds so incredibly far away, and Boston still isn’t on the list of planned cities (that’s where I live, folks). I might not get to see Hamilton for a while yet. But I can be patient! It’s going to be worth it!

(via New York Times, image via The Odyssey)

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Anne Thériault’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

If you’re anything like me (and if you aren’t, MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE – THINK ABOUT IT), you’ve definitely spent a lot of your time objectively ranking Henry VIII’s wives. This can be done by carefully employing the scientific method that you learned for the science fair in sixth grade. After that you need to square your answer and find the hypotenuse and then employ the quadratic formula. Because this isn’t just conjecture, ok? This is English Monarchy Science.

The ranking of Henry VII’s wives is so obvious that I shouldn’t even have to tell you who comes first and who comes last. Like, do you even Tudor, bro? But just in case you’re in any danger of coming to the wrong conclusions, let me condescendingly lay it out for you here:

FROM BEST TO SUCKIEST:

1. Anne Boleyn
2. Catherine of Aragon
3. Catherine Howard
4. Anne of Cleves
5. Catherine Parr
6. Sucky old Jane Seymour, with her stupid ability to give birth to princes who survive past infancy and her stupid boring face. GOOD RIDDANCE, JANE SEYMOUR. WAY TO DIE IN CHILDBIRTH LIKE A CHUMP. DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOUR ASS ON THE WAY OUT.

Far from being the slutty home-wrecker and raging bitch that both historical texts and popular media make her out to be, Anne was actually a super rad lady (although it should be noted that sluttiness is a social construct, and also that sleeping around and being a raging bitch are not mutually exclusive with the concept of radness.) Anne was a smart woman who knew what she wanted (to be queen) and what she didn’t want (to be the king’s mistress/anything other than queen.) She held out for seven years while Henry tried to get her into his bed. SEVEN YEARS. That is so fucking ballsy. Like, it’s both ballsy not to give the King of England what he wants and also ballsy to assume that you can keep him and his roving boner interested in you for seven years. 

Speaking of ballsy, let’s talk about the death grudge that Anne held against Cardinal Wolsey. Some background: Anne had a secret betrothal to Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, but when Wolsey found out he forced them to break it off. Anne was fucking pissed, mostly because she was pretty sure no one as high ranking as an earl’s son would ever offer to marry her again (hang in there Anne, there are better things coming – but, spoiler alert, also way worse things.) Did Anne choose to forgive Cardinal Wolsey, one of Henry VIII’s closest friends and advisors, once she and the king were finally boning? NO SHE DID NOT. She had way too much self-respect for that. Instead, she convinced Henry that Wolsey was deliberately cock-blocking him by failing to get him an annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. And if there was one thing that Henry VIII hated, it was cock-blocking. 

Wolsey was stripped of all his titles and sent to Yorkshire. The next year he was accused of treason, and on his way back to stand trial London he died.

ANNE BOLEYN – 1

CARDINAL WOLSEY – 0

Anne was great at a lot of things, for example pretending to be French. She helped solidify England’s alliance with France, which she probably accomplished by taking every important French dude aside and being like, “Listen, just tell him that Catherine of Aragon’s a bitch and that you hate Spain and I promise he’ll love you forever. Also, feel free to keep that shit hole Calais.” She spent her spare time skateboarding around and flipping off the pope. Like, she would lean over Henry’s desk with an anti-Catholic pamphlet in her cleavage and be like, “HEY, CHECK OUT THIS HERETICAL WRITING THAT JUST FELL INTO MY MELON BASKET.” And then Henry would be like, “HMMM YOU SAUCY LITTLE MINX, SOUNDS LIKE SOME GOOD READING MATERIAL FOR WHEN I VISIT THE ROYAL SHIT HOUSE*.” Then he would go to stick his hand down her dress and she’d be all, “NO BUT I AM A VIRTUOUS MAIDEN AND ONLY MY HUSBAND SHALL TOUCH ME THERE. I WISH THOU WERT MY HUSBAND BUT SADLY, THOU ART ALREADY WEDDED” and he’d be like, “WHOA LIGHTBULB MOMENT WHAT IF I MADE A NEW CHURCH THAT LET ME DIVORCE CATHERINE???”

Which is pretty much how the Reformation played out.

For her coronation ceremony, Anne totally wore a dude’s crown. She was like, “Fuck your lady crowns, I want that big gold fucker over there.” And everyone else was like, “BUT MISTRESS FAIR, THAT IS ST. EDWARD’S CROWN. IT HAS ONLY EVER HISTORICALLY BEEN USED TO CROWN A KING. ART THOU NOT A QUEEN?” And Anne was like, “Fuck your gender binary of crowns.” 

And then she invented gender theory and burned down the patriarchy and was like, “Fuck all of you motherfuckers.”

Things got a little shaky for Anne after her marriage and subsequent inability to produce a baby with a penis (which, having taken grade eleven biology, I know was actually Henry’s fault, but I guess they didn’t really Science much back then.) Three years after her coronation she was accused of sleeping around with pretty much the entire court, including her brother. Which, I mean, Henry. Come on. That’s fucking gross and you have a gross imagination and what are you, sixteen? Writing out his fake accusation probably involved Henry writing out a bunch of fanfic about Anne and all your friends and being like, HMMM WHICH PAIRING DOES THE ROYAL DICK LIKE BEST? And there is nothing wrong with writing fanfic about your wife, but no one else wants to know about your incest fantasies. 

Anne was, of course, beheaded. Henry brought in a special fancy swordsman from France to do the job, like, OH MY LITTLE SWEETMEAT, NOTHING BUT THE BEST BEHEADING FOR YOU. But Anne faced death just like she faced everything else, by which I mean she looked death in the face and made a jerk-off motion. She even went around saying that her execution would be easy because she had such a little neck. The Constable of the Tower said that she laughed “heartily” over that joke. HEARTILY, I TELL YOU. Then she went to the window and flipped off Jane Seymour forever.

Anne lived in a time when women were shit on (figuratively and maybe even literally, depending on people’s kinks) for their entire lives. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she refused to be meek and nice and instead went balls-to-the-wall for what she wanted. And anyone who stood in her way would end up a sad old dead cardinal. You might not like what she did, and you might not like her methods, but man have you ever got to respect the fact that she did not give up on her dream. 

Also, she gave birth to Elizabeth I, so I guess you can just go ahead and thank Anne Boleyn for stuff like Shakespeare and Sir Francis Drake and those giant Elizabethan neck ruffs. Would you want to live in a world without giant Elizabethan neck ruffs? I didn’t think so. Anne Boleyn is the best, CASE CLOSED.

*Please note that Henry VIII actually had one of his dude friends employed as his “Groom of the Stool,” which meant that they had to wipe his ass whenever he took a shit. Just throwing that out there.

Read more Anne Boleyn: Your Hero and Mine at The Toast.

Previously: You can’t make a pork chop without losing a part of yourself.

Each issue of Cook’s Illustrated begins with a folksy letter with news from down on the old Vermont farm by founder and editor-in-chief Chris Kimball. These charming, old-timey updates remind us all of a slower, simpler way of life, where neighbors stop to swap plowing tips out by the trading post and run when they see Old Henry coming. Who’s Old Henry? Why, what a question, stranger. Old Henry knows who you are. That much is certain. Old Henry knows who you are just fine.

The Toast has received an advance copy of Mr. Kimball’s most recent letter, which we are proud to publish in full here.

It’s a hard world for little things. I’ve seen the first of things, and I’ve seen the last of things. I’ve seen the last of Marie Briggs, the baker at the Yellow Farmhouse, the first farmhouse on the left as you drive into town. No one saw Marie after me.

Funny how you can chop and chop and chop away at something, but it never quite disappears.

I’ve seen the last of Marie, but that don’t mean she isn’t a-moving and a-bustling around in my barn right this very minute. Can’t you hear her? Something’s in there, moving between the walls and above the floor and below the roof. Something’s in there, children, and it isn’t me and it isn’t you.

Ah, children, you’re staring at my choppin’ fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of Right-Hand, Left-Hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I’ll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one against the other. Now watch ‘em! Old brother left hand, left hand he’s a-fighting, and it looks like love’s a goner. But wait a minute! Hot dog, love’s a winning! Yessirree! It’s love that’s won, and old left hand hate is down for the count!

No, no! Don’t you touch that, little lamb. Don’t touch my dicing knife, that makes me mad. That makes me very, very mad.

If you’re a curious child — and I don’t recommend curiosity, children; it makes your biscuit dough tough — you might wonder what could disappear next. Why, anything. A man sitting on his porch, watching his potatoes grow. Tom and Nate and Joe and the boys grilling venison over a wood fire, thinkin’ they’re alone in the dark. Why, children, a body’s never really alone in the dark, because the dark’s with him. Remember that, now.

A town’s only as real as its oldest stories. If you take the stories, the town is yours. Who’s takin’ ours? Who’s takin’ ours, and dancing under a moonless sky at the crossroads, and always running a little bit faster than me when I try to see his face? Why do I hear him laughing low and soft under my bed a-nights when it’s too cold and too troublesome for me to lift the covers?

There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.

Anyone can kill a woman, but it takes a special kind of man to cook an artichoke right.

People ask me sometimes: What religion do you profess, preacher? And I tell them: The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us. And they don’t ask me again.

I hope I haven’t seen the last of the bachelor farmers who work their fields without mouths and without eyes. I hope I haven’t seen the last cunning woman run out of town after interferin’ with a birthin’-woman. I hope I haven’t seen the last gravestone wedding. I don’t like the look of single headstones. It’s messy, and I won’t go to my final rest in a messy churchyard.

If they let me rest. Would you let me rest, children?

The stars will start movin’ again soon, and then the world will change without me. I know that. Once the stars change, nothing a man can do but watch the new people move into his house and set his clocks wrong and walk right through him, as if he weren’t even there. Nothing to do but wait for them to drown in the creek, if ever they drown at all.

I have a black and white photograph from the 1920s of a school outing at the Haunted Chimney. The girls are well-turned out in white frocks, the boys in pressed pants and collared shirts. The chimney is still there, at the end of Chambers Road past two dairy farms. It’s just into the tree line on the left—the foundation intact and the chimney standing tall. Someday, I’ll be the last person to look for a woman on a white horse. That’s the day that the old foundation turns to ruin and we are all lost. You keep this photograph, now, and I’ll always come a-running when you need me.

I can hear you whisperin’ children, so I know you’re down there. I can feel myself gettin’ awful mad. I’m out of patience, children. I’m coming to find you now.

Hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hung hang hing. See the robber swing. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hing hang. Hing hang hung. Now my song is done. Hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hung hang hing. See the robber swing. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hing hang. Hing hang hung.

Read more A Letter From Chris Kimball at The Toast.

Why teachers drink -