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The person who goes by “Lurker” at Balloon-Juice reached out and mentioned his blog, Two Miles High. Here’s a taste of today’s post:
As everyone knows, Princess Fiona in Shrek was cursed to be transformed into an ogre every night, and only at the end of the movie with Shrek's kiss is she freed from the curse, to be her true self. Long before Shrek, there was the Roman de Mélusine back in medieval times, where Melusine is cursed to be transformed every Saturday into a snake-like creature below the waist. Opinions differ on why she was cursed, but all agree there wasn't a happy ending. No kiss. (The male equivalent story has the prince transformed into some sort of animal, where he is under a curse, like in Beauty and the Beast.)
The blog has a number of interesting series of posts, including deep dives into the Wizard of Oz to discover a trans character. It’s a real labor of love.
I don’t often read memoirs, but holy shit is Neko Case’s memoir, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You really good. One thing that’s relevant to this blog is her frank discussion of growing up in extreme poverty and neglect. It’s not often that someone as eloquent as Case writes about it. Sonja Livingston’s Ghostbread is another example.
Spolier alert, but not really surprising: both of Case’s parents had been molested as children. She was not, and that’s in part because her dad would rather leave her alone in the house than entrust her to a babysitter. So this brings us to the case of the Israeli cybersecurity agent who was attending the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas:
An Israeli government cybersecurity official was reportedly arrested recently by Las Vegas police and other authorities in Nevada who were conducting an undercover investigation aimed at online users seeking to sexually prey on children.
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, 38, faces felony charges of luring a child with a computer for a sex act, alongside several other suspects who were apprehended during the two-week sting operation, the Las Vegas metropolitan police department said in a statement published on Friday. He has since been released from custody on $10,000 bail after an initial court appearance, records show, and returned to Israel.
A media outlet called the North Star News, claims to have interviewed police involved in the sting, who say that the Trump administration expedited Alexandrovich’s return to Israel. He sure left in a hurry, that’s for sure.
Unsurprisingly, a pastor at the Las Vegas Redemption Church was also arrested. I googled their site and it was down. The Wayback Machine remembers, though — here are a few of their core beliefs:
[…] While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. […]
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
When the subject of Trump and Epstein comes up, some people talk about a pedophilia ring. That ring exists out in the open: patriarchal “Christian” churches that raise up men as “servant leaders” who can’t be questioned. It’s a ripe ground for child abuse, and it happens all the time.
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