Source: https://xcancel.com/chribjel/status/2046497932627644425

And here we all are building back better on the Fediverse/Threadiverse!

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/38833888

transscript: a shitty selfy of my ugly ass

might post more in the future if i don't feel too bad about myself

Sharing another one of the 4 paintings I did awhile back. Expect the same color scheme throughout all but with different shapes.

Emily Underwood, top deputy to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has announced a departure for Trust Ventures, a venture capital firm, where she will be a partner.

Underwood's departure set off fireworks on social media.

"It's a sinking ship," Democratic strategist Mike Nellis posted on X about the news.

"Rat flees sinking ship," Jason Tufele Carl Johnson, a former staffer for Rep. Raul Grijalva in Arizona, posted on X.

TL;DR - anybody find it via reverse-image search?

Wordy version - So, late in the day on Monday, my internet service (Spectrum, Midwest USA) did some kind of "planned upgrade," which wound up (temporarily?) killing a landslide of key sites for me, such as TheGuardian, Pinterest.com, archive.org, TinEye, Patreon, streamable.com, fandom.com and even bloody well Amazon! Even Google Image search craps out after I upload the image.

Now, I -think- this is from someone I previously posted here 2+yrs ago, but I'm getting older, and... well. 665 posts is a boatload of posts to search through when you can't remember a good key-word. :S

Funny thing is, I was trying to put together a little dossier on Horacio Altuna's BD art when I stumbled upon this one. One problem with that of course is that Altuna loves to spotlight a million+1 artists on his Twitter feed (see prior post), and this was one of them. But it's absolutely not him!

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Trump administration task force created to combat antisemitism pushed for settlements with Ivy League universities despite government investigations that were rushed and incomplete or that failed to establish legal violations by the schools, a former Justice Department lawyer alleged in a whistleblower disclosure obtained by The Associated Press.

The complaint alleges that the investigations into some of the nation's most prestigious academic institutions were designed to strong-arm the schools into cutting deals for political purposes. Outcomes of the investigations were "predetermined, without regard to the evidence" in a "politically mandated effort" to extract money from schools through settlement demands and funding freezes under the pretext of rooting out antisemitism, the complaint alleges.

Game is a blast for a political sim. Actually challenging depending on what kind of utopia you are aiming for. Reminded me of the first time I played "Democracy" but I actually found the political capital resource a bit more rewarding in this one. Other differences are more obvious, like the obvious leftist bent and the policy being more global then state focused.

Also it was free!

President Donald Trump has pushed to strip millions of Americans of the right to vote by mail. But he doesn't seem to think these restrictions should apply to him.

The White House confirmed to The New York Times that the president voted by mail ahead of Florida's Republican primary on Tuesday, marking at least the third time he has done so since becoming president. He also voted by mail in a state legislative special election earlier this year and in the 2020 Republican primary.

Though Trump has repeatedly characterized mail-in voting itself as a form of "cheating" and pushed to abolish it for most Americans under his proposed SAVE America Act, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said it was a "non-story" that he chose to participate in the practice himself.

"The SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel— but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud," she said. "As everyone knows, the president is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, DC."

Florida notably does not distinguish between absentee and other forms of mail-in voting, allowing residents to cast votes without an excuse—so the system Trump used to vote by mail is the same one he wants to make illegal.

Failing to pass his SAVE America Act through Congress, Trump has attempted to restrict mail-in voting via executive order.

An order he signed in March required states to hand over lists of eligible voters to the federal government and said that the US Postal Service could block residents of states from voting by mail if they refused to comply. The order also directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create state "citizenship lists" to be sent to election officials.

This order has been blocked in federal court, and Trump has pushed for the Supreme Court to allow it to go into effect before the November 3 midterm election. Voting rights advocates have warned that if the order goes into effect, many eligible voters will be wrongly excluded because their names don't appear on DHS's federal lists.

There is scarce evidence that any form of mail-in balloting is susceptible to fraud anywhere near the levels that would be necessary to swing the result of an election.

An analysis by the Brookings Institution last year, which examined data from the right-wing Heritage Foundation's election fraud database, found that for every 10 million mail ballots cast, about four ballots were associated with voting fraud, though the database is not exhaustive.

It's not clear why voting by mail for convenience would be any more "susceptible to fraud" than doing so for illness, disability, military, or travel, as the White House claims.

In fact, the Brookings study found that states with universal no-excuse mail-in voting have the lowest rates of mail-in fraud, and some states, like Washington, have seen reductions in fraud after transitioning to universal mail-in voting.

Advocates for universal mail-in balloting have emphasized that it makes voting easier and more accessible than when it's restricted to election days at physical polling places. They also say restricting it is especially harmful to voters from racial minority groups who face greater barriers to in-person voting and are more likely to have absentee ballot applications rejected.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) rejected the idea that the right of other Americans to vote by mail was any less legitimate than Trump's right to do so.

"Trump just voted by mail AGAIN while trying to take away the right for millions of people to do the same," Pressley wrote in a social media post. "The hypocrisy is the point. We won't let Republicans attack the sacred right to vote, including by mail."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Palestinians buy gold at jewellery shops in downtown Gaza City, as the precious metal commodity in the war-torn territory is increasingly becoming their hedge against financial uncertainty

The Canadian Defence Department’s recent announcement that it’s scaling back peacekeeping missions marks the final step in the triumph of one national peacekeeping mythology over another.

“The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is rebalancing its global operational commitments to better align resources with evolving defence priorities in an increasingly complex security environment. This includes closing Operations KOBOLD, SNOWGOOSE, SOPRANO, and CROCODILE, and reducing its contribution to Operation CALUMET. Approximately 50-60 CAF members currently assigned to these missions will be progressively reintegrated into higher-priority roles supporting operations at home and abroad.” — Department of National Defence announcement, July 17, 2026

Canadians could be forgiven for thinking this announcement about the end of Canada’s participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo is little more than bureaucratic housekeeping. In fact, it effectively marks the finale of 70 years of Canadian involvement in UN peacekeeping.

There are few countries more psychologically invested in peacekeeping than Canada. Canada as global peacekeeper is a national symbol or brand, forged in the 1956 Suez crisis, when Lester B. Pearson and other Canadian officials basically invented peacekeeping to diffuse the ill-conceived British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt and the occupation of the Suez canal zone.

For decades thereafter Canada was heavily committed to United Nations operations, peaking at nearly 4,000 personnel deployed in places like Cyprus and the Golan Heights. These were often UN “Pacific Settlement of Disputes” missions, where monitoring, buffer-zone enforcement and policing roles were central.