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"The Eastern Trail is a 62 mile multi-use, non-motorized greenway, that connects Bug Light in Casco Bay, South Portland to Kittery, Maine. Approximately thirty percent of the trail is off-road, and the trail is a part of the #EastCoastGreenway which will eventually connect #CalaisMaine to #KeyWestFlorida, approximately 3000 miles. The Eastern Trail is currently composed of 21 miles of off-road trails on the former Eastern Railroad bed with the remainder 41 miles on public roads.
"The entirety of the Eastern Trail is built to ADA standards. The trail surface varies between pavement and stone dust/gravel. Most of the trail is 10-12 feet wide, with some sections with an 8-foot width. There is a 30-inch opening between the bollards at entrances to keep out motorized vehicles, but wide enough to allow access for wheelchairs.
"The off-road section connecting Scarbrough to Saco privdes access to the 2200-acre Scarborough Marsh, which is Maine's largest salt marsh. Heading north on the trail from Pine Point (ME-9) or south from Eastern Road in Scarborough provides access to this 2.5 mile stretch of trail.
"Heading south from Pine Point Road, the trail crosses the York County and Cumberland County boundaries and users can walk/bike from Scarborough, through Old Orchard Beach to Saco, where the current-off-road trail ends at Thornton Academy in Saco, approximately 6 miles from the Pine Point kiosk.
"There are kiosks at 3 parking areas, that give some history and points of interest along the trail. For example, the Eastern Trail is built on the old Eastern #Railroad line that was built in 1840 and abandoned in 1945. Also, Charles Lindberg flew into the now abandoned Scarborough airport several times. And, a trestle once carried open air trolleys from the rail line to Old Orchard Beach for summer tourists."
Source and FMI:
https://www.mainetrailfinder.com/trails/trail/eastern-trail-saco-to-scarboroughEastern Trail Guide (downloadable PDF and booklets): https://www.easterntrail.org/eastern-trail-maps/
#SolarPunkSunday #MaineTrails #MaineByFoot #MaineByBicycle #Nature #SouthernMaine #AccessibleTrails #BikePaths #EasternTrail #AbandonedRailroads #RailsToTrails
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Saturday night was a very special night, for several reasons. As some of you know, this past year was a tough one as my father was diagnosed early on with terminal lung cancer, and subsequently suffered a few health crises which had him in the ICU a couple of times. For most of the past year, Jess & my lives were occupied with helping him, and visiting him regularly in New York. We were happy to do it, but it did mean a pause in our usual get togethers with friends, which we missed.
On December 10th, 2025, my father succumbed to his cancer. As you might expect, the subsequent weeks have been full of grief, and paperwork. Even death has bureaucracy.
December 10th was also the day that the Compass Box Whisky Confluence auction at Bonhams Skinner, to benefit The Wolfsonian-FIU, ended. I'd been watching the auction, but uncertain about bidding - despite being a longtime Compass Box fanatic. However, after my father passed early that morning, I decided that I needed something good to go with the day - and that was going to be winning Confluence, which I did. You only live once, as was painfully clear that day.
My birthday is at the end of December, and we had planned a small gathering with friends to celebrate - but Jess & I both came home from my father's services in NY under the weather, and not really in a celebratory mood, so we cancelled that.
Instead, yesterday we had a gathering which was partly a delayed birthday celebration, partly a toast to my father's memory, and partly an exploration of a truly unique whisky. But, more than anything, it was a gathering of good friends for the first time in quite a while - and boy did I need that more than I realized.
Thank you Jess, Jer, Shamala, Marc, Lizzy, Lisa, Carol, Friski and Betsy for making the evening wonderful.
Before we could dive into the whisky, we had to put something in on stomachs - so we had an assortment of my father's favorites, in his honor. There was an antipasto salad, some veggies and cheese, meatballs and sauce (for subs or over pasta), pickle soup (the Cafe Polonia recipe), kielbasa and sauerkraut, pierogi, a texas sheet cake, rice pudding, cupcakes, and some fine Läderach chocolates.
Properly fueled, we attacked the mission of the evening.
We'd assembled a lineup of whiskies for the evening - of course, there was the Confluence, but we also pulled some expressions from the component distilleries. Obviously, these were not *the* components used to make Confluence, but it was just a fun way to try a few things.
We'd lined up Mackmyra, a Gordon & MacPhail Miltonduff, a G&M Macallan, a Highland Park 25, a Flora & Fauna Teaninich, and a Glen Moray (which was peated, it was what we had). We also had a couple of whiskies from Nashoba Valley Distillery, right here in town - Papa's Bourbon and the Stimulus Twenty 20 year old American Single Malt. Thanks to Marc Follit, our good friend, neighbor, and distiller at Nashoba, for bringing those.
Oh, yes, and there is also the Black Tot Rum Last Consignment. It seemed like another special bottle to open - after the whiskies.
We started off with the Confluence, so that we'd have clear palates - the better to taste it with. Whisky reviewer extraordinaire, Friski Whiski, agreed to write up a joint review with input from the whole crew, and we spent quite a bit of time on that. A most enjoyable time it was, too. We avoided reading the official tasting notes before creating our own, and were pleased to see that our notes ended up aligning fairly well with the official ones once we were done.
Friski posted the review on his page (https://www.facebook.com/friski.whiski/posts/pfbid0cQjrjpvFAm7XzAwf54Y62YPcTHMwcriwn5aF1b4JifQrV9XumhkTR5NYcwrT18tMl), but here it is:
---START---
Dram of a lifetime on 1/10/26Compass Box
Confluence
Blended Malt Whisky
Age: NAS
Abv: 48.9%
No. of bottles: 1Components:
The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Cherry Wine Fresh Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Oloroso First Fill Sherry Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
American First Fill & Virgin Oak Casks
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Swedish Virgin Oak & First Fill Casks
3%Teaninich Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Sherry Butt
12%Miltonduff Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
12%Highland Park Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
Recharred Hogshead
3%The Macallan Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
14%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Availability: 1 of 1 bottle. Bonhams auction house event "Art & Alchemy of Spirits: Presenting Compass Box to Benefit the Wolfsonian".
Crowd source notes: MegaZone, Jess Terry, Jer Johnson, Shamala Rao, Marc Follit, Lizzy Nicolai, Lisa Mulvehill, Carol Ann, Betsey Hendricks, and Friski Whiski.
Color: Medium honey and golden syrup
Neat (without water)
Nose: Soft and crisp. Honey, green apple, marzipan, cooked caramelized pineapple, confectioner’s sugar, lemon citrus, orange peel, with hints of cardamom and anise.Texture: Warm. Creamy, buttery, slightly drying through the finish and pleasantly astringent.
Palate: Apple blossom honey, honey comb, marzipan, caramel, and birchwood. Swedish Kanelbulle (which is a classic Scandinavian cinnamon bun, spiced with cardamom in the dough, less gooey and use a lighter cinnamon application).
Finish: A roller coaster ride of white pepper, fresh green olive oil, saline, toasted almonds, fine Corinthian leather, oak, grapefruit pith, and oleo saccharum.
Unleash the serpent (with water)
Nose: An orchard house of fruit moved to the forefront. Pear, apple frangipane, sliced almonds, sweet cracked malt and fresh cream. Birchbeer float with vanilla bean ice cream. Lakrits, lemon blossoms where floral and citrus combine into a confluence of marriage.Texture: Creamy, buttery, woody without the tannic astringency.
Palate: Baked apple dumplings, roasted butternut squash, demerara sugar, sweet cream, and candied meyer lemon.Finish: Earthy notes get amplified. Warm spiced sweet potato pie with a pastry crust, sea spray, salted caramel, walnut skins, and toffee with subtle hints of a gentle smoke.
Tasting notes glass used: Open Up Chef and Sommelier 5.5oz glass.
The morning after glass: Sweet cracked malt, dust, vanilla, and caramelPairings...
Season: AnyMusic: Lovefool by The Cardigans
Food: Rosemary pork loin with homemade applesauce
Media: Best enjoyed with great company and good conversation.
Overall: From first nose to final sip, several of us ended up in a journey from an apple orchard to our grandmother's seaside cottage while various desserts were being cooked. Fantastic debut from Angela D'Orazio at Compass Box! We really look forward to her future creations.
---END---As you can see, we loved it. This is a fantastic whisky, IMHO, and I'm thrilled that we were able to try it. Whisky is for sharing, not for staring. It would have been a crying shame for this to sit on someone's shelf, never to be tasted. You can tell we enjoyed it - we went through about 1/3 of the bottle compiling those tasting notes. ;-)
Afterwards we did taste through the other whiskies - which were good, but kind of paled a bit after Confluence. The Mackmyra was well-loved as well, and you can see the influence in Confluence. The other standout for the group was the Flora & Fauna Teaninich - really good. Enough so that we're going to be looking for more Teaninich at auctions to try in the future.
Really, everything was good - and, more importantly, we had a lot of laughs and great conversation trying them.
After we ran the line of whisky, we did open the Last Consignment - and I figured out why it comes with two extra corks! The cork in the bottle is fully seated and covered in wax - so you have to pull it like a wine bottle, and it isn't really designed to go back in. So you use one of the supplied corks to reseal the bottle. Mystery solved!
It is a very rich, unctuous rum that those who tried enjoyed. It is also liquid history, and it was special just to be trying it. The previous evening I'd also read through the little booklet that is included, going through the history of the rum and rituals in the Royal Navy, and that was quite interesting.
The molasses note is front and center, but there are tropical fruits, spices, chocolate, leather, a bit of funk (there has to be some Jamaican rum in there)... a really thought-provoking sip.
As the evening ran down, and some of the crew left for home, we decided to keep the evening going with a few additional drams. So I grabbed some Glenmorangie. We hit Year of the Snake first - I'd opened this, but some of the others had not had a chance. This is still a standout dram - a blend of ex-Bourbon and Amontillado finishing casks.
They we opened the Rare Cask 21 year Mizunara finish. As expected, this is a very fine whisky, but the Snake was still in the lead by consensus.
And we last turned to the new 25 year, The Altus. This is mostly aged in designer bourbon casks, but is seasoned with a little whisky finished in Malmsey Madeira casks. A very juicy, fruit-forward dram, this ended up coming in second place, bumping the Mizunara to 3rd. Still, they're all fantastic.
That pretty much wrapped up the night. It was an amazing time start to finish - fantastic drams, but even better friends.
Next Saturday we're doing a larger gathering - this time for Raising Glasses rums. Should be fun!
#Whiskey #Whiskey #Rum #CompassBox #BlackTot #Mackmyra #Miltonduff #Teaninich #Macallan #HighlandPark #GlenMoray #NashobaValleyWinery #Glenmorangie #Scotch #Bourbon
-
Saturday night was a very special night, for several reasons. As some of you know, this past year was a tough one as my father was diagnosed early on with terminal lung cancer, and subsequently suffered a few health crises which had him in the ICU a couple of times. For most of the past year, Jess & my lives were occupied with helping him, and visiting him regularly in New York. We were happy to do it, but it did mean a pause in our usual get togethers with friends, which we missed.
On December 10th, 2025, my father succumbed to his cancer. As you might expect, the subsequent weeks have been full of grief, and paperwork. Even death has bureaucracy.
December 10th was also the day that the Compass Box Whisky Confluence auction at Bonhams Skinner, to benefit The Wolfsonian-FIU, ended. I'd been watching the auction, but uncertain about bidding - despite being a longtime Compass Box fanatic. However, after my father passed early that morning, I decided that I needed something good to go with the day - and that was going to be winning Confluence, which I did. You only live once, as was painfully clear that day.
My birthday is at the end of December, and we had planned a small gathering with friends to celebrate - but Jess & I both came home from my father's services in NY under the weather, and not really in a celebratory mood, so we cancelled that.
Instead, yesterday we had a gathering which was partly a delayed birthday celebration, partly a toast to my father's memory, and partly an exploration of a truly unique whisky. But, more than anything, it was a gathering of good friends for the first time in quite a while - and boy did I need that more than I realized.
Thank you Jess, Jer, Shamala, Marc, Lizzy, Lisa, Carol, Friski and Betsy for making the evening wonderful.
Before we could dive into the whisky, we had to put something in on stomachs - so we had an assortment of my father's favorites, in his honor. There was an antipasto salad, some veggies and cheese, meatballs and sauce (for subs or over pasta), pickle soup (the Cafe Polonia recipe), kielbasa and sauerkraut, pierogi, a texas sheet cake, rice pudding, cupcakes, and some fine Läderach chocolates.
Properly fueled, we attacked the mission of the evening.
We'd assembled a lineup of whiskies for the evening - of course, there was the Confluence, but we also pulled some expressions from the component distilleries. Obviously, these were not *the* components used to make Confluence, but it was just a fun way to try a few things.
We'd lined up Mackmyra, a Gordon & MacPhail Miltonduff, a G&M Macallan, a Highland Park 25, a Flora & Fauna Teaninich, and a Glen Moray (which was peated, it was what we had). We also had a couple of whiskies from Nashoba Valley Distillery, right here in town - Papa's Bourbon and the Stimulus Twenty 20 year old American Single Malt. Thanks to Marc Follit, our good friend, neighbor, and distiller at Nashoba, for bringing those.
Oh, yes, and there is also the Black Tot Rum Last Consignment. It seemed like another special bottle to open - after the whiskies.
We started off with the Confluence, so that we'd have clear palates - the better to taste it with. Whisky reviewer extraordinaire, Friski Whiski, agreed to write up a joint review with input from the whole crew, and we spent quite a bit of time on that. A most enjoyable time it was, too. We avoided reading the official tasting notes before creating our own, and were pleased to see that our notes ended up aligning fairly well with the official ones once we were done.
Friski posted the review on his page (https://www.facebook.com/friski.whiski/posts/pfbid0cQjrjpvFAm7XzAwf54Y62YPcTHMwcriwn5aF1b4JifQrV9XumhkTR5NYcwrT18tMl), but here it is:
---START---
Dram of a lifetime on 1/10/26Compass Box
Confluence
Blended Malt Whisky
Age: NAS
Abv: 48.9%
No. of bottles: 1Components:
The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Cherry Wine Fresh Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Oloroso First Fill Sherry Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
American First Fill & Virgin Oak Casks
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Swedish Virgin Oak & First Fill Casks
3%Teaninich Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Sherry Butt
12%Miltonduff Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
12%Highland Park Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
Recharred Hogshead
3%The Macallan Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
14%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Availability: 1 of 1 bottle. Bonhams auction house event "Art & Alchemy of Spirits: Presenting Compass Box to Benefit the Wolfsonian".
Crowd source notes: MegaZone, Jess Terry, Jer Johnson, Shamala Rao, Marc Follit, Lizzy Nicolai, Lisa Mulvehill, Carol Ann, Betsey Hendricks, and Friski Whiski.
Color: Medium honey and golden syrup
Neat (without water)
Nose: Soft and crisp. Honey, green apple, marzipan, cooked caramelized pineapple, confectioner’s sugar, lemon citrus, orange peel, with hints of cardamom and anise.Texture: Warm. Creamy, buttery, slightly drying through the finish and pleasantly astringent.
Palate: Apple blossom honey, honey comb, marzipan, caramel, and birchwood. Swedish Kanelbulle (which is a classic Scandinavian cinnamon bun, spiced with cardamom in the dough, less gooey and use a lighter cinnamon application).
Finish: A roller coaster ride of white pepper, fresh green olive oil, saline, toasted almonds, fine Corinthian leather, oak, grapefruit pith, and oleo saccharum.
Unleash the serpent (with water)
Nose: An orchard house of fruit moved to the forefront. Pear, apple frangipane, sliced almonds, sweet cracked malt and fresh cream. Birchbeer float with vanilla bean ice cream. Lakrits, lemon blossoms where floral and citrus combine into a confluence of marriage.Texture: Creamy, buttery, woody without the tannic astringency.
Palate: Baked apple dumplings, roasted butternut squash, demerara sugar, sweet cream, and candied meyer lemon.Finish: Earthy notes get amplified. Warm spiced sweet potato pie with a pastry crust, sea spray, salted caramel, walnut skins, and toffee with subtle hints of a gentle smoke.
Tasting notes glass used: Open Up Chef and Sommelier 5.5oz glass.
The morning after glass: Sweet cracked malt, dust, vanilla, and caramelPairings...
Season: AnyMusic: Lovefool by The Cardigans
Food: Rosemary pork loin with homemade applesauce
Media: Best enjoyed with great company and good conversation.
Overall: From first nose to final sip, several of us ended up in a journey from an apple orchard to our grandmother's seaside cottage while various desserts were being cooked. Fantastic debut from Angela D'Orazio at Compass Box! We really look forward to her future creations.
---END---As you can see, we loved it. This is a fantastic whisky, IMHO, and I'm thrilled that we were able to try it. Whisky is for sharing, not for staring. It would have been a crying shame for this to sit on someone's shelf, never to be tasted. You can tell we enjoyed it - we went through about 1/3 of the bottle compiling those tasting notes. ;-)
Afterwards we did taste through the other whiskies - which were good, but kind of paled a bit after Confluence. The Mackmyra was well-loved as well, and you can see the influence in Confluence. The other standout for the group was the Flora & Fauna Teaninich - really good. Enough so that we're going to be looking for more Teaninich at auctions to try in the future.
Really, everything was good - and, more importantly, we had a lot of laughs and great conversation trying them.
After we ran the line of whisky, we did open the Last Consignment - and I figured out why it comes with two extra corks! The cork in the bottle is fully seated and covered in wax - so you have to pull it like a wine bottle, and it isn't really designed to go back in. So you use one of the supplied corks to reseal the bottle. Mystery solved!
It is a very rich, unctuous rum that those who tried enjoyed. It is also liquid history, and it was special just to be trying it. The previous evening I'd also read through the little booklet that is included, going through the history of the rum and rituals in the Royal Navy, and that was quite interesting.
The molasses note is front and center, but there are tropical fruits, spices, chocolate, leather, a bit of funk (there has to be some Jamaican rum in there)... a really thought-provoking sip.
As the evening ran down, and some of the crew left for home, we decided to keep the evening going with a few additional drams. So I grabbed some Glenmorangie. We hit Year of the Snake first - I'd opened this, but some of the others had not had a chance. This is still a standout dram - a blend of ex-Bourbon and Amontillado finishing casks.
They we opened the Rare Cask 21 year Mizunara finish. As expected, this is a very fine whisky, but the Snake was still in the lead by consensus.
And we last turned to the new 25 year, The Altus. This is mostly aged in designer bourbon casks, but is seasoned with a little whisky finished in Malmsey Madeira casks. A very juicy, fruit-forward dram, this ended up coming in second place, bumping the Mizunara to 3rd. Still, they're all fantastic.
That pretty much wrapped up the night. It was an amazing time start to finish - fantastic drams, but even better friends.
Next Saturday we're doing a larger gathering - this time for Raising Glasses rums. Should be fun!
#Whiskey #Whiskey #Rum #CompassBox #BlackTot #Mackmyra #Miltonduff #Teaninich #Macallan #HighlandPark #GlenMoray #NashobaValleyWinery #Glenmorangie #Scotch #Bourbon
-
Saturday night was a very special night, for several reasons. As some of you know, this past year was a tough one as my father was diagnosed early on with terminal lung cancer, and subsequently suffered a few health crises which had him in the ICU a couple of times. For most of the past year, Jess & my lives were occupied with helping him, and visiting him regularly in New York. We were happy to do it, but it did mean a pause in our usual get togethers with friends, which we missed.
On December 10th, 2025, my father succumbed to his cancer. As you might expect, the subsequent weeks have been full of grief, and paperwork. Even death has bureaucracy.
December 10th was also the day that the Compass Box Whisky Confluence auction at Bonhams Skinner, to benefit The Wolfsonian-FIU, ended. I'd been watching the auction, but uncertain about bidding - despite being a longtime Compass Box fanatic. However, after my father passed early that morning, I decided that I needed something good to go with the day - and that was going to be winning Confluence, which I did. You only live once, as was painfully clear that day.
My birthday is at the end of December, and we had planned a small gathering with friends to celebrate - but Jess & I both came home from my father's services in NY under the weather, and not really in a celebratory mood, so we cancelled that.
Instead, yesterday we had a gathering which was partly a delayed birthday celebration, partly a toast to my father's memory, and partly an exploration of a truly unique whisky. But, more than anything, it was a gathering of good friends for the first time in quite a while - and boy did I need that more than I realized.
Thank you Jess, Jer, Shamala, Marc, Lizzy, Lisa, Carol, Friski and Betsy for making the evening wonderful.
Before we could dive into the whisky, we had to put something in on stomachs - so we had an assortment of my father's favorites, in his honor. There was an antipasto salad, some veggies and cheese, meatballs and sauce (for subs or over pasta), pickle soup (the Cafe Polonia recipe), kielbasa and sauerkraut, pierogi, a texas sheet cake, rice pudding, cupcakes, and some fine Läderach chocolates.
Properly fueled, we attacked the mission of the evening.
We'd assembled a lineup of whiskies for the evening - of course, there was the Confluence, but we also pulled some expressions from the component distilleries. Obviously, these were not *the* components used to make Confluence, but it was just a fun way to try a few things.
We'd lined up Mackmyra, a Gordon & MacPhail Miltonduff, a G&M Macallan, a Highland Park 25, a Flora & Fauna Teaninich, and a Glen Moray (which was peated, it was what we had). We also had a couple of whiskies from Nashoba Valley Distillery, right here in town - Papa's Bourbon and the Stimulus Twenty 20 year old American Single Malt. Thanks to Marc Follit, our good friend, neighbor, and distiller at Nashoba, for bringing those.
Oh, yes, and there is also the Black Tot Rum Last Consignment. It seemed like another special bottle to open - after the whiskies.
We started off with the Confluence, so that we'd have clear palates - the better to taste it with. Whisky reviewer extraordinaire, Friski Whiski, agreed to write up a joint review with input from the whole crew, and we spent quite a bit of time on that. A most enjoyable time it was, too. We avoided reading the official tasting notes before creating our own, and were pleased to see that our notes ended up aligning fairly well with the official ones once we were done.
Friski posted the review on his page (https://www.facebook.com/friski.whiski/posts/pfbid0cQjrjpvFAm7XzAwf54Y62YPcTHMwcriwn5aF1b4JifQrV9XumhkTR5NYcwrT18tMl), but here it is:
---START---
Dram of a lifetime on 1/10/26Compass Box
Confluence
Blended Malt Whisky
Age: NAS
Abv: 48.9%
No. of bottles: 1Components:
The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Cherry Wine Fresh Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Oloroso First Fill Sherry Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
American First Fill & Virgin Oak Casks
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Swedish Virgin Oak & First Fill Casks
3%Teaninich Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Sherry Butt
12%Miltonduff Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
12%Highland Park Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
Recharred Hogshead
3%The Macallan Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
14%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Availability: 1 of 1 bottle. Bonhams auction house event "Art & Alchemy of Spirits: Presenting Compass Box to Benefit the Wolfsonian".
Crowd source notes: MegaZone, Jess Terry, Jer Johnson, Shamala Rao, Marc Follit, Lizzy Nicolai, Lisa Mulvehill, Carol Ann, Betsey Hendricks, and Friski Whiski.
Color: Medium honey and golden syrup
Neat (without water)
Nose: Soft and crisp. Honey, green apple, marzipan, cooked caramelized pineapple, confectioner’s sugar, lemon citrus, orange peel, with hints of cardamom and anise.Texture: Warm. Creamy, buttery, slightly drying through the finish and pleasantly astringent.
Palate: Apple blossom honey, honey comb, marzipan, caramel, and birchwood. Swedish Kanelbulle (which is a classic Scandinavian cinnamon bun, spiced with cardamom in the dough, less gooey and use a lighter cinnamon application).
Finish: A roller coaster ride of white pepper, fresh green olive oil, saline, toasted almonds, fine Corinthian leather, oak, grapefruit pith, and oleo saccharum.
Unleash the serpent (with water)
Nose: An orchard house of fruit moved to the forefront. Pear, apple frangipane, sliced almonds, sweet cracked malt and fresh cream. Birchbeer float with vanilla bean ice cream. Lakrits, lemon blossoms where floral and citrus combine into a confluence of marriage.Texture: Creamy, buttery, woody without the tannic astringency.
Palate: Baked apple dumplings, roasted butternut squash, demerara sugar, sweet cream, and candied meyer lemon.Finish: Earthy notes get amplified. Warm spiced sweet potato pie with a pastry crust, sea spray, salted caramel, walnut skins, and toffee with subtle hints of a gentle smoke.
Tasting notes glass used: Open Up Chef and Sommelier 5.5oz glass.
The morning after glass: Sweet cracked malt, dust, vanilla, and caramelPairings...
Season: AnyMusic: Lovefool by The Cardigans
Food: Rosemary pork loin with homemade applesauce
Media: Best enjoyed with great company and good conversation.
Overall: From first nose to final sip, several of us ended up in a journey from an apple orchard to our grandmother's seaside cottage while various desserts were being cooked. Fantastic debut from Angela D'Orazio at Compass Box! We really look forward to her future creations.
---END---As you can see, we loved it. This is a fantastic whisky, IMHO, and I'm thrilled that we were able to try it. Whisky is for sharing, not for staring. It would have been a crying shame for this to sit on someone's shelf, never to be tasted. You can tell we enjoyed it - we went through about 1/3 of the bottle compiling those tasting notes. ;-)
Afterwards we did taste through the other whiskies - which were good, but kind of paled a bit after Confluence. The Mackmyra was well-loved as well, and you can see the influence in Confluence. The other standout for the group was the Flora & Fauna Teaninich - really good. Enough so that we're going to be looking for more Teaninich at auctions to try in the future.
Really, everything was good - and, more importantly, we had a lot of laughs and great conversation trying them.
After we ran the line of whisky, we did open the Last Consignment - and I figured out why it comes with two extra corks! The cork in the bottle is fully seated and covered in wax - so you have to pull it like a wine bottle, and it isn't really designed to go back in. So you use one of the supplied corks to reseal the bottle. Mystery solved!
It is a very rich, unctuous rum that those who tried enjoyed. It is also liquid history, and it was special just to be trying it. The previous evening I'd also read through the little booklet that is included, going through the history of the rum and rituals in the Royal Navy, and that was quite interesting.
The molasses note is front and center, but there are tropical fruits, spices, chocolate, leather, a bit of funk (there has to be some Jamaican rum in there)... a really thought-provoking sip.
As the evening ran down, and some of the crew left for home, we decided to keep the evening going with a few additional drams. So I grabbed some Glenmorangie. We hit Year of the Snake first - I'd opened this, but some of the others had not had a chance. This is still a standout dram - a blend of ex-Bourbon and Amontillado finishing casks.
They we opened the Rare Cask 21 year Mizunara finish. As expected, this is a very fine whisky, but the Snake was still in the lead by consensus.
And we last turned to the new 25 year, The Altus. This is mostly aged in designer bourbon casks, but is seasoned with a little whisky finished in Malmsey Madeira casks. A very juicy, fruit-forward dram, this ended up coming in second place, bumping the Mizunara to 3rd. Still, they're all fantastic.
That pretty much wrapped up the night. It was an amazing time start to finish - fantastic drams, but even better friends.
Next Saturday we're doing a larger gathering - this time for Raising Glasses rums. Should be fun!
#Whiskey #Whiskey #Rum #CompassBox #BlackTot #Mackmyra #Miltonduff #Teaninich #Macallan #HighlandPark #GlenMoray #NashobaValleyWinery #Glenmorangie #Scotch #Bourbon
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Saturday night was a very special night, for several reasons. As some of you know, this past year was a tough one as my father was diagnosed early on with terminal lung cancer, and subsequently suffered a few health crises which had him in the ICU a couple of times. For most of the past year, Jess & my lives were occupied with helping him, and visiting him regularly in New York. We were happy to do it, but it did mean a pause in our usual get togethers with friends, which we missed.
On December 10th, 2025, my father succumbed to his cancer. As you might expect, the subsequent weeks have been full of grief, and paperwork. Even death has bureaucracy.
December 10th was also the day that the Compass Box Whisky Confluence auction at Bonhams Skinner, to benefit The Wolfsonian-FIU, ended. I'd been watching the auction, but uncertain about bidding - despite being a longtime Compass Box fanatic. However, after my father passed early that morning, I decided that I needed something good to go with the day - and that was going to be winning Confluence, which I did. You only live once, as was painfully clear that day.
My birthday is at the end of December, and we had planned a small gathering with friends to celebrate - but Jess & I both came home from my father's services in NY under the weather, and not really in a celebratory mood, so we cancelled that.
Instead, yesterday we had a gathering which was partly a delayed birthday celebration, partly a toast to my father's memory, and partly an exploration of a truly unique whisky. But, more than anything, it was a gathering of good friends for the first time in quite a while - and boy did I need that more than I realized.
Thank you Jess, Jer, Shamala, Marc, Lizzy, Lisa, Carol, Friski and Betsy for making the evening wonderful.
Before we could dive into the whisky, we had to put something in on stomachs - so we had an assortment of my father's favorites, in his honor. There was an antipasto salad, some veggies and cheese, meatballs and sauce (for subs or over pasta), pickle soup (the Cafe Polonia recipe), kielbasa and sauerkraut, pierogi, a texas sheet cake, rice pudding, cupcakes, and some fine Läderach chocolates.
Properly fueled, we attacked the mission of the evening.
We'd assembled a lineup of whiskies for the evening - of course, there was the Confluence, but we also pulled some expressions from the component distilleries. Obviously, these were not *the* components used to make Confluence, but it was just a fun way to try a few things.
We'd lined up Mackmyra, a Gordon & MacPhail Miltonduff, a G&M Macallan, a Highland Park 25, a Flora & Fauna Teaninich, and a Glen Moray (which was peated, it was what we had). We also had a couple of whiskies from Nashoba Valley Distillery, right here in town - Papa's Bourbon and the Stimulus Twenty 20 year old American Single Malt. Thanks to Marc Follit, our good friend, neighbor, and distiller at Nashoba, for bringing those.
Oh, yes, and there is also the Black Tot Rum Last Consignment. It seemed like another special bottle to open - after the whiskies.
We started off with the Confluence, so that we'd have clear palates - the better to taste it with. Whisky reviewer extraordinaire, Friski Whiski, agreed to write up a joint review with input from the whole crew, and we spent quite a bit of time on that. A most enjoyable time it was, too. We avoided reading the official tasting notes before creating our own, and were pleased to see that our notes ended up aligning fairly well with the official ones once we were done.
Friski posted the review on his page (https://www.facebook.com/friski.whiski/posts/pfbid0cQjrjpvFAm7XzAwf54Y62YPcTHMwcriwn5aF1b4JifQrV9XumhkTR5NYcwrT18tMl), but here it is:
---START---
Dram of a lifetime on 1/10/26Compass Box
Confluence
Blended Malt Whisky
Age: NAS
Abv: 48.9%
No. of bottles: 1Components:
The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Cherry Wine Fresh Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Oloroso First Fill Sherry Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
American First Fill & Virgin Oak Casks
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Swedish Virgin Oak & First Fill Casks
3%Teaninich Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Sherry Butt
12%Miltonduff Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
12%Highland Park Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
Recharred Hogshead
3%The Macallan Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
14%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Availability: 1 of 1 bottle. Bonhams auction house event "Art & Alchemy of Spirits: Presenting Compass Box to Benefit the Wolfsonian".
Crowd source notes: MegaZone, Jess Terry, Jer Johnson, Shamala Rao, Marc Follit, Lizzy Nicolai, Lisa Mulvehill, Carol Ann, Betsey Hendricks, and Friski Whiski.
Color: Medium honey and golden syrup
Neat (without water)
Nose: Soft and crisp. Honey, green apple, marzipan, cooked caramelized pineapple, confectioner’s sugar, lemon citrus, orange peel, with hints of cardamom and anise.Texture: Warm. Creamy, buttery, slightly drying through the finish and pleasantly astringent.
Palate: Apple blossom honey, honey comb, marzipan, caramel, and birchwood. Swedish Kanelbulle (which is a classic Scandinavian cinnamon bun, spiced with cardamom in the dough, less gooey and use a lighter cinnamon application).
Finish: A roller coaster ride of white pepper, fresh green olive oil, saline, toasted almonds, fine Corinthian leather, oak, grapefruit pith, and oleo saccharum.
Unleash the serpent (with water)
Nose: An orchard house of fruit moved to the forefront. Pear, apple frangipane, sliced almonds, sweet cracked malt and fresh cream. Birchbeer float with vanilla bean ice cream. Lakrits, lemon blossoms where floral and citrus combine into a confluence of marriage.Texture: Creamy, buttery, woody without the tannic astringency.
Palate: Baked apple dumplings, roasted butternut squash, demerara sugar, sweet cream, and candied meyer lemon.Finish: Earthy notes get amplified. Warm spiced sweet potato pie with a pastry crust, sea spray, salted caramel, walnut skins, and toffee with subtle hints of a gentle smoke.
Tasting notes glass used: Open Up Chef and Sommelier 5.5oz glass.
The morning after glass: Sweet cracked malt, dust, vanilla, and caramelPairings...
Season: AnyMusic: Lovefool by The Cardigans
Food: Rosemary pork loin with homemade applesauce
Media: Best enjoyed with great company and good conversation.
Overall: From first nose to final sip, several of us ended up in a journey from an apple orchard to our grandmother's seaside cottage while various desserts were being cooked. Fantastic debut from Angela D'Orazio at Compass Box! We really look forward to her future creations.
---END---As you can see, we loved it. This is a fantastic whisky, IMHO, and I'm thrilled that we were able to try it. Whisky is for sharing, not for staring. It would have been a crying shame for this to sit on someone's shelf, never to be tasted. You can tell we enjoyed it - we went through about 1/3 of the bottle compiling those tasting notes. ;-)
Afterwards we did taste through the other whiskies - which were good, but kind of paled a bit after Confluence. The Mackmyra was well-loved as well, and you can see the influence in Confluence. The other standout for the group was the Flora & Fauna Teaninich - really good. Enough so that we're going to be looking for more Teaninich at auctions to try in the future.
Really, everything was good - and, more importantly, we had a lot of laughs and great conversation trying them.
After we ran the line of whisky, we did open the Last Consignment - and I figured out why it comes with two extra corks! The cork in the bottle is fully seated and covered in wax - so you have to pull it like a wine bottle, and it isn't really designed to go back in. So you use one of the supplied corks to reseal the bottle. Mystery solved!
It is a very rich, unctuous rum that those who tried enjoyed. It is also liquid history, and it was special just to be trying it. The previous evening I'd also read through the little booklet that is included, going through the history of the rum and rituals in the Royal Navy, and that was quite interesting.
The molasses note is front and center, but there are tropical fruits, spices, chocolate, leather, a bit of funk (there has to be some Jamaican rum in there)... a really thought-provoking sip.
As the evening ran down, and some of the crew left for home, we decided to keep the evening going with a few additional drams. So I grabbed some Glenmorangie. We hit Year of the Snake first - I'd opened this, but some of the others had not had a chance. This is still a standout dram - a blend of ex-Bourbon and Amontillado finishing casks.
They we opened the Rare Cask 21 year Mizunara finish. As expected, this is a very fine whisky, but the Snake was still in the lead by consensus.
And we last turned to the new 25 year, The Altus. This is mostly aged in designer bourbon casks, but is seasoned with a little whisky finished in Malmsey Madeira casks. A very juicy, fruit-forward dram, this ended up coming in second place, bumping the Mizunara to 3rd. Still, they're all fantastic.
That pretty much wrapped up the night. It was an amazing time start to finish - fantastic drams, but even better friends.
Next Saturday we're doing a larger gathering - this time for Raising Glasses rums. Should be fun!
#Whiskey #Whiskey #Rum #CompassBox #BlackTot #Mackmyra #Miltonduff #Teaninich #Macallan #HighlandPark #GlenMoray #NashobaValleyWinery #Glenmorangie #Scotch #Bourbon
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Dear Friends,
#FensterFreitag. This #house, at least the main part on the right, is over 300 years old. It's a rare "overhanging salt box" style. The house is owned by the local township, is nationally registered as an historic site, yet remains in disrepair. I'll speak up about it having just noticed what poor condition it is in.
https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/85002506
ESM
#History #HistoryMatters #homestead #ColonialAmerica
#decay
#photography #PhotoResearcher -
This year, I thought the Hugo finalist novels & novellas were mostly great, but the entries in Best Novelette (longish short stories, between 7500 and 17500 words) were mostly just OK, and I don't have much to say about them. Check out any that seem interesting to you!
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars” by Premee Mohamed: a wizard who's lost her powers is given an apprentice, and has to prepare for an impending dragon-related disaster. http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/by-salt-by-sea-by-light-of-stars/
“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou: one day the protagonist misses a reunion with an old friend; she can't see her friend even though she's sitting at the same bus stop. This then spreads to her family as she slips further into a parallel existence. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/loneliness-universe/
“Signs of Life” by Sarah Pinsker: the protagonist has a reunion with her estranged sister, and learns a magical family secret. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/signs-of-life/
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer: a woman moves to Massachusetts with her family. She was forced to give up her grad-school research on seals, and discovers her seal research subjects are still alive and now living offshore from their new home. Coincidence, or something else? https://asimovs.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TheFourSisters_Kritzer.pdf
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha: a Bradburyesque story about books and videos in a near-future where they're obsolete. The narrator is disposing of his deceased mother's possessions, and stumbles across a Brotherhood that preserves retro technology. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_05_24/
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Trapped in Quicksand
Once upon a time, adventurers into unknown lands feared quicksand – a deadly hazard that looked like a sand patch or a harmless puddle. Step in the wrong place, the natives warned, and you would die. This sudden peril became a very useful device in TV and movies from the 1950s to the 90s, and a metaphor for the U.S. war in Vietnam. It’s an old-fashioned trope now but quicksand is a real thing. A curious situation created through soil dynamics makes for some spooky geology.
Updated version. Originally published June, 17, 2023.
Quicksand, as a distinct thing and a metaphor for sinking deeper as you try to escape, was once popular in TV, movies, comic books, and adventure stories. It even became a fetish. In the 1960s, the concept of quicksand was invoked frequently whenever people went into unknown areas. It was characterized by immobilization and eventual death. Struggle was futile. The unfortunate victim was sucked down gradually into the goo until only an outstretched hand, and then, finally, a hat, was all that remained floating on the surface.
Engraving from sketch by Mr. Edmund Hornby Grimani. Illustrated London News 96:2651 (8 February 1890).The quicksand was said to be bottomless.
All of that is untrue. Yet, quicksand is not wholly fiction. It can be a danger today, particularly to animals or people who can’t get out of the trap before a tide rushes in. Let’s unpack this geological hazard.
From Engbar, Slate.What is it?
Classic quicksand is a mix of sand and water that looks and acts like a solid but destabilizes and collapses when stress is applied.
Areas of silt and clay can also appear as a stable surface that collapses. There is also dry quicksand – a mix of air and sand – that will not hold weight. You might hear that some unsuspecting traveler through the desert (or fire swamp) will sink into a man-eating natural hourglass, but this is entirely mythical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Fsyld7YD0
Sediment + water
Think about how you moisten sand at the beach to build up a sand castle. A moderate amount of water and sand results in packed grains that are held fairly tightly together and can sustain weight. Additional water reduces friction, the particles separate and the mixture flows. The sand may look stable and can hold light weight but a force such as a foot bearing down disrupts the balance. The sand suddenly loses stability and collapses.
Vibration, such as from an earthquake, can trigger a complex process called liquefaction. Buildings constructed on wet ground can collapse during the shaking when the shear strength is suddenly reduced and the particles flow past each other. The land liquifies.
Natural areas of quicksand can be found where there is upward flowing water, like at the outflow of spring, or near rivers or on beaches where water is present just below the surface.
Silty areas can more easily liquify than sand. Clay deposits can exhibit thixotropic behavior and lose their shear strength suddenly due to vibration. (Add water to corn starch while slowly stirring to make it just liquid. Then let it rest. Is this a liquid or a solid? It’s a thixotropic solution.)
The higher the stress applied to the material, the more liquid it becomes. Therefore, thrashing around will indeed cause you to sink and become more engulfed.
Kids experiencing quicksand at Mont-Saint-Michel, an island in Normandy, France.
A.Bregain / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)Myths
“Quick” suggests the sand comes to life but, instead, it gives way. “Quick” refers to how easily the sand changes character from solid to liquid. As mentioned, quicksand pits are not bottomless. They are typically not even very deep. No scary creatures live in the sand to consume you.
Quicksand doesn’t suck you down, but you sink into as you would in any liquid. It is always denser than water alone. The high viscosity of the saturated sand creates resistance and suction. You are almost guaranteed to lose your shoes during a quicksand escape if they aren’t laced tight.
In 2005, researchers published in Nature how they simulated natural quicksand from a location in Iran using sand, clay, and saltwater. The results of the experiment made news headlines. We were assured that quicksand is real, but you can’t sink in more than halfway.
Locations
Areas of quicksand or dangerously sticky mud or clay are found around the world near sources of water. They can be a fairly permanent feature or appear in response to wet conditions. They can even move locations from one day to the next.
Locally known as “jelly sands”, areas of quicksand occur around the Santa Ana River in California, posing a threat to horses who step onto damp sand only to sink in. Horses may panic and become exhausted trying to escape. It can take special equipment to pull them out.
In 2019, two horses had to be rescued from Merthyr Mawr beach in Glamorgan, South Wales after they sunk into quicksand. A similar event in 2012 in Geelong, Australia required the horse to be sedated to get him out before the tide came in.
The Broomway path in the UK is a well-known hazard in Southend-on-Sea, England along the edge of the aptly named Foulness Island. Accessible only during low tide, the trail has claimed some who have gotten stuck in the quicksand and could not escape before the tide returned “faster than a man could run”. The so-called Black Grounds along the land’s edge consist of jelly-like mud.
In 2014, a 78-year-old woman who frequently hiked alone in Arches National Park, Utah without issue became stuck in quicksand for 14 hours before rescuers helped free her. As with other areas, it was difficult to tell the ground was unstable until you stepped in it.
And, again, in Arches, in early December 2025, a hiker on the Hayduke Trail walked over a sandy area with about an inch of water. He sank in to his ankle. The more he tried to pull free, the deeper his leg was trapped. He said about the experience: “It felt like I had stepped into concrete, and then it hardened around my leg. I couldn’t even move it a millimeter.” The threat here was freezing temperatures. Luckily, he was able to send an SOS on his GPS device and was rescued.
Courthouse wash, Arches National Park, UTHow to escape
If you discover you are rapidly sinking up to your waist, toss off any extra backpacks and attempt to redistribute your weight by lying back.
Selectively increasing the stress is the key to escape. Stopping can cause the viscosity of the material to increase (like when you stop stirring the corn starch). When you try pulling your leg out of the semi-liquid, you are working against a vacuum left behind. Instead, move a little back and forth to create a space for water to move into. This will loosen the material around your limbs. Don’t panic and move slowly and deliberately towards safe ground. Many people can extract themselves relatively easily, provided they can get leverage and move their legs/feet slowly and pull out. Most importantly, don’t hike alone and be aware of hazards in silty, wet places. Don’t fear the quicksand, just respect it.
Quicksand Schiermonnikoog – an island in the Netherlands BlankeVla at German Wikipedia / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)References
Bakalar, N. (2005). Quicksand science: Why it Traps and How to Escape. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/9/quicksand-science-why-it-traps-how-to-escape/
Engber, D. (2010). Terra Infirma: The rise and fall of quicksand. Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.html
Khamsi, R. (2005). Quicksand can’t suck you under. Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news050926-9Video blog
#Broomway #geologicHazard #jellySands #movies #popCulture #quicksand
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Trapped in Quicksand
Once upon a time, adventurers into unknown lands feared quicksand – a deadly hazard that looked like a sand patch or a harmless puddle. Step in the wrong place, the natives warned, and you would die. This sudden peril became a very useful device in TV and movies from the 1950s to the 90s, and a metaphor for the U.S. war in Vietnam. It’s an old-fashioned trope now but quicksand is a real thing. A curious situation created through soil dynamics makes for some spooky geology.
Quicksand, as a distinct thing and a metaphor for sinking deeper as you try to escape, was once popular in TV, movies, comic books, and adventure stories. It even became a fetish. In the 1960s, the concept of quicksand was invoked frequently whenever people went into unknown areas. It was characterized by immobilization and eventual death. Struggle was futile. The unfortunate victim was sucked down gradually into the goo until only an outstretched hand, and then, finally, a hat, was all that remained floating on the surface.
Engraving from sketch by Mr. Edmund Hornby Grimani. Illustrated London News 96:2651 (8 February 1890). From Engbar, Slate.The quicksand was said to be bottomless.
All of that is untrue. Yet, quicksand is not wholly fiction. It can be a danger today, particularly to animals or people who can’t get out of the trap before a tide rushes in. Let’s unpack this geological hazard.
What is it?
Classic quicksand is a mix of sand and water that looks and acts like a solid but destabilizes and collapses when stress is applied.
Areas of silt and clay can also appear as a stable surface that collapses. There is also dry quicksand – a mix of air and sand – that will not hold weight. You might hear that some unsuspecting traveler through the desert (or fire swamp) will sink into a man-eating natural hourglass, but this is entirely mythical.
“Lighning sand” from the The Princess Bride (1987)Sediment + water
Think about how you moisten sand at the beach to build up a sand castle. A moderate amount of water and sand results in packed grains that are held fairly tightly together and can sustain weight. Additional water reduces friction, the particles separate and the mixture flows. The sand may look stable and can hold light weight but a force such as a foot bearing down disrupts the balance. The sand suddenly loses stability and collapses.
Vibration, such as from an earthquake, can trigger a complex process called liquefaction. Buildings constructed on wet ground can collapse during the shaking when the shear strength is suddenly reduced and the particles flow past each other. The land liquifies.
Natural areas of quicksand can be found where there is upward flowing water, like at the outflow of spring, or near rivers or on beaches where water is present just below the surface.
Silty areas can more easily liquify than sand. Clay deposits can exhibit thixotropic behavior and lose their shear strength suddenly due to vibration. (Add water to corn starch while slowly stirring to make it just liquid. Then let it rest. Is this a liquid or a solid? It’s a thixotropic solution.)
The higher the stress applied to the material, the more liquid it becomes. Therefore, thrashing around will indeed cause you to sink and become more engulfed.
Kids experiencing quicksand at Mont-Saint-Michel, an island in Normandy, France.
A.Bregain / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)Myths
“Quick” suggests the sand comes to life but instead it gives way. “Quick” refers to how easily the sand changes character from solid to liquid. As mentioned, quicksand pits are not bottomless. They are typically not even very deep. No scary creatures live in the sand to consume you.
Quicksand doesn’t suck you down, but you sink into as you would in any liquid. It is always more dense than water alone. The high viscosity of the saturated sand creates resistance and suction. You are almost guaranteed to lose your shoes during a quicksand escape if they aren’t laced tight.
In 2005, researchers published in Nature how they simulated natural quicksand from a location in Iran using sand, clay, and saltwater. The results of the experiment made news headlines. We were assured that quicksand is real but you can’t sink in more than halfway.
Locations
Areas of quicksand or dangerously sticky mud or clay are found around the world near sources of water. They can be a fairly permanent feature or appear in response to wet conditions. They can even move locations from one day to the next.
Locally known as “jelly sands”, areas of quicksand occur around the Santa Ana River in California, posing a threat to horses who step onto damp sand only to sink in. Horses may panic and become exhausted trying to escape. It can take special equipment to pull them out.
In 2019, two horses had to be rescued from Merthyr Mawr beach in Glamorgan, South Wales after they sunk into quicksand. A similar event in 2012 in Geelong, Australia required the horse to be sedated to get him out before the tide came in.
In 2014, a 78-year-old woman who frequently hiked alone in Arches National Park, Washington without issue became stuck in quicksand for 14 hours before rescuers helped free her. As with other areas, it was difficult to tell what ground was unstable until you stepped in it.
The Broomway path in the UK is a well-known hazard in Southend-on-Sea, England along the edge of the aptly named Foulness Island. Accessible only during low tide, the trail has claimed some who have gotten stuck in the quicksand and could not escape before the tide returned “faster than a man could run”. The so-called Black Grounds along the land’s edge consist of jelly-like mud.
How to escape
If you discover you are rapidly sinking up to your waist, toss off any extra backpacks and attempt to redistribute your weight by lying back.
Courthouse, WA, Arches National ParkSelectively increasing the stress is the key to escape. Stopping can cause the viscosity of the material to increase (like when you stop stirring the corn starch). When you try pulling your leg out of the semi-liquid, you are working against a vacuum left behind. Instead, move a little back and forth to create a space for water to move into. This will loosen the material around your limbs. Don’t panic and move slowly and deliberately towards safe ground. Many people can extract themselves relatively easily provided they can get leverage and move their legs/feet slowly and pull out. Most importantly, don’t hike alone and be aware of hazards in silty wet places. Don’t fear the quicksand, just respect it.
Quicksand Schiermonnikoog – an island in the Netherlands BlankeVla at German Wikipedia / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)References
Bakalar, N. (2005). Quicksand science: Why it Traps and How to Escape. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/9/quicksand-science-why-it-traps-how-to-escape/
Engber, D. (2010). Terra Infirma: The rise and fall of quicksand. Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.html
Khamsi, R. (2005). Quicksand can’t suck you under. Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news050926-9Video blog
#Broomway #geologicHazard #jellySands #movies #popCulture #quicksand
https://sharonahill.com/?p=1414
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Trapped in Quicksand
Once upon a time, adventurers into unknown lands feared quicksand – a deadly hazard that looked like a sand patch or a harmless puddle. Step in the wrong place, the natives warned, and you would die. This sudden peril became a very useful device in TV and movies from the 1950s to the 90s, and a metaphor for the U.S. war in Vietnam. It’s an old-fashioned trope now but quicksand is a real thing. A curious situation created through soil dynamics makes for some spooky geology.
Updated version. Originally published June, 17, 2023.
Quicksand, as a distinct thing and a metaphor for sinking deeper as you try to escape, was once popular in TV, movies, comic books, and adventure stories. It even became a fetish. In the 1960s, the concept of quicksand was invoked frequently whenever people went into unknown areas. It was characterized by immobilization and eventual death. Struggle was futile. The unfortunate victim was sucked down gradually into the goo until only an outstretched hand, and then, finally, a hat, was all that remained floating on the surface.
Engraving from sketch by Mr. Edmund Hornby Grimani. Illustrated London News 96:2651 (8 February 1890).The quicksand was said to be bottomless.
All of that is untrue. Yet, quicksand is not wholly fiction. It can be a danger today, particularly to animals or people who can’t get out of the trap before a tide rushes in. Let’s unpack this geological hazard.
From Engbar, Slate.What is it?
Classic quicksand is a mix of sand and water that looks and acts like a solid but destabilizes and collapses when stress is applied.
Areas of silt and clay can also appear as a stable surface that collapses. There is also dry quicksand – a mix of air and sand – that will not hold weight. You might hear that some unsuspecting traveler through the desert (or fire swamp) will sink into a man-eating natural hourglass, but this is entirely mythical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Fsyld7YD0
Sediment + water
Think about how you moisten sand at the beach to build up a sand castle. A moderate amount of water and sand results in packed grains that are held fairly tightly together and can sustain weight. Additional water reduces friction, the particles separate and the mixture flows. The sand may look stable and can hold light weight but a force such as a foot bearing down disrupts the balance. The sand suddenly loses stability and collapses.
Vibration, such as from an earthquake, can trigger a complex process called liquefaction. Buildings constructed on wet ground can collapse during the shaking when the shear strength is suddenly reduced and the particles flow past each other. The land liquifies.
Natural areas of quicksand can be found where there is upward flowing water, like at the outflow of spring, or near rivers or on beaches where water is present just below the surface.
Silty areas can more easily liquify than sand. Clay deposits can exhibit thixotropic behavior and lose their shear strength suddenly due to vibration. (Add water to corn starch while slowly stirring to make it just liquid. Then let it rest. Is this a liquid or a solid? It’s a thixotropic solution.)
The higher the stress applied to the material, the more liquid it becomes. Therefore, thrashing around will indeed cause you to sink and become more engulfed.
Kids experiencing quicksand at Mont-Saint-Michel, an island in Normandy, France.
A.Bregain / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)Myths
“Quick” suggests the sand comes to life but, instead, it gives way. “Quick” refers to how easily the sand changes character from solid to liquid. As mentioned, quicksand pits are not bottomless. They are typically not even very deep. No scary creatures live in the sand to consume you.
Quicksand doesn’t suck you down, but you sink into as you would in any liquid. It is always denser than water alone. The high viscosity of the saturated sand creates resistance and suction. You are almost guaranteed to lose your shoes during a quicksand escape if they aren’t laced tight.
In 2005, researchers published in Nature how they simulated natural quicksand from a location in Iran using sand, clay, and saltwater. The results of the experiment made news headlines. We were assured that quicksand is real, but you can’t sink in more than halfway.
Locations
Areas of quicksand or dangerously sticky mud or clay are found around the world near sources of water. They can be a fairly permanent feature or appear in response to wet conditions. They can even move locations from one day to the next.
Locally known as “jelly sands”, areas of quicksand occur around the Santa Ana River in California, posing a threat to horses who step onto damp sand only to sink in. Horses may panic and become exhausted trying to escape. It can take special equipment to pull them out.
In 2019, two horses had to be rescued from Merthyr Mawr beach in Glamorgan, South Wales after they sunk into quicksand. A similar event in 2012 in Geelong, Australia required the horse to be sedated to get him out before the tide came in.
The Broomway path in the UK is a well-known hazard in Southend-on-Sea, England along the edge of the aptly named Foulness Island. Accessible only during low tide, the trail has claimed some who have gotten stuck in the quicksand and could not escape before the tide returned “faster than a man could run”. The so-called Black Grounds along the land’s edge consist of jelly-like mud.
In 2014, a 78-year-old woman who frequently hiked alone in Arches National Park, Utah without issue became stuck in quicksand for 14 hours before rescuers helped free her. As with other areas, it was difficult to tell the ground was unstable until you stepped in it.
And, again, in Arches, in early December 2025, a hiker on the Hayduke Trail walked over a sandy area with about an inch of water. He sank in to his ankle. The more he tried to pull free, the deeper his leg was trapped. He said about the experience: “It felt like I had stepped into concrete, and then it hardened around my leg. I couldn’t even move it a millimeter.” The threat here was freezing temperatures. Luckily, he was able to send an SOS on his GPS device and was rescued.
Courthouse wash, Arches National Park, UTHow to escape
If you discover you are rapidly sinking up to your waist, toss off any extra backpacks and attempt to redistribute your weight by lying back.
Selectively increasing the stress is the key to escape. Stopping can cause the viscosity of the material to increase (like when you stop stirring the corn starch). When you try pulling your leg out of the semi-liquid, you are working against a vacuum left behind. Instead, move a little back and forth to create a space for water to move into. This will loosen the material around your limbs. Don’t panic and move slowly and deliberately towards safe ground. Many people can extract themselves relatively easily, provided they can get leverage and move their legs/feet slowly and pull out. Most importantly, don’t hike alone and be aware of hazards in silty, wet places. Don’t fear the quicksand, just respect it.
Quicksand Schiermonnikoog – an island in the Netherlands BlankeVla at German Wikipedia / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)References
Bakalar, N. (2005). Quicksand science: Why it Traps and How to Escape. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/9/quicksand-science-why-it-traps-how-to-escape/
Engber, D. (2010). Terra Infirma: The rise and fall of quicksand. Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.html
Khamsi, R. (2005). Quicksand can’t suck you under. Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news050926-9Video blog
#Broomway #geologicHazard #jellySands #movies #popCulture #quicksand
-
Trapped in Quicksand
Once upon a time, adventurers into unknown lands feared quicksand – a deadly hazard that looked like a sand patch or a harmless puddle. Step in the wrong place, the natives warned, and you would die. This sudden peril became a very useful device in TV and movies from the 1950s to the 90s, and a metaphor for the U.S. war in Vietnam. It’s an old-fashioned trope now but quicksand is a real thing. A curious situation created through soil dynamics makes for some spooky geology.
Updated version. Originally published June, 17, 2023.
Quicksand, as a distinct thing and a metaphor for sinking deeper as you try to escape, was once popular in TV, movies, comic books, and adventure stories. It even became a fetish. In the 1960s, the concept of quicksand was invoked frequently whenever people went into unknown areas. It was characterized by immobilization and eventual death. Struggle was futile. The unfortunate victim was sucked down gradually into the goo until only an outstretched hand, and then, finally, a hat, was all that remained floating on the surface.
Engraving from sketch by Mr. Edmund Hornby Grimani. Illustrated London News 96:2651 (8 February 1890).The quicksand was said to be bottomless.
All of that is untrue. Yet, quicksand is not wholly fiction. It can be a danger today, particularly to animals or people who can’t get out of the trap before a tide rushes in. Let’s unpack this geological hazard.
From Engbar, Slate.What is it?
Classic quicksand is a mix of sand and water that looks and acts like a solid but destabilizes and collapses when stress is applied.
Areas of silt and clay can also appear as a stable surface that collapses. There is also dry quicksand – a mix of air and sand – that will not hold weight. You might hear that some unsuspecting traveler through the desert (or fire swamp) will sink into a man-eating natural hourglass, but this is entirely mythical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Fsyld7YD0
Sediment + water
Think about how you moisten sand at the beach to build up a sand castle. A moderate amount of water and sand results in packed grains that are held fairly tightly together and can sustain weight. Additional water reduces friction, the particles separate and the mixture flows. The sand may look stable and can hold light weight but a force such as a foot bearing down disrupts the balance. The sand suddenly loses stability and collapses.
Vibration, such as from an earthquake, can trigger a complex process called liquefaction. Buildings constructed on wet ground can collapse during the shaking when the shear strength is suddenly reduced and the particles flow past each other. The land liquifies.
Natural areas of quicksand can be found where there is upward flowing water, like at the outflow of spring, or near rivers or on beaches where water is present just below the surface.
Silty areas can more easily liquify than sand. Clay deposits can exhibit thixotropic behavior and lose their shear strength suddenly due to vibration. (Add water to corn starch while slowly stirring to make it just liquid. Then let it rest. Is this a liquid or a solid? It’s a thixotropic solution.)
The higher the stress applied to the material, the more liquid it becomes. Therefore, thrashing around will indeed cause you to sink and become more engulfed.
Kids experiencing quicksand at Mont-Saint-Michel, an island in Normandy, France.
A.Bregain / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)Myths
“Quick” suggests the sand comes to life but, instead, it gives way. “Quick” refers to how easily the sand changes character from solid to liquid. As mentioned, quicksand pits are not bottomless. They are typically not even very deep. No scary creatures live in the sand to consume you.
Quicksand doesn’t suck you down, but you sink into as you would in any liquid. It is always denser than water alone. The high viscosity of the saturated sand creates resistance and suction. You are almost guaranteed to lose your shoes during a quicksand escape if they aren’t laced tight.
In 2005, researchers published in Nature how they simulated natural quicksand from a location in Iran using sand, clay, and saltwater. The results of the experiment made news headlines. We were assured that quicksand is real, but you can’t sink in more than halfway.
Locations
Areas of quicksand or dangerously sticky mud or clay are found around the world near sources of water. They can be a fairly permanent feature or appear in response to wet conditions. They can even move locations from one day to the next.
Locally known as “jelly sands”, areas of quicksand occur around the Santa Ana River in California, posing a threat to horses who step onto damp sand only to sink in. Horses may panic and become exhausted trying to escape. It can take special equipment to pull them out.
In 2019, two horses had to be rescued from Merthyr Mawr beach in Glamorgan, South Wales after they sunk into quicksand. A similar event in 2012 in Geelong, Australia required the horse to be sedated to get him out before the tide came in.
The Broomway path in the UK is a well-known hazard in Southend-on-Sea, England along the edge of the aptly named Foulness Island. Accessible only during low tide, the trail has claimed some who have gotten stuck in the quicksand and could not escape before the tide returned “faster than a man could run”. The so-called Black Grounds along the land’s edge consist of jelly-like mud.
In 2014, a 78-year-old woman who frequently hiked alone in Arches National Park, Utah without issue became stuck in quicksand for 14 hours before rescuers helped free her. As with other areas, it was difficult to tell the ground was unstable until you stepped in it.
And, again, in Arches, in early December 2025, a hiker on the Hayduke Trail walked over a sandy area with about an inch of water. He sank in to his ankle. The more he tried to pull free, the deeper his leg was trapped. He said about the experience: “It felt like I had stepped into concrete, and then it hardened around my leg. I couldn’t even move it a millimeter.” The threat here was freezing temperatures. Luckily, he was able to send an SOS on his GPS device and was rescued.
Courthouse wash, Arches National Park, UTHow to escape
If you discover you are rapidly sinking up to your waist, toss off any extra backpacks and attempt to redistribute your weight by lying back.
Selectively increasing the stress is the key to escape. Stopping can cause the viscosity of the material to increase (like when you stop stirring the corn starch). When you try pulling your leg out of the semi-liquid, you are working against a vacuum left behind. Instead, move a little back and forth to create a space for water to move into. This will loosen the material around your limbs. Don’t panic and move slowly and deliberately towards safe ground. Many people can extract themselves relatively easily, provided they can get leverage and move their legs/feet slowly and pull out. Most importantly, don’t hike alone and be aware of hazards in silty, wet places. Don’t fear the quicksand, just respect it.
Quicksand Schiermonnikoog – an island in the Netherlands BlankeVla at German Wikipedia / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)References
Bakalar, N. (2005). Quicksand science: Why it Traps and How to Escape. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/9/quicksand-science-why-it-traps-how-to-escape/
Engber, D. (2010). Terra Infirma: The rise and fall of quicksand. Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.html
Khamsi, R. (2005). Quicksand can’t suck you under. Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news050926-9Video blog
#Broomway #geologicHazard #jellySands #movies #popCulture #quicksand
-
Trapped in Quicksand
Once upon a time, adventurers into unknown lands feared quicksand – a deadly hazard that looked like a sand patch or a harmless puddle. Step in the wrong place, the natives warned, and you would die. This sudden peril became a very useful device in TV and movies from the 1950s to the 90s, and a metaphor for the U.S. war in Vietnam. It’s an old-fashioned trope now but quicksand is a real thing. A curious situation created through soil dynamics makes for some spooky geology.
Updated version. Originally published June, 17, 2023.
Quicksand, as a distinct thing and a metaphor for sinking deeper as you try to escape, was once popular in TV, movies, comic books, and adventure stories. It even became a fetish. In the 1960s, the concept of quicksand was invoked frequently whenever people went into unknown areas. It was characterized by immobilization and eventual death. Struggle was futile. The unfortunate victim was sucked down gradually into the goo until only an outstretched hand, and then, finally, a hat, was all that remained floating on the surface.
Engraving from sketch by Mr. Edmund Hornby Grimani. Illustrated London News 96:2651 (8 February 1890).The quicksand was said to be bottomless.
All of that is untrue. Yet, quicksand is not wholly fiction. It can be a danger today, particularly to animals or people who can’t get out of the trap before a tide rushes in. Let’s unpack this geological hazard.
From Engbar, Slate.What is it?
Classic quicksand is a mix of sand and water that looks and acts like a solid but destabilizes and collapses when stress is applied.
Areas of silt and clay can also appear as a stable surface that collapses. There is also dry quicksand – a mix of air and sand – that will not hold weight. You might hear that some unsuspecting traveler through the desert (or fire swamp) will sink into a man-eating natural hourglass, but this is entirely mythical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Fsyld7YD0
Sediment + water
Think about how you moisten sand at the beach to build up a sand castle. A moderate amount of water and sand results in packed grains that are held fairly tightly together and can sustain weight. Additional water reduces friction, the particles separate and the mixture flows. The sand may look stable and can hold light weight but a force such as a foot bearing down disrupts the balance. The sand suddenly loses stability and collapses.
Vibration, such as from an earthquake, can trigger a complex process called liquefaction. Buildings constructed on wet ground can collapse during the shaking when the shear strength is suddenly reduced and the particles flow past each other. The land liquifies.
Natural areas of quicksand can be found where there is upward flowing water, like at the outflow of spring, or near rivers or on beaches where water is present just below the surface.
Silty areas can more easily liquify than sand. Clay deposits can exhibit thixotropic behavior and lose their shear strength suddenly due to vibration. (Add water to corn starch while slowly stirring to make it just liquid. Then let it rest. Is this a liquid or a solid? It’s a thixotropic solution.)
The higher the stress applied to the material, the more liquid it becomes. Therefore, thrashing around will indeed cause you to sink and become more engulfed.
Kids experiencing quicksand at Mont-Saint-Michel, an island in Normandy, France.
A.Bregain / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)Myths
“Quick” suggests the sand comes to life but, instead, it gives way. “Quick” refers to how easily the sand changes character from solid to liquid. As mentioned, quicksand pits are not bottomless. They are typically not even very deep. No scary creatures live in the sand to consume you.
Quicksand doesn’t suck you down, but you sink into as you would in any liquid. It is always denser than water alone. The high viscosity of the saturated sand creates resistance and suction. You are almost guaranteed to lose your shoes during a quicksand escape if they aren’t laced tight.
In 2005, researchers published in Nature how they simulated natural quicksand from a location in Iran using sand, clay, and saltwater. The results of the experiment made news headlines. We were assured that quicksand is real, but you can’t sink in more than halfway.
Locations
Areas of quicksand or dangerously sticky mud or clay are found around the world near sources of water. They can be a fairly permanent feature or appear in response to wet conditions. They can even move locations from one day to the next.
Locally known as “jelly sands”, areas of quicksand occur around the Santa Ana River in California, posing a threat to horses who step onto damp sand only to sink in. Horses may panic and become exhausted trying to escape. It can take special equipment to pull them out.
In 2019, two horses had to be rescued from Merthyr Mawr beach in Glamorgan, South Wales after they sunk into quicksand. A similar event in 2012 in Geelong, Australia required the horse to be sedated to get him out before the tide came in.
The Broomway path in the UK is a well-known hazard in Southend-on-Sea, England along the edge of the aptly named Foulness Island. Accessible only during low tide, the trail has claimed some who have gotten stuck in the quicksand and could not escape before the tide returned “faster than a man could run”. The so-called Black Grounds along the land’s edge consist of jelly-like mud.
In 2014, a 78-year-old woman who frequently hiked alone in Arches National Park, Utah without issue became stuck in quicksand for 14 hours before rescuers helped free her. As with other areas, it was difficult to tell the ground was unstable until you stepped in it.
And, again, in Arches, in early December 2025, a hiker on the Hayduke Trail walked over a sandy area with about an inch of water. He sank in to his ankle. The more he tried to pull free, the deeper his leg was trapped. He said about the experience: “It felt like I had stepped into concrete, and then it hardened around my leg. I couldn’t even move it a millimeter.” The threat here was freezing temperatures. Luckily, he was able to send an SOS on his GPS device and was rescued.
Courthouse wash, Arches National Park, UTHow to escape
If you discover you are rapidly sinking up to your waist, toss off any extra backpacks and attempt to redistribute your weight by lying back.
Selectively increasing the stress is the key to escape. Stopping can cause the viscosity of the material to increase (like when you stop stirring the corn starch). When you try pulling your leg out of the semi-liquid, you are working against a vacuum left behind. Instead, move a little back and forth to create a space for water to move into. This will loosen the material around your limbs. Don’t panic and move slowly and deliberately towards safe ground. Many people can extract themselves relatively easily, provided they can get leverage and move their legs/feet slowly and pull out. Most importantly, don’t hike alone and be aware of hazards in silty, wet places. Don’t fear the quicksand, just respect it.
Quicksand Schiermonnikoog – an island in the Netherlands BlankeVla at German Wikipedia / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)References
Bakalar, N. (2005). Quicksand science: Why it Traps and How to Escape. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/9/quicksand-science-why-it-traps-how-to-escape/
Engber, D. (2010). Terra Infirma: The rise and fall of quicksand. Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.html
Khamsi, R. (2005). Quicksand can’t suck you under. Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news050926-9Video blog
#Broomway #geologicHazard #jellySands #movies #popCulture #quicksand
-
Finally Friday Reads: TACO Tales
“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough. His first statement rang true throughout the world. “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.”
The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark. As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out? Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can? Do you melt away? Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light. It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.
The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response. “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”
Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.
But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.
The fury started when a pro-MAGA account clipped portions of Pelley’s speech and shared them on X, writing “Scott Pelley raged at Trump in angry, unhinged commencement address at Wake Forest.”
What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”
And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”
Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.
What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.
Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.
A complete transcript of the speech follows. Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here. The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!
When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news. My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening. When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.
When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada. When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe. It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper. I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles. Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?
Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever. So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.
One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it. You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human.
I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms. It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos. That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI. We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly. However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve.
I say this because I watched a news program where the new AI installed at the Social Security phone line repeatedly ignored the question they asked, then kept squawking “Can I help you with something else?” endlessly. This is the point where I hear my Nana’s voice telling little me, “Well, you can, but may you?” AI does not grok manners and polite conversations. It could be because human mutants like Elon Musk and his Dodge cluster have never quite figured that out either. Garbage in, garbage out. But, then maybe that’s what they want. Cease being polite and just be technically acceptable. Okay, it’s long but I’m getting there, I promise.
This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson. One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.
It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students. Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form. Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru. Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you. A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.
Okay, I really am getting to the read now. At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper. And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost. He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound. At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error? The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.
MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.
NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.
“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”
NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.
NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”
“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”
Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.
Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report. Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.” Well, that’s typical of a lot of students. If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can. You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.
Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.
Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.
Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.
A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.
So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake. Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this? I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print. If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.
AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.
“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”
“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.” Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF. I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists. I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones. I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance. Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.
The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.
But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.
“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.
The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.
Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.
Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”
Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.
“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this
So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.
The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-05-30T16:16:57.733Z
I think we can start making the Big Brother is watching you references now. This is the subheading, which is startling IMHO. “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.” Getting your passport ready yet?
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right. This is from Forbes Magazine. “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.” He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.
Key Facts
- Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
- The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
- The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
- The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
- Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.
The New York Times has more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.” Of course, they sent two women after this story, too. Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.
As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.
Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.
At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.
I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested. This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.” I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.
So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”
President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.
The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.
Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.
ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.
Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”
For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.
He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).
All the best people, folks, all the best. So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.” This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.” Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.
President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.
“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.
Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.
The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.
He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a Fox News interview on Thursday, said that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled.”
CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.
The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.
“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.
“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”
“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.
“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.
You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs. Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did. One missing comma. I evidently have a thing against commas.
So, at least it’s the weekend! Hope y’all have a great one! I say TACO, they say TACO!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#FartusDeportUs #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DrugAddict #ElonMuskNAZI #kakistocracy #PalantirDataTheftSpecialists #ScottPelley #TACO #WhoAreYOU_ #WifeStealer
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Finally Friday Reads: TACO Tales
“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough. His first statement rang true throughout the world. “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.”
The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark. As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out? Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can? Do you melt away? Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light. It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.
The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response. “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”
Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.
But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.
The fury started when a pro-MAGA account clipped portions of Pelley’s speech and shared them on X, writing “Scott Pelley raged at Trump in angry, unhinged commencement address at Wake Forest.”
What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”
And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”
Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.
What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.
Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.
A complete transcript of the speech follows. Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here. The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!
When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news. My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening. When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.
When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada. When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe. It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper. I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles. Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?
Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever. So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.
One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it. You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human.
I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms. It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos. That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI. We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly. However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve.
I say this because I watched a news program where the new AI installed at the Social Security phone line repeatedly ignored the question they asked, then kept squawking “Can I help you with something else?” endlessly. This is the point where I hear my Nana’s voice telling little me, “Well, you can, but may you?” AI does not grok manners and polite conversations. It could be because human mutants like Elon Musk and his Dodge cluster have never quite figured that out either. Garbage in, garbage out. But, then maybe that’s what they want. Cease being polite and just be technically acceptable. Okay, it’s long but I’m getting there, I promise.
This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson. One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.
It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students. Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form. Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru. Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you. A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.
Okay, I really am getting to the read now. At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper. And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost. He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound. At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error? The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.
MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.
NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.
“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”
NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.
NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”
“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”
Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.
Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report. Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.” Well, that’s typical of a lot of students. If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can. You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.
Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.
Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.
Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.
A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.
So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake. Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this? I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print. If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.
AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.
“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”
“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.” Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF. I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists. I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones. I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance. Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.
The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.
But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.
“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.
The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.
Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.
Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”
Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.
“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this
So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.
The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-05-30T16:16:57.733Z
I think we can start making the Big Brother is watching you references now. This is the subheading, which is startling IMHO. “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.” Getting your passport ready yet?
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right. This is from Forbes Magazine. “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.” He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.
Key Facts
- Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
- The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
- The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
- The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
- Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.
The New York Times has more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.” Of course, they sent two women after this story, too. Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.
As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.
Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.
At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.
I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested. This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.” I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.
So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”
President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.
The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.
Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.
ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.
Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”
For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.
He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).
All the best people, folks, all the best. So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.” This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.” Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.
President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.
“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.
Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.
The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.
He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a Fox News interview on Thursday, said that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled.”
CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.
The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.
“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.
“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”
“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.
“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.
You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs. Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did. One missing comma. I evidently have a thing against commas.
So, at least it’s the weekend! Hope y’all have a great one! I say TACO, they say TACO!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#FartusDeportUs #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DrugAddict #ElonMuskNAZI #kakistocracy #PalantirDataTheftSpecialists #ScottPelley #TACO #WhoAreYOU_ #WifeStealer
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Finally Friday Reads: TACO Tales
“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough. His first statement rang true throughout the world. “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.”
The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark. As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out? Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can? Do you melt away? Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light. It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.
The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response. “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”
Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.
But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.
The fury started when a pro-MAGA account clipped portions of Pelley’s speech and shared them on X, writing “Scott Pelley raged at Trump in angry, unhinged commencement address at Wake Forest.”
What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”
And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”
Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.
What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.
Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.
A complete transcript of the speech follows. Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here. The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!
When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news. My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening. When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.
When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada. When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe. It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper. I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles. Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?
Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever. So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.
One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it. You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human.
I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms. It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos. That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI. We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly. However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve.
I say this because I watched a news program where the new AI installed at the Social Security phone line repeatedly ignored the question they asked, then kept squawking “Can I help you with something else?” endlessly. This is the point where I hear my Nana’s voice telling little me, “Well, you can, but may you?” AI does not grok manners and polite conversations. It could be because human mutants like Elon Musk and his Dodge cluster have never quite figured that out either. Garbage in, garbage out. But, then maybe that’s what they want. Cease being polite and just be technically acceptable. Okay, it’s long but I’m getting there, I promise.
This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson. One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.
It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students. Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form. Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru. Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you. A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.
Okay, I really am getting to the read now. At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper. And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost. He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound. At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error? The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.
MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.
NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.
“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”
NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.
NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”
“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”
Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.
Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report. Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.” Well, that’s typical of a lot of students. If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can. You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.
Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.
Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.
Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.
A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.
So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake. Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this? I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print. If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.
AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.
“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”
“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.” Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF. I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists. I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones. I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance. Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.
The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.
But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.
“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.
The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.
Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.
Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”
Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.
“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this
So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.
The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-05-30T16:16:57.733Z
I think we can start making the Big Brother is watching you references now. This is the subheading, which is startling IMHO. “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.” Getting your passport ready yet?
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right. This is from Forbes Magazine. “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.” He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.
Key Facts
- Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
- The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
- The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
- The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
- Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.
The New York Times has more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.” Of course, they sent two women after this story, too. Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.
As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.
Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.
At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.
I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested. This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.” I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.
So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”
President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.
The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.
Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.
ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.
Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”
For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.
He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).
All the best people, folks, all the best. So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.” This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.” Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.
President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.
“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.
Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.
The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.
He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a Fox News interview on Thursday, said that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled.”
CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.
The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.
“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.
“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”
“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.
“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.
You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs. Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did. One missing comma. I evidently have a thing against commas.
So, at least it’s the weekend! Hope y’all have a great one! I say TACO, they say TACO!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#FartusDeportUs #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DrugAddict #ElonMuskNAZI #kakistocracy #PalantirDataTheftSpecialists #ScottPelley #TACO #WhoAreYOU_ #WifeStealer
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“Darling, everything is an allegory for eternal surrender if you butter it properly” | Butter Me Immortal
On Bluesky, Kat Day posted a critique of the “male gaze” saying that Hollywood men with ripped physiques are represented for the benefit of other males. Okay. Then she also stated that “Women, in the main, would much rather see a man who looks like he’d make himself a stack of buttered toast and let you steal a slice”.
Oh really? Challenge accepted… but with a twist.
Elsewhere I have friends who literally make a living writing literate fantasy erotica, and I have others who prefer to spend their mental downtime reading the same. I am aware of some of the tropes, but I lack the bandwidth, kink-awareness, motivation, drive, and above all creativity to make a worthwhile satire in this space … but I do know how to push ChatGPT and with a little bit of prompting it has far exceeded my expectations, especially given that my expectations were so low to begin with.
Thus, the attached. Personally I laughed out loud several times, and I’m sure that – aside from the crime of being genre fiction – it probably amasses numerous sins of literature.
But for 10 minutes of effort the laugh was well worth it; and of course this foreshadows that someone will want to age-verify LLMs in the near future.
Butter Me Immortal
Time for you to cast yourself as a creative writer! I want a draft for the back cover material of a cheesy vampire romance, dark yet seductive and funny, about a sexy male bad-boy vampire who seduces women into a world of high class luxury lifestyle, by offering them luxurious slices of richly buttered toast. Think: anne rice vampire erotica meets christian gray with a dad bod in fifty shades meets sex in the city and the devil wears prada. Three paragraphs, tight, descriptive, luxury power fantasy
Back Cover Copy (Draft)
In the velvet shadows of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he moves like silk and danger—Dorian Vale: centuries-old vampire, toast connoisseur, and unapologetic libertine. With a smirk that melts reserve and a wardrobe that whispers Tom Ford with bite, Dorian doesn’t stalk prey so much as lure them with artisanal brioche, golden and dripping with truffle butter. Middle-class and mildly repressed, Olivia Penrose wasn’t looking for immortality—or carbs—but when she bites into his toast, she bites into a world of midnight limos, blood-soaked gala invitations, and seduction served on platinum.
Each woman he brings into the fold is promised luxury beyond mortal reach—custom coffins lined in cashmere, eternal youth under soft mood lighting, and high-society blood feasts where gossip flows faster than O-negative. But for Olivia, the real addiction isn’t just the cashmere or the couture—it’s Dorian himself: the crooked grin, the dad bod that could still bench-press a Vespa, the way he says “you will eat carbs” like it’s a sacred commandment. As she falls deeper into his decadent underworld, she must decide whether she’s hungry for more than toast… and whether she can handle the heat of vampire politics served rare.
Butter Me Immortal is a wickedly indulgent romp through lust, lard, and late-night decadence—a tale where the toast is hot, the vampires are hotter, and the price of passion is paid in blood… and butterfat. Come hungry.
Room Service and Other Sins
Ok, imagine that this is a fully written book. Open it at some random point about halfway and give me a page of plot, assuming the characters and location settings are already fully fleshed-out in line with the back matter that you have posted above, give me a couple of pages from the book making sure that you stick to your own brief of the books contents and characters and characterisation and style.
Certainly. Here is a selection from somewhere just past the midpoint of Butter Me Immortal, assuming full immersion in the world and tone described—midway through the seduction arc, when Olivia is already entangled but not yet fully corrupted.
Chapter Fourteen: Room Service and Other Sins
(pp. 213–215)Olivia stared at the silver tray as if it might explode.
Or seduce her. Possibly both.A single slice of toast rested atop a monogrammed linen napkin, slathered in something so glossy it caught the firelight. The crust was browned to the color of antique leather, the center pillow-soft, obscenely thick with sea-salted French butter and, yes, she could smell it—just a trace of blood orange zest. Dorian leaned on the doorframe of his penthouse suite, shirtless, barefoot, and exuding the confidence of a man who had never known the phrase “portion control.”
“This,” he said, voice like dark molasses dripped over a knife blade, “is not breakfast. This is foreplay.”
“Is it actually toast,” she asked, skeptical, arms crossed over the satin robe he insisted she wear—black, floor-length, trimmed in a red that matched her current blood type. “Or are you going to tell me it’s an allegory for eternal surrender again?”
Dorian sauntered toward her. “Darling, everything is an allegory for eternal surrender if you butter it properly.”
He took a bite of the toast—slowly, eyes locked on hers—and made a low sound in his throat that was technically illegal in three Midwestern states. She hated him. She hated that her knees betrayed her at that sound. She hated that she wanted to lick the citrusy butter off his smug, supernatural mouth. But most of all, she hated that she had started referring to herself as “middle-class” in the past tense.
“You can’t just keep feeding me and hoping I’ll forget about the blood thing,” she said, reaching—traitorously—for the toast. The butter was warm.
“Oh, I absolutely can. And I will. The heart may resist, Olivia, but the mouth always remembers pleasure.”
He circled behind her, breath cool against the back of her neck. She stiffened.
“Besides,” he murmured, “you already forgot about the body in the tub.”
“Only because you said it was ‘an aesthetic misunderstanding.’”
“Which it was,” he said brightly. “Poor Michel had dreadful taste. His arteries tasted like margarine. Honestly, the man was a crime against breakfast.”
She took a bite.
God help her, she moaned.
Let me know if you’d like a scene in a different register—e.g., high-society vampire politics, Olivia’s moral crisis, or a full-blown undead sex-toast ritual.
The Eucharist of Excess
Let’s go for the latter.
Excellent. Below is a scene excerpted from the fictional novel Butter Me Immortal, roughly Chapter Seventeen, where the absurd erotic crescendo intersects with the gothic and gastronomic. The tone deliberately skews high-camp with earnest undertones—an over-the-top vampire-carbohydrate-blood ritual with dramatic stakes and low-cholesterol irony.
Chapter Seventeen: The Eucharist of Excess
(pp. 263–265)The ballroom of the Maison Sang-Noir was candlelit to filth.
Crystal chandeliers dripped like stalactites of desire, casting honey-colored light on a hundred silk-draped sinners and one long obsidian banquet table covered in nothing but toast.Not just toast.
Artisanal slices of rare grains, hand-forged in the ovens of a Venetian patissier who swore in seven languages and wept openly during lamination. Each piece was a masterpiece: rye with roasted marrow butter; spelt with bergamot and saffron; brioche soaked in clotted cream and the psychic essence of a fallen cardinal. Somewhere near the center was something that looked suspiciously like a croissant doing drag as communion.
Olivia stood at Dorian’s side, eyes dilated, lips stained red—not from lipstick.
She had tasted eternity, and it had notes of Vermont cream and remorse.“This,” he whispered, as the gathered immortals began their slow, sensuous procession around the altar of toast, “is the Rite of the Golden Crumb. It is performed once every two hundred years, or whenever someone sufficiently dramatic gets turned in the Hamptons.”
The High Butterier—somewhere between maître d’ and dark pope—raised his arms, silken sleeves falling back to reveal forearms tattooed with ancient jam recipes. “Let the blessed fat speak,” he intoned, as masked vampires began drizzling clarified butter onto the bread with antique eyedroppers.
A moan of collective hunger echoed through the hall.
Olivia’s pulse thudded, confused. She shouldn’t want this. She shouldn’t understand this. But somewhere between the marrow butter and the erotic Gregorian chanting, something in her clicked.
“Why does this feel…” she paused, breathless, “…religious?”
“Because,” Dorian murmured, pressing himself behind her, his hand ghosting over her waist, “luxury is religion. This is indulgence sanctified. Devotion performed not in denial—but in decadence.”
Someone screamed in French. Someone else climaxed just looking at a particularly golden focaccia. A slice of sourdough was lifted like a holy relic. Olivia reached for it, fingers trembling, and bit.
The crowd roared.
Her eyes rolled back.And in the toast-drenched haze of ancient butter, sex, and the collective ecstasy of the damned, she understood:
She hadn’t been seduced.
She’d been converted.Would you like the next chapter to follow with consequences—existential, comedic, or just more caloric?
The Buttered Throne
I think you’re doing fine, especially sticking to the characterizations you’ve already drawn. What do you think the denouement should be for the first book in the series?
Thank you for the framing. Given the tonal and thematic architecture already established—campy decadence, eroticized gastronomy, gothic seduction, and class-fluid vampiric excess—a satisfying denouement for Book One of Butter Me Immortal should both resolve the central personal arc (Olivia’s transformation from “mousey middle-class mortal” to something self-possessed and dangerous) and create narrative and symbolic space for a sequel.
Here’s a sketch of a denouement that preserves the tone, elevates the emotional stakes, and complicates the luxury fantasy just enough to provoke continuity:
Denouement: “The Buttered Throne”
After the climax of the Rite of the Golden Crumb, Olivia awakens in Dorian’s bed—but alone, swathed in black silk and smeared with the remnants of something citrusy and aristocratic. The room is quiet, too quiet. The opulence suddenly feels sterile. Dorian has vanished, leaving behind only a note in calligraphic script and a sealed envelope filled with brioche crumbs and a single gold credit card embossed not with a bank logo, but with the seal of the Crustati, the secret cabal of immortal patricians who control the global blood-and-butter economy.
The note reads:
“My darling Olivia, To become what I am, you must do what I never could. I gave you taste. Now take appetite. Yours, immortally—D.”
In the days that follow, Olivia finds herself courted not only by vampires, but by institutions. Blood sommeliers send her sample flights. An undead couture house offers her a contract. She’s invited to chair a board at the Vatican’s secret Ministry of Delicious Heresies. But more troublingly, she discovers that Dorian—long thought an irreverent rogue—may have once ruled this echelon of undead hedonism and abdicated for reasons no one will speak aloud.
Haunted by his absence and increasingly aware that power among the immortals is culinary, carnal, and colonial, Olivia faces a final decision: retreat into luxury as an adored kept consort—or ascend the metaphorical (and literal) buttered throne as a queen regnant of this perverse nocturnal aristocracy.
The final scene:
Olivia, in crimson leather gloves and a corset stitched with breadknife filigree, steps onto the dais at a clandestine gala deep beneath the Paris Opera. She lifts a silver butter dish in one hand and a glass of Type AB in the other.
She says, coolly:“Let them eat me.”
Cue applause. Curtain closes.
Thematic Resolution
- Transformation Completed: Olivia sheds passivity and middle-class repression, but not at the cost of agency.
- Dorian’s Arc: He becomes a gothic absence—a lover, mentor, ghost, and antagonist-in-waiting.
- Class & Appetite: The book ends not with moralism, but with power reclaimed through indulgence.
- Setup for Book Two: Olivia now rules—but doesn’t yet know what it means to govern the world she’s inherited.
Let me know if you’d like a title and back-cover blurb for Book Two. I suspect it might be called Crumbs of the Crown or Blood & Brunch.
#butter #butterMeImmortal #chatgpt #dadBodDracula #llm #maleGaze #nofeed #Porn #toast
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Unearthly Rites – Ecdysis Review
By Steel Druhm
Unearthly Rites are a new kid on the block in Finnish death metal, with only an EP to their name prior to the release of debut full-length, Ecdysis.1 Formed by scene vets with time spent in Sink, Hexhammer, and Fuck-Ushima, they bring plenty of experience to the party. What Unearthly Rites offer is a ghastly amalgamation of raw old school death, grind, and crust, curated and designed to cave in your face with the resulting unnatural sound profile. This is nasty, fetid reptile shit that sticks to your ribs and cakes your lungs with toxic fumunda cheese. It also features the most inhuman death vocals I’ve heard in a long while. What more could you ask for?
After an instrumental intro that properly sets a dark, ominous mood, the hammer comes down hard with “Deep Drilling Earth’s Crust” and the large and hideous sound will pummel you mercilessly. The guitar tone is ragged and huge, the bass is putrid and those vocals by Sisli are like the gates of Hell flung open with unspeakable atrocities spewing forth. The song swerves from frantic thrashing to crushing mid-tempo grooves with chugs massive enough to flatten Venus and Uranus. It’s a chaotic, messy ride that will leave you feeling like a hit-and-run victim and it reminds me of the glory of Rotpit’s “Slimebreeder,” though this is much heavier. Even better is “The Master’s Tools” which starts off slow and menacing before kicking into a mammoth, sludgy groove that feels like Bolt Thrower on Super-Soldier Serum and bath salts. This thing weighs a fucking ass-ton and it will push you into the Earth’s core before it’s over. “Capitalocenic Nightmare” is another remorseless wargrinder with grooves so big they devour light and warp time and you’ll savor every horrific second.
The title track is raw as fuck but showcases a confident, almost playful swagger even as it puts the boot to your bloody face. Sisli really goes for it here with an abomination of a vocal performance that has to be heard to be disbelieved. “New Venus” also refuses to spare the brutality with a crushing chug-fest heavier than a mountain of titanium ore. The slightly crusty, punky attitude pairs well with the raw straightforward death assault and you get the worst of both styles dumped on your head like so much fresh pig offal. Over the very short 34-minute runtime, only the 2 minutes of “Fuck Ecofascism” feel underdeveloped and disposable. The production is straight from a sewer running under a graveyard and it’s too grisly and gruesome to resist. I love the way this sick beast sounds and how it feels like an anvil collection is slowly crushing me with irresistible mass as it plays out.
Santtu Markko and Simo Perkiömäki bring the war to your door with megaton riffage and spine-dusting chug grooves that shave years off your life expectancy. They aren’t doing anything revolutionary, just crafting huge, oppressive leads that weigh a fucking ton. The solos are jagged, abrasive, and discordant, and everything they do hits the sweet spot in a deranged mind. Jennika Vikman’s bass work is ugly and nasty, with a wonderfully deranged tone. It fills out the sound with fat, bubbling low-end terror and adds to the rich ear mulch. Over all this, Sisli grunts, roars, screams and wails in horrific ways guaranteed to shock and awe. This particular set of lungs should be taken out and studied by modern science because they clearly are not human in origin.
Ecdysis is the kind of little underground gem you stumble upon and fall in love with. It’s so so fucking nasty and slimy and yet somehow catchy and easy to enjoy. Unearthly Rites may be new to the death world, but with a sound this big and engaging, they won’t stay under the sod for long. Get in on the ground floor of the newest plague, because this shit is contagious.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Prosthetic Records
Websites: unearthlyrites.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/unearthlyrites666 | instagram.com/unearthlyrites
Releases Worldwide: May 3rd, 2024#2024 #35 #DeathMetal #Ecdysis #FinnishMetal #May23 #ProstheticRecords #Review #Reviews #Rotpit #UnearthlyRites
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The Minecraft Saltire
Old gun emplacement on Cramond Island, Edinburgh.
This graffiti/ artwork - and only this one, out of many on the island bunkers - prompted complaints by an irate British Nationalist troll known as Agent P.
#SaltireSunday #WWII #CramondIsland #Edinburgh #Scotland #graffiti #History #ScottishIndependence #Minecraft
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I Sleep Great Now That I Spray Salt Lab Magnesium on My Feet
I have been a terrible sleeper ever since I had kids. My 8-year-old asked me if I stay awake all night because I always respond when either of them shouts for me. I have tried a lot of things to improve my sleep quality, and Salt Lab’s …
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Nutrition #nutrition #thestrategist #thisthingsincredible #wellness
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2308878/i-sleep-great-now-that-i-spray-salt-lab-magnesium-on-my-feet/ -
old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4318c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4318c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4318c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4318c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4318c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and other water birds at Salt Plains NWR in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4275c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and other water birds at Salt Plains NWR in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4275c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and other water birds at Salt Plains NWR in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4275c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and other water birds at Salt Plains NWR in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4275c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, cropped differently
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and other water birds at Salt Plains NWR in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4275c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography
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old photo, I have not been keeping up with making new ones
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and other water birds at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma on September 21, 2021
Some of the camera settings I used to make this photo are at: https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2021Sep21_birds_and_cats/2021sep21_birds_IMG_4269c.html
#birds #SaltplainsNWR #wildlife #wildlifephotography #Oklahoma #photography