'I have made the decision to retire at the end of this year'

'He will tell every part of his story'

A video shared on X claims to show Iranian fighter jets flying over U.S. warships. The only country that is not afraid of getting close to American warships, IS #IRAN ??⚡️ pic.twitter.com/V5IoQwT7dd — ZAINABZEHRA???????? (@ZAINABALI_72) September 15, 2024 Verdict: False The video shows Iranian F-4 Phantom fighter jets flying over Iranian naval vessels. Fact Check: Iran’s president […]

Books Mark as Read In Praise of Things Being Just Plain Good In a world of extreme opinions and polarizing reviews, we ought to appreciate books and other art that is just plain good. By Molly Templeton | Published on September 26, 2024 “The Reader” by Frank Weston Benson (1906) Comment 0 Share New Share “The Reader” by Frank Weston Benson (1906) Lately I have been reading a lot of books that don’t quite bowl me over. They’re solid, they’re nicely written, they’re entertaining, they have things to say. They are, in a word, good. But they’re not great. They’re not mindblowing, excellent, outstanding, beyond compare, brilliant, or any of the other hyperbolic words that feel, sometimes, as if they’re required when discussing art we love—especially online. These books are not redefining what a book or a genre is; they are not changing the world. They are kind of like the basics in one’s closet, which sounds a bit like damning with faint praise, but I mean this entirely positively: What would I do without my black jeans and tank tops? I would stay in pajamas all day, that’s what.  We need basics, or at least most of us do. And I think we need art that’s just plain good, too.  Obviously, this is entirely subjective. A book I think is brilliant might be—let’s be honest, often is—something that a whole lot of other people overlook, or dismiss, or bounce off, or just straight-up hate. For a little while I made a habit of looking at Goodreads whenever I’d discover a fantastic book that I hadn’t heard anyone talking about. Almost without fail, the reader comments there were largely along the lines of “DNF @ 20%” or “I’m not sure what this book is doing” or “The narrative was confusing.” The opposite was true of books I didn’t like at all. It felt like reading responses were some kind of teeter-totter: AMAZING!!! on one side, “DNF” or animosity on the other. I hesitate to make sweeping generalizations about the internet, this land of sprawl and niche, but I think this is perhaps another kind of polarization bred by social media and the attention economy. A calm appraisal of a book, or movie, or album, gets no views. No one clicks. No one hate-reads. If you want eyeballs, you have to yell, whether in appreciation or loathing. I’ve been thinking about this in terms of language for years, catching myself using extreme terms—hated, loved, incredible, the worst—when really, a lot of the things I was reading or watching were just fine. Good, even. Well-made, if not exactly my jam. Did I haaaaate it, or was it just okay? But all that grandiose language falls apart in the face of one of the best-known moments in online book recommendation in recent years: The Bigolas Dickolas tweet. The tweet that sent This Is How You Lose the Time War onto bestseller lists and made the words “Bigolas Dickolas” into something approaching a household name, at least for us book dorks. Here’s what the tweet said: “read this. DO NOT look up anything about it. just read it. it’s only like 200 pages u can download it on audible it’s only like four hours. do it right now i’m very extremely serious.” Yes, the “extremely serious” part is hyperbolic. But otherwise, this tweet is pretty mellow in terms of how it describes the book. It’s instructive in a way that is almost without praise. It makes me think of a line from Jess Ball’s Autoportrait: “The best speech about books is just the injunction: read this one.” Read this one. What I am saying here is not just that we ought to appreciate books and other art that is just plain good, but that I wish it were more common to recognize it as such. To say just read this one without having to dress up the recommendation in gushing terms that begin to all sound the same after a while. It’s kind of a cousin of publishing’s blurb situation, where every novel comes with a heap of praise that all too often doesn’t actually help a reader decide whether or not they want to read the book in question (except when they do work, which they do! Sometimes!). If we are all shouting about how every book is the best book ever, don’t we all drown each other out?  The flip side of this, though, is that authors in the modern day are in a shitty situation (and marginalized authors all the more so). If readers don’t leave four- or five-star reviews on those dreaded reviewing platforms, the algorithm might punish the book, burying it never to be found by those who ought to read it. If we don’t yell about our beloved books from every mountaintop, will anyone find them in the absolute sea of words available for purchase? One estimate has it that between self-published and traditionally published books, there are probably 3 million books released every year. Or more. I don’t have an answer for that. If anyone did, maybe authors wouldn’t be in this situation of pleading with their readers to leave reviews, or making TikTok videos even as they dread it, or having to ration their time between self-promotion and, you know, actually writing the things. But I wonder how many solid, good books get lost in that sea, and how we can find them, recognize them, lift them up for just being plain old good books. I am reluctant to use specific examples here, to be honest; the internet of flamboyant praise means that I worry about sounding as if I’m actually insulting a book by saying it’s just plain good. But to give an example of something I love that is in no way brilliant, world-changing, or genius: I love, deeply love, the Fast and Furious franchise. I love watching this diverse motley crew save the world in increasingly absurd ways that regularly defy the laws of physics.  And I would never in a million years pretend these movies are great. There are marvelous things in them: inventive action sequences, impressive stunts, and astonishing moments in which the actors keep straight faces while reciting some of the dialogue. But the only way you could rank a Fast and Furious movie as a truly incredible work of art is if you were judging greatness based on how many times a film cuts to a shot of a foot on a gas pedal or hand on a gearshift. In those categories, these films are truly leaders. Perhaps record-setters, even.  They’re also wildly popular, which brings me to a last and maybe contentious point: Popular things can also be just plain good. I keep running into a perspective that seems to claim that because things are popular, they’re brilliant, which absolutely does not track. (Neither does the opposite.) Popularity is one thing; quality is another. One is measurable in various ways; one is subjective.  And this is fine! This is good, even! Not everything we love has to be great. I love bad movies, and cheesy bands, and even some books that might, by some mythical objective measure, be rated “not good at all, actually” but something in them speaks to me. Love isn’t dependent on quality. Many years ago, a boy I knew looked at me with scorn when I said I liked a band he didn’t care for, and asked, “Why would you like something that isn’t good?”  Why would you limit yourself, my friend? What I am trying to say here is that it doesn’t matter. I think it would be nice if there were more nuance around praising the things we love, regardless of their entirely subjective quality. It would be nice if I didn’t have to read the gushing tweets that movie studios regularly repost about their most inane output, no matter how much those tweets seem calculated for exactly this effect. It would be nice if everything were a little more nuanced, honestly, and this is, in the grand scheme of things, small potatoes. But there’s so much out there that’s just good. Just plain good. And we should say so.[end-mark] The post In Praise of Things Being Just Plain Good appeared first on Reactor.

THE DAILY CALLER FOUNDATION—Democratic Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said on Wednesday that he was “innocent” after being indicted by a federal grand jury following multiple federal investigations, accusing the Biden administration of retaliating against him for criticizing its “broken immigration policies.” Federal prosecutors in New York secured an indictment against the former New York Police Department captain, who had been under investigation over corruption charges, The New York Times reported. Adams accused the Justice Department of targeting him after he spoke out about the effects that the influx of migrants had on the city. “New Yorkers know my story,” Adams said in the statement. “They know where I come from, I have been fighting injustice my entire life. That fight has continued as your mayor.” WATCH: “Despite our pleas, when the federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief, I put the people of New York before party and politics,” Adams continued. Adams announced funding cuts across multiple city services in November 2023 to address the need to house over 100,000 migrants to New York City. He also announced in January that the city would sue bus companies delivering the migrants to the city over the financial struggle the city has faced from the influx. Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona began busing migrants to New York City and other so-called “sanctuary” cities in 2022. “Yes, I’m speaking directly to the administration. This is a problem that we must have a resolution both from Congress on immigration, but [also] the administration to deal with the immediate need that we have,” Adams stated after visiting the southern border in January 2023. New York City formally became a sanctuary city in 2017, according to the Center for Popular Democracy. Then-Democratic Mayor Ed Koch of New York City initially signed an executive order barring police officers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in some situations in 1989. “I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target, and a target I became,” Adams said in his statement. “For months, leaks and rumors have been aimed at me in an attempt to undermine my credibility and paint me as guilty. Just this past week, they searched the home of our new police commissioner, looking for documents from 20 years ago, just one week after he joined my administration. Enough! I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength and my spirit.” The White House didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post Eric Adams Claims Biden-Harris Admin Targeted Him After He Spoke Out About ‘Broken Immigration Policies’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The town of Madaba in Jordan is home to the early Byzantine Saint George’s Church, which itself houses something quite incredible. In History Hit documentary The Jordan: A River Through Time, historian Dan Snow visits a site which has long been associated with early Christianity and the making of mosaics. It is still possible to find artists carefully crafting in stone here, continuing a tradition stretching back millennia and exemplified by one incredible Byzantine-era mosaic in particular. This is the so-called Madaba Map, the oldest known map of the Biblical Middle East. The Jordan: A River Through TimeImage Credit: History Hit “130 years ago workmen were clearing away the ground here to rebuild Saint George’s Church when they uncovered something extraordinary under the floor,” says Dan. “Pieces of small coloured tile began to emerge. Bit by bit, they revealed a large mosaic. But it wasn’t a pattern or a picture. They discovered a map, complete with towns, seas and rivers, showing this whole region dating back nearly 1,500 years.” The astonishing map is much more than just an atlas. “It doesn’t just show where places are in the physical space in relation to each other, but the importance of the spiritual dimension as well.” “This is how early Christians saw their world, how they understood their place within it, and the centrality of their faith.” “You can see the Dead Sea looming very large with the ships riding its waves,” explains Dan. “And there, just to the west of it we have the ancient city, the holy city itself, Jerusalem, depicted disproportionately large compared to other places on the map.” It is possible to pick out individual buildings on the map. “You can see the ancient walled city’s Damascus Gate. Next to Damascus Gate stands the dark column that once supported the statue of Emperor Hadrian. Moving further into the city, there’s a long colonnaded main street, or cardo. Prominent on the map are Jerusalem’s principal churches, including the large new Church of Saint Mary. Tucked against the city walls in the northeast is the Church of the Sheep Pool.” “This is my idea of heaven” “Right next to the main street stands the most important of them all. In Byzantine times it was called the Church of the Resurrection, but it’s now known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where it’s believed Jesus’s body was laid to rest after crucifixion. Still a place of devotion, 1,500 years after this map was made.” The map teems with details about the places that mattered to the Christians who lived in Madaba in Byzantine times. To the south Bethlehem can be seen, and elsewhere the names of Biblical places and tribes. The Nile flows in the west and on the Mediterranean coast the port of Gaza is visible. On the River Jordan itself lies the point where Jesus Christ was baptised. “As someone who is obsessed with both maps and history, this is my idea of heaven,” says Dan in the film. “It is as instructive as it is beautiful. It tells us about the world of the early Christians, literally where everything was, but also where they saw their place within it.” Watch The Jordan: A River Through Time and more original films by signing up to History Hit. Sign up to watch

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