Warning: This post quotes reports that describe acts of extreme animal cruelty.

In January of 1980, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I was walking past the student union when I noticed a banner hanging either from the roof of the Union itself or from a building next to it (I can’t recall the exact location, and I believe the building next to it may have been the fraternity in question).

The banner read Burn Frats Not Cats, and it was inspired by this incident:

Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.

Hamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The charge was brought against Hamlin under a local Ann Arbor ordinance. All five members of Alpha Delta Phi were later expelled from the fraternity.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.

The case caused such a furore locally that some students and animal rights activists wore buttons and armbands in memory of BK.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. Photograph: Courtesy Shelagh Abbs Winter

Hamlin served as the fraternity president at the time, according to the media reports. While Hamlin’s exact role in the killing is unclear, a report in the Ann Arbor News published in March 1980 – at the time of the court case – said that district court judge SJ Elden singled Hamlin out for criticism, saying he could have prevented it from happening as the leader of the fraternity.

The judge called the cat killing an “unconscionable and heinous” act and suggested the fraternity had tried to engage in a coverup to protect its members after the crime was exposed.

“Heartlessness must be in the job description to run the NRA,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety.“This revelation shows that the NRA has failed to turn the page on its scandal-plagued leaders and its doom spiral continues with Hamlin at the helm.” . . .

Shelagh Abbs Winter, who was named in a media report as the student who reported the incident to authorities at the time, told the Guardian she recalled many of the details, including that she had felt compelled to report the incident to authorities after she learned what had happened from another student who was a pledge at the fraternity.

Winter was and remains an animal rights activist, and expressed surprise when she was contacted by the Guardian for this story, because she had not followed Hamlin’s career nor realized that the 1979 incident would still be personally relevant decades later.

“You don’t know how amazing this is to me, because I am a member of Moms Demand Action,” she said, referring to one of the most influential grassroots gun control advocacy groups in the country, which has proved to be a thorn in the side of the NRA. Winter said she remembered feeling threatened at the time for coming forward.

“Once a creep, always a creep,” she said.

A cook who worked at the fraternity at the time and asked not to be named said he recalled speaking to police and never returning back to work because he feared reprisal. “After it was disclosed that the police were investigating, a meeting was called, and the members were told to say nothing; not to cooperate; and not to, essentially, give up their brothers,” the person told the Guardian.

According to press reports, the charges were ultimately expunged from the men’s records after they completed 200 hours each of animal-related community service.

The real story, as it has been related to me on several occasions both around the time it happened and more recently, is actually a good deal worse.

The unnamed cook quoted in the story above was, I’ve been told independently by several people, the fraternity’s house father or house dad, that is, an adult paid by the chapter to live in the house and manage the running of it, as well as in this case cook for its members.

This man — again several people have told me the same story independently over the years — was gay, although the frat’s members didn’t know this when he was hired. BK was actually his own cat. One day the frat’s members discovered that their house dad was gay, and they decided to torture-murder his cat in revenge for this crime. (Hamlin himself told other students that he and the other killers were “tripping on acid,” by way of explanation).

Besides the fact that several people who didn’t know each other told me this story at the time and subsequently, it is on its face far more plausible than the one these fine young men told in court — that the fraternity’s own cat was torture murdered because it wouldn’t use its litter box.

I remember well the outrage this incident inspired on campus (hence the banner). The frat had its charter revoked and was shut down, although none of the students involved were expelled from the university, or as far as I can recall even suspended.

For a couple of years the building was rented out to students, a group of which eventually decided to apply to reinstate the fraternity, which the university agreed to do.

That last month the entire Republican party, of which the NRA is now a wholly owned subsidiary, was consumed with false reports of dusky-hued foreigners kidnapping, killing, and eating the cats and dogs of real meaning white Americans, is, in 2024, very much par for the course.

The post EAIAC cruelty to pets edition appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

The River Welland used to split into two channels in the heart of Crowland, Lincolnshire, and in 1360 the townspeople arranged to bridge it with this unique triple arch, which elegantly spanned the streams at the point of their divergence, allowing pedestrians to reach any of the three shores by a single structure. The alternative would have been to build three separate bridges.

The rivers were re-routed in the 1600s, so now the bridge stands in the center of town as a monument to the ingenuity of its inhabitants. It’s known as Trinity Bridge.

From the ArtefactPorn subreddit.

amtrak-official:

mostly-funnytwittertweets:

Her only options are NYC and Chicago actually

bunjywunjy:

maximum-overboner:

in primary school we had a creative writing assignment where we had to ‘write about a character in a new, strange situation!’ and i wrote about a squid that was somehow teleported from the ocean to the forest floor and slowly choked to death for two pages and i’ll never quite forget my teacher’s face because it turns out she wanted ‘this new school is scary, i hope i make friends!’ and not a graphic description of a squid dying

well that’s just the risk you take if you decide to teach creative writing

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco has perched at the top of Nob Hill for nearly a century. When it opened in 1926, it was more simply called the Hotel Mark Hopkins, named after the railroad executive that once built a home there.

The luxury hotel has hosted presidents, premiers, and all kinds of celebrities. But one famous group of visitors didn’t visit the hotel to stay in a suite. Throughout World War II, military personnel flocked there to take the elevator to the Top o’ the Mark, a bar on its 19th floor.

The Top o’ the Mark (or the Top of the Mark, as it’s usually written these days) was converted from a penthouse into what famous San Francisco journalist Herb Caen called “a glass-enclosed saloon” in 1939. People didn’t always head there for the drinks, he added. “The famed cocktail bar floats approximately fifty stories above sea level, and the view is so staggering (fifty miles in every direction) that alcoholic beverages seem superfluous.”

To the military personnel visiting during World War II, though, alcohol was not superfluous. The bar, with its lofty view of the ocean, became a symbolic place to drink before shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Life magazine published a story on the phenomenon in July 1944, noting how the bar’s clientele had turned over entirely. Once, it was “the exclusive night spot of San Francisco.” Instead, the journalist wrote, it was "patronized by beribboned servicemen,” and “democratically crowded to the walls.”

Crowded was an understatement. On busy nights, servicemen would wait hours in the hotel lobby to take the elevators up to the Top of the Mark. Some months would see as many as 30,000 military visitors to the hotel bar, where an unusual tradition sprang forth.

“One day, it's rumored that an officer from a squadron bought a bottle of bourbon, wrote a note on it, attached it to the bottle, and left it with the bartender,” explains Connie Perez-Wong, creative director at the hotel. Any member of the squadron who came in could have a shot from the bottle. “The only caveat was that whoever had the last shot would need to buy the next bottle,” Perez-Wong says.

Servicemen who passed through San Francisco often promised to meet each other again at the Top of the Mark, and many did, making it a meaningful place of reunion and remembrance for those who didn’t return from the war. But eventually, Perez-Wong says, the custom stopped.

“I don't know if it was actually stopped or it just died off,” she says. But the story “passed down through the different teams at the hotel.”

Then, in 2009, came the revival. According to Perez-Wong, a cadet named Lieutenant Mike Hall, who’d just graduated from Annapolis, came to the bar. “And at the time, the manager of the room knew about this tradition, and he told young Lieutenant Hall,” Perez-Wong says. “And Lieutenant Hall said, ‘By golly, we’ve got to get it restarted.’”

Lieutenant Hall bought a bottle and left it behind the bar. In the following years, the collection exploded. Today, guests stepping off the elevator into the Top of the Mark will be greeted by dozens of bottles, some in display cases, some on carts, all covered in notes and surrounded by photographs, badges, patches, and pins. Some notes contain well-wishes for those in active service, while others memorialize those who never came home. “We also have logbooks for anybody that wants to leave a story or leave a dedication,” says Perez-Wong.

Today, there’s about 80 bottles in the collection. Some of them will likely be gone soon, since it’s currently Fleet Week, when San Francisco welcomes Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard ships. Civilians can tour ships, listen to military bands, and watch an air show by the Blue Angels. The air show alone usually draws a million people to the city. Perez-Wong says the bar hosts an influx of guests during Fleet Week, as well.

Some of them might even buy a bottle to leave behind. Anyone can leave a bottle, and you don’t need to be part of a specific squadron to have a drink, either. “If you present a military ID, you can choose whichever bottle that you want to drink from, basically,” says Perez-Wong. As for what there is to drink, “the story is that it started with a bottle of bourbon,” she says. “So the majority would be either whiskey or bourbon, but we've had purchases of vodka [and] gin. It runs the gamut now.”

low-shear-velocity-province:

Which side of the salmon is free from sin? What sins do they contain?