Nombe (@nombesf on Threads)

Important history! #Deadheads

Systemic theft-denial of loans, a biased legal system that refused to enforce its own rules against predatory, fraudulent encroachment.

Lot of you don’t know bout dis #OhioPlayers 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Woodstock Jazz Festival. Jack DeJohnette, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Anthony Braxton, Lee Konitz, Miroslav Vitous ft. Chick Corea #Jazz

Think New Orleans music begins with Jelly Roll Morton or Louis Armstrong? Long before recording technology, composers across the city were already experimenting with rhythm, improvisation, and global influences. Their work survived only in print. Now, for the first time in over a century, that music can be heard again. Opening April 16 at the New Orleans Jazz Museum: The First Piano Professors and the Lost Music of Early New Orleans Featuring a live performance by Victor Campbell Special thanks to Bywater Hotel and exhibition sponsor Ann Atkinson. More info: nolajazzmuseum.org/lostmusic #NOLAJazzMuseum #JazzOrigins #NewOrleansMusic #NOLAHistory

💛 Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Maya Angelou, who would have turned 98. A poet, author, activist, and global voice for justice — her words continue to inspire the world. “Still I rise.” ✨What is your favorite Dr. Maya Angelou quote? #MayaAngelou #Birthday

I wrote "My Way" in 1968, and one of my greatest decisions was handing it my friend Frank Sinatra. Stream "My Way" here: tinyurl.com/y3jt4fjh

This MJ photo is being sold in Goldin's photography auction tonight, confirming that the NBA Summer League, going into the 1984-85 season, was indeed called the Schlitz Malt Liquor Summer League.

JFK had Theodore Sorensen (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”), Reagan had Peggy Noonan (“slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God”), Bush had David Frum (“Axis of Evil”), and Obama had Jon Favreau (“Yes we can.”). All presidential speechwriters who helped craft speeches that entered world history. Speechwriters matter. When an important message must be delivered to a nation and to the world, it has to be conveyed with the right political substance, at the appropriate level for a president, and in a way that can be remembered. Speeches are particularly important when a nation must be brought together, when support for a cause must be built. That is why such speeches carry a certain sense of solemnity. And it is also why they are preserved for posterity. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after launch in 1986, it shocked the American nation. Peggy Noonan wrote President Reagan’s address — a speech that comforted, encouraged, and honoured the fallen astronauts — and which was delivered as only a statesman could. And that brings me to today. A few days ago, Donald Trump was due to address the American nation. The United States is at war. In such moments, a president speaks to the nation and to the world — typically at the outset of a conflict. Yet more than a month has passed. I set out to find the speech, to see how it had actually been written. But on the White House website, there are no speeches to be found — only short, stilted video clips from various events. There are no written records for the history books. Why does this matter? Because it illustrates something fundamental: the absence of a coherent articulation of vision and strategy. It is precisely through speeches that leaders communicate their plans and direction. Trump’s “speeches”, by contrast, are often little more than a stream of words without a clear thread. This week’s address on Iran could have been different. I have found video clips and a transcript via the Associated Press, but not the speech as a coherent, official document. Writing a speech is a collective process. The central message and its significance are defined first, before the text is drafted, refined, and aligned. That is how it has traditionally been done in the United States. Or rather, that is how it used to be done. Today, it is not even clear who writes Trump’s speeches. What is clear is that they rarely convey a consistent message. And that is the point: when the speeches themselves are absent — or lack structure and coherence — it suggests the absence of a clearly communicated vision.

Applebaum's piece is worth reading slowly because the specific details are doing work that the summary can't. Danish military commanders - inside a NATO alliance the United States founded - had to sit in a room and war-game whether their forces would shoot down American planes and kill American soldiers. Some of them still haven't fully recovered from running that exercise. The most popular app in Denmark during Applebaum's visit was one that identifies American products so users know not to buy them. NATO has invoked Article 5 exactly once in its history. On behalf of the United States. After September 11th. Allied troops went to Afghanistan and some of them died there. Trump told reporters those allies "stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." The families of soldiers who didn't come back heard that. Now Trump is in the middle of a war in the Persian Gulf with the Strait of Hormuz locked, oil prices spiking, and he's telling NATO allies - the same ones he insulted and tariffed and threatened - that he's "demanding" they come help solve a problem his own decisions helped create. Applebaum's conclusion is precise: he doesn't connect what he does on one day to what happens weeks later. Allied leaders have drawn their conclusions. The rupture, as Mark Carney called it, isn't coming. It already happened.

A lot more men getting emotional and angry about this tweet.

Here is everything Dawn Staley had to say today about Geno Auriemma, his statement, and her perspective: "No distractions at this time... I grew up in the projects of North Philly. 215, 267 area code. Nothing can derail us, or me, from staying with the task at hand."

The Denmark detail is the one that should stop people cold. NATO allies had to genuinely war-game shooting down American planes. Some of their military leaders still haven't fully processed having run that exercise. The most popular app in the country identified American products to avoid buying. And now Trump is demanding - his word - those same allies solve the Strait of Hormuz problem his war created. NATO invoked Article 5 once. For us. Their soldiers died in Afghanistan. He told reporters they stayed "a little back." Their governments remember that. They've drawn the conclusions and they aren't reversible.

A typical day at my elementary school: 1. Spelling 2. Math 3. Social studies 4. Lunch 5. See which kid dies on this fucking thing 6. Art 7. Music

Victor Glover failed an engineering class his sophomore year of college. His dad talked him out of joining the Navy SEALs and told him an engineering degree and pilot wings might make him an astronaut someday. Right now Glover is somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. He grew up in Pomona, California. Played quarterback in high school, wrestled well enough to place sixth at the state championship, won Athlete of the Year. Went to Cal Poly for engineering and played both sports at the college level. He got his Navy wings in 2001 and started flying F/A-18 fighter jets off aircraft carriers. His squadron deployed on the USS John F. Kennedy to fight in Iraq, the carrier’s final deployment ever. Twenty-four combat missions. His commanding officer gave him the callsign “Ike,” short for “I Know Everything.” He became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base and over his career flew more than 40 types of aircraft, 3,000 hours in the air, everything from a Korean War-era Soviet MiG-15 to the Goodyear blimp. More than 400 landings on a moving carrier deck. He earned three master’s degrees in three years. He once told Cal Poly’s president that the hardest thing he ever chose to do was walk in space. The second hardest was wrestling practice. He applied to NASA in 2009 and got rejected. Applied again in 2013 while working in the U.S. Senate for John McCain. NASA’s head of flight crew operations called him. He missed the call. Frantically dialed back. Eight people got in that year out of more than 6,000 applicants. NASA put him in the pilot seat for the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon flight in 2020. He spent 168 days on the International Space Station and walked in space four times. Last June he went back to Cal Poly to accept an honorary doctorate. His wife Dionna and their oldest daughter Genesis both walked across the stage at the same ceremony to pick up their own degrees. Three days ago Glover launched from Kennedy Space Center. The crew will fly past the far side of the Moon on Monday and travel about 252,000 miles from home, breaking a distance record that Apollo 13 set fifty-six years ago. They come back at roughly 25,000 mph. He has four daughters. His callsign is still Ike.

@jazzisdeadco youtube.com/watch?v=LuzlbR…

@jazzisdeadco RIP James youtu.be/T4JtCCWB6Y4

Rest In Power James Gadson 🕊️ The 16th Note King, the master of the pocket, the heartbeat of soul. Nearly 300 gold records, and every one of them felt like home. If it made you move, he was probably behind it. Thank you for showing us where the groove lives.

Going off the board with this one. Which team do you associate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with?

Marvin Gaye composed, & remade the boundaries of what a hit could be, in complete defiance of the incredibly successful formula that made him a star in the first place. What he managed to do was unprecedented in R&B. Its closest analogue was The Beatles radical evolution in Pop

Iconic Legends, Aging Gracefully. Candi Staton 85, Denise Williams 75, Melba Moore 80, Regina Belle 62 and Anita Ward 68. 🖤