It has been a terrible week in the news, and it has also been a difficult week for me personally. I’m having trouble thinking clearly today. It all seems like a bad dream. Today I’m going to focus on Tyler Robinson and why he might have hated Charlie Kirk. I know there’s plenty of other news, but I’m still trying to understand this awful event and its aftermath.
Since it’s Caturday, and since we all likely could use some comfort, I’m going to begin with this article about people and cats by neuroscientist Laura Elin Pigott: The Conversation: What owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs).
Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry.
The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin is important for cat-human bonding too.
Oxytocin plays a central role in social bonding, trust and stress regulation in many animals, including humans. One 2005 experiment showed that oxytocin made human volunteers significantly more willing to trust others in financial games.
Oxytocin also has calming effects in humans and animals, as it suppresses the stress hormone cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest system) to help the body relax.
Scientists have long known that friendly interactions trigger oxytocin release in both dogs and their owners, creating a mutual feedback loop of bonding. Until recently, though, not much was known about its effect in cats.
Cats are more subtle in showing affection. Yet their owners often report the same warm feelings of companionship and stress relief that dog owners do – and studies are increasingly backing these reports up. Researchers in Japan, for example, reported in 2021 that brief petting sessions with their cats boosted oxytocin levels in many owners.
In that study, women interacted with their cats for a few minutes while scientists measured the owners’ hormone levels. The results suggested that friendly contact (stroking the cat, talking in a gentle tone) was linked to elevated oxytocin in the humans’ saliva, compared with a quiet resting period without their cat.
Many people find petting a purring cat is soothing, and research indicates it’s not just because of the soft fur. The act of petting and even the sound of purring can trigger oxytocin release in our brains. One 2002 study found this oxytocin rush from gentle cat contact helps lower cortisol (our stress hormone), which in turn can reduce blood pressure and even pain.
Click on the link to read more about oxytocin’s effect on the human-cat relationship.
Yesterday, we learned that the man who murdered Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is the product of a gun-owning, Republican family who for the past couple of years spent most of his time on-line. There are suggestions that he may have been a follower of Nicholas Fuentes, who hated Kirk because he wasn’t far right enough. Fuentes followers call themselves “groypers.” Regardless of whether that hypothesis pans out, Robinson clearly was not a “far left lunatic,” as Trump claimed the murderer must be. We can’t be sure of Robinson’s motives, because he is not talking to investigators.
In the conservative southern Utah city where Tyler Robinson grew up, neighbors and classmates described him as a reserved, intelligent young man raised in a Republican family who was deeply interested in video games, comic books and current events.
On Friday afternoon, people who knew Mr. Robinson struggled to reconcile their memories of him and his seemingly ordinary suburban upbringing with his notorious new image: the latest face of political violence, accused of fatally shooting the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus earlier this week in what the authorities have called a political assassination.
By Irina Babichenko
“It’s really sad that someone with his mind put it to that sort of use,” said Keaton Brooksby, 22, a former high school classmate of Mr. Robinson’s.
Mr. Robinson had recently spoken with a family member about the fact that Mr. Kirk was going to hold an event in Utah, according to a police affidavit, and he and his relative discussed “why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had.”
But as elements of the nation’s political left and right scrambled for motives, the image that has initially emerged of Mr. Robinson is not at all clear. Neither is his trajectory from a scholarship-winning high school student to an apprentice electrician to a suspect.
Mr. Brooksby said that Mr. Robinson was generally considered a quiet pupil when they were growing up in the conservative St. George area, but one day in high school, the topic of the 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, came up during lunch. Few there knew exactly what had happened, but Mr. Robinson was sure of himself.
“He gave us a whole spiel on what happened,” Mr. Brooksby said. “I just remember thinking, he’s got a lot of information on this for someone who’s 14.”
A bit more info:
Mr. Robinson is registered to vote in Utah, but he is not affiliated with a political party and had never voted in an election, according to the Washington County Clerk. His parents are registered Republicans, both with active hunting licenses in a part of the country known for its outdoor life, near Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks.
Social media photos posted by his family over the years show Mr. Robinson and his two younger brothers shooting and posing with guns….
Adrian Rivera, 22, who had been in a high school woodworking class with him, said that Mr. Robinson would often hang around the area designated for the Junior R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, with other students who were interested in the military program. It was unclear whether Mr. Robinson had actually been a member of the corps.
Mr. Rivera said that Mr. Robinson was a “massive Halo guy,” referring to the popular science fiction game, and that he also liked to play Call of Duty, and other shooter games.
Sam New, 23, remembered a different video game, Minecraft, which Mr. Robinson, an introvert from a conservative family, played obsessively.
Use the gift link to read more, if you’re interested.
The Wall Street Journal: Tyler Robinson’s Descent From Promising Student to Murder Suspect.
Tyler Robinson was the pride of his Utah family. He was a 4.0 high-school student who won a prestigious college scholarship, according to social-media posts.
“His options are endless,” his mother wrote on Facebook.
Four years later, authorities say the 22-year-old Robinson used an old bolt-action rifle to fire a single shot that killed Charlie Kirk while the conservative activist spoke Wednesday at Utah Valley University. He allegedly had ammunition etched with phrases borrowed from internet and gaming culture like “Hey, fascist! Catch!” and “If you read this, you are gay, lmao.”
Authorities, friends and even his own family were trying to understand how Robinson went from a top student raised by parents who were registered Republicans in a Mormon stronghold in southwest Utah to a suspected assassin who authorities said targeted one of the country’s most popular conservative youth leaders. Robinson was in the past registered as nonpartisan….
As everyone knows by now, Robinson’s family turned him in to authorities after he confessed to his father.
Robinson was from the small city of Washington, nestled in southwest Utah between red-rock canyons and snow-capped mountains. Striking national parks like Zion and Bryce Canyon aren’t far.
Like many boys in this area, Robinson grew up hunting and was well-versed in the use of firearms, according to law-enforcement officials. Photos shared on social media show the family shooting rifles.
State records show his parents own a custom-countertop business, and his mother is a licensed clinical social worker. The family lives on a suburban street that a neighbor described as quiet with many households attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robinson, who has two brothers, was a stellar student, according to his mother’s posts on her Facebook account. He had a perfect GPA and scored a 34 out of a possible 36 on his ACT….
Robinson’s mother hoped he would stay close for college, and in the fall of 2021, she posted pictures of him in his dorm room at Utah State, a 5-hour drive north of the family home in Washington. He arrived with a scholarship worth $32,000 over four years.
But he wasn’t there long. Utah State said he attended the school for just one semester. More recently he has been enrolled in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, where he is a third-year student, according to the Utah Board of Higher Education.
On the speculation about Robinson’s political leanings:
One thing is apparent about Robinson: He lived much of life on the internet. By age 15, he had developed enough of an online presence that he dressed up as “some guy from a meme” for Halloween, according to his mother. Writings on the bullet casings found by police appeared to reference various memes and online culture.
One unfired casing was inscribed with lyrics from “Bella Ciao,” an Italian song dedicated to those who fought against fascism during World War II that has been revived on TikTok.
“It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” Cox said in an interview with the Journal.
Online, however, X users have noted that a version of the song also appears on a Spotify playlist for Groypers, the name for followers of Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist personality who has criticized Kirk, including for his support of Israel. Fuentes has publicly condemned the shooting of Kirk and posted on X that “my followers and I are currently being framed” for Kirk’s killing “based on literally zero evidence.”
Although MAGA figureheads have been quick to point fingers at the left for Kirk’s death, Tyler’s grandmother, Debbie Robinson, 69, insisted that they come from a family of Trump supporters.
She spoke with the Daily Mailon Friday after news of Robinson’s arrest broke. “My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump,” Debbie told the outlet. “Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”
According to the outlet, Robinson’s father, Matt, 48, was the one to turn Tyler into the authorities after he confessed to the grisly crime. Debbie has not been able to get in touch with her son since news of her grandson’s arrest went public.
“I’m just so confused,” Debbie said of her grandson’s arrest. “[Tyler] is the shyest person,” she said. “He has never, ever spoke politics to me at all.”
Extreme right groups, Charlie Kirk, and Tyler Robinson
It ideologies of far right groups are more complex than us “normies” generally realize.
For years, extremist groups, white nationalists, and militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw Charlie Kirk not as their ally, but as their enemy.
But in the immediate aftermath of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, these same groups were quick to frame the incident as an attack on one of their own, portraying Kirk’s death as part of what they see as an ongoing war against white, Christian men. The same groups were relatively quiet on Friday after police announced they had arrested a 22-year-old from Utah for the killing who had no obvious ties to the left.
By Giuseppe Mariotti
These groups, many of which have been relatively dormant since the mass arrests surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, have used the outpouring of grief around Kirk’s death as a lightning rod, a signal that they need to mobilize and take action. Many of them, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have used Kirk’s death as a recruitment and radicalizing tool to convince his supporters to take a more extreme worldview.
“Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, the leader of the far-right National Network, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, wrote on his Telegram channel. “We are mobilizing young Nationalists to defend our communities against the Radical Left—we need your help!”
The appeals appear to be at least somewhat working: Sánchez’s post was accompanied by a screenshot showing a $1,000 donation he received on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.
“This is the beginning of a movement that may define our nation,” the donor wrote on the site. “Use it for good and purge the country of these insane ideologies.”
On Friday, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native, was identified by federal law enforcement as a suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk. During Friday’s press conference, officials said that several bullet casings recovered from a hunting rifle found near the crime scene had messages inscribed on them.
During the press conference, officials appeared to take the inscriptions literally, to the extent they ascribed meaning to them at all. But the four messages apparently written by the alleged shooter instead seem to invoke a variety of memes and video game references.
One of the casings was said to be engraved with the phrase “Hey Fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow, a right arrow, and three downward-facing arrows. That sequence is an apparent reference to the “Eagle 500kg bomb” in the popular third-person-shooter game Helldivers 2. The bomb has become a meme in the Helldivers community for being comically excessive.
By Elias-Mollineaux-Bancroft
Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers of Helldivers 2, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Launched in 2024, the game has grown a cult following for its Starship Troopers–like storyline. The cooperative shooter allows teams of up to four players, called “Helldivers,” to spread “freedom” across a fictional universe—fighting bugs, robots, and squid-like aliens rather than other humans. Their form of managed democracy is “basically fascism,” says independent extremism researcher Harry Batchelor, who works with the Extremism and Gaming Research Network.
Helldivers 2 is satire, and the vast majority of players are in on it. The game, says Batchelor, “takes “the whole ‘pretending to be democracy while actually being a fascist government’ so seriously, it’s obviously a joke.” The community around the game has generally maintained a positive reputation, even working together to combat “review bombing”—coordinated negative reviews intended to hurt a game’s chance of success.
The arrows that activate the Eagle 500kg bomb have been used in other memes to show that a user is “going to do a big, violent action,” Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, tells WIRED. “That’s maybe a cheeky way of expressing it on the casing.”
More bullet engravings and their meanings:
One of the other alleged memes on the casings says, “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” which seems to be more of a common online insult than a specific reference. “I believe this person is genuinely just always online,” Batchelor says.
“They knew that they’d be discovered and posted about,” says Caldwell of the decision to include meme references on the casings. “People understand that memes are very powerful and get a lot of attention. As soon as people read them, they’re going to desperately try to figure out what the reference means. It makes it more interesting.”
As of yet, little is known about Robinson’s alleged motivations or ideology. But the few details surrounding the 22-year old point toward a troubling trend: young shooter suspects who communicate primarily via obtuse memes and digitally inflected irony.
All sorts of young adults are familiar with the culture of video games, Twitch streamers, and YouTube, speaking a language completely foreign to those who do not spend as much time online. Is that language inherently sinister? No more than, say “Skibidi Toilet,” a series of crude animated shorts about toilets from which talking heads emerge. (There’s a movie in the works.) None of the phrases Robinson allegedly wrote are known code words for anything nefarious; they signal little beyond a connection to a contextless internet, where memes take on a life of their own and are used by the benign and malignant alike.
By Tatyana Ornisana
Some memes, however, aren’t so neutral. The young men who admired, and still admire, Charlie Kirk tend to be extremely online—which doesn’t necessarily mean that they all share exactly the same ideology. Internecine conflict between conservative factions is common, both on social media and at events for young conservatives. The most notable of these are the “Groyper Wars” of 2019. “Groypers” are fans of white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes who like to hide their racism behind ironic jokes; when Kirk began making an effort to mainstream his ultra-right-wing Turning Point USA movement, Fuentes instructed them to publicly troll Kirk.
A Facebook photo in which Robinson appears to reference a Groyper meme has led to early speculation that Kirk’s killing may have been an outgrowth of these intra-far-right skirmishes. But another feature of the modern far-right is an embrace of the post-truth huckster. In these circles, it’s always possible that someone is playing a character—or will claim to be doing so, muddying the waters so no one can accuse them of having a sincere belief beyond the desire to rile up their targets. For people like this, the whole world is a forum board, where lewd public comments and real-world violence are becoming increasingly interchangeable. (Consider the messages left behind by the deceased shooter of Annunciation Catholic School, which were full of references to both other shooters and innocuous memes.)
I think Rivera’s last paragraph is important:
In every respect, the circumstances surrounding Kirk’s murder are alarming for those with the understandable impulse to make some kind of sense out of terrifying events. It is true that real-life violence is the end result of our cultural coarsening. It is also important to remember that Robinson’s generation is entering public life with frames of reference that are totally foreign to its elders, regardless of individual ideology. We cannot properly comprehend the harm of bad actors or the concerns of the innocent until we have taken the time to learn their language—and sometimes, even then we won’t understand.
I’ve tried to gather the latest speculation about Tyler Robinson’s possible motives and ideology. We’ll likely learn more in the coming days, especially if he begins talking to investigators. We are dealing with a right wing culture that is very dangerous.
“The idolization of Charlie Kirk is gross.” John Buss, re@peat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I have to admit that when I first read my undergrad psychology textbook, and when we hit the unit on personality disorders, I really had never heard the term “sociopath”. I read it and recognized my father-in-law right there in the definition.
When Doctor Daughter had her rotation and classes in psych, she was told by her professor that the perfect example of a narcissist was good ol’ Yam Tits. Evidently, the “reality show” he had at the time–which I never bothered to watch–was chock-full of examples good enough for med students to use as examples for diagnosis. This day and age I get to experience all that human toxicity constantly.
When I was getting my teaching certificate in the 1970s, we were part of the first generation of teachers who had to know all kinds of disabilities and emotional and mental issues so we could identify students with possible issues and suggest they see the school psychologists. We had the duty to report any signs of abuse, also. That’s the point at which I started working more diligently towards my terminal degree. Little did I know that the same problems invaded all levels of education.
There was a shooter recently in the library at the campus where I taught for years. Just yesterday, there were lockdowns and shooter alerts at many campuses, including all historically Black colleges, the Naval Academy, and UMass Boston. That includes Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where evidently one sociopath took out another. The AP reports, “A list of all deadly shootings on college campuses in the USA.” Thankfully, several of the ones yesterday–specifically UMass Boston and the Naval Academy–were false alarms. The shooting at a high school in Colorado was real and has been conveniently ignored by the majority of the media. The one at FSU yesterday was real and deadly.
The latest deadly shooting on a college campus in the U.S. unfolded Thursday at Florida State University, where two people were killed and at least six others were wounded.
Frightened students, faculty and parents there for a tour took cover and waited in classrooms, offices and dorms across the university in Tallahassee after it issued an active shooter alert. Some crammed into a freight elevator after hearing gunshots outside the student union.
The gun used in the shooting belonged to the 20-year-old suspect’s mother, who has worked for the sheriff’s office for 18 years, authorities said. They described the gun as her former service weapon.
The gunman, believed to be a student at the university, was shot and wounded by officers and was taken into custody, according to authorities. The two people who died were not students.
Florida State’s main library was the site of another shooting in 2014, when a 31-year-old gunman wounded three people before he was shot and killed by police.
Experts say mass shootings on college campuses, although rare, are often on the minds of students today because they grew up participating in active shooter drills in elementary and high school.
It was only natural that one sociopath with a gun would eventually shoot another sociopath who viciously spread hate throughout the internet and the country. Here are some of Charlie Kirk’s “Greatest Hits.” He basically hated everyone who wasn’t a cis White Christian Male in the mode of his form of Christianity. There are two historical concepts of historical justice that come to mind. The first one is Karma. The second is “You reap what you sow.” The third one is a morphed version of an older one. “Live by the gun, die by the gun.” Of course, I support free speech. Of course, I abhor gun violence and all kinds of killing.
It doesn’t take much in the way of brains, though, to determine that when you basically dare the world to argue with your hate speech, you’re going to attract some unwanted attention. It’s kind of like the old male stereotype that if you wear provocative clothing and show up in the wrong place, you deserve to be raped. If a lot of sick men believe this about women, then a lot of sick men are going to be violent in the face of taunting, also. There are a lot of lone white male shooters out there just willing to go on a hunt. Charlie Boy enabled them with weapons and hate speech.
Here are some of Charlie Boy’s greatest hits. There are many more. I’m also pretty sure that I wonder if a little girl is better off under a father who tells her she should be a slave to a husband and would force her to carry the product of a rape to term at 10 years old.
The victims of mass shootings in this country–including children and the elderly worshipping in their holy place–basically become numbers unless their grief-stricken relatives force us to remember them by asking the media and the public to listen to their stories and the acts of violence that ended their lives. Why aren’t they victims of political assassination whose ends are covered relentlessly on the internet and TV? What about the details of the other folks this week who lost their lives to gun violence? I found this article on The Verge that contains a lot of good questions as we investigate Charlie Boy’s shooter, whose own family turned him in.
The fatal shooting of Kirk on Wednesday led to an intense manhunt across Utah, though it encountered numerous complications along the way. Several leads, publicly teased by FBI Director Kash Patel, quickly petered out. Leaked documents from law enforcement published by MAGA influencers led to false narratives about how markings on the bullet indicated that the shooter was in favor of “transgender ideology.”
It was nearly impossible to divorce politics and internet misinformation from Kirk’s death, however. The 31-year-old was a powerful figure in the MAGA movement, as the founder and leader of the right-wing college group Turning Point USA, and a prominent podcaster and MAGA influencer himself, famous for appearing on college campuses to confront liberal students. President Donald Trump credited Kirk and TPUSA as a factor in his return to office, and frequently relied on him as an emissary to youth voters.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, his allies in the MAGA movement, including lawmakers and influencers, promised swift retribution against the left should the killer share their ideology. The themes of Helldivers 2 could have an ideological meaning, albeit not necessarily a straightforward one. But ultimately, the messages on the shooter’s bullet casings can best be described as bizarre and extremely online.
The writings on the bullet were clever, cruel, and spot on.
It’s not hard to see where the “antifascist” conclusion came from on two of the other bullets: “Bella ciao” is an Italian song adopted by partisans and resistance fighters while Italy was governed by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Cox said in response to a question during the conference that the “hey fascist” message “speaks for itself.” Three downward-slanting arrows are a symbol used by both historical and contemporary antifascists.
But the full arrow sequence was quickly recognized as something else: a combo from Helldivers 2 for calling the Eagle 500kg Bomb stratagem. The world of Helldivers — which evokes Robert Heinlein’s book Starship Troopers and the subsequent movie — concerns fascism thematically; developer Arrowhead has characterized it as a satire where players fight for a fascist state.
As for the use of “Bella ciao,” the song has no obvious connection but given its historical significance, unsurprisingly does appear in a Helldivers 2 mod, as well as in at least one other video game, a World War II-themed strategy game called Hearts of Iron IV.
There is no doubt that Charlie Boy was a fascist. He’s left a trail that would reach the sun. However, we do have free speech; fascists can speak as they wish. But what happens when that talk reaches into vile hate speech and suggests things like “Gay people should be stoned to death”? We need to have a huge conversation on the fine line between exercising your right to free speech and making suggestions that crazy white men with guns will act on.
This is my very short post today with its very short questions. While this shooter used a slightly modified long gun typically used for hunting, do we really need military style weapons floating around a society where we can identify so many personality disorders and severe mental illnesses? Germany has basically outlawed anything NAZI-related. If that’s going too far, what’s the point at which we hold public figures accountable for out-and-out hate speech and suggestions that might provoke action? Also, shouldn’t there be some point at which giving a Presidential Medal of Honor to someone who dedicated their career to hate speech should be universally condemned? When is saying don’t speak ill of the dead too passive? Can we celebrate the death of Hitler while ignoring the fact that NAZIs are among us? What happened to the only good NAZI is a dead NAZI? Is that just rhetoric or going to far? I sure wouldn’t shoot aNAZI even though my father bombed them, but I sure would spit in their face and then meditate on the nature of karma.
My fellow Americans, we need to have a good, long talk and stop all this fawning over your basic bully and start discussing how the fuck we’ve lost our way so badly.
Don’t forget we have a Department of War now. Don’t forget the mission of ICE now. We’re in this deep and for some time. My guitar and I gently weep.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Take a look at that video above, it was taken on September 6th, 2001. This is how I remember the World Trade Plaza. Even after 24 years…it still hurts. Weren’t they just beautiful buildings?
Now, on the events from yesterday.
Reload the page if you are having trouble seeing the Instagram posts:
Charlie Kirk was shot and killed yesterday. Here is the video of him being shot…if you don’t want to see it, don’t look. I am posting it so you can see just how exact this shot was.
Repost: @thesidewalkschool TRIGGER WARNINGCharlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, the nation’s pre-eminent conservative youth organization, was shot while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, a university spokeswoman and Mr. Kirk’s spokesman said.
The university spokeswoman, Ellen Treanor, said that Mr. Kirk was struck about 20 minutes after he began speaking on campus. She said a suspect had fired at Mr. Kirk from the Losee Center, a building about 200 yards away, and been taken into custody. The suspect was not a student, she said.
Ms. Treanor said Mr. Kirk’s security had taken him away after the shooting, and she did not have any information on his condition. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, confirmed that Mr. Kirk had been shot in the neck.
Cellphone videos taken at the event that were circulating online showed people running at the sound of a gunshot. One video appeared to show Mr. Kirk’s head jerking back as he delivered remarks while sitting under a tent with the slogan “The American Comeback” printed on it.
President Trump posted on social media in support of Mr. Kirk. “We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot,” he wrote on Truth Social. “A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!” -New York Times
As you can see there was some confusion about the suspects…so far no one is under arrest.
BREAKING The killer of Charlie Kirk remains at large. FBI Director Kash Patel just now: “The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement. Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in interest of transparency.”
While America is praying for Charlie Kirk, children were shot at a Colorado high school today. The same children Kirk said have to be sacrificed for the Second Amendment.abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-…#CharlieKirk #MassShooting #crime #guns #NRA
Polly Holliday, a prolific stage and screen actress known for playing the gum-smacking waitress Flo who popularized the phrase “Kiss my grits!” on the long-running CBS sitcom “Alice,” died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 88.variety.com/2025/tv/obit…
I’m even more overwhelmed than usual with the news today. It’s absolutely insane.
Yesterday we got to see Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, and it is simply disgusting, as JJ wrote yesterday. Trump can deny he wrote the note with his signature all he wants. No one is buying it. He was closse friends with this man for 10-15 years and had to know what Epstein was up to. Not only that, Trump makes other sickening appearances in the book, including one about buying a “fully depreciated” woman from Epstein.
That would be enough horrible news to deal with today, but there’s much more. Poland shot down Russian drones that entered their air space. Israel bombed a building in Qatar. The Supreme Court decision to legalize racial profiling continues to be a top story (Dakinikat covered that extensively on Monday.). ICE is continuing to terrify residents of numerous cities. Trump ventured out of the White House last night with some cabinet members and was called Hitler by citizens of Washington DC.
Looking back, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I opened “Request No. 1,” the PDF file containing the contents of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and co-conspirator, created the book in 2003 by soliciting tributes from the financier’s friends and associates. Given the crimes Epstein was convicted of, I steeled myself before scrolling. Somehow, my internet-addled imagination failed me. This book is a nightmare.
The book was released yesterday by Congress after Epstein’s estate, which was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, provided a copy. It is the same book that contains the now-infamous letter and “bawdy” sketch from Donald Trump that ends: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” When The Wall Street Journal reported on the letter’s existence in July, the newspaper described it but did not republish the letter itself, so Trump vehemently denied that it was real and sued for defamation. But the now-public letter certainly looks real, and so does Trump’s signature. Many of the people who encountered it for the first time yesterday made a similar observation: Its creepy prose is framed by a markered sketch of what looks like the caricature not of a woman’s body, but of a girl’s. (The White House can no longer plausibly deny that the letter exists, but it now insists that Trump did not write or sign it.)
The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.” Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document. Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself.
The book’s contributors apparently include former President Bill Clinton, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, the billionaire retailer Leslie Wexner, and, of course, Maxwell herself, as well as a prominent fashion designer, financiers, and a media magnate. Clinton, Mitchell, and Wexner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Clinton referred The Wall Street Journal to a previous statement that said, “The former president had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein’s 2019 arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.” Wexner declined to comment to the Journal but previously told reporters he cut ties with Epstein in 2007.
Not all of the entries in the book allude to sexual activity, and it’s plausible that not all of the contributors knew about Epstein’s crimes. Still, the document is conspiracy jet fuel—visual and textual confirmation of the long-held suspicions that Epstein’s sex pestery was an open secret, enabled by powerful people who may have participated in it themselves or laughed it all off as a friend’s roguish quirk….
Sanitizing this document would be wrong, so I’ll be blunt: The Epstein birthday book is full of contributions from wealthy and powerful people who appear fully aware of Epstein’s attraction to “girls.” In fact, they seem to celebrate it and, in some cases, allude winkingly to Epstein’s predatory lifestyle.
Use the gift link to read the rest. I haven’t looked through the entire book yet. I suppose I should do it, but I’m not looking forward to it after what I’ve already seen and heard.
The splashy focus of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book released by lawmakers on Monday was a lewd drawing apparently signed by Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s cameo in another part of the book also provided fodder for Democrats and other critics of the president.
An entry in Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, contributed by the Florida real estate developer Joel Pashcow.
The entry, included in a bound volume in 2003, was made by Joel Pashcow, the former chairman of a real estate company in New York and a member of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. It shows a photograph of Mr. Pashcow at the resort with Mr. Epstein, another man and a woman whose face is redacted. Mr. Pashcow is holding an oversize check that appears to have been doctored, with a seemingly phony “DJ TRUMP” signature.
A handwritten note under the photo, which was taken in the 1990s, joked that Mr. Epstein showed “early talents with money + women,” and had sold a “fully depreciated” woman to Mr. Trump for $22,500.
The woman, whose name is also redacted in the files released by the House Oversight Committee, was a European socialite then in her 20s, according to two people familiar with the original photo. She had briefly dated both Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump around that time, according to court transcripts and a person close to Mr. Epstein. The birthday book entry appears to be a reference to the competition between the two men for the woman’s affections.
The nature of the woman’s relationship with Mr. Epstein is murky. The New York Times is not naming her because she may have been one of his victims.
A lawyer for the woman said she knew Mr. Epstein in “a professional capacity” when she was a student but severed ties with him in 1997. She did not know anything about the letter or its “derogatory content,” the lawyer added.
A bit more information:
Mr. Pashcow appears to have contributed several consecutive pages to the book. On the page before the mock check is a vulgar cartoon depicting Mr. Epstein’s grooming of young girls: On one side, marked 1983, Mr. Epstein is handing out balloons to a group of girls; on the other, labeled 2003, he is receiving a naked massage from four topless young women. “What a great country!” it reads at the bottom.
The photograph with the giant check offers fresh insight on the social circles shared by Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein. It is no secret that the two were friendly in the 1990s and early 2000s, before Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes in 2008.
A visual analysis by The Times found that the photo was taken at Mar-a-Lago after the resort opened as a club in 1996 and was landscaped with palm trees and other features.
Use the gift link to read more details if you so desire.
NATO fighter jets shot down multiple Russian drones that violated Polish airspace during an attack on neighboring Ukraine early on Wednesday, as the military alliance denounced Moscow for “absolutely dangerous” behavior that ratcheted up tensions to a new level.
The operation marked the first time that shots were fired by NATO since the start of the war in Ukraine. Polish and Dutch jets intercepted the drones, with assistance from Italian, German and NATO’s multinational forces, officials said.
People watch as a house is damaged after a drone or similar object struck a residential building according to local authorities, following violations of Polish airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Addressing the Polish parliament, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that while there was no reason to say that Poland was in a state of war, it was closer to a conflict than any time since World War II. He said the country was facing an “enemy that does not hide its hostile intentions.”
Tusk also announced that Poland has invoked Article 4 of NATO, meaning the alliance’s main political decision-making body will now meet to discuss the situation and its next steps.
Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement that it had carried out a strike against Ukraine overnight. It said that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range that of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).
The Russian foreign ministry then said that these “specific facts completely debunk the myths repeatedly spread by Poland in order to escalate the Ukrainian crisis further.”
NATO chief Mark Rutte said, however, that the violation of Poland’s airspace was not an “isolated incident.”
Poland invoked Article 4 of NATO’s treaty on Wednesday after the alliance’s fighter jets shot down Russian drones that entered its airspace in the early hours of the morning. Russian drones have crossed into Poland before, including twice last week, but this was the first time that Russian drones had been shot down over the territory of a NATO country.
“What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident,” said Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general. “We will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defenses continually at the ready.”
Here’s what to know about NATO’s Article 4….
Article 4 allows a member state to start a formal discussion among the alliance about threats to its security. While invoking Article 4 does not commit NATO to any military action, it is a required step toward a NATO decision to invoke Article 5. (An invocation of Article 5 is often assumed to have military implications, but the NATO treaty says only that its members will “assist” the party that has been attacked. This can also mean economic or political action.)
Article 4 states that the alliance’s members “will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”
Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked eight times. Before Wednesday, the last was on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now what?
The joint NATO response early Wednesday showed how quickly the war in Ukraine could escalate into a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Mr. Rutte said that the alliance’s air defenses were activated to ensure Poland’s protection. The response included fighter jets and air-defense systems from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, he said.
“The security situation of our airspace has been stabilized, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have returned to standard operational activities,” the Polish military said on social media.
• US President Donald Trump expressed displeasure about the attack. “I’m not thrilled about the whole situation. It’s not a good situation,” he said, adding he would issue a full statement on Wednesday. Qatar’s prime minister was visibly angry as he described the strike as “state terrorism.”
Qatar said it has the right to respond to Israel’s strike in Doha that targeted Hamas political leaders, which it decried as a “blatant attack”.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, described Tuesday’s attack as “state terrorism” that targeted the security and stability of the region.
Aftermath of Israeli strike inside Qatar.
“Qatar… reserves the right to respond to this blatant attack,” he told a late night press conference.
“We believe that today we have reached a pivotal moment. There must be a response from the entire region to such barbaric actions.”
US president Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” about Israel’s airstrike that killed six people, saying it advances neither Israel nor America’s goals.
Trump called the strike on Hamas’s political wing “unfortunate” and said he had directed US envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar but it was too late to stop the strike.
Hamas said five of its lower-ranking members and a Qatari security official were killed in the airstrike, but that all its leaders survived the attack.
A big change happened yesterday, when the Supreme Court said it was okay for ICE and the Border Patrol to racially profile individuals walking freely on America’s streets. If you’re brown, speak Spanish, and work in a blue-collar job, you officially belong to a different class of citizen and according to Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s okay to racially profile you.
We have never in US history seen a federal law enforcement agency operate the way ICE has operated this summer — it marks the arrival of a new style of domestic policing, more in line with the infamous “brown shirts” of authoritarian regimes the world over than any regular policing tradition in the nation’s interior. Yes, we’ve seen similar abuses of civil liberties and due process stem from corrupt and racist state police and country sheriffs in the Jim Crow south, and plenty of local police departments even today suffer from localized corruption scandals, but never we seen what is happening with ICE right now take place the whole country over.
All of the nation’s law enforcement are blending together into an “ICE auxiliary.” — Garrett Graff
The day-to-day behavior and aggression of ICE is corrupting the soul of America. I encourage you to watch this video of federal agents policing the start of an elementary school in DC — there not to secure the school and children, but specifically to intimidate and punish schoolgoers. Tell me that isn’t the picture of authoritarianism? You know how you’re going to be the bad guy in the eyes of history? If school children and mothers have to push their way through your armed, masked gang while you’re carrying assault weapons in order to attend school. I can’t help but think how the Trump administration has turned the proud tradition of the US Marshals at the University of Mississippi or the 82nd Airborne at Little Rock Central High on its head. Similarly, this video of a masked officer detaining a father outside immigration court in New York City — the masked officers are indistinguishable from Wild West bank robbers.
There are four things that have really struck me about ICE’s operations over the last month, all of them worrisome about the trajectory of that agency and the presence and role of federal law enforcement in American life. (Separately, I’m going to write about the warning signs already visible in ICE’s dramatic hiring surge.) Taken together, they paint a picture of an already rogue agency that feels it operates outside of the Constitution and owes nothing to the Americans it’s supposed to serve.
(NOTE from BB: You’ll need to go to the link to read the entire explication under the four headings)
1) Everything is now ICE.
The most worrisome aspect of the quick militarization and turbo-charging of ICE is how American law enforcement across the board — and much of the government beyond — is being subsumed by ICE’s mission and lowering themselves, from hiring to behavior to tactics, down to ICE’s standards.
We have different federal law enforcement agencies for a reason — and moreover, as citizens, we as a country need and want federal law enforcement. The FBI, DEA, ATF, Secret Service, and the US Marshals all have their own lanes, authorities, and responsibilities, but right now we’ve watching the Trump administration turn all of federal law enforcement across both the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security into an faceless quasi-ICE auxiliary, blending all these agencies and agent into some amorphous anonymous blob of masked, brown tactical-vest-wearing federal law enforcement. I wrote recently about how this precisely is what authoritarian regime looks like — armed, masked, anonymous agents of the state jumping from unmarked vehicles and whisking people away….
2) Collapse of Moral Legitimacy.
I wrote earlier in the summer about how in a democracy policing requires moral legitimacy and the permission of the policed. That’s been one of the hallmarks of policing ever since Sir Robert Peel built the first modern police force in London’s Metropolitan Police. One of his core principles of policing was: “To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.”
The DC police department was literally created originally in Peel’s image, which is why it too is known awkwardly as the “Metropolitan Police.” Now, in a historical irony, it is ground zero for the erosion of the moral legitimacy of federal law enforcement writ large….
3) Operating without due regard for civil liberties and due process.
In my essay at the end of August about how America has tipped in fascism, I wrote, “America has become a country where armed officers of the state shout ‘papers please’ on the street at men and women heading home from work, where masked men wrestle to the ground and abduct people without due process into unmarked vehicles, disappearing them into an opaque system where their family members beg for information.”
Add up all of the above and you have a portrait of a rogue agency, which is what leads me to my final dangerous warning sign: This agency clearly knows that it can do no wrong in the eyes of the White House and administration — there is no level of violence, brutality, or abuse of civil liberties that would get any of these agents or officers in trouble with their bosses. Earlier this summer, I wrote about how ICE is acting as if it will never face accountability again. We’ve seen ICE flaunt federal law that requires congressional oversight — and, instead, it has tried to arrest and charge federal lawmakers, a bright line if there ever was one.
At every turn, though, the agency is going out of its way to make it harder to hold officers accountable. ICE officers don’t routinely wear name tags or easily visible badge numbers (in this video, check out how you have to zoom in on his badge on his belt to even begin to identify his badge number.) Moreover, though, despite the fact that we’re weeks and months into this national ICE takeover, the agency has made no effort to make its masked officers on the streets identifiable to either the public — or even to itself.
You there. Stop what you’re doing. Take off that tool belt and hard hat—let’s see some ID. Why? Because we don’t think you’re a citizen. Now show us your papers.
This kind of behavior by government officials is now legal in the United States.
Masked ICE agents in Los Angeles
Yesterday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court allowed ICE officials to conduct roving patrols and use racial profiling to stop and detain people for no other reason than their skin color, the language they’re speaking, suspicions about their national origin—or, really, if immigration officials just feel like it.
But wait, you might object. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Did the Court explain why that protection apparently no longer applies to you if you’re a day laborer or running a fruit stand? Good luck with that: This Court’s majority doesn’t explain itself to anyone. It merely lets stand or overturns the decisions of lower courts—lately, almost always in favor of expanding the power of, and corroding any checks on, President Donald Trump.
Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo is a case from Los Angeles about whether ICE can stop people because of a suspicion of their being in the United States illegally, based solely, as SCOTUSblog summarized it, on any combination of four factors: a person’s “‘apparent race or ethnicity,’ speaking in Spanish or accented English, being present at a location where undocumented immigrants ‘are known to gather’ (such as pickup spots for day laborers), and working at specific jobs, such as landscaping or construction.”
A California district-court judge had earlier enjoined ICE from making such stops, perhaps appalled by this example:
Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in East Los Angeles and identifies as Latino. On the afternoon of June 12, he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of a tow yard in Montebello, California, where he saw agents carrying handguns and military-style rifles. One agent ordered him to “Stop right there” while another “ran towards [him].” The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American—and they repeatedly ignored his answer: “I am an American.” The agents asked Gavidia what hospital he was born in—and he explained that he did not know which hospital. “The agents forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” An agent asked again, “What hospital were you born in?” Gavidia again explained that he did not know which hospital and said “East L.A.” He then told the agents he could show them his Real ID. The agents took Gavidia’s ID and his phone and kept his phone for 20 minutes. They never returned his ID.
In overturning the lower court’s decision, five of the Court’s six right-wing justices—there is no other reasonable way to describe them at this point—took advantage of their right to remain silent, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh gamely tried to speak up in a concurrence. If his goal was to be reassuring, he did not help matters: Such stops are usually “brief,” he explained. Again, I am not a scholar of the Constitution, but I had no idea that I could be deprived of my rights under the Fourth (or any other) Amendment as long as my getting roughed up takes only a few moments out of my busy day.
President Donald Trump stepped out for dinner in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday only to find himself immediately confronted by protesters calling him “the Hitler of our time,” forcing him and his entourage of cabinet officials to stand awkwardly listening to their taunts before they could sit down to eat.
Activists took advantage of Trump’s rare public outing to to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, a short walk from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to heckle and berate the president with cries of “Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
“You are not welcome here!” one woman can be seen telling him in a video shared on social media. “Yes he is,” another diner countered.
Trump initially looked unfazed by the provocation but then gestured to his security team and said impatiently: “Come on. Let’s go. Get them out of here.”
The activist in question was escorted out of the dining area but continued to yell, despite some boos: “He’s terrorizing communities all over the world! From Puerto Rico… to Palestine to Venezuela! He’s not welcome to D.C.! He’s not welcome to Palestine! Palestine is not for sale!”
Only after she had been removed could Trump and his guests take their places at their table.
Joining the president for dinner were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other senior White House officials.
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
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There is just too much shit going on with Trump these days…
"The signature and font used in the 2003 Epstein letter resemble …"… a thank-you letter Trump sent in April 2006 to attorney George Conway …"… and a letter sent in November 2000 to Hillary Clinton …."www.wsj.com/us-news/law/… bsky.app/profile/moll…
Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has given Congress a copy of the 2003 birthday book, including the letter with Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist.
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
There was a shooter recently in the library at the campus where I taught for years. Just yesterday, there were lockdowns and shooter alerts at many campuses, including all historically Black colleges, the Naval Academy, and UMass Boston. That includes Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where evidently one sociopath took out another. The AP reports,
It was only natural that one sociopath with a gun would eventually shoot another sociopath who viciously spread hate throughout the internet and the country. Here are some of Charlie Kirk’s “Greatest Hits.” He basically hated everyone who wasn’t a cis White Christian Male in the mode of his form of Christianity. There are two historical concepts of historical justice that come to mind. The first one is Karma. The second is “You reap what you sow.” The third one is a morphed version of an older one. “Live by the gun, die by the gun.” Of course, I support free speech. Of course, I abhor gun violence and all kinds of killing.
The victims of mass shootings in this country–including children and the elderly worshipping in their holy place–basically become numbers unless their grief-stricken relatives force us to remember them by asking the media and the public to listen to their stories and the acts of violence that ended their lives. Why aren’t they victims of political assassination whose ends are covered relentlessly on the internet and TV? What about the details of the other folks this week who lost their lives to gun violence? I found this article on 
The writings on the bullet were clever, cruel, and spot on.
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