Another day, another photo challenge. Today it’s the Which Way Photo Challenge. From the host:
My way is on the Stanford University campus. Looking straight ahead from the steps of the Cantor Art Center. That’s the Bing Concert Hall in the distance.
Self is committed to making her front door as inaccessible as possible, lol. Hence, she packed her front porch with distractions.
Posting for the Weekend Challenge hosted by Weekly Prompts.
I tell ya, E. Jean Carroll wasn’t the only one with a smile on her face! Fantastic day for women all over the world!
Posting for Six Word Saturday.
For the first time in forever, it is not raining.
Hello from self’s backyard.
Posting for Xingfu Mama’s Pull Up a Seat Challenge.
Hanssen’s treachery led to the exposure of four Russian HUMINT, three of whom were executed (What happened to the fourth?)
Ames’s treachery “led to the execution of at least ten Soviet sources of the CIA and FBI.” (And all the while, this rotter drove his Jaguar to work. Why did no one wonder how a mid-level CIA case officer could afford a Jaguar?) Ames blew the cover of Gen. Dmitri Polyakov, who was executed on March 15, 1988. “Polyakov never asked for money. He spied out of conviction.” (Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, p. 158)
Haven’t posted a Weekend Sky for ages.
This challenge is hosted by Hammad Rais.
The day is a little overcast (good).
Skimmed the last fourth of Spare: It was all Meghan Meghan Meghan. Harry was so besotted, he lost all objectivity and the book became a litany of grievances against the likes of Camilla and his brother. Even the ghostwriter seemed uninspired.
Began a new book in the wee hours: Spies, Lies and Algorithms: the History and Future of American Intelligence, by Amy B. Zegart, a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
It’s an ambitious title. Glad to say the book (the first chapter, anyway) has no technical jargon. Zegart writes clearly and concisely, and marshalls a wide array of facts.
When U.S. Navy SEALS conducted their secret nighttime raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, Pakistan’s military didn’t detect a thing. But a local information technology consultant named Sohaib Athar did. Hearing strange noises, he took to Twitter. “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. (is a rare event),” he posted. Athar ended up live tweeting the operation, including reporting when an explosion shook his windows.
–Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: the History and Future of American Intelligence, pp. 5- 6
The “explosion” Sohaib Athar heard was likely the Seals blowing up the Blackhawk that crashed.
Kanlaon 