John C. Wright sounds like C.S. Lewis when he argues the importance of the epic to humanity, and contends that Epic Deprivation Syndrome has a lot to do with the deficiencies of the contemporary age.
The moderns are hallow without knowing they are hollow: the world is not descending into paganism. It has reached something darker and worse. The postmodern is craven and smug and doomed where the ancient pagan was noble, melancholy, and doomed, because the modern world is hollow and small, but he postmodern men are too hollow and too small to notice.
Gawker claims to have a theory about what is actually going on with respect to the biggest mystery since the Bermuda Triangle: Donald Trump’s hair.
A tipster who claimed knowledge of Trump’s hair recently came to Gawker with a potential solution to the enigma: Trump’s hair is not his own, costs tens of thousands of dollars for installation and upkeep, and comes from a man as mysterious as Trump is bombastic.
This solution that Trump, our tipster says, sought for his hair woes is a little-known, patented hair restoration treatment called a “microcylinder intervention.†It’s only performed by one clinic that we know of—Ivari International—where our source once sought treatment, and where he says he learned of Trump’s apparent patronage. What’s more, Ivari’s New York location was inside Trump Tower—on the private floor reserved for Donald Trump’s own office.
Gawker was unable to independently confirm Trump’s connection to Ivari; both Trump and Ivari did not respond to multiple and persistent requests for comment. But after extensive research into Ivari’s history, Ivari’s treatments, and the photographic record of Donald Trump’s hair, this is a potential answer—perhaps the first plausible one—to the riddle of Donald Trump’s hair.
Trump- supporter admirer Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) mocked:
No one wakes up with a passion to pursue togetherness. Half of the country is comprised of introverts, loners, and competitive a-holes. Those folks want less togetherness, even if they mean it in an entirely different way. On an irrational level, togetherness – in all its forms – is simply not a universal desire. Compare that to making America greater, which is all good, all the time, to all Americans.
I am German, male and 25. I had travelled to the US quite often and had been to a lot of different places there. I love the US, especially the National Parks. I also love US cities regardless wether they are cheap or expensive.
When a few years ago I came to NYC for the first time I had the expectation that NYC wouldn’t differ more than other cities from how they are shown in movies and tv shows. I was wrong.
I expected NYC to be at least somewhat of a modern and shiny skyscraper city. The secret capital of the US – and – maybe the world. I expected something at least iconic.
Now when I landed at JFK moldy carpets and a worn down airport greeted me. I took the train to Manhattan that overpasses ghettos.
I could not believe how loud and shaky the subway was. The awful state of maintenance. How extremely dirty it is. How bad signs are placed. How counterintuitive everything is made.
Everything must have been great some decades ago but was never kept well. There was no good way to get from one part of the city to another. Taxis are stuck and the subway is disgusting. Busses are worse.
The smell. When I think of NYC I no longer think of lawyers in suits on a rooftop terrace. I think of the strong smell of death – of rotten rat meat.
The garbage. Everywhere. On the streets. I mean black sacks full of garbage to be picked up in few hours stinking and leaking.
How unimpressive 5th Av is. Or Times Square.
The skyline is really not so impressive or iconic if you have been to Hongkong or other places.
I was amazed by the the awful German translations on the large signs of the 9/11 sight. I always thought that this was a place of big importance and that NYC would not use Google translator to greet the world when they are visiting to show respect.
You might think that I am exaggerating and describing things that one could look over. Maybe. But I am just trying to justify my disappointment.
The poor quality of life and the huge costs. You can park your car in NYC for a few hours for a couple of hundred dollars. But why would anyone consider it worth it? You can live in a shoebox and do your laundry in a nearby laundromat? What good reason is there to do that? The prices felt very artificial. Now if there was a demand justifying these prices I would shut up. But for good reason there actually isn’t.
NYC was a big disappointment for me. It is just another US city. I did not feel safe. I was simply asking myself why anyone would want to spend so much money for such a bad quality of life.
This German chap is perfectly right. New York City has been declining in governance, liveability, and affordability since WWII. He doesn’t realize, though, that the city is actually cleaner, less smelly, and less crime-ridden since the time of Giuliani.
The most intriguing duel fought between women, and the sole one that featured exposed breasts, took place in August 1892 in Vauduz, the capitol of Liechtenstein, between Princess Pauline Metternich and the Countess Kielmannsegg. It has gone down in history as the first “emancipated duel†because all parties involved, including the principals and their seconds were female. Also, the confrontation was organized and presided over by the Baroness Lubinska, who had a degree in medicine (a rarity for a woman in those days) and was prepared to minister to any wounds incurred. Before the proceedings began, the baroness pointed out that many insignificant injuries in duels often became septic due to strips of clothing being driven into the wound by the point of a sword. To counter this danger she prudently suggested that both parties should fight stripped of any garments above the waist. Certainly, Baroness Lubinska was ahead of her time, taking an even more radical take on the (at the time) widely dismissed theories of British surgeon Joseph Lister, who in 1870 revolutionized surgical procedures with the introduction of antiseptic. With the precautions Baroness Lubinska recommended, the topless women duelists were less likely to suffer from an infection; indeed, it was a smart idea to fight semiclad. Given the practicality of the baroness’ suggestion and the “emancipated†nature of the duel, it was agreed that the women would disrobe—after all, there would be no men present to ogle them. For the women, the decision to unbutton the tops of their dresses was not sexual; it was simply a way of preventing a duel of first blood from becoming a duel to the death.
At the dueling ground on the fateful day, all formalities were carried out to the letter including an attempt at and refusal of reconciliation. The ladies engaged and, after a few trifling feints and thrusts, a wild slash from the princess brought about a light flow of blood from the countess’ nose. Seeing the injury she caused, the shocked princess, in a stereotypical feminine gesture, threw both hands up to her cheeks. Just then, the countess lunged and pierced the princess through her right forearm. The sight of the ensuing blood caused the respective seconds to faint. The footmen and coachmen, who had been ordered to stand some distance away with their backs toward the action, heard the cries and ran toward the women to render aid. Baroness Lubinska, however, decided the male servants had more salacious motives and attacked them with her umbrella, shouting, “Avert your eyes, avert your eyes—you lustful wretches!†The baroness was once again ahead of her time in sensing the necessary precautions. It was as if she already knew the gossip and speculation that would result from this premier example of what could have become a clothing–optional sport.
The rumors started just as soon as the Princess Metternich and Countess Kielmannsegg cast aside their weapons. Artists and storytellers speculated about the duel, most of their tales centering specifically on the scanty clothes the women wore. It is humorous that most recounts of this historic event fail to mention two important things: the winner of the duel (Princess Metternich) and the reason why the women came to arms in the first place—they disagreed over the floral arrangements for an upcoming musical exhibition. Bared breasts, apparently, overshadow such trivial details.
The rivalry between “Princess Paulina†and the Countess Kielmannsegg was apparently so well known that it was documented in the Vienna society pages of the British women’s magazine The Lady’s Realm. In one issue, the magazine reported, “The Countess Anastasia, who is Russian by birth, is very ambitious, and has a great talent for arranging entertainments of all kinds, and during the mourning of the Princess Paulina she has come more to the front than ever and has been most indefatigable. She is young enough to be the daughter of her rival in good works, and, like her, is possessed of an untiring energy.â€
In the summer of 1892, Princess Pauline was the Honorary President of the Vienna Musical and Theatrical Exhibition and Countess Kielmannsegg was the President of the Ladies’ Committe of the Exhibition, and the two clashed over some of the arrangements for the Exhibition. (Several sources claim it had something to do with the floral arrangements.) Heated words were exchanged, and the two women agreed to settle their differences with a duel. …
The Metternich-Kielmannsegg duel was … an “emancipated duel,†because all the parties involved were women. The duelists seconds were the Princess Schwarzenberg and Countess Kinsky, and a woman even presided over the duel: Baroness Lubinska, a Polish woman who had a degree in medicine.
So why on Earth were they topless? According to Atlas Obscura and the Women of Action Network, that was Baroness Lubinska’s idea. The duel was not supposed to be a deadly one, but the baroness noted, that if a piece of dirty clothing was pushed into a wound, that would would be more likely to become infected. It would be much safer, she reasoned for the rapiers to touch only bare skin. So she instructed the combatants to strip down to the waist and ordered the male servants off in the distance to look away.
The combatants met in August 1892 Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, and dueled with rapiers to first blood. The Princess Pauline was the victor in the third round, when she was injured slightly on the nose but also drew blood from the countess’s arm. The report in the Pall Mall Gazette says that, once the round ended, the seconds “advised them to embrace, kiss, and make friends.†But the idea of topless duelists captured the imagination of many folks, with images of women, breasts bared and swords crossed, appearing in paintings and erotic photographs of the era.
At Christie’s Books and Manuscripts Sale 12260, 16 June 2016, in New York, Neal Cassaday’s 40-page Lost Letter to Jack Kerouac, Lot 146, Estimated price: $400,000 — $600,000.
Considered ‘lost’ for 66 years, Neal Cassady’s visionary ‘Joan Anderson letter’ is a foundational document of the Beat era and the inspiration for Kerouac’s literary revolutions, beginning with On the Road.
Neal Cassady’s long-lost letter to Jack Kerouac, dated 17 December 1950, has permeated virtually every conversation about the Beat era. Referenced not only by Kerouac but by Allen Ginsberg, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Herbert Hunke, and a host of their contemporaries, Cassady’s fluid, incantatory, and deeply revealing prose influenced the entire generation of Beat writers.
The letter was written on a three-day Benzedrine high, Cassady later confessed. It contained, by Kerouac’s first calculation, at least 13,000 words and ran to 40 pages, offering a compelling, unaffected and discursive account of Cassady’s frenetic love life in 1946, particularly with Joan Anderson (whom he visited in a hospital after a failed suicide), and ‘Cherry Mary’, recounting an acrobatic escape through a bathroom window when they were surprised by Mary’s aunt. The uninhibited, non-literary narrative pointed the way to the free, truthful style to which Kerouac aspired.
STG-44, aka Sturmgewehr 44, the world’s first assault weapon.
The US backed Free Syrian Army [FSA] allegedly uncovered a stockpile of 5,000 STG-44s in 2012. A video released at the time had WWII militaria collectors everywhere wishing the weapons could be accessed and imported.
———————————–
———————————–
So, how did 5000 of those historic pieces get to Syria? Probably from Africa.
JWH1975 explains that first the Russians captured them.
When WWII ended in 1945, the Soviet army retained and stored every StG-44 it found. By best estimate, in 1948 there were about 102,000 StG-44s in Soviet custody. As the SKS and AK-47 were already entering Soviet use, the captured StG-44s were not issued to Soviet units but rather made available for transfer abroad, with Czechoslovakia being the first and main recipient, followed by East Germany. Hungary also received a small (about 4,000) batch, and Yugoslavia also received some prior to it’s split with the east bloc. These joined StG-44s captured by the Yugoslavs themselves. Finally the Soviets transferred a few to North Vietnam; these in turn were joined by more transferred from Czechoslovakia and East Germany (which themselves had come from the USSR) as those two countries phased the type out.
Lots of them ended up in Africa, dispatched by Russia, and its satellite proxies Czechoslovakia and East Germany, to Soviet-sponsored insurgent groups in Algeria and Somalia, with others also sold to the governments of Egypt and Libya.
ANN ALTHOUSE POSES THE QUESTION OF THE AGE: “Did Donald Trump make that happen or did he just sit back coolly and let it happen or — if such a thing is possible — is this not even about Donald Trump?â€
Ann Althouse was actually referring to Megyn Kelly losing negotiating power with Fox News due to her performance interviewing Donald Trump, but when I first read it, I thought she was referring to the mania for Trump that swept over “Reagan democrats” and Low-Information Voter Republicans.
