Open thread 2/20/2026
I looked up a few of these, and they were indeed the wedding dresses the real people actually wore. So different from today:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
I looked up a few of these, and they were indeed the wedding dresses the real people actually wore. So different from today:
Hos do that. It is a money thing.
I do enjoy AI restoration/colorization of old film clips.
However, AI is going further than that. Here’s a viral video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duking it out, action film-style, which is AI generated. You can watch it here:
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The clip originated from a Chinese company and was then tweeted out by filmmaker Ruairi Robinson.
The 15-second clip depicts the two A-list stars trading blows in a desolate, concrete setting. The footage is not a deepfake in the traditional sense of pasting faces onto stuntmen, but rather a fully generative sequence of the two famous actors fighting.
Again, this is from a Chinese company, so Brad and Tom can’t sue easily, because if an American company did this, it would be illegal and have a ton of blowback and precedents that were violated.
https://nofilmschool.com/viral-ai-fight-pitt-cruise
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Hollywood is facing many problems, most of them deserved IMO, but AI is coming fast and hard. Here’s one of my favorite AI YouTubers on the subject:
–David Shapiro, “Hollywood is COOKED”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmameJ_c-68
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/02/20/susan-rice-reveals-what-dems-will-do-when-back-in-power-and-its-terrifying-n4949739
We knew it all along but at least it’s out in the open.
My mother was married in 1945, in wartime Washington, in a nice blue suit.
Interesting Pick at powerline today – the al-Jazeera style guide.
https://freebeacon.com/media/inside-al-jazeeras-style-guide-which-forbids-reporters-from-calling-isis-a-terrorist-organization/
Handsome. My grandmother’s 1924 wedding dress was agreeable.
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The wedding at the conclusion of The Best Years of Our Lives I thought was instructive as in indicates what was credible to a post-war audience ca. 1946. It occurs in a private home and the musical accompaniment is a piano playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ with some children making a poor effort at singing. (With the music you can dispense).
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If you hold your service in a side chapel, arrange for a cantor and a small choir from the parish regulars to provide a capella chant or song, have a cream-colored dress for the bride, have the father of the bride and groom in tuxedos, have a small corps or relatives from each side as guests, and have the couple’s abiding friends as guests, you’ve got a wedding. Reserve a scrum of tables at a place like this (https://www.yeoldelandmark.com/menu) and you’ve got a dinner. When your youngest child is age 23, you’ve got something to celebrate (https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/cruise-destinations/europe/romantic-danube/2026-budapest-regensburg/index.html#noscroll)
Ace has a good discussion of the Scotus travesty of a ruling on tariffs. The bottom line is that the fat lady has not sung on this issue. Potus has many other tools to impose tariffs. Any well written decision would have addressed this, but this travesty did not.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/418600.php#418600
Edit. That the President has other ways to impose tariffs seems to be a common view on the conservative side.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2026/02/20/law-professor-trump-administration-can-still-impose-tariffs-through-other-statutes-n2671645
There’s euthanasia commercials in Canada now. YouTube may make this hard to access, but there’s also an article about it.
Indeed. It’s refreshing to hear these aims expressed so directly. Euthanasia is in the top 5 causes of death in Canada now.
The dress was handsome; her history wasn’t. Childless and ran through five husbands.
The state of Washington is suing Adams County and the Adams County Sheriff’s Office for violating the “Keep Washington Working Act”. Here’s a summary:
Adams County is very rural with a small population (about 21,000) and is majority Hispanic (around 65%). The largest town is Othello (8500) and very Hispanic (78-80%). There is a area just outside the city limits called Little Mexico. I mention this to demonstrate how complicated this all is.
Washington state isn’t the only state that has passed laws like “Keep Washington Working”, where the law prevents law enforcement from using resources on immigration enforcement.
How similar is this to the pre Civil War era, where northern states were passing laws restricting the ability of federal law enforcement and slave hunters from returning slaves to the south? As part of the slave compromises, the Federal government passed the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
As a reaction several/many northern states passed laws making enforcement of the law harder or impossible.
So there is precedent for states to pass laws making enforcement of federal laws harder.
Excellent article on the Islamification of Europe:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/europe_s_civilizational_war_will_be_bloody.html
If anyone is interested in an fairly in-depth look at the force buildup surrounding Iran and the potential for strikes, this podcast is extremely informative. These aren’t arm chair analysts.
Deep Intel on America’s Imminent War with Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8wwntm8zIg
POLITICAL CHANGER — Novelist Lionel Shriver explains how she left the Left. 6m clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ0fh-JdoV4
It wasn’t all at once. But a series of steps. In her youth, she was a hippy, who actively opposed the Vietnam War. She had an older brother subject to the military draft.
Shriver’s parents were liberals and altruistic supporters of Democrats.
But, Shriver’s lived experience in Northern Ireland — the IRA heavily supported by Democrats as a de facto liberation movement — taught her that they were an evil menace. (She had had a boyfriend from Belfast, but they broke up before the move. She decided to go there, anyway.) This menace had to stop! — she could have mentioned the random bombings of innocents because of their presumed religion, but does not.
This great alienation led to another. In the Clinton years, welfare reform by the newly empowered Gingrich GOP in the House, meant that he eventually backed work training or work seeking requirements for welfare recipients.
Shriver’s father was so outraged that he was going to stop giving any money to the Democrats. But she thought otherwise, because the goal was to get subsidized poor back to work and productive members of society.
Outside this clip, in the full interview, she makes clear that her insight into political-economics has crabbed limits. She could benefit from selectively reading a couple of Thomas Sowell books.
Her new novel is “A Better Life,” which wrestles with the immigration and illegal immigration problems.
“Texas Voters Face Critical Choice on Sharia Law Proposition 10”
The plan is to start with Texas, with other states to follow.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/02/20/texas-proposition-10-a-critical-test-case-for-prohibiting-sharia-law/
https://bansharia.com/
Grace Kelly!
Sharia should have exactly the same status in law as arbitration. Both parties must agree with no coercive measures, said coerciveness to be subject to ordinary court rulings, and only for civil financial matters with a $ limit. We don’t handle social (divorce, adoption, estates, etc) or criminal matters in arbitration nor should they be handled by sharia. Let the Muslims have their own culture, until it runs against American constitutional rights. Don’t allow them to build grievance case to give the left another club to break US society.
Art Deco:
The wedding at the conclusion of The Best Years of Our Lives I thought was instructive as in indicates what was credible to a post-war audience ca. 1946. It occurs in a private home and the musical accompaniment is a piano playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ with some children making a poor effort at singing. (With the music you can dispense).
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There were 2 distinct types of American Jewish weddings after WWII.
– American-born 2nd generation Jews had pretty lavish weddings to show they’d arrived.
– The bride-in-a-suit, restaurant meal was due to financial necessity and/or shadows of the War… typical of Holocaust survivors, for whom Hitler had reduced the wedding party. These were often second marriages of newly-arrived displaced persons or war widows.
One of my parents’ long-standing gentile friends recalled how they really enjoyed the lavish buffet and canapes before my parent’s interesting Jewish ceremony with the bridal canopy – and then when they went to the coat check, they saw all the other guests filing in to the banquet hall…. they could not believe there was more food.
What’s with Ayres’ left foot? Do people actually walk like that?
One of my parents’ long-standing gentile friends recalled how they really enjoyed the lavish buffet and canapes before my parent’s interesting Jewish ceremony with the bridal canopy – and then when they went to the coat check, they saw all the other guests filing in to the banquet hall…. they could not believe there was more food.
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My father had an account of he and my mother attending a wedding such as you describe. Not sure of the date, but my best guess is 1962. I’ve forgotten the name of the family and I’m not sure they were people I ever met. One thing that astonished them is that as they were leaving, they saw people who had left earlier returning for more food and drink. It was quite late.
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Looking again at the picture: Is it a caricature? See the size of Ayres’ head to his torso? Almost like a midget or something. Was he really little?