Anthony Pignataro

@apignataro.bsky.social

656 Followers 358 Following

Editor/reporter at the co-op @lbwatchdog.bsky.social. Former MauiTime (RIP) editor. Former OC Weekly (RIP) reporter. My new novel The B Girls and new memoir Remembering Lahaina are now available. He/him.

As I’ve said before: The watchword of patriarchy is women’s service with a smile. Every woman alive is hence in the service industry to some extent or other, in being subject to the constant expectation of our emotional and intellectual, as well as sexual and domestic, labor. I want to live in a world where privileged men learn not to expect this kind of service to be on tap for them. Generative AI is just going to make the weaning process harder
DVD box for the 2000 movie The Dish showing two men in suits, one smiling, next to images of a rocket basting off, and an astronaut in a space suit and a large satellite dish at sunset. The cover text says “The first step on the moon nearly stumbled on Earth. The Dish. Based on a true story.”
Image of the October 13, 2016 cover of the tabloid MauiTime featuring a black and white photo of a man wearing glasses and lei holding a gavel with the headline “Examining Elmer Cravalho — Maui’s Most important Political Leader.”
Collage of images including two of a car flying in space surrounding the words “Rocket Boy.”
A man wearing a red shirt and white sailor hat in a tropical jungle gets into a car made of bamboo and then pedals the car furiously as it races away.
A hand holds a copy of a book titled Days of Dissent: Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories by Gabriel San Román.
Cars on a freeway pass beneath a pedestrian bridge where someone has hung a large banner that has the letters “G” and “P” with the Soviet hammer and sickle symbol between them so it seems to spell out “GOP.”
A hand holding a paperback book titled “Days of Dissent: Revolts, Strikes and Rebel Histories” by Gabriel San Román.
It’s always too soon to go home. And it’s always too soon to calculate effect. I once read an anecdote by someone in Women Strike for Peace (WSP), the first great antinuclear movement in the United States, the one that did contribute to a major victory: the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which brought about the end of aboveground testing of nuclear weapons and of much of the radioactive fallout that was showing up in mother’s milk and baby teeth. (And WSP contributed to the fall of the House sun-American Activities Committee [HUAC], the Department of Homeland Security of its day. Positioning themselves as housewives and using humor as their weapon, they made HUAC’s anticommunist interrogations ridiculous.) The woman from WSP told of how foolish and futile she felt standing in the rain one morning protesting at the Kennedy White House. Years later she heard Dr. Benjamin Spock — who had become one of the most high-profile activists on the issue — say that the turning point for him was spotting a small group of women standing in the rain, protesting at the White House. If they were so passionately committed, he thought, he should give the issue more consideration himself.
A green metal bench on the sidewalk with metal barriers placed along the seat to prevent a person from laying down and an advertisement mounted on the back from Covenant House that says “No kid should ever have to sleep on the streets.”
A round, white spacecraft with a small red logo saying “NASA” is near a half moon, which fills the other half of the image, with another small “NASA” logo in the upper right hand corner.
ktkins @voldemortsbicep my favorite game is to act like i can’t understand something very simple when a man is explaining it to me to see how dumb he thinks i am. greghughes @voldemortsbicep this, my dear, is called deception… ktkins @grhughes82 what do you mean? greghughes @voldemortsbicep it’s a form of dishonesty that you are using for self gain or amusement. It’s actually quite sophisticated stuff well done. ktkins @grhughes82 sorry, I don’t get it?
For the first year, Dangle says he spent a lot of time just trying to figure out what the executives were talking about. “You’d be amazed at how bad corporate meetings are,” he says. “They show PowerPoint presentations, and then everyone falls asleep. But I was always willing to ask a dumb question. And when I asked it, I found half the room didn’t know either.”
It Takes a Pretty Miss to Score With Lensman. When Leonard Nimoy, 20, went before Superior Court Judge Frank G. Swain and received approval of his 10-picture contract with Jack Broder Productions, the next move was to have been a picture in The Times. However, the photographer was not impressed with a contract approval in which the minor was only another guy. “Who wants to look at a picture of a guy,” he asked logically, for a photographer. “Go get a cute tomato and pose with her and we’ll get your picture in the paper.” Nimoy left and brought back Mona Knox, with whom he is currently making a picture, “Kid Monk Baroni.” “I’m a fighter in it, and she’s my feminine interest,” he explained. “She takes my dough in the picture.” Twenty-two year old Mona, wearing a sweater and snug skirt, approved his contract that starts at $200 a week, and rises $25 a week every second picture. The photographer approved of Mona.
Another email in the Epstein files details Horner’s return to the ranch in 2016 during a trip through Santa Fe with one of his graduate students. According to Horner, Epstein wasn’t present. That same year, Horner claimed that pressure from Museum of the Rockies officials over his marriage to a 19-year-old undergraduate student in 2012 and subsequent divorce influenced his decision to retire.
Horner claimed that those present during the Aug. 2012 stay included Epstein, his secretary, a ranch manager and four women introduced to him as college students. “Nothing I observed or experienced during my short stay at the ranch indicated or suggested the conduct that came to light,” Horner stated. “That said, I regret my use of the term ‘girls’ in emails referring to the students, rather than using more appropriate language. I [now] understand the students may have been victims of Epstein, and I deeply regret that I did not realize this at the time.”
In another email exchange, from October 2009, Epstein discussed mounting an exhibition featuring images of minors. “I might want to fund an exhibition entitled statutory.. girls and boys ages 14 - 25.. where they look nothing like their true ages. Juvenile mug shots. , photo shop, make up. some people go to prison because they can't tell true age. controversial . fun. maybe it should be a web page , with hits, tallied,” Epstein wrote to Ross. Ross appeared to embrace Epstein’s exhibition idea and suggested speaking later that day. “You are incredible,” Ross replied. “This would be a very owerful [sic] and freaky book. Do you know that total porno commercial kiddie picture of Brooke Sheilds that Richard Prince appropriated for an exhibition in the early 1980's?”
A man wearing green leaves in his hair is kissing a woman.
A television screen displaying the note “The following program contains content which may not be suitable for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.”
“This is a Band-Aid—I am trying my best while people in power deal with policy. This is what I can do,” explains Raines. In an interview with Vogue on her work during the pandemic, she confessed that doing the work with the pandemic crowding the city is skyrocketing her anxiety. “It’s very unsettling for me and my team. Of course, we’re paranoid and washing our hands 24/7. Of course, my family is concerned. My kids and my sister beg me, ‘Please, don’t go out there,’ and I’m just like, ‘I gotta. We can’t give up on them right now. [I have asked the people here to] lay back, close their eyes, and trust that my Fighters for the World will make sure nobody will run up on them. We gained their trust with consistency by coming every Saturday. And that can’t end now. It is essential that we don’t lose that love and trust we’ve worked so hard to get from this community.” Raines lost her job recently due to pandemic budget cuts, but she’s still coming out every weekend with donations from her online network of supporters. She is still handing out roses from her car window and apologizing for not being able to hug the now-familiar faces on the street who call her mom, who call her godmother, who ask her about her health and her family.
“The Daniel Pearl Foundation is thrilled to have Bari Weiss as recipient of the 2021 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. Bari has earned this award for her persistent willingness to resist groupthink, her commitment to telling the truth, even when it’s politically inconvenient, and her courage in standing up for her people against the rising tide of antisemitism and Zionophobia,” said Judea Pearl in the name of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.
Picture of women in purple uniforms and white uniforms playing basketball with the following captions: Los Angeles Times Columnist Apologizes For “Deeply Offensive” Descriptions Of LSU Women’s Team – Update. By Bruce Haring, Tom Tapp. April 1, 2024 4:07pm. UPDATED with statement: Los Angeles Times columnist Ben Bolch, who came under widespread fire for a column about the LSU–UCLA Women’s NCAA tournament matchup in which he called the Lady Tigers “dirty debutantes” and called them “villains,” while calling the Bruins “milk and cookies,” has apologized.
Los Angeles Press Club photo of a smirking woman with the caption “Bari Weiss is the 2021 LA Press Club Daniel Pearl Awardee.”
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 6, 2021. Clear that Jon Ossoff has won his Senate race, too. Pence then announces that he will do nothing to stop Biden from becoming president. And while the House and Senate carry on their ludicrous debate over the electoral results, Trump lovers storm the Capitol complex. The Cannon building was evacuated, and cops and Trump supporters were engaged in open fighting. This is what Trump wants—violent chaos, and he's getting it. How can we survive another two weeks as president if he'll just call on his supporters to violently overthrow the government? Then it got a whole lot worse-rioters, helped by cops (!?!), breached the barricades around the Capitol itself and stormed up the steps. The congress was debating an objection to the Arizona electoral tally at the time. All representatives and senators were evacuated. No member of the public has been allowed inside since March, when the pandemic began. Many broke open windows and stormed inside, some carrying confederate flags. Angie and I watched CNN and twitter in horror as we saw these knuckle-dragging fascists, puffed up with their own misogynistic and racist entitlement, rummage through Senators' desks and sat at Pelosi's desk. One insurrectionist was photographed holding a fistful of zip-ties, which means this was a legit lynch mob, bent on taking hostages. That they didn't was because capitol police were able to evacuate the members of congress in time. For much of the day I couldn't eat or drink. I had no appetite. I just silently scrolled through Twitter while the dumb CNN pundits droned on in the background about how shocked they were—like Trump hasn't been inciting violence for the past four years. In the afternoon Angie opened a bottle of wine, and I felt a bit better—though on my empty stomach, I realized I shouldn't go beyond one glass.
Movie poster for the 1951 picture His Kind of Woman, showing a woman in a strapless dress resting her hand on a man’s chest while they stare into each other’s eyes.
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Reuters. Nicolas Maduro’s heavy-handed rule in Venezuela is finally ended by Trump. By Reuters. January 3, 2026. 5:44 AM PST. Updated 25 mins ago.
Meme of Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons clutching her face and asking “won’t somebody please think of the fascists?”
Claymation image of a smiling man in a green sleeveless sweater standing next to a white dog.
police officer for less than a year. “Jim Gerhart did all the talking… “I just stood by and watched and hoped for the best,” Anderson said. “I had a clean area [to shoot] at him in case it did start.” The FBI agent and the former policeman talked, although Anderson declined to describe their conversation in detail and said he could not recall exactly what Reynolds said before he surrendered. “I was more interested in seeing if he was going to make a move than in listening to exactly what he was saying,” Anderson said. Then the gun was in Gerhart’s hand and it was all over. “We searched him, cuffed him, and took him down stairs.”
Gerhart and Anderson stepped into the storage room and there stood Reynolds, in the closet doorway, holding a gun and wearing a blue sweatshirt, baggy blue jeans, and dark socks. Both lawmen drew their guns. The two sides faced one another. “Seemed Like 10 Hours.” Only five or six minutes passed, but “God, it seemed like like it was about 10 hours,” Anderson said. “He looked tired, tired from running.” “I didn’t say a word,” recalled Anderson, who has been a Le Claire…
Shortly before dawn, he said, the searchers were led to believe that a woman at 122 Dodge St. in Le Claire might be able to give them a lead. It was not considered a solid lead, but it had to be checked out anyway. Gerhart, Anderson, police detective Sgt. Decker Ploehn of the Bettendorf Police Department, and another FBI agent went to the house, knocked, and identified themselves as lawmen. The door stood open, but no one answered. A shadow moved inside. The lawmen again called out, they said, and then Gerhart and Anderson went in while the other officers stood watch outside. There was no sign of the woman and young girl who live there; only their dog seemed to be home.
Armed stand-off ends in capture of ‘polite’ fugitive. Le CLAIRE, IA — For a tense five minutes, two lawmen faced fugitive Donald C. Reynolds in an armed stand-off in an aging house on Dodge Street here. Cornered in the doorway of a closet, pointing a nickel-plated, .22 caliber automatic pistol, was the man who was wanted in three states and who had been linked to the abductions of 14 people. But for all his notoriety, this man known as the “polite” fugitive was reminded that he “really hadn’t hurt anybody yet,” said rookie Le Claire police officer Gerald T. Anderson, 25. The man’s gun arm began to lower, sinking slowly until barrel pointed to the floor. Special FBI Agent James Gerhart of Cedar Rapids reached out and took the gun. Donald Reynold’s strange odyssey was over. The four-month flight of the rogue policeman ended Sunday morning in…
Despite their plot line beginning with Luke drunkenly raping Laura — played by Genie Francis — only to have her fall in love with her rapist, their love story became insanely popular in the early 1980s, appealing to a younger audience and saving the series from cancellation. The characters got married in November 1981. The audience for the wedding, which aired over two days, was around 30 million viewers and remains the highest-rated soap opera event in history.
As the LA Times noted, when Tompkins Rivas was hired in 2020, she was one of six women hired to fill leadership roles, five of whom were women of color. With her departure, only two of them remain.
SHAEF commanders at a conference in London during World War II. Left to right: Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, and Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.
⁠Disabled the Fire Cloak ability for Cletus Brimstone to prevent players from taking extra unintended damage. While his name has been cleared for causing player harm, this temporary fix unfortunately also cleared his name in-game. He will now be known as “LOOK UP FAILED” for the time being.
The book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, placed on a blue cushion.
Cover image of the book The House of Beauty: Lessons of the Image Industry by Arabelle Sicardi showing a black bottle pouring a sparkling red liquid onto the ground.
Two Fathers Shot Dead While Stealing Turkeys for Thanksgiving Dinner. Chicago, Nov. 26 (U.P.)—Two fathers, trying to steal Thanksgiving turkeys for their destitute families, were shot to death here today. Fred Bernard, father of four children, was killed by police after he had broken into a butcher shop and fled with a turkey in his arms. Officers called to him to halt. He continued to run. The police fired. Bernard was killed instantly. His wife said he had been out of work for six months. Joseph P. Martin, father of two children, used a glass cutter to make a hole in the window of a butcher shop owned by William Branska. The window was full of fat, dressed turkeys. Branska dozed behind the fowls, with a shotgun by his side. In reaching for a turkey, Martin woke Branska. The latter fired once. Martin died with the turkey in his hand. His widow said he had not had a job for almost a year.
Chanel was happy to exploit others to maintain her own wealth, eager to be seen as enterprising, glamorous, worldly, and in charge. She framed her products as worthy of whatever violence and danger it cost to produce such beauty. She was raised in a community of hatred, never sought out different frameworks, and was duly rewarded for her selfishness. It was a conscious choice, never to leave her gilded shell. And it makes sense, really, because power appears beautiful, and beauty makes time feel conquerable. Beauty makes cruel choices so easy.
Coco Chanel didn’t kill anyone. She merely slept with a spy who probably did—we don’t know. She only tried to get people she distrusted removed from positions she wanted herself. She only had meetings with people who could make that happen. Coco Chanel didn’t kill anyone, but she wrote letters to the people who could have made it happen. Coco Chanel didn’t kill anyone, but she lived in a hotel with the men who did and wrote letters to the men who did and paid for the publishing of a magazine that encouraged them to do it.
“It has a retail value of $20,000,” said boutique manager Leisa Abernathy. The Montblanc name is famous around the world for expensive, jewel-encrusted fountain and ballpoint pens. Its catalog is filled with limited editions, paying homage to men like Alexander the Great, Andrew Carnegie and chronometer inventor John Harrison. And, interestingly enough, F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Although Fitzgerald enjoyed the high-society life,” notes the current Montblanc special editions catalog, “in his outstanding works such as The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise he drew a subtle psychological portrait of the hedonistic America of the 1920s, which allowed the inescapable tragedy beneath the glittering surface to shine through.”
Notice for an October 18 protest from Long Beach Indivisible that says, “We have friends everywhere” in large type.
I found it interesting that Klein’s instinct after Kirk’s assassination was to “sit with (his supporters) in their grief” in an effort to see Kirk in the light that his supporters did. But when Coates, who is largely unsurprised by the political moment, relays a historical record that informs his views, Klein is unwilling to sit with that history to reach a similar understanding.
In the last 24 hours, two 40-year-old white men, both former U.S. Marine Corps Iraq War veterans, committed mass shootings. One fired into a crowded bar in Southport, North Carolina from a small boat on the Cape Fear River Saturday night, the other drove a truck, decorated with American flags, into a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan during Sunday morning services and began shooting. Three dead, eight others wounded in Southport, about the same in Grand Blanc. Think of all this what you will, but please think.
He had decided to make love to the android replica if it became necessary… No, that was untrue. He began to hope that it would become necessary.
Decker found himself suddenly inna swirl of sensual arousal — he could catch just the faintest scent that always accompanied the wild excitants that Ilia’s body could do mysteriously and wonderfully manufacture for him.
“This is not our navigator,” Spock said quietly. But it almost certainly was Ilia — except that there was some sort of a glowing light from the throat… Kirk found his eyes shifting from the tiny light glow to what seemed impossibly lovely, hard-tipped breasts, which were at this moment swinging around to point directly at him… damn! It had to be Deltan pheromones that were doing this to him! This meant Spock was wrong. She had to be Ilia!
As he entered, Spock’s ears caught the sounds of humans in love, which told him that privacy was still respected in this area of the ship.
McCoy came into sickbay without a word, his beard scratching Chapel’s face during the one hug he gave her before he began to swear quietly at the look of the new medical equipment there. He expressed his unhappiness in enough detail for the tall, handsome woman to recover from the surprise of his entrance.
The moon Io had held some shocks for the first Earth scientists to land there, although not nearly as shattering as the earlier discovery that Earth’s own moon had once served as a base for space voyagers (their identity still a mystery)…
Sulu felt it hardly prudent to stand up at this moment. But unlike Kirk, he had no choice and therefore tried to seem to be bowing to her as he rose — and the tripped and then decided to pretend he was actually offering Ilia his hand. Then he immediately thought better of this, withdrew his hand abruptly, and quickly employed it in very busily punching out equations on her navigator’s console. “It’s all in the computer,” he mumbled. “You’ll have no problems…”
“Never hoped to see you sitting there again, sir,” Sulu said. The grin made it clear that his very scrutable Asian helmsman was please to see Kirk back in the center seat.
Here the most vital of the ship’s mechanisms were kept in peak operating efficiency through music, song, games, debate, exercise, competition, friendship, romance, sex — the list was as endless as human ingenuity itself.
“He wanted her back,” said Sulu. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be in his way when he went after her!” Uhura nodded. This was exactly what she had just felt in Kirk, too. He had also had that look which comes into some men’s eyes when they’ve just won a woman and she lies there ready to be taken. Uhura was not unacquainted with that look, but she was troubled at the amount of hunger she had seen there too.
Kirk understood completely. But he kept his expression blank. Your next words could brand you a whore, Lori. Nogura’s staff whore. I hope I’m wrong.
“Hello, Jim.” As always, her lips seemed to caress his name as she spoke it. He could almost catch the scent of her body fragrance, and he could feel the slight pressure of his genitals responding to those memories.
Chapter One. He felt a strange tingling coming from somewhere inside his head. It was as if some intricate mechanical pattern had started to firm there. Then that pattern became a memory, and he realized that he was receiving a Starfleet command alert signal. He did not like the feeling of it — and knowing that it came from a device implanted inside his brain made it even more annoying.
Some critics have characterized us of Starfleet as “primitives,” and with some justification. In some ways, we do resemble our forebears of a couple centuries ago more than we do most people today. We are not part of those increasingly large numbers of humans who seem willing to submerge their own identities into the groups to which they belong. I am prepared to accept the possibility that these so-called new humans represent a more highly evolved breed, capable of finding rewards in group consciousness that we more primitive individuals will never know. For the present, however, this new breed of human makes a poor space traveler and Starfleet must depend on us “primitives” for deep space exploration.