Masters of the Sun is a 2017 comic book series created by the Black Eyed Peas, an American hip-hop group. It tells the tale of a hip-hop group from the Bronx who must battle an ancient, alien god set on controlling the Earth. While on tour in L.A., a zombie outbreak breaks loose when a drug manufactured by the aliens starts turning its users into zombies. The group narrowly escapes the initial outbreak and starts investigating what caused it.
The story serves as an allegory for the crack epidemic of the 1980s, where the “soulless husk” zombies of the comic stand-in for the people addicted to crack-cocaine. The comic pushes the idea that the epidemic was not random happenstance, but a purposeful agenda orchestrated by the government to keep the black community down.
In other words, a 21st century version of the old claim in the 1960s that sickle-cell anemia, which occurs among about 1 out of every 365 Black or African-American births (by comparison, it occurs in 1 out of every 16,300 Hispanic-American births) was a disease introduced to weaken the blacks.
And since this is introducing a new topic (sickle-cell anemia) based on the prior entry, I’ll consider this as being IN PLAY.
The hammer and sickle is a symbol of communism, in particular the solidarity between the working classes in agriculture and industry. The emblem originated in Russia, during the Russian Revolution, and was adopted as part of the Soviet Union’s state emblem in 1923; from there, it became adopted as a symbol in a number of other Communist countries.
The Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, officially came into existence in December of 1922. The first government leader of the USSR was Vladimir Lenin, and he ruled for less than two years until his death in 1924. His successor was Josef Stalin, who ruled for almost 30 years until he died in 1953. Six more men ruled the country over the next 38 years until the country was dissolved in 1991.
Stalin gave strict orders never to be disturbed while in his chambers, and no one could enter unless he allowed it. After suffering a massive stroke, he lay unattended for hours because everyone feared for their lives if they entered without approval. He was discovered, almost dead, 20 hours later. Had he been found earlier he might have survived.
Billy Squier is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Squier worked as a musician through the 1970s, and finally broke through in 1981, with his song “The Stroke,” which reached #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
“The Stroke” was the first of three charting singles from Squier’s album Don’t Say No; the others were “In the Dark” and “My Kinda Lover.”
In 1985, Billy Squier tried to ascend to the summit of Mount Everest by helicopter, but despite offering several thousands of dollars no pilot would risk it.
Since 1921, over 330 people are known to have perished attempting to climb Mount Everest. About 200 of the bodies are still on the mountain, and recovery of those bodies is either impractical or, in many cases, impossible.
Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, is, per Wiki, in Nepali called सगरमाथा, romanized Sagarmāthā; in Standard Tibetan, ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ, romanized Chomolungma; and in Chinese, 珠穆朗玛峰; pinyin Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng.
Off topic: I used to stay there on my annual trips to attend a construction super-conference in San Francisco. Reasonably priced and decent accommodations.
Comment only: That’s what I understand about it: reasonably priced and decent accommodations. I’ve stayed once but it was long ago. I’ve been meaning to get up there for a day and read through all of the displays. I live about an hour south.
One of the last lines in Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is " ‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess."
Considering the state of politics and partisanship these days, I can see it happening that someone might either (a) decline to drink the toast or (b) neglect to make the toast at all. Any ideas as to what would happen?
That was an issue in 1993, when some conservative officers were less than pleased to have Bill Clinton as CINC. They were reminded that they were toasting the office, not the man. I never heard that any had to be ordered to do so.
In play:
The US Department of Justice was created by statute in 1870. Before that, the Attorney General was the only Cabinet officer who didn’t lead a department.