John Dahlstrand

Lighting designer. Fav color: all of them. Gin Martinis. Takes more than 2 to tango. Been writing the same novel since 2009.

[John Dahlstrand @jrdahlst]

@IonaItalia @d08890 does this "tribe" have a chapter in the USA?

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

An apt day to remember that Dolly Parton once recorded a cover of Stairway to Heaven - and, in defiance of every moral law in the universe, she absolutely owned it.

[Mark @lebatardshowfan]

My favorite clip of Dolly.

[Marshall Mathers @Eminem]

I'm sorry we never got a chance to meet, but getting this note from Dolly really had a an impact on me. She definitely didn't have to take the time to do it. Even for a kid who mostly listened to rap music, she was an icon. A superstar in every sense. Rest easy Dolly. And thank you for the kind words.

[Dolly Parton @DollyParton]

A message from the family of Dolly Parton.

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

A big reason for the trade imbalance? We were buying oil at below market rates from Canada. We had a sweat heart deal. Take oil imports out of it and we had a trade surplus. This thing with Canada is moronic. And the people buying into Trump's bizarre misunderstanding of basic facts and economics are telling on themselves.

[Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum]

The comparison between the discovery of the Katyń mass graves and the physical evidence of the victims at Auschwitz rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the German SS and Soviet NKVD disposed of their victims.
A close analysis of the historical, chemical, and physical evidence reveals why this comparison is flawed, and what physical traces of the victims actually remain at Auschwitz:

1. Clarifying the Numbers
The claim of "millions" of victims is a slight exaggeration of the historically accepted figures. Rigorous demographic and archival research, led by historians such as Dr. Franciszek Piper, has established that at least 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz (of whom approximately 1 million were Jewish).

2. Katyń vs. Auschwitz: Direct Burial vs. Industrial Cremation
The reason intact bodies were found in the Katyń forest but not in similar numbers at Auschwitz lies in the radically different methods of body disposal.
Katyń: The Soviet NKVD shot Polish officers and buried them directly in the ground. Because they were buried in cold, deep, undisturbed clay soil without being cremated, their bodies underwent natural preservation, allowing for their subsequent exhumation.
Auschwitz: The SS systematically worked to destroy all physical evidence of mass murder. While some victims were initially buried in mass graves in Birkenau in early 1942, Heinrich Himmler visited the camp in July 1942 and later ordered all previously buried bodies to be dug up and burned.

3. The Industrial Disposal of Ashes
From late 1942 onward, the SS utilized burning pits and later high-capacity, coke-fired crematoria in Auschwitz II-Birkenau to incinerate the bodies of those murdered.
Bone Crushing: The cremation process did not reduce bones completely to dust. To hide the evidence, Jewish prisoners in the Sonderkommando were forced to use heavy wooden pestles to crush the remaining skulls and long bones into a fine powder.
Systematic Dispersal: The pulverized human ashes and bones were loaded into trucks and dumped directly into the nearby Vistula and Soła rivers so the current would carry them away. Ashes were also mixed into agricultural compost or dumped in deep, swampy ditches and hollows.

4. The Traces That Do Remain
Despite the Nazis' extensive efforts to erase all evidence—which culminated in blowing up the Birkenau crematoria and gas chambers in January 1945—massive physical evidence remains preserved at the site:
Massive Ash Deposits: The claim that no human remains exist is false. Massive deposits of human ashes and bone fragments remain preserved in the soil around the ruins of the crematoria, the open-air burning pits, and in the nearby forests and glades of Birkenau. The entire former camp area is recognized and protected as a cemetery.
Archaeological Proof: Modern excavations and conservation works in the areas of the ruins have uncovered tens of thousands of personal effects belonging to the victims (including jewelry hidden in false-bottomed mugs, eyeglasses, children's toys, and prostheses), directly proving that the people on the transport lists arrived and were stripped of their possessions at these exact locations.
Parallels in Other Camps: Similar "no graves" claims have been systematically debunked at other pure extermination camps like Treblinka (where bodies were also exhumed and cremated on pyres). Modern archaeological studies utilizing Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and targeted excavations have successfully located the exact gas chamber foundations and massive, deep pits filled with ash and bone fragments beneath the soil.

Ultimately, we do not find intact skeletons of the 1.1 million victims because the Germans went to industrial lengths to incinerate them and throw their ashes into local rivers. What remains today are the massive ash fields, the ruins of the machinery used to murder them, and the millions of personal items they left behind.

[Frank J. Fleming @IMAO_]

Candace Owens joins the Scooby Gang!

[John Dahlstrand @jrdahlst]

maybe it's all because we don't use bidets in the US

[Iona Italia, PhD 🦘🇦🇺 @IonaItalia]

If you could make one segment of humanity significantly more intelligent, which would you choose:

[John Dahlstrand @jrdahlst]

@StephenFleming People are always creating more stuff to ingest

[Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @NotHoodlum]

On 9/11, after US airspace closed, Canada launched Operation Yellow Ribbon. Gander, a town of 10,000, received 38 airliners. Residents sheltered, fed, clothed, and supported stranded passengers for days, providing this hospitality free of charge.
https://t.co/gw5avajjoe

[Matt Worthington 🇨🇦 @MattyWorthy32B]

I don't recall seeing Sean Duffy in Afghanistan after the September 11th terrorist attacks. He was a fit, educated 30-year-old "alpha male" when his nation was attacked, so why was it that 40,000 Canadian soldiers would go to Afghanistan(158 killed) while Sean Duffy didn't? 🇨🇦

[Robert E Kelly @Robert_E_Kelly]

Incompetence

Trump is not a foreign agent or any of that

The answer is far more banal: he is staggeringly unqualified for the job. He’s impatient, undisciplined, doesn’t read at all (that’s a huge part of it), easily bored, & too venal to grasp his job’s public responsibilities

[John Dahlstrand @jrdahlst]

I bet if they put them on wheels, they'd go WAY faster

[The Associated Press @AP]

WATCH: Chinese robot beats Usain Bolt's 100m world record on the opening day of the Olympics-like World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. Read more here: https://t.co/aHbmKfOG3h

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity.”

— Anne Applebaum

[John Dahlstrand @jrdahlst]

@DrNeilStone probably medical examiners too

[Rep. Dan Goldman @RepDanGoldman]

The Trump administration is reportedly moving to strip Doris Miller's name, a Black Pearl Harbor hero, from the aircraft carrier meant to honor him, with word that it could be renamed after the president instead.

This is an insult to veterans who have earned these honors in combat.

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

OK let’s do this again: after Covid vaccines were widely available by spring 2021, beginning with the delta wave, 80-85% of the Covid deaths occurred among the unvaccinated. The other 15% I seem to remember were roughly split between those who received only one dose vs 2 doses, so only about 7% of deaths occurred among fully vaccinated and even then most of those did not get boosted after the virus mutated to later variants. The vaccines afforded 90-95% vs Covid deaths. So overwhelmingly refusing Covid vaccines and contracting Covid was the reason so many Americans perished after July 2021. Details are in my 2023 book The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science @JHUPress