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She's just flailing now.

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"I'm a Truthful Whitefoot"

The fun thing about the knights and knaves puzzle is that no matter what goofy variant you come up with, not only has it already been considered, some maniac has worked out the optimal solution. What if there's a third guard who lies or tells the truth at random? It's been done. What if the guards will only answer yes/no questions, and also for some reason they understand your language but refuse to speak it, and you don't know which of the two words they may respond with means "yes" and which means "no"? Literal thesis papers have been written on that one. Logicians are absolute freaks for these guys.

#Youtube

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based on the breakup of clothing, Fourteen is going commando right here.

David Tennant & Ncuti Gatwa - Doctor Who: The Giggle (2023)

#doctor who

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Considering its effects on flesh, it seems like a bad idea...but pineapple enzymes also digest proteins, so...?

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Let's not ignore that lovely supplex that nattie gives to Becky in the last pic.

and..."Chelsiper"

Chelsea Green's look of admiration as Piper goes toe-to-toe with Nia Jax, followed by her rushing over to support her!

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The Wafle House of Tom Bombadil.

https://creanavt.tumblr.com/archive

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"The price is on the can, though..."

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Finally scored a copy of this for a fair price.

#Spider-Man

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It'd be funny if they met Go-On Gold and Silver, and they didn't get along.

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They're looking to SEE his plans?

What past performance are they basing that desire on?

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump says he wants to hold a major campaign event at New York's Madison Square Garden featuring Black hip-hop artists and athletes. Aides speak of Trump making appearances in Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta with leaders of color and realigning American politics by flipping Democratic constituencies.

But five months before the first general election votes are cast, the former president's campaign has little apparent organization to show for its ambitious plans.

His campaign removed its point person for coalitions and has not announced a replacement. The Republican Party's minority outreach offices across the country have been shuttered and replaced by businesses that include a check-cashing store, an ice cream shop and a sex-toy store. Campaign officials acknowledge they are weeks away from rolling out any targeted programs.

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This is all part of the whole "Science is not to be trusted" campaign. Pretty much whatever information is presented, it will be spun and twisted to seem like "they don't know what they're talking about".

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.  Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly. The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S. This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  “What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

Continue Reading.

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One of the reason I love films about con artists is they SHOW you the tricks they use.

Nightmare Alley explains in exacting detail the art of the cold reading. Make vague statements that the mark will read into and convince themselves that you said the details they thought up and volunteered.

The Music Man is a perfect class in salesmanship - create a need and fill it, convince people they have a problem, and then sell them the solution.

Thank You For Smoking is one of the best seminars on winning a debate I've ever seen. You don't have to convince the audience you're right, you only have to convince them the other guy is wrong.

But rather then being seen as ways to avoid falling for these tricks, they are more often used as ways to learn the tricks to use on others, for either good or ill.

It's certainly how I use them.

More in specific comment to the film mentioned in this post - My God could Patricia Highsmith pack a novel with homosexual subtext. There were murmurings that someone wanted to do a new take on Strangers on a Train, and I've never stopped hoping for Jim Parsons to someday play Bruno Antony.

Me and Tom Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley. The Imposters. The Grifters. Inventing Anna. Saltburn.

I love stories about con artists, sociopaths, and imposters.

I've rewatched the Netflix series Ripley about six times since it came out.

When I was about thirteen years old, I read every book in the local public library about cons and cold reading. I read about how to win people over in business, I learned how to cold read. There were all these books out there that TEACH you how to pretend to be a normal person that someone wants to be friends with! These books teach you how to get people to trust you, to believe you!

I found these to be amazing tools. I could not get people to believe me, I could not figure out why people disliked me. I could not figure out what I was doing so wrong that made bullies kick me in the halls or throw things at me from schoolbuses. I knew it was something wrong with me, I knew I was messing something up, I knew I was failing. So I studied.

I studied how to fake the things I actually felt and believed.

The thing was, I wasn't lying most of the time. Most of the time I was using the social techniques of con artists and cold readers to get people to believe that things I meant. If I said "yes I like this song" in a way that was natural and comfortable for me, the person I was talking to thought I was being sarcastic and mean and that I hated the song, that I thought poorly of them for liking it. I did not! I liked the song! But to get the other person to believe me I had to remember to do all these extra things, like turn my body to 3/4 face the other person, to smile, to make me voice sound like a smile. I would think about cuddling a puppy in order to get the right amount of warmth in my eyes. I would lean in and raise the pitch of my voice.

There are all these extra THINGS I had to learn and remember to do in order to get people to respond to what I intended to say.

So, yes, I love media about con artists and grifters. I love watching people be good at that switch, at putting on the mask. I love watching people in a panic that they will be caught, be revealed, because that's how most social interactions feel to me -- constant worry that my mask will slip and the person I am talking to will suddenly feel that I'm lying to them, that I'm faking everything. (I am faking everything but it's to make sure they believe the truth! Which they won't believe unless I fake everything! I am an imposter, but in support of the truth!!)

Part of what I love about the Netflix Ripley is that Tom is only good at lying to other people when he has successfully gotten himself to believe what he is about to say. He practices and rehearses his lies so that he can sell them to others. I used to practice my facial expression in the mirror, trying to get them to look like other people's faces and expressions. I would practice my tone of voice and how to make it sound warm and friendly. All the things Tom does -- except the murders! and the theft! -- all the SOCIAL things Tom does, I have done those things in an effort to hide my autism and be accepted by the people whose respect and friendship I wanted.

Con artists, cold readers, and comic books taught me how to pretend to be neurotypical.

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If the President has absolute immunity while in office...

Why is impeachment a thing?

And if the President has absolute immunity while in office...

Why are they talking about all these "illegal" things Biden allegedly did?

Federalist Society malware strike again.

The bogus textualists & originalists are suddenly making up dictatorial powers out of thin air to protect criminal Trump, their vehicle to power.

Turns out their constitutional interpretations were just fraudulent justifications for their obvious power grabs & rights violations.

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Map of Israel and Gaza.

Look at how TINY Gaza is. If this was America, it'd be like Connecticut.

This reminds me of how in a movie you've got a developer buying up all the land in an area, except for one batty old man's house, and they're doing everything thing they can to get rid of them.

So yeah, let's get a bunch of helium balloons...

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Howard Stern has always been a staggeringly good interviewer. Even in the early days of his show, he used his abilities to get people to open up in more racy ways, but as time went on he's gotten some amazing things out of people.

He had a show on E! back in the day, but I'm amazed they've not tried to do a network special series, a la the Barbara Walters interviews. He is that good.

President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

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First person who tries to give us Prince Albert gets a bop inna snoot.

I tried to find more information about Albert here. There is an article in The Mirror, but some of the reporting seems dubious. Which I believe is standard operating procedure for that particular news outlet.

But according to the article, "Fat Albert" lives in the very specific area of "Alaska, USA" and is believed to be the fattest polar bear in the world. And they claim he got fat because the townspeople of "Alaska, USA" are following an ancient tradition that dates back "thousands of years."

"The locals throw out large amounts of whale blubber to the bears as a sign of 'respect'. They would cut a large portion of the whale and blubber, and drag it four miles out of town for the bears to find. This stops the bears from travelling into town to harvest and disrupting the process. In other words, it's a way to stop a group of hungry bears coming towards you in a hurry."

From supplemental research there is precedent for folks in Russia and Alaska to leave whale carcasses for polar bears, but I could not find any corroborating evidence about Albert specifically.

So, I rate this myth...

In any case, when I saw this picture of Albert, it seemed like a good opportunity to practice my Photoshop skills. He has clearly been rolling around in some mud and his beautiful white coat has been obscured.

It is very easy to change the color of something to red, blue, or green and every color in between. Just hit that hue/saturation and check colorize and you've got Pride Albert in a jiffy.

However, it is much more challenging to change things to white or black. This is the bane of graphic designers who have to take the same picture of a t-shirt and digitally alter it to be every available color including black and white.

So I challenged myself to give Fat Albert a bath.

And then I challenged myself again to make him a distant relative.

I wish I could tell you the exact process for how to do this, but this is one of those things you have to trial and error your way through and I honestly don't remember everything I did.

One thing I can tell you is that I definitely, absolutely, positively named all my layers properly—as that is best practice and I am a good Photoshop boy.

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You have to wonder if they did it as CGI, or just drilled it full of holes and hooked a gas hose to it as God intended.

YESSSSSSSS THEY LIT IT ON FIRE