A friend has asked me to canvass Publoccians on which is the scariest photo of Eleven:
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Okay, he's going to win this. Email me at publocc@gmail.com if you'd like your vote (anonymous) to count.
Monday, August 10, 2026
Public Occurrences August 10, 2026
111 Now Dead in Columbia
1:57 pm:73 People Dead in Earthquake in Columbia
🎵I know that painting; I know that painting🎵
Why does everything feel so joyless? Welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure Guardian
The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490-1510, Hieronymus Bosch.
Hemingway saw the painting in the Prado and his decadent mind was enraptured. The experience led directly to his decadent (and best) (unfinished) novel The Garden of Eden.
Among the bites of the forbidden fruit in Bosch's fantasies are several that strongly imply interracial sex. I've snipped several that I saw in brief examination:
That was the 15th-16th century, practically modern compared to 79 AD. That was the year that Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii. Destroyed and preserved evidence of the life that the ancient Pompeiians lived. Yet, there too.
There are a lot of depictions of explicit interracial sex--during a time when I would have expected none. I am not a historian and may be making assumptions regarding travel capabilities that are not warranted. But I am not making assumptions about the sexual practices of ancient Pompeiians. My eyes do not deceive me.
When Eleven is in heat, there are several complications caused me.
- One, I have to wear my heavy Eleven body armor shirt against her claws.
- Two, I am made uneasy by the proximity of Eleven's razor-sharp hind claws to my carotid artery and button the heavy shirt at the neck to guard against puncture and Charlie Kirk Syndrome.
- Three, a cat's normal body temperature is 100.4-102.5.
- Fo', it is mid-August in Miami.
- Five, I sweat blinking my eyes.
- Six, Eleven in heat perched on my shoulders is deleterious to my performance on USMLE (30% Friday!).
Seems like the White House Felon's coattails have gotten short
Trump-backed candidate in battleground Michigan district loses to opponent who dropped out
Amir Hassan lost to Tom Smith, who had suspended his campaign but is now jumping back into the race for the purple 8th District.
Poly
Sunday, August 09, 2026
The Toilet Nation was built on the backs of African slaves. The greatest slave trader was James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island. DeWolf became a U.S. senator. When he died he was the second-richest man in America. A nation cannot outrun that legacy. Neither can a family. The DeWolf's have their own cemetery in Bristol. James DeWolf's burial mound has been vandalized so many times that there is now a heavy steel plate at the entrance. I went to the cemetery on a visit to see my daughter some years ago. I took this photo of the headstone of another DeWolf slaver descendant.
Saturday, August 08, 2026
Public Occurrences August 8, 2026
Third World Nation
As Blanche’s path to confirmation is cleared, Trump’s tax audit immunity remains in place
AP
4:03 pm:
Statement issued by the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr
There are six explicit conditions required from the United States for Iran to alter its current position and consider reopening the strategic waterway:- End all threats: Stop threatening Iran and insulting the religious beliefs and sacred values of the Iranian people.
- Halt regional aggression: Permanently end all military actions and wars against Iran and its regional allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq.
- Lift the blockade: Remove the naval blockade of Iranian ports and completely withdraw all U.S. naval and air forces from the region surrounding Iran.
- Pay war damages: Provide full financial compensation to Tehran for damages resulting from what he described as two aggressive wars imposed on Iran. Remove economic restrictions: Lift all U.S. sanctions targeting Iran.
- Remove economic restrictions: Lift all U.S. sanctions targeting Iran.
- Release blocked capital: Unconditionally release all frozen and seized Iranian assets globally.
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T'ain't happenin', Mo Zo! You want endless war. I very, very much doubt you can win a full-scale war against the U.S.
8:43 am:
"Iran is going after the enemy’s defeat — not an agreement.”
-Mahdi Mohammadi, Iranian national security analyst and advisor to the chief negotiator with the U.S.
Friday, August 07, 2026
Eleven can look so strange. In the last photo, malevolent, bat-like, her eyes so strange, two different colors, and up there next to the gaping mouth of the shower head like a bat gargoyle. In the photo before, the question-mark tail that she has always had.
I think I can explain the bat-gargoyle photo. I tried to get her with the lights out but the phone said turn on flash so I did, but I then turned the bathroom lights on and snapped the photo. I'm not positive but I don't think I turned the flash off. I'm pretty sure that's the camera flash off the shower head. Maybe the flash caused her right eye to appear yellow? Her eyes are green. Maybe her left eye is picking up some of the green in the towel causing her eye to look more green? Idk, but lordy, lordy, that is still a strange photo.
In the previous photo I don't think the question-mark tail has ever been that prominent. And I just didn't happen to catch the tail in one photo, I took five or six others in rapid succession. She just woke up and is stretching, she's not arching her back in anger.
Eleven is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. I mean that, and lord knows I have posted dozens, maybe hundreds of photos where she looks as angelic as she is live. ...But not those. Those are two strange, chilling photos.
Public Occurrences August 7, 2026
U.S. Intel Finds Putin Could Test NATO’s Resolve With Limited Incursion
New assessment updates past forecasts that Russia’s leader wouldn’t provoke the alliance during the Ukraine war
The assessments, described by U.S. officials, come amid a shortfall in certain critical munitions that the military would need to confront Russia or China in a potential future war. The U.S. has severely degraded its stockpile of these weapons because of transfers to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, as well as the U.S. conflict with Iran.
3:30 pm:
U.S. Lost 23,000 Jobs in July, delivering political setback to Trump
Turkey: 'Missing' man joins search party looking for himself
😂
Trump won't drop war, tariffs or monuments to save the GOP
😂
Him. Only him. Doesn't care about country. Only himself.
Even some longtime insiders fear he's trapped by a war he shouldn't have waged, tariffs he shouldn't have levied, monuments he shouldn't be obsessed with.
These three topics chew up much of Trump's time and attention. All three are widely unpopular in polls.
And it's almost impossible to see the public suddenly warming to war, tariffs or more statues.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman estimates 70% of the president's mindshare goes to renovations and monuments. "It's a legacy thing," she told her colleague Ezra Klein.
Miami Beach Occurrences
Golf-cart traffic stop deepens beef between Miami Beach police, city commissioner🙄
Thursday, August 06, 2026
"And of course, we are Yankees"
Today is the first time I have ever seen this photo. It is also the oldest photo of a member of my family that I have ever seen.
That is a man of evident prosperity, well-earned pride, with an intelligent face that promises covert humor and great benignity. That is Peter Garman, my great-great-grandfather, and my son's namesake, in 1900 when he was 78 years old.
Peter's granddaughter, my maternal grandmother*, and great-granddaughter, my mother, were also namesakes. And then there is the eponymous Garmantown, formerly the village of Garman, originally Garman's Mills.
Circa 1940, with identifying turret top from the hill above the road leading into Garmantown.
Same angle from the Sulfur Creek, aka the Shit Creek (acid mine drainage).
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The inviting road leading into Garmantown in 2010
Across the street from the mill was the family homestead which lodged employees at the mill and had a dining table that seated twenty-two. The Garman House also hid runaway slaves as a "documented stop on the Underground Railroad."
Peter died at age 87 in 1909. Obituary "from The Indiana Democrat of March 10, 1909 (page 1)":
Peter Garman was the greatest man on my mother's side of the family. The name Garman is scattered throughout the generations and Peter Garman's legacy still is present in tangible form in the area where he settled. It is thus strange that I never was taken to, never visited, or even knew where the Garmans were buried.
Peter and another man owned all of the land that became Northern Cambria, originally Barnesboro (named for the co-founder of the Barnes and Tucker Coal Mine), my hometown. Peter had another home, a large brick house where he retired, in Indiana, Pennsylvania. That structure also still stands and has for many years been an administrative building of Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Peter Garman, one of the oldest and most respected citizens of this county died at his residence in this place Wednesday evening, March 3, 1909, aged 87 years...
The deceased was born and reared at Chambersburg, Franklin county. Later he moved to Garman's Mills, on the west branch of the Susquehanna river and in Cambria county just across the line, where he engaged extensively in the lumber business. He retired from the lumber business in 1881 and moved to Indiana (county), where he has since lived a quiet and useful life keeping in close touch with church and business circles. Mr. Garman was married August 14, 1845, to Lucinda Dunkle [or Dunckle], and after her death to Carolyn W. Bracken [sic, Caroline] (note - abt 1861)...All the children with the exception of Mrs. Kirdendall [Spokane, Washington] , attended the funeral which was held at the Garman home, Friday afternoon, with the interment following in Greenwood cemetery.
Peter Garman died as he lived, in honored prosperity. Greenwood Cemetery: "The cemetery’s design and layout were the work of a professional gardener from London whose plan featured lots and sections arranged in unique shapes with wide, graceful driveways."
It does have the look of an English cemetery.
*In 1971 "Gram", as we called her, wrote a family history. One line in particular on the Garman family's origins has always tickled me:
"The Garman family came from around the Dutch border of Germany and in Ireland there is a Loch Garman indicating that the name was common there. This gives us a Dutch-German-Irish descent, and, of course, we are Yankees."
USMLE Today
I suck :(. 20%. Dr. Ana is always in sync with her fellow PROFESSIONAL medical students. I am always in sync with random dart throwing. BOO HOO HOO :)
We had a question today that only 12% of real medical students answered correctly, by far the fewest of the thousands of questions Dr. Ana and I have had in these over two and one-half years. There is no teaching moment in a question like that, it is just designed to lower students' scores. Bullshit question.
Wednesday, August 05, 2026
Do you know what my name would have been had I been a girl? TONI! Frigging TONI!! I would have committed PARRICIDE if I had been a "TONI". What was my middle name going to be, huh? Can't use Franklin. Henrietta, my grandmother's middle name? Can you imagine going through life as Toni Henrietta Harris? My initials would have been a stutter, THH. That's child abuse.
I don't know where they got Benjamin, I never did know, unless once they settled on my middle name (Franklin was my doctor Uncle Harry's middle name) they just decided in for a dime in for a dollar.
I think I have repressed trauma from "Toni".
I KNOW, BROTHER!!!! PINCH ME!
𝙃𝙀𝘼𝙏 𝙉𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉
@HeatvsHaters
Giannis is a Miami Heat player yall can you believe it
4:02 PM · Aug 5, 2026
21.5K Views
Public Occurrences August 5, 2026
I read about this a month or so ago and didn't want to believe it.
Public Support for Aid to Israel Dropping? No Problem! Make it a Legal Mandate!
Now, with U.S. political support for sending military funding to Israel dropping off sharply, Congress is considering phasing out the financial commitment and instead undertaking a far more integrated defense and technology partnership built around legally mandated defense industrial cooperation between the two nations.
Both the House and Senate have included such a proposal in the annual defense policy bill, laying the groundwork for melding U.S. and Israeli defense and intelligence capabilities in profound ways that some critics find alarming.
Trump and Netanyahoo are pushing for the shift, which comes as lawmakers on the right and left have grown increasingly hostile to sending taxpayer dollars to Israel’s military.
Supporters argue the move would benefit the United States, allowing it to capitalize on Israel’s defense and intelligence innovations. They say it would elevate the U.S.-Israel relationship from one of donor and recipient to a strategic partnership.
THAT is the motivation! To "elevate" Israel from vassal status!
But some lawmakers fear that such deep ties could blur the lines between supporting an ally and effectively allowing Israel’s military to become intertwined with the Pentagon in ways that could be dangerous and difficult to unwind.
The United States and Israel already partner to produce defense technologies...The defense policy bill, which passed the House last month and is awaiting action in the Senate, would enshrine those partnerships in law.
The House measure would create an office in the Defense Department that would be legally required to facilitate cooperation between the United States and Israel.
A separate intelligence bill that is expected to be merged with the defense legislation would call on the president and the director of national intelligence to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the government of Israel,”
Why is Congress considering this now?
The [old] memorandum, which mandates that the United States provide $3.8 billion a year in military aid to Israel, ends in 2028, and lawmakers in both parties have said they would oppose a new deal based on billions of dollars in direct aid to Israel.
See? Members of Congress "oppose" a new deal based on the old, so under the current proposal they won't have to vote against military aid to Izvassal!
[Passing the new bill] would provide extraordinarily valuable support to Israel and its military and intelligence service without explicitly requiring Congress to sign off on sending a set amount of federal money to Jerusalem each year.
TOLDJA!
The idea has gained traction as the future of traditional U.S. military assistance to Israel has become increasingly uncertain following a backlash to Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
The push also stems from Mr. Netanyahoo’s public campaign to appear less reliant on U.S. military aid ...
Why has the proposal generated controversy?
Opponents argue that the idea would give too much control over sensitive U.S. defense matters to a foreign nation.
Ooh, a NYT reporter said that out loud. Hope Robert Jimison is okay."The U.S. government can always choose on a case-by-case basis to enter into joint production agreements,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said in an interview. “What’s sort of jaw-dropping about this is that it mandates it.”
With Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, [lameduck Congressman] Massie attempted to strip the provision from the defense bill. But the two lawmakers were blocked by Republican leaders from bringing the matter to a vote.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, warned in a social media post that the proposed partnership would “merge parts of our military with the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces. She warned that such a move would be “an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy.”
AOC! AOC! AOC!
Defense industrial partnerships are a key feature of the U.S. relationship with close allies, including Britain, Australia, Canada and NATO partners. But the new proposals would establish one of the broadest such partnerships with Israel, with which the United States does not share any formal mutual defense treaty.
Van Hollen and other critics argue that the mandated joint production provision could constrain the United States militarily. He pointed to Israel’s repeated objections to transferring Iron Dome air defense batteries to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, out of concern that the weapons could fall into the hands of Russia, be delivered to Iran, then used against Israel.
“The one precedent that we have is the Iron Dome co-production agreement, where the government of Israel did exercise that authority,” Mr. Van Hollen said. “That should be a very cautionary tale.”
Here, he is not
NYTPitchbot
@DougJBalloon
Max Miller has learned his lesson.
by Susan Collins
7:51 PM · Aug 3, 2026
74.8K Views
Here, he is being serious (I think lol)
NYTPitchbot
@DougJBalloon
Tonight’s primaries are a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.
9:48 PM · Aug 4, 2026
23.5K Views
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