Beauty possesses the capacity to blow right through our rational faculties. You might say we are much more permeable to it, whereas truth and goodness are generally mediated through the rational faculties. Bishop Barron likes to illustrate this by asking, "what was the first song that rocked your world?" (I think he uses "Like a Rolling Stone"; I might go with Rush's "Limelight").
Men have been known to be converted on the spot by a High Latin Mass or a Byzantine Liturgy -- the French poet Paul Claudel comes to mind. Beauty spikes them like a holy lance and all they can say is "I have to be part of this."
From this we can estimate why ugliness is so important to the Enemy. Reflect on the ugliness of so much modern architecture, for instance -- even church architecture. Or consider the horrors of transgenderism, where the anxiety a girl feels when she suddenly becomes aware that she instantly draws the attention of every man she encounters -- this perfectly natural anxiety gets manipulated into a project to sterilize and mutilate her. Almost a primeval assault on beauty as such.
Our weapons against this assault are what they always have been: reverently attend to beauty; defend beauty by contrasting it with ugliness; and create beauty yourself -- even in the smallest of ways.
"Our weapons against this assault are what they always have been: reverently attend to beauty; defend beauty by contrasting it with ugliness; and create beauty yourself -- even in the smallest of ways."
This bears repeating, so:
"Our weapons against this assault are what they always have been: reverently attend to beauty; defend beauty by contrasting it with ugliness; and create beauty yourself -- even in the smallest of ways."
While I suspect the Englishman Martin Shaw regards automobiles with indifference or even disdain ("the mechanical Jacobin" -- Russell Kirk), nevertheless he has launched a fascinating and unique project of beauty, storytelling and myth that might be of interest to ACfers:
I am familiar with him through Jonathan Pageau! There's an entire group of artists-philosophers engaged in interesting work connected through him it seems.
A black female Twitter commentator was deriding Sweeney for her “low brow” endorsements, claiming she should be in Dior and a Merceds.
A surprisingly insightful guy in a tank top, sunglasses, and Fred Durst beard responded with, “High end products are small tits industries”. I was gobsmacked, and laughed out loud.
You're not wrong. And any man here with big nads will be accidentally sitting on them before he reaches thirty. That doesn't mean I'd rather have small balls.
There was a nice but average girl I used to work with who had small breasts, but she always used to sport cleavage, and we all loved her for it. She wasn’t Sydney but she was very sexy.
One thing women just won’t believe is that shape >>> size. I’ll take a nice pair of perky Bs over some big old water balloons tacked to the wall, even if they are Ds. Fortunately I don’t have to, my wife’s are big and round, and that’s why i married her.
Maybe that’s why I think she’s so hot. Never understood the “model” thing. The conspiracy goes that the gay fashion designers want thin models with the bodies of 12 year old boys.
Comedian Joe DeVito had my favorite joke on the Sweeney scandal, "We're so starved for ads with hot women we're losing it over Sydney Sweeney dressed like she's Jay Leno."
I am curious to see how gleefully some of the usual suspects here react to the - apparently random, per the WSJ* - slaying of senior Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, who was Head of Core+ RE and CEO of BREIT at BX. Among the other victims, of course.
I have perhaps 15 days of personal experience working out of the building in question, 345 Park Avenue; my Chicago employer had the 12th floor of the building at the time, and I worked out of that office on several occasions. One reason that tenants selected that particular building was the presumption of safety: recall that in the wake of 9/11, “Wall Street” moved to Midtown Manhattan, largely for safety considerations. 345 Park, which counts BX and the NFL as tenants, was perceived as particularly safe given that Steve Schwarzman has an office in the building.
*She was en route to grab drinks with someone at ~6:30 PM when the gunman encountered her in the lobby of the building and shot her. He did not access any BX floors.
This is the first I've heard of it. I don't know who pulled the trigger and I don't know why, so I'm going to default to "the slaying of a fellow human being in cold blood is deplorable." Whether or not the world will be a better place in the absence of this individual is beside the point.
Blackrock was initially a subsidiary of Blackstone, but it was 'sold off,' provided you believe that the same people don't control everything through Blackrock, Vanguard, StateStreet and T. Rowe Price. Blackstone is the operation that is buying up residential real estate, with a meaningful amount of the funding coming from enormous university endowments that were funded by money from Obama's unlimited student debt.
The assassination of a Blackstone executive creates a moral quandary for me. I'd like to say I'm above experiencing a sense of schadenfreude over the murder of even someone so avaricious that they see people as sacrificial pawns in a zero-sum game, but reality suggests otherwise. I find Luigi-worshippers utterly repellent. I still think the world would be a better place if there were some checks and balances in place for the demons of private equity.
My days of believing anything in the journal are behind me. Are people on the street really surprised that the tariffs that worked for every other country as they expropriated our nation's wealth around the world will work to bring some of it back when we're the ones levying the tariffs? I suppose I haven't heard that their coverage of this story included repeated references to how a black man with asian features is 'possibly white,' but CNN and MSDNC don't really set a high bar.
I suspect that the Grays are very hard targets. The idea that this was a random accident sounds like a cope. What does it mean that he couldn't figure out the elevator bank? When I worked at 245 Park Avenue, the elevator banks were accessible to anyone who looked remotely like they belonged, IIRC. We were evacuated a couple of times for bomb threats after 9-11, but I really don't remember much in the way of security. Today, a high-rise beach condo in my Virginia Beach neighborhood has security doors, a security desk, and then the elevators need a revolving code to be entered to leave the lobby. Do 345's elevators now require a transponder fob or access code? I wouldn't be surprised, and I also wouldn't be surprised for the WSJ to mischaracterize a successful security feature as a sign of attacker incompetence, when that is the narrative that they want to sell.
The same story was reported elsewhere with fewer particulars.
She attempted to hide behind a column but was shot. The gunman, per his suicide note, planned to target the NFL, but he went to the landlord’s offices (at or near the top of the building) instead. The NFL has floors 5-8.
I have seen zero mention in any of the news sources I read about the shooter being “possibly white.”
When I worked out of 345, I had to have an admin in the office put me on a list ahead of time. They printed a temp badge for me at the security desk in the lobby, which is fairly standard.
When I consulted for Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns and the NYBOT, the only place that gave me temporary security badges every day was the WTC. I did have employee IDs from most of the others.
@TheGr8Landini nailed it. Compared to the other famous political murderer of the year, Luigi M. v Thompson, LePatner was simply an incidental victim at the wrong place at the wrong time, where former UHC CEO Brian Thompson was specifically targeted for some specific grievance* (*assuming you believe Luigi did it and wasn't a patsy). In certain ways, the incidentality of her murder raises rather than lowers the level of tragedy, even IF her dayjob involved mass-buying of SFHs , ie the intentional destruction of a part of the American social contract.
I've read/it's worth noting that most mass shootings are like this. Mass shooter has specific grievance, and then barely-if-at-all succeeds in doing violence to the people with whom he has said grievance. Could call this "The Elliott Rodger Effect"
In this case, much as with other recent mass shootings, the action will likely have the exact opposite of the intended effect, as the elite corporate class gets further entrenched, further displaced from, and further secured away from the bulk of humanity. Perhaps the main rule of these mass shootings is that the actual after-effects are the exact opposite of what the shooter's stated goals implied he would have hoped for.
I have a hard time with the Gracie Abrams breathy ingenue set. Feels like an unconvincing distillation of Mazzy Star, which back then felt like an homage. It doesn’t brawl, it doesn’t swing, it doesn’t have any sharp edges. Thank you for staying off my lawn, I’m off to go play some Sabbath tunes
I was unaware of the VIN check website, thank you for that. I ran my no-title project bike, no records of theft or salvage title. I figured I was safe buying a no-title 50y/o project bike that wasn’t running and had no brakes or clutch, no one swiped it off the street. Apparently, there’s a (alleged) sex offender in TN who will register it for you and mail you a TN title to transfer to yourself in your home state for $200. Which comes with its own myriad of ethical concerns, but hey.
The process to get a title for something without one is incredibly difficult. I don’t get why in today’s day and age they can’t use this VIN site (or similar) and streamline the surety bind process.
For the types of things that normally have lost titles (cheap cars, trailers, bikes), it’s not even worth your time going through the process to get it sorted legally.
At the outset I naively thought I’d just bring a signed bill of sale and whatever other necessary documents to the DMV and fight my way through the bureaucracy. A little research led me to the conclusion that I should just take the path of least resistance.
Ahh, so you sold it to an unsuspecting schmuck? That’s what I did with my trailer that was missing both the title and the VIN tag (surprisingly not stolen, just passed through the hands of several apathetic rednecks).
Colorado simplified things for stuff 20 or so years old or older without using the surety bond process as long as there isn't an outstanding lien. Certified VIN, title searches to the tune of like $3 and some forms. I was able to do it without a bill of sale too. I wasn't super on top of things but it was maybe a monthlong process start to finish. The total cost was far less than $100 although I got the certified VIN check for free
Bama and GA do this too. Anything old doesn't even get a title now. It's just BoS. Other states have to deal with it or buyer has to suck it up.
Here in NC we had a scandal a while back where DMV officers were helping to wash titles and fake VINs based on previously crushed/destroyed numbers in the system, so we were state people were taking stuff to that was stolen and the dot gov was handing out titles like youth pastors hand out side hugs. So a bunch of guys got fired (I think 1 went to jail... probably the least connected and stupidest one who wouldn't shut up for the AG interview) and a former Judge was appointed as DMV head. So now you're well and proper fucked if you have a no title vehicle in the state of NC. For a while it was even tough to do the VT title thing here because they wold balk and investigate the entire paper trail til they found anything to invalidate it. At one point a friend had an inspector come to his holler and demand to see the pieces of the 2nd Ford truck he'd parted out to make one, including a cab he'd stripped and used. Lucky for him he's a hillbilly and had observed the time honored tradition of "roll it down the bank." So the inspector actually climbed down the mountain chopped the kudzu off the old cab, examined the VIN, and then begrudgingly issued him a title for his project.
This is why I still have a 54 Indian Trailblazer (a Royal Enfield Meteor rebadged) sans title still in my shop unconstructed. I'll probably have to sell it to a Brahman and strap it to a pallet bound for Goa before it's over.
The state to state difference is broad, mostly owing to graft of state employees not greasy knuckled dummies like me. Gotta look before you leap.
I once rescued a 1961 Maserati 3500 GT from a barn, it was covered in racoon sh*t. No papers and no engine and on NY plates. Took many many trips to our version of the DMV to get a title. Each time a different answer, including restore and drive it to the office to prove its real to we can't issue a title because it has the same VIN as a snowmobile....only in Canada eh?
I had plans to drop in a Pontiac 400 but ended up selling to a dealer in the States. Someone likely spent a quarter million to restore. Still glad I could save the GT from being scrapped. Barn was scheduled to be torn down the following week.
To get my 65 Corvette titled when I moved to NC, I had to meet a local sheriff at the DMV to inspect my car and review the title search. It only took 5 minutes but the sheriff said they just wanted to make sure it was real.
"there’s a (alleged) sex offender in TN who will register it for you and mail you a TN title to transfer to yourself in your home state for $200."
Interesting.
I have a bike bought new with only an MSO and the idiots in my state are making it very hard for me to get titled. A title would make it easier... so, ahh... where can we find more info on this delightful, highly ethical fellow?
The dude is on Facebook, Roger Teal, and has a business “Doctor Moto”. An acquaintance used him a while back and it worked. I saw the rumors of the sex offender on another FB thread, no idea if true or if it’s the same dude. So you might reach out to him and ask. FB message him or his business # posted online is 865-724-6147. Again, no relation and never (yet) used him myself.
We had dinner and did some shopping at the mall last Friday. Everything is full on 00s now. Hollister (the clothing, not the store itself) looked like 2003 inside. Zumiez had Osiris D3s prominently displayed next to a whole wall of car clothing ranging from Honda HRC to Illest. Now the hottest advertisement of today features a busty blonde woman.
"Or — and this theory is perfectly supported by recent results — he’s lost his talent"
when do you reckon he gave it up and what was the tell?
"feathers ruffled is credibly rumored to be Jerry Kunzman, the founder of NASA itself"
absurdly cringe and gay behavior by that dork but why does he even care to begin with and how did she even wind up on his radar
"He’s dead serious about Christianity and morality in general"
i like this fellow
"I have zero snitch in me so it’s not like I’m gonna call LAND and say, “Can I also use your Sprinter to transport stolen goods around Ohio and beyond?” In fact, I kind of admire the brazenness of it."
nah fuck this guy and call it in
"breathless press releases declaring that representation is the new hotness"
oh theyre breathless alright but anyways the people involved are evil and should be charged with criminal mischief or something for putting fat people in my line of sight without my consent
"Much of what has been in publicly-accessible media for the past sixty years amounts to a full-throated attack against normal, decent Americans"
upholding the virtues necessary for a healthy community to flourish is difficult to do but worthwhile. everyone has their part to play but there is a mass influx of those who dont play by our rules making everything worse. solving that problem is hard
I'm not a huge F1 guy, but I watch when I can. I know Verstappen is really good, but I had never really seen him talk about anything. Ford Performance or whatever on YouTube put out a video with him and Chris Harris, who I think is quite good at car stuff. Gave me some insight into his mindset when driving I didn't previously know. Granted I know nothing about driving a race car, so to each their own.
The 38 minute one with Harris was what I was talking about. I haven't watched the Ford official GTD lap yet. Not sure that I will. I'm with Jack on the insignificance of burgerkingring times. Put both cars on the same track, the same day. Then see which is better. I'm having a hard time in my head figuring out what exactly the GTD is versus the latest greatest Corvette. I will fully admit I'm a Ford guy, yet I have a Cadillac in my garage.
If this has been addressed already, note that I don't get to read a lot of the comments. Jack often balances his comments on overweight and less-than-attractive people by stating he's part of that group. My question is this: at which point does one's relation to said adjectives justifies pointed commentary? For example, if I've never tipped into the overweight BMI category, do I still get to poke fun at other overweight men, but not women, and so forth?
In high school English I often missed the subtle plot aspects and "what the book was about." So, maybe it's nothing more than just about POWER.
I think anyone should be able to make fun of anyone at any time and I'll march ten miles with a ruck in that cause.
However, I don't want my readers to think I'm a bully, because I am not. Periodically some garbage gets tossed around saying I have a trust fund and I don't work and I have never suffered in my life. Were any of that the case, it would be unpleasant for me to say some of the things I say.
I'm a bully, but I try not to be cruel. I like to think of it as "constructive bullying", maybe I can get someone to get in shape/shut the fuck up/stop being a dumbass.
Recently got a kid to tough up and join the police academy via my comments, got him to work out regularly, and got him into autocross instead of just driving like a dweeb.
Imagine if all the usual suspects who are upset about these jeans ads had been around for this one with Brooke Shields. I remember the me and my Calvin’s one but not this one. “Selective mating?!??”
Maybe I'm particularly frustrated because I had to pay through the nose for years to insure bikes. I ended up paying cash I didnt really have for a few new bikes just to avoid paying 3k a year on them. People like Brad's original thief were part of that.
I am no fan of bike thieves and i sold my r1 99% because insurance cost too much and 1% because it was deadly painful to ride but an 700$ bike with a title is maybe a 1000$ bike.
A functional country with functional police departments and a functional justice system could easily do bike or auto "honey pot" surveillance stings. Park a high theft auto or bike model in a "known" area, monitor remotely, and criminals come to you.
Yeah, pro thieves with flatbeds or vans (for bikes) are more challenging.
We have an entire scooter shop here in the city who do nothing but stolen resells. Our PD is full of diversity hires after they were defunded and all the cops moved leaving the dept full of people who care so hard or are close to pension and don't care at all. So, if you leave a scooter parked anywhere in the greater city area, including the sprawl, it will be stolen. Of course, now that stuntas(!) have moved on from hammering the tanks of Gixxers for high chair wheelies to sliding Dynas around, the complexion of bike theft has changed. But you can still get a bike stolen here too by the usual suspects. And no one will do jack shit about it from the investigation end besides deny you a title.
How hard is it to find semtex? Of course, the police would solve that one. There are funny bike thief videos where after fifty years the bike stops suddenly. Or there is one where the seat doesn’t work snd the column meets the inside of their butt. Probably all fake
We have a large Eastern European community here nowadays. I heard a tale that one of the thieves had their lock cut off and got beaten with the same bolt cutters as a specific Balkan identifying person retrieved their stolen bike.
If you use splodeys the fedbois get involved and the locals have auto-erotic daydreams about that to the point they'll get up and do their job. Handing someone their ass gets a report filed that never sees the light of day again. People from former Soviet countries understand how to engage crumbling infrastructure and crooked civil employees in a way soft burb'-Americans do not.
Honorable mention for my fellow hillfolken who have essentially lived in American Albania for generations now.
Why set up theft stings, which will merely net a criminal, when you can do drug raids, and seize everything under asset forfeiture laws, thereby netting you not just a criminal (who will soon be replaced by someone else slinging rock) but maybe thousands of dollars?
The departments are (mostly) functional; they are just responding to incentives which are not, strictly speaking, good at reducing crime.
Integrity is a great trait to possess. Even if it's old or a piece of junk, it still belongs to someone else and is therefore off limits.
Screw Fat Brad and his lack of scruples. There should also be a law against cruelty to machines. Imagining him mounting that poor bike should be death penalty eligible.
The guy next to you at the light, in the 15-year-old shitbox S-Class with the limo-tinted windows all rolled halfway down on a 95-degree day, blasting "Fukkk Whitey" by Tha Lowa Kayse Gs featuring Ghettopotamus, is forcing you to put up with his "music" because he knows damn well his asshole behavior isn't gonna turn that Benz into a blood-soaked crime scene.
Fuck that guy. Wood-shampoo his ass and toss him in with the Mexicans on their way out.
We are leas than 100 years away from multiple genocides and are currently watching one now. America and canada will probably have their own in the next 50-100 years. Who is wiped out is still up for discussion
I get the feeling she is right more often that she is wrong, but nevertheless when I board a plane for Frankfurt in a few weeks I'll be on my GOLDEN ERA
Beauty possesses the capacity to blow right through our rational faculties. You might say we are much more permeable to it, whereas truth and goodness are generally mediated through the rational faculties. Bishop Barron likes to illustrate this by asking, "what was the first song that rocked your world?" (I think he uses "Like a Rolling Stone"; I might go with Rush's "Limelight").
Men have been known to be converted on the spot by a High Latin Mass or a Byzantine Liturgy -- the French poet Paul Claudel comes to mind. Beauty spikes them like a holy lance and all they can say is "I have to be part of this."
From this we can estimate why ugliness is so important to the Enemy. Reflect on the ugliness of so much modern architecture, for instance -- even church architecture. Or consider the horrors of transgenderism, where the anxiety a girl feels when she suddenly becomes aware that she instantly draws the attention of every man she encounters -- this perfectly natural anxiety gets manipulated into a project to sterilize and mutilate her. Almost a primeval assault on beauty as such.
Our weapons against this assault are what they always have been: reverently attend to beauty; defend beauty by contrasting it with ugliness; and create beauty yourself -- even in the smallest of ways.
beauty explains itself
ugly needs a lawyer
Their is a guy for every hole and if you have 2 of the three sixes a hole for every man.
what if i dont want to fuck a guy
Lol.
"Our weapons against this assault are what they always have been: reverently attend to beauty; defend beauty by contrasting it with ugliness; and create beauty yourself -- even in the smallest of ways."
This bears repeating, so:
"Our weapons against this assault are what they always have been: reverently attend to beauty; defend beauty by contrasting it with ugliness; and create beauty yourself -- even in the smallest of ways."
https://youtu.be/HQVEteeLC3c?t=81
While I suspect the Englishman Martin Shaw regards automobiles with indifference or even disdain ("the mechanical Jacobin" -- Russell Kirk), nevertheless he has launched a fascinating and unique project of beauty, storytelling and myth that might be of interest to ACfers:
https://www.jawbonestories.com/
https://drmartinshaw.com/about-martin-shaw/
I am familiar with him through Jonathan Pageau! There's an entire group of artists-philosophers engaged in interesting work connected through him it seems.
This reminds me I need to read my copy of Ethics of Beauty which is sitting on the pile.
Related, for parents:
https://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Potential-Facial-Retained-Lost/dp/B0DCZKDYGJ
So the, er, large guy with the motorcycle. Is it wrong I immediately flashed back to this?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqPClQoFz4
My mind also went to The Simpsons, but this scene: https://imgur.com/a/cjN147g
No.
We all do every time he posts pictures of him with the bikes he never actually rides.
A black female Twitter commentator was deriding Sweeney for her “low brow” endorsements, claiming she should be in Dior and a Merceds.
A surprisingly insightful guy in a tank top, sunglasses, and Fred Durst beard responded with, “High end products are small tits industries”. I was gobsmacked, and laughed out loud.
BIG TITS AND BLUE JEANS
THATS THE AMERICA I KNOW AND LOVE
Would be a great country song!
ideal use for ai
you sir have described Anna Nicole Smith
i think im okay with that
as we all should be, sir.
As Al Bundy famously said, "Pretty women make us BUY beer, ugly women make us DRINK beer."
Absolutely!
Sydney looks like a poor man's idea of a hot woman.
I’ve never seen anyone spell “straight” “p-o-o-r” before.
Is she my #1? No. Is she hot? Oh fuck yes she is.
Agreed
Those things are gonna hit the ground when she has kids. Ask me how i know
"Stretch marks haven't ruined our bodies!"
"That's the spirit!"
Meh. You get used to the stretch marks.
“Every girl grows into her tits.”
I like Sydney’s progress on this quest.
thats what surgery and implants are for
The surgery is cheap, the recovery is 8-10 weeks with 4 kids
yeah that's a whole different thing. Who has time for recovery? Kept women.
You're not wrong. And any man here with big nads will be accidentally sitting on them before he reaches thirty. That doesn't mean I'd rather have small balls.
I will verify that
Me, I always favored Maureen O'Hara or Sophia Loren, but I couldn't find a thing wrong with Sweeney.
Even though I el o el'd at this, I'm not sure I entirely agree. I think she has a slightly above average face but a pretty banging body.
Are there much prettier actresses with great bodies? Absolutely.
And maybe that's what has riled up on the feminists - this example isn't good enough even for them to conceded.
She’s a good start for the aesthetic reset.
Couldn't agree more
The most powerful thing women have is their femininity, yet many choose to ignore it.
Maybe Sydney will teach them a valuable lesson.
Ignore it? They burn it to the ground.
Yup. Plus they conflate femininity with beauty.
There was a nice but average girl I used to work with who had small breasts, but she always used to sport cleavage, and we all loved her for it. She wasn’t Sydney but she was very sexy.
One thing women just won’t believe is that shape >>> size. I’ll take a nice pair of perky Bs over some big old water balloons tacked to the wall, even if they are Ds. Fortunately I don’t have to, my wife’s are big and round, and that’s why i married her.
Just saw Lindsay Lohan in a Samsung commercial, and she looks way hotter than Sydney, IMHO.
comment made me go play the REO song “Son of a Poor Man”
Maybe that’s why I think she’s so hot. Never understood the “model” thing. The conspiracy goes that the gay fashion designers want thin models with the bodies of 12 year old boys.
Comedian Joe DeVito had my favorite joke on the Sweeney scandal, "We're so starved for ads with hot women we're losing it over Sydney Sweeney dressed like she's Jay Leno."
Well Sir, you ruined that advertisement for me but damn if Joe isn't right.
If aliens were to land on Earth tomorrow they wouldn't believe that Sydney Sweeney and Fat Brad are members of the same species.
Fucking LOL. Diversity truly is our skrenft.
I am curious to see how gleefully some of the usual suspects here react to the - apparently random, per the WSJ* - slaying of senior Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, who was Head of Core+ RE and CEO of BREIT at BX. Among the other victims, of course.
I have perhaps 15 days of personal experience working out of the building in question, 345 Park Avenue; my Chicago employer had the 12th floor of the building at the time, and I worked out of that office on several occasions. One reason that tenants selected that particular building was the presumption of safety: recall that in the wake of 9/11, “Wall Street” moved to Midtown Manhattan, largely for safety considerations. 345 Park, which counts BX and the NFL as tenants, was perceived as particularly safe given that Steve Schwarzman has an office in the building.
*She was en route to grab drinks with someone at ~6:30 PM when the gunman encountered her in the lobby of the building and shot her. He did not access any BX floors.
This is the first I've heard of it. I don't know who pulled the trigger and I don't know why, so I'm going to default to "the slaying of a fellow human being in cold blood is deplorable." Whether or not the world will be a better place in the absence of this individual is beside the point.
Is she responsible for the buying up of houses? I thought that was Blackrock, not Blackstone. But I am blissfully ignorant of these things.
It’s not BlackRock:
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-record-straight/buying-houses-facts
That’s Blackstone…
deleting this out of shame
Blackrock was initially a subsidiary of Blackstone, but it was 'sold off,' provided you believe that the same people don't control everything through Blackrock, Vanguard, StateStreet and T. Rowe Price. Blackstone is the operation that is buying up residential real estate, with a meaningful amount of the funding coming from enormous university endowments that were funded by money from Obama's unlimited student debt.
The assassination of a Blackstone executive creates a moral quandary for me. I'd like to say I'm above experiencing a sense of schadenfreude over the murder of even someone so avaricious that they see people as sacrificial pawns in a zero-sum game, but reality suggests otherwise. I find Luigi-worshippers utterly repellent. I still think the world would be a better place if there were some checks and balances in place for the demons of private equity.
I don’t think the gunman knew who she was (again, my knowledge is based on the WSJ reporting that they encountered each other in the lobby).
After all, he allegedly had CTE and couldn’t figure out how the elevator banks worked.
Besides, if you REALLY wanted to make a statement about BX, you would’ve gone after Steve or Jon Gray.
My days of believing anything in the journal are behind me. Are people on the street really surprised that the tariffs that worked for every other country as they expropriated our nation's wealth around the world will work to bring some of it back when we're the ones levying the tariffs? I suppose I haven't heard that their coverage of this story included repeated references to how a black man with asian features is 'possibly white,' but CNN and MSDNC don't really set a high bar.
I suspect that the Grays are very hard targets. The idea that this was a random accident sounds like a cope. What does it mean that he couldn't figure out the elevator bank? When I worked at 245 Park Avenue, the elevator banks were accessible to anyone who looked remotely like they belonged, IIRC. We were evacuated a couple of times for bomb threats after 9-11, but I really don't remember much in the way of security. Today, a high-rise beach condo in my Virginia Beach neighborhood has security doors, a security desk, and then the elevators need a revolving code to be entered to leave the lobby. Do 345's elevators now require a transponder fob or access code? I wouldn't be surprised, and I also wouldn't be surprised for the WSJ to mischaracterize a successful security feature as a sign of attacker incompetence, when that is the narrative that they want to sell.
The same story was reported elsewhere with fewer particulars.
She attempted to hide behind a column but was shot. The gunman, per his suicide note, planned to target the NFL, but he went to the landlord’s offices (at or near the top of the building) instead. The NFL has floors 5-8.
I have seen zero mention in any of the news sources I read about the shooter being “possibly white.”
When I worked out of 345, I had to have an admin in the office put me on a list ahead of time. They printed a temp badge for me at the security desk in the lobby, which is fairly standard.
When I consulted for Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns and the NYBOT, the only place that gave me temporary security badges every day was the WTC. I did have employee IDs from most of the others.
@TheGr8Landini nailed it. Compared to the other famous political murderer of the year, Luigi M. v Thompson, LePatner was simply an incidental victim at the wrong place at the wrong time, where former UHC CEO Brian Thompson was specifically targeted for some specific grievance* (*assuming you believe Luigi did it and wasn't a patsy). In certain ways, the incidentality of her murder raises rather than lowers the level of tragedy, even IF her dayjob involved mass-buying of SFHs , ie the intentional destruction of a part of the American social contract.
I've read/it's worth noting that most mass shootings are like this. Mass shooter has specific grievance, and then barely-if-at-all succeeds in doing violence to the people with whom he has said grievance. Could call this "The Elliott Rodger Effect"
In this case, much as with other recent mass shootings, the action will likely have the exact opposite of the intended effect, as the elite corporate class gets further entrenched, further displaced from, and further secured away from the bulk of humanity. Perhaps the main rule of these mass shootings is that the actual after-effects are the exact opposite of what the shooter's stated goals implied he would have hoped for.
I have a hard time with the Gracie Abrams breathy ingenue set. Feels like an unconvincing distillation of Mazzy Star, which back then felt like an homage. It doesn’t brawl, it doesn’t swing, it doesn’t have any sharp edges. Thank you for staying off my lawn, I’m off to go play some Sabbath tunes
Abrams bears an uncanny resemblance to someone of whom I was once very fond.
I think I'll follow your lead, and put on "Sabotage," the best of Black Sabbath's work for my money.
I find that 'breathy ingenue' sounds much better in French or Portuguese.
Edit: I speak neither.
I was unaware of the VIN check website, thank you for that. I ran my no-title project bike, no records of theft or salvage title. I figured I was safe buying a no-title 50y/o project bike that wasn’t running and had no brakes or clutch, no one swiped it off the street. Apparently, there’s a (alleged) sex offender in TN who will register it for you and mail you a TN title to transfer to yourself in your home state for $200. Which comes with its own myriad of ethical concerns, but hey.
The process to get a title for something without one is incredibly difficult. I don’t get why in today’s day and age they can’t use this VIN site (or similar) and streamline the surety bind process.
For the types of things that normally have lost titles (cheap cars, trailers, bikes), it’s not even worth your time going through the process to get it sorted legally.
At the outset I naively thought I’d just bring a signed bill of sale and whatever other necessary documents to the DMV and fight my way through the bureaucracy. A little research led me to the conclusion that I should just take the path of least resistance.
Ahh, so you sold it to an unsuspecting schmuck? That’s what I did with my trailer that was missing both the title and the VIN tag (surprisingly not stolen, just passed through the hands of several apathetic rednecks).
Nah I’ll just PayPal the sex offender $200 and enjoy my TN title.
Colorado simplified things for stuff 20 or so years old or older without using the surety bond process as long as there isn't an outstanding lien. Certified VIN, title searches to the tune of like $3 and some forms. I was able to do it without a bill of sale too. I wasn't super on top of things but it was maybe a monthlong process start to finish. The total cost was far less than $100 although I got the certified VIN check for free
Bama and GA do this too. Anything old doesn't even get a title now. It's just BoS. Other states have to deal with it or buyer has to suck it up.
Here in NC we had a scandal a while back where DMV officers were helping to wash titles and fake VINs based on previously crushed/destroyed numbers in the system, so we were state people were taking stuff to that was stolen and the dot gov was handing out titles like youth pastors hand out side hugs. So a bunch of guys got fired (I think 1 went to jail... probably the least connected and stupidest one who wouldn't shut up for the AG interview) and a former Judge was appointed as DMV head. So now you're well and proper fucked if you have a no title vehicle in the state of NC. For a while it was even tough to do the VT title thing here because they wold balk and investigate the entire paper trail til they found anything to invalidate it. At one point a friend had an inspector come to his holler and demand to see the pieces of the 2nd Ford truck he'd parted out to make one, including a cab he'd stripped and used. Lucky for him he's a hillbilly and had observed the time honored tradition of "roll it down the bank." So the inspector actually climbed down the mountain chopped the kudzu off the old cab, examined the VIN, and then begrudgingly issued him a title for his project.
This is why I still have a 54 Indian Trailblazer (a Royal Enfield Meteor rebadged) sans title still in my shop unconstructed. I'll probably have to sell it to a Brahman and strap it to a pallet bound for Goa before it's over.
The state to state difference is broad, mostly owing to graft of state employees not greasy knuckled dummies like me. Gotta look before you leap.
I once rescued a 1961 Maserati 3500 GT from a barn, it was covered in racoon sh*t. No papers and no engine and on NY plates. Took many many trips to our version of the DMV to get a title. Each time a different answer, including restore and drive it to the office to prove its real to we can't issue a title because it has the same VIN as a snowmobile....only in Canada eh?
Totally expected from Canuckistan, but what a rad car you found.
I had plans to drop in a Pontiac 400 but ended up selling to a dealer in the States. Someone likely spent a quarter million to restore. Still glad I could save the GT from being scrapped. Barn was scheduled to be torn down the following week.
To get my 65 Corvette titled when I moved to NC, I had to meet a local sheriff at the DMV to inspect my car and review the title search. It only took 5 minutes but the sheriff said they just wanted to make sure it was real.
x1000
It's even hard (in states where the DMV techs are dumb and the rules are nonsense) with a legit MSO !
"there’s a (alleged) sex offender in TN who will register it for you and mail you a TN title to transfer to yourself in your home state for $200."
Interesting.
I have a bike bought new with only an MSO and the idiots in my state are making it very hard for me to get titled. A title would make it easier... so, ahh... where can we find more info on this delightful, highly ethical fellow?
The dude is on Facebook, Roger Teal, and has a business “Doctor Moto”. An acquaintance used him a while back and it worked. I saw the rumors of the sex offender on another FB thread, no idea if true or if it’s the same dude. So you might reach out to him and ask. FB message him or his business # posted online is 865-724-6147. Again, no relation and never (yet) used him myself.
Hey first google hit on him is FL sex offender case, lewd/lascivious child under 16 in 1997. His DOB is 1965 so it wasn’t a Romeo and Juliet thing.
So don’t hire him to watch your kids. But to wash your title through the mail you’re probably Ok.
We had dinner and did some shopping at the mall last Friday. Everything is full on 00s now. Hollister (the clothing, not the store itself) looked like 2003 inside. Zumiez had Osiris D3s prominently displayed next to a whole wall of car clothing ranging from Honda HRC to Illest. Now the hottest advertisement of today features a busty blonde woman.
We are so back.
and were on track to head back to a conflict in the middle east
fuck
Well maybe there is a solution to the certain over population problem up north.
>indian conscripts
close enough welcome back british empire
Gotta get midwestern scots-irish and german-deriveds hornt up (apparently) to go pointlessly die in the sand for the benefit of people who hate us
again
I didn't have the money to buy a pair of D3s back in the day, maybe now is my opportunity.
I am a… great admirer… of burritos
That burritos caption was the best since "The prophet Alanis said the Chili's was in here."
I was going to comment on that one, but then he blithely segued over to Janet El Reño.
There’s at least a couple of burrito smuggling jokes in there, too.
"Or — and this theory is perfectly supported by recent results — he’s lost his talent"
when do you reckon he gave it up and what was the tell?
"feathers ruffled is credibly rumored to be Jerry Kunzman, the founder of NASA itself"
absurdly cringe and gay behavior by that dork but why does he even care to begin with and how did she even wind up on his radar
"He’s dead serious about Christianity and morality in general"
i like this fellow
"I have zero snitch in me so it’s not like I’m gonna call LAND and say, “Can I also use your Sprinter to transport stolen goods around Ohio and beyond?” In fact, I kind of admire the brazenness of it."
nah fuck this guy and call it in
"breathless press releases declaring that representation is the new hotness"
oh theyre breathless alright but anyways the people involved are evil and should be charged with criminal mischief or something for putting fat people in my line of sight without my consent
"Much of what has been in publicly-accessible media for the past sixty years amounts to a full-throated attack against normal, decent Americans"
upholding the virtues necessary for a healthy community to flourish is difficult to do but worthwhile. everyone has their part to play but there is a mass influx of those who dont play by our rules making everything worse. solving that problem is hard
I was recently at an unnamed store and saw belts that were close to my height.
I assumed they were utilized by Target models in real life.
There was a tweet a few years ago from a woman who was in the clothing department of a Target store.
She took a photo of the giant wall display of obese women and captioned it:
“I’m in the monster section at Target”.
A walmart medium
I'm not a huge F1 guy, but I watch when I can. I know Verstappen is really good, but I had never really seen him talk about anything. Ford Performance or whatever on YouTube put out a video with him and Chris Harris, who I think is quite good at car stuff. Gave me some insight into his mindset when driving I didn't previously know. Granted I know nothing about driving a race car, so to each their own.
just saw that too
great watch but i wanted to see verstappen tackle the ring in it at some point in the future
Agreed. I haven't watched the official one from Ford yet, not sure if I will.
the 38 min one? i wasnt aware there was another
The 38 minute one with Harris was what I was talking about. I haven't watched the Ford official GTD lap yet. Not sure that I will. I'm with Jack on the insignificance of burgerkingring times. Put both cars on the same track, the same day. Then see which is better. I'm having a hard time in my head figuring out what exactly the GTD is versus the latest greatest Corvette. I will fully admit I'm a Ford guy, yet I have a Cadillac in my garage.
Compared to any of the top 3 vettes, the GTD is easy meat, is what it is. Still like it.
The GTD is a boondoggle.
I wish Max would now announce he's signing with Mercedes while holding a can of Red Bull.
Toto is such a douche
If this has been addressed already, note that I don't get to read a lot of the comments. Jack often balances his comments on overweight and less-than-attractive people by stating he's part of that group. My question is this: at which point does one's relation to said adjectives justifies pointed commentary? For example, if I've never tipped into the overweight BMI category, do I still get to poke fun at other overweight men, but not women, and so forth?
In high school English I often missed the subtle plot aspects and "what the book was about." So, maybe it's nothing more than just about POWER.
my stance has been that anyone can poke fun at any group at any point at any time
they might get mad at you but thats their problem
One cannot GIVE offense, one can only TAKE it.
it's a 2 part transaction, and both parties need to play along. The question is why take offense when you could brush it aside instead?
Be a Stoic.
"Siri, what are the bounds of discussion at noted men's forum, Avoidable Contact Forever?"
As a Fat American I’ll grant the rest of you the license to mock us chubbies liberally. Go for it, we deserve it.
I think anyone should be able to make fun of anyone at any time and I'll march ten miles with a ruck in that cause.
However, I don't want my readers to think I'm a bully, because I am not. Periodically some garbage gets tossed around saying I have a trust fund and I don't work and I have never suffered in my life. Were any of that the case, it would be unpleasant for me to say some of the things I say.
Everyone knows bark got the trust fund!
And spent every dime!
Well, you both would’ve done that
Fucking nepo baby.
I'm a bully, but I try not to be cruel. I like to think of it as "constructive bullying", maybe I can get someone to get in shape/shut the fuck up/stop being a dumbass.
Recently got a kid to tough up and join the police academy via my comments, got him to work out regularly, and got him into autocross instead of just driving like a dweeb.
A lot of what's appropriate around commentary (or, at least, humor) is indeed about power--punch up, not down.
Imagine if all the usual suspects who are upset about these jeans ads had been around for this one with Brooke Shields. I remember the me and my Calvin’s one but not this one. “Selective mating?!??”
https://youtu.be/ssJF-UXDJLc?si=NLiaTXOnhXcvzcI1
“Baby’s got her blue jeans on”
I went back to pay the $19 i accidentally stole from costco when my wife called me while i was in self checkout but if this bike is really old, meh.
Maybe I'm particularly frustrated because I had to pay through the nose for years to insure bikes. I ended up paying cash I didnt really have for a few new bikes just to avoid paying 3k a year on them. People like Brad's original thief were part of that.
I am no fan of bike thieves and i sold my r1 99% because insurance cost too much and 1% because it was deadly painful to ride but an 700$ bike with a title is maybe a 1000$ bike.
A titled yzf600 v&h fetched 13 grand on BaT this year.
Well then, i agree! 10k+ difference is a big deal
A functional country with functional police departments and a functional justice system could easily do bike or auto "honey pot" surveillance stings. Park a high theft auto or bike model in a "known" area, monitor remotely, and criminals come to you.
Yeah, pro thieves with flatbeds or vans (for bikes) are more challenging.
We have an entire scooter shop here in the city who do nothing but stolen resells. Our PD is full of diversity hires after they were defunded and all the cops moved leaving the dept full of people who care so hard or are close to pension and don't care at all. So, if you leave a scooter parked anywhere in the greater city area, including the sprawl, it will be stolen. Of course, now that stuntas(!) have moved on from hammering the tanks of Gixxers for high chair wheelies to sliding Dynas around, the complexion of bike theft has changed. But you can still get a bike stolen here too by the usual suspects. And no one will do jack shit about it from the investigation end besides deny you a title.
How hard is it to find semtex? Of course, the police would solve that one. There are funny bike thief videos where after fifty years the bike stops suddenly. Or there is one where the seat doesn’t work snd the column meets the inside of their butt. Probably all fake
We have a large Eastern European community here nowadays. I heard a tale that one of the thieves had their lock cut off and got beaten with the same bolt cutters as a specific Balkan identifying person retrieved their stolen bike.
If you use splodeys the fedbois get involved and the locals have auto-erotic daydreams about that to the point they'll get up and do their job. Handing someone their ass gets a report filed that never sees the light of day again. People from former Soviet countries understand how to engage crumbling infrastructure and crooked civil employees in a way soft burb'-Americans do not.
Honorable mention for my fellow hillfolken who have essentially lived in American Albania for generations now.
Stealing the most second valuable thing most people own (after their house), should be taken way more seriously. Like 10 years in prison seriously.
Horse thieves were hanged by the neck. Surely in our enlightened age we can go for the balls.
Hanging works for me.
some of those have already been voluntarily removed.
better just go with "draw and quarter"
Why set up theft stings, which will merely net a criminal, when you can do drug raids, and seize everything under asset forfeiture laws, thereby netting you not just a criminal (who will soon be replaced by someone else slinging rock) but maybe thousands of dollars?
The departments are (mostly) functional; they are just responding to incentives which are not, strictly speaking, good at reducing crime.
Integrity is a great trait to possess. Even if it's old or a piece of junk, it still belongs to someone else and is therefore off limits.
Screw Fat Brad and his lack of scruples. There should also be a law against cruelty to machines. Imagining him mounting that poor bike should be death penalty eligible.
Did you make it past the receipt checker or did they actually catch it and send you back in?
I made it past the receipt checker.
The guy next to you at the light, in the 15-year-old shitbox S-Class with the limo-tinted windows all rolled halfway down on a 95-degree day, blasting "Fukkk Whitey" by Tha Lowa Kayse Gs featuring Ghettopotamus, is forcing you to put up with his "music" because he knows damn well his asshole behavior isn't gonna turn that Benz into a blood-soaked crime scene.
Fuck that guy. Wood-shampoo his ass and toss him in with the Mexicans on their way out.
Agreed
the law is unjustly applied
this angers people and i do not know where the breaking point is
Cincinnati perhaps
We are leas than 100 years away from multiple genocides and are currently watching one now. America and canada will probably have their own in the next 50-100 years. Who is wiped out is still up for discussion
When keeping it real goes wrong
Keepin' it real should ALWAYS go wrong.
Someone made fun of your green sneakers? Oh My…
I was, and remain, deeply hurt. To be dismissed by a beautiful woman is the worst injury.
Hurts worse when she’s ugly
"Hey baby, wanna come dance with the big, bad wolf?"
"No! Fuck off, creep!"
"Hey, that's okay. The other pigs said 'No,' too."
A man with your taste in shoes should be above wearing shit like that. She was right.
I get the feeling she is right more often that she is wrong, but nevertheless when I board a plane for Frankfurt in a few weeks I'll be on my GOLDEN ERA
Those shoes were cool (for women) about 10 years ago, so it makes sense that they are now on trend in rural Ohio.
Explains why the lines in Tokyo were out the door, too.
That’s obviously because they fetishize what was once popular in America!
E.g., Buzz Rickson, The Real McCoys, etc.