The Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor, D. 821, was written by Franz Schubert in Vienna in November 1824. The sonata is the only substantial composition extant today for the arpeggione (which was essentially a bowed guitar). The sonata was composed in November 1824, about a month after Schubert had returned to Vienna from his second stay in Zseliz. It has been adapted to other string instruments, especially the cello.
Martha Argerich – on piano
Mischa Maisky on cello
Enjoy, Jack
Jack, thanks. so that was music for the “ bowed guitar” played like a cello? here’s that nutty Mozart Group’s music on a cello (and violins) played Un-bowed like a guitar:
a “happy birthday” observance from the guardian
The weekend is 100 years old – but have ‘skiveday Fridays’ and hybrid working ruined it for everyone?
In 1926, Henry Ford gave his employees both Saturdays and Sundays off – and the two-day chunk of time to party, pray or simply do nothing was born. Now it’s changed beyond recognition
For 11 years, from 1929 to 1940, the Soviet Union did not have weekends. Instead, to increase productivity citizens were allocated a day off in every seven at random. With 80% of the population at work on any given day, factories never had to power down.
A letter from a disgruntled worker to Pravda newspaper, published soon after the implementation of this new working calendar, outlined the problems: “What is there for us to do at home if our wives are in the factory, our children at school, and nobody can visit us?” the letter-writer asked. “It is no holiday if you have to have it alone.” Parents found themselves at home while their children were at school, or with kids unsupervised while they were on shift. With no shared day off, extended family gatherings became impossible. The workforce became demoralised and listless, the projected spike in productivity never materialised, and the policy was first modified, then abandoned altogether.
[…]
Remarkably, the concept of the weekend as we know it is only 100 years old. In 1926, Henry Ford changed the shape of the week, announcing that the workers at his factories would now do five eight-hour days instead of six, with no cut in pay. Ford did not invent the weekend – the idea had been bubbling under for a century, in campaigns by trade unions, religious groups and progressive employers – but by putting his considerable industrial weight behind it, the two-day chunk of freedom was born.
“It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege,” Ford wrote in his company’s Ford News in October 1926. Ford’s innovation was in part a response to his earlier invention: the assembly line, which had increased productivity but exhausted workers, with absenteeism up to 10% in factories; in his article he did not disguise that there was self-interest involved. “People who have more leisure require more transportation in vehicles,” he continued. The new fashion for day trips was an effective marketing device to sell cars. Meanwhile, his factories maintained a steady level of productivity despite the reduced hours. In 1938, faced with rising unemployment levels in the Great Depression, the five-day week was officially adopted across the US.
[…]
Ever since we invented the weekend, we have been anxiously taking its pulse. The Victorians worried that workers would waste their precious leisure days drinking. Mid-century Britain feared television was keeping families indoors. Today’s concern is that we spend Saturday scrolling Instagram and Sunday answering emails. The rituals change; the suspicion that the weekend is being ruined remains. Yet the weekend survives, perhaps because it has never demanded perfection. The lie-in and the late night are equally valid forms of resistance. Its holiest rites – the greasy fry-up, the football terrace, Saturday-night shiny-floor television – are gloriously unrefined. The weekend is where a good time still trumps good taste.
The Soviets discovered that a day off is not much use unless other people are off, too; Ford understood that workers needed time in which to become themselves again, even if he hoped they would spend it buying cars. At 100, the two-day weekend is fraying at the edges, leaking into Friday and nibbled away by Sunday night emails. The weekend will keep changing, because work keeps changing. But it will still always be the best thing work ever invented.
GOOD MORNING TRAILMIXERS ☕
— Silicon Tomato Reviews The News (Gemini Pro}
Jack
Thank you for another great Sunday musical education.
“Worker productivity”
I vaguely remember an experiment in the psychology of worker productivity where the workers were observed and records kept of productivity levels
So it went, as best I can remember, they made some improvements in worker conditions and productivity rose. So they made more improvements and productivity rose again. 3rd time, same productivity result. Then somebody had the idea, “What happens if we make conditions somehow WORSE?” So they did—and productivity still rose. They made things worse again and found another rise in productivity. So anyway, again as best as I can remember, it turned out that “doing things” either for or to the workers would increase productivity.
Somehow the very act of focusing on the workers pro or con increased productivity.
Or something like that.
Probably a BF Skinner or John B Watson kind of deal.
I shall pursue the meager traces I’ve managed to retain of said experiment from some class in psychology long ago.
I also remember working in the bindery of a large printing company in Nashville where I distinctly had the feeling of the workers being lab rats in a grand experiment of some kind.
some guy just called in the Washington Journal on C-SPAN making islamophobic statements and it certainly seemed like he was also making menacing statements concerning something happening on Tuesday in Michigan or Dearborn specifically (he said “everybody is gonna find out come Tuesday”)
The host asked him what he was talking about and the caller said “you follow social media you know what I’m talking about”
I don’t follow social media, what was he talking about?
taking a wild guess that it’s some kind of white supremacist rally?
Maybe he missed the primary, Anon, and thinks they’re this tuesday
Sturg, i remember something like that called Hawthorne factor — productivity rises even when your’e mean to them. Always sounded dubious to me
Are we sure bowed guitar wasn’t just one left out in the rain? Sounds wonderful. Thanks Jack.
Don’t forget, you can binge all 66 Sunday Serendipity videos anytime at trailmix.cc/sunday
Tanks, Jack…..that guy also wrote my favorite melody. Here it is by my favorite girl singer.
Our Red Hat Ladies video is still going strong, just topped 60,000 views — got a comment this morning:
Yippee, today’s Serendipity is not copyright blocked. We can rock out to Schubert in the diner today, 11-Noon ET…
The weekend is bleeding out, Monday is actively sharpening its claws, and the only thing standing between you and the abyss of the upcoming week is the right playlist. Let’s compose a soundtrack for making it through whatever fresh garbage awaits us 👉 Digital Diner: Here’s HOW TO JOIN US
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Days since last public appearance:
Melania Trump: 28
Mitch McConnell: 63
fuckin robot:
to my question “what is happening in dearborn this tuesday”
AI Overview
Dearborn is preparing for a heightened security presence and has relocated its upcoming City Council meeting this Tuesday, August 18, 2026, due to a planned outside demonstration called a “Christian Crusader March”.
Rham Emanuel on CBS Sunday Morning (family’s choice on the clicker), but FFFF that corporate Dem.
Dems didn’t raise minimum wage or give us universal healthcare when they had the chance. ACA is a bigger gift to insurance companies than its recipients, so I DO NOT TRUST CORPORATE DEMOCRATS.
Rham said he is actively fighting against DS aka midnight blue. F HIM!
Happy Sunday!
Katie – Loved the Lime Scooter fk-flock protest in MPLS. Now, Flock comes with Signal Trace.
https://www.404media.co/this-company-will-add-phone-airpod-and-smartwatch-trackers-to-license-plate-readers/
SignalTrace “links devices that regularly travel together, correlating them to license plate.” It is a surveillance product that will sweep up and add all sorts of Bluetooth and other data to license plate readers, linking specific devices—and people—to cars.
A surveillance company plans to add sensors to automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) that would mean the devices, as well as capture the license plate of passing vehicles, would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices in those cars, potentially letting law enforcement identify specific drivers or passengers.
A Wisconsin woman says she is still shaken after police pulled her over at gunpoint because a license plate reader identified her vehicle as being connected to a Milwaukee homicide.
*It read the plate number incorrectly.
https://www.cnet.com/home/security/when-flock-comes-to-town-why-cities-are-axing-the-controversial-surveillance-technology/
Flock’s cameras and drones are spreading throughout the country.
One study from the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington found that at least eight Washington law enforcement agencies shared their Flock data networks directly with ICE in 2025, and 10 more departments allowed ICE backdoor access without explicitly granting the agency permission. Many other reports outline similar activity.
https://unflocked.org/faq
Everything you need to know about Flock cameras, your rights, and how UnFlocked works.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/13/texas-ken-paxton-james-talarico-religion-campaign-christianity/
Paxton, Talarico tap contrary versions of God and Christianity in appeal to Texas voters
Campaigning for the U.S. Senate, Paxton says he was “delivered by God” to protect Texas from leftists.
Talarico’s focus: “You can’t love God and hate other people.”
Paxton sees God as on his side — a force safeguarding his ability to protect Texas and the nation from disaster at the hands of the “radical left.” “I truly believe that God just delivered me, not because I am a great person, because God is sovereign and he does what he wants to do,” Paxton said on Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s podcast, referring to tribulations that included an unsuccessful 2023 impeachment on corruption charges. “I don’t take credit for it, it’s really by the grace of God,” Paxton said.
Paxton’s version insists conservative Christian values — such as protecting the unborn and preserving the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage — must prevail.
*Paxton’s god must be super-OK with adultery and corruption, too.
Talarico’s Christianity celebrates pluralism, affirms LGBTQ+ individuals and believes God transcends all partisan divisions. “Scripture says you can’t love God and hate other people,” Talarico, a seminarian, said in a sermon posted on TikTok in December 2025. “You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can’t love God and bully the outcast. You can’t love God and oppress the poor.” “We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor who bears the divine image. In the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God,” he said.
Talarico has gone on the offensive as well, criticizing Christian nationalism, an ideology that depicts the U.S. as a nation founded on Christian principles that must be protected by the government. Many Paxton-supported policies, according to Talarico, advance that agenda.
Talarico pointed to a state law requiring Texas public school classrooms to display donated copies of the Ten Commandments — a law that Paxton supports and has defended in court as state attorney general.
“It’s using political power to elevate one religious tradition over all the others,” Talarico told podcaster Joe Rogan in July 2025. “It’s using governmental power to dominate our neighbors instead of loving them as ourselves, which is exactly what we’re called to do as Christians.”
“Noah’s Ballroom”
today’s meme…
Today in the Diner…
Todd Blanche & Tom Homan Defend Trump’s Fascist Agenda
Todd Blanche admits the DOJ belongs to Donald Trump while Tom Homan pushes ICE electrocution gloves. Plus, Mitch McConnell goes MIA.
We start the morning with a look at the Iowa State Fair and the Minnesota State Fair, but things get dark quickly when we check in on the new authoritarian playbook. Former ICE Director Tom Homan took to Fox News to promote literal electrocution gloves to help make people compliant. The gloves are already showing up on police in Omaha Nebraska. If you want to know what the new regime looks like, just look at the tools they are buying.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has his loyalists falling in line. Todd Blanche went on Meet the Press and flatly refused to pledge that the Justice Department would operate independently from the White House. Steve Bannon is already openly talking about a third term for Trump. And in the middle of all this chaos, Mitch McConnell has disappeared for weeks, inspiring a hilarious Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch parody about the missing Kentucky Senator.
Finally, we break down some deep red state election strategies. We track Mary Peltola and the confusing ballot situation with Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Rahm Emanuel going to war with the DSA, and why suburban white voters in places like Johnson County Kansas hold the keys to the Senate majority.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
Website: https://trailmix.cc
Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
04:24 Iowa State Fair Horse Show
16:45 Minnesota State Fair & Food
22:20 Mary Peltola in Rural Alaska
23:10 Tracking Missing Mitch McConnell
32:05 Texas Border Military Zones
36:44 Tom Homan & Omaha ICE Gloves
41:50 Todd Blanche Loyalty to Donald Trump
48:45 Steve Bannon Plugs a Trump 3rd Term
51:00 Rahm Emanuel Attacks the DSA
57:20 Dan Sullivan Alaska Ballot Chaos
— Human directed and edited. Machine drafted (Gemini Pro).
https://apnews.com/article/defense-department-school-classical-hegseth-c29537087c0dbf3271cf293a9b17053f?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share
AP Exclusive: US military base schools put new emphasis on Western civilization and Christianity
More Hegseth shoving religion
https://www.wlky.com/article/mitch-mcconnell-senate-vote-committee-farm-bill-1/73378426
Sen. Mitch McConnell cast his first vote in weeks—by proxy. But it didn’t count.
“I know how much he would have wanted to be here to advocate for Kentucky’s farmers and rural communities. Throughout his career, Sen. Mitch McConnell has been a steadfast champion for the Bluegrass State,” Sen. John Boozman (R-AK) said.
Boozman voted yes for McConnell by proxy, which is not allowed on the Senate floor, but can be permitted in committees. But due to rules specific to the Senate Agriculture Committee, his proxy vote didn’t count.
With 10 votes for and 11 against, the bill did not pass out of committee.
Democrats stood firm in demanding a two-year SNAP extension.
*I missed the part where Boozman tried to cast Mitch’s vote.
The new Trading Post is fabulous, Craig, thanks for your hard work and hard-earned technical expertise.
Catching up from the downtime to see what I might’ve missed. Copy Jack’s comment: that’s what I’m seeing at this time with the Home button. Did you come up with a fix for that on your end, Jack? Thanks.
Thanks for the reminder Ivy. I just did a fix for that url redirect issue. Bookmarks with the old address should go to the new address now.
Still, it’d be good to edit any trailmix bookmarks to go directly to our new streamlined url at https://trailmix.cc
Ivy
just click on the trailmix graphic at the top of the page and bookmark it. Then delete your old bookmark. Then things are back to normal only better. Still great loading speed. It does it so fast that sometimes when I reload I don’t realize it was finished and hit the reload button twice. Old habits are hard to break.
Jack
Ha Jack, I have done that a bunch of times. Such a happy problem!
As I told Ivy I have set up a redirect so that the old address goes directly to the new, but still better to update bookmarks just in case that ever glitches out.
We are in the middle of August, with middle of August weather. Hot and dry. One of those days where it does no good to water as the plants dry out faster than they can absorb water. Just make sure the soil is moist so they can recover overnight. My thermometer in the shade on the north of the house is pushing 100, real heat, not that “feels like ” clickbait number. The official number from out at the Airport says 95. I think their gage may be stuck or we have a hell of a heat island effect in this town,
Jack
We are officially passengers on the decoy plane. Watch the latest Digital Diner short as we dissect resting senators and the GOP’s newest fascist fantasies. Brace for impact.
We may be on the missing Flight 828 from NBC’s Manifest.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/16/navy-families-denounce-trump-hegseth
Families of US sailors denounce Trump and Hegseth for ‘dismissing their experiences and calling them liars’
The families, with loved ones on board the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli, all spoke anonymously for fear of retribution against their active duty relatives.
They spoke of insufficient nourishment that has led to close relatives losing 20-30lbs in weight since they were sent to the Middle East five months ago, leaving one sailor “emaciated”, according to his mother.
They spoke also of low-quality drinking water and scarce mental health counseling and support despite the intense burden of being at sea for months on end without making land.
When Trump was asked on Friday whether naval families were worried about conditions on board, he replied: “No, they’re not.” He said that the Lincoln’s deployment, now in its ninth month, was “not nearly long enough”.
Earlier, Hegseth also swatted away families’ concerns, saying that the reality onboard the Lincoln had been “completely misrepresented”.
CNN has reported that among the multiple suicide attempts onboard the Lincoln, a sailor succeeded in going overboard earlier this month and had to be rescued by helicopter.
“Our deployment resilience counsellor quit months ago. To see the ONLY PSYCHIATRIST is a five-week wait unless you do like three of our shipmates and jump off the ship or take 27 sleeping pills.”
He added that a senior officer from Centcom, the US central command overseeing operations in the Middle East amid the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran, visited the Lincoln for two hours recently. “He made an interesting speech. It was all pretty good news and quite inspiring, until he reminded us that it’s not mental health it’s just health and we can simply exercise our brains to make ourselves happy.”
*Military, military families, veterans…Will any of them vote Republican in the midterms? Will those deployed be allowed to vote? Why in the F isn’t the MSM spending more time on
this?
If we’re not on missing Flight 828, then surely Mitch is.
https://www.reporternews.com/story/news/politics/2026/08/14/talarico-closed-data-center-roundtable-abilene/91295009007/
James Talarico, Texas state representative and Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate, held a bipartisan roundtable and press conference Thursday, Aug. 13, regarding the development of data centers in the region.
The roundtable discussion, which was held at 1:30 p.m. at the G.V. Daniels Recreation Center, was closed to the press except for MS Now, a national news outlet.
Abilene Reporter-News asked Talarico why this was the case at the follow-up press conference held outside the recreation center.
“We wanted to make sure that folks can feel comfortable being honest without the need to be worried about cameras in the room,” said Talarico. “So we decided to split one into a private conversation so I could hear directly from residents and get their honest feedback, and then a time for us to talk publicly with reporters and folks across the community.”
However, cameras were seen inside the room by the Abilene Reporter-News.
According to Talarico, members of the roundtable discussion involved both Republicans and Democrats as well as small business owners and local Abilene residents like Chrisina Gonzales, a lifelong resident of Abilene.
“I live down the road from one of the data centers here in Abilene, and my life has been turned upside down,” said Gonzales.
“Our water bill has increased,” she said. “My kids are thinking about moving from Abilene to Fort Worth because it’s cheaper. Meanwhile, our wages haven’t increased at all. I’m grateful that James Talarico is willing to listen to local Abilene residents about these data centers and the hiking of our prices.”
Talarico is visiting Abilene as part of his “The New American Dream Tour” and was scheduled to hold a rally at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the 201 Mesquite Event Center.
Yesterday, I saw a video from a woman who was at an event in Abilene. Not sure if it was this one because she said it was a dinner, but she said folks paid to be there and there were Republicans.
DEAD SENATOR SKETCH
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
Ossoff rally live now…
a lot of plants wilt in the afternoon as an extreme heat response even if they have enough water at the roots, so if you are watering diligently, just try not to look at them when they do
i fill a 25 gallon drum with water to let it dechlorinate and then water by hand at night or before dawn because it’s better for the plants as opposed to spraying and to conserve water because everyone else is wasting it, but that’s lot of work, have to do it every night in extreme heat
paint balloons
we really need to ban lawn irrigation ASAP
ofc we won’t
but we should
i haven’t at all this year, and planted drought tolerant grass years ago because i saw this coming
not that i’m psychic, literally 95% of the world’s climate scientists have been warning about it for decades, evil republicans still dispute it
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/israels-ben-gvir-advocates-killing-141720683.html
Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir made the statement while speaking to a former Gaza-held hostage, Rom Braslavski, on Braslavski’s podcast. The two were discussing Israel’s recovery from the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, when Ben-Gvir criticized Israel’s recent drawdown of strikes in Gaza.
“It’s no secret, I disagree with the prime minister,” he said. “I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat — there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
Israel’s domestic media has made scarce mention of the statement, highlighting how once-fringe ideologies like Ben-Gvir’s are surging in the leadup to Israeli elections Oct. 27.
It is collective insanity to level forests that acted as carbon sinks, and replace them with houses with lawns that need to be irrigated with water that has been chlorinated
But we already knew that Americans were idiotic
but let’s pretend they’re not and praise their virtue in election years
Defense Department accounts on X posted images overlaid with the words “SEND ME.” The agency’s Rapid Response account published the phrase on a picture of a service member watching a helicopter above an aircraft carrier. Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell quoted Isaiah 6:8 in a post and included the all-caps phrase on an image of a soldier silhouetted in the dark. The Department of War’s official account amplified both posts.
Isaiah 6:8 is a verse that appears in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament in which the prophet Isaiah answers a divine call. When God asks, “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah replies, “Here am I. Send me.”
Jemar Tisby, a historian of religion, said Isaiah 6:8 functions in American evangelical culture “almost entirely as a standalone missions text,” commonly invoked at missions conferences, ordinations, and altar calls as a declaration of willingness to serve. “The most important context of Isaiah 6, the part most people miss, is that the devastation falls on God’s covenant people,” Tisby said. “The nation doing the sending, not a foreign enemy, is in view here.”
“Given Hegseth’s religious influences, tied to Douglas Wilson, and taken with the fact that Hegseth instituted worship services at the Pentagon, this reads as part of a larger effort to incorporate a narrow vision of Christianity into the military and the federal government writ large,” Tisby said.
The messages marked a notable institutional shift. Previous controversies centered on statements by individual commanders or political appointees. This time, multiple official Defense Department accounts amplified the same biblical passage, and the Pentagon declined to explain why.
even more insane than that is doing the same practice to install data centers that use even more water than that and heat it up
Fucking insane
using gas powered lawn equipment to remove organic material and put it in plastic bags and then use fossil fuels to send it to a landfill is
Fucking insane
ASK ANYONE WHO has followed news about Gaza with even a smidgen of critical thinking, and they will tell you: Media organizations are biased against Palestinians — and systematically favor Israel.
I examined over 12,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and The Associated Press, along with 5,000 TV segments that aired on CNN and MSNBC. The focus is on center-left media outlets influential with the Biden administration during the first year of the conflict — with an emphasis on the first few months, when Israel firmly established its narrative justifying the genocide, rendering mass death inevitable.
Here are seven statistical findings that prove the U.S. media’s bias against Palestinians.
*Graphs, graphs, and more graphs.
hopefully there is a hell for climate change deniers
lol wonder why
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/business/who-is-dario-amodei-s-wife-cami-clark-explained/story
Anthropic CEO’s wife pitched ‘luxury porn’ business to Jeffrey Epstein
Cami Clark, the entrepreneur and wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, is under renewed scrutiny over her past business dealings with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Emails from the Epstein files have revealed that Clark approached Epstein in 2011 and 2012 to discuss investments in a “free luxury porn” company and a women’s health start-up. The Wall Street Journal has examined these exchanges but found no evidence of Epstein investing in either venture.
Clark also discussed her social dieting app and website with Epstein.
The service collected data from health monitoring devices and turned it into infographics about users’ health, which they could then share with friends.
Other emails show Clark continued to keep Epstein on her email list, inviting him to a housewarming party in July 2012.
He connected with her on LinkedIn in 2013 but there is no evidence of any further meetings between them.
https://finance.biggo.com/news/69bbc8f1-9b5d-48fd-b068-13b42ba9a12e
As Anthropic races toward a blockbuster IPO that could value the company at over $2 trillion, Cami Clark—wife of CEO Dario Amodei—has drawn intense scrutiny. Clark holds no formal role at the company, yet she serves as her husband’s most important strategic advisor and emotional anchor. She was instrumental in bringing former Google CEO Eric Schmidt into Anthropic’s early investor ranks.
Clark grew up in a blue-collar family in Reno, Nevada, experienced bankruptcy, and founded an adult film company and a women’s health clinic—during which she sought funding from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In 2021, she attempted to launch an “AGI Mother Fund” with Schmidt but faced internal resistance at Anthropic.
Recently, she has become active in political social circles, befriending Ivanka Trump and helping broker the company’s relationship with the U.S. government. Meanwhile, Anthropic is expected to go public this fall at a $2 trillion valuation, with investors betting annualized revenue will reach $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of 2026—though export controls, cost pressures, and market competition cloud that outlook.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited global AI leaders to New Delhi earlier this year, each executive was allowed to bring only one companion. Most brought colleagues. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei brought his wife, Cami Clark.
Clark holds no formal position at Anthropic, yet she is almost never absent from her husband’s most important appearances—whether front-row seats at Davos or the Allen & Co. investor gathering in Sun Valley.
According to media analyses and a person familiar with the matter, information about Clark online is extremely scarce, and someone has actively removed records. Her personal website is down, her LinkedIn profile has disappeared, and her Instagram has gone dormant. Amodei’s Wikipedia page only noted his marriage this summer, and still does not name his wife. A Google search for “Dario Amodei’s wife” often surfaces photos of his sister, Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei.
Even Anthropic’s own AI chatbot, Claude, when asked about the matter, can only respond: “Dario Amodei’s marital status does not appear to be definitively confirmed.”
In the real world, however, Clark’s presence is unmistakable. She accompanies her husband to high-profile events in Davos, New Delhi, and Sun Valley, compensating for Amodei’s more reserved personality with her outgoing social style. According to people familiar with the matter, she proactively approaches politicians and potential investors, then introduces them to her husband.
At this July’s Sun Valley conference, she had lunch with Ivanka Trump and spoke with Jared Kushner—Amodei had previously approached Kushner seeking investment.
racist online bullies killed this guy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/14/world/europe/jason-arday-dead.html
Send Dodo.
Ai data centers aka “windowless tumors” have metastasized to the rest of the world.
BBC radio is israel-critical if you’re looking for that fyi
they call out israeli hypocrisy and duplicity to government spokespeople, the spokespeople are typically evasive and defiant
meanwhile, out media covers taylor swift’s hair
I wanna meet the assholes who are still using exotic, unsustainable, rare woods to build guitars
rich white people ugh
smoke em if ya got em (cigarettes that is)
Trump’s AG Todd Blanche just went on live TV and murdered the independent Justice Department. We are officially back to Nixon’s Imperial Presidency:
The Orwellian Company Behind ICE’s New Electric Shock Gloves
“With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.” That makes it hard for victims to sue.
We have a saying: Feeling is believing,” Compliant Technologies CEO Jeff Niklaus said in one 2022 YouTube video.
In 2022, Assistant Chief Adam Glueck, of the Cape Girardeau Police Department in southeastern Missouri, purchased electric shock gloves for his officers after learning about them at a trade show. And his employees, he said, couldn’t get enough of them. “If I try to take away the gloves from those officers at this point I think we may have a mutiny on our hands,” Glueck joked on a podcast interview a couple of years later. “They’ve grown really attached.”
The shock gloves, he went on to explain, allow their wearer to inflict pain without leaving the sort of marks that could look bad to witnesses or leave an officer vulnerable to lawsuits.
“In today’s society, you know, everybody’s filming everything, everybody has a cell phone,” Glueck said. If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But “the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.”
Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have long raised concerns about electric shock devices like the GLOVE, as well as other products that Compliant Technologies sells, like electric shock belts and vests, which the company recommends for prisoner transport, courtroom use, and use on “combative individuals” during medical procedures like blood draws.
The technology is unregulated “despite the clear human rights risks associated with its use,” Amnesty International researchers wrote in a 2025 report detailing instances in which electric-shock devices have been used for torture. The report ends with a recommendation that countries “cease use of, decommission and destroy any stockpiles of such prohibited electric shock weapons.” Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture, called the gloves “inherently abusive equipment that facilitates torture.”
But local police across the country are still eagerly buying the gloves—in large part so that they can harm people and avoid being sued for it. It’s been successful “from the patrolmen to the jailers,” Lumpkin County Sheriff Stacy Jarrard said in a Compliant Technologies promotional video. “It’s been a great tool as far as mitigating liability,” according to Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall.
Bob Couey of the Floyd County Sheriff’s Department sung the GLOVE’s praises, too: “I highly recommend these gloves to anybody that’s looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits.”
Today is my mother’s 99th birthday. She was born when Calvin Coolidge was president. The United States had celebrated it’s 150th anniversary the year before. This is about two months before “talking movies” were introduced. She was a farmers daughter. Her mother, my grandmother, died of Tuberculosis just three years later. Her hard life, not provided right now, created a special resilience in her. Good genes and a never give up learning has brought her these many years.
About a week after its allies won a Supreme Court ruling allowing states to ban transgender girls from girls’ school athletics, a leading conservative group that has campaigned for seven years to “protect women’s sports” is singing a very different tune.
On July 8, the Heritage Foundation—the right-wing think tank widely known for sponsoring Project 2025—published a report calling for the rollback of the very landmark federal protections for women’s sports that have driven their explosion in popularity over the last five decades.
The paper, by Heritage senior research fellow and Boise State University professor Scott Yenor, argued for “restoring a flexible approach to athletics” by exempting sports from Title IX, the 1972 federal law that bans sex discrimination in education, or else loosening the law’s requirements.
The paper is laced with stereotypes about women’s “natural preferences”—describing women as having “gentle, graceful, cooperative tendencies” and being “oriented toward motherhood and traditional feminine graces.”
In his paper for the Heritage Foundation, Yenor argues that schools should be allowed to “accommodate sex differences” by replacing competitive women’s sports opportunities with “cheerleading, dance, yoga, hiking clubs, recreational intramurals, and other athletic opportunities more aligned with average female interests and tendencies.” High-intensity exercise, he notes, “increases infertility.” (
(Women who exercise “too much” may indeed have a harder time getting pregnant, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—but some research suggests those effects are mitigated as long as they eat enough. Anyway, it’s not altogether clear that getting pregnant is a priority for the school-age athletes Yenor is writing about.)
BB – That’s quite a milestone. She has seen rights of many gained and lost. May she see them regained. Happy Solar Return.
Happy 99th to your mother, BlueBronc. It takes a serious spine to watch nearly a century of humanity’s circus and still decide the world is worth paying attention to.
Tell her the Trailmix crew raises a glass to her!
Ossoff went in for the kill shot on Collins today: “a crumbling little bigot”
COMPLIANCE BY ELECTROCUTION →
ICE thugs now want torture gloves to “help people be compliant”. Pure Doctor Evil.
Why Is Pete Hegseth Purging Women From Command? Doug Wilson Is Why.
He preaches holy war, iron discipline, and male dominance. And one of his disciples runs the Pentagon.
A core tenet of Wilson’s beliefs is that a patriarchal society, what he calls “biblical masculinity,” is both a religious mandate and “cultural gluten,” as he wrote in his 2023 book, Mere Christendom. “Without it, the cookie just crumbles to pieces in your hand, and is tasteless on top of that.” In a previous book, Fidelity: How to Be a One-Woman Man, he wrote: “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” For that reason, he went on, the dynamic of a dominant man and a submissive woman is “an erotic necessity.” As Wilson put it in an interview with CNN last year: “Women are the kind of people that people come out of.”
Wilson, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, is the 73-year-old senior pastor and founder of Christ Church, a congregation of approximately 3,000 in Moscow [Idaho]. But his influence extends far beyond this small town. Wilson has spoken at high-profile conservative events, including the 2024 National Conservatism conference, where then-Sen. JD Vance was also a headliner. He appeared on a political strategy panel with Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director and a key architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 conservative blueprint. He’s also the co-creator of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a global network of 160 congregations—including the one Hegseth attends in Washington, DC. A few months before my visit to Idaho, Hegseth had invited Wilson to the Pentagon to deliver a sermon to troops and officials on the importance of faith in times of war.
I invited myself to Moscow, and he graciously accepted. Over the course of my five-day trip, I had unprecedented access to the world he has carefully built, which serves as a model for what he imagines a Christian United States might someday look like.
I wandered around, I noticed another Moscow, one in which Wilson’s influence is omnipresent. On one downtown corner is a brick building housing New Saint Andrews College, which he helped found, where clean-cut young men in button-downs and khakis and women in crisp blouses and knee-length skirts milled about. Nearby are the offices of Canon Press, his book publisher. One of Wilson’s spinoff churches, King’s Cross, hosts a service inside an old movie theater. Another building, spanning an entire city block, is labeled “Kirker Commons.” (Wilson is heavily influenced by Scottish Calvinist tradition, and his congregants call themselves “Kirkers” after kirk, an old Scottish word for church.)
Nearby are other businesses owned by present or former Christ Church members: a Kirker pizzeria, a Kirker bar (they do like to drink, especially whiskey for the guys), a Kirker cafe, and a Kirker real estate office. My tour guide, a former Kirker, pointed out a common hallmark of Kirker families: stylishly dressed young moms pushing strollers, often trailed by a small flock of toddlers.
*Just what we need, a white nationalist theme park.
They believe that people will go to Heaven because of God’s grace rather than good works; they don’t believe in the Jesus-is-coming-look-busy version of the end times; they baptize members as infants rather than wait for adults to choose for themselves.
So confident are the Kirkers in their interpretation of the Bible that they believe people who don’t share their specific beliefs are not only going to Hell, but are doomed to earthly suffering. For them, Christian nationalism is redemptive, a lifeboat launched in a sea of drowning souls. One Kirker woman, who requested that I refer to her by her middle name, Linda, said she found upsetting the mere idea of an interfaith event that was happening in town that evening. It’s like saying, “We’re going to pat you on the head, you Baha’i, you Jew; we’re going to be like, ‘It’s okay,’” she said.
The Kirkers’ world is a fairly closed ecosystem. People who move to Moscow to join the church often send their children to Logos School, a classical Christian academy that Wilson and his wife helped found in 1981. Newcomers often find employment in one of the Kirker entities. If not, they can plug into the network of church-affiliated local businesses, which includes construction companies, an outpost of a major supplier of electrical transformers, and RedBalloon, an anti-woke job board that recently scored a contract with the State Department. Moscow’s Kirker community has swelled since the pandemic—so high is the demand for Logos School that it opened an impressive new campus last year and its roughly $7 million in revenue was almost double the previous year’s.
Kirkers make up only about 10 percent of the town’s population of 27,000. But their influence is outsized, locals told me—in May, one Kirker won the Republican primary for the state legislature. Their presence is a particular thorn in the side of the Mormons, who have inhabited Idaho for generations and generally see Wilson’s camp as presumptuous upstarts.
If Moscow is a tale of two cities, it is also a tale of two Doug Wilsons. Brunch Doug was affable and warm, bearing little resemblance to the pugnacious Online Doug.
Nancy, too, was a muted version of her online persona. Her viral moments are not as numerous as Doug’s, but there are some bangers: One is a video in which she recalls spanking her preschool-age daughter for not being excited enough to see her at the end of a playdate; another is a passage from her 1997 book, The Fruit of Her Hands, arguing that there is no such thing as marital rape: “Of course, a husband is never trespassing in his own garden, though he can be made to feel as though he is an intruder.” Brunch Nancy, by contrast, gushed about her grandchildren and kept my coffee mug filled.
Doug’s line about women being “the kind of people that people come out of” had been intended as a joke, one that the liberal media was obviously too sanctimonious to laugh at. The whole wives-being-submissive thing had also been overblown by the media—they could count only a handful of times in their own marriage when Doug had to overrule Nancy. Sure, they spanked their kids, but never in anger, and the children had grown into well-adjusted adults who endorse the discipline they received in their youth.
Emily, who requested I not use the family’s last name, set up a table and chairs in the shade of a tree that arched over their sprawling backyard. She told me she’d met her husband 20 years ago, right around the time she joined Wilson’s church as a young adult. “I’m a strong, very resilient woman, and I’m so thankful that I have a man in my life that I can look up to,” she said. “I can unload some of that pressure that I’m not built to carry on him—so it actually makes me softer and more delightful.”
*Yeah ~delightful~
Vote your Ossoff!
Did you see the part of his speech where he talked about the USS Lincoln, and about how the current regime “lied us into war”?
99 is an awesome achievement, BB. Raised without a mother herself, she obviously has passed on an abundance of endurance, strength, and resilience to her own family, including you. Happy Birthday, BB Mom❗️
Here’s that clip BiD. I love a candidate who goes in for the kill even when he’s ahead…
https://www.knopnews2.com/2026/08/14/omaha-police-address-shock-glove-technology-schools/
Omaha Police addresses shock glove technology in schools
Omaha Police Department school resource officers have carried a device called GLOVE — Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — on their belts at middle and high schools for more than a year.
Cvitanov said the device activates within one second and that officers have observed immediate compliance with minimal contact.
“That allows the officers to apply just a mild grip. You don’t even need to squeeze. It’s a mild grip, and then what we’ve seen thus far is immediate compliance. That’s a benefit to everyone involved, because it is such a low level of force being utilized by officers, which is the goal in every situation,” Cvitanov said.
Not all observers support the use of the device in schools. Katie Nungesser of Voices for Children in Nebraska said the rollout is inconsistent with the stated mission of school resource officers.
“It’s important to look at the justification for even having these school resource officers in our schools, is that they’re there to protect the kids and facilitate that learning environment. They’re not actually there to police the kids. So seeing this roll out, we just think it’s really inconsistent with that purpose and the mission of what school resource officers are meant to be in Nebraska,” Nungesser said.
Nungesser said the device undermines efforts to build relationships between law enforcement and students, and raised questions about the physical and mental health implications for children subjected to its use.
“This officer doesn’t have any background on this child’s physical health or mental health. It’s what kind of situation are you saying is happening common enough for us to be using this kind of force on kids in schools? And how does that change that kid forever?” Nungesser said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/17/trump-cuts-south-korea-joint-drills-us-military-good-relationship-kim-jong-un
Trump has said he is scaling back joint US military drills with South Korea aimed at deterring North Korea, despite military officials from both countries warning that Kim Jong-un’s regime was learning new battlefield tactics from the Ukraine war.
Sunday evening, the US president said he was “not happy” with US participation “based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong-un”. He added that they were costly and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and Trump added that it was too late to cancel the drills so he had ordered the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to “substantially reduce” them. He also said South Korea had refused to help in the “denuclearisation of the Islamic republic of Iran”.
On Saturday, Trump also shared an old photo of him posing with the North Korean leader on Truth Social, repeating his claim the two “get along great”, leading to speculation he would renew his attempt to have a summit with Kim.
Also, Ossoff noting that the regime “views persistence in deceit as a virtue,” when talking about Hegseth lying about the progress of the war was just chef’s 😘
*MuskRat, seemingly high as a kite on ketamine, giggling like a deranged Bond villain, and NOT DENYING that Tesla is stealing water.
WTF is he wearing under that weird blazer, a bulletproof vest? He looks padded. And a neckerchief like effing Howdy Doody.
Actually, MuskRat’s laughter reminds me of the movie Amadeus.
https://x.com/ShadowofEzra/status/2081553182988062988
@ShadowofEzra
Former Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino drops a massive bombshell and confirms the IDF has been training Border Patrol, ICE agents, and law enforcement as far back as before 9/11.
“They sent me to a VIP security school, and it was run by the Israelis. That school was for all law enforcement.”
“They contracted with Israeli instructors, and they were really good.”
Just when you think Dumbass couldn’t get any worse he proves you wrong again.
https://people.com/hayden-panettiere-reveals-more-details-singer-put-in-bed-with-18-11978234
According to Panettiere, the incident occurred during a trip to the South of France aboard what she describes as a “super yacht” filled with celebrities, parties and nonstop champagne.
At the time, she says she was traveling with a woman she considered one of her closest confidantes.
Toward the end of the trip, Panettiere says her friend approached her during dinner and asked her to come downstairs to meet someone.
After walking through a narrow hallway and into a private cabin, Panettiere says she discovered a “famous thirtysomething British singer-songwriter” shirtless in bed under sheets.
“‘Oh my God,’ I thought. ‘Is he naked under there?'” she writes, claiming her trusted friend whispered to her, “I want you to get in bed with him,” before leaving them alone in the room.
Though she writes that she initially complied in shock, Panettiere says she immediately began to mentally disconnect from the situation.
“My body no longer felt like my own,” she recalls in the memoir, explaining that years of being “managed” by adults in the entertainment industry had conditioned her to trust people around her and suppress her instincts.
“As soon as the door clicked close, my survival instinct kicked in,” she writes. She says she told the man: “Look … I don’t know what she said to you, but this is not going to happen,” before leaving the room.
The actress says she quickly climbed out of bed, ran from the room and returned to her cabin, where she booked a hotel and began packing to leave the yacht. “I felt like I’d been kicked in the face,” she writes, adding that the experience left her feeling used and deeply betrayed by someone she trusted. “She’d confided in me, pampered me and treated me like her best friend — then turned around and treated me like a call girl,” Panettiere writes.
*Was het friend Ghislaine Maxwell?
Anyway, Hayden Panettiere has died now.
that sucks, always liked her
NEW THREAD by our fearless leader