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Dolly
Currently...

Dolly Parton Will Always Love You

Dolly Parton, the country music superstar whose decades-long career made her one of the most recognizable entertainers in the world, has died at age 80, her publicist announced. No cause of death was provided. While Parton’s music brought her global fame, those who followed her closely say her philanthropic work — much of it channeled through the Dollywood Foundation and focused on literacy, disaster relief, and healthcare — left an equally lasting mark on the communities she touched. Roots in Rural Poverty Parton was one of 12 children raised in a “dirt-poor” household in Sevier County, Tennessee, an upbringing she often cited as the foundation for her charitable instincts. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, left school early to help support his family and never learned to read or write. Parton said she witnessed the limitations and embarrassment that illiteracy caused him throughout his life, an experience she later pointed to as the origin of her lifelong focus on childhood literacy. That same period also exposed her to the area’s high dropout rates and persistent economic hardship — issues that would later shape the earliest programs of her foundation. A Global Literacy Program Born Locally In 1995, Parton launched the Imagination

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Vlad
My Take

CIA Director in Moscow — Huh?

CIA Director John Ratcliffe is reported to have spent a few hours in Moscow, without any details being released. According to The New York Times: Mr. Ratcliffe was on the ground for about eight hours. It was not immediately clear why he was in Moscow or whom he met with in the Russian capital. There was no clarification or explanation from Ratcliffe or anyone in the administration. The CIA Director had previously been appointed to the negotiating team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who have been active in pursuing a peace deal for the Ukrainian conflict. Ratcliffe took a military plane to Russia, landing in Riga, capital of Latvia, before journeying to Moscow. Is this some sort of “Nixon Goes to China” event that may unleash new realities? Doubtful, but something’s definitely afoot.

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BessentTV
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Iran Economic D-Day Amounts to Just a Threat

The Trump administration had predicted for days a new package of economic sanctions that would bring Iran to its knees and beg to deal with the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today ascended a White House podium to provide the details of what was being called Operation Economic Outcast. On TV before his appearance, he announced that “we are going to collapse this regime.” At the press conference, he announced only that there would be sanctions against countries that continue to deal with Iran, but he didn’t name them. China is one of the largest trading partners with the Islamic Republic, but it seems doubtful the Chinese would cut off trade. “Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States,” Bessent told reporters. “An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.” Iran had said over the weekend that any country acceding to U.S. trade demands would be creating “an act of war.” Later, Bessent confided about the lack of sanctions detail by saying: “We are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial

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PRC
Global News

China Copying Iran on Taiwan Strait Ownership

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), aka Mainland China, is stepping up its patrols in the Taiwan Strait and is monitoring traffic going through. The Philippines even claims that a PRC Coast Guard vessel fired a water cannon on one of its vessels. The strait is much larger than the one that the Islamic Republic of Iran is now claiming as its property. The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide, while the Taiwan Strait is 110 miles. The PRC seems intent on similarly controlling its strait just like Iran and Hormuz. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), which monitors traffic in the strait, reports that Chinese vessel activity between Taiwan and Mainland China has been increasing in the past three months. There was no activity by China in the strait between January and May, but there were 111 sightings in June, 117 in August, and 118 so far in August.  AMTI said the activity was concentrated in waters where Chinese, Japanese and Philippine maritime claims overlap. The activity seemed to begin when Japan and the Philippines began negotiations in May over a security pact. “China intends to claim that waters off Taiwan’s east coast are also within its law-enforcement jurisdiction,”

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Bolt
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Chinese Robot Bests Usain Bolt’s 100-Meter Record

The Chinese already make the best EVs in the world, and now they’ve come up on top in the humanoid robot race. A Chinese robot in Beijing this weekend bested the 100-meter world record held by Usain Bolt, finishing at 9.32 seconds compared to Bolt’s 9.58 seconds. Beijing-based X-Humanoid built the robot. One big difference between Bolt’s race and the robot’s was that the robotic competitors had to be stopped by a cushioned barrier at the end of the sprint. Another humanoid set a standing high jump record (if we are to recognize robotic achievements). The humanoid reached 2.88 meters, surpassing the 2.45 meters set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor in 1993. Other robots were not so successful, many falling down in their attempts.

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ShakeTrump2
My Take

Did Shakespeare Anticipate Donald Trump?

For nearly a decade, literary scholars, theater directors, and political commentators have reached for Shakespeare to make sense of Donald Trump. The impulse is understandable: Shakespeare devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to the psychology of power—how leaders acquire it, wield it, and lose it—and his gallery of kings, generals, and tragic figures offers a rich vocabulary for describing contemporary politics. Stephen Greenblatt’s 2018 book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics did much to popularize this mode of analysis, arguing that Shakespeare’s history plays and tragedies function as enduring studies of demagoguery, populism, and authoritarian temperament. Several characters recur in these comparisons, each illuminating a different facet of Trump’s public persona. But if one figure captures the fullest and most resonant parallel, it is Richard III—the scheming, charismatic outsider who dismantles political norms through sheer theatrical audacity. The other characters discussed below—Coriolanus, King Lear, Falstaff, and Julius Caesar—each capture something real, but partially: pride, loyalty demands, comic bravado, or populist menace, without matching Richard’s particular fusion of outsider self-fashioning and calculated norm-breaking.

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AlienHead
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Four Types of Extraterrestrial Beings Identified

Interest in unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) has surged in recent months as government agencies have released additional batches of previously classified files, videos, and witness testimony related to unexplained aerial sightings. While these disclosures have expanded the public record of unresolved cases, officials have been careful to note that none of the newly available material confirms the existence of extraterrestrial life or identifies any specific alien species. The distinction is a crucial one: an “unidentified” sighting means only that investigators have not yet determined a conventional explanation, not that it has been linked to beings from another world. [Pictured above: An alien “head” from NASA archives] Even so, the renewed public attention has reignited long-standing discussion within ufology, science fiction, and popular culture about what extraterrestrial visitors might look like if they exist. Over decades of witness accounts, alleged encounters, and entertainment media, four recurring archetypes have emerged as the most widely referenced descriptions. None of these types has been verified by mainstream science, and researchers caution that they remain speculative composites drawn from anecdotal reports and cultural imagination rather than confirmed biological data.

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