Regarding the shots taken at Trump, resulting in one audience member behind him dead, two wounded, and the shooter, a sniper on a roof apparently less than 100 meters away, shot by counter snipers.
I've now given a bit of thought to the "false flag" … "if was all staged" scenario.
It's not plausible.
But it will be almost impossible to allay such concerns. This helps support a false equivalence between supposed left wing conspiracy theories and Qanon.
If I were writing an action thriller around these events, I would do it like so:
Master mind (some like Gen. Mike Flynn or a Putin operative who has successfully maintained the secret of his, or her, identity) recruiting four co-conspirators.
Only one of those is in on the whole plot.
One other is a patsy, the others get duped into it thinking that it was just going to be a campaign publicity stunt.
Patsy is a unknown, random, Trump supporter and espionage wannabe. Convinced to snipe from a rooftop and deliberately miss, intentionally hitting (wound or kill, doesn't matter) a random person behind Trump.
They're convinced they're going to get away. Our master mind shows them the getaway plan and sells it (perhaps with the true co-conspirator — the shooter's shooter — posing as getaway accomplice).
The true co-conspirator is either a secret service agent who shoots the patsy, or a second sniper using the efforts of the actual anti-sniper, counter-sniper unit to cover his, or her, shots supplied with the exact same ammo as the anti-snipers).
One of the duped accessories must be close in with Trump's security detail, supplied with a trick ring or other device with a tiny, short, razor blade. He bloodies Trump's ear during the scuffle (after shots fired).
This avoids the risk of the (patsy) sniper having to graze Trump with a real bullet. Trump could be depicted, in my hypothetical story, as the one to cause the superficial but photogenic injury. He was around pro-wrestling kayfabe enough to understand that.
The last accessory is the attending physician — to ignore the discrepancies between intentionally inflicted razor bloodying and grazing from a real bullet.
Might actually be instructed to alter the injury to it would pass third party (cursory) review.
Only the mastermind and the shooter's shooter need to be in on the whole plot up front.
Everyone else is a patsy (dead afterwards) or duped into participating in "just a stunt" and then locked in as accessory to murder among other charges after the member of the crowd is shot by the patsy.
This is all far more plausible than most popular fiction, and perhaps more plausible than a shooter really only barely grazing Trump's ear from only 100 meters or so away, on a clear day, with clear line of sight to target. (I shoot better than that without any formal training!)
JimD
npub1trhp...e2z6
Greybeard Geek.
ゆっくり繰り返してください
#NoContext4U
What would it take for @Damus to support the iPadOS/iOS [Share] feature that's common in various other apps?
For example in Duolingo I can "share" an achievement to 𝕏 or Meta/Facebook like I did here:
Also, what's the best way to share a #NOSTR note or event over the web?
I would love to phase out direct posting to 𝕏 and shift towards posting new content on #NOSTR with links to 𝕏 and other social media. Grow the NOSTR community by guiding my (admittedly not impressive number) of followers towards it.
Basically getting sick of 𝕏's continued decline and was long ago disgusted by Facebook's policies and algorithmic manipulation of my feed.
X (formerly Twitter)
Jim Dennis (@answrguy) on X
I'd say my experiment in low intensity 日本研究 (Japanese studies) is going well.
I'm, surprised that I'm ranking this high given that I'm onl...
These are worth pondering:
1. One mark of a smart person is the ability to learn from people they don’t like.
2. The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is simply the word "no."
3. Rich people have money. Wealthy people have time.
4. Writing is often the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about.
5. 90 percent of success is not getting distracted.
6. Short-term results come from intensity. Long-term results come from consistency.
7. Clear writing gives poor thinking nowhere to hide.
8. The quicker you want something, the easier you are to manipulate.
9. If you want new ideas, read old books.
10. First-principles thinking is a competitive advantage because almost no one does it.
11. Talent and potential mean nothing if you can't consistently do the boring things when you don't feel like doing them.
12. The greatest trap is telling yourself that you’ll do something important tomorrow. Procrastination creates negative momentum.
13. Make your next project something people will ask you about for the rest of your life.
Those are from: 
I'll add:
* To be successful, learn how to respond to failure.
X (formerly Twitter)
Write of Passage (@1WriteofPassage) on X
13 remarkable tweets from Shane Parrish (@shaneparrish), the creator of Farnam Street:
1. One mark of a smart person is the ability to learn from ...
Story idea: Ægobots
Have you ever wanted a personal robot or servant?
What if you could actually sort of be your own robot? What if there was some sort of implant or even just a discipline or technique by which you could turn the part of you that you consider to be YOU, your ego, inward to sleep, play games, watch movies, chat, do your doom scrolling, engage in virtual sex with other ægobots, whatever … all while a sort of AI or "mini me" was blissfully directing your body and other parts of your brain, alter egos, doing various boring, mind numbing or mindless tasks for you.
In other words, what if you could direct your body to essentially be your own personal servant?
Now the story plot: what if that device, implant, mechanism … what if that were compromised, backdoored, and after untold millions of folks had adopted this for their benefit, they could be subverted, co-opted into being a meatspace army while the owners of all those bodies were off in a dream space, unaware that any of this was going on … a sort of Inception/Matrix zombie horde?
What if?
⚠️ WARNING: A fraudulent Electrum app is being distributed on the Apple @AppStore. ⚠️
Someone asked #NOSTR should be funded. I responded in thread, but want to also post this on its own:
How is the Internet funded?
NOSTR should not be a project, nor a product, nor a service.
It should be a suite of protocols (implemented over the Internet's TCP/IP protocol suite) which establishes interoperability among clients, servers, and peers — between clads of users and sources of content or providers of services.
In other words, it should be like the web, but using public/private keyed identities over an explicitly censorship resistant and privacy preserving event/relay model.
Custodia Bank announced ₿ custody solution for institutional customers:
Custodia Bank
Custody Whitepaper | Custodia Bank
Custodia provides a full suite of banking and financial services tailored to business customers looking for enhanced regulatory clarity, defined as...
Every successful narrative must incorporate improbable elements. It's due to a Darwinian dynamic.
TIL: polysemy: characteristic referring to lexicographically equivalent terms with multiple (poly-) semantic interpretations (-semy). 
Precursors to Isekai 異世界
☞ Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain, 1889
☞ The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis, 1955
☞ Three Hearts and Three Lions, Poul Anderson, 1961
☞ The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, 1959
☞ Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein, 1963
☞ Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, H. Beam Piper, 1965
☞ Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny, 1970
☞ Spellsinger, Alan Dean Foster, 1983
I'm sure I'm missing some seminal works which could qualify. Also The Twilight Zone only deserves honorable mention as many of its episodes wouldn't qualify as isekai. However, enough of its stories are so influential, and develop themes which could implicitly be isekai (in the sense that the protagonists have slipped into these "other worlds" without any exposition on how it occurred) that I felt compelled to include it.
But we might make similar arguments for The Outer Limits, or even Night Gallery. Where do we draw the line?
Isekai - Wikipedia
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Wikipedia
The Magician's Nephew - Wikipedia
Three Hearts and Three Lions - Wikipedia
The Twilight Zone - Wikipedia
Glory Road - Wikipedia
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen - Wikipedia
Glory Road - Wikipedia
Spellsinger - Wikipedia
Took the train from Berlin to Amsterdam.
Utterly failed to arrange hotel accommodations between getting here. Decided to wing it.
Picked a nice sounding pub to park Heather and the luggage at and just struck up a conversation with some pensioners who were drinking and smoking outside.
Asked if they had advice for a dumb, impetuous American.
So my new buddy Dietrich called over to the hotel that was listed as “full” nearby and arranged for them to hold a room for me at a lower rate than web was showing for anything else in the area.
Bought the lads a round. Left Heather here playing D&D over her phone and the interwebs, and watching the luggage while I ambled a quarter kilometer across Haarlemmer to pay for the room and pick up our keys.
Now I back sipping on Glenmorangie and getting ready to roll our luggage over these streets.
RIP my wheels.
Finnegans Rainbow: 