FREERIDE

Can we just start a class action lawsuit against the US government? US Citizens v United States. Gross negligence in handling taxpayer funds would be a good start. Who’s in?

Russia raises children from birth inside fake American towns deep in Siberia. American food. American TV. American holidays. Perfect Midwestern accents drilled in by native speakers brought in for the job. The kids grow up never knowing they are Russian. When they hit their early twenties, the SVR sends them to a cemetery in Canada or the United States, finds a baby who died young with no surviving relatives, and pulls a duplicate birth certificate in that dead child's name. The agent gets a real Social Security number, a real passport, a real identity. They walk into America as an American citizen who legally exists. Then they live a normal life. Real estate agent. Suburban dad. PTA mom. Consulting firm partner. For ten, fifteen, twenty years. Until one day the radio crackles a coded sequence, or a stranger on the subway whispers a phrase only their handler would know, and the sleeper wakes up. This is what former CIA officer John Kiriakou just told Steven Bartlett happens, and the case file is wilder than the story. In June 2010, the FBI rolled up ten of these agents across Boston, Yonkers, suburban New Jersey, and Northern Virginia in Operation Ghost Stories. They had been watching them for more than a decade. One couple, posing as Canadian, had been in Cambridge, Massachusetts long enough to put one kid through high school and into college. The husband held a Harvard MPA. The wife sold houses through Redfin. Their two sons were born in Toronto and grew up believing they were Canadian. When the FBI raided the home, the kids found out their parents were Russian intelligence officers from the agents' own arrest warrants. One agent's mission was to cultivate a venture capitalist who co-chaired Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. The intelligence target Moscow assigned her: details about the global gold market. The cash drops the SVR buried in the woods to fund her operations sat unrecovered in the dirt for two years before another sleeper dug them up. The agents communicated with Moscow through invisible ink, dead drops in suburban parks, radiograms beamed across the Atlantic on shortwave frequencies, and steganography hidden inside vacation photos. Press Control-Alt-E on the right JPEG, type a 27-character password, and the message decrypts. The same toolkit the KGB used in the 1960s, still operational in the 2010s. When the swap happened in Vienna on July 9, 2010, Russia traded ten of these agents for four Western-handled assets, including the GRU colonel later poisoned with novichok in Salisbury. Putin met the returnees personally at the Kremlin, sang the Soviet anthem "Where the Motherland Begins" with them, and placed them in elite positions. The lead Cambridge agent now teaches international relations at MGIMO and consults for Rosneft. His wife writes spy novels and lectures on networking at the Orator Club in Moscow. The program has been running continuously since the 1920s. The current generation is already deployed. Two more illegals were exposed in Slovenia in 2022, posing as Argentine art dealers, with their two young children also in the dark. One was caught in Norway. One was caught in Brazil. The scariest part is not that the sleepers exist. It is that the program has been running for a hundred years, the FBI has known about it for decades, and Moscow keeps replacing the burned agents faster than the West can find the new ones. Right now, somewhere in suburban America, a kid is at soccer practice. Their dad is making dinner. The radio is on in the kitchen. Both of them are waiting for the phrase.

Daenerys Targaryen’s inbreeding coefficient is 0.375. Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg who was impotent, drooled, was mentally disabled, and could barely walk, had a coefficient of 0.254.

BREAKING: Flightpath of the US KC-135R Stratotanker before signal loss over the Strait of Hormuz, with the aircraft descending while squawking general emergency and heading toward Qatar. Currently unclear if it crashed or landed. Powerful regional-level AIS/GPS jamming and spoofing has also been seen over the Strait of Hormuz in the past hour.

🛳️CRUISE SHIP OUTBREAK REPORT RELEASED—New crazy timeline data on cruise ship passengers who got sick and died of hantavirus (and 3 more sickened, including 1 critical). According to latest WHO report, index patient died within 5 days of symptoms. Crazier is that close contact #2 didn’t get hospitalized until 13 days later, and then died within 2 days of hospitalization. Case 3 didn’t get sick until 13 days after first index case died… but respiratory tested negative for 8 days until PCR confirmed it on 8th day; case 3 still hospitalized. Meanwhile, Case 4 got sick on April 28th with pneumonia, and died very quickly just 4 days later! Although uncommon, limited human‑to‑human transmission of HPS due to Andes virus has been reported in community settings involving close and prolonged contact. Secondary infections among healthcare workers have been previously documented in healthcare facilities, though remain rare. Hantavirus infections are associated with a case fatality rate of <1–15% in Asia and Europe and up to 50% in the Americas. While there are no specific treatment nor vaccines for hantavirus infections, early supportive care and immediate referral to a facility with a complete ICU can improve survival. A good reminder that cruise ships often have a variety of outbreaks if not careful.

Jetblue warns it is weeks away from bankruptcy as fuel costs spiral.

Most of you aren't aware, but Hantavirus is not naturally transmittable. On rare occasion it will wiggle its way into a human, but it lacks the ability to jump to another. Until now. With human transmission, this is potentially black plague 2.0.

Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all Jews must convert to Catholicism or leave Italy. The Jewish community protested, so the Pope offered a deal: he would have a religious debate with a representative of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay. If the Pope won, they would have to convert or leave. The Jewish community chose an aged and wise Rabbi to represent them. However, since the Rabbi spoke no Italian and the Pope spoke no Hebrew, they agreed to conduct a silent debate. On the chosen day, the Pope and the Rabbi sat across from each other. The Pope raised his hand and held up three fingers. The Rabbi responded by holding up one finger. Next, the Pope waved his finger in a circle around his head. The Rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope then brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine. The Rabbi reached into his bag and pulled out an apple. At that, the Pope stood up and declared himself defeated. The Rabbi, he said, was too clever. The Jews could stay in Italy! Later, the cardinals gathered and asked the Pope what had happened. The Pope said, “First, I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded with one finger to remind me that there is only one God shared by both our beliefs. Then I circled my finger around my head to show that God is everywhere. He pointed to the ground to show that God is also right here with us. Finally, I presented the wine and wafer to represent salvation. He produced an apple to remind me of original sin. He bested me at every turn, and I could not continue.” Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered around the Rabbi and asked how he had won. “I don’t have a clue,” the Rabbi said. “First, he told me we had three days to get out of Italy, so I gave him the finger. Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews, so I told him that we were staying right here.” “And then what?” someone asked. “I don’t know,” said the Rabbi. “He took out his lunch, so I took out mine!”

If I'm bro with the backwards hat this is getting framed in my house.

Allen iverson in tears having to be consoled, after losing to the pacers in the 2nd round in 2000. It was the 2nd straight yr the pacers sent ai home in the 2nd rd Ai would bounce back in 2000-2001 winning mvp, beating the pacers finally, in route to the nba finals.

I do it for free every day

For more than 50 years, my Dad dreamed of a day when every frame of a major Hollywood film would be captured with IMAX cameras. Tonight, Christopher Nolan spoke beautifully about his friendship with my Dad - and the new Keighley IMAX camera - on The Late Show w/ Colbert.

can’t stop thinking about this one pic from artemis II, it’s so fucking crazy

“I don’t read all the things written about me. I wasn’t aware that the world thought that I was so weird and bizarre. But when you grow up as I did in front of 100 million people since the age of 5, you’re automatically different.” — Michael Jackson. 🕊️ 🥹

Buying concert tickets in another city and planning a trip around it. >>>>

me in my bed judging rich people’s outfits at met gala like:

They have no right to go this hard

Before iPhones, this was the pinnacle of technology

The new trailer for Christopher Nolan's ‘THE ODYSSEY’ has been released. In theaters on July 17.

In Uno that means you are losing.