Kind of a shocker – Germany is already out of the World Cup

Scoop, ... 6 comments.

Germany entered the match as -700 favorites to advance. According to BetMGM sportsbook insights, 99% of the money wagered was on Germany to qualify! I’ve never seen a betting situation like that – all the money placed on a bet that would have paid next to nothing.

They lost to Paraguay, a team that the USA beat 4-1.

The USA team has so far managed to recover from their embarrassing loss to Turkey. (Turkey lost all of their other games, scoring no goals.)

Thanks to a red card, the USA had to play a man short for the final 25 minutes against Bosnia, but still managed to advance to the round of 16 for the first time since 2002. They are not expected to advance farther because the red card also means that star player will not be eligible to play the next game against Belgium.

Robin Byrd nudity in Bang My Box (2026)

Scoop, ... 6 comments.

Documentary from HBO

You may not know who she is if you didn’t spend a lot of time in NYC in the last quarter of the last century, but Robin Byrd was an absolute fixture on New York cable television (Channel J) for two decades, in a raunchy show co-produced by Robin and the infamous Screw Magazine. “Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box” was her theme song. Each episode featured Byrd in a skimpy bikini, in front of a red wall with a hanging sign reading “The Robin Byrd Show.” Many of her shows were aired live, and would occasionally take viewer calls. Her guests were porn stars and strippers, who sometimes got naked.

She became better known outside NY when SNL, another New York institution, ran several parodies of the Robin Byrd Show in the late 90s, featuring Cheri Oteri as Robin.

Here is an excellent summary of her career from The Guardian


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Video
The video above is not really worth your time, but the documentary is pretty interesting. There is some additional nudity from guests on her show, male and female. I didn’t capture it, since the old tapes of her show are in very poor shape, and the guests are either anonymous strippers or porn stars that you can see naked in much better quality with a Google search. There is also some nudity from Robin today, although she is 70ish and morbidly obese.

Before her Manhattan Cable days, Robin appeared in some adult films. She had a small part in a very famous one, Debbie Does Dallas (1978)


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Bambi Woods, Robin Byrd – Debbie does Dallas (1978)

What Is the Definitive Movie About America?

Scoop, ... 35 comments.

It’s an interesting question. Which films have caught, if not the essential nature of America, at least the zeitgeist of America at a particular time.

There are some odd selections among these ten, including some mediocre-to-poor films, and films that say absolutely nothing accurate about America.

I’ve always argued that Casablanca is the film that best reflects what we want to be, and Idiocracy is the one that portrays what we really are.

I would include, as a joint entry of films that accurately portray America as I knew it in the time of my youth and childhood, two comedies by Bob Clark: Porky’s and A Christmas Story.

There was a hot girl-girl scene in the new episode of Birodalom (s1e5)

Scoop, ... 1 comment.

Maya, the character played by Mariann Hermanyi, was having trouble getting into the mood for her porno scenes until the director spotted what she needed – some proper attention from Michelle Wild (played by Viola Lotti Gombo).

Mariann Hermanyi

(With an assist and a near Heche from Viola Lotti Gombo.)

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Viola Lotti Gombo

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Hermanyi and Gombo

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Luka Markus

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Videos

Previous episodes of this show about the porno industry in Hungary in the 1990s and Oughts.

The Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship.

Scoop, ... 34 comments.

Overview from The Hill

The actual text of the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The controversial part is underlined.

By the reckoning I use, they upheld it by a 3-1 decision. I say that because there are five justices whose votes I can predict 100% of the time, even though I know nothing about constitutional law. As soon as I know what the issue is, I know how Thomas, Alito, Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan will vote. I don’t know need to know what the legal issues are because I know they will find some legal pretext to vote they way they want to. In this case the four remaining justices split 3-1, with Gorsuch dissenting.

I know that the legal reasoning of Alito and Thomas will be sophistry, so let’s see what Gorsuch had to say:

“At the heart of today’s dispute lie two competing views of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. On one account, the Clause incorporated the English common law rule of jus soli (literally, the ‘right of the soil’),” he noted. The other account, he said, “adopted a distinctly American settler’s view of citizenship … that promises the full ‘dignity and glory of American citizenship’ to any child born in this country to parents who have made this Nation their permanent home **, regardless of their race, religion, or national origin.”

(Gorsuch went on to agree with the latter interpretation. The majority obviously did not.)

I know that the legal reasoning of Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson will be sophistry, and Kavanaugh sided with the majority for a completely separate reason, so let’s see what Roberts and Barrett had to say:

Roberts wrote:

“The Court exhaustively canvassed the text and history of the Citizenship Clause and at no point identified any evidence that the ratifiers thought themselves to be imposing a domicile limitation.”

Amy Coney Barrett did not write a separate opinion, so we presume she agreed with Roberts’ reasoning. I don’t know the history he’s citing, but assuming he is correct, that sounds like a reasonable position to me.

Kavanaugh flew solo, and went in his own direction. He opined that birthright citizenship could be further* limited, but not in this case. It would require an act of Congress, not the simple declaration of one man (Trump in this case). Even if such a law were passed, the other five in the majority would presumably deem it unconstitutional.

——

Footnotes:

* There are exceptions now.

1. Children born in the USA to foreign diplomats are NOT entitled to birthright citizenship, while children of American citizens assigned overseas ARE.

– John McCain is a famous example of the latter.

– The cleanest example of the former is Amany Mohamed Raya. She was born at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., in 1981 to an Egyptian embassy attaché. When she applied for a U.S. passport in 2004, the State Department denied it, saying her father had diplomatic privileges and immunities at her birth, so she “did not acquire U.S. citizenship” and was “not entitled to a U.S. passport.” The federal courts agreed.

2. Another exception would be a baby born on a foreign ship in US territorial waters. They are technically in the USA, but not legally subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

** Note that one interpretation of the Gorsuch definition could allow citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants living here and trying to make the USA their permanent home, but would not grant citizenship to children born of visitors. I think I actually agree with that position. It doesn’t seem to me that the USA border is like the touchdown line in football. A pregnant woman crossing the line on “vacation” shouldn’t score the TD. But that’s just my opinion, not a legal position.