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Nov. 17th, 2025 10:54 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Not over this budget, anyway.

It boggles me that Canada had to endure 13 days of ambiguity about the budget vote. What next, an election cycle that lasts five whole weeks? The suspense would be palpable.

Cloistered - Catherine Coldstream

Nov. 17th, 2025 09:54 pm
troisoiseaux: (reading 2)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Finished Cloistered: My Years as a Nun by Catherine Coldstream, which is, as it says on the tin, a memoir about the author's twelve years (1989-2002?) in a strict Carmelite monastery* in the north of England, and HOO BOY. This read like a slow-motion (and then very fast) car crash I couldn't look away from, possibly not in the way you would expect from a memoir by an ex-nun that begins with her literally fleeing into the night to escape— her issues with monastic life seemed to be more interpersonal than institutional? For one thing, apparently Coldstream - who converted to Catholicism after losing her father and another close relative in her early 20s and was immediately like I want to spend the rest of my life as a Bride of Christ in a particularly austere, silent, cloistered order - struck the other nuns as being A Bit Weirdly Intense and Emotional; for another, there was kind of a The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie thing going on with a charismatic (in the usual, secular sense) prioress who cultivated a clique of loyalists and indulged her favored mentees while icing out others (i.e., Coldstream). ... ) On the other hand, the fundamental issue was institutional: the culture of self-sacrifice/self-denial/self-abasement and total obedience to God's will - and its flip side, that any doubt is temptation that must be overcome - is the reason she stayed for years even though she started to see the red flags before officially taking her vows. (On a third hand, Coldstream still seems pretty pro- the overall institution of the Catholic church...?) So, yeah. A fascinating, somewhat baffling read.

* Apparently the distinction is not that monastery = monks and convent = nuns, as I'd always assumed, but that a monastery is "a strictly 'enclosed' or secluded house of prayer rather than an active convent, from which nuns might typically go out to teach."
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Posted by adamg

Among those thousands of Jeffrey Epstein e-mail messages released last week are a number  over several years between him and Joichi Ito, who was director of MIT's Media Lab between 2011 and 2019 - when he resigned after news broke of his close connections to the pedophile with his fingers everywhere.

Among the topics of their discussions, which started in 2014 and ended in March, 2019, about five months before Epstein killed himself in a New York prison cell, were the possibility of getting President Obama and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to collaborate on a groundbreaking particle accelerator, Epstein's belief that after Obama left office, he didn't want to do good, he just wanted to make money, and how, not long before his death, Epstein could funnel money to MIT's Media Lab after MIT rejected it.

Oh, and Epstein answered the question of whether Bill Clinton ever visited Epstein Island. No, Epstein insisted, in a Jan. 4, 2015 message:

bad press in full' swing . she also claims to have dinner on my island with clinton. lots of details where he was sitting etc however he was NEVER on the island NEVER.

Their first e-mail conversations in the tranche released last week started with Ito sending Epstein a link to a New York Times article about Putin's hidden fortunes.

"Can you talk now? If you have time," Epstein added.

"Calling you from a 310 #..." Ito replied.

On Feb. 16, 2016, an Epstein minion wrote Ito to let him know Epstein had to cancel a trip to Vancouver, where they were planning to meet up, because he was suddenly called to Washington.

"Good not bad," Epstein quickly replied to that e-mail.

"Good," Ito replied. "Was worried you getting deposed about Trump or something. :-)"

On Nov. 10, 2016, Epstein alerted Ito to a story in the Daily Mail about a "troubled woman with a history of drug use" claiming she was assaulted at a "Donald Trump/Jeffrey Epstein sex party" when she was just 13. "FABRICATED" he wrote.

On Dec. 12, 2016, Epstein wrote Ito for advice after he was contacted by a Politico writer seeking his thoughts on Trump's impending inauguration, for a series of "out-of-the box ideas for President Trump, suggested by writers and thinkers from a variety of fields and ideological positions." But the record shows no advice from Ito.

With the advent of the Trump administration, the two began talking about how Epstein could raise money for the Media Lab.

On Nov. 22, 2017, the two discussed getting together for some fundraising discussions, but with some side thoughts on other matters. Epstein wrote:

maybe week of 3rd not seeing anything that exciting or new ? you? with all these guys getting busted for harassment, i have moved slightly up on the repuation ladder and have been asked everday for advice etc. this morning I have Ken Starr coming to point out how if clinton cigar lewinsky were to be outed today the world would be a different place 

Ito replied he would be in town that week, said one Media Lab researcher in particular did a bang-up job with a PhD paper that disclosed a vulnerability in a new cryptocurreny, oh, and "metoo is quite amazing."

After that, there's no e-mail listed between the two until March 4, 2019, when Ito told Epstein that a donation from rich Epstein pal Leon Black came through OK, but that "the $25K from your foundation is getting bounced by MIT back to ASU. Sorry."

Epstein said no problem, he was still trying to get "more black" for Ito and added:

brutal press. . sorry . it seems im a symbol for all ills. :). if you hate the rich, the men , the trump  types . im your boy . at least for the moment. . hope you are well 

He followed up by saying maybe he could funnel the money through his pal Andrew Farkas, a New York real-estate investor who "gave a building to the hasty pudding harvard."

"Can he give a gift to me at MIT?" Ito wondered.

No reply from Epstein is listed. 

Epstein died in a New York prison cell on Aug. 10.

About a month later, Ronan Farrow detailed in the New Yorker how Epstein had been giving money to MIT - and how MIT had been hiding just how much money it was getting from him. Ito resigned not long after.

MIT then hired a Boston law firm, Goodwin Procter, to look at Epstein's money at MIT. Its report found that MIT, or at least Ito's Media Lab and a professor in another department, continued to take the sex offender's money even after he was convicted in 2018, in fact, he gave most of his money after his conviction.

The report found that some MIT officials even told Ito to continue taking his money because "society is better off if money from 'bad' sources is put to good uses."

Ito messages viewed via the searchable Epstein Email Archive Explorer.

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30 in 30: Star Wars Legends

Nov. 17th, 2025 06:38 pm
senmut: Grand Admiral Thrawn in repose (Star Wars: Thrawn)
[personal profile] senmut
AO3 Link | Not So Deadly Questioning (100 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Gilad Pellaeon
Additional Tags: Drabble
Summary:

Everyone holds their breath when Pellaeon questions






The silence on the bridge spoke volumes to the terror they had Known. Pellaeon questioning orders had everyone running the roster, trying to determine how close to the danger they would move when the Grand Moff Admiral eliminated the officer.

"It is good that you question," were not words any of them expected. "There are intelligence points that are kept solely within my planning agenda," Thrawn continued. "I ask, Captain, that you trust in my grasp on these matters, given my survival and track record?"

Everyone relaxed slightly when Pellaeon agreed, wondering when Thrawn would kill him out of sight.
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Posted by adamg

The Dorchester Reporter reports on Wednesday's School Committee meeting, at which BPS officials will recommend shutting or reorganizing six schools

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Posted by adamg

The Crimson reports Sen. Elizabeth Warren says the latest revelations about  how former Harvard President Larry Summers sought the Dead Pedophile's love advice - including on how to woo a "mentee" of his despite being married - mean it's past time for Harvard to end any affiliations with him. Oh, and look, Summers is teaching Harvard undergrads this semester. No word if it's a hands-on class.

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(no subject)

Nov. 17th, 2025 05:40 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
DEAR HARRIETTE: My boyfriend recently moved in with me, and ever since then, my cat’s behavior has completely changed. She’s been acting out: scratching furniture, hiding for hours and even refusing to eat sometimes. She used to be calm and affectionate, but now she seems anxious and territorial. My partner is trying to be patient, but I can tell he’s getting frustrated, especially since the cat hisses at him whenever he walks by or tries to sit near me. It’s creating tension between us, and I feel stuck in the middle trying to keep everyone happy. I’ve tried introducing them slowly, giving the cat space and even buying new toys to distract her, but nothing seems to help. My boyfriend thinks I’m overreacting and that the cat will “get over it,” but I know she’s genuinely stressed.

I feel guilty because I was so excited for us to finally live together, and now it feels like we’re both walking on eggshells around my pet. I love them both, but I’m starting to wonder if this living situation is sustainable. How can I help my cat adjust to this big change without it putting more strain on my relationship? -- Standoff


Read more... )
wychwood: Trip staggering (Ent - broken)
[personal profile] wychwood
First day back at work fairly whizzed by; between catching up with email, Teams messages, and the spam queue, redoing and circulating all the team monthly reports because it turned out we didn't have any data for 30 or 31 October when I did them, and my interim PDR I was fairly bushed by the end of the day. The PDR went well, but was quite intense. Then I staggered off to my singing lesson, but surprisingly was somewhat revived by Schumann, who is not normally that inspiring for me.

Then I came home and tackled a pile of evening tasks. The cleaner is coming tomorrow, and I had an accumulation of things in my to-do list that I hadn't got to. There's still quite a few left, but I have least ordered the things I wanted from Boots. Or Miss H did it for me, at least, after a catalogue of disasters including six successful orders cancelled immediately after I placed them, Paypal getting into a loop where I had to input a 2FA code in order to be shown a captcha which then told me I had completed it successfully and hung indefinitely (at least three times), attempts involving two payment methods, three computers, two different web browsers, on multiple days... all of them identically unsuccessful. As I said despairingly to Miss H, I just wanted to buy some insoles, how could it possibly be so hard.

It worked fine for her, anyway, and I've paid her back so soon I will have my spare hot water bottle etc.

And on that note of triumph I am going to transport myself to bed where hopefully the current hot water bottle will have made everything lovely.

Bundle of Holding: Salvage Union

Nov. 17th, 2025 03:43 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Scrappy scavengers in scrap-metal mech robots

Bundle of Holding: Salvage Union

PhoenixSong.net is Moving to the AO3

Nov. 17th, 2025 08:25 pm
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Posted by therealmorticia

PhoenixSong.net, a Harry Potter fanfiction and fanart archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

Background explanation

PhoenixSong.net is being archived at AO3 to help ensure that the works will remain available. AO3 will also give its users the ability to review and respond to reviews, which hasn’t been the case at PhoenixSong.net for a while now.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Sherylyn to import PhoenixSong.net into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all images currently in PhoenixSong.net will be hosted on the OTW’s servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Phoenixsong.net to the AO3 after November. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on PhoenixSong.net?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We’ll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your PhoenixSong.net pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

  1. You’d like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
  2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
  3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
  4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
  5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
  6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your PhoenixSong.net account, please contact Open Doors and we’ll help you out. (If you’ve posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they’re yours, that’s great; if not, we will work with the PhoenixSong.net mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

If you still have questions…

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We’d also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of PhoenixSong.net on Fanlore. If you’re new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We’re excited to be able to help preserve PhoenixSong.net!

– The Open Doors team and Sherylyn

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

All fun and games until

Nov. 17th, 2025 07:29 pm
oursin: Photograph of Stella Gibbons, overwritten IM IN UR WOODSHED SEEING SOMETHIN NASTY (woodshed)
[personal profile] oursin

Are they going to eat me alive?’: trail runners become prey in newest form of hunting:

Would you like to be chased by a pack of hounds? It’s a question often put to highlight the cruelty of hunting, because the answer would seem to be no. Or so you would think.
Yet increasing numbers of people are volunteering to be chased across the countryside by baying bloodhounds in what could soon be the only legal way to hunt with dogs in England and Wales, rather than pursuing animals or their scents.

I seem to recall that the pursuit of children with bloodhounds featured in the Mitford children's childhood (or was this just one of Nancy's fictional artefacts?) but as I recall that did not involve pursuing them across country on horseback.... (and presumably the children were already acquainted with their father's bloodhounds).

Maybe this would have struck differently - jolly countryside japes? - if this had not been the same week in which there was

a) a review of the new remake of The Running Man:

Ben signs up for a top-rated reality TV show called The Running Man; he has to go on the run across the US, hunted by professional killers, and if he can survive for 30 days, he gets a billion dollars. But all too late, he realises that these shark-like fascist TV execs aren’t going to play fair.

(pretty sure I have come across similar scenarios set in nearish future dystopias) and

b) this creep-making report: Italy investigates claims of tourists paying to shoot civilians in Bosnia in 1990s:

[J]ournalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who describes a "manhunt" by "very wealthy people" with a passion for weapons who "paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians" from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo.
Different rates were charged to kill men, women or children, according to some reports.

I'm really not sure it's a great idea to start this sort of thing.

(no subject)

Nov. 17th, 2025 02:12 pm
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
Violet has been waiting all week for the next episode of "Game of Wool". Last night she came down at bedtime to check whether episode three was available yet, and yes, it was. She was so excited! Then this morning she came down before 6 am to ask if we could watch the episode. We did watch the first half (about 25 minutes), but after that I told her she needed to go upstairs and get ready for school but that she could look forward to watching the rest later in the day. (After homework, dinner, etc.)

(no subject)

Nov. 17th, 2025 02:07 pm
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
It's much windier here than I'm used to. Back in Maryland, our house was extremely sheltered so we rarely felt much of a breeze even when it was more windy in surrounding areas. However, even on very windy days the wind didn't feel as strong as it does here. My daughter's house is at the top of a small hill so it's extra windy, but wherever I walk or run around here, it seems to always be unpleasantly windy and therefore colder than I would like. We had a strong wind warning yesterday which I thought ended at 1 am this morning, but it was still almost as windy today as it was yesterday.

I'm feeling quite nervous about my interview at the DMV tomorrow for car registration and driver's licence transfer. I've checked and double-checked that I've got all the necessary documentation, but I can't help worrying that something will get rejected and I'll have to start all over again. I'm probably worrying needlessly though.

Monday

Nov. 17th, 2025 09:36 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
The Timber Ridge Executive director sent out a letter last week explaining that every few years the parent company, LCS, does a survey of all residents. This was the year. They would be having coffee and donuts this morning at 9 if you wanted to come fill out the survey then. (And ice cream tomorrow afternoon for another session.) I got there at 9:05 and they were like chickens with heads cut off. The Executive Director and the Events Director were there with underlings and they were not ready. All of them were far more interested in overly cheerfully greeting everyone than setting up. Oh look, we're all wearing the same color!! Isn't that fun?? Squee!! was invented here. They did not even seem to have a plan.

So... by the time I got pencil to survey, I was pretty annoyed.

NOTE... if you are going to ask people questions you want positive answers to, don't annoy them first.

Honestly, I have thought about moving to another, different, Continuing Care Retirement Community. I won't but I have thought about it. The problem is, that you can't really judge so many of the good/bads of a place without living there. And it's the little invisible things that kill it.

Or it could just be that I'm having an annoying day.

I did get in a particularly glorious swim so I should focus on that.

I think I'll clean up a few things around here and then go out and puzzle until time to go down and pick up lunch.

20251116_200552-COLLAGE
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Posted by adamg

A Dedham man was arrested today on a federal charge of conspiracy to launder money for the nearly $2.5 million in cash he allegedly delivered to informants as part of a money-laundering scheme for Mexican drug dealers, and possibly jewelry thieves.

Jan Paulino, 29, faces his initial appearance this afternoon in US District Court in Boston - several days after his lawyer filed a demand that the FBI return $877,240 in cash initially seized by state troopers during a traffic stop on Rte. 128 on May 9.

According to an affidavit by a Watertown police detective working with the FBI, three criminals working with investigators in hopes of leniency on their own charges, or  one case, money and "immigration benefits," became undercover operatives, who accepted increasingly large amounts of cash from Paulino in several meetings this year. After taking 2.5% off as their accepted fee, they then used the money to make deposits in a cryptocurrency account, specified by Paulino, using Tron, a cryptocurrency much beloved by criminals.

The affidavit details the cash trips Paulino allegedly made. On April 8, for example, Paulino allegedly drove from his home on Ashcroft Street -  a dead end just over the Readville line and watched via a camera investigators placed on a nearby pole - to a Starbucks in Waltham, where he handed over four boxes containing $505,485 in currency, according to the affidavit.

A week later, he delivered $515,060 to one of the informants in a parking lot.

He made smaller payments in several other meetings, including one in the parking lot of the Watertown Target. Although the affidavit states the bulk of the money came from drug proceeds, it adds, during a discussion of one meeting:

While waiting, PAULINO was speaking on his cell phone to the ultimate recipient of the cryptocurrency, who PAULINO referred to as "Coca Cola." PAULINO also spoke to someone in the Dominican Republic to try to sell that person a stolen Rolex and claimed, to CW-3 [one of the informants], that the bulk currency was from stolen goods, specifically jewelry.

But Paulino's largest haul went undelivered because state troopers stopped him, allegedly for making an unsafe lane change, on 128 north in Dedham on May 9, and they didn't buy his story on why he was driving around with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and so seized the money:

PAULINO's story changed multiple times but admitted that he was transporting a large amount of currency to be structured into small checks through the bank system. PAULINO lastly stated that the money was from jewelry sales. During the stop, between speaking with the MSP Trooper, PAULINO sent a text message to UC-1 [an undercover investigator], which stated, “Leave now[.]” PAULINO further stated that he would call UC-1 later. Based on experience and training, investigators believe that PAULINO was warning UC-1 to leave the planned meeting location to avoid law enforcement detection. 

Investigators found the red and black bag in the vehicle which contained $877,240 in U.S. currency. The currency was seized. Prior to submission to evidence, a MSP K9 conducted a random sniff of the bag to include the currency, and the K9 alerted to the presence of narcotics. Based on experience and training, the communications leading up to this planned money drop-off, and the positive K9 alert for the presence of narcotics odor, investigators believe that this currency is drug proceeds.

The seizure put a crimp in his business, because the cash suppliers wanted their money, as he explained to one of the informants at a meeting three weeks later:

PAULINO explained that the money seized during the May 9 traffic stop was money being laundered for Mexicans. CW-1 understood this comment to mean that PAULINO was laundering the money for Mexican drug traffickers. PAULINO stated that he was getting indirect pressure from the money owners (the drug traffickers) to pay the money back and that PAULINO was not allowed to launder any more funds until half of the seized money was paid down to the drug traffickers. PAULINO stated that he had obtained a lawyer and paid a Jewish man in New York City to falsify jewelry receipts so that PAULINO could submit a claim to have the seized funds returned to him. PAULINO further explained that he would be looking to sell UC-1 cocaine to help him pay the funds back. PAULINO stated that he did not want to risk traveling with narcotics for fear of being stopped by police and that his plan was to introduce UC-1 directly to PAULINO’s drug connections.

Paulino's lawyer filed a demand for the return of the money in July. On Thursday, with no answer from the government, he sued in US District Court.

Innocent, etc.

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sovay: (Jeff Hartnett)
[personal profile] sovay
Blind Spot (1947) was unobjectionably winding up its 73 minutes of inessential Columbia B-noir and then it stuck its middle-aged character actors with the emotional landing and I was obliged to have feelings about it.

Thanks to a screenplay which regularly fires off such pulp epigrams as "Yes, but why should dog eat distinguished writer?" Blind Spot never actually bores, but it has little beyond the acridity of its literary angle to differentiate it from any other lost weekend noir when critically esteemed and commercially starving novelist Jeffrey Andrews (Chester Morris) comes off a double-decker bender to discover that his disagreeable publisher has been iced in exactly the locked-room fashion he crashed around town shooting his mouth off about the previous night and worse yet, he can't even remember the brilliant solution that made his pitch worth more than the pair of sawbucks he was condescendingly packed off with. "It's like falling off a log. Dangerous things, logs. More people get hurt that way." Smack in the frame of a crime he may even have committed in a time-honored vortex of creativity and amnesia, he renews his ambivalent acquaintance with Evelyn Green (Constance Dowling), his ex-publisher's level-gazed secretary whose loyalty he refuses to trust in light of his convenience as a three-sheets stranger with a foolproof gimmick for murder to a girl with a handsy wolf for a boss, but with a second corpse soon in play and a policeman pacing the shadow-barred sidewalk above his basement efficiency like a guard down the cell block already, the two of them take their slap-kiss romance as much on the lam as the rain-sprayed studio streets will allow until the complicating discoveries of a check for $500 and a gold spiral earring pull their mutually suspicious aid society up short. Since everyone in this film reads detective fiction with the same frequency as offscreen, the levels of meta flying around the plot approach LD50. "The only thing this proves is that I'm slightly moronic."

So far, so sub-Woolrich. The supporting cast may not be any less stock, but at least their detailing is more inventive than the hero's blear o'clock shadow or the heroine's demi-fatale peek-a-boo. Sarcastically spitballing a detective for his easy-peasy crime, Jeffrey proposed Jeremiah K. Plumtree, an eccentric old New Englander with the lovable habit of forgetting to unwrap his caramels before eating them. Instead he gets the decidedly uncozy Detective Lieutenant Fred Applegate of the NYPD (James Bell), one of those dourly hard-boiled representatives of the law whose wisecracks even sound like downers, the lean lines of his face chilled further by his crystal-rims. Even when he straightens up into an overhead light, he looks mostly annoyed at the shadows it sets slicing through his third degree, a thin, plain, dangerous plodder. "That's right. With an M." Naturally, his narrative opposite is the effusive Lloyd Harrison (Steven Geray), a cherubically flamboyant sophisticate with an honest-to-Wilde carnation in his buttonhole who deprecates his own best-selling mysteries with the modesty of the luxuries he can afford because of them, shaking himself a cocktail at a wet bar that could host the Met Gala. His Hungarian accent lends an eerily psychoanalytic air to the scene where he talks Jeffrey through recovering the blacked-out solution of his story, one of its few expressionist touches. "Small was the worst kind of a stinker. And a pair of shears in his back? Well, as the saying goes, on him it looks good." They make such an odd couple meeting over the trashed files and splintered locks of the crime scene that when the writer opens with the arch observation, "The cops must really love to wreck a place," we half expect to learn that the lieutenant ran him in once for some aesthetic misdemeanor or other and instead Applegate cracks the first smile we've seen out of his burned-in cynicism and then tops it by folding himself down at the murdered man's desk, conceding his mystification with the case, and even submitting to be teased self-reflexively by Harrison: "Only amateurs can solve a crime. You've read enough mysteries to know that." It's no caramel, but around a clearly old friend he has an odd, thoughtful tongue-in-cheek expression he closes his mouth on the second he catches himself being noticed. He chews on the ends of his glasses, too. It makes him look downright human.

You forget the solutions must be completely logical as well as acceptable by the reader. )

Blind Spot was the third film noir written by novelist and screenwriter Martin Goldsmith who had already penned the budget-free noir legend Detour (1945) and would pick up an Oscar nod for the equally second-feature The Narrow Margin (1952) and it shares their flair for creatively tough dialogue, even when its rhetorical saturation occasionally tips over from the enjoyable to the inexplicable, e.g. "Possibly it was the heat which the rain had done no more than intensify, which drained a person's vitality like ten thousand bloodthirsty dwarves." Its economical direction was the successful debut of former child actor Robert Gordon, but like so many B-pictures it relies as much or more on its photography, in this case by George Meehan who opens with a fabulous track down a working-class, washing-hung street of litter and pushcarts that could almost pass for a naked city, shoots his leading lady like abstract sculpture in the dark, and just for good measure throws in some subjective camera for an unfortunate run-in with a chair. I watched it off TCM at the last minute and am distressed to report the almost unwatchably blurred-out grunginess of every other print the internet seems to offer, not to mention their badly clipped runtimes; it hampers the ship manifesto. Pace the indeed memorably weird moment where Morris essentially faceplants into Dowling, muzzily nuzzling into her platinum waves like a soused, stubbly cat, I cannot care that much about obligatory het even when it comes with left-field chat-ups like "I was afraid you were going to turn out to be frivolous—order one of those exotic cocktails like crème de menthe with hot fudge." James Bell absentmindedly twiddling an important piece of evidence is more my line. This theory brought to you by my distinguished backers at Patreon.
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Posted by adamg

Boston Police report arresting two men they say were hanging out with some drug users on Woodledge Street yesterday afternoon - with a gun loaded with 21 bullets.

Police say that when officers arrived around 2:50 p.m. to check out reports of drug use going on.  They spotted Tamerat Edelstein-Rosenberg, 18, "sitting on a scooter, with a bulge near his waistband area." And then, police say:

The suspect turned on the scooter and attempted to flee, almost striking an officer. The suspect fell off the scooter and a struggle ensued as he began reaching towards his waistband.

Prentice Jones, 18, came out of the rear of a Howard Avenue building and began videoing the whole thing, but then Edelstein-Rosenberg reached into a fanny pack and threw a firearm towards Jones, police say:

Jones picked up the firearm, and both suspects jumped over a fence in attempts to flee. A foot pursuit ensued, and both suspects were apprehended.

District Detectives were requested to respond to the scene and process the recovered evidence. The firearm was determined to be a Ghost gun with one round in the chamber and twenty rounds in the magazine.

Both were charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of a loaded firearm, possession of a large-capacity firearm and possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number, police say. Edelstein-Roseberg was also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, resisting arrest and trespassing.

Innocent, etc.

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