He wrote the score to the filmed version of Our Town. Good stuff.

Replies: @vinteuil

Almost Missouri
5d

Steve: "there still isn’t much evidence that Charlie’s killing had much to do with left-wing movements besides transgenderism."

AM: "Maybe, maybe not: we don't know what the authorities have. But in any case, transgenderism has become a core tenet of leftism, such that the rest is commentary anyway. As you note in the next sentence, 'you don’t even have to be terribly left-wing to be into trans': if you accept a little leftism, you accept a lot of transgenderism, so which is dog and which is tail is practically moot.

"Fortunately, we don't have to interpret the hermeneutics of the suspect's trans fetish. [New York Times columnist, who is apparently herself a sexual psychopath] M. Gessen is hardly an outlier among Mainstream Media. Their almost universal lockstep supposition is that mild mannered Charlie Kirk deserved assassination because he declined to accept Leftism as his Lord and Savior. Then they rely on Antifa generally, or loose-screwers like Robinson or Routh individually, to carry out the logical consequences of their implicit supposition. They are the terrorists they accuse others of being."

That is the most succinct description I've yet to see of the contemporary, totalitarian mind. Thank you, AM.

Replies: @vinteuil, @David In TN

Thanks for that, it is a good starting explication.

Just for comedy purposes, here is what I thought as a kid. The rock press kept mentioning Trout Mask and how it was the Michelangelo of rock, but never explicitly saying what or why or how they meant by that. Not having heard it, I somehow imagined that it must sound like this.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJFSIX_uVPM

And then instead I finally found out that it sounded like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iin88DxJlpo&list=RDiin88DxJlpo&start_radio=1

Took me a while to figure out they weren't joking.

Just for the kids, you have to understand that the so-called "car-crash guitar" of what they did on Trout Mask became totally absorbed into the mainstream, so when you hear the car-crash guitar sound of a pleasant thing like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk&list=RDCv6tuzHUuuk&start_radio=1

You don't realize that it had been normalized from this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQEmdAiEnQc&list=RDQQEmdAiEnQc&start_radio=1

But let's face it, Susanna Hoffs is much cuter.

Replies: @Curle, @vinteuil

This entire site, including you, are proof of how successful Russian propaganda has been.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Almost Missouri

In the eighties there was a serious shortage of needed medicines in the GDR, with many patients dying before they could get it. Because of this, the government encouraged citizens to get medicine from relatives or Church Charities in the West. There was also a shortage of medical equipment like dialysis machines. Dental drills were so outdated that dental treatment was an ordeal.

Yes and there are free market African countries that predate the GDR and had medical shortages all the time.

Why is the magic market not working for them?

There was also a shortage of doctors because many of them who visited the West stayed.

COVID shots ended up in the trash because some African free market countries didn't have enough nurses. Why is the market having such problems with occupational training and allocation?

Of course, there was a separate and better medical system for the Marxist bigwigs running things. Under Marxism all people are equal but, as Animal Farm put it, some are more equal than others.

I already stated that I was using an extreme example as a point. It wasn't an endorsement of Marxism. The example shows that libertarians are full of shit. It is an endorsement of Rand as a fraud.

The GDR in the 1980s had better health care than free market African countries.

That should simply not have been the case if libertarian beliefs were true.

Minimal government countries should resoundingly beat Communist countries in all areas. But that isn't the case, is it? Sometimes 100% government regulation beats minimal government and this has happened in metrics like health care quality and industrial output, correct? Or should we start pulling countries from the time? As a reminder Liberia has been a minimal government state with a constitution modeled after the US since 1822.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Mark G.

This is a commentary on what Spencer sees as the symbolism of the event for the Republican Party's future.

(Spencer is among those pushing the theory of "There will be a pro-White exodus from the 'dumbed-down' Republican Party which the Democrats may use to reorient as the High-Standards White Party," reference to which was made in earlier comments here.)

Here:

Thoughts on the Charlie Kirk Funeral
By Richard B. Spencer
September 21, 2025

For 50 years, the GOP has been integrating Megachurch elements into its campaigns. Various evangelical pastors would be trotted out and Dubya might speak of "walking through the valley of the shadow of death" and such.

The #CharlieKirkMemorial marked a complete integration of the Megachruch and Republican Party. Kirk was educated on talk radio and dedicated his life to Republican hackery. He is remembered by Republicans, however, as one who "brought people to Christ," as if voting GOP saved souls. The is now no separation between America's goofiest religious tradition and Republican electioneering.

Schmitt said all political ideologies are secularized theologies. And perhaps no political participation is possible without a certain religious enthusiasm. But what we are seeing is the replacement of a religion by a political pageant and the transformation of right-wing politics into a mystery cult.
 

Replies: @Mr. Anon, @vinteuil

In fairness to you, one could sympathize with your "latest song-bot" crack maybe back during her early trip-hop phase; even I didn't take too well to the pedestrian stuff like "Bury a Friend" or "You Should See Me in a Crown" -- a nasty wag might call it stoned Cesar Vallejo on auto-tune with some ProTools out back.

But now we're up in the Himalayas, my dude, and this is where the oxygen tanks are stored....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZqCFE_9U9o&list=RDaZqCFE_9U9o&start_radio=1

You don't have to like that, natch, cuz nobody HAS to like anything. But to crankishly say it is juvenile, is sort of like letting slip in good company that you've never read Catullus.

We can all do better.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Mike Tre

Assassination is murder for hire—that’s all
 

Replies: @Intelligent Dasein, @vinteuil

So is he endorsing Leviticus 18, or not?
 

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 48 — Trump Rally Aftermath + Pride Month + "White Fortressing"?
In this week’s ThoughtCrime Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Andrew Kolvet, and Blake Neff react to Donald Trump's Swamp the Vote rally in Arizona, then discuss questions like:

-Who is the best of Trump's 7 (supposed) VP finalists?

-Why is children's content creator Ms. Rachel a Pride Month fanatic?

-What is the new "white fortressing" term the media has invented, and who are they attacking with it?
 

Replies: @vinteuil

Charlie Kirk could have theoretically been killed for online misinformation about what views he held.

https://deadline.com/2025/09/stephen-king-apology-charlie-kirk-stoning-gays-1236529789/

Stephen King Apologizes After Claiming Charlie Kirk “Advocated Stoning Gays To Death”

Stephen King, the renowned American horror author, has apologized after claiming that Charlie Kirk “advocated stoning gays to death.”

In the hours after conservative provocateur Kirk was assassinated, The Shining author took issue with Fox News host Jesse Watters, who claimed that Kirk was not a “controversial” or “polarizing” man.

“He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin’,” King replied to Watters in a now-deleted post on X/Twitter. He has since rowed back from the remark after being heavily criticized by MAGA supporters.

King wrote: “I apologize for saying Charlie Kirk advocated stoning gays. What he actually demonstrated was how some people cherry-pick Biblical passages.”

After Senator Ted Cruz decried King as a “horrible, evil, twisted liar,” King responded: “This is what I get for reading something on Twitter w/o [without] fact-checking. Won’t happen again.”

King’s original claim refers back to comments made by Kirk in 2024, when attacking YouTuber Ms. Rachel for quoting “love your neighbor” to defend Pride celebrations.

Kirk said: “Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours, in a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18 is that thou shall lay with another man, shall be stoned to death.” He added: “Just sayin’.”
 

Replies: @vinteuil

Tucker: Would you be comfortable with an AI that would be as against gay marriage as most Africans are?

Sam: Um ... [dead air]
 

Tucker: So, ChatGPT's official position is "suicide is bad"?

Sam: Yes, of course, ChatGPT's official position is "suicide is bad".

Tucker: Well it's legal in Canada and Switzerland. So you're against that?

Sam: Uh ... in this particular case ...
 

Replies: @Loyalty is The First Law of Morality, @Emil Nikola Richard, @vinteuil

Non-fat means fewer calories. Whenever I can, I limit calories. I will eat regular yogurt if it is more convenient.

Everything is a tradeoff and an optimization problem. To get and enjoy the benefits of those menu items of mine that must have prompted your question, I limit calories in other ways.

OCD was horrible before I ever had seen or read any reference to it. I am an expert more qualified than any psychologist or psychiatrist who has not suffered from the real thing. People check things, but few experience those things as endless obsessions. OCD destroyed my life. I tried to kill myself at age fifteen, after just a year of it.

I eventually earned myself a mediocre college degree while this shit subsided.

I've done the best I can, and I consider myself a failure.

I still live with it. Frankly, I would not even be here wasting my time with you or any of the other, mediocre, modestly intelligent, modestly failed/successful nerds if I had not been living now for half-a-fucking-century with a ball-and-chain around my very strong mind!

This whole experience is beneath me, and it does make me angry. Be glad I am not disposed to go shoot someone. Who the fuck would I shoot anyway? I was ready to shoot myself numerous times.

But God is real, and my consciousness and his truly exist. The rest of you fucks can revel and fight and debate in the dank mud of your "thoughts."

Thank you, res, for your question. It gave me this opportunity, and I find it satisfying.

BTW, I write this comment so thoughtfully because I have observed similar thoughtfulness from you. Ron Unz gave you special honor some time ago, and I agreed with his decision.

My wife just cooked chicken Tajine in her new Tajine pot, and it was delicious. I enjoyed mine with a botttle of Mumm from Napa.

Replies: @vinteuil, @The Germ Theory of Disease

There is no "deep state".

Replies: @vinteuil

Your source there isn't the Daily Mail, it's a teenager with a once in a lifetime chance to rearrange the letters on a marquis.

Replies: @vinteuil

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @vinteuil, @J.Ross

The whole game-plan of the left is to provoke mistakes & over-reaction from the right and then to exploit it.
 

Replies: @vinteuil

That looks dispositive.

Too bad Crowder probably burned his source over this.

Replies: @vinteuil

Because they’ve seen all the tv shows with nice black guys and heard all the stories about evil white racists – hell, they heard them at school ! Repeatedly !

And women (as a group) are more conformist than men.

This is unfortunately correct.

White women all over the world are taught by schools and Hollywood that race doesn't exist and any type of statistical thinking related to race is just their bad evil White brain trying to trick them into rejecting The Science. In fact look at this long list of publicly funded scientists [Source, neatly provided] that make 6 figures and not one suggests the establishment is wrong. The Science is unanimous! Science be praised!

European women are more naive than American women. They've had the same TV shows but without the doubts from the cousin that lived in Chicago or Baltimore. Meaning they are even more shielded from reality.

I don't blame this woman at all. The same result would happen if you told White women from birth that it's perfectly fine to walk in traffic and that cars will stop for you. Any hesitation is just evil doubt from the Bad White Men that are trying to trick you. The Science has spoken and publicly funded scientists are in agreement that traffic rules are a meaningless social creation crated by anti-car White men of the past. You aren't against the science, are you? Are you that ignorant and stupid? Or part of the educated?

Replies: @vinteuil, @Almost Missouri

It was a guess that turned out to be wrong, I don't see the point of removal.
And, while it's not what we were looking for, it wasn't a waste of time. That tranny isn't a murderer but did publicly wish death on an ideological opponent. It is possible that further action will follow.

Replies: @vinteuil

Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @YetAnotherAnon, @Corpse Tooth, @Emil Nikola Richard, @MEH 0910, @vinteuil

You have friends? I’m shocked I say shocked do you lecture them like you do to everyone in the comments?

I don't talk politics or religion with practically anyone in real life.

In real life I am really a rural Walmart shopper who stands there and eats an apple while someone tells me about what Trump did. Oh really? Was that on the news? (chews apple)

Replies: @vinteuil

Our neocon Lackey of the Deep State Been_there_done_that wrote to me:

Yanukovych clearly intended to resign and then removed himself...
 

In fact, he very publicly said the opposite.

And how did he "remove himself"?

I suggest that you read the 2015 BBC investigation (see here) citing eyewitnesses as indicating that there were shooters on the side of the protesters: this would explain how three cops were killed. I was following the mainstream news at the time, and I believed that Yanukovych's life was in danger: he probably reached the same conclusion.

So, he fled Kiev.

How is that a matter of him removing himself?

The Ukrainian Constitution makes it very clear how he would have to remove himself:

The resignation of the President of Ukraine enters into force from the moment he or she personally announces the statement of resignation at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
 

What is really interesting here is why you and your neocon friends keep trying to come up with these increasingly outré theories, falsely claiming that Yanukovych was removed legally. As I pointed out to our crazy friend who wants to bring about World War III, even his theory that Yanukovych could be removed under Article 75, which grants the Rada the right to pass laws, runs aground on Article 94, which gives Yanukovych fifteen days to veto any law.

A serious question: why on earth are you neocons so desperately grasping at very weak straws?

Why not just admit that, in a revolution, which the 2014 putsch certainly was (the "Maidan Revolution"), laws are indeed broken?

Do you somehow think that your hands will not be dripping rivers of blood if you show that Yanukovych was legally removed?

It won't work.

Dave "The Arbiter" in Sacramento

Replies: @Been_there_done_that, @vinteuil, @wojtek, @EliteCommInc.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Buzz Mohawk

"Why so many White men still kneel to this wench and her “minimal government” religion is the real question. I can see following this stupid cult in the 80s but it really doesn’t hold on the internet. We can show how she was just plain full of shit."

Rand is beloved by poorly-read (or rather, narrowly-read) pimply high school kids with grand pretensions because she herself was a high-school-level intellect with a view of the world about as sophisticated as an old "Here Comes/There Goes the Incredible Hulk!" T-shirt. It's the same basic mechanics as the other brand of bozos with their Bazooka Joe understanding of Nietzsche that they got not by actually reading Nietzsche, but from reading a collection of quotations. The kind of kid who spends way too much time in his bedroom listening to ELP, and who keeps a pet snake or an exotic lizard instead of just getting a damn dog -- not realizing what the purpose of a kid owning a pet dog actually is.

If I remember correctly, Rand was so pompous she actually went around wearing a cape -- just like Frank Lloyd Wright, another idiot with a cool sketchbook who was too superior to learn anything about the effects of water damage. But who still wanted to make buildings. Anyone who calls their school of thought "Objectivism" is too silly and self-involved to take seriously.

Replies: @John Johnson, @vinteuil

Well I wouldn't call it quarreling, more like just talking past one another. It is hard to tell just how tightly his thinking is tethered to reality, because he builds up these long accumulations of high concept words, and you can't quite understand what is meant.

I'm no better when it comes to unreality because my basic thinking is that there are a whole slew of measures which could be taken to rebuild this country and check its decline, but they will never happen because they are so far outside the American traditional political consensus, that they would be considered outrages. And somehow I don't see Shih Huang-Ti waiting in the wings, ready to make all the right heads roll.

Replies: @vinteuil

"Your mind is blinkered because you still think there is some sort of problem"

Um no, my mind is not actually blinkered, it's just that it is sometimes tactful to be a bit self-deprecating before you make an uncomfortable assertion. Don't worry though, you definitely don't need to get out more often. The train is fine.

"That is pure, unconscious modernism of a socialist bent."

Well as Strother Martin famously said... oh, forget what he said about communication. What you've got here is a private language. When you say "unconscious" do you mean the Freudian type or the bottle-of-Bushmills type? And Modernism is its own animal, has nothing to do with socialism or Uri Geller bending spoons WITH HIS BRAIN!. No one is going to follow you if they have no idea what you're talking about. They stopped making Raisin Bran decoder rings back in the 70s, we don't have them for you.

There are societal questions worth a conversation, because they can be talked about; and then there are your own personal fascinations which can't be. Which, you may be surprised to learn, most people do not share because they cannot parse your Klingon vocabulary. You're the one who brought up blacks and affirmative action and sports and so on: there are some hard societal questions in there, fodder for a frank discussion. But if you think the Important Questions involve overthrowing a "neo-liberal monetary system" or the tyranny of compulsory education, then you'd better open the pod bay door and let the spaceman back aboard the ship.

You know what Billie Eilish has that you don't have? Clarity, directness, musical logic, and a thorough mastery and understanding of her chosen medium. And a charming smile goes a long way too, if you want followers. Skip the early trip-hop stuff, and go straight to the more mature later things that win all the Oscars and so forth.

Replies: @Currdog73, @vinteuil

Egads, sorry to hear that I come off as an elitist or a snob, I don't mean to. Something to work at improving, I guess. Oh well, everybody needs to get kicked in the shins once in a while, keeps us honest, I probably need it more than most.

Most guys seem to have an inborn trait for going into "a buncha guys talkin' sports" gear from time to time. I enjoy that as much as anyone, but my problem is I don't actually like any sports and don't know anything about any of them, so my pub-talk is more about culture and nerding out.

Maybe it's my delusion, or maybe some people would agree, but I have gotten the impression over the years that American public culture has gone into really steep decline from one stage to the next. With the exception of a few serious TV shows, movies and music seem to have just gotten worse and worse. There are no novelists any more, and nothing to put in them even if you wrote one. Actual grownups seem to be an endangered species -- Trump is trying his best, but really, this is what passes for a statesman now? And that dumb girl who read that awful poem at Biden's fake inauguration, that's culture now? The occasional flash of brilliance here and there just throws the whole thing into worse contrast. Or maybe I'm just a grouchy old grump, and things are not really so bad.

Replies: @deep anonymous, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @vinteuil

Oh I'm sorry was there a system of turns in place?

I've lived in multiple Democrat cities and I don't buy into conspiracy theories of widespread ballot stuffing. I don't trust the Democrats but when it comes to voter ID there is a simpler explanation of Democrats not wanting to scare off Blacks that have warrants. Blacks with warrants do not trust anything involving government workers asking them for an ID.

Democrats are not going to state that reason on television. That is why they keep making up excuses to leave the current system in place.

Most of you have clearly not lived around Democrats or Blacks. You think you understand these areas by reading blog posts on Unz.

You have no idea as to how urban White Democrats actually view Blacks. They view them like bears that are to be avoided unless they need to be corralled for the polls.

Replies: @vinteuil

From about First Movement 8:40 to about 11:55, she's okay. But still, her time throughout is just awful.

Her take on the Second Movement is not so bad.

Guess you don't really play Uncle Bob so much, eh.

Replies: @vinteuil

Why do you suppose the Democratic Party takes these positions? How can you reach any other conclusion but that they want the ability to stuff the ballot boxes wherever they have control of the vote counting?

Oh I can name another reason that isn't simple box stuffing.

They don't want Blacks with warrants to stay home over ID rules.

There is an underestimation of how many Blacks have a warrant over something stupid like an unpaid traffic ticket.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Almost Missouri

Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @OilcanFloyd, @vinteuil

Eric135 wrote to me:

Some progress has been made. We’re no longer giving money to Ukraine. Instead, the EU is buying weapons from us. They can carry on the war by themselves if they so choose.
 

“If [President] Zelensky were to give any unconquered land away, he would be a corpse — politically, and then for real,” Sternenko said.
 

Replies: @vinteuil

The Corvomatic-bot seems to have problems with this, but all I can say about it is: Mamas, don't let yer babies grow up to be cowboys.

To do that show, even though later on it ran all around the world and helped who knows how many millions of kids, first I had to sleep on the floor of the fucking conference room because my own office wasn't big enough to fit me and they didn't even give me a couch; lunch and dinner weren't catered, you had to bring your own lunch or else there was just this one Chinese place across the street and get this, it was called "Chinese Food". Just that. I thought I must be living in a dream-space. Who on else here LIVES here?! I thought I was a grunt at Studio Ghibli.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVVTZgwYwVo&list=RDTeQ_TTyLGMs&index=5

If you're a nerd and you look closely at around 2:56 -- 3:01, frame by frame, you will see an astonishing transformation, one of the great moments in animation acting: Elsa goes in an eye-blink from furious, FURIOUS anger (and I do mean utterly rage-induced irrational FURY), to then just regular human anger as she tears off her royal tiara and throws it to the wind, to a kind of relief, then to a kind of sublime happiness.

I hope a couple of nerds at least got a bottle of Chivas Regal out of that.

Replies: @vinteuil

A Few Good Men is thinly veiled, anti white, anti masculine garbage. The Jessup character is yet another depiction of the same psychopathic white male officer archetype that has been beat to death since KILLGORE (is that subtle enough), a sort of caricature of Patton (who you should know exactly why is presented as a psychopath in historical movies), was presented to us in Apocalypse Now.

Anyone who knows anything about the military and its officers knows that an officer like Jessup would never make it past the rank of LT Colonel, let alone be given command of a military base in such a delicate and precarious location as Guantanamo Bay, and he would have had to have been lucky enough to avoid multiple career ending bullets throughout his career based on his volatile personality.

Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @vinteuil, @Currdog73, @Jenner Ickham Errican

Replies: @vinteuil

Ugly kitsch.

Replies: @vinteuil

...they avidly secularized themselves & were literally hungry for the riches of high European culture...
 

Replies: @vinteuil

Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @The Germ Theory of Disease, @vinteuil

This steaming pile of crap is right in the middle of Boston's historic colonial area. I've always seen it as the local Jews telling the goyim that their history is more important than ours. I tell anyone who ever mentions it that it needs to be moved to Brookline where it belongs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Holocaust_Memorial

Replies: @Corvinus, @Felpudinho, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @vinteuil

Had I been the prosecutor, I would have asked him only two questions…

— Please explain to the courtroom what a portico is. And,
— What’s your opinion of Le Corbusier?

When he gave me the deer in the headlights look, I woulda rested my case.

What do we draw from all this? ...

— He clearly knows nothing about architecture...
 

Sometime in the middle of the year 2001.

They were sponsored by a Jewish charity across the street, and they were brought to me to open bank accounts. "Oh, you're an art student. That's nice. I'm fond of the Impressionists. What do you like?"

Dead silence accompanied by dead, brown eyes.

"I also like the early 20th century efforts to align painting with new media like film. What do you think of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase?"

Crickets and hostile stares.

I don't claim to know how this ties in to the picture you painted, but somehow I think it does.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/09/a1/74/09a1745869bcee593f10a65543eb2912.png

Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @vinteuil

"Everybody knows that everybody knows. Action is a different animal."

Yeah, well. But the question tumbles through the air... what *kind* of action? This is where philosophy is your friend. And what kind of philosophy? Well not Rousseau, for starters. And from the other end, also not Ricoeur, or JL Austin. I think Wendell Berry is a good place, not for his own personal views, which comically are in contradiction with his thought, but because he is (or was?) a sane, literate, stout old Kentucky farmer with deep family roots in the land. I always say begin with "Home Economics: Fourteen Essays" -- not that you should literally take him at his word, it is just that his perspective is a good home base.

So this next is kind of a tangent, but it makes a roundabout point -- sort of how Conrad describes Marlowe's oblique way of telling a story as sort of getting the listener to make his point for him.

There's a TV show called "Bull" about a psychiatrist who is a trial/jury consultant who tries to game a given trial through careful jury selection. Legal drama shows like this frequently take their stories from the actual headlines, and then just tinker with the details to make them look like fiction -- mostly by changing the obviously black perp to a white one. But one can have confidence that these things somewhat reflect our current reality.

So there was this one story about an idealistic young black high-school teacher who was mentoring/tutoring a black student whom she thought had some promise, but was being held back because of his cliche-ridden 'difficult' family life. She winds up modifying an answer for him on a standardized test to boost his score to protect a scholarship offer, gets caught red-handed, and off we go to the courtroom.

The story itself is not so interesting as the portrayal of the student. For whatever reason, the producers didn't wear the mask: the actor played the kid not as some unsung academic superstar, but as a reasonable, do-my-best striver who, for all that... clearly just wasn't very bright. He was a nice kid trying to make it, but obviously not "promising" rock star college skorraship material. In the big pivotal scene, he re-takes the test without cheating, and scores in the 80% slot. In other words, a B. Not even a B+, just a B. His stated goal is to go to college and become an architect.

No one tells him that architecture is a furiously competitive game, and no one with a B average who can barely speak Standard English is going to ever become a real architect, just an AA decorative fake one like a lawn flamingo. Had I been the prosecutor, I would have asked him only two questions...

-- Please explain to the courtroom what a portico is. And,
-- What's your opinion of Le Corbusier?

When he gave me the deer in the headlights look, I woulda rested my case.

What do we draw from all this? (assuming it's a close approximation of a real case.)

-- The kid views a college education as a spiffy commodity, as a way to get out of "da streets" which his own people of course created.... not as an actual education -- in fairness, like many do.

-- He clearly knows nothing about architecture, and picked the word out of a hat, because it sounded impressive.

-- The entire courtroom is asked to go along with the public sentimental ruse that this Black! kid is "promising" because he has average grades, a good sob story, and no felony convictions. In other words, just meeting bare minimums makes him worthy to displace a star white kid and fuck a white co-ed or three.

-- This is the best "promising" student that Idealistic Black Teacher could find, to risk her career over.

-- People who object to the whole charade on rational grounds are Blue Meanies and racists.

-- Water seeking its own level is Raciss. Water must be "uplifted" to places where water is not useful, and then we must pretend that it is useful.

All sticks poked in one's eye. But I am not persuaded that a Reichstag fire or an Odessa Steps moment is the most promising solution.

Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @vinteuil, @Mike Tre, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Buzz Mohawk

Yeah, agreed.
To sum it up concisely: Tucker is full of shit. This is an amoral, uneducated & rotten piece of human garbage. In some cases he is right, but that doesn't alter the fact that he is human excrement.

Replies: @vinteuil

I believe both Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson are against our encouragement of Ukraine and would like a peace deal.

Tucker was running defense for Putin before the war started.

At Fox he would do his "Putin ain't so bad" report which of course ignored the harsh political crackdowns and the drownings/accidents/suicides that just so happen to befall his opponents.

Another full of shit conservative that decries liberal speech control but shrugs when a 5'1 dwarf dictator locks up his political enemies for simply existing.

Russia doesn't have gay parades and for conservatives like Tucker that is enough. That justifies the complete elimination of individual rights. Constitutions and rights are for Anglos I guess. Slavs get dictators and prison sentences for even using the term bald dwarf do describe Putin. Igor Girkin got a hefty sentence just for saying Putin is lousy at war. He may be fighting at the front soon to convert the sentence which means his former alliance with Putin will probably be paid with his life.

Russia is not what Tucker or other lying youtube conservatives want you to believe.

The prisons of Russia are dominated by a mafia that can decide if you are to be anally raped for your entire stay. Russia has the highest HIV rate in Europe from drug use and for over a decade under Putin they had the highest abortion rate. For years Putin was fine with the USSR policy of late term abortion as a valid form of birth control. Moscow Slavic women could get a "whoops" from partying and then go to the state abortion center. The Muslims of Chechnya had high birth rates while the urban Slavs adopted a degenerate lifestyle.

The Tuckers of the West of course don't talk of that and instead depict Russia as some Gud Orthodox nation. Also no talk of their minorities or how Ukraine is the more Christian and homogenous of the two.

Tucker is full of shit. He used to be the pet conservative at CNN (Be Gud Boy and don't talk about race) and now he is an advocate for a mass murderer. I think he is more just confused than anything. He doesn't have a moral compass and views Putin as an ally.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Bardon Kaldian

Under normal direct war engagement (not proxy) rational thinking losing side would accept neutrality and save the lives in pointless continued carnage. Not Zelensky, that would mean his end, perhaps by Mussolini treatment. It appears he is willing to lose Odessa.

Why would you talk of Odessa when Russia hasn't taking Kherson?

Kherson is 30 minutes from the Russian border and still in Ukrainian hands. Or are you hoping that Russia tries a Gallipoli on live television? Odessa never had a separatist movement which means Russia would be trying to take a hostile port city. Historically that is very risky and a D-Day type attack would be near impossible to keep secret. A swarm of sea drones could making the landing ships sink before they arrive. Or Ukraine lets them show up and a dozen machine guns fill the water with blood.....now livestreamed!

You also didn't explain you claim of Putin being hesitant in the context of civilian casualties even though he has been launching hundreds Iranian drones at downtown Kiev. Are those attacks on civilians (including ethnic Russians) or do you just avoid the subject?

Replies: @vinteuil, @A123, @Mr. Hack

Thanks and LOL, I never saw that. But since we're now getting into some Japanese/metal crossover, have a look at this. Disclaimer: it's funnier the second time you watch it.

https://youtu.be/-UYgORr5Qhg?si=nhfdTxZr-8WSsGdC

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @vinteuil

You haven’t proved what said is wrong. All you did was yelled.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Mr. Anon

If you're looking for someone to thank for the ostensible Golden Age of Hollywood, then thank the Catholic Church and the Hays Code. Without that, it's just Fatty Arbuckle and Jews banging Midwestern shiksa hopefuls on the casting couch, all the way down.

There was a natural home-grown American high culture in the making, which you can see in the Chicago Columbian Exposition (the "White City") and the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition in 1901. A fusion of European aesthetic ideals with American energy and reach-the-sky ambition. Think of the Woolworth Building and the Flatiron Building. Then the ashkenazim started getting their fingers in every single pie, and we wound up with... well, you know the rest.

For instance, the idea that Lenny Bernstein is a genius composer is... well. He wrote some great show tunes, then an entire awful musical (Candide) and his stabs at classical composition are not dreadful, they're just... not memorable. As a conductor, he jumped around a lot and called attention to himself. (Hmm, what's his background again?) But in his favor, he was an absolutely marvelous educator in music. So, not all bad, just not some towering figure like Certain People demand he be. Rinse and repeat, til your own culture is gone.

Replies: @vinteuil

Americans say "center". Brits and Irish Brits like Yeats write "centre".

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
 

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @vinteuil

UK local councils have a LOT of statutory obligations, but they no longer have the money to enforce them. So things are slowly falling apart - people break planning laws, but the councils don't have the cash to take them to court, wealthy property developers appeal against planning decisions, the council don't have the money to contest the appeal. Then there's "equal pay" claims, which are actually "equivalent work" claims:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-invention-of-tradition-how-regional-italian-cuisine-has-rapidly-progressed/#comment-6400628

then, and probably the biggest drain on council funds, "special needs education":

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/30/councils-england-insolvency-risk-send-costs

which is perhaps related to the YUGE rise in UK mental health conditions - 36% of young women 18-24. The Native Brits are exhibiting some of the pathologies of other dispossessed aboringinal peoples :

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/26/young-people-england-common-mental-health-conditions-nhs-survey

This is just trying to set the scene in which the following is happening:

"The sale of illegal cigarettes signals a deeper problem with UK high streets"

It's pitch black and we're crawling along a secret underground tunnel beneath a high street in Hull. We pass rotting beams propped up precariously by stacked breeze blocks. A rusty car jack is helping prevent the shop floor above from falling in.

Through the rubble, we follow a Trading Standards Officer, his torch swinging back and forth in the darkness until it rests on a hidden stash of thousands of illegal cigarettes.

This is just one such surreal experience while investigating the sale of illegal cigarettes in Hull. In one week we repeatedly witnessed counterfeit and smuggled tobacco being sold in high street mini marts - and were threatened by shop workers who grabbed our cameras when we tried to film them.

This is now a familiar story being repeated across Britain. In April, the National Crime Agency (NCA) raided hundreds of high street businesses, many suspected of being supplied by international crime gangs. Trading Standards teams have also found a thriving trade in illicit tobacco.
 

One leading criminology expert called the networks behind the supply of illegal cigarettes the "golden thread for understanding serious organised crime", because of its links to people trafficking and, in some cases, illegal immigration.

So, in some ways, these high street shop fronts connect the various domestic problems facing Britain today.

Political researchers claim it's also damaging trust in police and the government - and turning our high streets into symbols of national decline.

Of course, there have long been pockets of criminality on the UK high street. But now experts tell us that this illicit trade is harming people's trust in authority - and, at a basic level, their sense of fairness.

"If you're a law abiding business following the rules, you're jeopardising your own livelihood and the viability of your own business," argues Prof Taylor. "And to me that's not fair that someone can succeed by not playing by the rules."

Josh Nicholson, a researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, believes that perceptions of crime are worse than ever. "From research we have done there is a feeling of powerlessness, a lack of respect for authority like the police," he says.

"Are the police... seen to be tackling low level offences? When they don't see it tackled, people's perception is that things are getting a lot worse."
 

Replies: @Corvinus, @Achmed E. Newman, @YetAnotherAnon, @vinteuil

The closest official weather station to where he lived is Martinsburg, WV. According to the National Weather Service, the high and low temperatures during the period leading up to ZMan's death were:

2025-06-22 94 68 81.0 16 0.00
2025-06-23 97 70 83.5 19 0.00
2025-06-24 98 72 85.0 20 0.00
2025-06-25 97 71 84.0 19 0.06
2025-06-26 95 70 82.5 18 T

The column headings are Date, High, Low, Mean Temperature, Cooling Degree Days, and Precipitation. (In degrees Fahrenheit and inches)

So the day he died, the high temperature was 35C, and the dew points were in the 70sF, which is low-to-mid 20sC, i.e., very high.

Data from US NWS website:
Climate
Weather.gov > Baltimore/Washington > Climate

Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @vinteuil

muh muh wrote to me:

[Dave]The Gospels are largely fictional works, as I assume you know. No one knows if Jesus actually said that to any living humans.

[muh muh] Okay, but that’s not what we were debating. Presupposing as fact the historical context provided by the author(s) of the text we were discussing is just a method of literary criticism. You’re now introducing a completely separate argument.
 

[Dave] Well… I most certainly do not “acknowledge that Jesus did, in fact, call upon his disciples to purchase a sword.”

[muh muh] Then you reject what’s plainly written in the text.
 

You infer that, in scripture, there is a general mandate for genocide against non-Jews simply for being non-Jews. We might amend this to read ‘non-Jews who refuse to abide by Noahide Law.’
 

[Dave] The Germans no longer have the “metaphysical basis” of Nazism, nor the Russians the “metaphysical basis” of Communism.
 

[muh muh] So what? Germans and Russians still have alternative metaphysical bases undergirding their societies, however you wish to name them.
 

Nobody escapes ontology. Even the claim to have no answer to the question of being is an answer to it, one that absolutely affects the formation of a worldview. If you’re hung up on the semantics of ‘metaphysical’, try ‘ideological’ or ‘philosophical’ if you wish.
 

[Dave] I want to see the “metaphysical basis” of Judaism similarly wiped out of existence.
 

... [muh muh] And how do you propose to do this?
 

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
 

Replies: @vinteuil, @muh muh

" almost always sopranos, and you almost always have to hear it live, whose singing at its best reaches a whole ‘nother level, almost as if they are opening a portal to parallel universe"

I think I prefer opening a portal to a human soul, even a distraught one:

A little shepherdess
Is waiting, near the top of the woods
Awaiting her lover
But he does not come

"Ai! He's abandoned me!
My lover's not here
I thought he loved me
And I loved him so!"

A star comes out,
The first star of evening
And the poor little shepherdess
Is still there, crying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7IvN5F9HEY

Replies: @vinteuil, @Currdog73

Hey look! A Covidiot just said something I agree with.
 

Replies: @vinteuil

Poetry and music don’t necessarily mix. Set Longfellow to music and it’s a bust…

That droning stuff you posted is neither poetry nor music.

Despite all your extensive showbiz experiences, you don’t have any taste in either music or poetry. I still love you, brother. Don’t ever change…

Replies: @vinteuil

Ugh, you don't read or write poetry, do you.

PRO TIP: Do NOT try to write free verse at home! Start out with blank verse, Donne and so forth, then work yourself up to read some Stevens, and only THEN try to read WC Williams and Frank O'Hara.

Here's a good (advanced) model....

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/33328/korean-mums

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

And don't do this either.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa9nN3G2CSg



And anyone who's ever had a dream.
And anyone who's ever played a part.
And anyone who's ever been lonely.
And anyone who's ever been, TORN APART.

People who have not themselves been actually "torn apart" should not apply to participate in this conversation.

Replies: @vinteuil, @Old Prude

Yep, I can’t remember the title or author of the de Vere bacon books I read in college. Just remembered how absolutely ignorant of 1500s England the authors were. And of de Vere’s life always in trouble. Not that his troubles prevented him from writing highly regarded poems.

Since I retired I’ve read a lot more about Tudor England. A lot more than Joe Sobran ever read or his book wouldn’t have such glaring inaccuracies about 1500s England .

And, yes, I read Alias Shakespeare Friday night March 28. Public library copy ordered it Tuesday picked it up Friday read it in a couple hours. About as accurate as the progressive media’s version of George Floyd’s death

Replies: @notanonymousHere, @vinteuil, @Ron Unz

People keep claiming that Shakespeare wasn’t the author because he didn’t have sufficient literacy/formal education to account for all the erudition in the plays.
 

That's a totally legitimate inquiry, obviously, but understandably many are reluctant to believe that he could have cracked Nashe's reference, and especially that this could have led to a massive unfolding of many independent lines of evidence that Thomas North was in fact the author of not only ur-Hamlet but all of the source plays for the plays that presently make up the canon. (There are a number of exceptions: The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Two Noble Kinsman; and of course, The London Prodigal, A Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John Oldcastle - plays that were ascribed to Shakespeare for a hundred years after his death.) Since apparently they refuse to entertain the idea that there could be significant positive evidence for this conclusion, they put it all down to disbelief that Shakespeare could have written erudite plays.

If we can get over this sticking point, and realize that it is actually uncontroversial that Shakespeare frequently used source plays, and then recognize that if it is possible to discover authorship of the source plays, this would put us in position to inquire about allocation of responsibility for the contents of the plays in their present forms. This would be progress.

In this respect, I actually think the position you put - that North may have written some of the source plays, but is unlikely to have been the author of all the great and gritty comedic dialogue that is found in the plays - could be quite useful for advancing the subject.

In a previous post I mentioned that the question of the respective contributions of North and Shakespeare is somewhat open, and probably varies from one play to another. I also hinted at three hypotheses, viz (1) that Shakespeare took crude and variously authored source plays from early English theater and fashioned them into the beautiful poetic works we know today, (2) that Shakespeare relied on one single common earlier playwright's work in the crafting of a number of the English history plays (but certainly not the whole canon), and that this earlier playwright was responsible for the scholarship but not the poetic beauty found in the current plays (a position developed around 1930 by Dover Wilson), or (3) that Thomas North was the original author of nearly all the plays of the canon, and therefore could well have been principally responsible for the dramatic genius of the plays, with Shakespeare's role as an adapter of the works for the public theater decidedly secondary.

Evidently, your position resembles the second hypothesis, and it is well and good that that hypothesis should be taken where it can.

I think the reverse question is actually far more interesting, to wit: Shakespeare’s works contain an oceanic, encyclopedic knowledge of and sympathy with ordinary working people from all walks of life: Mistress Quickly, the Nurse, Fluellen, Fabian, Bottom, the Gravedigger, it goes on and on. Many of these parts are written in such a pitch-perfect manner one could be forgiven for thinking they had been recorded with a tape recorder.

Now is it likely that an arrogant sneering aristo like de Vere, or a scholarly legal Latinist like North, could have lived the lives they are said to have lived, and also had the time and sympathetic inclination to talk to and listen to and remember conversations with half the working stiffs of London? But the life of Shakespeare supports the thought of such an “education”.

North was not a playwright, viz he was not a man of the working theater; he was a legal man and a translator and a scholar who sometimes wrote “plays”. One can find traces of his language everywhere in Shakespeare, but one will search in vain for Shakespeare’s knowledge of stagecraft (or of common humanity) in North. Who could write the great scene between Viola and Feste and end it with, “Cressida was a beggar”.
 

Again, I think it could actually be useful if someone were to develop the thesis that the ribald comedy in the plays owes more to Shakespeare than to North. Even Dennis McCarthy's analysis of the Ben Jonson Ode that he put out last week might be helpful to such an endeavor, as it is arguably consistent with Ben Jonson having allowed that the comedies collected within the First Folio have less "original North" and more Shakespearean adaptation than do the other plays.

However, McCarthy has already assembled quite a lot of evidence that Thomas North's life experiences permeate the plays as well. Such evidence would also have to be taken into account in developing an alternative like the one you propose.

Might such experiences as witnessing his older half-sister being burned at the stake when he was 16 have affected his personality or perceptions of the world in any way? Or the experiences of his trip to Italy as a page for Viscount Montague? Or the 1774 embassy to France in which he personally met all of the real-life people who wound up being portrayed in Love's Labour's Lost? Or the 1775 Kenilworth festivities (alluded to in A Midsummer Night's Dream) for which he almost certainly had a role in orchestrating the entertainments? Or his experiences in war in Ireland, apparently after several writers associated with the Earl of Leicester were seen as going too far in promoting Leicester's marriage agenda? Or his trip back home in the company of Barnaby Rich, author of one of the sources used in Twelfth Night? Or the general impoverishment of the last few decades of his life after his patron the Earl of Leicester died in 1588 and his brother, the 2nd Lord North, kicked him and his daughter off the family estate (cf. As You Like It, The Tempest)?

Replies: @vinteuil, @The Germ Theory of Disease, @The Germ Theory of Disease

Fluellen does not just "wear a leek in his cap" like some sort of cliche; he gives a rather moving speech about why he wears the leek.

It's time for me to duck out of this discussion, but to sum up...

One imagines that a scholarly approach and scholarly techniques have their productive uses; but people who take a strictly scholarly approach, and who are not themselves artists, literally do not know what they are supposed to be looking for. It's right under your nose, yet you miss it every time. I really don't care how many books, if any, Will Shakespeare owned; he was a clever man, and apparently figured out how to get his hands on them one way or another. I suspect he was a bit of a drinker, or at least liked to hang out with drinkers; you think he couldn't get some amateur legal language worth copying, by buying a few rounds for the lads at Lincoln's Inn?

You can find in the North material all sorts of Latinate eloquence, which grew on trees back then (even Marlowe makes fun of it; but if you can find a scene in North as simultaneously raucous, hilarious and heart-breaking as the late-night kitchen scene in Twelfth Night, a scene with a line by North as funny as the insult "Go, sir: rub your chain with crumbs" then I will take the North hypothesis seriously. Til then, he didn't write "the" plays; he wrote "some" plays, which Will used at will so to speak, just like he used his conversations with crooked tapsters.

Replies: @vinteuil, @vinteuil

Fluellen does not just "wear a leek in his cap" like some sort of cliche; he gives a rather moving speech about why he wears the leek.

It's time for me to duck out of this discussion, but to sum up...

One imagines that a scholarly approach and scholarly techniques have their productive uses; but people who take a strictly scholarly approach, and who are not themselves artists, literally do not know what they are supposed to be looking for. It's right under your nose, yet you miss it every time. I really don't care how many books, if any, Will Shakespeare owned; he was a clever man, and apparently figured out how to get his hands on them one way or another. I suspect he was a bit of a drinker, or at least liked to hang out with drinkers; you think he couldn't get some amateur legal language worth copying, by buying a few rounds for the lads at Lincoln's Inn?

You can find in the North material all sorts of Latinate eloquence, which grew on trees back then (even Marlowe makes fun of it; but if you can find a scene in North as simultaneously raucous, hilarious and heart-breaking as the late-night kitchen scene in Twelfth Night, a scene with a line by North as funny as the insult "Go, sir: rub your chain with crumbs" then I will take the North hypothesis seriously. Til then, he didn't write "the" plays; he wrote "some" plays, which Will used at will so to speak, just like he used his conversations with crooked tapsters.

Replies: @vinteuil, @vinteuil

Rounding up brown people based on what some cop thinks of their tattoos […] and renditioning them off to a Salvadoran gulag without due process is not that.
 

Replies: @vinteuil, @Jack D

People keep claiming that Shakespeare wasn't the author because he didn't have sufficient literacy/formal education to account for all the erudition in the plays. I think the reverse question is actually far more interesting, to wit: Shakespeare's works contain an oceanic, encyclopedic knowledge of and sympathy with ordinary working people from all walks of life: Mistress Quickly, the Nurse, Fluellen, Fabian, Bottom, the Gravedigger, it goes on and on. Many of these parts are written in such a pitch-perfect manner one could be forgiven for thinking they had been recorded with a tape recorder.

Now is it likely that an arrogant sneering aristo like de Vere, or a scholarly legal Latinist like North, could have lived the lives they are said to have lived, and also had the time and sympathetic inclination to talk to and listen to and remember conversations with half the working stiffs of London? But the life of Shakespeare supports the thought of such an "education".

North was not a playwright, viz he was not a man of the working theater; he was a legal man and a translator and a scholar who sometimes wrote "plays". One can find traces of his language everywhere in Shakespeare, but one will search in vain for Shakespeare's knowledge of stagecraft (or of common humanity) in North. Who could write the great scene between Viola and Feste and end it with, "Cressida was a beggar".

Shakespeare's mature style is fairly unique in the theater and poetry of his time: the serpentine style of verse, the complex inner life of the characters, the morose view of humanity, the shall we say "earned" melancholy of even his comedies. The mashup of cheap lurid spectacle with intense deeply-felt contemplation. And it's all stylistically consistent with a single person's POV, not a committee's, though a committee may have helped and probably did. Read say The Revenger's Tragedy or The Spanish Tragedy with their Fred Flintstone verse to see what everyone else was doing at the time. Even Marlowe's masterpiece Doctor Faustus is pretty dramaturgically clunky in comparison -- though Mephistopheles as a character is perhaps the first instance of an inner life so much better developed in the rest of Will's work.

Replies: @Wielgus, @vinteuil, @Norumbega, @Dennis McCarthy

I was just making two factual points that everyone should agree on.

Shakespeare used source plays. Let's say, he did so for at least many of the plays, if not for nearly all or even all of them. This is conventional.

Separate from that fact, there are numerous specific source materials that scholars have determined are linked to various elements in the extant plays.

But if a source play was used by Shakespeare in any given instance, then it follows logically that there is a question whether the elements determined to derive from source materials were put there originally by Shakespeare or by the author of the source play.

I'm just saying that this question exists, whether or not we have present means to answer it. The question itself implies nothing one way or another about the degree of Shakespeare's originality.

Until recently, the basis for any inferences about authorship of the source plays was extremely scant, while the source scholarship on Shakespeare's plays was a rather well-developed field, so it was often easy to lose sight of the question - and to casually go along with the assumption that Shakespeare must have been the one who directly used the source materials.

And I was specifically responding to the implied suggestion that determining authorship of the source plays is a venture into the unknowable. The comment I was responding to suggested specifically that the huge number of verbal fingerprints of Thomas North found in the Shakespeare canon would at best justify the contention that Shakespeare used North's work as source material. Nothing more. It would not justify any raising of the likelihood that Thomas North was the author of the source plays that Shakespeare is agreed to have used. This likelihood remains essentially zero, despite the mass of verbal correspondences between not only Plutarch's Lives and the Roman plays, but also North's other translations and even unpublished work and essentially the entire Shakespeare canon. It remains essentially zero, also despite the many detailed correlations between the plays and North's life experiences (for example, his participation in an embassy to the court in Lyon in 1774 in which he personally met all of the people depicted in Love's Labor's Lost). And it remains essentially zero despite the fact that McCarthy and June Schleuter have now documented a payment to Thomas North for the exact customary amount for writing a play performed at court, directly adjacent to a record of a payment to the players of Leicester's Men, and other evidence of his involvement with playwriting. It can be nothing but sheer coincidence that Thomas Nashe's 1589 spoofing of the "English Seneca" who wrote the original Hamlet includes pointed allusions to Plutarch's Lives and to Boreas (which is Greek for North). McCarthy and Schleuter's detailed case that Thomas North was the author of the source play for Titus Andronicus (in Shakespeare Survey 67, 2014) is of no account. And their 2021 book (published by Faileigh Dickinson University Press) making the case that North was the original author of Henry VIII and The Winter's Tale is best ignored.

I don't suppose anyone actually takes this position. Rather, fixated on claims that Shakespeare was merely a "front" or a pen-name, they have blinded themselves to the alternative that McCarthy is actually proposing, and failed to look into the evidence that he (and Schleuter and Michael Blanding) have brought to bear on the question of Shakespeare authorship.

The two volume Complete Works from the house I grew up in stated in one of the introductions that "it is highly probable that Shakespeare's task in the case of The Merchant of Venice, as afterwards in that of King Lear, consisted in creating from old and worthless dramatic material found among the crude productions of the early English theatre those forms of beauty and of majesty of which we are familiar." (Clark and Wright, eds., dating from the 1860s, I think). The editor John Dover Wilson (King Richard II, Cambridge, 1939, 1961) thought that that he could detect traces of a scholarly playwright but clumsy poet behind the originals of the series that Shakespeare had improved with his dramatic genius.

If, as the evidence now seems to overwhelmingly suggest, that the criteria for determining whether a play is "authentic Shakespeare" is whether or not Thomas North wrote the original source play - the question of Shakespeare's contribution to "creating those forms of beauty and of majesty" that the plays are today appears in a rather different light.

Again, please have a look at the videos I linked to above.

For further reference, please see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/shakespeare-survey/shakespearenorth-collaboration-titus-andronicus-and-titus-and-vespasian/6B9BAEC552C78D3FBCAA22E39B8E6E13

https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Norths-1555-Travel-Journal-ebook/dp/B08QTR3JYJ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UB1KDK2L5O84&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9CKlIioS_mmt-i43QjW-6A.mtcGcs-FViQG2SEfRiKdsSeA1wSSmBn59CX4nglt71g&dib_tag=se&keywords=Thomas+North%27s+1555+travel+journal&qid=1742944798&sprefix=thomas+north%27s+1555+travel+journal%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-1

Replies: @Alden, @vinteuil, @The Germ Theory of Disease

Whoever wrote the link you posted knows nothing of Henry’s unique and special religion. Projecting the modern concept of the difference between Protestant and Catholic unto Henry. The mistake historians are supposed to avoid But never avoid.

The modern conventional wisdom is Catholic recognizes the leader supreme authority as the Pope in Rome. Any Christian sect that refuses leadership of the Roman Pope is Protestant.

But that was definitely not Henry’s vision for his unique and special Christian sect . He was the supreme authority the Pope. And his heirs would be the equivalent of a pope.

Why in the world did you think I would believe that ignorance you dredged from the internet?

The author knows nothing about Henry’s unique and special religion. Ignorantly believes any 1500s Christian sect was not Catholic is Protestant. That wasn’t Henry’s belief. And he confiscated his Tyndall bibles and forbade Bible reading. Because it led to Protestantism. Using the Bible to communicate with God LOL

James 1 was even more anti Protestant than Henry.

He’d lived through a three way religious war all his life. Powerful catholic resistance in the highlands the west coast and some of the islands. Wanna be Jew Calvinists increasing to majority in the towns and lowlands Both factions with strong overseas connections John Knox screeching slay the Amaleks Amaleks being not just Catholics but the official Church of Scotland

That’s why the Pilgrims fled first to the Netherlands then to America. And Calvinists to Switzerland and France then to America. James was even more anti Protestant than Henry. Because he’d lived with their attempts to take over the Church of Scotland all his life. James survived 17 very serious murder attempts before he arrived in England. To find that both Catholics and Protestant subversives were still very active.

Your link is completely wrong. Whoever wrote it knew nothing about Henry’s views of his very special new Christian sect. Why should I believe that ignorance?

Replies: @vinteuil, @JPS

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare seemed to have borrowed liberally and extensively from North, but that is as far as any serious person can go in this vain. You McCarthy goes as far as he is able in his argument and still have some ground to stand on. To go further and start inventing authors from your imagination is fantasy… not history. William Shakespeare of Avon was William Shakespeare. Eyewitnesses testified to this. Until you provide some other fact, you have nothing but imagination upon which to base your claim.
 

Replies: @vinteuil

Putin could have easily setup a spy at Epstein island. There was probably a lot of underpaid labor that could be paid off to setup a camera.

The Russians are in fact known to use prostitutes as spies.

Trump may well be compromised. It certainly would explain a lot.

In any case you don't know if there is a tape on him. The pee tape is a rumor that neither you nor I can verify.

We do know that Epstein described Trump as a close friend and that Trump lied about visiting the island.

Doesn't look good.

Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @vinteuil, @Mike Tre

Gold, Bitchez! [/ZeroHedge mode]

Replies: @vinteuil