Reading
Drivin’ down your freewaysMidnight alleys roamCops in cars, the topless barsNever saw a womanSo alone, so alone – from “L.A. Woman”, by The Doors In my 2019 review of Jacques Demy’s 1969 drama Model Shop, I wrote: George’s day (and the film) turns a 180 when he visits a pal who runs an auto repair shop and espies a lovely woman (Anouk Aimee) who is there to pick up her car. On impulse, he decides to follow her in his MG (yes, it’s a bit on the stalking side). He follows her high up into the hills over L.A., and then seems to lose interest. He stops and takes in a commanding view of the city and the valley beyond, deeply lost in thought. In my favorite scene, he drives up into (Laurel Canyon?) to visit a friend who’s a musician in an up-and-coming band. George’s pal turns out to be Jay Ferguson, keyboardist and lead singer of the band Spirit (and later, Jo Jo Gunne). Ferguson (playing himself) introduces George to his band mates, who are just wrapping a rehearsal. Sure enough, the boys in the band are Ed Cassidy, Randy California, and Matthew Andes-which is the classic lineup for Spirit!
MORE than a month after his disappearance, the parents of 18-year-old Jacob Partridge are “still out searching every day” for their son in bushland around Emerald Beach. Jacob, aged 17 at the time, was last seen by friends at about 11pm near Emerald Beach – 20km north of Coffs Harbour – on Friday 6 December...
The post Community continues search for missing teen Jacob Partridge appeared first on News Of The Area.
It’s even worse than the last time: The Trump family business released a voluntary ethics agreement Friday that allows it to strike deals with private foreign companies, a move that could help outside actors try to buy influence with the new administration. The so-called ethics white paper bars the Trump Organization from striking deals directly with foreign governments, but allows ones with private companies abroad, a significant departure from President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. An ethics pact that Trump signed eight years ago barred both foreign government and foreign company deals. They’re also trying to buy back the lease on the Trump Hotel in DC which they let go a couple of years ago. Why give up all that easy money? Plus MAGA DC needs a club house. Corruption is no longer an issue, at least until the Democrats take power again. Then the right wing scandal machine will rev up to a thousand and the Democrats will cower in fear. But right now, Trump can be photographed taking bankers boxes full of hundred dollar bills from an Afghan warlord and everyone would just shrug.
Max Read published an interesting piece today about Mark Zuckerberg’s move right. He reminds us that Zuck has changed up the moderation policies every election since 2016. He just rolls with flow of whatever he thinks is the political zeitgeist. But now it’s also happening at a very important time in Zuckerberg’s life. Read writes: [This] is a useful corrective to the unfortunate framing that this announcement represents an “unapologetic” Zuck (if anything, the 2025 version is more “apologetic” than its 2021 or 2016 equivalents, just presented in a well-calibrated tone of defiance that casts his previous decisions as coerced). But I do think there’s an important and interesting difference between this video and Zuck’s previous post-election weathervane announcements: The gold chain. It’s been clear for a while now that Zuckerberg has been Up To Something.
I am reliably told by virtually everyone that mentioning fascism is off the menu and that we need to only talk about kitchen table issues. But Jeff Sharlet makes a good point about how we have also decided to oppose Trump nominees on matters of character rather than ideology which doesn’t seem to be working: Problems with Pete Hegseth ranked from very bad to way, way worse: 6. drunkenness (common); 5. incompetence (common); 4. corruption (common); 3. raving bigotry (common); 2. alleged rape (less common); 1. Proposing military attack on US cities to exterminate all enemies. (That’s a new one). And yet focus has been winnowed down to drunkenness and incompetence, which probably describes a good 1/4 of cabinet secretaries in history. It’s framed as outrage—“he’s a drunk!”—but it functions as normalization. Not normalization via some insidious media plot to sanewash fascism. Rather, a much broader subconscious desire to frame problems in a fashion that lets us belittle actual threats. Just a dumb drunk. Ha, ha, incompetent. Not existential risk.
I have posted that before with the caveat that at least America isn’t seeking external expansion. Well…
Can I get an ‘Amen’? Mega money doesn’t necessarily go with megalomania. But one can find plenty of evidence for a correlation. Josh Marshall unearths a fine example in “Donald Trump’s Greenland jones” originating perhaps with tech-bro Dryden Brown. When money goes to your head, what does it do there? In Brown’s case, convince you you can fly into a poor country unannounced and try to buy it. In Peter Thiel’s case, prompt you to send an essay packed with “just asking questions” conspiracy theories and get the august Financial Times to print it. Kieran Healy, a Duke University Professor of Sociology, read Thiel’s offering and commented: This Thiel Op-Ed is really nuts. I mean, truly. His focus of attention is like a pinball careening around in a machine where every bumper and paddle is a noisy, flashing conspiracy topic. I get more measured and carefully-reasoned emails on these topics every other week from mentally-ill cranks. It’s never clear just what Thiel’s point is.
Biden drills down on offshore drilling, credit scores get healthier, social security gets a hand, and sketchy mortgage lenders are locked out.
Laboratories of election thievery In the District of Columbia this week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Donald Trump’s demand to delay his Friday sentencing in the New York hush money case. But in Raleigh, North Carolina, SCOTUS’s Mini-Me court accepted the demand by Judge Jefferson Griffin to delay certification of the race he lost in November. Griffin’s team hopes to have the state Supreme Court election overturned by the state Supreme’s Republican majority. Basic fact: After multiple recounts, incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs (D) defeated NC Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin (R) by 734 votes. I’ve already briefed you on this saga here, here, here, here, here, and here. The New York Times contacted several citizens among the 60,000 whose votes the NC GOP proposes voiding in an “extraordinary effort“: “Anyone who is trying to invalidate my personal vote as fraudulent — that’s a direct attack on the voters,” said Mr. Clay, who voted for Judge Griffin, who now sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. “It’s inexcusable to contest these legal ballots. He’s a sore loser.
Doctor Who has two eras and two sets of fans who now complain that the current era isn't as fresh or new. So what can a 60-year-old show do?
Alfred Bourgeois’s daughter is convinced of his innocence. In the four years since his execution, she has waged a sometimes-lonely battle to prove it.
The post She Lost Her Dad to Trump’s Killing Spree. Now She Wants Biden to Clear His Name. appeared first on The Intercept.
Sixth form college teachers are striking for a fair pay deal, after the government announced a 5.5 percent pay rise for teachers that excludes sixth form colleges. Members of the National Education Union (NEU), who are on strike in over 30 colleges across the country, are demanding that the pay offer be extended to their […]
Public defenders and legal professionals said they never see the leniency offered to Trump given to other defendants.
The post A Tale of Two Justice Systems: Only Trump Gets Convicted of 34 Felonies and Receives No Punishment appeared first on The Intercept.
Developers and real estate interests crushed efforts to limit development in high-wildfire-risk areas — including in L.A. neighborhoods now in ashes.
I would post something about the animals and the fires but I just don’t have the heart. I put up some links last night if you want to check out some of the various organizations that are working in that area. The devastation is going to be immense for them just as it is for the humans. It’s all bad. Here are some zoo animals frolicking in the snow. It made me feel better, anyway.
On Tuesday, January 7, 2025—just its second day of the session—the Idaho legislature sent a...
They aren’t even waiting until their Dear Leader is inaugurated: Acres of orange fields sat unpicked in Kern County this week as word of Border Patrol raids circulated through Messenger chats and images of federal agents detaining laborers spread on local Facebook groups. The Border Patrol conducted unannounced raids throughout Bakersfield on Tuesday, descending on businesses where day laborers and field workers gather. Agents in unmarked SUVs rounded up people in vans outside a Home Depot and gas station that serves a breakfast popular with field workers. This appears to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raid in California since the election of Donald Trump, coming just a day after Congress certified the election on January 6, in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency. The panic and confusion, for both immigrants and local businesses that rely on their labor, foreshadow what awaits communities across California if Trump follows through on his promise to conduct mass deportations. “It was profiling, it was purely field workers,” said Sara Fuentes, store manager of the local gas station.
The prison occupies a powerful place in the American imagination. In film and television it...