On the morning of May 30, 1893, the circus came to town unexpectedly in Tyrone, Pennsylvania.

A circus train convoy chock full of circus animals fatefully rounded a bend of a rural Pennsylvania mountain. The train was approaching a bend that was notorious for crashes. While 17-car coal trains could negotiate  the steep mountainside with just one locomotive, many of the 17 cars on the Walter L. Main circus train were twice as long as the average coal car. The engineers wired ahead to request more braking power but were denied. As they guided the train down the slope, it quickly picked up speed and couldn’t be stopped. The locomotive at the front made it around the curve, but the cars behind it flew off the tracks near a farm owned by a man named Hiram Friday.

The conductor was going 40 miles an hour when the circus flew off the rails and careened down a 30-foot-high (10 meters) embankment, fourteen of its 17 carsgold-gilt, steel-barred wagons crashing one on top of the other. Fortunately,, the performer car had stuck to its track. But even so, five circus employees were killed. The animals, mostly at the front of the train, bore the brunt of the suffering. Two “sacred cows” and at least 50 horses died in the wreck,. The Walter I. Main circus was known for its horse acts, such as chariot races and juggling shows performed on the animals’ backs.

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Who let Pixels Happen? The Sony Execs Behind Adam Sandler’s Newest Turd.

via Gawker.com

I’ve never even heard of this movie, but this takedown is pretty great.

“How did people whose job is to make good movies—and make money—do the opposite?”

In case any of you have a scheduling conflict and can’t watch the debate and/or the little league forum, let me recap it in advance:

Reagan
Benghazi
repeal Obamacare
Reagan
tax reform
Reagan
Iran Deal, Bad
Common Core
Reagan
Cecil the Lion
Hillz joke
Reagan
This administration’s failed policies
Reagan
Some Tea Party anti-bailout rhetoric
Reagan
Trump will sneer at some minority and the audience will gnaw its fingers off with excitement

the end.

What you won’t have missed: anything to even begin to fix this ruined country and cancerous economic system based on exploitation, the pillaging of natural resources for profit, etc.

The ferocity of the response to the lion-killing story has been breathtaking. Today I see something called “#wedontcryforlions” trending on Twitter? I’m too bored to see what it is all about, but wtf? I am happy when anybody is crying over ANYTHING these days, at least it proves that we still haver feelings. When the lion story broke, I was the subject of some borderline concern trolling – pointing out that that same ferocity could have been profitably directed toward Sandra Bland’s killers, or any number of murderers in badges. It’s true, I was not immune from the same feeling everyone else has about ol’ Cecil’s death. I was disgusted. I joined the digital lynch mob, gleefully.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” And, while the two ideas here (wanton destruction of wildlife/black lives matter) are not fundamentally opposed, I’ll invoke it anyway. The neo-Patriots arguing that banishing the Confederate flag won’t stop murder doesn’t change the fact of the long running dispute about that despicable flag needing to come down. It’s the nature of modern media to exploit one issue at a time (a missing plane, school shooting, earthquake), creating a perception of selective outrage.

When the fat guy who hunted and killed a black teenager who was armed with only a bag of candy was acquitted 2 years ago, it became a Rorschach test for the American public. For conservatives, it was triumph of permissive gun laws and a victory over us liberals, who had been unfairly rooting for the dead kid all along. For liberals, it was a horrifying, heartbreaking and glaring example of the gaps that plague our criminal justice system. For people of color, it became a vivid reminder that they- must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.

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Hillary’s new campaign ad is right up my alley, using good old gothic horror movie argle bargle to tease at all the Republicans who are simultaneously not scientists but 110 percent sure there’s no such thing as Global Warming. This is really something I can wrap my head around.