7 French Recipes to Bring to Your Thanksgiving Table

  

From Léonce:

Now, I should probably admit that I’ve only celebrated Thanksgiving once, here in Amsterdam. I was invited to dinner and brought a homemade pain d’épices, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable French contribution. Whether the evening followed every American tradition, I couldn’t say, but I remember enjoying it very much. So I’m hardly an authority on Thanksgiving, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of interfering with anyone’s treasured family recipes. We French have our own rather firm opinions about what belongs on the Christmas table, so I understand the sentiment.

Still, if there’s room for something a little different alongside the turkey and the pumpkin pie, I’ve gathered seven ideas, from Comté gougères and chestnuts gently cooked in butter to a stuffing inspired by something rather unexpected: the garlic and parsley butter we serve with escargots. Some are traditional French recipes you can easily bring along as a guest, while others are adaptations I’ve imagined for the occasion. You certainly don’t need to make all seven. From what I understand, there is already quite an impressive amount of food involved in Thanksgiving. But perhaps one or two will tempt you. (Read more.)

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The CIA and Election Fraud

 From Joe Hoft:

Here is a nice summary found at Sofia Karstens Substack entitled: “The CIA’s Own Document Contradicts the CIA“:

In June 2026, the CIA declassified a five-page summary of intelligence reporting on Venezuela’s electronic voting manipulation capabilities, spanning 2004 to 2020. The document is heavily redacted. What survived redaction is still enough to raise questions the document itself doesn’t answer: if this much was worth declassifying, what’s still being withheld? And why does the agency’s document undermine its own baseline finding?

First, a 2006 National Security Council threat assessment evaluated Smartmatic’s acquisition of the U.S. voting systems company Sequoia as a “moderate overall threat to US national security interests.” The assessment rested on two pillars: intelligence indicating Venezuelan government intent to influence U.S. politics, and documented evidence that Venezuela had manipulated its own electoral systems. That finding led directly to pressure from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which forced Smartmatic to divest Sequoia by 2007.

Additionally, intelligence reporting from April 2004 indicated Hugo Chávez stated his objective was to prevent the reelection of a sitting U.S. president – language the document says the IC treated as evidence of intent to influence U.S. domestic politics, not merely Venezuelan politics.

Lastly, prior to Venezuela’s 2012 presidential election, intelligence reporting described Chávez’s intelligence services – military counterintelligence and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service – as working with the National Electoral Council and Smartmatic to develop a specific manipulation plan: deploying altered machines to roughly 300 voting centers in pro-Chávez strongholds to secure a margin of about 1.5 million votes. Sources reportedly said Chávez congratulated his team afterward for “successfully implementing” it. Separately, September 2020 reporting on Venezuela’s National Assembly election described a technical method: creating a second, parallel set of “virtual machines” that would replicate legitimate vote data while substituting manipulated results, engineered specifically to survive standard audit procedures.

That is a documented election-manipulation plan, and a documented manipulation method, from the same company whose voting systems now run some of the largest election jurisdictions in the United States.

The baseline assessment problem makes the document even harder to take at face value. Despite reporting a detailed 2012 manipulation plan, the CIA’s stated baseline assessment – repeated twice in five pages – “maintained that large-scale electronic fraud did not occur.” The stated reasoning: pre-election polling had Chávez ahead by roughly 10 points, government spending rose 24 percent before the vote, the opposition conceded, and CIA’s own quantitative analysis found no irregular voting patterns. (Read more.)

 

From The Truth Barrier:

The Daily Mail article here.

Long time readers of The Truth Barrier are familiar with my deep dread of John Brennan.

And yes, you can “judge” a father whose son is depraved like this. Yes, it starts with the father.

(As with Russell Brand.)

Why did they only now decide to arrest this dangerous man, after almost two years of having evidence of his violences?

Because none of them care about children—they wait until the chess board tells them it’s time for a new scene in their movie.

Kyle Brennan should have been arrested in 2024.

The screaming lady with short hair who used to stand on the corner of 79th and Broadway with a poster of Screw magazine depicting a naked woman emerging from a meat grinder was right. I knew she was right, all those years ago. Andrea Dworkin was right. And the “crazy Christians” were right.

Pornography, depicted by its defenders as a matter of the first amendment, of personal “freedom,” is sheer black plague: The very death of freedom. (Read more.)

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The Posture Is the Purport

 From Steam Calliope Scherzos:

A decade ago, a trend came along in which men started to encourage the use of “standing” desks for doing work. From what I recall, these kinds of men were sort of unusual, maybe a little too “online” — the kinds of guys who would push the “paleo” diet as well as those toilets where you have to squat down to defecate in them. Their basic idea was that sitting down for extended periods of time is a serious problem, and so the ability to carry out a computer-oriented office job while standing would increase one’s productivity with work, prevent spinal problems from emerging, burn more calories, and so on. Soon, people started to purchase versatile “sit-stand desks” that would enable them to sit as well as stand when they desired, and they became popular enough to merit some research on whether these things are really so effective.

Well, as it turns out, the results were spotty and inconclusive, with scientists declaring that standing may not be all that much healthier than sitting. One recent study in fact used accelerometer data from over 80,000 adults in the UK and found that standing up neither increased nor decreased cardiovascular risk, while for some people, standing too much could create circulatory problems like varicose veins or deep vein thrombosis. The standing-desk advocates had clearly overstated their claims.

Still, though, the ability to change the position of a desk isn’t a bad thing, especially if you’re dealing with a herniated disc or something like that. And besides, other studies have indicated that standing at a desk doesn’t exactly hurt work productivity, even if there’s no slam-dunk evidence that it improves it. So, these desks are still being sold, and some people swear by them, as this thread from the “Dad Patrol” Facebook account indicates. The logic of the placebo effect tells us that if it feels effective for some people, then it probably will be. And the advocacy of standing isn’t exactly all that new, either. Ascetics throughout history have advocated standing for extremely long periods of time, such as the Jains, the Hindu “Standing Babas,” and the Stylites of early Christianity. So it seems that even if the inner satisfaction of pleasure-renunciation is the only advantage of standing up to work, these sit-stand desks are still here to stay. (Read more.)

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Meanwhile, Back in Middle-Earth...

  

Lovers are reunited, kingdoms are overthrown, and Sauron seeks means of crafting the One Ring to rule them all. And we finally find out who the dark wizard is...he is one of the mysterious blue wizards. Gandalf experiences an epiphany in the desert, a scene which appears to be borrowed from the Book of Exodus.Yes, I am enjoying Season 3 of Rings of Power. From The Wardrobe Door:

In the lead-up to this season, those behind the show have said viewers could start watching this season without having seen previous ones. This opening prologue and map seems designed to introduce new viewers and catch up returning ones.3

It has been five years since season 2 when Sauron destroyed the elf city Eregion and took the nine rings for men. In a voice-over, Galadriel tells us that Sauron has been marching across Middle-earth held back by only the elf rings, which the Dark Lord had no hand in forging.

The dwarves have rings from Sauron but have resisted using them at this point, but he has begun giving rings to men, who have succumbed to the power of the rings.

To this point, the kingdoms of Rhûn, the eastern desert land, and Númenor, the advanced island realm to the West, have not joined either side. (Read more.)

 

From The Conversation:

As much as The Rings of Power’s creators are aiming for a fresh start, the audience already has two seasons of the series on its mind – and in many cases, Tolkien, Jackson and decades of fandom.

These different yardsticks were apparent in reactions to season three’s trailer.

One commenter on Reddit acknowledged plot holes and lore changes while still valuing getting to spend time in Middle-earth.

Another said they would “watch characters in Middle-earth if they were going to a laundromat” as long as it was filmed in New Zealand or similar-looking locations.

Another commenter, a lifelong Tolkien reader, said the show is worst when it tries to emulate Jackson’s films. (Read more.)

Robert Aramayo plays Elrond 

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Are Democrats Creating Virtual Voters Out of Thin Air?

 From Tierney's Real News:

I compared every 2026 Senate and governor race to the 2024 presidential totals in the same states. The talking heads called it a normal midterm and a referendum on Trump. The data says otherwise.

Official Election Assistance Commission data shows more than 26 million new valid registrations were added between the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election. Almost all of them, 20 million, voted Democrat, and none of them had to prove citizenship. Texas alone processed 2.9 million of those new registrations. The GOP establishment let it happen. This post is about how I believe they turned those names into votes.

So far we’ve established that the midterm result was an aberration historically and that results were so uniform that an algorithm had to be used to make sure Democrats outperformed Trump in 2024 and yielded wins in every key Senate seat. Almost every thinking Republican admits it was stolen - those influencers who don’t are showing they are frauds.

BUT, the big question is HOW did they do it this time? In the past they have used mail ballots and ballot harvesters but that is getting harder to do. It looks like what they did this time was to use “virtual voters” created online for registration - and then used cartels or illegals to vote early and often in those fake names.

This is a theory. Take it or leave it. I’ve been investigating election fraud since 2018, so I’m not new to this. I’ve done the research across several platforms, and I have the receipts, the voting records, in separate documents that backs up what I’m about to say. Based on my own analysis, I believe what I’m saying is true. (Read more.)

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Why are Our Vocabularies Shrinking?

 From Country Life:

We can’t go back in time, but there is a way of inoculating ourselves against this deadening algorithmic creep. As a nation, we not only used to read more, but more widely and with greater courage. A glance at the 1956 O-level English Literature syllabus is salutary: how many of us now would be willing to give Francis Bacon’s 1626 utopian fever-dream The New Atlantis a go?

This is the National Year of Reading, ‘a UK-wide campaign designed to inspire more people to make reading a regular part of their lives’. Children who have been turned off it by relentless exams are a focus, but most of us could do with reminding ourselves of the magic of getting lost in a world built entirely from words.

Swapping a screen for ink and paper can get around digital distractions, but it isn’t mandatory: listening to an audiobook counts, ditto reading e-books (and, of course, magazines — including digitally). (Read more.)

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"Captivating Novel"

 A review of My Queen, My Love from Kathleen Van Lierop: 

Due to my interest for royal history, I was very keen to read "My Queen, My Love: A Novel of Henrietta Maria" written by Elena Maria Vidal. The book didn't let me down, it captivated me from the beginning  to the end, although I knew how the story continued...The author wrote this book very well and she painted a perfect picture from the 17th. century. It was very nice to read. So without no doubt, I recommend this book to all royal history lovers. I hope to read more books written by Elena Maria Vidal. I'm very pleased to give a 5 star rating for this captivating novel. (Read more.)

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DOGE Achieved More than You Think

 From City Journal:

The media often portrayed DOGE as a way for Donald Trump to get back at agencies he disfavored and social programs he disliked. It would surprise many to learn that the biggest workforce reductions came at the former Department of Defense, now the Department of War. The department has over 85,000 fewer employees than it did at Trump’s inauguration, down more than 10 percent. The Trump administration and the Republican Congress have showered the department with largesse and expanded military purchases, but that hasn’t stopped DOGE and Trump from trimming its civilian headcount.

Though liberal-leaning agencies like Health and Human Services saw larger proportional shrinkage, every agency across the federal government took cuts. The Department of Veterans Affairs, another agency favored by Trump and Republicans, has 27,000 fewer employees today than it did pre-inauguration.

Looking beyond departments to the types of jobs eliminated, the biggest group by far, at over 43,000, consisted of general administration, management, and “program analysis” positions—the sorts of middle-management jobs that previous government-slimming efforts have targeted. Other positions that saw large cutbacks included general attorneys, HR officials, clerks, and general business managers, each losing roughly 7,000 workers. If you wanted to trim fat, these are the positions you’d start with.

DOGE also made smaller cutbacks across hundreds of types of federal positions, adding up to significant numbers. The government has eliminated 1,000 or more positions among public-affairs specialists, logistics managers, financial administrators, accountants, budget analysts, social-science analysts, and grants managers. It also lost about 100 interior designers and creative-arts therapists. (Read more.)

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Love Bytes

 From Claremont Review of Books:

A recent survey of American teens found that 42% of boys aged 13 to 17 are now using A.I.-powered apps to create their own pornography. Thirty-two percent have created “deepfake” porn of girls their own age, then shared those images with others. In my work as a family physician and researcher, I have talked with these boys. One told me it’s almost magical: he speaks his fantasy, and—poof!—20 seconds later, there it is: professional-grade pornography, spun up in an app such as Seedream or Nano Banana. And this boy is 15 years old. He has never kissed a girl. A growing number of boys describe themselves not as heterosexual but as “pornosexual.” In my experience, a significant minority of these young men are virgins. They say that they prefer porn to the real thing. But they have never experienced the real thing.

Unfortunately, the elderly—by which I mean people over 40 years of age—often have no idea what is going on. A 16-year-old boy was suspended at a school I visited for creating deepfake porn of a classmate, then sharing those images with other boys at the school. When the parents were told what their son had done, they could neither believe nor understand what had happened. They had no idea such a thing was possible. They didn’t think their son was even looking at porn, much less producing and distributing it.

In the new edition of my book Boys Adrift, published this year, I explore how A.I.-generated seductresses are derailing many boys. But we now have a book which explores in depth how A.I.-powered apps are changing the lives of girls, too. Freya India, author of GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, was born in 1999. Her book is an extension of her popular Substack page of the same name. In both, she explores first-hand how digital technology has transformed the experience of young women. A native of England, she has recently relocated to Washington, D.C. She is careful to cite examples and data from both the United Kingdom and the United States, but she makes clear that there is little difference between our two countries on most of the topics she addresses. Her book shows that, whereas boys are prone to inventing and micro-editing their imagined partners, girls have tended to turn their tech inward to “perfect” themselves. The consequences are profound. (Read more.)

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