he's counting on people not knowing what a doctor looks like because they don't have healthcare

An illustration by Eleonor Piteira of Thorin Oakenshield (from The Hobbit) with closed eyes as he clutches the arkenstone in one hand.

Thorin, King Under the Mountain 👑

(2020) #fanart #thehobbit #illustration

Ok so Eleanor finds out a secret about the War, but the Ring was destroyed? What are the stakes on a war that's done and dusted?

Trying to retroactively improve LotR is just putting a hat on a crown.

The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications. No denials. No refunds. Just silence. This is the largest fee fraud in the history of the American immigration system. Here's what's happening. 🧵

Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM

Bernie Sander’s 2028 litmus test would strangle America’s golden goose

Surprise! The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is against my 5% billionaire wealth tax. I wonder why?

If enacted, Bezos would owe $12 billion in taxes, and an average family of 4 would receive a $12,000 direct payment.

Poor Jeff would be left with just $224 billion to survive.

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves. Nothing you can tell me about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven't lived in blood and bone. That doesn't mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins. If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it's not freedom you're after. Sahar Delijani, Iranian author

I am pro Iranian people. I stand with them against their own government’s repression AND against the imperial violence in the form of bombs dropped from the sky from Israel & the US who have already killed hundreds.

I support neither imperialism or dictatorship.

Sahar Delijani said it best:

average person cheering for war in iran

Every major disaster in this country over my lifetime has been self inflicted by right wing ideologues with just enough complicit or inert Democrats to enable or ratify them. That's why we've been on this doom trajectory for the last ~50 years and it'll keep getting worse if that doesn't change

imo the threat posed by CBS News and CNN getting absorbed by pro-regime billionaires isn't that they're going to produce right-wing slop that convinces people to be right-wing, it's the dismantling of newsrooms capable of doing investigative reporting on the administration. Fewer eyes on the street.

Still feel like if Dems wanted to fully own the midterms they'd just need to hammer Epstein links, vibe w/ the people who are out protesting over "AI" data centers making their water & power bills & air quality worse, & then link those to talk affordability, QoL, & corporate/billionaire excesses

Equality Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Sarah McBride: At the end of the day, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and sexism are all rooted in the same prejudice: the belief that one perception at birth should dictate who you are, how you act, what you do, who you love, and how you dress. And it's why threats towards trans people are threats towards all women."

"Because when they use trans people as the tip of the spear, when they come after trans people as they're doing right now using us as a political wedge issue, using people like me, using me—as you mentioned—as a political pawn,"

"not only are they licensing discrimination against trans people, they're sanctioning gender policing that we know in reality actually disproportionately targets non-transgender women."

"When they come after trans people[...] not only are they licensing discrimination against trans people, they're sanctioning gender policing that we know in reality actually disproportionately targets non-transgender women."
- CEC Co-Chair @mcbride.house.gov

Every day I wake up and deal with people romanticizing the early 2000s and making me feel old

Juicy on the ass

Someone a decade+ younger than I asked me if I saw the Matrix in theaters and how cool that must have been

look at my country man, we’re getting out-No Kings’d by the fuckin’ british

Why Transgender People Are Not Feeling Gavin Newsom We have seen this song and dance before.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about Gavin Newsom today.

I wanted to re-share this piece that I wrote, because I have a lot of center-to-left Dems that follow me that want to understand.

There are very good reasons transgender people do not like Gavin Newsom.

hey @jd-vance-1.bsky.social i think it’s fair to let you know that you truly look like shit here, big dawg & it’s actually impressive how there doesn’t exist any lighting that can help with that.

idk man, we gotta find a way to make you less creepy looking in everything if possible.

This weekend, New York City will experience some of the coldest – and most dangerous – weather we’ve seen in a long time.

If you see someone in need, please call 311 immediately so our outreach workers and first responders can provide assistance.

this unprecedented momentum behind a single issue sure might be a useful fulcrum to try and wrench this country back from over the brink

Trump: ‘We should take over the voting’ Trump, as usual, offered no evidence for any of his claims.

🚨BREAKING: President Donald Trump urged Republicans to seize control of elections and place voting under national authority Monday — one of his most explicit signals yet that he plans to interfere with the workings of democracy. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

With the latest Epstein drop, just think that Biden had all these incredibly damning files just sitting there for a whole 4 years and instead of doing *anything* with them he did a genocide.

There's no way you can keep funding a federal government who's primary mission is to inflict pain on the population. Every federal agency from McMahon at DoE to RFK shredding HHS and everything in between. Every day we let them stay open is more time we'll need to repair the damage they've done

it doesn't matter if you don't want to have this fight, it doesn't even matter if it's not politically optimal to have this fight

the fight is here and sitting it out is not an option

if you can't see that get out of the way

The best new characters so far are Lionel Baratheon's antlers closely followed by the editor splicing in cuts of Ser Arlan. Everybody else is great too but man, they're really the best.

#KnightOfTheSevenKingdoms

Hoping to see the conchshell helm featured jussayin

We all bemoan the death of places we can go without spending money. Knowledge cartels already exist (see academic publishing) but this is an enclosure of the *process* of thinking. As such, it's actually a logical extension of Enlightenment thinking re the individual as enclosed body

There's another weird wrinkle here: if the federal government can sue states for legislating AI, then I imagine it becomes possible for the government (or another federal actor) to sue states for regulating other kinds of technologies.

This could possibly lead somewhere very bad.

Remember: they used thousands of academic books too! If you’re a scholar, check for your books too. This isn’t just novelists and pop writers, it’s academic books too!

Charlotte Area: This is the link for the Carolina Migrant Network
carolinamigrantnetwork.org

Now is a good time to keep their information handy. Donating to them, if you can, is another good thing you could do.

I'm not trying to be mean, but racists who believe Trump betrayed them by being a child molester are not going to embrace the Democratic Party without forcing that party to embrace racism. And the people gained would in no way make up for those lost.