Dreamlike Serenity in Blue and Purple by Olya Enina is from the Contemporary Portraits collection.
I can't even begin to list the outrages the Trump administration is committing against people in America, but I'm listening right now to Sam Seder's interview with Jeremy Scahill and it sounds like because Trump is incredibly transactional, ego-driven, and corrupt, he may actually be shifting the politics in the Middle East in a less horrible direction. (You can also read Scahill's interview with an actual Hamas official here.)
You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that Elon wants to go to Mars because billions of years from now the sun is going to incinerate the Earth. If he'd said, "So we need to learn how to get into space and this is a first step," I might have been slightly mollified, but he never did. And, to be quite honest, if I still believed it was possible for humans to ever create machines that would take us to the stars, I could only do so if I still believed we would evolve first into the kind of society that was genuinely cooperative and collaborative and not the horrible, competitive, dog-eat-dog kind of world Elon Musk and the people like him have given us. This is not the Star Trek timeline, the Bell Riots never happened, and the Earth, if it is still here, will burn up along with Mars. But we'll probably have died out long before that happens.
In explaining why the administration had just fired Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, a year before her ten-year term was set to expire, the White House spokesblonde said, "There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the Library for children and we don't believe she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well." She thinks it's a lending library for kids?
"Hamas Launches Unprecedented Legal Case in Britain, Demanding the Government Remove its Terror Designation: In a legal filing, a Hamas founder argues that the group has the right to use armed resistance to achieve Palestinian liberation—and that Britain is crushing honest debate about its aims. In an extraordinary legal filing submitted Wednesday in London, Hamas argued that the British government should remove its designation of the movement as a proscribed terror group and recognize its legitimate role as a Palestinian resistance movement engaged in a struggle for self-determination and liberation. A top political leader of Hamas rejected allegations that the movement is an anti-semitic terror organization, asserted that Hamas poses no threat to Western nations, and argues that the political organization has never engaged in an armed operation outside the boundaries of historic Palestine."
Radley Balko "On 'unleashing' the police" makes the excellent point that Trump's recent order to "unleash the police" doesn't make much sense since we have no evidence that the police feel "leashed"—or restrained in any way—to begin with. "As for the executive order itself, it is heavy on bluster and short on details, like most of Trump's orders. Some of the measures are nonsensical, like 'indemnifying' police from damages. (They're already indemnified by taxpayers in more than 99.9 percent of such cases.) For others, it isn't clear if he's referring to federal or state and local police. Trump also provides no funding for his demands. Some would violate the law, such as charging progressive prosecutors for failing to prosecute some crimes to Trump's satisfaction. Others, like directing law firms to do pro bono work defending cops accused of wrongdoing, are both unconstitutional on their own and build on previous executive orders that are also unconstitutional (as a federal court emphatically declared just this week). Still others would require approval from Congress. How much of this agenda is actually feasible depends on whether Trump is willing to push through these barriers, and whether the federal courts are willing to stop him. That, however, is true with or without an executive order."
"The Supreme Court Approved Trump's Trans Military Purge in the Most Shameful Way Possible: On Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for President Donald Trump to purge transgender people from the military in a brief, unsigned order that did not bother to provide any reasoning. All three liberals dissented. With this decision, the Trump administration may now enforce a sweeping ban on military service, prohibiting the enlistment of transgender people and expelling those who are currently serving. The forced removal of these service members—who joined the military on the good-faith belief that the U.S. government welcomed their service—will mark one of the most sweeping acts of government-imposed bigotry in modern times. And the Supreme Court's shameful, unexplained approval of the policy is certain to weaken the armed forces by pushing out thousands serving their nation honorably."
"Leftist Online Creators Say They've Been Detained and Questioned Over Anti-Trump Content: 'No U.S. citizen should be detained by law enforcement, at the border or anywhere, because of their protected speech.' 'It happened,' said progressive online political commentator Hasan Piker on Sunday in a cryptic post on the social media site X—one that suggested he wasn't altogether surprised when he was detained for several hours by border agents at a Chicago airport after flying back to the U.S. from France. He explained to his 1.5 million followers later that he had been stopped by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents 'for additional questioning.' [...] The questions over the two-hour period suggested that the Trump administration has been following Piker's commentary, which has recently included vehement criticism of U.S. support for Israel as it bombards and starves the people of Gaza. 'They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently,' Piker said. '[The agent] kept saying stuff like, do you like Hamas? Do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a terror group or a resistance group?'"
Hm, what's my new Senator been up to? "Alsobrooks, RFK Jr. spar during testy Senate hearing: U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks squared off against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a testy Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday, continuing her campaign against the controversial cabinet head. 'Sir, you are the wrong person for this job,' Alsobrooks flatly told Kennedy." Good. If you can't make law, at least make noise.
"Consenting Sexual Activity at Sex Clubs and Parties in the UK is About to Become a Crime: The Crime and Policing Bill 2025 aims to infringe your freedom and control your sex life"—and it's more than just sex parties: "Under NEW CLAUSE 2: if you paid to be in the same room as someone and expect to be sexually aroused by their activity then it is a crime. Even if you everyone is clothed and there is no touching each other."
RIP: "Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff who ministered with a charming, humble style, dies at 88: The Vatican said Francis died of a stroke that put him into a coma and led his heart to fail." He was the best Pope of my lifetime, I'll give him that. Mind, this isn't saying a lot, but still. In any case, right-wingers are upset that the new pope, an American who has named himself Leo XIV, talks like someone who was actually raised on the teachings of Jesus.
RIP: "Will Hutchins, Star of ABC's Sugarfoot, Dies at 94. The onetime Warner Bros. contract player also appeared in two Elvis films and played a New York City landlord and Dagwood Bumstead on short-lived sitcoms." OK, he was no big deal, but I just always liked Sugarfoot, he was the cutest of the prime time cowboys.
ROT IN PERDITION: Alan Simpson died just before I had my little accident and I'd almost forgotten about it, but you really shouldn't miss Eric Loomis' remembrance of this horrible monster.
"Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram: A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed suit—widening the net of posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history. [...] Despite Meta's awareness of Israel's aggressive censorship tactics for at least seven years, according to Meta whistleblowers, the company has failed to curb the abuse. Instead, one said, the company 'actively provided the Israeli government with a legal entry-point for carrying out its mass censorship campaign.'"
"Douglas Murray's 'Expertise' Is a Sham" In On Democracies and Death Cults, Murray offers a straightforward 'good versus evil' account of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He does this by excluding every piece of information that undercuts his thesis and even spreading outright falsehoods. [...] Instead of discussing the question 'Who is an expert?' we should always ask a different set of questions, namely: 'What is the argument being made and what is the evidence provided in support of it?' It doesn't matter who has been to Israel, it matters what the proof for their claims is. (After all, both Murray and Ta-Nehisi Coates have been there, but they reached very different conclusions.) The focus should be on Murray's thesis and the support he provides for it. Plenty else is irrelevant: the fact that he's spent time in the region, the fact that he has a posh British accent, the fact that his book is a bestseller, the fact that the Times of Israel calls it important. We must zero in on what Murray is arguing and whether it happens to be true. When we do, we quickly see that his argument is nonsense and filled with deception. "
Zeteo has made a film of their investigative report on Who killed the US journalist & Why did Biden cover it up? "A new documentary film reveals the identity of the Israeli soldier who killed the Christian American journalist, as well as a shocking US cover-up. Exclusive interviews with former Biden officials reveal that in order to protect its relationship with Israel, the administration 'failed' Abu Akleh. Former Wall Street Journal Middle East reporter Dion Nissenbaum and longtime foreign correspondent Conor Powell conducted a months-long investigation that uncovered the hidden identity – and fate – of the Israeli soldier who killed Shireen Abu Akleh." You can watch the first 8:55 for free from the link.
Cory Doctorow is still on the case of how enshittification happened and how to fight it with "Who Broke the Internet? Part II: The thesis of the show is straightforward: the internet wasn't killed by ideological failings like 'greed,' nor by economic concepts like 'network effects,' nor by some cyclic force of history that drives towards 're-intermediation.' Rather, all of these things were able to conquer the open, wild, creative internet because of policies that meant that companies that yielded to greed were able to harness network effects in order to re-intermediate the internet. [...] This week's episode of "Who Broke the Internet?" focuses on those IP laws, specifically, the legislative history of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law whose Section 1201 bans any kind of disenshittifying mods and hacks. [...] DMCA 1201 has its origins in the mid-1990s, when Al Gore was put in charge of the National Information Infrastructure program to demilitarize the internet and open it for civilian use (AKA the 'Information Superhighway'). Gore came into conflict with Bruce Lehman, Bill Clinton's IP Czar, who proposed a long list of far-ranging, highly restrictive rules for the new internet, including an 'anticircumvention rule that would ban tampering with digital locks. This was a pretty obscure and technical debate, but some people immediately grasped its significance. Pam Samuelson, the eminent Berkeley copyright scholar, raised the alarm, rallying a diverse coalition against Lehman's proposal. They won – Gore rejected Lehman's ideas and sent him packing. But Lehman didn't give up easily – he flew straight to Geneva, where he arm-twisted the UN's World Property Organization into passing two "internet treaties" that were virtually identical to the proposals that Gore had rejected. Then, Lehman went back to the USA and insisted that Congress had to overrule Gore and live up to its international obligations by adopting his law. As Lehman said – on some archival tape we were lucky to recover – he did 'an end-run around Congress.'"
HILARIOUS: "Thanks to DOGE, Gumroad's founder has a second job with the VA [...] To hear it from Lavingia, the Elon Musk-backed DOGE was a shortcut in a direction he already saw himself going. Years ago, during the Obama administration, he applied to the United States Digital Service, the predecessor organization to DOGE, only to find the hiring process arduous. While he officially works for the VA, DOGE gave him an inroad into government work that didn't force him to go through a complicated vetting process." Yes, that's right, this wealth-creating genius thinks he's fit to handle the VA when he was too lazy to complete the application process to work for the government, so he took a short-cut.
ASTONISHING: The Lever interviewed Art Laffer, and this guy really thinks that his clever tax cut plans really improved life for Americans, including minorities. Oh, and he solved he housing market problems in Los Angeles! This guy drew a line on a napkin and he thinks it's more real than the massive homelessness problem he helped create.
Tom Jones and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, "Long Time Gone"
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