'Joe Biden deserves better'

'Troubling, quite frankly'

Still committed to producing those EVs

Critics question the feasibility of "clean" hydrogen projects

'Despite her dismal approval ratings'

Our 10 Most Underrated Queen Songs list takes a stroll back in time to some of the band’s most loved albums. It’s such a shame that the band’s legacy was cut short with the passing of Freddie Mercury in 1991. Nobody sounded like Freddie Mercury; Queen was a special band. Yes, they have carried on over the years, first joining forces with Paul Rodgers and then hiring Adam Lambert to sing the Freddie Mercury parts, but it will never be the same. It’s nice that a new young legion of fans has discovered the band because of the biopic film. The post 10 Most Underrated Queen Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

The world’s most influential YouTuber has accomplished an incredible feat of crowdfunding after leading dozens of the world’s top influencers to drive donations and volunteering toward the goal of cleaning up the oceans. 34 million pounds of trash and plastic were removed from oceans and rivers all across the globe, with each dollar donated verified […] The post MrBeast’s TeamSeas Project Removed 34 Million Pounds of Ocean Trash by Harnessing Social Media Influencers appeared first on Good News Network.

Column Close Reads A Eulogy for House of the Dragon’s Model of Old Valyria Imagine the glory that would be a Westerosi model train… By Michelle Jaworski | Published on July 18, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to Close Reads! Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Michelle Jaworski sings a song of models and madness, and draws our attention to House of the Dragon‘s greatest hobbyist, King Viserys I, and his ridiculously detailed model of Old Valyria. Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2. It was perhaps the greatest empire the known world had ever seen. Marble carved into a marvel, ever-expanding (almost greedily so) with dragons overlooking its walls and labyrinth-esque city, it seemed to grow every time we saw it on our screens. It captivated us, yes, but nobody as much as its maker. Except now, his corpse is barely cold, and his vast creation is no more: Destroyed in a “cataclysm” brought on by a multitude of factors, but mostly the fiery rage of a dragon. I’m not here to mourn Old Valyria, the ancient and extinct stronghold that the ancestors of House Targaryen and House Velaryon once called home. No human or dragon who could’ve witnessed it is still alive to tell us what happened—not even Vhagar, born decades after its destruction and whose first rider, Visenya Targaryen, helped conquer Westeros. And Westerosi historians still have no idea which prevailing theory (a natural disaster of epic proportions, magic, Valyrian hubris, among others) led to its Doom. Credit: HBO Rather, I’m here to mourn King Viserys I Targaryen’s (Paddy Considine) stone model of Old Valyria, which was destroyed in the opening minutes of House of the Dragon Season Two, Episode 2. An ever-present set piece in Viserys’ chambers during Season One, it was destroyed by his enraged and grief-stricken son Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) after learning that assassins murdered his son and heir Jaehaerys in the Season Two premiere; if you were near the room as he learned of his son’s fate, you could hear him cry out, “I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them all!” The destruction led Considine to cheekily chide Glynn-Carney for smashing it to bits, telling him on Instagram last week, “That took me f@@@ing years to make.” (Glynn-Carney responded in a comment, calling it “shoddy workmanship .”) I’ve been drawn to Viserys’ old model since I first saw it appear in House of the Dragon. There’s no basis in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood for why Viserys Targaryen became consumed with recreating Old Valyria the way someone might build expansive model railroads and gigantic LEGO sets as a hobby, customizes Warhammer miniatures, or really gets into Roblox a la Child Colin Robinson; Considine called it “Viserys’ train set” in a Season One episode of the behind-the-scenes docuseries The House That Dragons Built. (Massive shout out to the HotD crew, who masterfully designed, 3D-printed, and put each piece together over several months!) But this quirk of Considine’s Viserys persisted throughout the first season, endearing him to us in a way that many of his actions—whether it’s how he treated his family when they irked him or how his body continued to fall apart before our eyes—could not. The Old Valyria model appeared as early as House of the Dragon’s first episode. Following his first wife Aemma’s (Sian Brooke) death, Viserys used it to escape his duties and his grief. Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) weaponized his obsession by employing a young Alicent (Emily Carey) to wear her mother’s dress and bond with him over the model in hopes that Viserys would eventually wed her. Alicent commended him on his work, but Viserys deflected on taking sole credit for the model’s creation. “I only pore over the histories and provide the plans,” Viserys explained. “The stonemasons build the structures.” As he relayed the history of Old Valyria to Alicent and informed her that “the glory of Old Valyria will never be seen again,” he dropped a stone dragon figurine on the ground. It broke, and while Alicent got it repaired for him, it’s definitely not an ominous sign of things to come. “Viserys is not into dragon-riding,” co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal said on The House That Dragons Built. “He takes a more intellectual pursuit. The idea is that he’s gone back to all the old texts and maps and has painstakingly recreated it.” That wasn’t a kid-friendly stone-carved mode of Old Valyria; it was an adult stone-carved model of Old Valyria. You know that Viserys has yelled at his children and grandchildren multiple times to stop running around his damn model, to stop touching it, and to move as far away from it as possible from it because That model is not a toy, and You will know pain if you break any part of it or whatever else he might’ve said. The Red Keep servants probably weren’t allowed to touch it, either. By the end of Viserys’ life, you can see the neglect by the cobwebs forming on the tops of buildings. The structures were less detailed, signs that the king’s health deteriorated so much that he could no longer indulge in his main hobby. Instead, the king’s final outburst of energy was directed toward a slow walk to the Iron Throne, a symbol made with Valyrian might. Credit: HBO Who knows how many hundreds, if not thousands, of gold dragons Viserys invested in it over the 20-plus years we’ve watched it across Season One. Who knows of the tireless hours the probably underpaid stonemasons took in crafting it to Viserys’ exact specifications; if we ever learned of Red Keep budget disputes over how much Viserys could spend on upgrades every year, I wouldn’t be surprised. Who knows how much of his life Viserys ultimately devoted to researching, building, and expanding upon a model of an ancient and cursed city he might’ve loved more than several of his kids. Perhaps Viserys’ second-greatest legacy—the first being king during a largely peaceful reign that ended with a civil war so destructive that it would lead to the dragons’ extinction and the deaths of many of his descendants and relatives—is instantly destroyed by his short-sighted successor. Given that at least one person hoped Aegon would take the model out as a screw-you to his father, maybe it wasn’t surprising that he smashed it to bits. He was aware enough of Viserys’ feelings about him that, on his way to being crowned, he questioned the last-minute decision to make him heir because he knew his father never liked him. In Season Two, Aegon hadn’t been king long, but he was winning the court of public opinion until he hanged every rat catcher in Red Keep to ensure Cheese’s death—a decision for which Otto ripped him apart. “Do you never think of your father?” Otto asked in exasperation. “His forbearance, his judiciousness, his… his dignity.” Otto probably wasn’t speaking of that model stone city, long since decimated; he’s mourning an old friend and the king he could once more easily manipulate. But Aegon’s desire for vengeance and his “wish to spill blood, not ink” are already paving a different path and legacy for House Targaryen. And when Aegon pushes back, Otto weaves in seeds of doubt, almost ensuring that Aegon will continue pursuing a path of violent self-destruction with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), Aegon’s newly appointed Hand of the King. Credit: HBO The Cargyll twins, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best), and Meleys were early casualties of that destruction. But if Viserys breaking one figurine of his model dragon in Season 1 might’ve been a harbinger of doom for himself, Aegon’s destruction of all of Old Valyria could be a harbinger of even graver consequences for House Targaryen. Alicent’s accidental breaking of that once-repaired dragon in Episode Four signaled even more doom; at least she only moved Viserys’ old books to another room. Aegon might’ve achieved victory at Rook’s Rest, but it came at a high cost: By the end of the episode, both Aegon and his dragon would lay severely injured. Viserys Targaryen is kind of like House of the Dragons’ version of Bobby Baccalieri. Despite his high status (albeit higher than Bobby’s), he’s often more interested in his minuscule but rewarding pursuits than the family business. Far more ruthless family members surround him, though he’s been known for his own casual cruelty a time or two. As more conniving characters plot around him, struggling in vain to save an empire as they cling to the past, his death lays bare the rot from within. And the various branches of House Targaryen are besieged with rot: Even if some characters make it out alive at the end of the Dance, House Targaryen will become a shadow of what it once was, with only the ruined remains to remember it.[end-mark] The post A Eulogy for <i>House of the Dragon</i>’s Model of Old Valyria appeared first on Reactor.

New allegations that Secret Service training resources were reallocated to “executive leadership bonuses” and DEI-prioritized recruitment are among the torrent of charges leveled against agency Director Kim Cheatle and other top officials in the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Inside the main hall of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, Republicans … were enjoying a Make America Great Again lovefest. But on the outside perimeter of the convention center, anger was still spewing over an avalanche of negative information about the layers of Secret Service failures that led to a bullet piercing Trump’s right ear, just millimeters away from killing him, four days ago at a rally in Pennsylvania. Two GOP senators angrily confronted Cheatle, running her down when she refused to answer their repeated questions.  “This is exactly what you were doing today on the call—stonewalling,” Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, fumed at Cheatle as she walked sternly without speaking, a tall male Secret Service agent by her side. “This was an assassination attempt!” stormed Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican. “You owe the people answers. “You owe President Trump answers.” A tight-lipped Cheatle continued to walk briskly away. Afterward, Blackburn and Barrasso posted a video on Twitter recounting the confrontation and reiterating their calls for answers and for Cheatle’s resignation. “I’ve got a message for her, she can run but she cannot hide because the American people want to know how an assassination attempt was carried out on President Donald Trump,” she declared. Allegations leveled against the Secret Service over the last 24 hours include: A Secret Service special agent or officer was assigned to the building rooftop where Thomas Matthew Crooks fired off the shots but never showed up for work that day. The explanation Cheatle provided for the unmanned rooftop—that she had placed agents and/or officers inside the building because the “slope” of the roof posted a physical danger – was nonsensical because there was a similar rooftop nearby where two counter snipers were positioned. Four Secret Service snipers were present at the Pennsylvania rally, but only two of them were from the highly trained Secret Service ranks. The other two, who were responsible for firing the shots that killed Crooks, were local law enforcement officers. A petition on change.org calling for Cheatle to resign was blocked and placed under review.  When the petition was shut down Tuesday, it was just a few hundred signatures shy of reaching its goal of 10,000. (Hours after RCP on X.com publicly questioned the move as a potential example of censorship, the petition was restored.) The revelations and serious allegations piled up Wednesday, with more lawmakers calling for Cheatle’s resignation after the director held a telephone briefing for senators on the security failures. On the call, senators learned that law enforcement had flagged Crooks for suspicious behavior more than an hour before he fired shots at Trump. The agents and officers noticed that Crooks was holding a rangefinder and was wearing a backpack. Counter snipers spotted Crooks 20 minutes before the shots rang out. Sen. Barrasso talked to reporters after the briefing, reiterating calls for Cheatle to resign and complaining that Cheatle shut down the telephone briefing after just a couple of questions and “didn’t get into the meat of the matter.” Several senators, including Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, remained in the queue, never getting their questions answered, The Federalist reported on X.com. “So far, they’re flooding us with details that aren’t helpful,” Sen. Lee, a Utah Republican, said in an X.com post before the briefing ended. “I have yet to hear them substantively address the failures that led to this tragedy.” Senators on the call also learned that the Secret Service was aware of a “potential threat” 10 minutes before Trump took the stage in Pennsylvania but let him go out anyway. That revelation outraged many senators, including Blackburn, who told reporters she was “appalled to learn the Secret Service knew about a threat prior to President Trump walking on stage.” “I have no confidence in the leadership of Director Cheatle,” she added, “and believe it is in the best interest of our nation if she steps down from her position.” The briefing for senators occurred after Cheatle failed to provide a promised Tuesday briefing for House Republicans on the Oversight Committee. Rep. James Comer, who chairs that panel, issued a subpoena Tuesday for Cheatle to appear for a hearing on Monday. The petition calling for Cheatle’s resignation cited her support for a “30×30 pledge,” which aims to reach at least a 30% female workforce by 2030. The pledge is part of a national drive adopted by various law enforcement agencies across the country and one Cheatle has openly and enthusiastically backed. “Although Director Cheatle’s goal may have good intentions,” the petition stated, “unfortunately her misguided agenda has employed methods that have apparently resulted in female candidates not being vetted.” The petition also cited manpower shortages due to attrition driven by heavy workloads and low worker morale, as well as “selective promotion practices” during Cheatle’s tenure as director that aren’t merit-based. It said the agency is struggling with insufficient training funds while resources are being “reallocated” for recruitment, promotional testing, and executive leadership bonuses. The petition detailed allegations that Cheatle and others in the agency’s “executive leadership” resisted taking appropriate investigative or disciplinary action for “blatant misconduct” by a female agent who had received poor performance reviews and then accused her supervisor of sexual harassment. That superior allegedly filed a whistleblower complaint, which resulted in disciplinary action being taken against the female agent in question, according to a copy of an internal Secret Service memo dated Jan. 19, 2024, and obtained by RealClearPolitics. Questions also are swirling around the agency about why its snipers didn’t shoot Crooks until after he fired on Trump. One source in the Secret Service community said the agency has long taken an overly measured approach when it comes to firing on suspicious activity or people—even when they are armed. In the fall of 2014, the Secret Service faced a crisis after several disciplinary problems and security lapses, including fence-jumpers making it inside the White House. Ralph Basham, a former Secret Service director from 2003-2006, a 30+ year veteran of the agency, and a former director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, testified at a Sept. 30, 2014, House Oversight Committee hearing. Under questioning from lawmakers, Basham tried to explain why the Secret Service has a resistance to shooting first unless they can be fairly certain a suspicious person is a direct threat to the president or other protectees. “So, there’s a lot of things going on in the Secret Service’s head, I am sure, when we have an intruder like that,” Basham said. “But I just have a real—well, I think I am out of time. But I will say, in 1976, there was an individual who came over the [White House] fence, apparently was carrying some type of device that was—appeared to be a weapon, but turned out to be a pipe, and they shot him. And there was criticism for that shooting in 1976. This is a difficult, difficult balance to strike.” “That has contributed directly (among many other things) to the hesitation to shoot first,” the source said. “Also, note that [the 1976] incident was the first time I am aware of when a counter sniper fired on someone.” “We don’t need a director who creates a culture where counter snipers and others have to be unreasonably concerned about ‘striking a balance,’” the source continued. ”We need to be trained, and then get a transformational leader who will back you if you followed your training.” This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire. The post Secret Service Chief Faces Mounting Pressure To Resign appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The South Pasadena Unified School District in California paid an organization that wants a “more inclusive world for gender-diverse children and teens” $1,500 for a three-hour workshop on so-called gender inclusion in 2022. The workshop at the Southern California district included training on creating “Gender Support Plans” using Gender Spectrum’s form, which hides a child’s gender identity from his or her parents, according to documents obtained through a California Public Records Act request and shared with The Daily Signal. The form asks whether the student’s guardians are aware of their child’s gender status, then says: “If not, what considerations must be accounted for in implementing this plan?” It asks how a teacher/staff member should respond if parents ask questions about the child’s gender identity. “If the student’s guardians are not aware and/or supportive of the student’s gender status, how will school-home communications be handled?” the form continues. Attachment-1-Gender-Support-PlanDownload On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed legislation barring school districts from requiring that parents be informed of their child’s gender identity. California is the first state to adopt such a law.  Assembly Bill 1955 overrules any school board policies that require transparency with parents about their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity. “In light of Gov. Newsom’s signing of AB 1955, this training should be viewed as the continued usurpation of parental rights,” said Mark Trammell, executive director of the Center for American Liberty, the nonprofit legal group that conducted the records request. The workshop featured a two-part session called “The Dimensions of Gender: An Evolving Discourse,” including a “presentation of key terminology and concepts related to gender” and “reflection on personal beliefs and experiences with gender.” Participants participated in a “facilitated discussion about gender literacy,” including a time for personal reflections in breakout groups. The training “builds on understanding of basic concepts of gender and applies them to school settings.” Gender Spectrum includes applications of the concepts covered to “counseling, social work, child welfare and institutional settings.” The workshop also reviews data on the connection to “family affirmation” and the well-being of transgender children. The latter is akin to the pervasive left-wing narrative that a child will commit suicide if the parents don’t affirm his or her desire to transition. Gender-Spectrum-Agreement-1Download South Pasadena schools use handouts from Gender Spectrum’s “Gender Inclusive Toolkit,” according to documents acquired through the records request. The toolkit aims to help schools “set a tone that demonstrates your commitment to making sure every student’s gender is recognized and accepted.”  According to the toolkit, Gender-inclusive schools ask, “How are we accounting for the unique gender of every student?” According to Gender Spectrum, gender-inclusive schools like those in South Pasadena “interrupt binary notions of gender,” “question limited portrayals of gender,” and “acknowledge and account for gender diversity.” The LGBTQ+ youth organization instructs teachers on how to indoctrinate kids about gender. Recommendations include designing lesson plans on gender identity, inserting gender identity into curriculum, using literature with themes of “gender diversity,” assigning gender-related projects, and highlighting transgender people in history. Trammell said parents in South Pasadena should proceed with caution in response to the district’s intention of hiding gender identity from parents. “I hope that this revelation will encourage parents to pay even closer attention to who has influence over their kids—and their kids’ teachers—while at school,” Trammell said. The school district did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. The post EXCLUSIVE: California School District Paid $1,500 for ‘Gender Inclusion’ Staff Workshop appeared first on The Daily Signal.