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He Shills With Sea Shells By The Score
For anyone who’s had their head in the sand for the past day, James Comey (former Director of the FBI) posted a cute little arrangement of seashells that playfully call for the 86-ing of number 47. Amusingly, Big Jim claims he just came across the innocent but artful jumble while walking innocently on the beach. He has no idea what it might mean, of course, so what could he do but post it? Isn’t nature clever to arrange these shells just so?
The Tall Twee One is an obvious and clumsy liar, but set that aside for a minute. Two things here are worth noting. One, that picture is rather difficult to find, only one day after he posted it. None of the MSM sites are showing it. Go check a few. Isn’t that curious? Why would honest journalists (there aren’t any other kinds) write about the controversy and fail to include the image that’s at the heart of it? So many questions.
The other thing I noticed was a claim that the shell-o-gram was a reference to 9/11/2001 – that the attacks occurred 8,647 days ago. That’s easy to check, so I did. Grok gave me a detailed calculation that I won’t reprint here (you can ask for it), but the number of days from 9/11/2001 to the day of Tweetop’s post (5/15/2025) is 9,012. So that claim is dumb. Ridiculous. I mean, look how big the error is: 9,012 minus 8,647 is … uh, oh, it’s 365.
What do you want to bet that Tall Boy missed a year in his arithmetic? If so, that implies some real planning. Dumb, like you’d expect, but real. It’s too much to hope for, but I’d love to see this doofus doing a stretch in a federal pen.
Later: False alarm! Grok added a year. I did the total by hand and got 8,647. All I asked the stupid thing for was “How many days since September 11, 2001?” and I can’t even trust it for that.
From 9/11/2001 to 12/31/2001: 19+31+30+31 = 111
From 12/31/2001 to 12/31/2024: 23*365 + 6 = 8401
From 12/31/2024 to 5/15/2025: 31+28+31+30+15 = 135
111 + 8401 + 135 = 8647
Published in Terrorism
It looks more like S6 47 to me. Most likely a commemoration of the birthday of Jane “You ignorant slut” Curtin.
Oh, stop! It hurts! Whoo! Haven’t laughed so hard since I heard that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack.
Excel’s math function gave me the 8647 day count. So if it’s wrong, I blame Microsoft.
You and Excel are correct. I just got thru the update above. My fault, I trusted the tech.
Thanks.
My personal opinion is that it’s a troll.
Ok, so what is the significance of 8,647 being the number of days since 9/11/2001? Comey was US Atty for SDNY in 2001, so that date would stick with him more than most people. Of course, he never posted any other counts – what about 7501 or 8397? So “86 47” is what he wanted to communicate. Did he maybe think he could use the 9/11 aspect to weasel if he was pressed on it? Or did he just intend to make the association between PDT and any bad thing he can?
Or did nature just conspire to arrange those shells on the beach, like in The 3 Body Problem? (That’s an excellent series, btw.)
FWIW: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/05/breaking-james-comey-be-escorted-secret-service-dc/
I found Grok’s error. When I asked “how many days has it been since 9/11/2001?” Grok included the entire year 2001, in addition to the days from 9/11 to 12/31. When I asked “how many days since September 11, 2001?” it found the right answer.
It’s good that the thing shows its work. It’s interesting that Grok followed different logic for the two questions. To us humans, those questions are practically identical. Not so to the machine. Here are links to the conversations.
https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1923431548398993784
https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1923488498742591499
I’d rather that people like Comey were spending lots of time uploading photos of sea shells rather than arranging for another sniper or two to take the president out.
To this day, I am very grateful that by God’s grace, Trump turned his head a little bit when it counted.
Well, [Stage Direction: Puts on Big, Beautiful MAGA Tinfoil Conspiracy Theory Hat], if I were writing the screenplay for this obviously fictional proceeding, it would go something like this:
ACT ONE
A former FBI Director knows perfectly well what “8647” means to those who follow such things in the political world. (He was the Director of the FBI for Pete’s sake. Maybe he’s an Amazon customer, too; you can buy dozens of articles imprinted with the the numbers there, any day of the week.) He also knows the “8647” date arithmetic. (I haven’t quite worked out why, or how, he knows this rather obscure fact, or who’s counting. Need to invent some fascinating background here. Watch this space.)
He thinks: Wouldn’t it be fun to troll MAGA world by posting an image of these numbers on his Twitter account, and let them think the obvious thing they’re going to think. Then, when they’re all astir, and the Secret Service and FBI, in jackboots, have fetched him out of bed at 5AM with Fox News conveniently deployed to film him being dragged off in handcuffs, and they’ve indicted, prosecuted, and locked him up, the grieving widow will suddenly appear to say that she’s walked that beach every day for the last 86-umpty days and counting, and written the numbers of days in seashells on the sand, that she thought it was a beautiful gesture for Former FBI Director to photograph and post it, and that nothing was ever further from her mind than the “other” meaning for that particular number (of days).
Then F-FBI-D will be released from jail and he’ll shame the other side for paranoia, for going off the deep end, and for turning a personal tragedy and beautiful gesture into an ugly political football.
And finally…
F-FBI-D for President, 2028!
THE END
You’re welcome.
Times really have gotten more violent. Back in my bartending days “86 that guy” meant “kick him out”– by the seat of his pants, if necessary. Now we’re supposed to assassinate him?
Well, I wouldn’t say “86” meant to kill someone, just to get rid of them. Put them in the trash. But in the current context, it turns up the heat – stochastic terrorism, the left calls it. It’s not unreasonable for the USSS to have a chat with Comey.
Say he’s autistic. It’s trending, gets sympathy.
I like it!
I am told the origin of “86” is from Las Vegas gangsters taking people 8 miles out town and burying them 6 feet under. If Comey thought it had to do with days since 9/11, he could have said that instead of just saying, “I didn’t know what it meant” and deleting his post. Why post, if you didn’t know what it meant??? He is corrupt and a liar, so we should assume the worst. Lastly, when I was kid through last week, “86” meant to put something into the trash.
I don’t believe a word Comey says. But here were his actual words, after he’d deleted the original, which was on Instagram, not X, as I said previously (via PowerLine):
I’m not sure why he “assumed they were a political message,” or why he called them “cool,” and posted them to his Insta account if he didn’t know what they signified. If it’s not a lie (unlikely that it’s not a lie, IMHO), that strikes me as rather reckless behavior from the one-time FBI Director. And I’m also of the opinion that he probably photographed his own handiwork, rather than coming across them fortuitously. (Again, that gives a rather odd picture of his activities and behavior.)
As for his “not realizing some folks associate those numbers with violence,” I don’t believe that either. In any case, and given Comey’s political proclivities, it shouldn’t matter what he didn’t “realize,” as he comes from the same stable as those who believe that offense is in the eye of the offended (“if I’m offended, then it doesn’t matter what you meant; the offense stands and you’re guilty”), and that if I say “your words are violence,” then they are. I don’t see why the same shouldn’t be true for numbers.
The difference between food service and the military/intelligence services.
There is some overlap here. If you were 86’d from any bar that I worked at, you were not coming back. I once worked for a guy who had been 86’d from all of his favorite places (he was prone to standing on the bar and giving speeches), so he opened his own place.
Would LOVE it if anyone got video of that gorilla Comey crouched down, arranging those shells and giggling like a a schoolgirl.
Season 6, episode 47?
But what tv show is he referencing?!
More here: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/05/friday-fun-twitter-x-users-respond-james-comey/
This is nuts. I don’t see how the world can possibly work this way.
When I hear that someone has 86ed her boyfriend, I take it to mean she dumped him, not that she murdered him.
I really hate to cut this guy slack but even though his post (and presumed beach art) is stupid, dishonest, and twee, it is legal and is not truly a criminal matter.
What a schmuck.
But if you heard from someone in the military or intelligence community that a certain foreign leader was eighty-sixed?
Given the way I’ve always heard the term used, I would presume the leader was deposed, not assassinated.
It isn’t supposed to “work”. Silence is violence. Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Update 5/20/2025: At this point, Comey has made public statements. (Kayleigh McEnany’s report is tolerable for at least the first two or three minutes; I stopped after that.)
Comey had a range of possible explanations, of course. He could say “86” just meant “to be rid of” or anything else to blunt the perception of his attack, make it more anodyne. He could cite the irony of the days since 9/11/2001. I expected both of these, and I could see that they’d work for him. The press would eat it up.
No. He’s going with denial and ignorance. He didn’t arrange the shells, instead he found them. He thought they made a nice political statement so he posted. He does not mention 9/11.
I suppose he’s going to wait for someone else to call out the 9/11 angle, then maybe say he saw it all along.
Pretty sure if two weeks ago I had seen those numbers arranged in shells on a beach, I would keep walking, never connecting them to Trump at all. But if I did, I would probably wonder about the simpleton who thought he was making a powerful statement in such a way.