Sunday, June 25th, 2023 - TrickJarrett.com: Semper Ad Meliora

The CIA ran a Secret Brothel in San Francisco in the 50s and 60s

Remember, power corrupts.

White was the federal agent responsible for a top-secret CIA program called "Operation Midnight Climax." The CIA thought it could use hallucinogenic drugs like LSD as weapons of war against its enemies. To find out, the agency got Bay Area residents high without their consent.

White outfitted rooms inside a Telegraph Hill apartment building, at 225 Chestnut St., into a safe house for testing LSD. He gave sex workers get-out-of-jail-free cards in exchange for luring unsuspecting johns to the apartment, where the men were dosed with acid while White watched from the other side of a one-way mirror.

Operation Midnight Climax is now an infamous example of government abuse, but in White's opinion, according to a letter unearthed by John Marks in his 1979 book "The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate,'" it was nothing but "fun, fun, fun."

"Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?" White asked.

And, regarding the value derived from this endeavor?

The eight-year mission apparently produced almost nothing of value for the spy agency. The agents never discovered a mind control technique or truth serum they could use against America's enemies. They did learn at least one lesson: It's easier to get something out of a man after he had sex instead of before, according to Marks, who interviewed agents who had worked with White.

6/25/2023 2:37 pm |

| Tags: sex work, san francisco, 1960s, 1950s, drugs, cia

The Bear, Season 2 is really good

This is not a surprise to anyone who saw Season 1, but wow is Season 2 really good. I have really fucking enjoyed it. The Christmas episode (Seven Fishes) is rough and hard and does exactly what it was meant to do. Additionally, Jeremy Allen White is fucking fantastic. Again, not surprising.

6/25/2023 2:51 pm |

| Tags: television, streaming

Topography of Africa

Found from this Reddit thread. I particularly love this top comment by g1ngertim:

Three plates meet in Ethiopia at what's called the Afar Triangle. All three plate boundaries are divergent, and the boundary between the African plates forms what's sometimes called the Great Rift Valley. It will eventually become a sea that divides Africa.

This sent me to Wikipedia to read more about the Afar Triangle.

The Afar Triangle (also called the Afar Depression) is a geological depression caused by the Afar Triple Junction, which is part of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. The region has disclosed fossil specimens of the very earliest hominins; that is, the earliest of the human clade, and it is thought by some paleontologists to be the cradle of the evolution of humans. The Depression overlaps the borders of Eritrea, Djibouti and the entire Afar Region of Ethiopia; and it contains the lowest point in Africa, Lake Assal, Djibouti, at 155 m (509 ft) below sea level.

Of note, Badwater Basin in the US is the lowest point, at just 282 feet below sea level.

Fascinating stuff.

6/25/2023 7:06 pm |

| Tags: africa, geography, map