IF IT WERE ONLY ON THAT…  Report: FBI Conducted Domestic Influence Operation Targeting Social and Corporate Media to Discredit Hunter Biden Laptop Story.

FACT CHECKERS ARE FOR WRONG THINKERS:  ‘Fact Checkers’ MIA After After Joe Biden Tells Whopper About Giving Uncle a Purple Heart.

UNLSS THEY’RE AFRAID OF WHAT HE’LL SAY:  Still Makes No Prosecutorial Sense For Feds To Have Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested On Eve of Congressional Testimony.

UH UH. SURE IT IS:  NYT Claims Swastika Shaped Crossword on Eve of Hanukkah is a ‘Common’ Design.

THEY’RE STARTING TO TURN ON THE HOMELESSNESS THING:  Article in “The Atlantic” Slams Blue State Liberal Policies for Homelessness Crisis

MATH IS RACIST. ACCOUNTING IS RACIST AND NATIONALIST:  Report: Stacey Abrams Campaign Owes Over $1 Million to Vendors.

A JEWISH FRIEND REMINDED ME THAT DIFFERENT OPINIONS CAN BE ENRICHING:  You’re All Wrong, Die Hard Is A Hanukkah Movie.

OBSCURED BY CLOUD-BASED STREAMING SERVICES: Pink Floyd Quietly Put 18 Unreleased ‘Dark Side’-Era Concerts on Streaming Services.

In what’s becoming an annual tradition, Pink Floyd quietly uploaded 18 Dark Side of the Moon-era concerts onto streaming services recently, as well as a collection of “alternative tracks” from their legendary 1973 LP.

In Dec. 2021, Pink Floyd similarly dumped a dozen unreleased concerts, spanning from 1970 to 1972, on streaming services without any fanfare; artists like Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan have employed this tactic in the past in order to extend the rights of the recordings.

In 2013, a rep for Sony explained Dylan’s release of uncirculated music by telling Rolling Stone, “The copyright law in Europe was recently extended from 50 to 70 years for everything recorded in 1963 and beyond. With everything before that, there’s a new ‘Use It or Lose It’ provision. It basically said, ‘If you haven’t used the recordings in the first 50 years, you aren’t going to get any more.’”

The 18 concerts — none of which have been released in any official capacity — span from Jan. 23, 1972 to Dec. 9, 1972, with Pink Floyd workshopping, fine-tuning and then perfecting The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety at every show ahead of its March 1973 release. Pink Floyd’s entire four-night stand at London’s Rainbow Theatre from Feb. 17 to 20, 1972 is also available for streaming.

More details here: Pink Floyd Quietly Releases 18 ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ Era Concerts Onto Streaming Services.

The concerts are a bit tricky to find on streaming services and probably will not be available for long; last year’s batch were removed after a few weeks but can still be found on YouTube. On Spotify, look under “albums,” then “compilations,” click “show all” and scroll way down (assuming you don’t feel like searching for titles like “Pink Floyd Live at the Palais des Sports de L’Ile de la Jatte, Saint Ouen, France, 01 Dec 1972”).

Although this realm is most definitely not a place for casual fans, it’s fascinating to hear “Dark Side of the Moon” played in its entirely for totally unfamiliar audiences before it became Dark Side of the F**king Moon, and imagining being among the first people on earth to have their minds blown by it.

Pink Floyd uploaded some of the tracks from the live concerts at YouTube — but doesn’t appear to embed them in their main YouTube homepage, but searching under the titles in the first Rolling Stone link will bring them up.

STANFORD IS ANTI-AMERICAN. No, this is not news from 1981. I mean that the IT department literally doesn’t want you to use the word “American.” Stanford took it down but WSJ saved a PDF. (Maybe it’s a parody? I hope?)

But beware! “Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.”

OPEN THREAD: Make it special.

RIP: Terry Hall of The Specials dies aged 63.

TWITTER FILES PART SEVEN: The Guns Begin to Smoke.

This starts to bring it all together.

This isn’t smoking gun proof yet.

But this begins to show us where to find the smoking guns.

And it tells us that yes, the FBI deliberately ran a coordinated disinformation campaign against the people of the United States of America, and a coup against the lawful government of the United States of America that the people had elected.

And now that it’s coming out: The Cathedral Turns Torquemada On Elon Musk.

TWO JOHN CLEESES IN ONE! John Cleese on How Wokeness Smothers Creativity:

In a career that has spanned seven decades—and included such classic shows and movies as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, Life of Brian, and A Fish Called Wanda—the comedian John Cleese has relentlessly satirized politics and religion while stretching the boundaries of decorum and good taste.

Now 83, Cleese—who studied law at the University of Cambridge—has set his sights on political correctness, which he says is the enemy not only of humor but of creative thinking in all areas of human activity. “There are people sitting there who are deliberately waiting for the thrill of being offended,” he says, emphasizing the importance of paying attention to context, without which irony and sarcasm can’t be properly understood.

One of those people “deliberately waiting for the thrill of being offended?” Someone named John Cleese! John Cleese suggests best answer to Jeremy Clarkson’s problematic opinion is to ‘regulate the press.’

First, a bit of background. Jeremy Clarkson of “Top Gear” hosting fame has cultivated a reputation for himself as something of an outspoken guy who couldn’t care less about what people — particularly those who are of the left-leaning persuasion — think about him. He doesn’t care for wokeism, and if you have a problem with that, he doesn’t care about your feelings.

Anyway, Clarkson recently found himself in hot water over an opinion piece he’d written about Meghan Markle, who, along with her husband Prince Harry, is currently on a whirlwind tour pimping the Netflix documentary series about them. Anyone being honest with themselves knows that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are an absolutely insufferable couple and would serve the world far better by fading into the background or at the very least just relinquishing their microphones. They’re just effing annoying, basically. And, in Clarkson’s opinion, Markle has effectively emasculated Prince Harry.

* * * * * * * *

Here are the words that seem to be causing the most outrage:

At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when [Markle] is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!” and throw lumps of excrement at her.

You may or may not have watched “Game of Thrones,” but chances are pretty good that you’ve at least seen memes of the scene Clarkson is referring to. Apparently some people weren’t able to make the connection[.]

* * * * * * * *

Well, for what it’s worth, Clarkson has since tweeted an apology:

But something tells us that’s not going to cut it for all the people who were upset with Clarkson. It sure doesn’t sound like it’s gonna cut it for John Cleese, who clearly believes that much more than an apology is needed to right this particular wrong:

In recent years, John Cleese has begun to sound more and more like Theodore Dalrymple. Today, the elderly socialist reverted to type, and sounds like Xi Jinping.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Perseverance prepares to deposit Mars sample cache. “Perseverance is depositing the tubes to create a depot that could be retrieved by later missions in the overall Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. It will serve as a backup to Perseverance itself, which will keep other tubes and return them to a future Sample Retrieval Lander.”

BREAKING: Harvey Weinstein Verdict Is In.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What You May Not Know About Hanukkah.

NEW FINANCIAL WOES FOR GEORGIA’S GOVERNOR: Report: Stacey Abrams Campaign Owes Over $1 Million to Vendors.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ENTITLEMENT: Bucs reporter under fire for grilling Gio Bernard after botched fake punt.

When Marshawn Lynch sat before Super Bowl media so he would not get fined, it spoke to a tenuous relationship between NFL athletes and journalists.

Yes, NFL athletes are usually required to speak to the media, but journalists are expected to respect the boundaries of athletes as well, especially when present in a locker room following a humiliating loss.

So when Bucs running back Giovani Bernard tried to exit the locker room and reconvene with his family, he was stopped by a group of Bucs reporters who wanted him to answer to a costly botched fake punt in the game.

Bucs reporter Jenna Laine shared a video of that interaction, describing the fake punt as “the most pivotal play of the game” (although there were several Bucs penalties that contradict that assertion). Laine also added a note preemptively, as if she knew the video would spark outrage across the sports landscape: “As reporters, it is our job to seek clarity on what happened.”

Although this is true, athletes, journalists and fans disagreed with the manner in which the impromptu interview was conducted, leading Laine to defend herself in Twitter comments.

As reporters lament the lacking opportunity to speak with Bernard all year, Bernard looks flabbergasted by the way media members feel owed an explanation for the fake punt mishap.

With one reporter astonishingly asking,“What have you done for us to talk to you all year?”

“Can I go to my family that I have outside, and… all the sudden, now?” Bernard asks.

“Just don’t say we didn’t talk to you all year,” a reporter responded tersely.

“We just wanted to ask for your perspective on what happened there,” Laine said.

“You were involved in one of the biggest plays of the game,” another reporter chimed in.

Here’s the clip of the exchange:

https://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/1604913965896589312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1604913965896589312%7Ctwgr%5E638362a16aa2b61ed33839010f0071274422f2cb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffansided.com%2F2022%2F12%2F19%2Fbucs-reporter-gio-bernard-punt%2F

To paraphrase the Nazi writer of “Springtime for Hitler” in Mel Brooks’ The Producers, “You are the athlete; I am the journalist. I outrank you!”

THE MAKING OF NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR:

‘The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary’, writes Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. ‘This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by 25 years in a forced-labour camp.’ That is what it is like to hold this brand new, manuscript edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four in your hands. You feel as if you are doing something you shouldn’t. You get to see Orwell’s own handwriting. His revisions and reworkings. His mind in motion. It is a clandestine and intimate experience, like having a glimpse into Winston Smith’s diary.

WHAT’S IT CALLED WHEN GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATIONS COOPERATE TO SQUASH POLITICAL OPPOSITION? FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to snitch on and silence its own customers.

Related:

HMM: A Physicist Came Up With Math That Shows ‘Paradox-Free’ Time Travel Is Plausible. “Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency.”

The notion that timelines tend to heal themselves is the source of one strand of time-travel fiction, and now there’s some evidence that it may be right.

I’m not entirely convinced, however, that this undercuts Niven’s Law of Time Travel.

OH FUCK OFF: Op-Ed Argues ‘Put Down the Burger’ to Protect Earth’s Biodiversity.

FLASHBACK: Juliette Ochieng: Who Runs Things?

BREAKING: SCOTUS Delays End of Title 42.

WATCHING FOOTBALL: “Something weird is happening.”