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Recycling Isn't About the Planet. It's About Profit.
When you drop a bottle in a blue bin, you're joining the unruly transglobal trash trade.
By Henry Grabar
April 05, 20195:45 AM
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Henry Grabar.
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If you wanted to recycle a Coke bottle, the spring of 2011 was a great time to do it. That spring, every soda bottle you dropped into the translucent blue bag in your kitchen was worth about eight times what it had been just 2½ years earlier, and four times what it would be five years later. Municipal recycling agencies (and town dumps) found themselves sitting on heaps of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic that could be spun, Rumpelstiltskin-like, into gold.
But for the companies that actually do the recycling, that spring was not so good at all. Oil had reached a two-year high, and soda bottles are made of PET, which, like all plastics, is basically just processed oil. As the price of "raw" plastic increased, recycled plastic—a natural substitute for manufacturers—became more expensive too. What was good for cities' recycling programs was bad for the companies that did business with them. The Coca-Cola Company's Spartanburg, South Carolina, plant, which had opened in 2009 to recycle old soda bottles into new ones, idled as recycled PET plastic prices went through the roof.
We tend to think of recycling (abstract noun) as an idea in which we are deeply, perhaps morally, invested. But recycling is also a concrete noun, a word for physical stuff with a supply chain full of rivalrous buyers and sellers whose interests are often at odds. And it is also a verb—one we use to describe what we do in our kitchens and on our streets, though that is only the first step of a Coke bottle's long, uncertain path toward reincarnation.
Recycling was supposed to be one of the few positive environmental legacies bequeathed by the boomers, the generation that otherwise did what it could to make the Earth uninhabitable.
Recycling is the globe's bizarro commodity, created by the richest people on Earth and sold to the developing world. Like all commodities, its price reflects a staggering string of interconnected happenings. Your 2011-era empty Coke bottle wasn't just worth a lot because of high oil prices—it was worth a lot because Pakistan had suffered devastating monsoons in the summer of 2010. Flooding in the Indus River was one of a cascading series of events that sent cotton, in April 2011, to its highest nominal price since records began in 1870. Jeans were going to be more expensive, Levi's announced. And so, it turned out, was recycled PET plastic, because for Chinese manufacturers of articles like teddy bears and blue jeans, polyester fibers made from old plastic bottles were a cost-effective replacement for cotton. Cotton was up; plastic was up; recycled PET prices went up. As when cotton hit its previous high price in 1995, the scramble was on for old bottles. Which you, American reader, the world's leading consumer of soda and bottled water, had in spades.
It is currently, you may have heard, not a good time to be in the business of collecting and selling household recycling. Americans are still diligently filling our blue bags with everything we can, but there are fewer places for our dirty goods to go to find redemption. That's in part thanks to China's 2017 decision to shut the door on imports of recycled materials, ending a two-decade stretch during which the U.S. came to rely on the country to take and process about 70 percent of its used paper and 40 percent of its used plastic. In 2017, Republic Services, the second-largest waste collector in the U.S., was selling about 35 percent of its recyclables to China. By the end of 2018, China's National Sword policy, which banned plastics outright and placed strict standards on paper imports, brought that number down to 1 percent.
Earlier this month, I asked Meleesa Johnson, president of the Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin, what her colleagues' reaction was like when National Sword was announced. "Horror," she said.
After China stopped buying, a supply glut sent prices for recycled materials down, and fast. Recyclers found themselves dumping paper in landfills outside Seattle and incinerating plastic in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Glass recycling is local but expensive, and its reuse had often been subsidized by paper and plastic, so with paper and plastic prices in freefall, glass disposal became more of a burden too. In October, Northeastern recyclers were sending just 54 percent of the bottles they collected to processors for reuse. The rest were basically landfilled.
Is American recycling still functioning? "Functioning may be a little optimistic," says Analiese Smith, who runs the recycling program in Waukesha County outside Milwaukee. "But we're keeping the lights on."
Recycling was supposed to be, like the elimination of acid rain or the repair of the ozone layer, one of the few positive environmental legacies bequeathed by the boomers, the generation that otherwise did what it could to make the Earth uninhabitable for future generations. If you believe the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. recycling rates have been steadily rising for decades, from 6 percent of total municipal garbage generated in 1960 to over 34 percent in 2015—90 million tons of materials set aside for reuse. In reality, the picture was never as rosy as all that. But nor is the current situation so dire.
It's also not all China's fault. The country might be the easiest scapegoat, but this is a story about automation, deindustrialization, empty shipping containers, and dirty boxes. The interdependence of American producers and Chinese consumers is just one part of the recycling crisis. Every time you rinse out a jug or a can or a jar in your kitchen, you are, in some small way, competing with oil drillers and cotton pickers and miners and lumberjacks all over the world, because you too are creating a commodity. At present, the fruit of your labor is not terribly competitive. But your fortunes will turn.
Let's get one thing out of the way: Recycling writ large isn't going anywhere. It's an ancient practice motivated not by virtue but by profit. It's also much bigger than your bottles. There are grease buyers and ship strippers and copper wire thieves. The single greatest recycled material in the United States, by weight, is ferrous scrap—primarily iron and steel from old cars. No one exports more ferrous scrap than we do. (The three biggest buyers are Turkey, Mexico, and Taiwan.)
But when you think of recycling, you're almost certainly thinking of the recycling you make at home. (It always feels better when you make it at home, whether "it" is a roast chicken or a globally traded commodity.) Nobody makes more of it than you do, because nobody buys more stuff than you do. A lot of that stuff you buy comes from China, whose demand for raw materials to turn into your stuff was one of the defining economic stories of the 2000s.
The hunger of Chinese manufacturers for wood pulp, plastic, and aluminum can't be met by Chinese suppliers or even big commodity exporters like Brazil and Indonesia. Chinese importers solved this problem by buying enormous amounts of recyclables to substitute for raw materials. China went from bringing in 7 million tons of recycled material between 1994 and 1998 to 104 million tons between 2009 and 2013—a 15-fold increase.
Relatedly, the explosion in Chinese exports meant that ports like Los Angeles (the nation's largest) were always stacked with containers that arrived full of new sneakers and televisions but often had to return empty. Which meant shippers would basically take old paper and cardboard back to China for free—it functions as ballast. As a result, shipping a ton of old boxes from Los Angeles to Hong Kong was often cheaper than shipping it to a recycled paper mill in eastern Washington. In 2017, the single largest export from the Port of Los Angeles was wastepaper. The third-largest export was scrap metal. They don't call us the Saudi Arabia of scrap for nothing.
According to data compiled by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in 2017, China and Hong Kong bought 49 percent of our exported plastic (930,000 tons), 55 percent of our aluminum (871,000 tons), and 53 percent of used paper (more than 10 million tons).
Then came National Sword. It didn't come out of nowhere. In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced Operation Green Fence, a crackdown on poorly sorted shipments of used paper and plastic that arrived from America contaminated with trash. The work of sorting those bales had fallen to Chinese families whose impoverishment and appalling working conditions were the subject of the 2016 documentary Plastic China. This was the latest film by the documentarian Wang Jiuliang cataloging China's environmental problems, and it became a smash success—and then disappeared from the internet in China. But perhaps Wang's work made it to the right people: A few months after Plastic China premiered at Sundance, China told the WTO it would be cracking down on foreign garbage for public health reasons.
So, in 2018, the doors shut to American recycling, and over the next year, U.S. scrap exports to China dropped 38 percent.
Recyclers are currently feeling defensive about their industry. Articles like the Atlantic's March story "Is This the End of Recycling?" have gotten their goat. Sure, we're no longer in recycling boom times—men with rented U-Hauls aren't stealing cardboard off the streets of Midtown Manhattan like they did in 2012. But China was only one of a handful of international buyers, and most recyclables have always been put to use domestically. That's still happening.
But it's not just about unloading the materials somewhere. It's about getting paid for what you've got. And here, the recyclers—in this instance, the people who actually turn your old stuff into new stuff—currently have the upper hand. When a China-size buyer leaves the market, prices drop fast. Manufacturers' inputs suddenly got a lot cheaper.
"It changed the landscape of the global recycling market in a very short amount of time," says Pete Keller, a vice president at Republic, which collects recyclables in more than 2,700 US cities. "It's costing more to collect, process, ultimately produce recycled materials today than they're worth. So unless there's a business transaction occurring at the front door of these centers, processors are not capable of making money today." Republic is trying to revise its municipal contracts to reflect the price crash—many cities are going to have to pay more until prices recover.
One consequence of recycling's role as the world's reverse-commodity is that we are its miners. Its culture of production belongs to people who are in all other ways the globe's biggest consumers, who rarely if ever produce any physical goods. But we produce this good, because the act of recycling gives us pleasure, satisfaction, a sense of environmental virtue. Like other people who toil at the first step of a commodity supply chain, we tend to have no idea where it ends up after it leaves our hands.
In March, I stood with Tom Outerbridge at a warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront, looking at a dozen enormous bricks of aluminum. Outerbridge is the general manager of this material recovery facility (MRF), run by Sims Municipal Recycling, where much of the refuse from America's largest city becomes a commodity. Outerbridge sees a couple things in the aluminum: There's a whole lot of foil from takeout, for example. Very New York. And there are very few soda and beer cans, because New York state has a bottle deposit law that rewards people who remove these items from the public recycling stream.
For all the talk about China, what happens to recycling is also quite dependent on local economic geography. In New York, half of all paper waste is recycled at a mill on Staten Island and turned immediately into pizza boxes and other goods for New Yorkers to reconsume. In New England, glass recycling took a huge hit when processing facilities in Massachusetts and Rhode Island closed in 2018. (Used glass is a substitute for sand in making new glass, which means it has to be cheaper than sand to pencil out for bottle manufacturers. Sand is very cheap. Because glass weighs so much, it stops being cheap when you have to ship it a long way.) Environmental laws also shape local practices. Trash disposal is extremely expensive in New York and Massachusetts, which makes recycling comparatively attractive. In Wisconsin, it's illegal to landfill cans, bottles, and cardboard.
And then there is the local variance in how we recycle. The Brooklyn MRF (pronounced murf) is state-of-the-art. In one room, a series of ramps and chutes, crisscrossing like Charles Sheeler's famous photo of River Rouge, comprise the optical sorter, which sifts plastic, glass, and metal into separate grades and bales. Paper and cardboard are compressed separately. Not only does New York's recycling get sorted by an expensive piece of equipment, but it arrives in the warehouse in two distinct batches: paper and cardboard on one side, plastic, glass and metal on the other. The result is high-quality product.
You haven't stopped ordering cardboard boxes from Amazon or drinking cans of seltzer just because no one wants to buy them now.
For a while, making pure bales didn't seem entirely necessary. Beginning in the late '90s, right as the Chinese commodity boom was taking off, U.S. waste haulers came up with the idea of single-stream recycling. The generous read on this innovation is that it would encourage Americans to recycle more things at lower costs. It certainly lowered costs: Many trucks became few trucks, with automated pickup technology. Well-paid haulers and drivers—sometimes with union jobs—were replaced with low-paid sorters who stood over a conveyor belt all day, picking out plastic bags and garden hoses.
Did single-stream make Americans worse at recycling, encouraging us to engage in so-called aspirational recycling, trying to send in lawnmower motors, extension cords, and dental floss picks? Maybe. Did single-stream recycling produce a lower-quality good? Indisputably. There's a reason it is practiced virtually nowhere else in the world. Plastics ended up mixed. Paper was soaked and shredded with glass that had been crushed in the truck, sometimes beyond saving. Between 2005 and 2014—right as Chinese demand was at its peak—single-stream grew from covering 29 percent of American communities to 80 percent.
Did it matter when we could send all that stuff to China? Not really.
"Factories had been saying for years to haulers, 'This is crap,' " says Susan Collins, the executive director of the Container Recycling Institute. "But if we were putting it in a bale and shipping it to China, no one ever saw. The consequences were never borne out here."
Contamination rates rose, especially in paper and plastic. Some American buyers complained, but China picked up the slack. Others just paid top dollar for well-sorted material.
In China, meanwhile, recyclers did the work we hadn't done here. Until China pulled out of the market. The conventional wisdom—that the Chinese government was concerned about public health and pollution—makes enough sense. But several observers I spoke to suggested another change was underway: China finally had its own army of consumers, and was trying to jump-start its own domestic recycling program.
The American domestic recycling industry has a few choices while we wait for prices to recover. Cities can quit single-stream recycling and make residents sort things themselves. That's what Nebraska's largest recycler did last summer, and what Brookhaven, Long Island, did in November, after its collector broke a contract because it couldn't sell any of what it was picking up. "There is no market for single-stream. Just no market," the town supervisor told Newsday.
Municipal recyclers can slow down the conveyor belts at the sorting facilities. That's what's happening in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. "We have to have cleaner end product to be able to continue to market it," says Analiese Smith, the county's solid waste chief. If workers take more time picking through the stream, the result is a purer bale that's easier to sell in a buyer's market.
Cities can invest in more expensive machinery that does this automatically. That's what is happening in San Francisco, the Twin Cities, and in Phoenix, where brand-new optical sorters will improve the quality of the goods.
Or they can shut down recycling programs completely. The main sorting facility in Memphis, Tennessee, owned by Republic, is no longer accepting commercial recycling from major institutions like the university, the hospital, and the airport, citing contamination. Commodity busts often drive producers out of business: Coal miners stop mining coal in a crash. This one is in some ways even worse. You haven't stopped ordering cardboard boxes from Amazon or drinking cans of seltzer just because no one wants to buy them now.
Not everyone is so glum. "There was a pretty vibrant recycling industry before China came along, and even though we're seeing a slowdown in trade, there's going to be a vibrant recycling industry on the other side too," says Joe Pickard, the chief economist at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Paper exports actually rose last year, mostly to India and Indonesia. (Though Indonesia has also started to crack down.) Some European officials believe the continent's recycling industry will emerge stronger than before.
Most recycling has always been domestic, anyway. And with prices so low, a crazy thing is happening: U.S. mills are reopening or expanding to accommodate recycled paper. America was once the papermaker to the world, but was eclipsed by China two decades ago. Now, one of the world's largest papermakers is the Chinese recycled-paper giant Nine Dragons. Last spring, the company bought two mills in Maine and Wisconsin and announced it would adapt them to process more recycled material. In October, Nine Dragons bought another mill in Maine. In November, it acquired a recycled pulp mill in Fairmont, West Virginia.
A Shanghai-based company called Roy Tech Environ opened a plastics recycling facility in Alabama last summer. Ecomelida, another Chinese recycler, is opening a plastics and paper recycling facility in South Carolina. The plant will turn empty bottles into pellets that will be shipped, of all places, to China, where they'll be used to make coat hangers and fake plants … which might, eventually, get sold back to you.


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Jimbo Goes To The Movies: 'Finding Dory' (2016) Review
It's not the best Pixar movie of the decade, but it's nonetheless an immensely enjoyable little diversion. Bonus: it features Al Bundy as an ornery octopus with just seven tentacles.
@Jimbo__X
Of course, Finding Dory is an unnecessary sequel. Indeed, the 13-year-late follow-up might just be the most superfluous Pixar movie to date, a film that clearly has no creative reason to exist other than to capitalize on a popular I.P. and make Walt Disney a ton of moolah.
But in that shameless cash grab, something unexpected happened – Pixar wound up making a really, really good movie. Granted, it's not quite as good as Inside Out or Toy Story 3, but it's certainly a more enjoyable romp than Monsters University, Brave and especially the studio's ultimate disappointment, Cars 2.
The plotline for Finding Dory is pretty much a carbon copy of the script for Finding Nemo, albeit with a grander flare for extravagant action sequences. Whereas the first film was a heartfelt paean to the insecurities of parenthood, this flick is pure popcorn hokum through and through, a movie more interested in connecting one improbable escape sequence to the next, even more improbable one than laying on the sentimentality.
That's not to say Dory doesn't have its syrupy moments. After all, the movie is about a character trying to find her long-last parents. Nonetheless, the movie never gets bogged down in the saccharine stuff, instead emphasizing the kind of high drama you'd expect out of the latest Mission: Impossible offering.
Nemo and Marlin, the father and son clownfish duo that were the focal point of the original, are stuck playing second bananas to the eponymous character, a blue tang plagued by short term memory loss (which, as displayed in the film, appears to be much closer to fish ADD than anything else.) Stirred by faint recollections of her parents, Dory decides to make the trek from the Great Barrier Reef to coastal California, an endeavor that is filled with dire miscalculations and missteps from the get-go. After almost being devoured by a giant squid, she finds herself stuck in the "quarantine" zone of a marine rehabilitation institute, where the stern-yet-reassuring audio recordings of Sigourney Weaver play on an infinite loop. There, she meets an octopus – well, technically, a septupus, since he only has seven tentacles – voiced by AL FUCKIN' BUNDY, who hashes out an agreement to help her escape if and only if she gives him a tag that allows him safe passage to that cephalopod Shangri-La … Cleveland, Ohio?
From there, we're introduced to your usual assortment of quirky Pixar side characters. There are two seals who hang out in the bay beside the institute who sound like the blokes from Top Gear and a seagull named Becky that is either diseased, mentally retarded or both. But hey, she's at least handy with a bucket when it counts, though. Rounding out the franchise newcomers is a whale shark with poor eyesight (but a crucial water duct navigator), a beluga with echolocation abilities that rival Daredevil, a gigantic (and gigantically emo) clam and a gaggle of otters whose sole function in the film is to look adorable so as to distract human captors.
Which brings us to the best thing about Dory – its absurdly over-the-top action sequences. While you probably shouldn't be looking for realism in a film about talking aquatic life (which is apparently something that the reviewers who inherited Roger Ebert's domain name take into consideration), the stuff that goes on here is just absolutely bonkers. Whereas the wackiest thing that happened in the first film was Nemo hopping out of an aquarium tank in a dentist's office, this flick ends with a 20-minute long truck-jacking that culminates in a big rig careening into the San Francisco Bay. Granted, we all knew octopi were intelligent creatures, but who knew they were intelligent enough to operate a manual transmission?
Sequels – especially ones like Dory that are meticulously crafted to reap profits instead of tell decent stories – are tricky business. While no one will ever lump this one along with the likes of Aliens or Terminator 2, you at least have to give Pixar some credit. Really, they could have simply phoned in a lite and frothy rehash of the original, but instead, they sought to do something unexpected. It's not quite a jailbreak movie and it's not quite an ensemble caper movie, but it definitely has touches of both sub-genres infused into its celluloid structure. The guys at Pixar never sat out to make "a bigger and badder" Nemo, they simply took the core concept of the first movie, wedged it into a carefully formatted jape narrative, and went buck wild with the set pieces. I mean, if you are going to make a movie about something as ridiculous as an octopus trying to help a fish find her mother and father, why not anchor the hootenanny around an I-5 car chase?
For those of you worried that the film takes an undesired detour into soulless Cars 2 like territory, rest assured, the film still packs plenty of emotion (if not forced emotion, in some respects.) The film's big reunion scene has all the syrupiness you'd expect it to, and the grand finale gives the series a nice sense of closure – although considering the impressive box office take, we probably won't have to wait another 13 years for Finding Hank, or Finding Destiny or Finding Forrester or whatever the hell they want to call part 3. Oh, and the requisite pre-feature short? My goodness, is it the goddamnedest most adorable thing ever.
Give this Andrew Stanton guy his props. He had absolutely no incentive to make Finding Dory worth a toot, but by golly, he managed to turn what was almost destined to be a half-hearted warm-over into one of the more interesting popcorn cinema offerings to come pouring down the pipes so far this year.
Dory ain't revolutionary cinema. Nor is it top-of-the-line storytelling. What it is, however, is an extraordinarily entertaining romp that never falls into the doldrums many films of its type are prone to. It's funny, it's heartwarming and it has some downright insane action scenes, especially for a kids movie. And come one, people: do you really think I'm going to give a negative review to anything starring Ed O'Neil as a misanthropic mollusk?
Posted in Al Bundy, Ed O'Neil, ellen, Finding Dory, finding nemo, fish, Lesbian, negative review, octopus, Pixar, review, septopus, Transgender on June 28, 2016 by Your Friendly Neighborhood Jimbo | Leave a comment Edit
This Week in Social Justice Warrior-Dom
A fond look back at all the things that had ultra P.C.-jihadists OUTRAGED ... before they forget all about them in just a few days.
Media, special interest groups struggle to find self-benefiting angle to the worst mass shooting incident in modern U.S. history
For years, the liberal, secular-progressivist, pro-globalization, multiculturalism-uber-alles evangelists have strived to build a base around an eclectic mix of interests groups and minorities, who despite often sharing completely incompatible core beliefs, they theoretically assumed could be assembled as a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" supergroup determined to take down that most villainous scourge, the white, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied male power structure (bonus points if they are Protestant and conservative-leaning, of course.) Like some sort of rainbow-hued Allied Powers, the regressive left did all they could to unite feminists, LGBT folks, Hispanics, the African-American community and - especially in the wake of 9\11 - Muslim-Americans as their ideological infantry for a figurative D-Day against the old, Caucasian guard. They were the future, their political adversaries were the past, and by golly, hand-in-hand this quirky coalition of minority identitarians were destined to unseat all of those racist, xenophobic and intolerant honkies and make America the great country it never could have been with old Whitey in command of the vessel.
And then, the absolute worst modern mass shooting in U.S history transpired the morning of June 12. Forty-nine people - the overwhelming majority of them Hispanic and virtually all of them homosexual - were viciously gunned down by a carbine-toting attention-whore (he apparently checked his Facebook stream during the rampage to see how much publicity his early morning carnage was garnering) who, much to the dismay of leftist ideologues the world over - was also a pretty big fan of Allah.
As expected, the American media is having a field day with the Orlando massacre, which has provided the cable news outlets with a twisty-turny, subplot-laden melodrama that puts anything Shonda Rhimes has typed up to shame. Was the shooter secretly gay? How complicit was his wife in the rampage? How much did his father know, exactly? It's even got a horrifically ironic plot twist that seems like it could've been lifted from an old Tales From the Crypt comic - since the shooter donated blood days before the massacre, there is a very strong chance that one of the 50-plus survivors from the rampage wound up getting an emergency transfusion containing the plasma of the very man who tried to murder them.
Alas, the horrific incident has put the illiberal masses in a tough bind - one of their designated-protected-status special interests groups is undoubtedly responsible for mass murdering one of their OTHER designated-protected-status special interests groups, and there is virtually NO rational way to pin the blame on their "shared" ideological foe, the Republican, Christian, vagina-loving white man (indeed, the shooter himself appears to have fostered a pretty big disdain for the same group - not only was he a registered Democrat, he allegedly told black hostages that "they had suffered enough" and that he was actively targeting the lighter-skinned patrons of the night club.)
It's a tragic event that completely shatters the left's illusory idea of a coalesced, multicultural movement, and it certainly destroys their notion that the artificially forged "mass resistance" is one bound to the ideals of diversity, tolerance and ESPECIALLY non-violence. So, naturally, the agenda-driven faux-news sites and shameless advocacy groups did what they always do when something "problematic" arises - they simply ignored reality and started blaming it on the cis-het-white-male patriarchy anyway, stating that their impact on culture as a whole - while not directly inspiring the rampage, per se - is still pervasive enough to deflect blame from "their side" of the aisle.
Perhaps Amanda Marcotte's Salon screed "Overcompensation Nation" is the perfect place to start. Per Mrs. Marcotte, the real root cause of the Orlando massacre wasn't the bigoted, intolerant Islamic religion, but rather, the white-male manufactured and marketed "toxic masculinity," which she describes thus:
"Toxic masculinity is a specific model of manhood, geared towards dominance and control. It's a manhood that views women and LGBT people as inferior, sees sex as an act not of affection but domination and which vaporizes violence as the way to prove one's self to the world."
Which, of course, doesn't sound anything at all like Muslim culture, which is so tolerant of women that Pakistani senators DON'T threaten to rape activists on live TV broadcasts and the Qatar government DOESN'T arrest rape victims for committing "adultery." And of course, countries like Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are SO welcoming of homosexuals that they DON'T have laws on their books mandating gay people be executed for engaging in man-on-man loving in their own private quarters. And certainly, Islamic countries DON'T routinely post among the world's highest homicide rates and Islamic extremists AREN'T responsible for a near totality of the planet's religiously-motivated murders. You would NEVER hear about Muslim radicals murdering 2,000 people over the course of a few days in Nigeria, or plotting to toss gay people off rooftops in London, or recording themselves skinning dissidents alive and throwing their still-living, muscle-tissue-exposed bodies off cliffs. And even if they were, Marcotte theorizes, such horrendous acts ain't SHIT compared to the horrendous things white, Christian radicals are doing ... like refusing to leave empty wildlife refuges out in the middle of nowhere, picketing abortion clinics and protesting the funerals of dead gay people, which I think we can all agree is INCONTESTABLY a worse transgression than actually being responsible for those funerals in the first place.
After attacking Donald Trump and - for some inexplicable reason - the guys on Duck Dynasty for wearing beards, Marcotte goes on to blame the culture of "toxic masculinity" for ALL of America's gun violence, stating "this persistent pressure to constantly be proving manhood and warding off anything considered feminine or emasculating is the main reason why we have so many damn shootings in the United States ... the common theme is toxic masculinity, a desire on the part of the shooter to show off how much power and control he has, to take male dominance to the level of exerting control over life and death itself."
Alas, as to how this culture of "toxic masculinity" explains away the 1,000-plus homicides committed by women in the U.S. In 2014 - a disproportionate amount involving child victims, no less - uhh, well, umm ... oh shit, look, a bunch of white private school kids may have tried to lynch one of their black classmates! Whew, that was a close one ... for a minute there, I thought I was actually going to have to address REAL data instead of imaginary constructs!
But what if you want to find a different religion to peg the blame on? Well, The New York Times gave us not just one, but two meandering screeds blaming Christianity for promoting "a harmful atmosphere for gays." In the wake of the Orlando massacre, it is Christians - not Muslims - who ought to "repent for the ways they've helped create a culture that devalues LGBT people made in the image of God," writes blogger Julie Rodgers. Mercer University professor David P. Gushee does her one better, stating "even polite half-acceptance leaves LGBT people in a demeaning second-class position," which in turns makes it easier for non-Christians to demonize homosexuals. Interestingly, the Times - whose majority shareholder just so happens to be Mexico's wealthiest businessman - didn't dedicate too much ink to all of the homophobia ingrained in the Hispanic church, such as Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, Calif., overseen by Roger Jimenez, who said "the tragedy is that more of them didn't die" shortly after the shooting. Nor was that much said about Jose de Jesus Manzo Corona, a Ministry of Development and Social Integration official in Jalisco, Mexico, who tweeted "too bad it was 50, not 100" just hours after news of the shooting broke. Considering how one of the most popular crowd chants in Mexican soccer is to call the other team's players "male prostitutes," maybe the Latinos ought to be taken to task for all the toxic anti-gay rancor in their communities, too?
But of course, the ultimate display of self-serving identity politicking came in the form of - surprise, surprise - a Black Lives Matter protester, who reckoned a June 13 community vigil at the University of Missouri mourning the lives of those lost in the shooting was a most opportune time to complain about white people. "I wish this many people came out to our racial demonstrations and our Black Lives Matter movements," the bespectacled "mourner" declared. "I don't want to stand up here and be angry, because this isn't for me, this isn't for you, it's for the people that we lost, and the people that we lose tomorrow, and the people that lost yesterday. But I thought I'd take a moment to list out some facts that many of you probably don't know because you're white."
So what's the big takeaway from all of this? Well, it's a cynical outlook, I know, but maybe - just maybe - nobody really gives a damn about the people who died in Orlando, other than the fact it gives them another talking point to promote their ideological propaganda. I'm sure the London vigils that transformed into voguing contests were well-meaning, but isn't using the brutal murders of 49 people you never personally knew as an on-ramp to celebrate your own identity politics - whether it's to promote LGBT pride, further an anti-gay agenda, support new gun controls measures or rally for less restrictive gun laws - kind of a callous, exploitative thing to do?
I'd be a little skeptical of all those outraged tears, folks: after all, to some people "tragedy" is nothing more than the most desirable form of publicity there is.
More fun with guns!
Of course, Orlando wasn't the only hot spot for hot lead over the last fortnight. Grab your N.R.A. hat, fellas, it's time to take aim at a whole bunch of other recent firearm-related tomfoolery that's been happening en masse these days:
The very same day of the Orlando shooting, Santa Monica police busted Indiana man James Howell for having a car filled with arms, munitions and low-level explosives materials. Considering Howell told police he was en route to that afternoon's LGBT pride festival, it doesn't take too much thinkin' to figure out what his plans could've been. Alas, Howell - who apparently was a homosexual himself - never got to his destination, and is now sitting in a L.A. county jail cell for a litany of weapons charges. Oh, and apparently, he's staring down some serious child molestation charges in his home state - a strangely relevant detail the mainstream media, for some inscrutable reason, choose to completely leave out of their narratives.
In Amarillo, Texas, 54-year-old Somali immigrant Mohammad Moghaddam - obviously, a Southern Baptist - waltzed on in to a Wal-Mart with a boom stick, fired a couple of shots at the ceiling above the checkout lanes and proceeded to hold two of his colleagues hostage before SWAT swooped in and shot his ass dead. Local officials are describing the June 14 incident as - what else? - an instance of "workplace violence."
Why let guys who revere a holy book that encourages the ingestion of camel pee have all the fun when it comes to firearm-assisted ideological violence? Such was the case in jolly old England, as British Labour Party MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed in the city streets of Birstall by 52-year-old Tommy Mair, your typical odd-duck Limey nationalist shut-in who allegedly purchased a manual from the U.S. neo-Nazi group National Alliance in 1999, on June 16. Despite being an extraordinarily isolated incident, many pro-E.U., pro-multicultural sorts have already started writing diatribes with sensational headlines like "I Want My Country Back From Nasty Nationalists." Now, where are the equally apoplectic rants directed towards the seven Muslim immigrants who abducted almost 400 British girls and sold them into sex slavery? Under the rug - along with all the other hideous crimes perpetrated by British inhabitants who just so happen to share the same religion - might be a pretty good place to start looking.
While mass shootings are generally considered a crazy ass white man activity, the surprising statistical truth is that about three-quarters of all individuals responsible for mass shooting incidents (per FBI data, shootings in which four or more people are wounded or killed) in the country are actually African-American. The 2016 stats got bumped up June 13, when a 21-year-old black male went on a shooting spree in a Brooklyn playground. Five minors were injured in the episode, which police believe was spawned over a stolen backpack.
Of course, we can't leave out self-inflicted gun violence, and by golly, do we have a bizarre one coming out of the wild and woolly world of mixed martial arts. On June 12, former Bellator fighter Ivan Cole was fatally shot in - of all things - a game of Russian Roulette in Dallas. Meanwhile, 48-year-old homeless man Louis Anderson (not to be confused with Louie Anderson, naturally) is being investigated by police after apparently shooting himself accidentally with a concealed handgun on June 14 while waiting in line to buy a bagel and coffee. As to how a homeless man with no less than nine previous drug arrests was able to obtain a handgun in New York - let alone be able to afford a breakfast at Zabar's - remains unclear.
And no matter if you are pro-gun control or anti-gun control, there's at least one news story out there that ought to please you and your agenda-furthering ways. A proud pro-gunner? Then you should be pleased as punch that a CBS reporter who cooked up some documents for a piece meant to show how easy it is to get a semi-automatic weapon is now looking at potential felony federal charges for making a straw purchase. Not a fan of the gun lobby? Then don't be too sad - proving once and for all that concealed weapon carry is the solution to all of our mass violence problems, an Ohio gun shop owner was shot and killed by a student June 19, whose gun accidentally went off during - get ready for the cruel, cruel irony - a concealed weapons permit training class.
I am woman, hear me roar (and also, commit unspeakable crimes)
Here at The Internet Is In America, we wholeheartedly believe that men and women are equals in every conceivable way ... well, except for when it comes to athletics - we all know that's a recipe for disaster. One area we are particularly interested in leveling the playing field is in the domain of savage, cruel and inhumane violence. Long thought to be the bastion of the XY-chromosome set, the fairer sex is certainly making great strides in bringing a little perverse parity to ghastly crime these days; as such, we consider it both a pleasure and an honor to highlight the remarkable, trailblazing work of all the homicidal ladies listed below:
On June 13, a Denver jury sentenced 23-year-old Kelsey Newell-Skinner to 35 years in prison for beating her two-year-old daughter to death in 2014. She told the court that she had no recollections of murdering her own flesh and blood because she "couldn't remember anything after a hard night of drinking."
In Baltimore, 29-year-old Crystal Marie Wagner has been charged with the murder of her own mother in a mall parking lot June 12. Her mama wasn't the first person she has been charged with stabbing, either: she was already scheduled for a September court date for attempting to murder her husband last October.
Alongside her husband Thomas Joseph Westerman, Atlantan Kimberly Quinlan Lindsey is staring down serious child molestation charges stemming from an alleged incident involving a 6-year-old in 2011. Sound like stereotypical Georgian white trash? Well, both of the accused were high-ranking members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with Quinlan at one point overseeing $1.5 billion in terrorism preparedness funding. Amazingly enough, even after she was arrested for child abuse, Lindsey was still allowed to work for the CDC - and if that wasn't enough, she's also facing bestiality charges, as well.
Northern Ireland Muslim convert Lorna Moore, 34, has been given a two and a half year prison sentence for attempting to flee to Syria to reunite with her ISIS terrorist husband. Oh, and she planned on taking her three children with her, too.
In Philadelphia, 39-year-old Shavon Armstrong and 28-year-old Shintelle Smith have been charged with the murder of 26-year-old Toy Charda Bryant. Police found Bryant's corpse handcuffed, the apparent victim of prolonged torture. Per investigators, the gruesome stabbing and beating death stemmed from Bryant owing her murderers a mere $800 debt.
In Orlando, 20-year-old martial arts instructor Stephanie Figueroa has been arrested for sexting an 11-year-old boy. Among other charges, she is looking at multiple counts of attempted lewd or lascivious conduct, solicitation of a minor via computer, showing obscene material to a minor, unlawful use of a two-way communication device, child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
18-year-old San Diego area cheerleader Hailey Suder doesn't have too much to rah-rah-rah about these days. On June 20, she and two brothers - one of whom she was romantically involved with - went before a judge for their parts in the savage beating death of a homeless man last April. If convicted of the felony accessory to murder charges, she could wind up spending as many as three years and eight months in the slammer.
After copping a plea deal, Georgian teen Kayla Dixon will serve 40 years in prison for the 2014 shooting death of Danny Zeitz during a botched armed robbery. Dixon was just 16 years old at the time of the homicide, which was over, of all things, a Playstation 4.
In the outskirts of Atlanta, 16-year-old Antavian Love has been charged with the shooting death of 49-year-old Enrique Ramirex Trejo. She is also charged with theft by taking, theft by receiving and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
In Ohio, 26-year-old Tequila R. Mannering has been charged with the murder of her sixth-month-old son. Other charges pending from the June 19 homicide include one count apiece of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.
So that settles it: judging from how good they are at murdering their children, parents, friends and perfect strangers, women can't be considered anything short of men's equals in every category. I mean, sure, 85 percent of all female marines can't pass the same physical fitness exams that a statistically insignificant 97 percent of their male counterparts do, but when it comes to committing cold-blooded murder and ghastly abuse of minors? Sorry boys, anything we can do, they can clearly do better.
London bans "unrealistic body images" in local advertisements
In 2015, advertisements for Protein World, a dietary supplement manufacturer, were defaced in London subway stations. The ad, which featured a hot chick in a bikini, was criticized as "body shaming" by many irked passers-by, almost all of whom were probably envious that they lacked the will, self-control and discipline to stick to a regimented diet. Well, thanks to London's still kind of newish mayor Sadiq Khan - whom just so happens to be a Muslim - future mass transit enthusiasts won't be offended by such displays ever again. On June 13, Khan implemented a citywide ban on advertisements "promoting unrealistic expectations surrounding their bodies." Transport for London, the official agency that oversees the city's subway systems, lent Khan their support, releasing a statement declaring that they would no longer permit adverts that "could reasonably be seen as likely to conform to an unrealistic or unhealthy body shape, or as likely to create body-confidence issues, particularly among young people." Of course, one has to wonder if the ads are really promoting "unrealistic" beauty standards when, as evidenced by the existence of the poster board models themselves, they quite clearly are attainable. Furthermore, one has to wonder if the same "this ad shouldn't exist because it makes me feel bad that I haven't made something out of myself" rationale should be applicable to ads for luxury products, like designer clothing, ritzy watches and sports cars - I mean, doesn't Khan know how bad those ads make people without money feel about themselves? Alas, others have floated up the downright asinine assertion that Khan - as an aside, were you aware he is a practitioner of Islam? - made the unilateral call to ax the ads because his faith doesn't look to kindly upon ogling at the female form. Clearly, this was an preposterous claim totally invalidated by an anti-Brexit pit stop Khan made in Manchester, in which all of the female attendees of said speech were burka-clad and not-at-all-suspiciously clustered towards the back of the throng, which as a sheer coincidence, appears to have been about 99 percent brown-ish men.
#BlackCrimesMatter
Seeing as how African-Americans make up three-quarters of the NBA and nearly seventh-tenths of all NFL players, we here at IIIA sometimes worry that the nation's black populace sometimes get unfairly stereotyped as world-class athletes. Indeed, Lebron James and Khalil Mack are indeed some impressive physical specimens, but as surprising as this may be, not all black men in the United States are professional athletes. In fact, there are actually more black men who AREN'T pro sports stars than there are those who make millions of dollars playing big time ball, and - shocking, I know - some of them even, gasp, do illegal things, some of which are serious enough to warrant lengthy prison sentences. To help call attention to this completely aberrational and justly under-reported statistical quirk, it may be worthwhile to examine a small sample of some of the more recent (and most certainly unusual) instances of African-Americans doing something that is completely anathema to our accepted cultural narrative concerning the U.S. black experience - that is, committing insanely violent crimes.
In Oakland, Calif., a 16-year-old girl was killed and three others were wounded in a daylight drive-by. The two gunmen are still at large - the attack transpired during a community vigil for two local boys who had recently drowned.
On June 15, Chicagoan Antonio Perkins was shot in killed on the streets of the Lawndale neighborhood. The 28-year-old recorded his own murder live on his cell-phone.
Robert Marks, assistant principal of Brookstown Magnet Honors Academy in Baton Rouge, La., has been arrested for the murder of coworker Lyntell Washington, who was pregnant and allegedly threatening to go public about the two's extramarital affair. In addition to the first degree homicide and feticide charges, Marks has also been charged with kidnapping and deserting Washington's 3-year-old daughter.
Also in Louisiana, 19-year-old Jerman Neveaux has been arrested for murdering Jefferson Parish Sheriff's officer David Michel, Jr. on June 22. Sheriff Newell Norman described the homicide thus: "As (Michel) was going down, Neveaux was going down with the gun and fired two shots in his back," he said. "A cold-blooded murder."
Wondering how Chicagoans celebrated Father's Day weekend? If you said "with 59 shootings, 13 of them fatal," you sir, would be a horrible, horrible bigot ... nonetheless, a wholly accurate one.
Near Pittsburgh, Orlando Williams decided to show the 8-year-old son of his fiance what-fer by slamming his second-grade attending ass to the floor like he was The Undertaker. Alas, Mr. Williams put a little too much oomph in his powerbomb, and the young boy, well, kinda died. Already facing aggravated assault and child endangerment charges, looks like you can add "pedocide" to Williams' rap sheet very, very shortly.
You know, there are a lot of hurtful, untrue stereotypes that have circulated for a long time claiming that African-American individuals have an unnaturally strong craving for fried chicken and an equally aberrational predilection for theft. Of course, such assertions are callously prejudiced and ill-founded ... that is, unless you are talking about Cliff Hayes, a 67-year-old Mississippi man who broke into a Church's restaurant at 5 in the morning and stole several boxes of frozen poultry on June 21.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a 16-year-old girl claims she was raped by eight teenage boys, who allegedly took turns sexually abusing her for several hours - with some of the heinous crime recorded on their cell phones. So far, five minors - the youngest reported thus far 16 - have been arrested and charged with multiple felony counts of sexual assault.
And in news that may indeed eerily portend a lot of mayhem later this summer, the Twitter account of top Black Lives Matter organizer DeRay McKesson was hacked June 10, revealing a "leaked" back-and-forth IM conversation with fellow BLM big wig Johnetta Elzie, who discussed, among other things, plans to cause so much havoc at the upcoming Republican and Democratic national conventions that martial law will be declared and Obama will get a third term of office. Now, this is the kind of stuff that's next to impossible to confirm 100 percent, but if there's even a granule of truth to what's been leaked (including insinuations that Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been actively coordinating "mass civil disobedience" strategies with BLM leaders), well, folks ... this might just be the eeriest calm before one of the biggest shit storms in American history.
A slew of happenings demonstrating the many, MANY advantages of being "disadvantaged"
Let's talk about "currency" for a minute. You know, the term isn't just applicable to money matters; indeed, there is a - pardon the pun - wealth of things out there that could be considered forms of de facto capital, like credit and reputation, that allow an individual just as much ability to get things done as good old fashioned moolah. Well, as judging by the recent-ish stories below, it looks like we can add a new cultural commodity to the list of valuable, exchangeable goods - frothy, ideology-driven, self-centered righteous indignation:
Led by civil rights icon John Lewis, a gaggle of Democratic congress-people decided to host a 27-hour sleepover on the floors of America's bicameral legislature to make a point about how damned important passing new gun control legislation is on June 22-23. Deciding that now was not the best time to take advantage of a national tragedy to support their own agendas and pout like five-year-olds because the meanies on the other side of the aisle wouldn't give them what they want, House and Senate Dems agreed to resume their battle against due process on July 5.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania announced he was going to introduce "The Hate Crimes Prevention Act" to Congress on June 13. The measure, he said, is meant to keep firearms out of the hands of not only individuals convicted of misdemeanor hate crime charges, but even individuals "reasonably suspected of being guilty of a hate crime." I mean, where does it say in the Constitution that you need evidence and have to follow specific legal procedures to deprive someone of their rights, anyway?
Tamara Wyche, a 29-year-old graduate from the Harvard School of Law, is suing the New York Board of Law Examiners because she failed the bar. According to her suit, Wyche suffers from "debilitating panic attacks" and demanded to take the exam in a room separate from other exam-takers and be given more test time and breaks than everybody else. Despite being given these special accommodations, it should probably be noted that Wyche still managed to fail the bar three times.
Bloodroot, a self-described "feminist" restaurant in Connecticut that specializes in vegetarian cuisine, appears to have adopted an unorthodox strategy to gain the upper hand in the battle against "body-shaming" - they've decided to ban all patrons from discussing the caloric content of their food. By the way, that will soon be a federal violation, as a component of the Affordable Care Act requiring all restaurants to list the calorie counts of their menu offerings is set to take effect Dec. 2016.
Twitter SJW celebre "Briene of Snarth" has been heavily scrutinized after she made the following remarks after the body of drowned toddler Lane Graves was recovered near Disney World: "I'm so finished with white men's entitlement lately that I'm not really sad about a 2yo being eaten by a gator bc his daddy ignored signs." You know, if you look at the tragic death of a baby while snared in the teeth of a humongous reptile and the first thing that goes off in your head is "fuck the patriarchy," maybe it's time to reassess the healthiness of your ideological underpinnings, isn't it?
Looking for a cheap and easy way to make a cool $60,000? Well, sly opportunist ... I mean, unfortunate victim of transphobia Leo Seoll received just that amount from an elementary school in Oregon, after she filed a complaint stating that her (or he, or they, or them) was referenced by the wrong pronoun. As a result of the "emotional damage" Seoll experienced, the district has announced that it will now roll out "gender neutral" restrooms at all of their schools.
And of course, you can't have an installment of This Week in Social Justice Warrior-Dom without touching upon all of the wacky, "multiculturalism uber alles" shenanigans going on across U.S colleges and universities. Wondering what our future caretakers and governors are learning in the hallowed halls of higher education (and on the taxpayers' doles, no less?) Well, at Wayne State they've dropped a freshmen mathematics course in favor of a diversity workshop, students at Western Washington University are demanding that an "Office of Social Transformation" be established to police students and professors from using "cissexist" and "ableist" language, Yale is contemplating dropping works by white poets from their required reading list, the University of Northern Colorado is using a "bias response team" to go after faculty members who dare promote anything in class other than a "fuck the white man" pro-globalization philosophy, Emory University is proudly pimping the shit out of a black professor's new book that blames all of the failings of inner city blacks on "white rage," and UC-Irvine temporarily suspended its College Republicans club because ... well, just because, it appears. Alas, there is indeed a silver lining here; according to the most recent U.S. News & World Report estimates, about 40 percent of all individuals who attend college never earn a diploma, which means their chances of applying all of that cultural Marxist pseudo-radical commie claptrap in the real world are virtually nil.
The downside? They still have an unlimited number of chances to keep failing in higher education, and guess who's paying the bill for them to flunk introductory algebra for the 42nd time?
United States Department of Justice censors Orlando shooting 911 transcripts for our own good
On June 20, the United States' Department of Justice released an official transcript of one of the phone calls the Orlando massacre gunman made to 911 responders. But, uh, there was just one, slight, insignificant little hitch: the transcripts were heavily, HEAVILY redacted, with such cryptic, indecipherable "quotes" from the shooter as "I pledge allegiance to [omitted], may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted.]" After ferocious (and entirely justified) blowback on social media from irked legislators and taxpayers alike, the FBI eventually released a slightly less redacted version of the 911 transcript, which still contains numerous portions vaguely referred to as "[Arabic]," which yeah, probably means he was screaming "Allahu Akbar" over and over again and Loretta Lynch don't want to publicize it. Interestingly, the DOJ still hasn't posted the transcript for the shooter's second 911 phone call, which FBI officials have gone on record saying it contains juicier tidbits about the shooter's potential links to other Islamofascist terrorists. So, uh, why exactly did the DOJ censor the transcripts so heavily? Per Tampa FBI field officer Ron Hopper, "part of the redacting is meant to not give credence to individuals who have done terrorist attacks in the past ... we're not going to propagate their rhetoric, their violent rhetoric, and we see no value in putting these individuals' names back out there." Of course, the FBI could also just release the 911 audio in full and let the masses decide for themselves what the shooter's motivations may have been, but by golly, if that were to happen, people may accidentally assume that some Muslim people may be prejudiced, homicidally violent ideologues who pose a grave threat to national security. Fifty bullet riddled corpses is one thing, but the notion that someone may have their general anxieties about an ethnic minority even partially affirmed by 911 audio? Yeah, better keep this one under lock and key for the long-term ...
News anchor fired for saying statistically verified, scientifically irrefutable things about black community sues former employer
On March 30, Pittsburgh-area news anchor Wendy Bell got shit-canned for making "insensitive remarks" on Facebook. Commenting on the shooting of five black people March 9, Bell stated the following:
"You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many heats. They are young black men, likely in their teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested."
Despite virtually everything Bell said in the post being 100 percent, federal-data-backed factual statements (which were even backed up publicly by our noble Commander in Chief), WTAE got antsy when some social media opportunists with a brazen aversion to indisputable reality started saying the 21-time Emmy Award winner's words were, you guessed it, "racist." Well, Bell decided she wasn't going to take that kind of Orwellian, reverse-populist McCarthyist bullshit and turned around and sued her former employer June 20 for violating her civil rights. "Ms. Bell's posting of concern for the African-American community stung by mass shooting was clearly and obviously not intended to be racially offensive," the suit states. "Had Ms' Bell written the same comments about white criminal suspect or had her race not have been white, [the] defendant would not have fired her, much less disciplined her."
And as for why those gravely offended by Bell's comments AREN'T equally offended by the reality of young, black male violence and its scientifically-validated ties to father absenteeism? Apparently, pointing out the existence of a problem in African-American communities is more offensive than completely ignoring its root causes and letting the cycle of misery perpetuate from generation to generation.
The "rape cultures" we're NOT discussing
So last week, there was furor a plenty over Brock Turner, the Stanford university student-athlete who received a six-month sentence for sexually molesting - but not technically raping - a drunk woman at a social mixer. Surely, the massive outrage had little to do with the circumstantial elements of the incident (what, with Turner pretty much being the poster child for what most neo-neo-liberals would deem "white privilege,") and everything to do with collective outrage over the unspeakable savagery of the crime itself. However, if the universal outrage over "rape culture" indeed revolves around a shared hatred of the despicable crime of rape itself, where were the same people calling for the judge in the Turner case to be publicly flogged when the news broke about Chad Cameron Camp, the 26-year-old Oregonian who allegedly spent half an hour grouping a 13 year old girl on a June 15 American Airlines flight? Furthermore, were was the same white-hot anger when a 19-year-old Yemeni immigrant was given 18 months probation for raping a Swedish 13-year-old (which local authorities, unbelievably, blamed on the nation's "Nordic drinking culture?") And where are the outraged protesters clamoring for justice for 15-year-old Karen Perez, whose brutal rape and strangulation was recorded on camera by her underage boyfriend in Texas? And for the love of Christ, why isn't anyway going on a Cosby-esque, legacy-destroying revisionist purge after police documents confirming that Michael Jackson stockpiled child pornography at the Neverland Ranch were made public? Judging from the tepid response from the miscellaneous SJW camps out there, it looks like the only time rape is worth combating with a public show of force is when it involves a college campus and a ready-made villain who nails all the check boxes - white, male, wealthy, straight, Protestant, conservative and "able-bodied" - necessary to further their pro-diversity, patriarchy-disestablishing Tao. Oh, and if you are the victim of anyone who doesn't fit that description? Sucks to be you - in the eyes of the ultra-progressivists, your horrific abuse only has value if you get assaulted by the "right" kind of rapist.
Illegal immigrant tries to kill Donald Trump; media remains mum, online detractors praise would-be assassin
Imagine, if you still possess such faculties, the media's reaction if an assassination attempt was made against Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama at a public rally. Go ahead, feel free to select your own cultural pariah boogeyman - a Klansman with a homemade radioactive cannon, a gay-hating preacher who says homosexuals will be cursed with literal flaming buttholes, etc. Empirical wisdom would suggest that such an event would draw heavy scrutiny from the media, if not receive around the clock, updated-every-30-seconds wall-to-wall multi-platform coverage.
Well, when 19-year-old Brit Michael Sanford - irony of ironies, one of them there "illegal immigrants" the old Trumpster ain't too keen on - attempted to wrestle a handgun away from a security officer at a June 19 pro-Donald rally in Las Vegas, the startling incident barely made a blip on the national radar. According to the Secret Service, Sanford - an autistic fan of Robot Wars - drove all the way from Hoboken, N.J. to murder the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
While a motive for the crime - which would net Sanford 10 years in the pokey - have yet to surface, his parents blame it on his anorexia, OCD and the fact that he was stark-raving bonkers over a girl who didn't like him back. Meanwhile, commentators on sites like Buzzfeed have taken it upon themselves to congratulate the illegal Briton for his efforts to rub out The Donald.
"Don't blame him really, everyone always says they would have killed Hitler if they had the chance," writes a young woman named Syd Monroe, who claims to be "owner at self-employed." Continuing, she states "I wonder had he succeeded what would all of Drumpf's avid anti-gun supportors [sic] done then?"
"Dont' give up on your obsessive-compulsive goals, Michael," writes Rick Mulcahy of Colby College. "Best of luck in future Trump stalkings."
"Finally someone took some initiative to do what many of us are thinking (and don't fucking deny it either!)," writes Azure Adams, who claims to be a clinician at Southwest Behavioral Health. "But 19 year olds are not the best at planning these kinds of things and effectively carrying them out. So next assassin, you are up."
"I hope someone blows that racist fucker's head off," writes James Eastwood. "He is one of one of the only people whose death I would cheer for. I will be throwing a huge party is [sic] Donald Trump does die..."
And to think: the media wants us to believe Trump supporters are the radicals we ought to be deathly afraid of!
...and a few headlines that speak for themselves...
Philadelphia man commandeers monster truck, small armory to rescue New York girl from clutches of heroin dealer
Alleged gay lover of Orlando massacre shooter claims killer did it to get revenge against Puerto Ricans
Independent congressional candidate in Tennessee forced to take down "Make America White Again" billboard
In rural Georgia, judge calls man on trial for murder a "queer" and challenges him to masturbate in court after he threatens to eat his nonexistent children
Kurt Angle's brother pleads guilty of murdering wife
U.S. missionaries in Jamaica shot and killed during robbery; officials find bodies hacked to bits in woods
Nation applauds Supreme Court for declaring racial discrimination constitutional
Black man found not guilty of killing other black man in case that brewed national discussion about white on black violence
Kenya high court upholds law allowing use of "anal exams" to determine if someone is homosexual
"Muslim" hero at Orlando nightclub shooting is actually a Hindu
Historically black college in Georgia about to lose accreditation, begins offering worthless classes to local high schoolers for free
Woman at Kroger causes ruckus by drop-kicking Batman v. Superman cake
After guilty verdict read, Ohio man tosses own pee-pee, doo-doo at attorney
Nearly nine out of 10 Venezuelans are now too poor to afford food
Church sign reading "Satan made gays & transgender" vandalized in rural Georgia
Jew in Berlin beaten up three Arab men for wearing kippah
At least six people killed in Mexican teacher protests
Naked man pees on Waffle House in Atlanta
New Mexico man kills wife, four children because he was about to get divorced
Islamist terrorist stabs to death French policeman and his girlfriend in front of their three-year-old son
Mass media, advocacy groups, special interest organizations and opportunistic lawmakers skillfully tiptoe around FBI data revealing U.S. homicide rate is at its lowest point in 51 years
Unable to grasp why people may be opposed to forfeiting national sovereignty and economic future to corrupt, multinational cabal, Twitter users simply blame Brexit on "racist" white people
Posted in Black Lives Matter, homophobia, orlando, political correctness, Racism, sexism, Social Justice, social justice warrior, This Week in Social Justice Warrior-dom on June 25, 2016 by Your Friendly Neighborhood Jimbo | 1 comment Edit
Do You Remember the BonziBuddy?
Everything you could ever possibly want to know about the notorious adware app from the AOL days. Probably too much, to be honest.
I've long believed that "nostalgia" has a 15-year incubation period. Granted, you can feel a flurry of emotions about things that transpired five or 10 years ago, but I don't think that you can really feel those whimsical pangs of days gone by until at least a decade and a half passes you by. An old commercial from four years ago or an old video game from eight years ago are just outdated things, but a 15-year-old advertisement or consumer product? All of a sudden, its ephemeral association with your own history makes it a transcendent object. It's no longer just some old thing … now, it's a vintage relic of yesteryear.
As such, we're just now getting to the point where early 2000s culture can be properly designated as "nostalgic." This is especially interesting, since it is the first arbitrarily-defined "quindecimester" to entail a heavy volume of Internet-borne evanescence.
Which means we've finally gotten to that cultural tipping point were new media things like AOL chat rooms, Real Player and early flash-based gaming can be considered legitimate historical subjects.
Amid those unforgettable first encounters with Rotten.com and malware-baiting "free music" Napster alternatives, at least one sidebar in the Big Book of Early 200s Nostalgia ought to be dedicated to the BonziBuddy – one of the more famous (and, in some circles, infamous) downloadable desktop apps of George W.'s first term of office.
How to describe the BonziBuddy to all you young 'uns? Well, conceptually, the adware was kinda' like Siri, except it didn't do anywhere near as much. Oh, and you couldn't talk directly to it, although you could type up inquiries and hope for some sort of quasi-useful retort. But by and large, the download was really only valuable because it served as a low, low-tech text-to-speech translator. Yeah, I know all of this shit must feel downright antediluvian to the children of the iPad, but back then, it was still cutting-edge stuff. The program also did a few other things, but before we get into that, some history.
When Microsoft Office '97 launched, it came with this feature called Office Assistant. Basically, it was this annoying little cartoon paperclip that would pop up on screen while you were working on homework assignments and clutter your desktop with all sorts of unsolicited advice on paragraphical indentation and adding MS Paint artwork to your research papers. Although the feature is looked upon with incredible disdain today, way back when, it was apparently popular enough to warrant legitimate DLC, as an array of Office Assistant skins made their rounds on the Internet – among them, a little green parrot named "Peedy."
Enter upstart Bonzi Software, who in 1999, released a freeware program that effectively served the same purpose as Microsoft's Office Assistant project, albeit with the addition of text-to-speech functionality. Ultimately, this was a rather ballsy move on Bonzi Software's part, seeing as how the software not only kinda-sorta-not-legally "borrowed" the technology from the old Lernout & Hauspie Microsoft Speech API 4.0 suite, but featured "Peedy" as its official avatar.
Rest assured, I am just as curious as you are as to what the "save you money" tab does. Curious, and very suspicious.
Although I haven't been able to uncover conclusive proof that MS threatened legal action, the wrath of Bill Gates must've nonetheless spooked the suits at Bonzi Software real good, as it was less than a year before they retired "Peedy" and replaced it with their own proprietary mascot – the eponymous BonziBuddy, which was stylized as a cherubic, purple gorilla.
Looking back on it, none of the program's features can be considered all that remarkable – even considering the state of technology at the time frame. Still, if you were a junior high schooler circa 2000, it was pretty hard to not be intrigued by the app. I mean, it was free after all, and like any eighth grader has the ability to say "no" to a downloadable app (especially one that was touted as being a "$40 value," despite seemingly no traces of evidence indicating there was ever a retail version of the program sold anywhere at anytime) that allows him to make his parents' PC say all sorts of crude and ribald things via a cartoon monkey. The pull, frankly, was irresistible.
The BonziBuddy was pretty much a case example in trying-way-too-hard preteen marketing 101. As soon as you downloaded the little sucker, the eponymous spokes-ape made his big debut on your desktop by literally surfing across your screensaver. From there, he (I'm assuming it's a he) would start yapping via word balloon, which was accompanied by that unforgettable, warbled voice. There was a bit of an effeminate twang to the character's brogue; so basically, he(?) sounded like a seven-foot tall mechanical drag queen (or Janet Reno, if there's any kind of difference there.)
As far as the app's functionality, the text-to-speech tool was the big selling point, but it wasn't its only feature. You could also ask him to relay obscure facts back to you, send pre-emojis in emails, manage downloads, sing (I vividly recall two songs – that "Day-zee, day-zee" song from 2001 and another ditty I vaguely remember but, for the life of me, can't recite a single lyric) and look up stuff online. And that's where BonziBuddy showed his shadowy underbelly.
Of course, we all know the BonziBuddy is shameless adware now. Before 9\11, however, we were a much more trusting society, and the idea that our beloved desktop monkey helper was actually a Trojan horse for surreptitious data collection and sneaky backdoor downloads never really crossed our minds. Alas, it is now blindingly obvious to anyone that the whole thing was a big ruse that preyed upon naïve Intraweb users – specifically, children.
For starters, the titular BonziBuddy wasn't the only thing you downloaded to your hard drive. The app also downloaded a proprietary Bonzi Software toolbar to your browser, except they never told you that in the fine print. On top of that, the BonziBuddy itself had a bad habit of obstructing your browsing, popping up while you were trying to read IGN and filling the screen with all sorts of ads (including a few pioneering scareware ads that were designed to fool users into thinking MS dialog boxes had been opened.)
The app also launched this thing called BonziWorld, which was a jungle-themed central hub of sorts that redirected you to a bunch of Bonzi Software pages (most notably, for the company's other big-seller, Internet ALERT.) The download also had the unstated after-effect of resetting your homepage to the company's central site, triggering unwanted pop-up ads and – the biggie – tracking user web browsing information. Hilariously, a 2001 update tacked on another new feature – irony of ironies, an alleged "virus" checker.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn't long before the app wound up in court. A 2002 class action lawsuit forced Bonzi Software to fess up to using scareware ads to deceive consumers and, representing the death blow to the app and software firm as a whole, the FTC slammed them in 2004 with a $75,000 fine for collecting data on underage users and not providing the federally mandated consent forms to their parents. The application was overhauled shortly thereafter, but it was for naught; the company would go belly up before the year was over.
Surely, those "recommended" sites have to be on the up and up, right? After all, there is NO reason to be wary of software that uses the phrase "best friend" with literal quotation marks included. NONE AT ALL.
The internet being the wide-open chasm it is, however, users were able to download the BonziBuddy – or at least reach his central website – as late as 2008. Since then, however, pretty much all vestiges of the app's existence have been scrubbed from the Web (well, except for the smart-alecky memetic recollections of salty forum dwellers, apparently.)
Outside of firing up your old Windows 2000-powered PC from way back when, it's pretty much impossible to re-experience the BonziBuddy phenomenon. Granted, there are a few videos out there – and thanks to the Internet Archive, you can even view the old app website just the way it was in 2000 (which allows you to download some kind of file from the old site with the suffix .exe, but I ain't brave enough to run it) – but just gawping at the damn thing isn't the same thing as actually fiddling around with it. You can watch speed runs on YouTube all day, but watching Ninja Gaiden II on the NES isn't the same thing as playing it. The same holds true for the BonziBuddy – unless you lived it, you'll never be able to fully comprehend it.
Of course, you can't really evaluate the BonziBuddy phenomenon without taking a look at its creators – Joe and Jay Bonzi of San Luis Obispo, Calif. As it turns out, Bonzi Software was just one of their many ventures in the early 1990s and late 2000s, which also included something called TrueTv.com (no relation to the Ted Turner-owned TruTV, I assume) and Bonzi Aviation, Inc. Per legal filings, it appears the duo spent a bulk of their post-Bonzi careers working for a marketing firm called 2KDirect, LLC, whose subsidiaries include the digital ad network iPROMTEu.
As the ultimate ephemeral media platform – where videos, photos, text and even entire websites can disappear overnight – semi-obscure internet nostalgia a'la the BonziBuddy represent our newest form of cultural currency. While possessing virtually no financial value, recollections of pre-Myspace advents of the like serve as a time capsule to a bygone era, giving us a firmer grasp of the times than even the "legitimate" media of the era. The same way scores and scores of channels on YouTube are dedicated to commercials from the late 1980s and early 1990s, it's really only a matter of time until before-Facebook web ephemera becomes the next big thing in "retro."
At the time, BonziBuddy was just another novel attraction on a fledgling media platform. A decade ago, it was a nearly forgotten antiquity exemplifying the faults and flaws of the early days of the Internet. But now? It's a bona-fide part of American pop cultural history, a shared emblem of an entire, technology-weaned generation and – perhaps above all else – a reminder of a less complicated, somewhat more innocuous society untainted by the omnipresent stain of reality television, social media vanity and the ubiquitous – and frankly, inescapable – gravity of the mobile-Internet-sphere.
And malware or not, goddamn, is that little gorilla just as adorable now as he was back when TRL was still a thing.
Posted in AOL, app, Bonsi Buddy, Bonzi Buddy, Bonzi Software, BonziBuddy, download, Internet Alert, Jay Bonzi, Joe Bonzi, lawsuit, malware, virus on June 23, 2016 by Your Friendly Neighborhood Jimbo | 1 comment Edit
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Jquery function for multiline ellipsis text I've created a fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/mupersan82/JYuSY/
Multiline ellipsis function:
$(function() {
var ellipsisText = $('.multilineEllipseText');
var textContainer = $('.incidentCellBottomRight').height();
while ($(ellipsisText).outerHeight(true) > textContainer) {
    $(ellipsisText).text(function(index, text) {
        return text.replace(/\W*\s(\S)*$/, '...');
    });
}

});
The function is taken from here: Cross browsers mult-lines text overflow with ellipsis appended within a width&height fixed div?
The function sort of works for multiline content but doesn't allow the content to extend to the edge. With singleline content, the ellipsis is added after only one word.
It should allow text up to the max height of its parent div, which is 100px.

A: Hope this will help you. (dotdotdot)
http://dotdotdot.frebsite.nl/

A: In your code you have:
var $ellipsisText = $('.multilineEllipseText');

this selects all .multilineEllipseText elements. Yet you are using .outerHeight(true) later on, which will return the height of the first element in the given set only.
So it works for the first element, but for each element after that, you're comparing to the wrong height (that from the first).

Here is how you can fix that:
var textContainerHeight= $('.incidentCellBottomRight').height();

$('.multilineEllipseText').each(function () {
  var $ellipsisText = $(this);

  while ($ellipsisText.outerHeight(true) > textContainerHeight) {
    $ellipsisText.text(function(index, text) {
      return text.replace(/\W*\s(\S)*$/, '...');
    });
  }
});

demo: http://jsfiddle.net/JYuSY/1/

A: I know this answer is very old, but I thought I'd share a similar problem and solution since it's very relevant.
I have a responsive site that has some paragraphs that need to cut off after 3 lines and add a link that essentially exposes the remaining text when clicked, for aesthetic reasons.
So it's crucial that I keep all of the text handy rather than refresh the page every time the screen size changes (that's the purpose of responsive).
Anyway, here's my elegant solution:
/**
  * @name   - Ellipsify
  * @desc   - trims and adds ellipsis to element when element text height is greater than element height
  * @param  - [required] (string)identity - string containing jquery selector used to create object group (array) based on selector
  * @function : _init - calculates each element and determines need for ellipsis, then truncates text as needed
*/
var Ellipsify = function(identity) {
    if (identity) {
        this.identity = identity;
        this.group = $(this.identity);
        if (this.group.length > 0) {
            this._init();
        }
    }
};
Ellipsify.prototype = {
    _init : function() {
        var that = this;
        that.group.each(function() {
            if ($(this).children('.hidden').length > 0) {
                $(this).children(':not(.hidden)').text($(this).children(':not(.hidden)').text().replace('...',' ') + $(this).children('.hidden').text());
                $(this).children('.hidden').remove();
            }
            if ($(this).children().outerHeight() > $(this).innerHeight()) {
                $(this).append('');
                while ($(this).children(':not(.hidden)').outerHeight() > $(this).innerHeight()) {
                    var paragraph = $(this).children(':not(.hidden)').text().replace('...', '');
                    var lastword = paragraph.substring(paragraph.lastIndexOf(' '));
                    $(this).children(':not(.hidden)').text(paragraph.substring(0, paragraph.lastIndexOf(' ')) + '...');
                    $(this).children('.hidden').text(lastword + $(this).children('.hidden').text());
                }
            }
        });
    },
};

The HTML looks like this:

Big paragraph of text goes here.

and the CSS is simply:
p {
    font-size:1em;
    line-height:1.5em;
    height:4.5em;
    width:100%;
    overflow:hidden;
}
.hidden {
    display:none;
}

A: Full-word multi-line word-wrap with ellipsis: http://jsfiddle.net/tdpLdqpo/4/
Check out the JSFiddle.  Just set these two properties:
var maxWidth = 300;
var maxLines = 3;

A: $(".jsgrid-cell").each(function(i,v){
    var txt=$(v).text();
    if(txt.length>100){
        var shortText=txt.substring(0, 100)+
        ""+
            "..."+
        ""+
        ""+
            txt.substring(100, txt.length)+
        "";

        $(v).html(shortText );
    }
});

A: Jquery function for single line ellipsis text. You can use this function for character count as well in textbox, span or any other DOM element. You just have to pass Text (String) (DOM element Value) and Size (Int) (In number)
// Character Count Ellipsis
function EllipsisChar(text, size) {
    var len = text.length;
    if (len >= size) {
        // if text length is equal to or more than given size then add ...
        text = text.substring(0, size) + "...";
    }
    else {
        // if text length is less then do something
    }
    return text;
};

Here is the example how to use:
var EllipsisReturnText = EllipsisChar("Sample text goes here", 10);

Result:
"Sample tex..."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
COVID-19 Information & Updates at CLE
For more information on the impact COVID-19 has on the airport, flights and safety measures being taken by CLE, please Click Here.
Non-Stop Cities
Information & Assistance
TSA & Security
Visit Cleveland
Airport Terminal Map
Courtesy Phones
Mother's Room
USO Lounge
Interfaith Center
Pet Relief Area
TACKL Health
Pet Relief Area (Main Concourse)
Shop, Dine & Relax
Plug In & Work
Healthy CLE
CLE Art Program
Parking & Transit Map
Cell Phone Lot
Shuttles, Limos, & Ride Shares
Media Tips & FAQs
Business at CLE
CLE Master Plan
Hopkins Happenings | Press Releases
| City of Cleveland Awards Contract for Development of CLE Airport Master Plan
City of Cleveland Awards Contract for Development of CLE Airport Master Plan
The City of Cleveland has awarded a contract to RS&H to create a new Master Plan for Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE). RS&H was selected through a competitive bidding process to work on the project. The company provides architecture, engineering and consulting services.
"The City of Cleveland is working to ensure that Cleveland Hopkins International Airport's remains competitive in the industry and continues to grow in the number of flight options offered and passengers it serves," said Mayor Frank G. Jackson. "This Master Plan process will identify investments that will make Hopkins a more modern, user-friendly airport to attract business flyers as well as leisure travelers."
A Master Plan is a dynamic, long-term plan that provides a conceptual layout which provide guidance for future growth and development at CLE. It will include airfield planning, terminal planning, landside planning, other facilities (i.e. aircraft maintenance, general aviation, emergency services) and environmental considerations.
The last time the airport worked on a Master Plan was in 2012 when CLE served as an airline hub location. Since the hub closure, CLE has changed dramatically going from roughly 65 percent Origin and Destination (O & D) traffic to 97 percent O & D, which has brought more than 3.6 million more passengers annually through the front door of CLE.
"As we look to the future of our airport, it is important to have a forward-looking plan on how to best serve the stakeholders that utilized the airport," said Airport Director Robert Kennedy. "The new Master Plan will give us a road map of projects and
improvements for years to come, given the dynamic changes the airport has undergone since 2014."
In addition to the changes as CLE, the Master Plan will incorporate global changes in the aviation industry. In recent years, commercial aviation has seen new business models and methodologies, significant rise of ultra-low-cost carriers and a dramatic change in the types of aircraft flying today. All of these facets will be taken into consideration as CLE strengthens its roll within the National Airspace System.
The $4.5 million project is expected to be complete by early 2021.
CLE presents two new exhibits CLE sees increase in passengers in 2013, first time since 2007 numbers have increased Frontier Airlines is Taking Its Talents to Cleveland!
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text:
class Control {
private:
  Statevars * vars;

  float xtrack_error;
  float xtrack_error_prev;
  float xtrack_error_rate;
  float xtrack_error_sum;
  float steer_control = STEER_NEUTRAL;

  void update_xtrack_error(void);
  void update_xtrack_error_rate(void);
  void update_xtrack_error_sum(void);

public:
  Control(const Statevars * s);
  void initialize(void);
  int8_t verify_init(void);
  void update(void);
};

#endif

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The DG district is part of Scotland. This local area includes Canonbie, Castle Douglas, Dalbeattie, Dumfries, Gretna, Kirkcudbright, Lockerbie, Moffat, Newton Stewart, Stranraer & Thornhill.
Explore below the franchises and business opportunities available in Dumfries and Galloway (DG). Franchisors have varying ways of defining territotories so though they may be displayed below it does not mean that a franchise is definitely available in this location. Also, some franchise business models may not necessarily be suitable to this specific location, though this is something that each individual franchisor would be able to explore with you directly.


text:
Ed Wood and the Mafia
My thanks to Ed Wood scholar Greg Dziawer for providing the breadcrumbs I followed for this article.
We all know that Ed Wood, the "Worst Director of All Time!", the writer/producer/director/creator of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, the "Worst Movie Ever Made!", was a friend of Bela Lugosi, and vice versa, while at the same time capitalizing on Lugosi's star power (the man still had some, despite a long string of B-movie performances for which he was underpaid) to further his own aspirations. And we know that, in the years following his apogee with PLAN 9, Wood was forced to work in the porn industry just to keep a roof over his head. But did you know this forced working in the seedy industry put him into contact, one degree removed, from organized crime?
Michael Thevis started his "career" selling black market porn in Atlanta and ended it on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. In between, he controlled almost half of the pornography industry in America, raked in a hundred million dollars a year through both legal and illegal means, murdered rivals, and peddled violent rape porn, S-and-M, bestiality, and kiddie porn. He owned X-rated theaters and adult bookstores across the country, had contacts within the Gambino crime family, was involved in arson and extortion, and published a magazine called PENDULUM. Ed Wood wrote regularly for PENDULUM, and Thevis published two of Wood's pornographic novels.
Thevis maintained legitimate businesses in order to launder the cash from his illegal ones, and it's doubtful Ed ever knew too much about the man, other than what he heard in rumors. Wood's association with Thevis is but an interesting, though terribly sad, footnote.
TheCheezman • January 7, 2019
Angelique's Cookies
Are You Ready For THE PASSAGE?
Vampire Fang Implants


text:
En astrologie, ce qu'on appelle le point cardinal Est de l'horizon (plan tangent localement à la Terre) est l'une des deux intersections du plan de l'horizon avec un grand cercle appelé par Dom Néroman orthovertical ou premier vertical. Ce dernier, qui est perpendiculaire à la fois à l'horizon et au méridien local, est sur le plan orienté Est-Ouest passant par la verticale du lieu (si l'on opère une rotation de 90° autour de la ligne Est-Ouest, le plan de l'horizon vient prendre la place du plan de l'orthovertical, et réciproquement).
Le point cardinal Ouest est le point opposé sur le cercle de l'horizon au point cardinal Est. Dans la journée qui suit le moment pour lequel un thème astral est dressé, la ligne d'horizon (ou ligne Ascendant-descendant) pivote autour de la ligne point cardinal Est de l'horizon-point cardinal ouest de l'horizon.  Ces deux lignes ne sont confondues que lorsque le degré zéro du signe du Bélier (ou point vernal) passe à l'Ascendant ou au Descendant.
Si l'Ascendant est censé exposer l'individu aux regards extérieurs (il relèverait de son comportement), le Point Est est dit correspondre, en interprétation astrologique, aux motivations inconscientes (à ne pas confondre avec le signe solaire, qui correspondrait avec la volonté consciente).

Notes et références

Astrologie occidentale

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


"Does green go on the right and red on the left? Or is that backwards?" Kristin and I are getting ready for a pre-dawn jaunt and on my shoelaces there are now tiny LED "running lights", a gift from dear friend Mary to enhance safety on dark winter mornings. We ramble along Old Chesterbrook Rd with a digression to inspect pastel colored Victorian-style spherical lamps on a side street. Many new houses are under construction and it's fun to peer at the designs as they take shape. Fearless squirrels dash in front of us. Chill northerly breezes begin to blow away some of the unseasonable warmth of recent weeks. We give thanks for being able to run vast distances with friends.