Category Archives: Transhuman News

>>385931931but you are wrong, in each of all counts.

fire is the warmth begat from the heavens, the warmth that kept tribes alive in the coldness of winter, the warmth that cooks food and nourishes life. it is this fire that brought forth cooperation, thus community.blood is the life that beats within all man, for each man contains within them the essence of life, and from their wound bleeds out their life. it is this blood that teaches us each man is equal, that death claims us at the end.steel is the hardness begat from our hands, the hardness that gave us tools to fight off the beasts, and put them under our command. it is this steel that grants us power, the ability to shape and alter the world to our desire.

fire begat religion and truth and faithblood begat empathy and equality and virtuesteel begat philosophy and science and literature

a sword can kill a man, but it is man who wields the sword. without man, a sword is useless. a sword is a tool, just like any other. a sword is created by the hands of man, using materials extracted and refined by the hands of man. to live by the sword is to die by the swords, and outside of hobbyists, the sword itself has been rendered obsolete by the weapons created by human industry and human science.

fools such as yourself only see the world with such childish eyes, a limited and simplistic view that knows not of the mechanisms that brought it to fruition. this 'primordial truth' that you claim is but an extension of another, and is built upon truths that you have decried as 'irrelevant'. a single warrior cannot defeat an army, a single gunman cannot kill an entire nation, and they are both nothing if not for civilization.

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/pol/ - Politically Incorrect - Page 4 - 4chan

As noted by MSN, Kung Pao chicken is said to have been named after a "19th-century Qin Dynasty official and governor of Sichuan Province" named Ding Baozhen. The name hails from "gong bao," which means Palace Guardian. Supposedly, the progenitor of kung pao chicken was one of his favorite meals. The origins of the dish, though and of Ding's reverence for it are often up for debate.

NPR states that it's unclear whether Baozhen ate the dish as a child before bringing it to Sichuan, or if he enjoyed it at a local restaurant. TheLos Angeles Times notes that he had a "penchant for stir-fried chicken ... [and] loved to eat it and often served it to guests." It is said that later in Ding's life, his chefs added "handfuls of dried chile and Sichuan pepper and a pleasing chord of sugar and vinegar," which is an approximation of the kung pao chicken of today.

Wu Maozhao a chef and cookbook author spoke with the LA Times, stating, "I think we can assume that the dish was originally based on Guizhou chicken with chiles, and acquired its name later because of Dig's fame." Guizhou chicken is in reference to a "Guizhou folk dish," which is a stew made of chicken, ciba chiles, and a sweet flour sauce.

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The Real Person Who Inspired Kung Pao Chicken - Mashed

Boris Johnsons turbulent tenure as Britains Prime Minister is coming to an end. He has resigned as leader of the ruling Conservative Party but will remain Prime Minister until the party elects a new leader.His resignation was long overdue. Several times over the past three years, as one scandal after another -- some involving Johnsons own misconduct and disregard for ethics or the law -- rocked his government, he should have done the right thing and stepped down. He did not, using lies, hubris and bluster to remain in power. Last week, his government was mired in yet another scandal. It proved to be the last straw and triggered the resignation of nearly 60 members of his government, including top cabinet members. Even as his government disintegrated around him, Johnson fought to hang on, until it was no longer tenable.

Johnson had built up his image as a fun-loving, if bumbling, politically incorrect politician. It got him votes, and in December 2019 he led the Conservative Party to a historic win in parliamentary elections. However, his governance was scandal-ridden and morally bankrupt. It stirred a realisation among Tories that his leadership was undermining the partys credibility. Their quarrels with him were not over big policy matters but on issues of misconduct and impropriety on the part of the Prime Minister. Importantly, in the face of a weak Opposition, it was his own Conservative Party that took corrective action. A month ago, Tory MPs called for a no-trust vote against Johnson. He survived that vote. It took the mass resignation of senior members of his cabinet and government to force him out. Ruling party MPs the world over, including in the biggest democracies, are rarely willing to oust their own leader, preferring to hang on to power and enjoy the spoils as long as they can. They turn a blind eye, and even sycophantically defend and support the leaders misconduct and misgovernance. The Tories, on the other hand, ousted one of their own rather than defend the indefensible. That is in the finest tradition of democracy.

The race for leadership of the Conservative Party, and thus to be Britains next Prime Minister, has begun. Among the candidates are Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, who are of Indian origin, Sajid Javid who is of Pakistani ancestry, and Nadhim Zahawi of Iraqi origin. Britain may not have fully resolved its problems of racism and discrimination, but it is heartening to see that people from its former colonies can aspire -- and perhaps rise -- to the countrys top office.

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Go, Boris: Tories did the right thing - Deccan Herald

YOUNG actor Ella Cruz boldly, if not innocently, stated that history is just like gossip or "tsismis." And social media erupted in derision, with netizens pelting her with insults and unkind words. It did not help that she is coming from a position of playing one of the Marcos children in the upcoming movie "Maid in Malacaang," about the last three days of the Marcoses before they fled to Hawaii in 1986. The public criticism she received ended up being clothed with political color.

Indeed, likening history to gossip is sacrilege to academic historians. Gossip is commonly taken as untrue, even malicious. At a time when historical distortion has become a push-button issue that can easily rile the critics of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who fear an impending spree of rewriting history, Ella Cruz's comment was taken to unimaginable heights of political trash talk.

It is tempting to scold the poor young actor for being clueless not to know that the movie she is appearing in is already being treated as a harbinger of a vigorous cultural production to distort history, and her alluding to history as mere gossip would be seen as politically incorrect. But I would rather dwell on the fact that likening history to gossip is an interesting subject for theoretical reflection. And I, as one whose economic livelihood rests on political theorizing, wouldn't miss such an opportunity.

It is necessary to recuperate the word "tsismis" and redeem it from the dustbin of being treated as something that is universally derogatory. Simply put, it is a generic word that takes life from "kuwentuhan" or storytelling in ordinary spaces and places, either as a pastime for people or as means to cement their social bonds. We call these venues the "umpukan" that happens in street corners while drinking, near artesian wells or riverbanks as women wash their laundry, or during breaks from the daily grind of economic activity. It is in these social interactions that social meaning is produced, and where people communicate their opinions and derive their information. While it is a fertile ground for distortion and disinformation to thrive, it would simply be foolish for any social researcher to dismiss this avenue as a source of data. In fact, indigenous psychology, or "Sikolohiyang Pilipino," values the "umpukan" and the "kuwentuhan" as valid sources of grounded and authentic information.

Reliance on documents has been the conventional source of historical data in Western historiography. There is this unsaid privileging of the text as written, and not said. Yet, there is much to be learned from oral accounts, many of which were fertilized, nurtured and found meaning in the stories told by people in "kuwentuhan" as they communed in the many "umpukan." It is through these avenues that the "kuwentong bayan," or oral narratives and folklore, have emerged.

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The seeming preference for written accounts over oral narratives tells us of a power differential that finds expression in the way information being shared by ordinary people are given lesser legitimacy, and are simply dismissed as unreliable "tsismis" or gossip. It becomes even more pronounced when stories told and written by those who are able to write, because of their wealth and position of power and authority, which include academics, take on the mantle of legitimacy and are now labeled as history, while the stories told by ordinary people are considered as unworthy "tsismis."

Thus, the power to label as lie what is otherwise truth is held by those in power to delegitimize the weak. It becomes a convenient mechanism for the powerful and the well-entrenched to hide their flaws, corruption, illicit affairs and even crimes and to dismiss the circulation of these negative stories as simply pure gossip. It is common for Filipino politicians to label stories about their marital infidelity as mere rumors.

And when it is the strong and powerful who turn lies into truth, it can become part of written history, and may no longer be labeled as gossip. I can only cite the case of Macario Sacay who was written about as a bandit by dominant authority in official documents, even if for all intents and purposes this was later proven to be a lie, and the truth is the one held by ordinary people who celebrated him as a freedom fighter and a hero. Dominant male state power, operating through the official texts of state and church narratives, have delegitimize women seeking knowledge, food and healing by venturing into forests, labeling them as witches and burning them at the stake. Anyone should watch or read the Arthur Miller play "The Crucible," to witness an account of how state and church authority draw on the power of rumor and gossip to their advantage, and propel it as truth.

But in a different sense, the act of telling stories, some of which can be embellished, can in fact be appropriated by the oppressed to get back at their powerful oppressors, by relying on the cloak of anonymity and the displacement of an authoritative source. It is in this context that James Scott wrote about gossip and rumor as effective weapons of the weak. Gossip renders private secrets that would otherwise be hidden into public knowledge, and thus embeds these in public discourse. Aside from acting as a form of social control, gossip also enables the emergence of data that can be useful to social researchers and historians.

Ella Cruz may have pushed sensitive partisan buttons when she likened history to gossip. It may not have been her intention, but she actually did all of us a favor. She forces us to revisit our historical narratives to find out which are those that are actually true but are dismissed by the elites as simply gossip, and which are actually untrue but are celebrated as history because they are convenient to those in power. It is in doing these that we may just clear history of its cobwebs of distortion and lies.

Link:
History and gossip - The Manila Times

Terrorism, like viruses, is everywhere It is at the very heart of this culture which combats it as though every machinery of domination secreted its own counter apparatus, the agent of its own disappearance against that form of almost automatic reversion of its own power, the system can do nothing. And terrorism is the shock wave of its silent reversion. Jean Baudrillard

The horrific murder of a Hindu tailor in Udaipur, Rajasthan, and a chemist in Amaravati, Maharashtra by Muslim zealots has predictably resulted in a disingenuous debate on lines dictated by political expediency, deep-rooted biases and ideologial loyalties.

Since it is premature to speculate on whether these were isolated acts or the culmination of a larger conspiracy also involving foreign elements as the National Investigation Agency is set to look into let us state the politically incorrect obvious: radicalisation, now or later, among at least some sections of Muslim Indians is beyond any shadow of doubt.

Let us also add: if the number of zealots among Muslim Indians attracted to the phantasmagoria of global Islamic Jihad was minuscule, it was because of their countrys secular constitution and the largely salubrious lived experience of being in a plural society despite sporadic aberrations.

The arrival on the scene of belligerent, merciless and mirthless Hindutva in the 1980s launched the long process in which their sense of belonging slowly but steadily began to be replaced by an existential fear. They were suddenly being held accountable for the real and imagined crimes of medieval kings and sultans who bore names like theirs.

An Indian Muslims psyche today, regardless of their adherence or otherwise to the faith of Islam, is a minefield of rage, frustration, helplessness and fear. There is evidence now to surmise that many have begun to shed their fear and confront the reality head on. The elite among the community may be thinking of the first opportunity to migrate to safer shores where their children can build a decent future, while some perhaps secretly wish their forefathers had not believed in the promise of the republics founders that they would be treated as equal citizens.

Let us be clear about one thing: if the constituent assembly had envisaged India as a Hindu Pakistan which it is fast becoming many more among the Muslims of the country, or even most of them, would have taken the pains to cross the then bloody borders. They decided to stay put because they believed in the promise of pluralism, harmony and coexistence as well as a bright future. They genuinely refused to share Jinnahs apprehensions, which now sound so perspicacious even to the staunchly secular among the Muslims.

Their sense of trust in the idea of India must have been further reinforced when Mahatma Gandhi valiantly took three bullets in his frail chest, chanting Hey Ram in defence of their rightful place in the new Republic. To them, Nathuram Godse and Savarkar must have appeared as rare abominations in a sea of sanity. They cannot be faulted for an absence of clairvoyance in not foreseeing the cataclysmic turn the Republic would take a few decades down the line.

We are not at a crossroads now, but at a definitive U-turn which will inexorably push the nation down a spiral of violent metamorphosis in 2025, the centenary of the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Podcast: My Book Was Pro Hindu. Those Who Had Attacked Me Hadnt Read It: Wendy Doniger

Four characteristics of Indias Muslims make their plight even more vulnerable against the backdrop of their everyday humiliation, marginalisation, and stigmatisation.

First, the community does not have even a semblance of an enlightened leadership, either nationally or regionally. The most influential leaders of the community, without exception, belong to what can crudely be described as a class of mealy-mouthed, myopic, and incorrigibly un-modern opportunists clerics and non-clerics. Consider that the Muslim Personal Law Board is now more worried about the absence of an adequately retributive blasphemy law in the land than about the political storm that threatens to engulf the community.

Also worthy of note is the fact that this body, which comprises almost all religious and social organisations working among the Muslims in the country, has not so far bothered to convene a meeting of the communitys leaders from various states to discuss a wise, prudent, and pragmatic way to address the current situation, whereas it will catapult itself into the scene the moment some religiously emotive issue comes to the fore. This body thrived consistently on cheap, medievalist and obscurantist sentiments.

Second, all the so-called secular opposition parties have now concluded that words such as Muslim and minority are avoidable terms to be used only in private conversations. Using these words in public they, perhaps rightly, decided will cause further loss of votes among the Hindus, a major chunk of whom have already got on the Hindutva bandwagon. A leaderless and disjointed community, abandoned by parties and people they thought would stand by them, is a sure recipe for radical imaginations.

Third, every member of the community wakes up from disturbed sleep every morning to a new set of news stories involving them in one way or another pogroms and riots; arrests of people with Muslim names for crimes such as checking facts; shocking stories of videotaped lynchings; venomous pronouncements; calls for genocide or threats of rape by love mongers like Yati Narsinghanand, Bajrang Muni or other vocal patriots; attacks on mosques and worshippers followed by arrest and persecution disguised as prosecution of the attacked; yet another court case claiming a mosque was built on the ruins of a temple; one more city renamed or sought to be renamed because it reeked of Islamic domination in the past; one more Muslim home bulldozed as a retribution for rioting; filthy dirt thrown at the ultimate sanctities of the faith on social media or television debates by the ruling partys national spokespersons; dwindling representation of the community in state assemblies and Parliament; bans in different states on the hijab, aazan and so on; stories with all sorts of prefixes to jihad such as love, Corona, land et al; a meat seller arrested for selling chicken wrapped in newspapers which had pictures of Hindu deities; round-the-clock spewing of hate against the community by a large number of highly popular television channels.

The list is endless and the pain unbearable.

Also read: The Hindutva Ecosystem Has a New Anti-Muslim Narrative. This Time Street Vendors Are the Target

Fourth, and perhaps the most significant of all the reasons that makes the Muslim community vulnerable, is the worry about the future of their children in a country where they are being systematically turned into nobodies.

The Sangh parivar is not going to moderate its views, nor change its ways. You cannot throw away nearly 200 million people into the Arabian sea. The toothless and internally divided opposition is unlikely to get its act together and throw an effective challenge against the ruling dispensation. The Muslim religious, political and social organisations do not show any signs of coming up with a wise course of action within the bounds of the constitution and the law. If they come together as embattled citizens sans religious rhetoric and decide to fight constitutionally and politically, they still have a chance to regain lost ground and assert their equal citizenship, but one sees no such initiative from the communitys existing leadership.

Now, even the judiciary is increasingly appearing to be partisan, at all levels. In such a depressing scenario, the likelihood of radicalisation among some sections of the community cannot be ruled out. We may argue that it will be suicidal that it it will push even more Hindus to Hindutva and that the entire community will have to pay a heavy price for the thoughtless actions of a few, and so on. But the sad truth is that the community is staring at a situation where arguments, logic and debate seem to make no difference.

If you cannot live with dignity, you had better die with dignity is an argument that has the potential to persuade many, as happened in the context of internecine conflicts in several parts of the world, including in our close neighbourhood. Emotive religious rhetoric will serve as fuel to the fire of anger that is already spilling out into the open.

External forces will definitely fish in troubled waters and do all they can to foment a retaliatory course of action from the embattled minority. Many in the Pakistani establishment must be feeling ecstatic now as their founding fathers pet theory is being proven right in India, at long last.

Is it too late for us to make a last ditch attempt at saving the republic and redeeming the idea of India as a plural, democratic, harmonious and composite nation-state? The advent of another Gandhi may be an impossibility, but the likelihood of legions of citizens metamorphosing into little Gandhis may still be a potent counter to the forces of hatred.

Perhaps the time is ripe for the resurfacing of the old Gandhian slogan of Hindu-Muslim unity. Hate can be defeated only by love, but the public space in India right now is emptied of all noble human emotions. The Muslim is the principal whipping boy who is blamed for all the ills that plague the republic. The question that all right-minded Indians should ask themselves is whether or not we can set aside our minor differences and come together to defend the country.

If not, what awaits us is the ignominy of being clubbed together by future historians with ill-fated countries ranging from Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and so on.

Shajahan Madampat is a cultural critic and commentator, writing in English and Malayalam. His book God is neither a Khomeini nor a Mohan Bhagwat: Writing against Zealotry came out in 2020.

The featured image is an illustration by Pariplab Chakraborty. To view more such illustrations, click here.

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Given the State of Indian Muslims Today, the Possibility of Radicalisation Cannot be Ruled Out - The Wire

Election season really does bring the very worst out of everyone and, as if Queer people dont have it hard enough, this election season had to collide with Pride Month, putting us right smack in the middle of the fucking circus. For the Republicans, this means lighting their torches and sharpening their pitchforks so they can chase us around for a while in front of the cameras. Florida Governor and professional Ronald Reagen impersonator Ron DeSantis rejuvenated his fag-bashing blue-collar street cred by attacking the admittedly odd spectacle of family-friendly drag shows as child endangerment and calling on parents who engage in such G-rated Disneyfied camp to be hunted down by Child Protective Services.

Not to be beaten by the Texas GOP, who used the month of Stonewall as an excuse to rev up the engines of their pick-up trucks with a new party platform declaring that homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice and reiterating their opposition to all efforts to validate transgender identity in language so unhinged from reality that it would give early-nineties-era Pat Buchanan a rager. Those self-loathing closet cowboys seem to be just one Austin Pride Parade away from climbing a clocktower and declaring the murder of Matthew Shepard a state holiday to prove their cis-hetero manhood to daddy.

This is all part of a multi-year campaign by the Republican Party to chum wayward Trump populists without having to give up on forever wars and outsourcing. These neocons achieve this by posing like hip, politically incorrect, edgelords and kicking trans kids who play soccer in the teeth before grabbing their jock and flexing for the Proud Boys. But this year those mouth-foaming curb stompers werent to be outdone by a Democratic Party equally desperate to appear relevant in an age when they look increasingly like relics. Maybe Im just a contrarian asshole but the only thing that feels worse than being used as a prop by bigots like Greg Abbot to prove how edgy he is is being used as a prop by bigots like Joe Biden to prove how woke hes suddenly become.

This year, the Democrats celebrated Pride Month by beefing up the police state that failed to take Stonewall from us but somehow hasnt yet failed at winning over the hearts and minds of the GOP-traumatized children of these faggots who whooped their ass back in 69. Kamala Harris got the festivities cooking by revamping Nina Jankowiczs failed Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board as a brand-new rainbow bedazzled White House Task Force to Adress Online Harassment and Abuse.

This new Ministry of Information sets itself apart from the last by specifically condemning gendered disinformation which according to Kamala basically amounts to insulting anyone with a vagina or anyone who should have been born with one who is vanilla enough to be picked from my tribe to represent us on the Death Star. Her memo specifically singles out women and LGBTQ Americans in positions of public or political leadership, and yes that includes cis-gendered serial killers like Hillary Clinton. To top it all off, this whole new woke posse is being co-chaired by none other than those fine drone jockeys at the National Security Council.

Joe Biden followed up this stunt by surrounding himself with a Barney-and-Friends-grade funky bunch of diverse, photogenic, Queer children so he could be filmed with them signing his historic Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Individuals (You forgot non-binary furies, asshole!) This word salad of alphabet soup essentially amounts to the old man instructing various federal bureaucracies to look into GOP legislative hate crimes and wag their fingers at them. Joe ended his little virtue-signaling serenade with a special message to freaks like me who suddenly matter enough for him to acknowledge. Just be you. You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong. Aw, thanks Pop-Pop, but go fuck yourself.

Do we really even want to belong with these people? Republicans have been horsewhipping us like Cossacks for decades and the Democratic cavalry only showed up to save the day with their empty gestures and glad-handing cash grabs when we started showing up on MTV. Joe Biden voted for both DOMA and Dont-Ask-Dont-Tell. In fact, the only Queer-friendly legislation that bastard has ever voted for are the hate crime laws that only empower the Queer-bashing prison system he spent the eighties and nineties juicing up with noted bigots like Bill Clinton and Strom Thurmond. This is the same prison system that gave Kamala Harris her political career with positions like District Attorney of San Francisco and Attorney General of California. Positions that Pride-hag used to hunt down transgender sex workers like dogs and throw them into mens prisons where she openly mocked them for demanding basic human rights.

Oh, but thats all over now, I can hear some suburban lesbian soccer mom cry out from the back of the room, theyve changed, theyve seen the error of their ways! Bullshit they have. In between Pride parades in 2018, then-Senator Kamala Harris sponsored FOSTA/SESTA, the opening salvo in the ongoing bipartisan war on sex workers. The bill essentially labeled the entire industry as a sex-trafficking cartel and violated the shit out of the First Amendment by making platforms like Reddit and Craigslist legally liable for content that aids sex workers by providing them the means to screen dangerous clients and share this information with a network of fellow working girls, keeping them safe and off the streets, away from serial killers and predatory pimps.

The National Center for Transgender Equality has found that 1 in 5 trans adults have participated in sex work. I have friends on the stroll, and they are not friends of Joe Bidens police state. Thats because 9 in 10 transgender sex workers report being harassed, attacked or just straight-up fucking beaten by the cops. But these women and femmes dont live in the suburbs and shop at the GAP. Most of them are Black or Latinx. Many suffer from years of trauma that the medical establishment conveniently labels as mental illness.

In other words, they arent conventionally pretty enough for a photo-op with a woke white supremacist. They dont pass for the kind of diversity Kamala Harris suddenly gives a fuck about. This is why nearly every presidential candidate in the packed 2020 Democratic Primaries backed FOSTA/SESTA, not just Joe and Kamala, but Warren, Gillibrand, Booker, even Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. The only motherfucker with the stones to stand up for my sisters when it counted was a grizzled old breeder named Mike Gravel who died a true ally last year, but he wasnt even invited to the debates. I guess he too was too Queer for inclusion.

The Democratic Partys real allies are the police state and the prison industrial complex, and these allies will always be the mortal enemies of all Queer people because they represent the very worst of the same traditional power structures that the Queer Liberation Movement was built to smash, and this movement was built on shoulders of sex workers of color like Miss Major, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha P. Johnson.

This movement was also built in solidarity with the revolutionaries who showed us the way in the ghettos and jungles of the Third World, from George Jackson and the Vietcong to Mumia Abu Jamal and the Houthi rebels. The kind of people who thugs like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris rape and pillage while they kiss the rings of rampant fag-bashers like the Saudis and the Azov Battalion. The sick truth is that those colonialist con-artists only want to be seen passively giving a fuck about certain Queer people because we help cover up the stink of their crimes, just like the GOP camouflages their devotion to corporate welfare with casual fits of well-publicized bigotry.

Its all a big fucking game, dearest motherfuckers, and this is one genderfuck revolutionary who is tired of being played by it. If Queer means anything anymore, it means rejecting the shackles of mainstream society and the patronage of the Democrats amounts to little more than shackles with rainbows on them. As a community, we should take a stand and throw their thirty pieces of silver back in their fucking face and add a thick loogie to the barrage. As a tribe, Queer people should shout it from the rooftop of every fleabag motel and massage parlor, the Democrats will never be our allies because our allies are the people they step on in the streets on their way to the White House. We dont fucking belong to you, Joe Biden. We belong to no man.

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Democrats Will Never Be Queer Allies - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Jim Chatfield| Special to Akron Beacon Journal

In Colorado last week, my wife and I enjoyed the ponderosa pines, fields of pink pinwheel morning glories interspersed with white, exotic mountain flowers such as shooting stars, old mans bear lichens gracing the trees, mountain roses and lupines.

Plant Lovers' Almanac:More about the bugs and the bees

Back in Ohio, the black raspberries in our yard were ripening, a sad loss to us, almost a reason not to travel, though visiting granddaughter June seals the deal.

Fortunately, we have friendsin Northeast Ohio who harvest those black raspberries. Not red raspberries, most peoples favorites, and wonderful, and not blackberries juicy and sweet, nor blueberries central to the most excellent blueberry buckle coffeecake, but to my taste the best of the early summer berries, the essence of woodlands black raspberries. Enjoy, friends.

Columbines (Aquilegia). When camping in the Colorado mountains, we came upon one of the most spectacular wildflowers you will ever see, the Rocky Mountain columbine (Aquilegia caerules), a lavender and white creation with big open blossoms with long backward-oriented nectar-bearing spurs.

There are over 60 species of columbines, members of the buttercup family, including a reddish version, Aquilegia canadensis, often found in Ohio woodlands. Hummingbirds love the nectar and a number of noctuid moths feed on columbines. Columbine leafminer flies and sawflies in turn love to feed on columbines. Plant garden columbine hybrids and species in partial shade, colors come in yellows, whites, blues and purples, reds and lavenders.

The Rocky Mountain columbinewas voted the favorite flower of schoolchildren there in the 1890s and was subsequently named the state wildflower of Colorado. It is something to see, but not to eat; columbines contain a number of toxic substances, especially in the roots and seeds.

Aspens and cottonwood (Populus spp.). Aspens are found in Ohio; in woodlands and come down to Secrest Arboretum for examples, and they are a delight due to their ever quaking, quivering nature, twittering in the wind due to the architecture of their leaves.

The flat leaf blade is at right angles to the leaf stalk (petiole) making the leaf particularly subject to movement with the slightest breeze. Cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) are considered somewhat coarse: taller, with larger leaves, stark trunks and major branches, and of course, all that cottonwood fluff, a mass of seeds, fruit capsules and cottony fibers.

Nevertheless, cottonwoods and all of the aspen species are closely related, in the same genus Populus. Dont believe me? When out west with abundant aspen groves, note the fluff not just on cottonwoods, but also on their aspen cousins.

Apple origins. No, not Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak: I speak of an apple a day.

It all started in the Tian Shan region of Kazakhstan, the heavenly mountains separating China and Central Asia. It is generally accepted now from genetic evidence that the progenitor of our domesticated apples is Malus sieversii. This tale is told well in one short chapter in the book Eating to Extinction: The Worlds Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them (2021) by Dan Saladino. Apples were spread by the land bridge to the Americas and by trade to Europe.

Saladino on those Tian Shan apples: Each tree is unique and so is the fruit; some apples are the size of tennis balls, others as small as cherries. Some are eye-piercingly lime green, others soft pastel pinks and purples. One might be sweet and honeyed; another spicy with hits of aniseed or licorice; others so mouth-puckeringly sharp and astringent youll want to spit them straight out.

As Saladino notes, apples were well known in the Roman Empire and mythically the goddess Pomona gave a golden apple to Hera upon her marriage to Zeus. Pomona is the Latin name for orchard fruit.

As I read this, a golden light dawned: As a crab apple lover, I know that apples are termed pome fruits,as fleshy fruits without a central stone; with a number of seeds in a separate chamber at the center of the fruit,so are other members of the rose family such as pear, quince, medlar, hawthornand mountain ash. But Pom-ona! How cool.

Then our American John Chapman/Johnny Appleseed saga. Though grafting desired apple types to a separate rootstock was known, Chapman traveled into Ohio and elsewhere with canoes full of pips, orseeds. Seeds result in variability, though, not reliably the best apples.

Why, Johnny, why? It was because he was a follower of the Swedenborgian religious sect, started by Emanuel Swedenborg after the first of his revelations in 1750. Chapman followed thebelief that plants suffer and so making those grafting cuts was not right. Ironically, later in life he became a vegetarian: Suffering was one thing, eating plants was apparently sacramentally sound.

Saladino details the history of deducing specifically where apples developed: It was clarified partly through the work of Nikolai Ivanovich Vasilov, the Russian geneticist who studied the worldwide center of origin of many crop species, including those Tian Shan apples. Saladinos essay refreshed my memory of learning of Vasilovs storied career while in graduate school.

Vasilov was lauded worldwide, but is a cautionary tale of the politicization of science. He ran afoul in the 1930s and early 1940s of Joseph Stalin and his loyal Trofim Lysenko, who declared genetics to be politically incorrect and favored the Lamarkian theory of acquired characteristics,train those plants to be better, dovetailing with revolutionary Soviet propaganda of the perfectability of nature. For his adherence to actual truth, Vasilov was sentenced to the gulags in 1941, and died there in 1943. Logic and science, and Vasilov, were victimized by propaganda! Truth matters!

Finally, it is interesting to note the three ways that apples multiply. From seeds come diversity, a great boon to developing novel and wonderful new varieties; there are as manytypes as there are apple seeds, most notably found in that now endangered Tian Shan area of Kazakhstan. Then there is grafting, asexual propagation involving taking cuttings that are essentially clones of each other, each scion identical to the next. Third, there is hybridization: sexual reproduction of different parents followed by cloning the results that are desirable (flavor, storability, color). Fuji and gala are results of such crosses.

In the end, it is this combination of sexual and asexual reproduction, and of nature and nurture, that mutually serve our horticultural and culinary interests. As Rachel Carson noted in Silent Spring,Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Both good and bad.

Jim Chatfieldis a horticulture educator and professor emeritus at Ohio State University Extension. If you have questions about caring for your garden and other topics, write to chatfield.1@osu.edu or call 330-466-0270. Please include your phone number if you write.

Plant Lovers' Almanac: A bit about bad bugs, blight and blooms

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A summer ode to black raspberries and columbines - Akron Beacon Journal

Chris Pratt stars in The Terminal List, which is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video, and The Daily Beast is freaking out about the military thrillers politically incorrect plot and villains, going so far as to call it an unhinged Right-wing revenge fantasy.

Source: The Terminal List, Amazon

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The streaming series is based on Navy veteran Jack Carrs novel of the same name. As I noted a few weeks ago, if the series stays true to the novel, then certain people might not be happy about it.

Based on the early reviews of it, it looks like the series may indeed remain relatively faithful to the book. The best example of this so far is a June 29 review from The Daily Beast that proclaimed, Chris Pratts The Terminal List Is an Unhinged Right-Wing Revenge Fantasy.

Source: Terminal List trailer, Amazon

Whenever you read a headline that amusingly frantic, you can only hope that what follows is filled with as much frantic panic. Thankfully, the review does not disappoint.

The first line is a doozy that sets the tone. The Terminal List features Chris Pratt going vengefully homicidal due, in part, to a serious mental condition in Amazons latest, which follows in the tradition of Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher by delivering gung-ho macho action-drama tailor-made for fortysomething Call of Duty players.

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And the next line that finishes out the opening paragraph is just as good. Still, if this adaptation of Jack Carrs novel mostly fits itself into a particular dad-entertainment streaming niche, it also, to a large extent, comes off as a wet dream for militia-minded anti-establishment kooks, replete with a Pratt performance as a Navy SEAL who responds to injustice by murdering the guilty with extreme prejudice.

Look at all those buzzwords and phrases macho, fortysomething Call of Duty players, and dad-entertainment. And, of course, the best one of all wet dream for militia-minded anti-establishment kooks.

Source: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Disney

This is The Daily Beast at its very worst/best. Its possible to pick out something hysterical in nearly every paragraph, but the last contains one of the best gems.

The Terminal Lists decision to posit Reeces reign of terror as virtuous is ultimately its defining characteristic, affording a window onto a conservative-America mindset that views the government as inherently corrupt (and anti-soldier), and lone-wolf military men as the only figures capable of making the world a more honorable place.

Ive no idea how accurately that sums up the series, but it sure does offer an insight into the authors mindset. So if you want a chuckle, go read the whole thing.

Source: The Terminal List Trailer

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Other media outlets have also given The Terminal List poor reviews. They havent come close to Daily Beast-level hysteria, but there are lines suggesting that they also arent happy with the series veering away from the Leftist narrative.

For instance, on June 29, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that, Each episode could have been trimmed to 15 minutes with no loss of nuance or characterization, and I suspect it would have made the series target demo tuning in for patriotically waving flags, substance-free military jargon and the very rare tautly edited suspense set-piece just as happy.

Source: The Terminal List. Amazon Prime Video 2022.

And on June 30, Variety opined, Reeces story is baleful, and its made clear to us that hes fighting the establishment as much as hes fighting for revenge, but if this series were an op to desensitize us against military violence, it couldnt have been made more effectively.

Still, not every review has been so negative. Collider gave it a decent review while also providing legitimate critiques of it.Regardless of whether the series is good or bad, The Daily Beast decrying it as an unhinged right-wing revenge fantasy tells us that The Terminal List isnt going to please the woke. So if nothing else, it at least has that going for it. And that might be enough to get viewers to flock to it.

NEXT: Variety: Netflixs Interceptor Takes On Right Wing Conspiracy Theories

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The Daily Beast Freaks Out Over The Terminal List, Calls It An "Unhinged Right-Wing Revenge Fantasy" - Bounding Into Comics

With the White House and leading Democrats promising to defy a recent Supreme Court decision overturning lawless precedents on abortion, Americans are wondering about our future. Will we see open confrontations between different branches of government? Between the states and the feds? Where will all this lead? The Streams John Zmirak interviewed film-maker Jason Jones, who recently released Divided Hearts of America, which explores our national schism on the Life issue.

John Zmirak: The abortion industry and its supporters arent acting like docile pro-lifers back in 1973 and 1992, when Supreme Court decisions went against us. Pro-choicers arent vowing to win the next presidential election, or draft an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. No, theyre talking like Southern secessionists after Lincoln got elected without a single Southern electoral vote.

Biden has condemned the Supreme Court, a co-equal branch of government, as out of control. His administration is speaking of defying state laws by aborting babies on military bases. Clearly, the pro-choicers arent making an argument about the Constitution, or even morality. Theyre just threatening violent force, and relying on raw power. How do we respond as pro-lifers?

Jason Jones: The partisans of abortion, like the partisans of slavery and segregation, have more in common than finding their political home in the Democrat party. The advocates of abortion, slavery and segregation are of one mind in their rejection of our founding principle, embedded in the Deceleration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We shouldnt be surprised to see abortion advocates burn down churches, since they burned down churches in the wake of progress made by the civil rights movement. So how can we respond to the terrorism ignited by our progress toward a humane society? We respond the way the Rev. King responded. We orient our activism to the Deceleration Principle, to the inviolable dignity of the human person. We respect the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of our states and continue to fight for positive laws that conform to the transcendent moral order.

You helped make a recent film, Divided Hearts of America, on the abortion issue, starring Benjamin Watson. Tell us about the film.

In January 2019, sexual predator and former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law denying the child in the womb protection from abortion up to the very moment of birth. Cuomo celebrated this atrocity by turning One World Trade Center pink. Seeing the very space above the earth where terrorists killed 2,977 Americans turned into a monument to the culture of death was appalling. I was chomping at the bit to respond.

The following day, I received a call from producers Chad Bonham and Betsy Kennedy-Ryzewicz, who pitched me the idea of producing a documentary investigating how New York and other states became so extreme on abortion. Of course, I jumped at the chance to serve as a producer. We understood from the beginning we needed a courageous, levelheaded, and respected person on both sides of the debate to serve as our documentarian.

Benjamin Watson was our first and only choice. I assumed he would pass. Starring in a documentary that straddles the third rail of American politics seems imprudent. There is nothing to gain personally and potentially a lot to lose especially in the era of cancel culture. The four of us jumped on a call, pitched Benjamin Watson, and to our surprise, he enthusiastically agreed.

Within months we were in production. COVID thwarted our plans for a theatrical release, but in the fall of 2020, we were on pay-per-view. Now we are streaming on FOX Nation, on Amazon, and on DVD and Blu-ray.

The film is structured around a series of more than 30 interviews with Americans holding opinions from all over the political and social spectrum. Most notably, the film includes interviews with Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and presidential candidate and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. We made this film to unite our country in a time of extradentary division. In the end, we could only be united in a post-Roe America. As our movie exemplifies, abortion is at the heart of our division because it denies our principle of unity the inviolable dignity of the human person.

Divided Hearts highlights the vast gap in moral reasoning between pro-abortion activists and the rest of us. They favor absolute, slave-like ownership rights of the mother over the fetus, right up through birth. Abortion through all nine months, which is illegal in most of the world except China, North Korea, and Canada. How does that divide them from mainstream opinion in America? How long will the voters in blue states support politicians with views this extreme?

There are a few big surprises for the Deep state, and our depraved establishment. One of those surprises will be the eruption of pro-life Democrats across the country. As the abortion debate moves to the states, the abortion lobby will find it impossible to stomp out this wildfire. There are 500,000 elected offices in the United States and around 7,000 state representatives. Whereas the abortion industry found it easy to control the federal offices, they will find it impossible to wield veto authority over state offices. Look out; here come the pro-life Democrats. Not so surprising, we will see the extinction of abortion industry hucksters in the GOP. And half-stepping straw soldiers like Mitt Romney will be swept into the dustbin of history.

Do you think the fall of falsified decisions like Roe and Casey will end up splitting the country? Should we in red states just go our own way? Let those in blues states trip through their rubble-strewn streets, and freeze and starve in the dark? Or can you see another scenario?

The end of Roe will mark the beginning of a unified America. Sadly, in the short run we will see the blue states become older, poorer, more violent, horrible places to live. The red states will become younger, wealthier, freer beautiful places to live. This experiment of states grounded in a respect for human dignity side by side with states grounded in the will to power will produces a striking contrast. In the long run we will see our nation reunified around renewed appreciation for the vision of the human person embedded in our founding documents.

What would an America reunited on this issue look like? Wont pro-choicers continue to bitterly resist, as the Klan and Jim Crow Democrats resisted the outcome of the Civil War for 100 years?

In our lifetime, advocates for abortion will become as hard to find as advocates of segregation. The Supreme Court open the door to a culture of life and young people will sprint through it, running from the ideologies of nihilism and death that have been assaulting them since they escaped Planned Parenthood at birth. We will weather several years of tantrums from those who worship the gods of the last age but their gods are dying and soon they too will pass to their reward.

What messages do pro-lifers need to mobilize and transmit now, in this polarized moment?

The fall of Roe is an essential yet modest step toward a culture of life. We need to order our lives to serve the vulnerable. We must continue to push for laws that correspond to the true nature of the human person. We must unravel the faulty logic of Roe that has poisoneed everything from our foster care system to our foreign policy. It is not enough for our posterity to be born. We must work for them to be born into a beautiful, humane, and just world.

Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, author, activist and human rights worker. Subscribe to his podcast, The Jason Jones Show.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. Together, Jones and Zmirak wroteThe Race to Save Our Century,and God, Guns, and the Government.

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Will Abortion Tear America in Two? - The Stream

Joe Rogan claimed that despite numerous opportunities to interview former President Donald Trump, he turned them down because he didn't want to help the ex-POTUS. Rogan told Lex Fridman, a computer scientist, on 'The Lex Fridman Podcast' on Monday, July 4, "I'm not a Trump supporter in any way, shape, or form. I've had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I've said no every time. I don't want to help him. I'm not interested in helping him."

During a larger discussion about the polarisation of US politics, Rogan drew his line about Trump. When considering the history of this country's split, he predicted that the Trump period will be one of the weirder times. He went on to say, The Trump era is also going to be one of the weirder times. When people look back historically on the division in this country, hes such a polarizing figure that so many people felt like they could abandon their own ethics and morals, and principles just to attack him and anybody who supports him because he is an existential threat to democracy itself.

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Rogan also anticipated that Trump, 76, would make another bid for the presidency, adding that he would be running against a dead man' referring to Biden, who's 79. Rogan said, Hes running against a dead man, you know? I mean, Biden shakes hands with people that arent even there when he gets off stage. I think hes seeing ghosts. Did you see him on Jimmy Kimmel the other day? He was just rambling" Fridman meanwhile, suggested that Rogan frequently hosted contentious personalities, such as the musician Kanye West, and that Rogan would eventually reconsider inviting Trump. However, Rogan drew a contrast, stating that West is an artist and that he's doing well or not doing well doesn't change the course of our country to which Fridman asked, "Do you really bear the responsibility of the course of our country based on a conversation?"

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Rogan replied, "I think you can revitalize and rehabilitate someone's image in a way that is pretty shocking." Fridman pushed Rogan to reconsider, adding that he believed Rogan could get Trump to reveal more information. But Rogan said that Trump didn't do drugs which he said helped some of his other podcast guests open up during their conversations and that he'd need to do significant research to prepare to interview Trump. "I don't know if he would genuinely be there. I think he would be putting on a performance, he remarked.

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Im not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form. Ive had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once Ive said no, every time."https://t.co/8SeV9bxsjt

According to Variety, despite objections from those on the left who disapprove of the politically incorrect things he has made, Rogan's show, The Joe Rogan Experience, is one of the most well-known and successful podcasts in broadcasting history. Trump supported Rogan in February after a video compilation of Rogan uttering a racial slur went viral, despite the fact that Rogan claimed he didn't support Trump. Trump said at the time that Rogan shouldn't have to keep apologizing to his critics. Additionally, Rogan's most recent statements appear to be at odds with those he made in 2020 when he declared that he would rather vote for Trump than Joe Biden, despite the fact that Rogan had previously supported Bernie Sanders and advocated a number of liberal political positions.

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Joe Rogan refuses to host Trump on his podcast: 'I'm NOT interested in helping him' - MEAWW