3. I bought some of those trick playing cards. If you fan the cards one way, they're all different, but you can turn the deck the other way and see the same card repeatedly because all those cards were cut a couple mm different from the others.

AI:

The 1956 Republican platform, supporting Dwight D. Eisenhower's re-election, promoted a "modern Republicanism." It combined a commitment to fiscal conservatism and a balanced budget with the preservation of New Deal social welfare programs, infrastructure investment, and strong anti-communism foreign policy.

Domestic Policy and Labor
Social Welfare: Pledged to extend and refine the Social Security system and protect worker benefit plans.
Labor Rights: Supported raising and extending the minimum wage, improving unemployment benefits, and revising the Taft-Hartley labor law to improve conditions for unions.
Civil Rights & Equality: Endorsed equal pay for equal work regardless of sex and expressed support for civil rights protections.
Education & Health: Promised federal assistance for school construction to fix classroom shortages and supported federal health reinsurance programs.

Economy and Infrastructure
Fiscal Management: Emphasized balancing the federal budget alongside realistic tax cuts targeted at small businesses and individual taxpayers.
Agriculture: Acknowledged federal support for farm pricing and stabilization, aiming to balance agricultural abundance with market stability.
Infrastructure: Championed large public works, including the expansion of the Interstate Highway System and cooperative resource development.

Current republicans are the worst.
But they've always been the worst.

#16 | Posted by eberly at

Nope.

Let's truly MAGA by returning the GOP to their 1956 national platform.

Eb: MAGA is an existential threat to this nation in a way that Nixon, Reagan, and their ilk never were, except for maybe Grover Norquist in the later Reagan years (another closeted GOP operative; imagine that).

I can only imagine that Romney is loved by his family, not his constituents, and certainly not Democrats. He wasn't even as popular as his VP pick, Eddie Munster. Romney is admired for his attempt at healthcare reform. In some respects he might be as crazy as RFK Jr., I don't know.

McCain was worthy of respect for what he endured, ended up worthy of great respect after some political missteps (the Palin thing was his own johnson talking). Do people like him? He was more human than Romney, but that's a low bar. And he could be honest when he talked, which was refreshing.

Crazy on top of stupid wrapped in arrogant and squeezed into a fetid tub of orange sludge is not a good look.

I tell people about that pizzeria as it was always my last stop before boarding to go home. A little kiosk right in the circle before the banks of double doors.

Unique among pizzerias (I tried them throughout three boroughs for 17 years), they would slightly salt their crust, which you could taste. Just ever so different from the others.

Grape drink. Always at Nathan's at Coney Island. More good mustard.

Excellent mustard, you are correct.

When food trucks first started appearing on NYC streets, my brother was working two (publishing!) jobs in Manhattan while living on Staten Island and would find himself with a few hours between shifts. Back in simpler decades, he would ask a food truck vendor if he could crash in the truck for a few hours.

What happens at the One Book Bookstore?

without prior written inquiry and explicit authorization from the copyright holder.

A statement being added to copyright pages.

The Content of this book is expressly prohibited from being used for:
Training artificial intelligence systems,
Training machine learning models,
Data mining operations,
Automated content generation systems,
Large language model development,
Any form of algorithmic learning or pattern recognition without prior

But people will still cheat.

Back in my youth, I would haunt the huge book warehouses on Fourth Avenue down in the teens, where you'd be looking at one shelf of books, with two other shelves behind it, for acres up down and sideways. Probably all Starbucks and fashion stores and NYU now.

Self-publishing has evolved into quite something from 25 years ago. Now it is--or can be--entirely legitimate and with better attention to detail than royalty publishers have time to provide. And the secret is that even if you publish with a royalty publisher, you're still doing your own marketing (book tours, etc.), unless you happen to come with a PR agency in tow.

And I'm amazed at the number of people who just want desperately to be "authors." I've worked for two mainline Protestant pastors who said they wanted "author" on their tombstone. Didn't mention thanks to the Big Guy.

I worked for a company out of North Carolina last century, as you say, called Pentland Press, a UK subsidiary. Pure vanity press, with less and less attention to content, although I think they were more legit in the UK.

Right before I moved to the VA/TN state line, I worked on a book that was a woman taking her meager divorce settlement to publish a book containing all the alleged scandals, faults, and shortcomings (physical and psychological) related to her former spouse, in addition to all other violations of theology and geometry (Toole, Dunces) that he may have committed. The book was rank and vile by any measure.

The lady author's name was Goforth, as I came to find out was a not-uncommon name where I moved to, and I shuddered the first time in NE Tennessee, where the author lived, to see a Goforth mailbox.

I thought they'd folded, but a few years later I received another call from Pentland with a more legitimate project. I mentioned my previous experience and told them to go pluck that book of the shelves and scroll through it. They were unfamiliar with the title.

The response I received was one of horror.

Damn, that probably means my S&H green stamps are worthless now too. (preinternet rewards system)

I wonder how many folks here got their degrees because they could draw Binky? (distance learning)

Walking back was a poor way of saying it.
#11 | Posted by BellRinger

Just admit that, on some level, words mean nothing to you, nor being held accountable for them.

I haven't heard her name for a long time, and I feel worse hearing it now.

Just her name. What an irritating human.

I think she reminds me of too much of a wing of my family. The irritating ones.

+++

I've seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers once. My sole memory is a closing shot of a zombie running a floor waxer. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Kinda like the DR sometimes.

Same type of dreck that goes through people's medicine cabinets at parties.

Oops. My bad. The Rodman factor.

She has been said to be the driving force behind the development of her brother's cult of personality, modeled after that of their grandfather, Kim Il Sung. Thae Yong-ho, a North Korean defector and former diplomat, said in 2017 that Kim Yo Jong organized all major public events in North Korea. She was said to have encouraged her brother to present an image of a "man of the people" with, for example, rides on fairground attractions and his friendship with basketball star Dennis Rodman.

his "very good relationship" with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

I'd like to put Trump in negotiations with Kim's sister, about whom there is not even agreement on her birthyear.

Long after the initial infection, the child becomes clumsy and forgetful, then experiences headaches, fevers and seizures, loses motor control and finally becomes bedridden and dies.

Other than that, Mom, how was the birthday party?

Doesn't discuss manuscripts that came in, were never published, and maybe the authors received a visit or two during the mid-60s.

Well, Amazon started out in the business of trying to put booksellers out of business. Might as well cut out the warehousing now that people are the product.

For books that will end up being rare, authors can always publish their diatribe on the "Create Space Publishing Platform" or whatever they call it now.

I cannot imagine vanity publishing now where no human is involved.

Then again, there was the Vantage Press of NYC, which I'd always heard was a CIA front for bizarre manifestos, but AI has been programmed to ensure me I am wrong about that.

There is no evidence that Vantage Press was a CIA outlet or a front for intelligence operations. Instead, it operated as a traditional "vanity press" -- a commercial publishing house where authors paid the company out of pocket to edit, print, and bind their books.

More: Declassified CIA reading room archives contain copies or reviews of books printed by various independent publishers, including Vantage Press, simply because those books touched on historical or geopolitical topics relevant to intelligence history.

Uh-huh.

It's the New World Order.

1. Everybody else.
2. The United States.

"If he's used it elsewhere."
"evangelical"

damn

Pointyhead.

Sorry, wrong Caputo. I'm always messing up the name. John Caputo.

Using "White Christian Nationalist" as a catch-all label is like claiming that two or three initials can adequately define an entire segment of America.
As if people who are Nationalist are all white or all Christian.

BillJ

"White Christian Nationalist" is not a catch-all label. It describes people who are white and evengelical/fundamentalist Christian and nationalist in the way that they want to impose their lifestyle upon everyone else. Hardly a free approach to the USA, speaking of three initials that used to work.

What do you think of the Seven Mountain Mandate, Bill? Thumbs up or down?

169. Okay, but [Pascal's wager is] not faith.

To me it is. It's faith that the higher power that seems to be hardwired into human consciousness and that is something I discount is a correct belief, for me. I can't see that absence but I feel it and believe it, which is faith, no?

And it's an abdication of moral responsibility. It's the same mentality as the only reason I don't murder people is murderers go to hell. It's just packaged better.

Nonsense. It's complete acceptance of moral responsibility, with the knowledge that might not mean squat to anyone ever anywhere. It's doing the right thing for no other reason at all. I've referred to my problems over the last year. My Millennials had to tell me, often and repeatedly, "Dad, this isn't the world you grew up in. Things don't always work out for everyone who do things the right way. And justice isn't on your side anymore, even though you're white and older."

My take on faith, religious belief, what have you: If it gets you through the day and it doesn't harm anyone else, more power to ya.

Of course.

My comment on panentheism was a bit off base. I just finished a book by US philosopher Peter Caputo, and he uses a phrase that I'd like to repeat here, but if he's not used it elsewhere, I'm screwed. As close as I can get:

The universe is a movie that runs without a reason. I'll add, and not necessarily in one direction.