Carl M. Grant

Attorney and scholar. Works for Travelers Insurance Company. Giants, Knicks, Yankees, Manchester United, Islanders, Star Wars, Star Trek, and LOTR.

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Spock’s death in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982) remains one of science fiction’s defining moments. After a lifetime of logic, his final act is driven by friendship, and that quiet exchange through the glass still hits just as hard decades later.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨BREAKING: TRUMP JUST HAD HIS WORST MELTDOWN EVER.

Trump completely unravels when Kristen Welker challenged him on his California election claims.

Instead of providing evidence, he called her "crooked" and "stupid," attacked the press, and abruptly WALKS OUT in the middle of the interview.

She did what every journalist should do every time Trump spews his unfounded bullsh*t.

Thank you, Kristen.

[Alex Wilson @AlexWilsonESM]

The Giants can get VERY stupid off the edge if this comes together.

OTA No. 9 had Arvell Reese screaming around the edge for a would-be sack.

A few plays earlier, Reese, Abdul Carter, Brian Burns, and Kayvon Thibodeaux all combined on the same pressure.

If Abdul Carter is ready to dominate RIGHT NOW, this pass rush has a chance to be the most fun thing on the roster.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

They called them flying coffins. The men who volunteered to fly them knew exactly why.

The Allied gliders of D-Day were made of fabric stretched over a frame of wood and metal tubing. They had no engine. No armor. No weapons. No parachutes for the men inside. They were towed to France at 130 mph on the end of a 300-foot nylon rope attached to a C-47, and when the rope was cut, there was one chance to land.

One. No go-arounds. No second approach. Whatever was below you was where you were going.

What was below them was Normandy at night.

The Germans had spent weeks preparing. Under orders from Field Marshal Rommel, they had driven wooden stakes into every open field in the region, angled to impale gliders on landing. The French called them Rommelspargel. Rommel's asparagus. Thousands of poles, many with mines or artillery shells wired to the tips, packed into every field large enough to land on.

What the glider pilots had not been properly told was the scale of the Norman hedgerows. The bocage. These were not English garden hedges. They were ancient earthen walls, some dating back centuries, topped with dense root systems and trees, rising 50 feet in places, bordering fields barely 200 yards long. A Horsa glider coming in at 100 mph hitting a hedgerow did not survive it. Neither did most people inside.

Some fields were flooded. Some were mined. Many were both.

517 gliders went into Normandy. 97 percent were abandoned in the field by the end of the operation. Most were destroyed.

General Don Pratt, assistant commander of the 101st Airborne, was in the first glider wave. His pilot managed to find a field near Hiesville and brought the glider down. It slid across the wet grass without slowing and hit a hedgerow at speed. The co-pilot died instantly. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Murphy, broke both legs. General Pratt suffered a broken neck. He became the first American general to die in the Battle of Normandy. His glider had landed in one piece.

Sergeant Eric Wilson's glider did not. It hit a building at high speed. Both of Wilson's legs were broken. He was trapped inside the wreckage, unable to move, in enemy-held Normandy, for two and a half days before anyone reached him.

Lieutenant Den Brotheridge had come in earlier than anyone, in the first glider to land in France, the silent coup de main assault on Pegasus Bridge just after midnight. His glider stopped 47 yards from its target. He led his men out at a run, reached the bridge, and was shot. He died within minutes, the first Allied soldier killed by enemy fire on D-Day.

The men who survived the landing did not get to stop. Glider pilots were not assigned to combat units. Once down, they were expected to fight as infantry, dig foxholes, guard prisoners, carry ammunition, do whatever was needed. Most of them had trained to fly, not to fight on the ground behind enemy lines in the dark.

They did it anyway.

Of the 517 gliders that went in, 222 were Horsa gliders. Most were destroyed either on landing or by German fire in the hours that followed. The Waco CG-4As fared slightly better but 97 percent of all gliders from the entire operation were eventually abandoned in Norman fields, broken and empty.

The men who flew them were not pilots in the traditional sense. They were soldiers who had been given just enough training to put an unarmed, engineless box of fabric and wood into a dark foreign field at 100 mph, full of men and equipment, with one attempt and no margin for error.

Many of them got it exactly right.

Many of them did not come home.

Today is June 6th.

Remember them too.

[TrekMovie.com @TrekMovie]

Happy birthday to Karl Urban, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond.
#StarTrek

[Legion Hoops @LegionHoops]

The Knicks have cancelled all watch parties outside of MSG due to Donald Trump’s attendance for Game 3, per Knicks PR.

[Andy Ostroy @AndyOstroy]

A prediction: Trump will announce that as much as he would love to go to MSG & have NY’ers cheer & applaud their favorite president, he unfortunately has to attend an emergency meeting about Iran (or some other BS excuse). He’s too big a coward to show up & be humiliated by massive booing

[Megatron @Megatron_ron]

NEW: 🇱🇧🇮🇱 Looks like Hezbollah is acquiring increasingly advanced air defense systems

Hezbollah launched a surface-to-air missile at an Israeli jet above Nabatieh, forcing it to deploy flares and retreat

[Retro Recall (☥𝐃𝐁) @RetroMoviesDB]

I am this old.

[New York Yankees @Yankees]

Sunday Matinee.

#RepBX

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

1977, Spider-Man.

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Because Trump is attending Monday’s NBA Finals Game 3 at Madison Square Garden, fans are being told to expect TSA-style screening, a strict no-bag policy, and to arrive at least two hours early.

As usual, Trump couldn’t care less about inconveniencing thousands of fans as long as he gets the VIP treatment. Hope he gets booed into oblivion.

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

This LEGO video is hilarious.

But the fact that people halfway around the world are trolling trump about the Epstein files more aggressively than many American media outlets should embarrass the hell out of us.

Don't stop talking about the Epstein files.

[Retro Recall (☥𝐃𝐁) @RetroMoviesDB]

Happy birthday Liam Neeson!

From Krull to Batman Begins....

Any fans or favourite roles?

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Netanyahu knows Americans are sick of funding Israel’s wars. So now he’s working with Congress to hide military aid inside Pentagon co-production deals.

That means MORE U.S. tax dollars for Israel, with even LESS oversight.

Not gonna happen!

[Megatron @Megatron_ron]

BREAKING: 🇺🇸🇨🇺The Cuban government has begun distributing weapons to ordinary citizens, officially urging them to prepare for an imminent US invasion, per Version Final

[Shadow of Ezra @ShadowofEzra]

Protests in Albania are exploding for a seventh straight day like nothing before.

Thousands of Albanians are refusing to surrender their land to Jared Kushner’s elite private island wish.

They are also demanding the immediate removal of their prime minister for colluding with Jared Kushner and Israel.

"Albania is not for sale."

[Marcó Alcaraz @MarcoAlcaraz_]

🚨🔴 The plan has remained unchanged since March: Man Utd intend to bring in THREE midfielders this summer, with Ederson set to become the first arrival when he joins in early July.

Fernandes, Tchouaméni, Scott, Tonali, Baleba and Anderson all remain on the #MUFC’s shortlist.

[Mal @UtdMaI]

🚨DONE DEAL:

Mateus Fernandes to Manchester United is agreed in a deal worth around £62m, with official confirmation expected in the media by mid-June.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇱 The Pentagon espionage bombshell just got worse...

New reporting confirms Israel has been eavesdropping on the American peace negotiators themselves.

The targets named: Steve Witkoff, Trump's top negotiator with Iran. Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's policy chief.

And Michael DiMino, who runs Middle East policy.

Israel wasn't just collecting on America generally.

It was listening to the specific men writing the deal Netanyahu opposes.

What's wild is the documented incidents read like operations against an enemy state.

American defense personnel in Israel discovered spyware surreptitiously installed on their phones.

In 2021, Israeli military intelligence officers were caught planting listening devices at DIA headquarters.

Last year, Shin Bet officers were discovered trying to bug a Secret Service vehicle.

A SECRET SERVICE VEHICLE.

One senior official described the Israeli collection effort against top U.S. officials as "unhinged."

And the rating in context: Israel's counterintelligence threat level is now higher than any other American ally and EVEN HIGHER than some adversaries.

Notice who got targeted.

Colby is the most prominent advocate of foreign policy restraint in the government.

DiMino runs Mideast policy. Witkoff writes the deal.

Israel's espionage maps perfectly onto the people standing between Netanyahu and the war he wants to continue. They bugged the peace.

All of this while Israeli officers sit inside CENTCOM with unprecedented access, while Congress moves Section 224 to link the two militaries' systems and data permanently, and while Huckabee negotiates the framework.

The Pentagon says the ally is spying at a critical level.

Washington's answer is to hand them the keys to the network. Please make it make sense...

Source: NYT