Category: Random Shots
What a Tangled Tweet We Weave When First We Practice to Get Outraged
A “good job” according to whom? May I ask when exactly was the last time you were in an elementary school and sat through an entire school day with first graders? I ask because my mother makes this same argument frequently, yet has not been in an actual elementary school building since 1976. Her grandchildren were taught at home so she, therefore, has no experience either visiting a school or evaluating a public school education since 1976.
American Civil War Casus Belli: African Negro Slavery.
Let’s be clear: The war was about slavery, from first to last. And after the gun stopped firing, the war continued in multiple ways that all-too-often includes violence and murder.
Donelson Renovates
Not much can be done about the traffic volume as long as Metro and the State are devoid of ideas or even the hint of wanting to think about possible solutions. Nashville is drowning in traffic, but no one has the will or money to do anything about it.
What We Hath Wrought
RIP Amara Renas and all the other unknown women and men and children. May you haunt our collective memory forever.
Pocket Guide to France, or, Onward to Parisian Mademoiselles
“You are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating Army now on earth. You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language.”
Paranoia, Fear, Terror and Facebook, et al.
“Insane levels of fear and control and succumbing to terror. We are a nation which is perhaps the most fearful of all countries.”
Corporate Power
“Many states whose sovereignty is threatened are now finally waking up to the danger. But is it perhaps already too late to do anything about the seemingly over-mighty corporations?”
Capital Destroys All It Touches
“What’s our death toll up to in this week’s boutique pay lots of money and die fashionably sweepstakes? 19?”
Where Are the Bodies? We Have an App for That.
“The information presented is stark and perhaps unsettling.”
No Slope, No False Equivalency. Just the Same. Damn. Thing.
Immoral, indecent, inhumane. … We are running concentration camps and human beings are dying.
The Wages of Sin, America, is …
“It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist Philosophy. For if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. …”
Random American Notes
“An American gentleman . . . likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves.”
Kit Marlowe is a Naughty Nellie and Probably a Witch
I just caught this from two years ago on The Guardian‘s website. Two years behind, that’s about my speed. But
New York City Municipal Archives
The city of New York photographed every building in the five boroughs for property tax assessment purposes. The city’s photographers took more than 700,000 pics as a result.
WWI Collides with D&D and Memes
It’s two years old, but I’m just seeing it for the first time. It’s « one of the best visual
End of Year Retrospectives: 75 Book Covers
“There are some gems among the 75 Best Book Covers of 2018.”
Deadly Chinese Fentanyl is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins
“Fentanyl’s potency has « transformed the global trafficking — and policing — of narcotics.”
World War II After World War II
“There are obviously many websites on WWII weapons, and many on post-war weapons, but I have always been fascinated with WWII weapons being used after the war.”
Tragically Brilliant
Steve Bell’s ‘toons for The Guardian are always brilliant. But «in this one», he’s surpassed himself.
Beery Originalist Quotables
Here are a few Original Originalist quotes worth Originally quoting, from a few of our first Original Founders:
Every Building
“On this page you will find maps showing almost every building in the United States. Why did we make such a thing? We did it as an opportunity for you to connect with the country’s cities and explore them in detail.”
Treading a Careful Path in Post-Castro Cuba
“There is a discrete left-opportunist trend that seeks to throw all developments in Cuba post-1959 into the dustbin and forget about it. This does as little for us as the right-opportunist line; both fail to grasp the full reality of revisionist corrosion and capitalist restoration in Cuba, although one cloaks itself in stultified theory.”
Warm Summer Night
Terrible quality, but is there anything better than a warm summer night playing in – er, rather sitting near the
We're Ready …
While waiting for “Sunset Boulevard” on Sunday at Opry Mills, Carol, Frank and I were … say it with me
That Curtain-y Feeling
That feeling you get when you hang your first curtains in the first house you ever owned? Priceless. Posted by
Deer Tracks
With the recent freeze/heat weather cycle, the Saddlebrooke Deer Herd are a little pressed for food, it appears. The… Posted
Yawny Fergus
Fergus Beagle avoids the camera studiously, so I snuck up on him and caught him mid-yawn. Incredibly, he turns 11
Sleepy Bosco
Bosco likes to sleep facing the wall, sun not required. (He’s hanging tough; while the osteosarcoma has spread from… Posted
Elegant Queen Sascha
The ever-elegant Queen Sascha likes the sun as well. Posted by Steve Pollock on Monday, February 26, 2018
Goose and His Elefunk
Some sun!!!! Goose and his Elefunk take advantage of rare sight in Music City: Light. He’s forgotten what it is,
Ice Lights
We got snow over ice … at least on our patio lights. Don’t want to know about the streets. Posted
On Shitholes
Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.
Shuttling Between Failures
The story is sordid and long, but the details were made clear by Matt Viser’s excellent Globe piece. To wit: Lorenzo sold the Donald the Eastern Shuttle for an overvalued $365 million (if DT had created a brand-new shuttle from the ground up with brand-new planes, not old worn-out 727s, estimates were that he could have done it for $300 million.) Of course, the money was all borrowed. It was 1989; Eastern (and Continental) were already almost dead from Lorenzo’s sledgehammer and the economy was tanking. Pan Am 103 was bombed, the first Gulf War was about to begin. It was incredibly bad judgement to overpay a bunch of other peoples’ money for something that was guaranteed to tank.
They Don’t Like the New ‘America First’ As Much As They Did the Lindbergh Version
So let’s see if I’ve got this. Germany, a country in which there are still many women alive who were raped by invading Russian Red Army soldiers and in which the human products of those rapes are still living, now trust … Russia more than the United States.
Questions. We Got ‘Em.
Why? Because, as reporter Anne Kingston notes, women are “female reproductive vessels” and not human beings. And because Long Dong Silver has always, and will always, get a free pass. And both of these are realities for reasons which surpasseth understanding.
American Carnage: 3-Dec-17
Nazis are just “the normal people next door” and nothing bad should happen to either them or the New York Times for pointing this out, says The New York Times.
Tessa: Turkey Bird Good!
Shhhhhh. Turkey bird good. Don’t tell Mummy! Posted by Steve Pollock on Thursday, November 23, 2017
American Carnage: 17-Nov-17
The Diddler’s Club What we learned this week: • Al Franken is the latest member of the “People Who Diddled
American Carnage: 10-Nov-17
Peckerwoods! What we learned this week: • Comedian Louis CK and Crusading Crazy Ass Roy Moore were accepted into that
Welcome to October
Seen while mowing. Welcome to October! Posted by Steve Pollock on Saturday, October 1, 2016
Downtown Music City Sunset
Music City sunset. Posted by Steve Pollock on Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Crescent Moon Chasing Sun
Crescent moon (upper left) chasing sun to the horizon over a hot Hermitage. Posted by Steve Pollock on Sunday, July 10,