Daily Archives: June 3, 2022

Guest post by Alt-Right Exposed

Right on cue, the Deep State Alt Right movement has been activated in order to conflate President Trump and Republicans with racism, and hatred of women, ahead of the mid term elections.

Andrew Weev Auernheimer, webmaster of the Deep State Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, publicly praised the cowardly mass shooting and terrorist attack, by one of his followers, against innocent Black Americans in Buffalo, New York on March 14th.

On the Poast social media platform, WeevstatedViolence works. Terrorism works., and They have launched open war against us, and occasionally there are a few heroes that are willing to respond in kind. I support anyone that kills Democrats.

TRENDING: SHOCKING UPDATE: JUDGE IN SDNY 'WE BUILD THE WALL' CASE DOXES JUROR WHO CALLED CASE "A WITCH HUNT"

In numerous articles on the Daily Stormer, and on their Gamer Uprising forum, posters have been celebrating the attack, and calling for more violence.

Andrew Weev Auernheimer is a convicted computer hacker, who was sent to prison after being caught stealing and doxxing over 100,000 iPad users.

Mysteriously, Weev was suddenly released by Obamas Justice Department, after serving only 13 months of a 41 month sentence. As soon as he left federal prison, Auernheimer immediately started to praise convicted Oklahoma City terrorist Timothy McVeigh, and he publicly called for statues to be erected of terrorists who attacked the United States government.

Weevthen fled to Ukraine, where he suddenly had someone tattoo a swastika on his chest, and started Sieg Heiling, while attempting to align himself with Donald Trump, during Trumps 2016 presidential election campaign.

This is all eerily reminiscent of Alt-Right leaderRichard Spencersuddenly doing Sieg Heils and praising President Trump right around the same time.

It has long been considered common knowledge on right wing message boards that Andrew Weev Auernheimer cut some sort of a deal with the feds, to get out of jail early in order to infiltrate, disrupt and neutralize the right wing.

Weev, who is of of Jewish descent, according to his ownmother, ingratiated himself to Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, editor of a site called Total Fascism, which was later became the Daily Stormer. Anglin allowed Weev to become the webmaster of the site, despite his ethnicity and his early release from federal prison.

Weev and Andrew Anglin registered the Daily Stormer in Russia, in order to conflate Trump and conservatism with Russia, during the 2016 election. If these two were not taking orders directly from Adam Schiff, it is hard to tell how they would act any differently.

The alleged Buffalo shooter, 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron, was an avid reader, and a huge fan of the Daily Stormer. Gendron promoted and praised the site by name in his manifesto, while describing himself as a Neo-Nazi, a white supremacist, and an incel. All of these buzzwords are constantly being bandied about on the Daily Stormer and on their forum.

Gendron also shared a lot of Daily Stormer memes on a Discord channel which has long been considered an FBI honeypot on 4chan.

Weev and Anglin recently switched the sites domain to a registrar in Communist China, but the CCP dumped them after the Buffalo shooting. It seems that promoting terrorism is a bit much for even the Chinese Communist Party to stomach, at least publicly.

The site is now only accessible on the Tor network, which is park of the Deep Web, or Dark Net, where drugs and child pornography are routinely trafficked.

The official Daily Stormer forum, Gamer Uprising, is still up and running on the regular Internet. A whois search of Gamer Uprising indicates that the forum is registered in Tonga, and is hosted in the state of Washington, on the notorious vanwa.tech.

It turns out that vanwa.tech is being kept online by a shady Russian company calledDDoS-Guard, which is the host of the official website of the terrorist groupHamas. Vanwa also hosts the8chanforum, where the Buffalo shooter just happened to post and hang out on. Just a coincidence, we are sure.

For most of the existence of the site, Anglin advocated Neo-Nazism, and called for the extermination of Jews, and the ethnic cleansing of all non-whites. As soon as Weev became involved, the site took an even darker turn, if that is possible, in which they started calling for the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of women and teenage girls, in addition to committing terrorism against all minorities.

Timeandagain, have documented how the Daily Stormer started promoting the Incel movement in the past.

The incel, or involuntary celibate movement is composed of losers who hate and demean women, because they lack proper hygiene and basic social skills. Most of them are addicted to pornography, so they do not have the courage to approach women without coming across as creepy.

Due to being constantly rejected by normal women, the incels become bitter and lash out at women, often threatening to rape them. Some, like Elliot Rodger, who is often praised on the Daily Stormer,murderedtwo people, all because of his inability to approach women.

In one recentarticle, Andrew Anglin celebrated the stabbing death of a 13 year old Florida cheerleader, Trystin Bailey, in 2021. While the rest of the world reeled back in horror at this gruesome, cowardly murder, Weev and Andrew Anglin celebrated it.

If all of this activity were confined to the Dark Web, that would be one thing. However, the incel movement that Weev and Andrew Anglin started, is beginning to become popular, even among young influencers on the right, who should know better.

The Daily Stormer is promoting and endorsing Donald Trump again, in order to, once again, conflate support for Trump with racism, terrorism, and hatred and violence against women. The exact same people did the exact same thing during the first year of President Trumps term, when they encouraged the attack on Charlottesville.

These incels and Neo-Nazis are not conservatives.

They are not traditional.

They hate Christianity and everything that the West stands for.

They are not part of our culture.

They are not American, and most importantly, they will not replace us.

Continued here:

Alt-Right Incels at Deep State Daily Stormer Site Celebrate Buffalo ...

The Friday edition of PBS and CNN Internationals Amanpour and Company could have selected anyone to profile Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as his name is increasingly floated as a possible 2024 presidential candidate. But, instead of picking DeSantis himself or someone close to him, NPRs Michel Martin chose Lincoln Project bomb thrower Rick Wilson, who labeled both DeSantis and press secretary Christina Pushaw as alt-right culture warriors.

Martin was confused where DeSantiss beliefs come from, considering he has an impressive resume that doesnt suggest right-wing crazy person:

I mean, he has a very, sort of, classic profile for a political figure but. I mean, he went to Yale, played baseball, like another former president, went to Harvard Law School, went into the Navy, served in Congress. He was always a very conservative member of Congress. But how do you think that this, sort of, fixation on this particular basket of issue started?

Wilson claimed the answer lies in Pushaw being some sort of alt-right troll and puppet master, He is surrounded by a small cadre of very ambitious advisers. And the chief among those advisers, who dominates every bit of his thinking now, is a woman named Christina Pushaw who comes from this very alt-right background, who comes from this background where the trolling and the social war stuff is the only thing that matters.

Pushaw has taken DeSantis who was fairly generic and caused him to be transformed into this alt-right trolling culture warrior of the first degree. Wilson then claimed, without any evidence that DeSantiss other advisors resent this, but DeSantis keeps her around because of 2024 ambitions.

It wasnt the first time Wilson accused DeSantis of doing what he has solely because of future plans. Earlier he labeled DeSantis the undisputed king of the culture war and declared that removing Disneys special tax status was equal to seeking to destroy them.

He also mispresented the states anti-Critical Race Theory law, As if you can just, like, lie to them and pretend [slavery and racism] never happened.

Finally, he attacked DeSantis from the left on abortion, which makes one wonder what he was doing when he advised Republican campaigns, And finally, his last act in this sort of culture war trifecta he's doing is he's passing one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country. Restricting abortion at 15 weeks with, you know, the usual -- the usual new play of no exemptions for rape, incest, life of the mother.

In a segment full of burned straw men and personal attacks, Wilson claimed, once again with no evidence, that, He is not doing this because he believes these things as a governor. He's doing it because he and his advisers have decided that this is the path to the 2024 nomination for president.

If Wilson, PBS, and CNN think that not teaching little kids about gender theory is alt-right then they are doing more to mainstream it then anyone actually on the alt-right could ever dream of.

This segment was sponsored by viewers like you.

Amanpour and Company

4/29/2022

11:38 PM ET

MICHEL MARTIN: How would you describe where Ron DeSantis, kind of, sits in the sort of, the ecosystem of our national politics right now?

WILSON: Well, I mean, look, Ron DeSantis is the undisputed king of the culture war in America right now. He is attacking a number of axes in Florida, particularly. Hes hes is accusing Disney of being a company dedicated to pedophile grooming and seeking to destroy them. He is setting up a system in Florida where where people who believe that Critical Race Theory, the imaginary demon of their -- is being taught in classrooms and will allow people to while people to sue teachers and schools that, quote/unquote, you know, "Make people feel uncomfortable for talking about slavery or racism in America." As if you can just, like, lie to them and pretend they never happened.

And finally, his last act in this sort of culture war trifecta he's doing is he's passing one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country. Restricting abortion at 15 weeks with, you know, the usual -- the usual new play of no exemptions for rape, incest, life of the mother. So, all these things that have been happening for Ron DeSantis are built around one central premise. He is not doing this because he believes these things as a governor. He's doing it because he and his advisers have decided that this is the path to the 2024 nomination for president.

They believe the culture war -- correctly, by the way, that the only thing the Republican base cares about now is the culture war. All the other ideological predicates of the past of what, you know, when when folks like me were working inside the party and doing campaigns from from president down to dogcatcher, there was a sort of -- whether you agree with it or not, a sort of coherent ideological idea: limited government, individual liberty, free markets, the world law. Again, maybe they weren't all evenly applied. But the principle of the Republican Party wasn't, let's burn down Walt Disney because we think that they're secretly trying to groom children for a pedophile ring and, you know, under the magic kingdom.

This craziness that has infected the party is very much what Ron DeSantis is running on in '22 and '24. And and very much what motivates the Republican base in this day and age.

MARTIN: What do you think this this this -- came from with Ron DeSantis? I mean, he has a very, sort of, classic profile for a political figure but. I mean, he went to Yale, played baseball

WILSON: Went to Harvard.

MARTIN: -- like another former president, went to Harvard Law School, went into the Navy, served in Congress. He was always a very conservative member of Congress. But how do you think that this, sort of, fixation on this particular basket of issue started?

WILSON: Sure, well, I can tell you why. He is surrounded by a small cadre of very ambitious advisers. And the chief among those advisers, who dominates every bit of his thinking now, is a woman named Christina Pushaw who comes from this very alt-right background, who comes from this background where the trolling and the social war stuff is the only thing that matters.

And and she has become the most prominent adviser around him. She directs every strategic decision inside the administration now. And and as she gained power, he shifted from being that, sort of, traditional Tea Party-ish Republican, who was fairly generic in almost every way. You know, decent accomplishments, decent educational background, you know, limited government constitutional conservative on paper.

Once Pushaw came into his orbit, he transformed into this alt-right trolling culture warrior of the first degree. And it is -- you know, in Tallahassee and among his many advisers, there's been a little grumbling about it but no one no one can take her out of that role because he views her position as being so vital because it's raised him $100 million from small door donors. It's given him, you know, something like 75 hits on Fox News in the last year. It's given him this enormous central prominence as the -- as a person that Trump fears the most who will run against him in '24.

Read the original here:

PBS, Lincoln Project Label DeSantis, Press Secretary 'Alt-Right'

from the failboat-sets-sail-again dept

Laura Loomer still thinks she can sue her way back onto Facebook and Twitter. In support of her argument, she brings arguments that failed in the DC Appeals Court as well as a bill for $124k in legal fees for failing to show that having your account reported is some sort of legally actionable conspiracy involving big tech companies.

For this latest failed effort, she has retained the services of John Pierce, co-founder of a law firm that saw plenty of lawyers jump ship once it became clear Pierce was willing to turn his litigators into laughingstocks by representing Rudy Giuliani and participating in Tulsi Gabbards performative lawsuits.

Laura Loomer has lobbed her latest sueball into the federal court system and her timing could not have been worse. Her lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook, and their founders was filed in the Northern District of California (where most lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook tend to end up) just four days before this same court dismissed Donald Trumps lawsuit [PDF] alleging his banning by Twitter violated his First Amendment rights.

Trump will get a chance to amend his complaint, but despite all the arguments made in an attempt to bypass both the First Amendment rights of Twitter (as well as its Section 230 immunity), the courts opinion suggests a rewritten complaint will meet the same demise.

Plaintiffs main claim is that defendants have censor[ed] plaintiffs Twitter accounts in violation of their right to free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution Plaintiffs are not starting from a position of strength. Twitter is a private company, and the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.

Loomers lawsuit [PDF] isnt any better. In fact, its probably worse. But it is 133 pages long! And (of course), it claims the banning of her social media accounts is the RICO.

The lawsuit wastes most of its pages saying things that are evidence of nothing. It quotes several news reports about social media moderating efforts, pointing out whats already been made clear: its imperfect and it often causes collateral damage. What the 133 pages fails to show how sucking at an impossible job is a conspiracy against Loomer in particular, which is what she needs to support her RICO claims.

The lawsuit begins with the stupidest of opening salvos: direct quotes from Floridas social media law, which was determined to be unconstitutional and blocked by a federal judge last year. It also quotes Justice Clarence Thomas idiotic concurrence in which he made some really dumb statements about the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity. To be sure, these are not winning arguments. A blocked law and a concurrence are not exactly the precedent needed to overturn decades of case law to the contrary.

It doesnt get any better from there. Theres nothing in this lawsuit that supports a conspiracy claim. And whats in it ranges from direct quotes of news articles to unsourced claims thrown in there just because.

For instance, Loomers lawsuit quotes an authoritarians George Soros conspiracy theory as though thats evidence of anything.

On or about May 16, 2020, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn and the Hungarian Government called Defendant Facebooks oversight board not some neutral expert body, but a Soros Oversight Board intended to placate the billionaire activist because three of its four co-chairs include Catalina Botero Marino, a board member of the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, funded by Open Society Foundations Soross flagship NGO and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Prime Minister of Denmark, who is unequivocally and vocally anti- Trump and serves alongside Soros and his son Alexander as trustee of another NGO, and a Columbia University professor Jamal Greene who served as an aide to Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) during Justice Kavanaughs 2018 confirmation Hearings.

Or this claim, which comes with no supporting footnote or citation. Nor does it provide any guesses as to how this information might violate Facebook policy.

Defendant Facebook allows instructions on how to perform back-alley abortions on its platform.

Loomers arguments dont start to coalesce until were almost 90 pages into the suit. Even then, theres nothing to them. According to Loomer, she relied on Mark Zuckerbergs October 2019 statement that he didnt think its right for tech companies to censor politicians in a democracy. This statement was delivered five months after Facebook had permanently banned Loomer. Loomer somehow felt this meant she would have no problems with Facebook as long as she presented herself as a politician in a democracy.

In reliance upon Defendant Facebooks promised access to its networks, Plaintiffs Candidate Loomer and Loomer Campaign raised money and committed significant time and effort in preparation for acting on Defendant Facebooks fraudulent representation of such promised access to its network.

On or about November 11, 2019, Loomer Campaign attempted to set up its official campaign page for Candidate Loomer as a candidate rather than a private citizen.

On November 12, 2019, Defendant Facebook banned the Laura Loomer forCongress page, the official campaign page for Candidate Loomer, from its platform, and subsequently deleted all messages and correspondence with the campaign.

On page 94, the RICO predicates begin. At least Loomer and her lawyer have saved the court the trouble of having to ask for these, but theres still nothing here. The interference with commerce by threats or violence is nothing more than noting that Facebook, Google, and Twitter hold a considerable amount of market share and all deploy terms of service that allow them to remove accounts for nearly any imaginable reason. No threats or violence are listed.

The Interstate and Foreign Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises section lists a bunch of content moderation stuff that happened to other people. Fraud by Wire, Radio, or Television consists mostly of Loomer reciting the law verbatim before suggesting Facebook and Procter & Gamble schemed to deny her use of Facebook or its ad platform. Most of the fraud alluded to traces back to Zuckerberg saying Facebook would allow politicians and political candidates to say whatever they wanted before deciding that the platform would actually moderate these entities.

Theres also something in here about providing material support for terrorism (because terrorists use the internet), which has never been a winning argument in court. And theres some truly hilarious stuff about Advocating Overthrow of Government which includes nothing about the use of social media by Trump supporters to coordinate the raid on the US Capitol building, but does contain a whole lot of handwringing about groups like Abolish ICE and other anti-law enforcement groups.

All of this somehow culminates in Loomer demanding [re-reads Prayer for Relief several times] more than $10 billion in damages. To be fair, the ridiculousness of the damage demand is commensurate with the ridiculousness of the lawsuit. Its litigation word soup that will rally the base but do nothing for Loomer but cost her more money. Whatevers not covered by the First Amendment will be immunized by Section 230. Theres no RICO here because, well, its never RICO. This is stupid, performative bullshit being pushed by a stupid, performative journalist and litigated by a stupid, performative lawyer. A dismissal is all but inevitable.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, conspiracy, content moderation, john pierce, laura loomer, mark zuckerberg, rico, section 230, terms of serviceCompanies: facebook, twitter

Excerpt from:

Alt Right Journalist Whos Lost Every Lawsuit Over Banned Accounts ...

The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial was, from gavel to gavel, a singularly baffling, unedifying and sad spectacle. Now that it has ended with the jury finding in favor of Depp on all questions and in favor of Heard on only one, its clear that the confusion was the point.

Why did Depp, who had already lost a similar case in Britain, insist on going back to court? A public trial, during which allegations of physical, sexual, emotional and substance abuse against him were sure to be repeated, couldnt be counted on to restore his reputation. Heard, his ex-wife, was counting on the opposite: that the world would hear, in detail, about the physical torments that led her to describe herself, in the Washington Post op-ed that led to the suit, as a public figure representing domestic abuse.

Even before the verdict came in, Depp had already won. What had looked to many like a clear-cut case of domestic violence had devolved into a both sides melodrama. The fact that Heards partial victory, which involved not Depps words but those spoken in 2020 by Adam Waldman, his lawyer at the time, can be spun in that direction shows how such ambiguity served Depp all along. As one commenter on The New York Times site put it, Every relationship has its troubles. Life is complicated. Maybe they were both abusive. Who really knows what happened? The convention of courtroom journalism is to make a scruple of indeterminacy. And so we found ourselves in the familiar land of he said/she said.

We should know by now that the symmetry implied by that phrase is an ideological fiction, that women who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have a much harder time being listened to than their assailants. I dont mean that women always tell the truth, that men are always guilty as charged, or that due process isnt the bedrock of justice. But Depp-Heard wasnt a criminal trial; it was a civil action intended to measure the reputational harm each one claimed the other had done. Which means that it rested less on facts than on sympathies.

In that regard, Depp possessed distinct advantages. He isnt a better actor than Heard, but her conduct on the stand was more harshly criticized in no small part because hes a more familiar performer, a bigger star who has dwelled for much longer in the glow of public approbation. He brought with him into the courtroom the well-known characters he has played, a virtual entourage of lovable rogues, misunderstood artists and gonzo rebels. Hes Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow, Hunter S. Thompson, Gilbert Grape.

Weve seen him mischievous and mercurial, but never truly menacing. Hes someone weve watched grow up, from juvenile heartthrob on 21 Jump Street to crusty old salt in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. His offscreen peccadilloes (the drinking, the drugs, the Winona Forever tattoo) have been part of the pop-cultural background noise for much of that time, classified along with the scandals and shenanigans that have been a Hollywood sideshow since the silent era.

In his testimony, Depp copped to some bad stuff, but this too was a play for sympathy, of a piece with the charm and courtliness he was at pains to display. That he came off as a guy unable to control his temper or his appetites was seen, by many of the most vocal social media users, to enhance his credibility, while Heards every tear or gesture was taken to undermine hers. The audience was primed to accept him as flawed, vulnerable, human, and to view her as monstrous.

Because hes a man. Celebrity and masculinity confer mutually reinforcing advantages. Famous men athletes, actors, musicians, politicians get to be that way partly because they represent what other men aspire to be. Defending their prerogatives is a way of protecting, and asserting, our own. We want them to be bad boys, to break the rules and get away with it. Their seigneurial right to sexual gratification is something the rest of us might resent, envy or disapprove of, but we rarely challenge it. These guys are cool. They do what they want, including to women. Anyone who objects is guilty of wokeness, or gender treason, or actual malice.

Of course there are exceptions. In the #MeToo era there are men who have gone to jail, lost their jobs or suffered disgrace because of the way theyve treated women. The fall of certain prominent men Harvey Weinstein, Leslie Moonves, Matt Lauer was often welcomed as a sign that a status quo that sheltered, enabled and celebrated predators, rapists and harassers was at last changing.

A few years later, it seems more likely that they were sacrificed not to end that system of entitlement but rather to preserve it. Almost as soon as the supposed reckoning began there were complaints that it had gone too far, that nuances were being neglected and too-harsh punishments meted out.

This backlash has been folded into a larger discourse about cancel culture, which is often less about actions than words. Cancellation is now synonymous with any criticism that invokes racial insensitivity, sexual misbehavior or controversial opinions. Creeps are treated as martyrs, and every loudmouth is a free-speech warrior. Famous men with lucrative sinecures on cable news, streaming platforms and legacy print publications can proclaim themselves victims.

In the courtroom. A defamation trialinvolving the formerly married actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard just concludedin Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia. Here is what to know about the case:

Ms. Heards op-ed. Mr. Depps suit was filed in response to an op-edMs. Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which she described herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse. Though she did not mention her former husbands name, he and his lawyers have argued that she was clearly referring to their relationship.

The domestic abuse claims. In the 2020 trial, Ms. Heard accused her former husband of assaulting her first in 2013, after they began dating, and detailed other instances in which he slapped her, head-butted her and threw her to the ground. Mr. Depp has since accused herof punching him, kicking him and throwing objects at him.

The verdict. After a six-week trial, the jury found Mr. Depp was defamed by Ms. Heardin her op-ed, but also that she had been defamed by one of his lawyers. Mr. Depp was awarded $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages, but the judge capped the punitive damages total in accordance with legal limits for a total of $10.35 million. The jury awarded Ms. Heard $2 million in damages.

Which is just what Depp did. And while he accused Heard of doing terrible things to him in the course of their relationship and breakup, the lawsuit wasnt about those things. It was about words published under her name, none of which were Johnny Depp. In a sentence the jury found false and malicious, after describing herself as representing domestic abuse Heard wrote that she felt the full force of our cultures wrath for women who speak out. This time she surely has.

Misogyny isnt the subtext of American political rage and social dysfunction; all too often, its the plain text. The links between domestic violence and mass shootings are chilling and well documented, though rarely cited in arguments about policy and prevention. The mobs of social media mobilize against women with special frequency and ferocity, often using the language of righteous grievance. Gamergate, a campaign of harassment directed at women who wrote about video game culture, pretended to be about ethics in journalism. The alt-right in the months before the 2016 election and its post-Trump progeny specialize in targeted misogyny. The TikTok hordes that went after Amber Heard over the past few months took a page from that book.

Depps victory is also theirs. The rage of men whose grievances are inchoate and inexhaustible found expression in a 58-year-old movie stars humiliation of his 36-year-old former wife. I have to wonder: Are men OK? Thats a sincere question. Does the blend of self-pity, vanity, petulance and bombast that Depp displayed on the stand represent how we want to see ourselves or our sons? Thats a rhetorical question. The answer is yes.

Not all men, though. Right? Now that the trial is over, well find new things to be ambiguous about, new venues where indeterminacy can serve as an alibi for the same old cruelty, and for its newer iterations. Johnny Depp is being embraced as a hero in some quarters, but his victory extends even to those who will allow themselves to feel troubled by the outcome of the trial and then move on. Some of us may wince a little when we watch Pirates of the Caribbean or Donnie Brasco, but well probably still watch. Theyre pretty good movies, and its not as if they can be expunged from the collective memory. That hasnt happened to Louis C.K., or Woody Allen, or Michael Jackson, or Mel Gibson, or even Bill Cosby. Some of them have gone to court, some have faced public censure and disgrace, but they all remain woven into the fabric of the culture, and their behavior is too. We may not entirely forget, but we mostly forgive.

Lets at least be clear about what that means. It means that we value the comfort and self-regard of men, especially famous ones, more than we value the safety and dignity of women, even famous ones.

View original post here:

Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Verdict: The Actual Malice of the Trial - The New York Times

EMILY KWONG, HOST:

You're listening to SHORT WAVE...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KWONG: ...From NPR.

So a few weeks ago, I had a few of my closest friends over...

THOMAS LU, BYLINE: Hello.

BERLY MCCOY, BYLINE: Hello. Hi.

LU: Oh, my. Look at - what, what?

MCCOY: I know.

KWONG: ...Aka, some of the members of team SHORT WAVE - you may recognize the voices of Thomas Lu and Berly McCoy - for an experiment in the culinary arts.

REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: I'm kind of jealous I was on the wrong coast, but a culinary arts experiment - are you saying you tried to cook something new?

KWONG: That's right, Regina Barber, and I used all of my creative impulses.

Sliding off this pan like kids down a waterslide into the wok - whee, I'm going to be a dish.

BARBER: (Laughter) I love it.

KWONG: You know, you got to talk to your food. I sent my friends outside, so it was just me cooking with Berly, our cat Zuko...

(SOUNDBITE OF CAT MEOWING)

BARBER: I love the name - go "Fire Nation."

KWONG: ...And possibly the most versatile pan in the kitchen - the wok.

BARBER: Everyone should get one.

KWONG: Seriously, we have a whole episode about woks coming out in a few weeks...

BARBER: Awesome.

KWONG: ...Featuring this guy.

KENJI LOPEZ-ALT: I'm Kenji Lopez-Alt. I am a he/him.

BARBER: Oh right, the cookbook author - "Food Lab."

KWONG: Uh huh.

BARBER: Doesn't he have those videos where he records his cooking from his head?

KWONG: Yeah, something like that.

LOPEZ-ALT: The GoPro was sitting in the kitchen, and I was about to cook something, so I just stuck it on my head, and I was, like, looking at my YouTube channel, and I was like, oh, this one video I have has, like, a million-something views, and it was just making a grilled cheese sandwich with a GoPro on my head.

KWONG: Kenji is all about demystifying the process of cooking. He peppers the pages of his cookbooks with science explainers so people can understand what's happening in, let's say, the wok, and why. So today, for the first time in a while, we have a SHORT WAVE Micro Wave.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BARBER: Ooh, I love our Micro Waves - our mini episodes with a little bit of science, and it's followed by some listener mail.

KWONG: That's right. And today, in this microwave, we're going to break down the science behind a cooking technique called velveting for making the perfect stir-fry, where the meat stays tender and the veggies are crisp.

BARBER: Velveting - it's not just for upholstery.

KWONG: That's right.

BARBER: (Laughter).

KWONG: You're listening to SHORT WAVE - the daily science podcast from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KWONG: So, Regina, what is your relationship to the cooking pan known as the wok?

BARBER: I actually have two woks. One is pretty old and nicely seasoned. I use woks to mostly, like, stir-fry vegetables and make big noodle dishes.

KWONG: Oh, it sounds so good. I have a wok that was salvaged from a thrift shop, and it's perfectly seasoned, too - such a find. We use it for stir-frying, steaming, simmering. But there's this thing that can happen in wok cooking where you're making stir fry, right? And your vegetables are crisping up all nice, but you're simultaneously drying out your meat.

BARBER: Yeah, I actually hate that.

KWONG: Yeah. And I always wondered, like, how, in Chinese restaurants, they kept the meat so tender.

BARBER: Totally.

KWONG: It provides that contrast with the rest of the stir fry. And the answer, my friend, is velveting.

LOPEZ-ALT: The name is called velveting because it gives the meat a very tender, velvety texture because it's already essentially cooked through.

KWONG: So think about restaurant stir-fry. You know how the chicken is kind of slick and, like, shiny?

BARBER: Yeah, it's. It's almost, like, unnaturally smooth.

KWONG: Well, that's because it has gone through this velveting process, where you marinate lean meats like chicken or pork loin or fish in a slurry of cornstarch and pre-cook it.

LOPEZ-ALT: So it actually makes the stir-frying process easier because you don't have to try and cook the meat through. It's ready to accept the sauce because it already has this layer of cornstarch on the outside. So all you have to do, then, is stir-fry your aromatics and vegetables, add your meat, add your sauce, and toss it all together. And it - you know, essentially, you do it to lean meats to give them that very, very sort of tender, velvety texture.

BARBER: It sounds so delicious.

KWONG: Right? What I learned from Kenji is that if you prepare this velveting marinade, it kind of acts like a sealant, protecting the meat from the direct heat of the wok and keeping the juices inside.

LOPEZ-ALT: As the meat cooks, and if it's exuding any juices from the inside, those juices, instead of going out in the pan and sort of steaming away, they get trapped in this layer of egg white and cornstarch.

BARBER: I want to make this now. Tell me more about the velveting marinade. Like, what's in it?

KWONG: OK, so Berly and I made Kenji's velvet chicken with snap peas - very simple. First, we cut up some chicken...

(SOUNDBITE OF KNIFE SLICING)

KWONG: ...And we coated it in a marinade of egg whites...

(SOUNDBITE OF EGG CRACKING)

KWONG: ...Cornstarch...

(SOUNDBITE OF CONTAINER LID OPENING)

KWONG: ...And a water-based liquid.

(SOUNDBITE OF LIQUID BEING POURED)

KWONG: You can use soy sauce or stock or Shaoxing wine.

BARBER: Like rice wine, right?

KWONG: Yeah.

BARBER: OK, so why those ingredients specifically?

KWONG: Well, the water-based liquid provides flavor and color. The egg whites - upon cooking, they create that loose matrix of protein, kind of setting up around the meat and protecting it from the heat. But the real star in this marinade is cornstarch.

BARBER: Love it.

KWONG: Cornstarch is raw starch. It's just extracted from the endosperm of corn, and it has this amazing property.

LOPEZ-ALT: Starch, essentially - like, it swells in water. And so it thickens water, and it turns it into this, you know, sort of, like, gel matrix as it heats.

KWONG: A single grain of starch can swell to 30 times its original size...

BARBER: Wow.

KWONG: ...Upon contact with heat. So when you coat chicken with a marinade based in cornstarch, it prepares the meat to later absorb sauces from the stir-fry and keeps the meat's juices trapped inside during cooking.

BARBER: This is super interesting. I love his phrase gel matrix. So after you marinate the chicken in this, like, cornstarch slurry, like, what's next?

KWONG: All right. Next is kind of a high-wire act of heat and courage. You want the coating to stick evenly, so the next step is basically to precook the meat in boiling water or oil.

BARBER: Ooh.

KWONG: So, yeah, we're putting the chicken that's coated with the cornstarch into hot water. This is called passing through. And in Chinese restaurants, actually, they do it with oil. We're just doing it with water because - a little healthier, maybe a little less scary.

BARBER: Ooh. Wait - what did the meat, like, look like after it was passed through?

MCCOY: I would have never thought to do this. This is...

KWONG: Right?

MCCOY: ...Such a...

KWONG: Doesn't it look like chicken you get at a Chinese restaurant, though - how it's kind of soft and doughy and spongy?

MCCOY: Totally.

KWONG: Then it was time for the wok.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOOD SIZZLING IN WOK)

KWONG: We added the chicken to a bath of delectable lemon ginger sauce...

(SOUNDBITE OF LIPS SMACKING)

KWONG: ...Those snap peas, and the final dish was...

Oh, my gosh, it's so good. Ooh.

BARBER: (Laughter) I'm still jealous.

KWONG: All I'm saying is that, by the power of cornstarch vested in me, I will be velveting my proteins for my wok from here on out.

BARBER: I think I will too.

KWONG: OK.

BARBER: But for now, Em, ready for some listener mail?

KWONG: I'm ready. Let's hear it.

BARBER: Listener Leah Maria Park (ph) writes, (reading) your piece about Chien-Shiung Wu really moved me. She's just so inspiring for me, as an Asian-read girl - which I think she means people assume she is Asian. She goes on to say, (reading) I also relate to Jada because I still don't know a lot about my grandma's life story, who passed when I was 13. I was just not interested in much of it at the time, and now I wish I had asked her. Thanks for bringing the story to us.

KWONG: Hmm. Oh, that's beautiful.

BARBER: It is beautiful.

KWONG: I also lost my grandmother very young, and, yeah, sometimes I think this kind of reporting is definitely, like, in her memory, you know?

BARBER: Yeah.

KWONG: What is the next letter?

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How To Keep Meat Juicy With Science : Short Wave - NPR