Art

A ten year-old atheist's thanks to every Christian: In 1976, my best friend was named Dayton. His brother was named Chris. Their parents were building a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. While the house went up, they lived in a trailer on the property. They were all Christians. I was an atheist. Dayton was my best friend anyway. Sara, Dayton's mom, once asked me to help Dayton in school. That was fine with me. She seemed to appreciate that, as if I was doing her a favor. Sara thought I could use some fresh clothes, so she gave me some of Dayton's old things, like the green Hulk t-shirt in the photo. I have another photo of Dayton wearing the same shirt, from when it was his. I didn't like the Hulk, but it was better than a shirt full of holes. I had a sleepover at Dayton's trailer for the Fourth of July weekend, the nation's bicentennial. On the Fourth, while eating breakfast, Sara announced it was Sunday, and we were all going to church. I objected. I said it would be dishonest for me to be there. I said the Bible was science fiction. They could believe it if they wanted to, but I couldn't pretend I did when I didn't. "Nevertheless, it's Sunday and we're going. There will be a picnic after the service. It will be fun." I went, as if trapped on a really scary roller coaster I didn't want to be on, trying not to think of the drop ahead. And then, my most wonderful day began. Everyone was nice. They all wore clean clothes. There was as much food as anyone could want. Best of all, I felt safe for the entire day. It wasn't just Dayton and his family, it was their church and everyone in it. For the first time, I didn't have to constantly scan the horizon for danger, like the time when Dayton and I were on the soccer field and he asked, "Isn't that your mom?" just as she plowed under 100 feet of the soccer field fence with her '65 Mustang. No one pointed a gun at me. Mom didn't try to kill herself, and me and my sister with her, by driving into a truck. I didn't have to worry about moving to a new town the instant I got home, or never seeing my friends again. I didn't have to wonder if one of Mom's boyfriends had found us despite our family-wide name change. For six hours, everything was perfect. A few months later, we moved. I was told I couldn't ever contact Dayton again. Bob, Mom's latest boyfriend, might find us through him. I thought I'd never see him again. Then, on October 3, 1999, Sara appeared to me in a dream. She told me someone in Dayton's family had died. It was her. There was a notice on their little church's website. I was talking with Dayton within minutes. A few months later, he came to LA with his family and met mine. I no longer felt he was foolish to believe in God, and told him how much I appreciated that day at their church, now fifty years ago.

@renegademormon You got me, but I agree. Both should have had a grate.

@ZarkFiles Why the [justified string of extreme expletives] was that tunnel open on one end?

The scariest moment in my life: As a child, I've had a gun pulled on me twice. My mom tried to commit suicide by driving straight into a tractor trailer with my sister and I in the car. Luckily, the other driver swerved. I was caught in a rip tide at a beach, and it pulled me into a whirlpool. I accidentally started a landslide in the California mountains, and started to go down the hill with the rest of the rocks. Those were scary, but the scariest incident prize goes to a day my mom brought my sister and I to the University of Nevada Las Vegas' pool for a swim. It happened in 1980. UNLV allowed people to pay a small fee to use their pool on weekends. I think it was twenty-five cents a person. It was an indoor swim center with two pools. One divided into 8-10 lanes for races, the other was smaller but much deeper, designed for diving. After swimming for ten or twenty minutes, I noticed what looked like a tunnel about 5-8 feet below the water line. I rose to the surface to see where it might lead, and saw it went straight from the diving pool to the racing pool. The distance wasn't too bad, easily within my lung capacity, so I decided to swim underwater from one pool to the other. I took a deep breath, swam down five feet, found the tunnel, and entered. It was narrower than it looked, but fairly easy to swim forward. The end of the tunnel was blocked by an iron grate. I couldn't get through. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around. I had to swim backwards 20 feet and then up to get out. I had budgeted enough air to swim down five feet, across about 20 feet, then up another five. Now, I had to swim another twenty feet before I could get out. I had to grip the walls with my fingertips and inch my way backwards. It had never occurred to me before that the human body is not designed to move backwards in water, but it isn't. It took me three times as long to get out of the tunnel as it took to get in. My lungs started to ache. And then I was out of the tunnel. I started seeing black spots as I lost consciousness. I was about to die. My mouth opened involuntarily and gulped down chlorinated water. And then my nose broke the surface and I was free. My mom was sitting on a lounge chair reading a book. She hadn't noticed, and I didn't tell her.

@twcroy3 Dang it, you just reminded me of my other "scariest moment" and it was at least as bad. I'll have to share that later, maybe tomorrow.

@ZarkFiles You ever have one of those moments where you realize that you better fight or it’s curtains? It was one of those. Kick out of the gear - swim - GTFO dodge . Don’t panic. Oh, and don’t lose the keys to the station wagon.

Few know how Judge Lewis Kaplan manipulated the ruling of the E. Jean Carroll case. The truth behind the ‘judicial forgery’ will disgust you. The first jury said no to r*pe. They found only s*xual assault. They never identified any specific act. In New York State, ’s*xual assault’ could be anything from an wanted advance to verbal taunting in sexual malicious manner. But in this ruling the context of ‘s*xual assault’ was left open to interpretation. Judge Kaplan filled the gap himself. He declared the jury must have found 'digital penetration’ as the primary ‘assault’ because the damages award was too large for anything less. No jury ever said those words. Kaplan supplied them. By putting a monetary value on it. Once that was established, Kaplan took it further. He then ordered the second jury to treat his invention as established fact. Accept it as true. Move on. He used the word “r*pe” in describing the “assault.” Issue preclusion requires what the jury must have decided, not what a judge prefers it decided. Kaplan acted as both judge and jury. That is a Seventh Amendment violation. The specific act mattered. The first jury's "no" on r*pe could have meant it rejected Carroll's full story. Kaplan chose the inference that advanced the narrative and discarded the rest. Rule 49(a) is not a tool for post-verdict fact creation. No court has ever given preclusive effect to a finding made to resolve a remittitur motion. Until Judge Kaplan. This is outcome engineering from the bench. The second verdict was built on sand the judge poured himself.

@twcroy3 I am amazed you managed to ditch your gear. That had to have been very difficult, and the water temps had to be pretty low, which would have made it difficult to swim even without your gear.

At 16, me and 2 buddies went fishing in a canoe in the Wapsipinicon River in Iowa — in early March. It was 50deg but essentially still winter. We were in parkas and boots. The wind tipped us and we all went down about 12+ ft in freezing water. “This is how it ends” went through my mind. We all kicked off our gear and got to shore. I’ve lived a life of close shaves and this was only one of them.

That comment is unrelated to the Carroll case. However crude, it sounds like there is some form of consent involved because he said, "they let you do it." That is very different from the scenario painted by Carroll, whose allegation is incongruous for someone who is concerned with consent.

@ZarkFiles I'm shocked that you didn't believe Trump when he said he just grabs em by the pussy the first time he said it.

According to the Gateway Pundit, E. Jean Carroll was just paid $5.6 Million by President Trump, pursuant to a court order. The way I see it, this completes the act of grand larceny against the president. Here's why: In my opinion, the underlying sexual assault claim was never true. I don't believe Carroll and Trump ever met. I don't believe the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room encounter she describes happened. This is my read of the evidence as presented — a decades-old, undated allegation, corroborated only by two friends recalling what Carroll told them years after the fact, plus the Access Hollywood tape, which I don't think was ever a confession to this, or any, specific act. If I'm right about that — and I want to be clear, this is my assessment only — then here's the legal question worth asking: what do you call it when someone knowingly presents a false claim in court, for the purpose of extracting money, and succeeds? It's called larceny by false pretenses — obtaining property through knowing misrepresentation. Courts have applied it for centuries to conduct that goes through a "legitimate" process on its face: the clearest modern example is insurance fraud, where fabricating a claim to collect a payout is prosecuted as theft, not just as fraud, even though the money changed hands "voluntarily" through a formal claims process. The mechanism doesn't launder the underlying conduct — a false pretense used to obtain money is still theft, whether the vehicle is an insurance form or a jury verdict. If the claim was fabricated, the court didn't neutralize the fraud — it became the instrument of it. And once money actually changes hands, as it just did this week, an attempted theft becomes a completed one.

She didn't prove anything to me. I doubt she proved anything to the judge either, and possibly the jury as well. Maybe they were all stupid, but it is more likely they were willing to participate in the lie, as you seem to be, to hurt Trump. At the very least, to remain ignorant to avoid acquiring any information that would conflict with their preferred narrative.

@ZarkFiles You could've saved time and just said that she hurt your feelings by proving your daddy is a rapist.

@AmericanMama I'd go so far as to serve bacon to the muslim students. I'm vegan and wouldn't eat bacon. If that's all there is, I'd go somewhere else. Same for these guys, but the incentives are wrong.

I don’t believe in negotiating with terrorists.

@jefftimmer He paid the money to a woman who made the claim. I believe she lied and has never been in a private space with Trump. At most, one of thousands in a handshake line. So no, your "he r***d" line isn't working here.

Fun Fact: The President of the goddam United States paid nearly $6 million in damages today to a woman he raped. Once upon a time, this would have been the only news you heard.

@MikeHart I sure hope so.

@ZarkFiles Can the people who funded her also be charged? That is where this get fun.

@BaselineHuman01 My employer, THQ games, to fix animation done in China.

@ZarkFiles Who sent you to China and why did you go?

I lived in Hollywood when I was sent to communist China for 6 weeks. At the time, I lived in a building also inhabited by some semi-famous people. Alyssa Milano was one, the writer Donald Spoto was another. I became friends with the actor Gary Graham at poolside. We saw each other regularly, and our daughters sometimes played together. When I returned to LA from China, I ran into Gary at the hot tub in our apartment complex. There, Gary told me of his experience in China, which predated mine by several years. I think he said he'd gone there to film a documentary, likely for his church (he was a very active Christian). This is what he said, as best I can remember: His crew had grown close with one of their government-assigned interpreters. At some point they realized he'd never even seen a Playboy — they're banned there. So after they got home, one of the guys mailed him one, thinking it was a harmless joke. It never arrived. Chinese authorities intercepted it, and someone was arrested over it — not the interpreter, but his brother, apparently by mistake. Neither of them had asked for it or knew it was coming. Not long after, Deng Xiaoping's government launched what became known as the "Strike Hard" campaign — a nationwide crackdown that, over the following few years, led to an estimated 30,000 death sentences. The interpreter's brother was one of them. A magazine, mailed as a joke, ended in an execution. I can't verify that specific case — Gary's gone now too, so I'm telling it the way he told me. But the campaign itself is very real and well documented: people really were arrested and sentenced to death under a catch-all "hooliganism" charge for offenses far less serious than smuggled pornography. A young woman in Xi'an was executed simply for being seen as too sociable with men. A man was sentenced to death for stealing a hat and getting in a minor scuffle. The machinery that could turn Gary's story into a real outcome unquestionably existed.

@KingdomsCometh A subcontractor was supposed to get a job done in Japan, but they sent it to China to save money. The job was completely screwed up, so I was sent with a colleague to salvage what we could.

@ZarkFiles Why were you sent there?

@NCCoastfan2 My opinion is that she had fantasies about Trump, and others took advantage of her weakness to harm Trump.

@ZarkFiles Lunatic Carroll never presented an atom of evidence of any assault. Trump was railroaded.

I expect that Trump will try to get that money back, and may succeed if for no other reason but the case was flimsy at best. If that happens, for Carroll's sake I hope she doesn't spend any of the money. It would be much harder for her to pay it back than it was for Trump to come up with the cash.

@lulumain2025 Yep. Baptised in 2005, almost 30 years later.

@ZarkFiles God works in mysterious ways! Hope you joined the club

A ten year-old atheist's thanks to every Christian: In 1976, my best friend was named Dayton. His brother was named Chris. Their parents were building a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. While the house went up, they lived in a trailer on the property. They were all Christians. I was an atheist. Dayton was my best friend anyway. Sara, Dayton's mom, once asked me to help Dayton in school. That was fine with me. She seemed to appreciate that, as if I was doing her a favor. Sara thought I could use some fresh clothes, so she gave me some of Dayton's old things, like the green Hulk t-shirt in the photo. I have another photo of Dayton wearing the same shirt, from when it was his. I didn't like the Hulk, but it was better than a shirt full of holes. I had a sleepover at Dayton's trailer for the Fourth of July weekend, the nation's bicentennial. On the Fourth, while eating breakfast, Sara announced it was Sunday, and we were all going to church. I objected. I said it would be dishonest for me to be there. I said the Bible was science fiction. They could believe it if they wanted to, but I couldn't pretend I did when I didn't. "Nevertheless, it's Sunday and we're going. There will be a picnic after the service. It will be fun." I went, as if trapped on a really scary roller coaster I didn't want to be on, trying not to think of the drop ahead. And then, my most wonderful day began. Everyone was nice. They all wore clean clothes. There was as much food as anyone could want. Best of all, I felt safe for the entire day. It wasn't just Dayton and his family, it was their church and everyone in it. For the first time, I didn't have to constantly scan the horizon for danger, like the time when Dayton and I were on the soccer field and he asked, "Isn't that your mom?" just as she plowed under 100 feet of the soccer field fence with her '65 Mustang. No one pointed a gun at me. Mom didn't try to kill herself, and me and my sister with her, by driving into a truck. I didn't have to worry about moving to a new town the instant I got home, or never seeing my friends again. I didn't have to wonder if one of Mom's boyfriends had found us despite our family-wide name change. For six hours, everything was perfect. A few months later, we moved. I was told I couldn't ever contact Dayton again. Bob, Mom's latest boyfriend, might find us through him. I thought I'd never see him again. Then, on October 3, 1999, Sara appeared to me in a dream. She told me someone in Dayton's family had died. It was her. There was a notice on their little church's website. I was talking with Dayton within minutes. A few months later, he came to LA with his family and met mine. I no longer felt he was foolish to believe in God, and told him how much I appreciated that day at their church, now fifty years ago.

@MikeTCT Exactly right. Laws, like handcuffs that remain in a drawer, are useless if never used. The same goes for data validation and other controls. Their mere existence isn't enough, they must be used.

I like it. Where there are weak controls, people WILL take advantage of the fact. A lack of transparency will cover their tracks. Controls must be adequate to the task including document security from beginning to end, and the verification of a voters qualifications to vote in a given jurisdiction. EVERYTHING must be completely open and transparent.

Me too. Dayton's family was great. I cut out a detail for brevity, but it is interesting. I actually had four dreams of Sara, not one, all in the same month. I'd been keeping a journal of my dreams for about 12 years at that point, and Sara and Dayton had only appeared in one other dream in the first month of the journal, which had nothing to do with a death in the family. Also, at first I worried Sara was talking about Dayton, but I couldn't find anything on him. It wasn't until a year later that I realized she was talking about herself, which makes sense because she was the one ttalking in the dream. I looked her name up and was almost instantly rewarded with the notice of her death, in the month all four dreams came from, and a way to contact Dayton.

@ZarkFiles I love this story of your life so much !! Impactful.

@YoAdrienne1968 I thought she was beautiful before the violent surgical injuries she mutilated herself with. It's really sad what the idea of transgenderism has done to so many people.

No one in Ellen (Elliot) Page’s life told her she was beautiful and worthy of remaining a beautiful woman. Now she is gone and replaced by a facade of gender fluid gobbly goop. 😔

🚨 ESCAPE FROM NYC! People across New York City are making a decision they never thought they’d have to make. They’re leaving. For many, it’s a combination of high rent, rising everyday costs, concerns about crime, frustration with city leadership, and feeling like the city they once loved has changed. More and more moving trucks seem to be part of the skyline now. It’s a sad sight when people who built their lives in a city feel their best option is to pack up and start over somewhere else.