COMMODITY FETISH

Jeff Beck guitar collection to go under the hammer in January

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Jeff Beck's guitars are to be auctioned at Christie's in London in January 

- Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks

A collection of guitars and other musical equipment owned by influential rock guitarist Jeff Beck will go on sale in London in January, Christie’s auctioneers announced on Friday.

Some of the 130 guitars, amps and “tools of the trade” used by Beck during his decades-spanning career are expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars) when they go under the hammer on January 22, it said.

They include the rock legend’s 1954 “Oxblood” Gibson Les Paul, famously depicted on the cover of his seminal 1975 solo instrumental album “Blow By Blow” and used on several tracks.

It is estimated to fetch up to £500,000 ($634,000).

Beck, who rose to stardom with 1960s supergroup The Yardbirds and later enjoyed a prolific solo career, died in January last year aged 78.

His widow, Sandra Beck, said it was “a massive wrench” to part with the instruments but that they needed to be “shared, played and loved again”.

“These guitars were his great love and after almost two years of his passing, it’s time to part with them as Jeff wished,” she said in a statement.

“I hope the future guitarists who acquire these items are able to move closer to the genius who played them.”

The collection includes another Gibson Les Paul from 1958, dubbed the original “Yardburst” as it was bought in 1966 while Beck was in the seminal British rock group. It is valued at up to £60,000.

Meanwhile, a Fender Telecaster and Gibson hybrid crafted by world-renowned guitar designer Seymour Duncan specifically for Beck in 1973 is predicted to sell for as much as £150,000.

Highlights from the guitar haul will be on public view in Los Angeles on December 4-6.

The full collection will go on show for a week at Christie’s London headquarters before the January 22 sale.

Christie’s Amelia Walker said the auctioneers were “honoured to have been entrusted” with the sale of instruments belonging to a “rock pioneer whose influence on his peers was unmatched”.

She added Beck’s guitars had “shared his emotion and voice” with the world and the auction would “pay tribute to his enduring legacy”.

Dinosaur skeleton fetches 6 million euros in Paris sale


By AFP
November 16, 2024

The buyer has pledged to donate the apatosaurus nicknamed Vulcan to a museum - Copyright AFP/File Alexander NEMENOV, Ting Shen

The skeleton of a 22-metre-long dinosaur (70 feet) fetched six million euros ($6.4 million) Saturday, AFP learned from auction houses Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa.

An anonymous collector snapped up the vegetarian apatosaurus, which was dug up in the United States, for 4.7 million euros rising to 6 million including costs. It is the largest dinosaur ever to be auctioned in France.

The buyer pledged to allow it to be displayed in a museum.

“We are happy that the buyer intends to lend it to an institution,” said Olivier Collin du Bocage. They skeleton of the giant herbivore is made up of 75 to 80 percent of the original bones and is roughly 150 million years old.

The giant creature’s skeleton, which weighed around twenty tonnes during its lifetime, spent the summer in the orangerie of Dampierre-en-Yvelines, a chateau some 50 kilometres (30 miles) southwest of Paris, where the sale took place.

The remains of the apatosaurus, nicknamed Vulcan, were discovered in 2018 in Wyoming, in the United States, where the law allows individuals to acquire concessions in the hope of excavating prehistoric bones. Excavations took place between 2019 and 2021, financed by a French investor.

The fossil, which includes 300 bones, was then shipped to France to be restored.

Its presale value at auction had been estimated at between three and five million euros.

Under the contract of sale the future owner undertakes to give paleontologists access to the dinosaur to study it.

 

Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence

University of Cambridge

 

image: 

A ‘one of a kind’ fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution.

Researchers have identified a remarkably well-preserved fossil bird, roughly the size of a starling, from the Mesozoic Era. The complete skull has been preserved almost intact: a rarity for any fossil bird, but particularly for one so ancient, making this one of the most significant finds of its kind.

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Credit: Júlia D'Oliveira

A ‘one of a kind’ fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution.

Researchers have identified a remarkably well-preserved fossil bird, roughly the size of a starling, from the Mesozoic Era. The complete skull has been preserved almost intact: a rarity for any fossil bird, but particularly for one so ancient, making this one of the most significant finds of its kind.

The extraordinary three-dimensional preservation of the skull allowed the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, to digitally reconstruct the brain of the bird, which they have named Navaornis hestiae. Navaornis lived approximately 80 million years ago in what is now Brazil, before the mass extinction event that killed all non-avian dinosaurs.

The researchers say their discovery, reported in the journal Nature, could be a sort of ‘Rosetta Stone’ for determining the evolutionary origins of the modern avian brain. The fossil fills a 70-million-year gap in our understanding of how the brains of birds evolved: between the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird-like dinosaur, and birds living today.

Navaornis had a larger cerebrum than Archaeopteryx, suggesting it had more advanced cognitive capabilities than the earliest bird-like dinosaurs. However, most areas of its brain, like the cerebellum, were less developed, suggesting that it hadn’t yet evolved the complex flight control mechanisms of modern birds.

“The brain structure of Navaornis is almost exactly intermediate between Archaeopteryx and modern birds – it was one of these moments in which the missing piece fits absolutely perfectly,” said co-lead author Dr Guillermo Navalón from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

Navaornis is named after William Nava, director of the Museu de Paleontologia de Marília in Brazil’s São Paolo State, who discovered the fossil in 2016 at a site in the neighbouring locality of Presidente Prudente. Tens of millions of years ago, this site was likely a dry area with slow-flowing creeks, which enabled the fossil’s exquisite preservation. This preservation allowed the researchers to use advanced micro-CT scanning technology to reconstruct the bird’s skull and brain in remarkable detail.

“This fossil is truly so one-of-a-kind that I was awestruck from the moment I first saw it to the moment I finished assembling all the skull bones and the brain, which lets us fully appreciate the anatomy of this early bird,” said Navalón.

“Modern birds have some of the most advanced cognitive capabilities in the animal kingdom, comparable only with mammals,” said Professor Daniel Field from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, senior author of the research. “But scientists have struggled to understand how and when the unique brains and remarkable intelligence of birds evolved—the field has been awaiting the discovery of a fossil exactly like this one.”

Before this discovery, knowledge of the evolutionary transition between the brains of Archaeopteryx and modern birds was practically non-existent. “This represents nearly 70 million years of avian evolution in which all the major lineages of Mesozoic birds originated - including the first representatives of the birds that live today,” said Navalón. “Navaornis sits right in the middle of this 70-million-year gap and informs us about what happened between these two evolutionary points.”

While the skull of Navaornis somewhat resembles that of a small pigeon at first glance, closer inspection reveals that it is not a modern bird at all but instead a member of a group of early birds named enantiornithines, or the ‘opposite birds.’

‘Opposite birds’ diverged from modern birds more than 130 million years ago, but had complex feathers and were likely competent flyers like modern birds. However, the brain anatomy of Navaornis poses a new question: how did opposite birds control their flight without the full suite of brain features observed in living birds, including an expanded cerebellum, which is a living bird’s spatial control centre?

“This fossil represents a species at the midpoint along the evolutionary journey of bird cognition,” said Field, who is also the Strickland Curator of Ornithology at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology. “Its cognitive abilities may have given Navaornis an advantage when it came to finding food or shelter, and it may have been capable of elaborate mating displays or other complex social behaviour.”

“This discovery shows that some of the birds flying over the heads of dinosaurs already had a fully modern skull geometry more than 80 million years ago,” said co-lead author Dr Luis Chiappe from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

While Navaornis is one of the best-preserved bird fossils ever found from the Mesozoic Era, the researchers believe many more finds from the Brazilian site where it was found could offer further insights into bird evolution.

“This might be just one fossil, but it’s a key piece in the puzzle of bird brain evolution,” said Field. “With Navaornis, we’ve got a clearer view of the evolutionary changes that occurred between Archaeopteryx and today’s intelligent, behaviourally complex birds like crows and parrots.”

While the discovery is a significant breakthrough, the researchers say it is only the first step in understanding the evolution of bird intelligence. Future studies may reveal how Navaornis interacted with its environment, helping to answer broader questions about the evolution of bird cognition over time.

Navaornis is the most recent in a quartet of Mesozoic fossil birds described by Field’s research group since 2018, joining Ichthyornis, Asteriornis (the ‘Wonderchicken’), and Janavis. The group’s work on new fossil discoveries combined with advanced visualisation and analytical techniques have revealed fundamental insights into the origins of birds, the most diverse group of living vertebrate animals.

The research was supported in part by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Daniel Field is a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.

Navaornis skull [VIDEO]

A ‘one of a kind’ fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution.

Researchers have identified a remarkably well-preserved fossil bird, roughly the size of a starling, from the Mesozoic Era. The complete skull has been preserved almost intact: a rarity for any fossil bird, but particularly for one so ancient, making this one of the most significant finds of its kind.

Credit

Guillermo Navalón

Skeleton of Navaornis, a fossil bird from the age of dinosaurs. 

Credit

Stephanie Abramowicz

Navaornis fills a ~70-million-year gap in our knowledge of the evolution of the unique bird brain. Navaornis hestiae (centre) documents a previously unknown intermediate stage in the evolution of the central nervous system between the earliest birds (e.g., Archaeopteryx, left) and living birds (e.g., Tangara seledon, right). Artwork from Júlia d’Oliveira.

Credit

Júlia d’Oliveira

---

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-024-08114-4 

Article Title

Cretaceous bird from Brazil informs the evolution of the avian skull and brain

Article Publication Date

14-Nov-2024

Overshot and Kaput: Humankind Wears Out Its Welcome

John Kendall Hawkins

 November 6, 2024

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

When Noam Chomsky deflected questions about 9/11 — refused to speculate like a common theorist of conspiracies — but, in short, directed us to the Truth: We have bigger fish to fry and have to get to it ASAP.  No doubt, he wouldn’t deny that there were such men in the world who would be happy to be Insiders with sticks of dynamite. That shit built the world we know. People who spread opines like, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. This election is too important for the people to decide.” The Kissinger Doctrine, once so beloved, now junk.

Kissingers have been breeding like quazy wabbits since “we” double-tapped the Japs in ‘45. That is the way of the world.  The world we must change. What Chomsky wanted to draw our attention to was what we still had limited time to do something about, his Three Big Concerns: Climate Change, nuclear war, and the end of democracy. Any one of these could bring an end to the experiment/accident called human life on planet Earth. How do we force our leaders to address this problem?

In Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (Verso 2024) by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, we get a clear picture of where we, as a globe, are at regarding Climate Change policy. What we knew, when we knew it, and what we are doing about the crisis that definitely has Doom as a consequence of limited or non-action.  Malm and Carton begin by telling the reader that mitigation is what they mean by overshoot.  They write,  “Overshoot is here not a fate passively acquiesced to. It is an actively championed programme for how to deal with the rush into catastrophe: let it continue for the time being, and then we shall sort things out towards the end of this century.” This strikes Malm and Carton as hideous and maybe insane.

If mitigation, such as it is, doesn’t work, and it won’t, there is a post-mitigation plan.  “The dominant classes have to come up with secondary, backup measures for managing the consequences of excess heat.” Reassuring, isn’t it? they seem to enquire of the reader. The backup includes three options (or phases of bankruptcy, depending on how you look at it): Adaptation, carbon removal, and geoengineering.  “All three are also replete with repercussions, ranging from the annoying to the apocalyptic,” write the pair, who plan on publishing a separate analysis of the three backup options, already calling it The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late. “It will pay special attention to the psychic dimensions of the climate crisis,” they write, “notably the tremendous capacity of people in capitalist society to deny, and, when this no longer works, repress it.”

The authors focus on fossil fuels.  They can see that warnings fall on deaf ears.  They note that the world had a chance to take advantage of the proverbial silver lining that came with Covid-19 and its lockdown regimen.  They write,

“In 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, something highly unusual took place: global CO2 emissions fell…The lockdowns that closed the highways of the world economy cut their total by some 5 or 6 per cent…coincidentally, the pandemic broke out just as the wave of climate mobilisations on streets from Berlin to Bogotá and Luanda to London crested – in 2019, this had been ‘the fastest-growing social movement in history’ – and so proposals were floated for using the pandemic to start the transition by then long overdue. These came to nothing.”

Came to nothing.  Miracles from God have been precious few for  millennia — this we all know — but seeing the CO₂plummet in 2020 was almost like a sign from heaven that our so-called covenant since Noah was still solid. But no. Selfishness rules.

The authors continue the chronicle of our planet’s demise.  In 2021, “CO₂ emissions rose by 6 per cent, or two gigatonnes.” Then the authors got trippy.  To picture an abstract gigatonne as a concrete image, they wrote, see a gigatonne as a unit of mass “which equals the weight of over 100,000,000 African elephants.” Two gigatonnes, then, would be the equivalent of 200,000,000 African elephants. Phew, I whistled. That would be heaven on Earth for the Mbuti pygmies of the Ituri Forest, but then I actually pictured two-thirds of the American population replaced by African elephants. That’s a lot of elephant shit. And methane. Phew, I held my nose.

The authors list the damage done already by climate catastrophe ignored for what it is — potentially eschatological in scope — “The double blow of a cyclone and an early monsoon …one third of Bangladesh under water…Pantanal, the planet’s largest wetland..enveloped in flames…in the Atlantic – thirty named storms; within a fortnight, two hurricanes lacerating Nicaragua…for the first time, a hurricane struck Somalia…(cities more deeply flooded) or introducing novelties (wetlands ablaze)…Swathes of ,,,Turkey and Greece…aglow, while in the Chinese province of Henan, a year’s worth of rain fell in three days – downpours ‘unseen in the last 1,000 years’ – but in southern Madagascar, drought forced eight in ten inhabitants to fill their stomachs with leaves, cacti and locusts.”  Almost there. Almost at the point where a plague of locusts arrives and is welcomed as a much-needed meal served up.

Overshoot is divided into a Preface and three main sections: The Limit Is Not a Limit; Fossil Capital Is a Demon, and Into the Long Heat. What we have going as mitigation is not enough; it’s not even a start. The culprit is the one we all know: Big Oil. The Long Heat means our children and children’s children will have to live underground to survive.  That’s what the book tells. Methodically. With detail. Last Chapter, like in its resignation to our fate. But — it does hold out the notion that some shock to the system’s dominant classes’s control of the shituation (h/t Peter Tosh) can lead to real mitigation.

I recall reading Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir, The Doomsday Machine. In it he relates how he and a RAND colleague went to see Dr. Strangelove when it came out, and how he and his companion agreed that the crazy shit they’d just seen came across as “essentially a documentary.”  In the film, one of the strangest scenes is the one where Dr. Strangelove explains how everyone, after the war, will have to live underground, but the good news is each man will be given a set of 10 beautiful women to restock the world with humans. Preferably of Nordic persuasion and pedigree. It is crazy thinking.

Some public policies are way too important for the elites and bloviators and technocrats to be put in charge of or to be ceded implicit control by the state in exchange for more and more money and power. In his most recent book, The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, a book co-written by ex-Google wonk Eric Schmidt and Henry Kissinger, wherein Schmidt writes, “AI…is being applied to more elements of our lives; it is altering the role our minds have traditionally played in shaping, ordering, and assessing our choices and actions.” Schmidt, who, in his previous book Empire of the Mind (later re-titled to The New Digital Age), envisioned hologram machines in the dens of dominant class families, so that spoiled kids could go on field trips to the slum of Mumbai, is all for ceding control of mind to machines.

I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a planet go to shit due to the irresponsibility of its elites. This crisis – these myriad crises — are too important for the dinosaur people to deride. It’s time to get tough, pinky. Where up against false Darwinism and stolen plans. The time for clownin’ around and making faces is over.

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia.  He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times.

“The View”'s Joy Behar asks if J.D. Vance is gay after 'normal gay guy' comment: 'How does he know? Is he one of them?'

Joey Nolfi
Fri, November 1, 2024 a

Patti LuPone also joined "The View" and reacted in shock when she heard that Vance said Donald Trump will win the "normal gay guy" vote.

Joy Behar's latest joke on The View attempted to push J.D. Vance's narrative into Hillbilly Ele-GBT territory.

The 82-year-old comedian asked on Friday's live show if Donald Trump's VP pick is gay, after panelist Ana Navarro shocked the program's interview guest, queer icon Patti LuPone, by informing her that Vance speculated in a recent chat with podcaster Joe Rogan that the Trump ticket could win the "normal gay guy" vote during Tuesday's election.

"Yesterday, J.D. Vance said the normal gays are going to vote for them," Navarro said, as LuPone put her head in her hand and asked, "Oh my God, who is this?"

"What does that even mean?" conservative panelist and former Trump staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin posed, before Behar quipped, "How does he know? Is he one of them?"

The audience lightly gasped at Behar's remark, after similar jokes about sexuality have landed other comedians and internet in hot water — including past digital memes that mockingly categorized Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin as a romantic one.

Navarro then turned to the crowd to ask, "Are there any normal gays in the audience?" while Griffin finished her thought by classifying Vance's assessment as "so offensive."

Vance has largely drawn criticism from the LGBTQ community, with GLAAD even listing a roster of stances the politician has taken that they cite as going against the interests of the community.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for the Trump campaign for comment.

Prior to becoming Trump's VP pick, Vance — who also courted controversy earlier this year after a resurfaced 2021 interview clip showed him slamming "childless cat ladies" on the political left — published an account of his life story under the title Hillbilly Elegy, which chronicled his relationship to his grandmother and mother (played by Glenn Close and Amy Adams in a subsequent Netflix movie) as well as his budding romance with his wife, Usha Vance (portrayed by Freida Pinto in the film).

The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on ABC.



Anderson Cooper: Trump Would Be the ‘Not-Normal’ Kind of Gay Guy

Janna Brancolini
Fri, November 1, 2024 

Dimitrios Kambouris



Anderson Cooper has some questions about JD Vance’s theory that he and Donald Trump are winning the “normal gay guy vote” in the election.

“I’m curious to know where the line is between a normal gay person and a not-normal gay person,” the CNN host said.

“I can guess what it is. Anything related to drag—and wearing as much makeup as Donald Trump wears—that would be considered not-normal. It’s fine for Donald Trump, but on a gay guy that wouldn’t be considered normal,” he added.


During a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan on Thursday, the Republican vice-presidential candidate said he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump won among “normal” gays who “just want to be left the hell alone.”

Attacking the transgender community has been a central part of the Trump campaign, as he and Vance try to convince voters that transgender athletes somehow pose a bigger threat to women and girls than deadly state abortion bans.

Trump has also tried and failed to explain how he would protect IVF, which many same-sex couples rely on to start families, from getting swept-up in those same abortion bans.

The strategy has apparently failed to win over LGBTQ+ voters; polling shows Kamala Harris leads by almost 70 points among likely queer voters.

After Vance’s comments on Thursday, quote-unquote normal gay guys chimed in on X, formerly Twitter, to make it clear they would not be supporting the Trump-Vance ticket.

“Sorry I wasn’t there to see JD Vance’s latest gaffe. My husband and I were taking our kids trick-or-treating. In our minivan. With costumes from Target,” Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten wrote. “Anyway, have you made a plan to knock doors for Kamala Harris this weekend?

Bravo host Andy Cohen’s response was more succinct.

“Sashay away,” he wrote.

JD Vance claims teens become trans to bolster chances of getting into Ivy League schools

Gustaf Kilander
Fri, November 1, 2024 

JD Vance claimed during an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan that teenagers become “trans” to better their chances of getting into Ivy League schools.

In the three-hour episode of The Joe Rogan Experience that was released on Thursday, the Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee also claimed that some women “celebrate” their abortions and that studies show that “testosterone levels in young men” are connected to “conservative politics.”

Vance spent significant amounts of time criticizing transgender and nonbinary people, and added that he believed he and former President Donald Trump are likely to win the “normal gay guy vote.”

The first-term senator claimed that children in some white families think that becoming trans would enhance their chances of getting into Ivy League schools. There is no data that being trans betters chances of getting into a particular school.

“If you are a middle-class or upper-middle-class white parent and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like, obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle-class kids,” Vance said.

He added: “But the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.”

DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion – is a framework that aims to promote the fair treatment of all people.

Trump also recently appeared on Rogan’s show as he and Vance attempt to bring out young, male voters to the polls via a series of podcast appearances.

JD Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Thursday with just five days left in the presidential election cycle. The Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee also claimed that some women “celebrate” their abortions and that studies show that “testosterone levels in young men” are connected to “conservative politics” (Screenshot / The Joe Rogan Experience)

Vance claimed during the interview that liberal women were publically celebrating their abortions, including “baking birthday cakes and posting about it” online.

“I think there’s very few people that are celebrating,” Rogan pushed back.

“For a lot of people, one of the issues is that men are making decisions for what women can and can’t do,” the comedian told Vance. “And one of the more concerning aspects of this is ... say if you live in a state like Texas where there’s a limit to when you can get an abortion, I think it’s like six weeks, which a lot of people think at that point in time you can’t even tell whether or not you’re pregnant, and this puts a lot of women in very vulnerable positions.”




He added: “And then there is this thought that they could go to another state where it is legal and have an abortion, but they could be possibly prosecuted for that in their state. That’s concerning to me.”

Vance claimed not to have heard of anyone being detained for traveling for an abortion.

“I don’t like the idea, to be clear, of people getting arrested for freely moving around the country,” the senator said.

During one part of the discussion, Vance asked Rogan: “Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics?”

“Maybe that’s why the Democrats want us all to be [in] ... poor health and overweight ... because it means we’re going to be more liberal, right? If you make people less healthy, they apparently become more politically liberal,” he added.

Anderson Cooper Makes Cheeky Dig At Trump After JD Vance's 'Normal Gay Guy'

 Comment
Curtis M. Wong
Fri, November 1, 2024 

Anderson Cooper Makes Cheeky Dig At Trump After JD Vance's 'Normal Gay Guy' Comment
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways

Anderson Cooper chimed in Thursday on Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s recent claim that former President Donald Trump is likely to win the “normal gay guy vote.”

During a panel discussion on his show, “Anderson Cooper 360,” the CNN anchor said he was curious to know exactly where Vance would make a distinction between “normal” and “not normal” gay men.

“At first I was like, ‘Oh, JD Vance thinks there’s normal gay people.’ So I guess that’s sort of progress,” Cooper, who is gay, said. “I’m curious to know what the difference — where the line is between a ‘normal’ gay person and a ‘not normal’ gay person.”

He then suggested Vance may possibly draw the line at “anything related to drag,” before taking a cheeky dig at Trump.

“Wearing as much makeup as Donald Trump wears, that would be considered not normal,” he quipped. “It’s fine for Donald Trump, but on a gay guy, that wouldn’t be considered normal.”

Vance made the questionable claim in a Thursday interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast in which he alluded to a gay friend who was a committed conservative. He contrasted this man with other members of the “crazy” broader LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender and nonbinary people.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote because again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone,” he said, before suggesting implausibly that more high school graduates were identifying as transgender to boost their odds of getting into Ivy League colleges.

Vance’s comment overlooked the staunchly anti-LGBTQ platform that Trump embraced during his first term ― something which many supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris quickly pointed out on social media.

Related...
JD Vance Claims 'Normal Gay Guys' Support Trump And, Oh, The Clapback




Vance’s former friend calls trans college admission comments ‘outrageous’

Brooke Migdon
Fri, November 1, 2024 

Vance’s former friend calls trans college admission comments ‘outrageous’

Sofia Nelson, a former friend of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) from Yale Law School, on Thursday called the vice presidential nominee’s suggestion that transgender individuals are identifying as such to make themselves more marketable to elite colleges and universities “outrageous” and “offensive.”

Vance made the remark during a three-hour interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, during which the two men also criticized allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports and questioned scientific evidence supporting gender-affirming health care. At one point, Vance said he expects himself and former President Trump to win “the normal gay guy vote.”

“I think the MAGA movement thinks of minority identities as something we take on and off like a jacket,” Nelson, who is transgender, told CNN’s Laura Coates late Thursday in a television appearance after the Vance-Rogan podcast episode aired. “The only advantage that’s flown to me from being transgender is that I get to live my authentic self, which I think is, you know, what all trans people are seeking.”



“The reality for trans people in America is that we’re four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime,” Nelson said, referring to a 2021 analysis of federal crime victimization numbers. “There’s no evidence to support what he’s saying, and I think it’s part of this nefarious, calculated plot to divide us and to sow division amongst the American people, and that’s why you see that they spent $100 million running ads attacking me and my community.”

Trump and Vance have made anti-transgender messaging a central part of their campaign’s closing argument, spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising that paints the Democratic ticket of Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as extreme for their past support of trans-inclusive policies. At rallies, Trump frequently rails against what he calls “transgender insanity” and has pledged on multiple occasions to ban trans women and girls from female sports teams as president.

The former president has also made remarks disparaging the LGBTQ community more broadly, and last week referred several times to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who is gay, as “Allison Cooper.”

“Trans people just want to be left alone to be able to live our lives,” Nelson said Thursday. “I’m not bothering anyone. I’m not making it difficult for any, quote, normal person to live their life, and I wish that we could get back to a place of respectful, curious dialog and not attacks.”

“I do miss JD and Usha. I don’t wish anything ill on them,” Nelson added. “I care about them as people, but the political messenger that he’s become, I think, is incredibly dangerous, and I encourage everyone, whether trans or not, to think about, ‘What do these types of attacks from our leaders mean for us as a country?’ and, ‘What kind of message does it send our children about bullying?’ These are not the ways we would want our kids to talk about people who are different from us. It’s certainly not the way we want our leaders to talk about it.”

Vance touched on his former friendship with Nelson while appearing on Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Nelson, he said, “kind of flipped out on me” when Vance came out in opposition to gender-affirming care for trans youth while campaigning for the Senate in 2022. Vance is the primary sponsor of a Senate bill that aims to make it a felony crime to provide transition-related care to minors.

Nelson shared about 90 emails and text messages between themself and Vance, primarily from 2014 through 2017, with The New York Times in July. Vance in the exchanges describes Trump as a “morally reprehensible human being” and expresses his support for Nelson’s gender identity. He and his wife, Usha, brought Nelson homemade baked goods after Nelson underwent surgery related to their transition.

“What I’ve seen is a chameleon, someone who is able to change their positions and their values depending on what will amass them political power and wealth,” Nelson told CNN’s Erin Burnett in July. “And I think that’s really unfortunate, because it reflects a lack of integrity.




The One Clarifying Moment From J.D. Vance’s Outrageous Joe Rogan Interview

Molly Olmstead
Fri, November 1, 2024 

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This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics?” —J.D. Vance, in his three-hour interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, published Thursday

The Trump-Vance campaign has, in the final push, gone all out in the bro-podcast space in hopes of turning out the base. To that end, in an episode released Thursday, J.D. Vance made a three-hour appearance on the mother of all bro podcasts, The Joe Rogan Experience. Vance and Rogan covered a wide range of topics, but the most notable theme—given the particularly gendered nature of this campaign tactic—was Vance’s effort to define the GOP as the party of masculinity.

For example, when Rogan claimed that there were “very few things that will turn you into a conservative more than martial arts,” Vance jumped at the chance to connect support of Donald Trump to higher testosterone levels. Rogan was making a different argument—that martial arts encourage a conservative worldview because they emphasize the importance of hard work. But Vance went ahead with the implication that testosterone makes one a Trump voter.

“Maybe that’s why the Democrats want us all to be poor health and overweight,” Vance said, without clarifying in what way Democrats were plotting against public health. “It means we’re going to be more liberal.” It’s possible that Vance is referring to the body positivity movement, but it’s hard to know exactly what he meant.

Vance’s most heated points about gender dwelled not on hormones but on LGBTQ+ issues. He guessed, for example, that Trump would win the “normal gay guy vote” because these men were tired of being lumped in with gender-related debates. “Now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it that, they’re like, ‘No, no, we didn’t want to give pharmaceutical products to 9-year-olds who are transitioning their genders,’ ” Vance said. The Trump campaign embraced gay men, he way saying, as long as those men also embraced conventional ideas about gender and masculinity.

Transgender women, the second great boogeyman of the Trump campaign’s fearmongering (immigrants are always first), came up repeatedly as reminders of the threat to societal masculinity. Vance argued that transgender women were forcing children to see their genitals by wearing short skirts in public. (“If that’s what you’re doing, you’re a pervert.”) He asserted that Big Pharma was pushing hormones on children. He dismissed the idea of transgender children by talking about his 4-year-old son identifying as a dinosaur. (“I’m gonna take him to, like, the dinosaur transition clinic and put scales on him?”) He expressed concern that his daughter would get injured competing against transgender girls in sports. (“I’m terrified she’s gonna get bludgeoned to death because we’re allowing a 6-foot-1 male to compete with her.”)




On the surface, Vance may not seem like the best Trump surrogate on the topic of toxic masculinity: He, unlike Trump, has been married just once and has none of Trump’s gaudy-rich-man, reality-TV, grab-them-by-the-you-know swagger. But Vance is also a Harvard Law–educated intellectual, so he knows how to craft intellectual frameworks for Trump’s emotional outbursts.

So it’s fitting that his most bizarre argument around gender had to do with elite institutions. It came down to a wild theory: that white parents are incentivized to encourage their children to identify as transgender in order to get them into Ivy League Schools. Vance said:

If you are a, you know, middle-class or upper-middle-class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, obviously that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle-class kids. But the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s going on where, if you become trans, that is the way to reject your white privilege.

It’s a patently absurd theory. There is no evidence that anyone has ever encouraged their child to pass themselves off as transgender for college admissions. And yet, if you look past the novelty of the argument, you can see how this claim fits into the worldview Vance is promoting: The social-order liberals want disadvantages for white people, to Vance’s mind. In an unfair system in which oppression is necessary to win esteem, white people are forced to seek out contorted ways to identify with oppressed groups, creating a twisted and tiring game of identity fraud.

Here’s why the internet is convinced JD Vance wears eyeliner

Meredith Clark

Sat, November 2, 2024 

Here’s why the internet is convinced JD Vance wears eyeliner
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways


Ever since JD Vance was selected as Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential election, the internet has had much to say about the Ohio senator.

Within a few short months, the 39-year-old potential vice president has gone from best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy to one of the worst-polling, non-incumbent vice presidential picks since 1980. Like many things these days, much of Vance’s net-negative rating has to do with social media.

For those who are unaware, Vance recently sparked a social media firestorm over past comments he made about Vice President Kamala Harris, in which he described her as a “childless” cat lady. His resurfaced comments – which he made during a 2021 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson – received backlash from Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston and childfree people everywhere.

But that wasn’t the only Vance-related topic of conversation to go viral online. While the most bizarre rumor to be spread about Vance seemingly involves a couch, some internet sleuths are more perplexed by Vance’s appearance, particularly when it comes to his distinct blue eyes.

Across platforms like X, formerly Twitter, many social media users are wondering whether Vance wears eyeliner to enhance his bright blue eyes. The speculation appeared to beginin early summer, when journalist James Surowiecki quote-tweeted a clip of Vance from a September 2021 video interview.

“Why does JD Vance always look like he’s wearing eyeliner?” Surowiecki wrote over the video, adding: “He doesn’t really seem like the goth-boy type.”

Unsurprisingly, this prompted thousands of social media users to share photos of Vance from past on-air television appearances, zooming in on what appeared to be a black smudge accentuating his waterline.

“There is only one urgent political question on my mind tonight. Why does JD Vance wear so much eyeliner?” one person asked on X, while another user joked: “I do think it’s funny that JD Vance thought all his problems could be solved with contour and a little eyeliner.”

“I’ve been saying JD Vance wears eyeliner since he got elected, I’m so damn happy someone else sees it!!!” someone else posted.

Meanwhile, photojournalist Zach D Roberts shared his own photo of Vance taken during a recent speaking engagement, in which a black line was clearly visible under his bottom eyelashes. “I really thought people were joking about this, but then I photographed him last week. Vance 100 percent does wear eyeliner,” Roberts captioned the post.

Over on TikTok, one woman even claimed she found Vance’s exact shade of eyeliner. “This is unserious political commentary but I can’t stop thinking about it,” said user Casey (@mamasissiesays) in a recent video with more than 300,000 views. “Is JD Vance wearing eyeliner?”

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As she compared side-by-side images of Vance’s public appearances alongside his official Senate portrait, Casey was admittedly conflicted. “No eyeliner to see here. That is very much a man not wearing eyeliner,” she said about his Senate portrait. However, sharing a photo of Vance’s TV interview, Casey said: “Obviously something’s going on here… along with some contour. I’d love to know his shade.”

She then jokingly claimed to have found Vance’s eyeliner pencil of choice from the brand Urban Decay, in the shade “desperation”.

The speculation grew so much that it also prompted comedian Jimmy Fallon to poke fun at Vance’s rumored affinity for eyeliner in an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. During the July 22 broadcast, Fallon showed an image of a graph increasing along its x-axis, along with the mocking tagline: “Google searches for, ‘Does JD Vance wear eyeliner?’”

The late-night talk show host then cut to a photo of Vance, once again showing a distinct black line under his eyes.

It may be possible that Vance uses eyeliner for live events and TV spots, just like many public figures wear makeup to enhance their appearance on camera. However, the reason why so many people online can’t stop talking about Vance’s rumored makeup is because it’s “hypocritical” due to the Republican’s staunch anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs.

“We’re fine with men who wear makeup. What we’re not fine with is hypocrites who make policies, harmful policies, against men who wear makeup,” Casey noted in her viral TikTok video.

The Ohio senator has introduced bills proposing to limit access to transgender healthcare, and limit the ability to mark additional gender identities on US passports. Vance also grilled several State Department nominees with a questionnaire about LGBTQ+ rights, Pride flags, diversity and inclusion, and other so-called “woke” issues,” which ultimately delayed the confirmation of more than 30 diplomats to senior positions until last April.

For someone who may very well be wearing eyeliner, Vance has been known to espouse traditional views on gender too. His pro-natalist stance has seen him describe declining birth rates as a “civilizational crisis” driven by a “childless left.” Vance has also argued that people with children should have “more power” at the voting booth, and claimed that Kamala Harris “doesn’t really have a direct stake” in the future of the country because she did not give birth to her two step-children.