Wesley Parmer

A man of substances

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Could someone please tell Fred I'd be delighted to answer his serious questions? I'm sitting here waiting for my nail polish to dry and quite fancy a time-killing lively debate, but unfortunately he's accidentally blocked me.

[Cigar Page @cigarpage]

Good luck

#fyp #meme #cigar #cigarsociety #cigarhumor

[Kyle Wilson @KyleDWilson1]

Let me explain the scene before this which makes it not woke.

So Eowyn and Merry are sitting there with the other riders, looking at the battle before them for the first time. They chose to be there. They want to be there. But you can also see the absolute terror in their eyes. They want to be there, but they would also rather be literally anywhere else.

And then they ride forward.

Eowyn is not some proud girl boss. She is not even trying to be the greatest warrior there. She simply wants to stand with the others who refuse to let evil win. She isn't confident. She is terrified. She knows she will most likely die there. She gets her ass kicked. She gets a lucky shot at the Witch King because Merry helped her and she refused to give up. And after she wins she collapses.

This woman is not some infallible Mary Sue like many modern female characters. You can see the doubt and fear in her. She does not win the battle. She doesn't even save her uncle. But she takes a stand when she is terrified. That is a character anyone, man or woman, can appreciate.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

Reversing Bias Rather Than Eliminating It

STEM professors rate identical CVs more favorably when attributed to women or Black people

https://t.co/AXWipwtWWT

[Jason Silva @JasonSilva]

AI, Creativity and Language

[Michael Shermer @michaelshermer]

. @JMGreerWriter
Dowsing "works" by the ideomotor effect—tiny motions of the arms & hands move the rods beneath perception.
Movements are random or directed by thought.
"Hits" are accidental.
Confirmation bias: remember hits, forget misses.
Under controlled conditions—dowser is blind to where buckets of water are hidden under opaque boxes that also include no water boxes—no one has EVER found water better than chance.
Ditto Ouija board.

[Frank Frazetta @frazettagirls]

Frank Frazetta’s “Beauty and The Beast” (1995) oil on board. 18x24 inches.

“Critics knocks my female figures. They say they're overblown, that women don't look like that. And I agree. Certainly all women don't look like my paintings. But you can't deny some women do look like that. I don't want to paint just another woman. A painting, it's something important; you want to look at it, maybe forever. Who wants to look at just an ordinary hero forever? You want the ultimate, you pull out the stops and do everything in extremes. The extreme in beauty, if it fits; the extreme in ugliness if it fits; the extreme in terror if this is what's required. You know, I think this is one reason that so many people enjoy my stuff, because all of these extremes are jammed into it.” ― Frank Frazetta, (Icon, Underwood Books, 2003)

To learn more about the life and work of Frazetta visit https://t.co/ID5mfP9m7j

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

‘If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction.’ Me, 2020

Can you see it yet?

[The Cigar Gentleman @cigargentleman1]

Apostate Cigars - The Endowment

[Wesley Parmer @wparmer]

@Jo_nathan_80 @NathanielSami I suppose. I just think he dealt with the actual questions being asked. It happens a lot in these hearings.

[theleahfiles @leahfiles]

Fun fact. Howard Lutnick missed work on 9/11 because he was bringing his son to school..for the first time ever he decided to be a dad. And the date of that school starting has not been confirmed. He lost everyone in his company that day. He also made an automated system that allowed him to not hire back the majority of people killed bc it took their jobs. He also sued American Airlines and won to the tune of $30 some odd million. He took the money and again, didn't have to replace anyone. He also cut off health insurance and payments to the families within 2 weeks. This matters because it sets the stage as to who he is as a human and sets the stage for what he's doing now. Coming tomorrow......bc f*ck you you child predator

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

I’ve always found people who bristle at “American exceptionalism” kind of… weird. Not because I lack self-awareness — I’ve spent my career cataloging every way this country fails to live up to its own rules. But that’s exactly why I love it so damn much. We built a system designed to be shamed by its own founding documents, and it still delivered one of the most spectacular, world-altering runs in human history. A genuine force for human flourishing.

I also found the argument against American exceptionalism to be historically illiterate. Here’s a sample of what we were first at:

• The first large-scale democratic republic in human history — not a city-state, not a monarchy with a parliament bolted on, but a bold continental experiment in self-rule, popular sovereignty, and ordered liberty.

• A written Constitution (1789) with separation of powers and checks & balances — still the oldest national constitution in force anywhere.

• The Bill of Rights (1791): the first time a nation wrote “the government cannot touch these” into supreme law and actually meant it. A dare the world copied — from later rights charters to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• Public land-grant universities and mass higher education (Morrill Act), opening college to ordinary people no aristocracy would have let near the gates. (but don’t get me started about what happened after we started. Massively federally funding it.)

• Kitty Hawk, 1903 — first controlled powered flight.

• The Moon, 1969 — still the only ones who’ve been there.

• The world’s largest economy since ~1890, powering unprecedented prosperity through grit and genius.

• The assembly line, skyscraper, transistor, personal computer, ARPANET — the backbone of the modern world.

• Telephone, phonograph, GPS — connecting and powering daily life.

• Surgical anesthesia, polio vaccine — saving and transforming millions of lives.

• Jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll — brand new American art forms that conquered the globe.

• Hollywood’s dreams, blue jeans, bourbon, and a culture so open a kid like me could devour sushi, burritos, stuffed cabbage, and tabouli in the same week and rightfully think of it all as American.

That’s the part that fills me with genuine love and pride: not just the power or the wins, but the appetite for freedom, creativity, and reinvention. The audacity to say “We the People” and keep trying to live up to it.

What do you love most about this truly exceptional country? 🇺🇸

[Jason Silva @JasonSilva]

Announcing my new book: The Ecstatic States of America, a manifesto for a country of the mind! Avail here: https://t.co/AxT92fpFio

[Amanda Fortini @amandafortini]

My husband @walterkirn’s college girlfriend just sent him a photo of himself at 17 years old. Little did I know he was Minnesota’s Camus.

[Mark Changizi @MarkChangizi]

One of the most important morals of Covid was that most people wouldn’t recognize the arrival of tyranny even if it

1/ banned church services

2/ shut down their business

3/ forced them to stay home

4/ stopped schooling their kids

5/ lost them their job cuz “inessential”

6/ kept sick family from seeing their loved ones

7/ prevented their doctors from making their own medical decisions

8/ demanded they cover their identity and ability to express themselves in public

9/ coordinated which speech and viewpoints would be allowed in the public square

10/ jabbed them in the arm with a rushed medication, and refusal to submit meant being fired and banished

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

America partied hard yesterday and celebrated its 250th birthday, so this weekend’s free speech update is going full revolutionary pamphlet-mode.

We’ve got a shot of Thomas Paine via @reason, a bunch of Frederick Douglass cocktails via @TheFIREorg, @NicoPerrino on @freespeechtalk with Anthony Aycock, and assorted apertifs from @sarahemclaugh, @StrangelEdweird, @tyler_tone, @CarolynIodice, @FreeSpeech_AI, plus international free speech news from Australia and Uganda.

Also: @damonroot's “A Glorious Liberty” is my book of the semisesquicentennial (a term that gives new meaning to “words fail”).

Catch it all, here: https://t.co/LoseoVyyen

[Isabella Clark @IsabellaClar7]

BJ joke you've never listened before 😭

[Sherman McCoy @wasphyxiation]

> notorious womanizer despite being fat and bald
> retires at 42 as the richest man in the colonies by building a fortune on posting
> world-leading scientist in his SPARE TIME despite little formal education
> hired by the government during the revolution to schmooze people in France
> founded the future most powerful country on earth
> died at an old age universally admired

Reminder: Ben Franklin was the biggest baller of all time

[reason @reason]

Thomas Paine was far from perfect, but when it comes to the questions that matter most today, he's the Founding Father to cast our lot with. He reminds us of America's true covenant: the right of every person to live without a master.
https://t.co/dv5bTxUxMq