How disappointing: A "Vomitorium" actually had nothing to do with vomiting between courses

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I saw a comment on another blog that claimed the Romans had “vomitoriums” that they used during banquets to make room for more gluttony. That sounded a bit dubious to me, so I looked it up. There was such a word, but it had nothing to do with extra slices of pie.

Purging the Myth of the Vomitorium

Ancient Romans used the word, but pop culture has the concept all wrong 

As far as pop culture is concerned, a vomitorium is a room where ancient Romans went to throw up lavish meals so they could return to the table and feast some more. It's a striking illustration of gluttony and waste, and one that makes its way into modern texts. Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" series, for example, alludes to vomitoriums when the lavish inhabitants of the Capitol—all with Latin names like Flavia and Octavia—imbibe a drink to make them vomit at parties so they can gorge themselves on more calories than citizens in the surrounding districts would see in months.

But the real story behind vomitoriums is much less disgusting. Actual ancient Romans did love food and drink. But even the wealthiest did not have special rooms for purging. To Romans, vomitoriums were the entrances/exits in stadiums or theaters, so dubbed by a fifth-century writer because of the way they'd spew crowds out into the streets. [Who Were the Barbarians?]

"It's just kind of a trope," that ancient Romans were luxurious and vapid enough to engage in rituals of binging and purging, said Sarah Bond, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Iowa.

Vomit. Vomitus. Vomitorium.

The Roman writer Macrobius first referred to vomitoriums in his "Saturnalia." The adjective vomitus already existed in Latin, Bond told Live Science. Macrobius added the "orium" ending to turn it into a place, a common type of wordplay in ancient Latin. He was referring to the alcoves in amphitheaters and the way people seemed to erupt out of them to fill empty seats.

I’m sure Hunger Games fans — I’m not one, never read (saw?) them — will be disappointed, but, like “the rule of thumb” cited by feminists as limitation on the permissible thickness of a rod used to beat one’s wife, it ain’t so. Now ask me about “niggardly”.

Do you doubt that there are millions of Americans out there who wouldn't support this?

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(unless you live in europe)

People in Europe and Great Britain are dying for (lack of) air conditioning in the current heat wave hitting the old world. The response of their governments?

In England, they’re forcing homeowners to rip out a/c units in the name of Mother Gaia.

The British Government Prefers Its Citizens Well Done

And in France, the communists have banned parent-supplied a/c units “because not every school’s parents can afford to supply them, and Marx knows we won’t.

Suffer the Little Children, France Insists

…. But it is the situation in Nîmes, a city of about 148,000 in a lovely part of the south of France. Actually, I've been in the south of France, and all the parts are lovely (except Marseille, of course), but I digress.

The region is suffering a record-breaking, early-summer heat wave with temperatures soaring as high as 40–44°C, the way the French reckon it, or 104–111°F in actual degrees. This is when Americans would set the thermostat to 68° (actual degrees) or maybe go see a movie at a theater where they keep it that temp all the time.

But at the École Primaire La Planette school in Nîmes, they have no air conditioning — naturellement — and according to Miss Jo on X and other sources, a child there "recently fainted because of the heat," even while "classes were being taught in corridors to get out of the heat."

Parents of the students there did what parents in America would almost certainly do in a similar situation, and they raised money to buy five portable air conditioning units for the school. The community got so involved that the parents needed just three days to raise the required €2,000.

So far, so good.

But Mayor Vincent Bouget is an actual member of the Parti communiste français (PCF), and if there's one thing Communists can't stand, it's the community doing stuff. Bouget ordered the school to remove the A/C because "it sets a precedent," and "in some neighborhoods, parents don’t have the means to act."

I mean, I guess those parents could hold a fundraiser like the other parents did. The community seemed pretty excited to jump in and help.

But no.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: France adopts the look and feel of our own major cities

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The Great Replacement Chronicles: Le Camp Des Saints

Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.
—Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints

Benjamin Bartee, PJMedia

French music festival devolves into violence

If I hadn’t attended public school in Atlanta, I probably would’ve found the brutal depictions of jungle life in The Heart of Darkness a bit too outlandish to swallow as something akin to the reality of pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa.

But I did go to public school in Atlanta, so instead of dismissing the narrative, I mostly nodded along, recalling my own “lived experience,” as the Social Justice™ people say.

Related: Migrants Committed Almost 70% of Violent Crimes in France Last Year

Surely, though, I thought to myself, nothing like that could ever happen in post-Enlightenment Europe.

Surely.

Via Daily Mail (emphasis added):

Female tourists who attended a festival in Paris where women were injected with date-rape drugs have called the event an 'apocalypse', and described being attacked.

More than 240 people were arrested, on Sunday's Fête de la Musique – a nationwide 'street party' attended by thousands of British people.

Two people were stabbed, and others raped, as France's biggest open air music festival descended into intense violence.

Police also reported multiple other sexual assaults, muggings, and girls being stabbed with syringes, on a night of anarchy.

One female victim said she was 'beaten' by two 'North African women' during the chaos. 

In a video posted on X, she claimed the pair approached her and her friend, snatched her phone, hurled it to the ground and then assaulted her friend. 

'One of the two girls who had already thrown my phone to the ground and hit my friend then approached us. She pushed my friend to the ground and started hitting us and kicking us in the head,' she said.

'About three minutes later, some men arrived, followed by the police, but there was nothing we could do. The girls gave their version of events, while my friend and I were left in tears.'

And one Irish woman who attended the festival took to TikTok to warn others not to go.

 'There's no music, it's world war Z,' she said, adding: 'It's only sirens and mobs and pandemonium. It's like the apocalypse.' 

Fresh videos circulating on social media show groups of young men smashing up cars and brawling in the streets, while piles of litter line the pavements.

In one clip, a man appears to swing a barstool at a car and a group of men, while others nearby kick and stomp on another man as he lies in the street. 

Another shows festivalgoers jumping on the shattered windscreen of a separate vehicle as music blares and people dance around it. 

A 40-year-old man and woman, who have not been named, were attacked in the early hours of Monday.

Watching helplessly as migrants twerk on the hood of your car, knowing its windshield is inevitably bound to get smashed in at any moment as your neighbor gets beaten unconscious with a stolen barstool on the street by a Third World mob for being white, against the backdrop of countless miles of trash on the Champs-Élysées to the exotic rhythm of drum and bass — that’s a whole lot liberal and loving cultural enrichment for the natives to enjoy.

Benjamin Bartee

Chicago? New York? Paris? Take your pick.

Thought she was in California, did she?

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Long Island school clerk caught tearing up ballots, trashing votes to help her candidate win: probe

A Long Island school clerk overseeing board of education elections tore up ballots and threw them in a dumpster to help her favorite candidate win, a newly revealed internal probe found.

Hempstead Union Free School District Clerk April Keys allegedly rigged the May 19 trustee election by smuggling official ballots out of her office and handing absentee ballots to favored candidate Victor Pratt so he could trash them, according to a 51-page petition filed by the district with the state Education Department.

….

Question marks were first raised by the district after it discovered major irregularities in its election.

Pratt won by just 81 votes — boosted by a suspiciously large number of absentee and early mail ballots that boosted him to the win even though he only came in third on machine voting, the probe found.

Pratt racked up 87% of absentee votes and 55% of early mail votes, compared to just 27% of in-person machine votes – while other trustee candidates received fewer than 100 absentee and early mail ballots combined, the probe found.

Fortunately, this kind of voter fraud is restricted to just one small, inconsequential school district; except for Hempstead Union, our voting system is 100% trustworthy, and universal absentee balloting and mail-in voting has only made it even more secure.

By the way, missing from the article is any mention of what, if anything, is being done to the candidate* who actually destroyed the ballots after the clerk gave them to him — arrested? Will he still be on the ballot if an election do-over is granted? Gotta love curious reporters.

*Victor Pratt, convicted of drunk driving and then arrested last year for reckless driving while his license was suspended, but no one’s perfect, eh?

North Street sale

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The Greenwich GMLS has closed down at noon, again — the staff was undoubtedly exhausted from its four-day Juneteenth holiday, taken while still reeling from its Memorial Day closure, and needs time to prepare for its upcoming 4th of July vacation week. Still, a little real estate news is trickling in:

420 North Street, guide price $5.550 million, has sold for $5.801. The same house sold for $4.9 million in July 2024, so I guess the market’s slowing down; I would have expected this to have doubled by now.

To be fair, Mrs. Buttigieg had to stay home to care for the infants because his husband refused to help

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And anyway, there’s really no comparison between a critical role like Press Secretary and the no-show job of Secretary of Transportation

June 23, 2026;

'Back on the road with President Trump': Leavitt returns to work after maternity leave

Meanwhile, back in South Bend, the kids are almost weaned, and Pee-wee’s getting ready for his next big adventure

Finally, FWIW readers' dieting yields results: our allies on the Freedom Flotilla have been released by their Muslim captors. What? You weren't part of that effort?

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No Jews, No News: Gaza 'Flotilla' Activists Held Captive In Libya for Weeks, Nobody Cared

David Strom, HotAir:

Remember when Israel arrested, fed, and gave free transport to Greta Thunberg and her motley crew of virtue signalers who tried to break the blockade of Gaza?

World news. Accusations of abuse (Pallywood-style), world condemnation of Israel for being cruel, inhuman beasts for not allowing commie cosplayers to deliver 4 loaves of bread or so to the not-really-starving Gazans. 

It made for great propaganda. Because they made Israel a villain, which is everywhere and always the point for leftists and transnationalists. 

A funny thing happened to the latest flotilla, and almost nobody heard about it: the whole thing was stopped off the coast of Libya, its "activists" were "illegally detained," and a bunch of their companions who were convoying supplies for it were kidnapped and held for "about a month." 

Ah, Hillary Clinton's Libya. "We came, we saw, he's dead." Good times. 

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, gave a crap aside from the flotilla organizers, Amnesty International (sorta), and the poor diplomats who had to figure out how to get them away from the kidnappers. 

“Four pro-Palestinian campaigners detained in Libya for about a month have been released, the Global Sumud Flotilla group has said.

In a statement on Wednesday, the organisation said Achraf Khoja from Tunisia, Matias Rodriguez from Uruguay, and Domenico Centrone and Leonarda Alberizia, both from Italy, had all arrived in Tunis. Six others are expected to be released in the next 24 hours, it added.

In an earlier statement, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani welcomed the news of the released Italians, saying the two, along with Rodriguez, who has Italian citizenship, were handed over to Italy’s consul in Benghazi. They will return to Italy on Wednesday, he said on X.

More than 400 activists were arrested last month in international waters on board dozens of vessels while sailing towards Gaza to break a siege imposed on the enclave by Israel.

The activists held in Libya were part of a separate group which tried to reach the strip by land. They had staged a hunger strike in protest at their detention, the Global Sumud Flotilla said.”

No Jews, no news. Almost literally, nobody cared. 

Only 7% voted communist, but 100% of New Yorkers will be punished

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How just 7% of voters, mostly young and white, led Mamdani’s NYC socialist election surge

Just 7% of active voters supported Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radical ally Darializa Avila Chevalier over establishment Democrat Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s main event primary, data shows.

The overall low turnout — roughly 17% of Democratic voters citywide — came as Avila Chevalier and two other Mamdani-backed House primary winners captured a mix of high-earning, young, white and black voters, analysts found.

Insiders also credited the Democratic Socialists of America’s formidable field operations for turning out voters who’d back Mamdani’s preferred candidates — setting the stage for a potential party takeover by the DSA.

“This was the red wedding and the victims of the red wedding were the Democrats,” said JC Polanco, a political analyst and professor at the University of Mount Saint Vincent in The Bronx.

“It’s a hostile takeover by the Democratic Socialists of America who have demonstrated that they have the organization to win primaries where there is no voter turnout,” Polanco told The Post Wednesday.

“In some of these districts nobody votes, it’s a very small turnout and the Democratic Socialists of America come in and win. They’ve taken over the party locally.”

Even for ultra-liberal New York City, the wins by Mamdani’s candidates ultimately came from small slivers of the city’s approximately 3 million active Democratic voters, data shows.

Avila Chevalier drew roughly 33,000 votes from 449,000 active voters in the 13th House District covering much of Upper Manhattan, including Harlem, and a swath of the Bronx, preliminary election data shows.

Steve Rattner, an economic analyst, posted on X that election data showed college-educated, non-Hispanic voters were more likely to vote for Avila Chevalier.

“Last night’s big wins for Mamdani-backed candidates were driven by young college grads” [because they’re all stupid, ignorant, envious do-nothings — you know — typical products of our modern institutes of higher learing. ED]

One more sale of note

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1 Old Church Road #6 has sold to Pleasantville buyers for $3.1 million on a guide price of $2.995. Listing agent Suzy Armstrong tells me that’s a record price for this complex, and would Suzy lie to me? Never!

She also mentioned it’s great for the old and feeble (she actually used a kinder term out of deference to my own dottage) because it’s one-floor living and an elevator (to the rooftop? She didn’t say).

In any event, nice job, Suzy.