… as Gerard Manley Hopkins would put it if he were writing his famous poem today. How could anyone who knows, even a little bit, our simulacral world, be surprised that the notorious Washington Post opinion piece currently ruining April Heard’s life wasn’t even written by her?
Over the past decade, more than 1,000 crime guns have been traced to Firing Line Inc., a gun store in South Philadelphia that federal inspectors have cited for failing to stop straw purchases, losing track of weapons, refusing to run timely background checks and a lack of reporting on suspicious buyers.
In 2017, after several warnings, A.T.F. officials concluded that the owner “failed to maintain accurate information,” but they allowed the shop to remain in business, in part, because inspectors must prove intent to shutter a licensed dealer. Since then, 399 new crime guns have been traced to the location, according to Brady.
[In perhaps the most shocking declaration about a nuclear holocaust delivered on Russian television in recent months, Simonyan concluded that the idea “that everything will end with a nuclear strike, to me, is more probable than the other outcome. This is to my horror, on one hand, but on the other hand, with the understanding that it is what it is. … We are all going to die someday.“]
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From a Russian documentary about Nikolay Chernyshevsky:
Nihilist: Ve believes in nossing, Lebowski. Nossing. And tomorrow ve come back and ve cut off your chonson.
The Dude: Excuse me?
Nihilist: I said we’ll cut off your johnson!
Nihilist #2: Just think about that, Lebowski.
Nihilist: Ja, your viggly penis, Lebowski.
Nihilist #3: Yeah and maybe we stomp on it and squoosh it, Lebowski.
… in which she versifies words found in a newspaper article. Other examples.
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The parachute, intact, Its suspension lines Trailing from the back- shell, lies in olivine Along the rocks.
The salmon surface pocks. This otherworldly wreckage Has a supersonic message. My detachment, while alarming, Shows no obvious signs of charring. You and your scribe study chaos control. All to calm my fiery roll.
… both young brilliant athletes – leaders on notable college teams – and both suicides. Meyer died last month, Bernett just the other day. Also last month, a young runner at the University of Wisconsin – Sarah Shulze – killed herself.
Shulze’s parents wrote that her effort to balance “athletics, academics and the demands of every day life … overwhelmed her in a single, desperate moment.” And impulsivity is indeed the mark of most youthful suicides; the same incredible energy that propelled many of these people to academic as well as athletic heights turns against the person herself when she – who knows? – suddenly and catastrophically falls short of her self-demands. Or is it that a hyper-intense life is vulnerable to collapse when for whatever reason the intensity flags, the adrenaline drops?
When I say who knows, I really mean who knows. We can mark these recurrences, common characteristics, etc. But the act itself remains shockingly obscure.
Bullet-riddled baseball is a uniquely American rite of passage, from the big boys of Congress to the Little Leaguers.
Mr. Orban found support from Mr. Trump, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and from the Italian populist leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. But they are all gone, as Mr. Jansa is expected to be…
For UD’s completely bored take on Hungary, go here.
Oh, and note to Vermeule and the brethren: Reserve your Budapest Baptismal Blowout today! While you still can.
Only two channels these days: You can watch Johnny Depp fall to pieces, or watch Vladimir Putin fall to pieces.
High-steppin’ strutters now limping into old age, grandiose world-conquerors who’ve lost it all, both of these woman-haters currently bloat and tremble on the global stage as their badly over-played machismo bites them in the butt. Women, says Depp, famously, are “cum-guzzlers”; Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton represent, in their freakish rise to male power, a personal insult to Vlad.
To be sure, one of these people might destroy the world, while the other has merely a film career to nuke (if you want to throw in Will Smith – currently staging a reincarnation in India – go ahead), but both offer the riveting and enlightening spectacle of the power of delusion and the delusions of power. Putin pursues a hopeless war; Depp presses one hopeless lawsuit after another, with profound carnage along the way. Our role is to be disgusted (and, in the case of Putin, afraid) as we fail to take our eyes off of the very worst outcomes of a reactionary ethos.
… silver linings. And of course there’s Macron’s victory over Le Pen.
… dinner before tomorrow’s ceremony awarding Stewart the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The whole thing’s vegan. She snapped a pic of the first course:
WUSA9 counted more than 60 gunshots over a 19-second span with the [Connecticut Avenue] shooter reloading once in the middle of the 2 volleys of bullets.
The video [taken by the shooter] is unstable at times and the sheer terror of it all is seen more clearly in freeze frames taken from the footage.
The shooter appears to have modified the camera to include a red bull’s-eye on the screen. First, taking aim at a poster for a recent fundraiser in the Edmund Burke School window. A few frames later, after the shots start, you can see four bullet holes in that same window. Just feet away, a young student appears to be ducking.
A couple of frames later, the bull’s-eye in the video appears to be tracking the students as they run for their lives. Then the shooter turns his sights back on the street and a person in a yellow vest who dives between parked cars to shield himself from the gunfire.
A student has apparently been shot at the school where my colleague Faye Moskowitz taught for years; two other people, near the apartment of our old friends the Elkins, have been shot. Hundreds of rounds went off, they say, and hordes of heavily armed police are still seeking the gunman. The area for blocks around has been locked down. The gunman is/was reportedly in this building.
Upper Connecticut – a broad beautiful leafy thoroughfare.
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I was sitting in the den overlooking Connecticut, Steve just told me, and I heard what sounded like some sort of machinery. Then I realized it was repeated gunfire. Di was just in its vicinity, at the grocery. I tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up. She just bought a new phone and doesn’t know how it works. I was frantic.
Finally she figured out how to make a call. She didn’t lock down. She sneaked across Connecticut and took a long roundabout way home. I met her outside our apartment, and at first we couldn’t get back in. I had to convince the police blocking the door that I live there.
Right now I’m looking at an incredible police presence up and down the avenue. I’ve never seen anything like it.
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Update: Now dead by his own hand, the Connecticut Avenue shooter seems to have lacked the whatever to massacre in the way of his role model, Vegas massacrist, Stephen Paddock.
[The] alleged shooter [on Connecticut Avenue] died by suicide while officers were entering a fifth-floor apartment where he had set up a “sniper-type setup” with a tripod. Six firearms, including several long guns, and multiple rounds of ammunition, were found inside the apartment.
Compare that to his hero, Paddock.
Twenty-four firearms, a large quantity of ammunition, and numerous high-capacity magazines capable of holding up to 100 rounds apiece were found in the suite. Fourteen of the firearms were .223-caliberAR-15-typesemi-automatic rifles: three manufactured by Colt, two by Daniel Defense, two by FN Herstal, two by LWRC International, two by POF-USA, one with a .223 Wylde chamber by Christensen Arms, one made-to-order by LMT, and one by Noveske. The others were eight .308-caliber AR-10-type rifles, one .308-caliber Ruger American bolt-action rifle, and one .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 342 revolver. Some of the AR-15 rifles were fitted with vertical forward grips and bump stocks, the latter of which allowed for recoil to actuate their triggers at a rate of 90 rounds in 10 seconds. The AR-10 rifles were equipped with various telescopc sights and mounted on bipods. Paddock was found to have fired a total of 1,058 rounds from fifteen of the firearms: 1,049 from twelve AR-15-style rifles, eight from two AR-10-style rifles, and the round used to kill himself from the Smith & Wesson revolver.