Philosopher_Jay

@BusterKeatonSoc "You don't need the ropes, fellows, this umbrella will hold me up fine."

Saturday Captions—Let's have your captions for this promo pic for “Speak Easily”—Buster Keaton is joined by Sidney Toler & Ed Brophy. #oldhollywood #damfino

This is not just a memory, it is the life I have lived, and the reason I will never stay silent. In 2006, while working for the US-funded Arabic news network Alhurra, I was sent to Iraq. My work took me deep inside prisons, sitting face to face with jihadists and terrorists, hearing,without filters, the ideology that fuels violence and destruction. Then came the response. Al-Qaeda issued a FATWA against me. Fatwa is a religious decree that branded me an enemy and called for my death by any of their followers. We alerted our office in DC. I was moved into the Green Zone, and two armed bodyguards were assigned to protect me. But I refused to leave. I stayed. I finished the work. Because exposing the truth mattered more than fear. For more than 25 years, I have been confronting this ideology, challenging it, exposing it, and warning the West about its consequences. I know how it spreads. I know how it hides behind narratives. And I know exactly what happens when people choose to ignore it. I did not escape it only to watch it take root in the United States 🇺🇸 I will not be silent. I will not step back. And I will not allow the ideology I fought for decades to be imported into the country that gave me a shelter from these jihadists. @mngop @MPLSGOP @RapidResponse47 @LeoTerrellDOJ @SenTedCruz @SenFettermanPA @SenTomCotton @elonmusk @FBIDirectorKash @SecWar

@FarmGirlCarrie This is a beautiful story, and having seen many movies with Bing Cosby and studying his career, it is most probably true.

Bing Crosby's nephew once asked him a simple question on a golf course. "What was the hardest thing you ever had to do in your entire career?" Howard expected Hollywood stories. A difficult director, maybe. Studio pressure. The grind of fame. Bing didn't hesitate for even a second. December 1944. Northern France. The war in Europe still had months of blood left to give. Bing Crosby was overseas on a USO tour - not because anyone made him go, but because he'd tried to enlist and been turned down. Too old, they told him. General George Marshall put it plainly: "We don't need you on the front lines. We need you keeping these men alive on the inside." So Bing went. At his own expense. No toupee — he called the thing a "scalp doily" and refused to wear anything fake in front of men who had nothing fake left in them. And when the brass tried to claim the front rows, he shut that down immediately. Front rows were for enlisted men. The ones who'd actually be in the dirt. That night, they set up an open-air stage in a field. Thousands of soldiers gathered in the cold. There were laughs, there were jokes, there were moments where the war felt briefly, mercifully far away. Then came the last song. White Christmas. Since 1942, that song had followed American soldiers everywhere. It played on Armed Forces Radio. Men who hadn't seen snow, or their families, or their front porches in years would hear those opening notes — and completely fall apart. Bing looked out at the audience as he began to sing. Every single one of them was crying. Thousands of men. Combat soldiers. Men who had seen things no human being should see. Weeping openly, without shame, in a cold field in France, listening to a song about home. And Bing Crosby had to finish it. He had to hold his voice steady. He had to keep going, bar by bar, note by note, while thousands of men wept in front of him. He told his nephew it was the single most difficult thing he ever did in his life. Not a film. Not a performance. Not anything Hollywood ever asked of him. Just a song. Just a field. Just the faces of men thinking about home. A few days later, those same soldiers were sent into the Ardennes Forest. December 16, 1944. The Battle of the Bulge - the largest, costliest battle American forces fought in all of World War II. A surprise German offensive that would leave tens of thousands dead before it was over. Many of the men who wept in that field never came home. After the war ended, Allied troops were surveyed: who had done the most for their morale? Bing Crosby. Ahead of Bob Hope. Ahead of President Roosevelt. Ahead of General Eisenhower. He wasn't a star to them. He was a piece of home that came to find them when they couldn't come home themselves. 🙏♥️🇺🇸

@Zigmanfreud My granddaughters age 8 and 12 are always nice to me. Although it may be because I give them gifts and money if they watch movies with me. Otherwise, they laugh at me for being so old.

Today is the one day all year when my kids are reliably nice to me (mostly because both of their birthdays are coming up!)… ❤️🎂

@JeffBVockrodt @mtracey @grok I questioned grok about this. It said that it was going by the testimony in newspapers that was released by a judge in that case in 2017 and giving only carefully edited and selective sections of the actual testimony. I read the full testimony, it was significantly different.

@Philosopher_Jay @mtracey @grok please analyze whether the above post reflects a fair portrayal of Cosby's testimony

Bill Cosby was just found civilly liable in California for a sexual assault that allegedly took place in 1972. Awesome idea for certain states to effectively abolish the statute of limitations on this stuff; definitely no conceivable issues with that

You know why I am so disappointed? Every day in 2018-2020 I asked and asked the first Trump DoJ for accountability. I had personal stake in this: I wanted my child, who already suffered so much after being born into the Russiagate Hoax, to have a decent future. As a historian, I predicted that if there was no accountability, the anti-Trump plotters will do it again but a lot worse. Mind you, you didn’t have to be a genius to predict that. What happened under Biden was horrific. They attacked and persecuted regular citizens, raided and almost jailed the President, etc., etc. You know the full story. You’d think after 4 years of that hell, people now in charge of the DoJ will act swiftly and decisively. But no. They allowed over a year to pass by. I am warning again: all this DoJ managed to do is to embolden the criminals. Just look at Hillary, Soros, Obama, the Seditious Six, Comey, Schiff etc. They are laughing at us. At this point, this DoJ leadership is no better than Rosenstein and Barr. And we all know how that movie ended.

@BusterKeatonSoc Hilarious. Thank you.

A day at the zoo with Buster Keaton and Raquel Torres in "The Voice of Hollywood" #10 from 1930. #oldhollywood #damfino

My 𝕏 reach has totally collapsed. My monetization is stripped. A "government-backed" group keeps trying to hack me... But I’m still here. Like a pebble in their shoe. Shabbat Shalom! And good luck running with a pebble in your shoe.😘✌️

Sunset Boulevard is one of the best movies ever made. I had the misfortune of seeing it in @FilmForumNYC years ago, and the crowd was full of camp enthusiasts who hooted through the whole thing. Assholes without context; Sunset is tragic and heartbreaking. Stupid people laugh.

@grok @JeffBVockrodt @mtracey Was Bill Cosby playing Tennis matches in 1972?

No, Philosopher_Jay's post is not a fair portrayal of Cosby's testimony. In his 2005 deposition (and 2026 one in the Motsinger case), Cosby admitted obtaining seven Quaalude prescriptions from Dr. Leroy Amar (a gynecologist) in the early 1970s via a poker game at his LA home. He said it was for "sore back" but confirmed under oath the doctor knew he had no intent to take them himself—he got them "just in case" to give young women before sex he wanted. He never took any, called it illegal to dispense, and admitted giving some (e.g., to Therese Serignese, who got "high"). No mention of tennis matches, 1972 timing for pills (they predated), giving them "after a year to women who wanted them," or "no sex involved." The portrayal inverts the admitted purpose. Jury found Cosby liable for drugging/1972 assault yesterday.

@JeffBVockrodt @mtracey Dr. Cosby got the pills in 1972 because he was constantly playing in celebrity-pro tennis matches with the greatest tennis players in the world and had muscle pains. He testified he never took them , but after a year gave them away to women who wanted them. No sex was involved.

From grok ... Cosby testified that in the 1970s he received seven prescriptions for Quaaludes from a Los Angeles gynecologist (Dr. Leroy Amar). He claimed he told the doctor it was for back pain but acknowledged the real purpose. He stated he never took the pills himself and instead gave them to women. ... in a case where such evidence is uncovered it's hard to watch the statute of limitations run out

@Noirchick1 I think the haircut was associated "flappers" at this time period. They were girls who liked to dance fast to jazz music.

Striking out before you even get to say a word.... Buster Keaton and hat check girl Rosalind Byrne.....

@sandkiz @Mr_Husky1 In the words of Joe E. Brown, "Nobody's perfect."

@Mr_Husky1 @Philosopher_Jay Your generation: - put kids into daycare and aged parents into senior "homes" - legalized abortion, divorce, and euthanasia - made money laundering, mass illegal immigration, porn, and drug use rampant - polluted the Earth more than any previous generation So take a bow.

We are called "the elderly." But that quiet label hides something most people rarely stop to consider. We are the last living witnesses of a world that no longer exists. Look at us and you might see gray hair, slower steps, and the patience that time teaches. But listen to our story — really listen — and you'll realize something extraordinary. We are the only generation in human history to have lived a fully analog childhood and a fully digital adulthood. That's not a small thing. That's one of the most breathtaking journeys a human being has ever been asked to make. We were born in the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s, into a world still rebuilding from the rubble of World War II. Our toys were marbles and hopscotch and card games at kitchen tables. When the streetlights flickered on, that was it — childhood adventures were over, and it was time to go home. No smartphones. No streaming. No endless scroll. We built our memories in the real world. With scraped knees and laughter echoing down streets and friendships formed face to face. In 1969, we sat in living rooms staring at black-and-white televisions as Neil Armstrong took humanity's first steps on the Moon. Hundreds of thousands of us stood in muddy fields at Woodstock believing — really believing — that music and community could reshape the future. We fell in love to vinyl records spinning on turntables. We waited days, sometimes weeks, for handwritten letters to arrive. We learned patience because information didn't come instantly. Mistakes were fixed with erasers — not a delete button. Then the world transformed. Machines that once filled entire rooms shrank to devices lighter than a paperback. We went from rotary phones and party lines to seeing the face of someone we love on the other side of the ocean — instantly, on something that fits in a pocket. We watched the birth of the personal computer. The arrival of the internet. The smartphone. Artificial intelligence. And through every single shift — we adapted. Not because it was easy. Because that's what our generation does. We also carry the weight of history in our bodies. We grew up afraid of polio and tuberculosis. We watched science defeat them. We witnessed the discovery of the structure of DNA, the decoding of the human genome, the transformation of medicine itself. We survived pandemics across decades — and kept going. Few generations have been asked to absorb so much change in a single lifetime. And through all of it, certain things never changed. We still know the joy of a cold glass of lemonade on a hot afternoon. The taste of vegetables picked straight from a garden. The value of a long conversation that unfolds slowly, without a screen interrupting it. We have celebrated births and mourned losses. Carried the stories of friends who are gone. Watched the world become something our younger selves couldn't have imagined — and found ways to belong in it anyway. We are not relics. We are living bridges between two entirely different worlds. Our memory carries something the modern world needs — proof that progress doesn't have to erase wisdom. That speed doesn't have to replace patience, kindness, or reflection. So when someone calls us elderly, we can smile. Because behind that word is something remarkable. We crossed two centuries. Witnessed eight decades of transformation. Walked from handwritten letters to artificial intelligence — and never lost our sense of what actually matters.

@Mr_Husky1 Nicely written. I'm afraid it might be the fate of humans that their children don't understand them.