@quellingly.bsky.social

@quellingly.bsky.social

1020 Followers 769 Following

The toad beneath the harrow knows
 Where every separate tooth-point goes 
The butterfly upon the road
 Preaches contentment to that toad

Michelle Obama in rose gold chain mail
Mrs Trump wearing novelty metallic giftwrap to a past Mar a Lago party.
Pam Bondi on X: Since day one, the Trump Administration and the Department of Justice have been fighting to end the drug epidemic in our country. President Trump closed the border. DOJ agents have seized hundreds of millions of potentially lethal fentanyl doses. We are aggressively prosecuting drug traffickers and cartel leaders. These are the results. Elections have consequences. Electing President Trump and enforcing the law is saving American lives. [below: a powerpoint chart of overdoses ending in October 2024 during Biden’s term with the lines stretched to almost reach 2025]
Well, I did get to show him a little of Southern California. One of Oscar’s phobias was the outdoors. He regarded Nature as a gigantic plot to persecute Oscar Levant, and avoided the outdoors along with evil hoodoos like physical exercise, hats, the number thirteen, the words “lucky” and “death,” and any mention of his childhood. Oscar had been in California for three months when I found out he had never seen the Pacific Ocean. He was in a strangely cheerful mood that day. When I suggested we go out to the shore and case the ocean he said okay. He supposed it was part of his education—like looking at the sky, which he also meant to do someday. We drove to the Palisades and parked at the edge of the cliff, where the panorama of mountains, beach and sea was unspoiled by any signs of civilization. The water was a sparkling blue and calm. Catalina Island, forty miles away, stood out like a sharp, brown rock. The western horizon was distinct as a line drawn with a ruler. No boarding-houses, bathhouses, refreshment stands or boardwalks anywhere in sight. It was magnificent. Oscar gave it a long look. He gave a whistle of disbelief. He said, “What do you know—a gentile ocean!” Harpo Speaks!, Harpo Marx & Rowland Barber
“Fraud, Ox!” he said furiously. “We live in a land so debased that its most valued art forms are fraud and forgery. The Neo-Confucians cannot accept the fact that a mere woman could be so gifted, and they of course, control the Imperial Censors, who control publication. They graciously consented to publish the lady’s poems, and to her amazement she saw the author’s credit: ‘Attributed to Yang Wan-li.’ That is really quite clever. The triplication being that somebody was faking a masculine classical style, and by officially classifying genuine work as fraudulent, they have, in effect, deprived Lady Hou of her identity. She’s been destroying her mind with Thunderballs and slitting Neo-Confucian throats ever since, but there are simply too many of them. They’ll win in the end. Eventually she’ll be convinced that she really doesn’t exist, and is actually a teapot or something in that general price range, and then they’ll lock her up and the head Neo-Confucian will suavely appropriate her poetry as his own.” The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, Barry Hughart
KAROLINE LEAVITT THE MOUTHPIECE The combative WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY fields questions from the press corps with all the subtlety of a rottweiler. Wiles calls her a “scary good” communicator, right up there with New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. “The president doesn’t give a crap if you’re a man or a woman,” Leavitt says. “He just wants you to be good at your job.” How’s she faring in the onslaught of questions about the Epstein files after Trump’s about-face? “It’s pretty clear he wants us to be aggressively offensive when it comes to this issue.”
the alien from the Darmok and Gilad episode of TNG: Felicia, when she left the village.
“But they were not long, the days of swine and Porsches. And by the early ‘nineties the smartest pigs, those who could still remember how to walk on two legs, were putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the wrack of that frightful image of perfection they had worshipped in vain. It would be comforting to see this as conversion. Alas, I fear that they are merely searching for new horizons to pollute, new territories to exploit. I fear nowhere is safe, not even the green grass, clear air, translucent waters and simple country folk of a distant, mega-boring Yorkshire dale.” Pictures of Perfection Reginald Hill
I’m going to break with tradition and won’t give you a global threat tour, but will focus here on Putin’s Russia. We all continue to face the menace of an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and harass NATO. I find it harrowing that hundreds of thousands have died, with the toll mounting every day, because of Putin’s historical distortions and his compromised desire for respect. He is dragging out negotiations and shifting the cost of war onto his own population. But Putin should be in no doubt, our support is enduring. The pressure we apply on Ukraine’s behalf will be sustained. Because it is fundamental not just to European sovereignty and security but to global stability. Alongside the grinding war, Russia is testing us in the grey zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war. It’s important to understand their attempts to bully, fearmonger and manipulate, because it affects us all.
Israel’s Netanyahu lashes out while world shows shock and sympathy over Australia shooting — Mass shooting at Jewish event on Bondi Beach follows rising antisemitism inAustralia
Israel’s Netanyahu lashes out while world shows shock and sympathy over Australia shooting — Mass shooting at Jewish event on Bondi Beach follows rising antisemitism in Australia
golden brown Benefit brow-filling powder
Don Jr on X If Indiana Republicans side with these Never Trumpers to do the dirty work of Democrats, I’ll be spending a lot of time in Indiana next year campaigning against every single one of them. PS: These RINO consultants sabotaging MAGA need to be rooted out of the GOP!!!
top ten holdings: NVIDIA, Apple, Meta, Amazon, two flavors of Meta, Microsoft, Broadcom, Tesla (for the love of god), and because why should the existing robber barons have all the fun, JPMorgan Chase.
on X, from 2021 PDX Conservative Oregonians— is it time to organize against mask mandates? Sharon K added, I’m not wearing one. Arrest me I will sue the heck out of them.
on X, from 2021 PDX Conservative Oregonians— is it time to organize against mask mandates? Sharon K added, I’m not wearing one. Arrest me I will sue the heck out of them.
Movie poster for what appears to be a thoroughly dreadful movie called The Undertaker and his Pals Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undertaker_and_His_Pals
Avery Brooks with sunglaaes and a gun
Rita Hayworth n the hall of mirrors from _The Lady from Shanghai _
100% of your recommended daily sodium in a medium-sized bowl.
Fred was hardly an outlier among the powerful at Krim’s townhouse. He had helped make many of the New York politicians there. They were among his closest friends, some since the 1930s and 1940s. Donald trailed after Fred through the crowd until finally Fred located the DNC official with whom he had arranged his donation. The DNC official, a friend of mine, recalled that Fred had asked him: “Wouldn’t it be great if Donald got experience in Washington?” Clearly, he wanted to get Donald a gig so that he could make national connections. Donald’s expression was unhappy. He opened his mouth, getting out only a couple of words: “Well, I … ” Fred cut him off before he could say anything else. “Shut the fuck up,” he said sternly. “We didn’t fucking ask you. Who the fuck cares what you think?” And Donald shut up.
the Allies blow the swastika off of the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.
Trump on Truth Social yesterday: This is the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool before Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and I fix it: Study it hard because you won’t be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer.
Former future Trump Ambassador Guilfoyle
Trailer and police cars with “OVERSIZE LOAD” on the back
Nutrition facts for Campbells soup (condensed chicken noodle)
Damned souls with hard hats, supervised by demons, building a road under a sign that says “YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS AT WORK”
as a mild-mannered elderly professor in Ball of Fire, 1941
list of high-volume Tesla accounts from Nigeria
fruit and honey Smuckers blueberry lemon spread
ceramic mosaic of a shark in a coral reef.
Clifton Webb as a dancer on Broadway.
extreme headdesk
Bast, a bombay cat (house panther)
As for the content of the emails… much of it is, in a word, gross. Certainly, we all write emails that, deprived of context, could embarrass us if they went public. But Summers’ emails went to a deeper, darker place; there is no context that absolves them. An ongoing theme is his recurring need for fraternal support from Epstein, repeatedly asking for advice on how to prolong an affair with a younger woman who was not his wife. In one exchange, Epstein called himself Summers’ “wing man.” The two men referred to the object of Summers’ lust — reported by the Harvard Crimson to be a Chinese economist — as “peril,” apparently short for “yellow peril,” the racist canard dating to Western imperialism of the late 19th century. When the clandestine relationship appeared to be fizzling out, Summers lamented that he “dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.” That sounds disturbingly like a sexual quid pro quo. In November 2018 Summers wrote, “I think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” which is the kind of relationship that should make Harvard think twice about Larry Summers, teacher.
microscopic creature playing the violin
Games Mother Never Taught You: Corporate Gamesmanship for Women
Used car dealer-type salesman: Sure, the abyss is great for staring into. But if screaming is your thing, you’ll want to go with the void.
My Little Ponies reenact the opera scene from Citizen Kane
Genvieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days (1 of 2)
You do not grasp that your grift actually depends upon something larger, something better, which it is sapping, weakening, bringing to ruin. You have fooled the world, and so you think that you understand it. Indeed, as a grifter, you become contemptuous of how other people make their living and live their lives. And yet your knowledge is actually limited. You know things that those outside the grift bubble do not know; but they also know things that you do not know. You can take away what belongs to people without knowing how they achieved or attained it. The guy who cheats the farmer at the county fair does not know how to farm. The guy who profits from curated crypto scams does not understand the world economy. Trump and Vance imagine, because it has worked thus far, that they can grift endlessly. They do not understand that their grift depends upon what I will unashamedly call the honest labor and decent convictions of millions of Americans. Were there not Americans who actually worked and cared and tried to live right, there would be nothing and no one to grift. In an instructive article that he wrote in 1990, the American novelist David Foster Wallace said that cynicism is a form of naïveté. When you dismiss everything, you feel like you can do anything; but then you don’t believe in some things that are real: like love, or law, or patriotism. For you, such things are just tools of the trade, manipulable handles, just the way to enlarge the grift. That they have some other sense, that they are the building blocks of some other reality -- this you do not see. And in that way you are naïve.
Shelley is identified as Mrs Percy B. Shelley in the credits of the silent version.
Evergreen Haberman tweet: Roger Stone for president
the call is apparently coming from Nigeria
starring, among others, Gary Cooper as the White Knight and Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle. Full cast here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023753/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cst_sm
Prince singing The Beautiful Ones in Purple Rain
black and white My Little Ponies recreate the opera applause scene from Citizen Kane
Robert Crump Keep on Truckin’ poster
Mr Daniels, formerly of Politico
Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) and her familiar, a siamese sealpoint named Pyewacket.
Poster for I Married a Witch (Frederick March and Veronica Lake).
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth leaves after a bilateral meeting with Malaysia’s Defense Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)
Una O’Connor and Olivia De Havilland in Robin Hood.
an illustration of Badger from the story Wind in the Willows.
The same grinning MAGA with a purple heart bandaid at the second W Bush convention.
A “Dutchman” and a mostly-naked native American flanking a windmill
exasperated Robert Carlyle: I just rolled my eyes so hard I saw my brain.