1/3 Two things are true at once. First, the Bolsonaro/transnational right claims about Brazil's voting machines are hilariously demagogic, as Brazil has used the same machines since 1996 and Jair Bolsonaro was elected on them in 2018. www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-elect...

Brazil's Voting Machines Keep No Paper Trail - Can Voters Still Trust Them in 2026?

Brazil is the largest democracy voting with no voter-verified paper trail. A 2025 poll finds 43% distrust the machines as the 2026 race nears.

riotimesonline.com

Matthew Hay Brown@matthewhaybrown.bsky.social · 2w ago

UPDATE Brazil has denied visas to the two State Department officials Trump planned to send to undermine confidence in the country’s electoral system

Linking to a Fox News interview is a first for me. Fox interviewed DSA co-chair, who confirms @ 3:17 in the video that DSA supports eliminating national borders as part of long-term vision. Abt 4:20, an exchange starts in which she says that borders needed only bc US destabilizes other countries.

DSA co-chair embraces abolishing Senate, ICE, borders as Democratic infighting escalates

DSA co-chair Megan Romer affirmed support for abolishing the Senate, ICE, prisons and borders while defending the group's Democratic ballot line.

foxnews.com

1/3 Two things are true at once. First, the Bolsanaro/transnational right claims about Brazil's voting machines are hilariously demagogic, as Brazil have used the same machines since 1996 and Jair Bolsonaro was elected on them in 2018. www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-elect...

Brazil's Voting Machines Keep No Paper Trail - Can Voters Still Trust Them in 2026?

Brazil is the largest democracy voting with no voter-verified paper trail. A 2025 poll finds 43% distrust the machines as the 2026 race nears.

riotimesonline.com

Jenny Cohn@jennycohn.bsky.social · 2w ago

“Brazil Blocks Visit by U.S. Delegation Seeking to Question Election System *** Brazilian authorities refused to grant visas to two senior U.S. officials out of concern they planned to sow doubt about the security of the country’s voting systems.” 7/25/26 … 1/

Hegseth told Senators this past week that the cost of the war has cost $37.5B. NBC cites three unnamed officials saying the cost is much higher. www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

1/2 Brazil's electronic voting system is vulnerable to systematic fraud, with no voter-verifiable paper records of ballots. The chutzpah-laden irony of Bolsonaro fraud claims is that Jair got elected on the SAME MACHINES in 2018. Big red flag. From an email from e-voting expert Douglas Jones:

Gail Helt@gailhelt.bsky.social · 2w ago

You know, I think I’d be okay if Brazil wanted to send observers to our midterms. They seem to understand what’s at stake and actually recognize trouble before it arrives.

Emmett Till would have been 85 today (b. 7/25/1941). The 14-year-old Chicagoan was brutally murdered by white men while visiting relatives in Miss. in 1955. His murder & the acquittal of the killers made Till an icon of the civil rights movement. Image: Public domain photo taken by Till’s mother.

Medicare for all or a public option as good and affordable as Medicare.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal@jayapal.house.gov · 2w ago

A study found that there was a dramatic spike in cancer diagnoses when Americans hit age 65. Why? Because they finally qualified for Medicare and could afford to see a doctor. People should be able to go to a doctor when they need to, not when they age into coverage. It’s time for Medicare for All.

The "rogue" OpenAI incident is not as alarming as the media hype. OpenAI's "agent" did not do something it was told not to do; it did something it was not specifically told was off limits. Interesting. From someone who has read OpenAI's technical reports: tinyurl.com/vmy88cr9

Wow. Department of Energy lawyers admit to Federal court that clean energy grants were cancelled "based solely" on whether or not they were going to states that went for Harris in 2024. The full NYT article is worth the time. Page 7 of the DOE court filing: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 2w ago

This is another step towards a one-party state: only give government grants to your political friends www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

Wu Shaoping is exactly the kind of person for whom our asylum system is designed. He is here legally and currently in detention. The whole column is worth your time. Gift link: share.inquirer.com/Vfgp9k

Wu Shaoping escaped China’s repression, only to get busted by ICE in Pa. | Will Bunch

The U.S.’s reputation as a safe haven for the world’s dissidents takes another hit with Pennsylvania’s arrest of a Chinese human rights lawyer.

share.inquirer.com

Will Bunch@willbunch.bsky.social · 2w ago

Here's an excerpt -- take a minute to read the actual column and tell me what you think

Intellectually honest, egalitarian perception of intellectual ability from a great scientist of the last century. Is it just me or does Gould's kind of sharp, egalitarian alertness seem on the decline these days?

Andrew Middleton@mapcenter.com · 2w ago

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

Prayers for the loved ones of Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton and Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, and gratitude for their service.

Pentagon Identifies Soldier Killed and Another ‘Believed’ Killed in Iran War (Gift Article)

Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, the 17th service member named, was killed during the disposal of a drone. The military also said Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad was “believed to have been killed in action.”

nytimes.com

Look forward with dread to reading the State Dept report on Cuban intel activities. I don't doubt that Cuban intel conducts extensive operations, including political influence ops, in the US. Bad. So are politicized smears. Two things can be true at the same time. www.rawamerica.com/p/trump-targ...

Can't get numb to this: The United States is stuck in a war it started, cannot end, and may further escalate to no avail, having dismantled its diplomatic apparatus, depleted its military stockpile, and destroyed its credibility. A historic strategic mistake harming millions in many different ways.

Heartbreaking article. “There is no work force waiting in the wings capable of replacing the longstanding relationships, in some cases built over years and even decades, that are so vital to quality care,” she said.

How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Hurting Elder Care (Gift Article)

Retirement communities already grappling with labor shortages are being forced to terminate caregivers at a time when more Americans are living longer.

nytimes.com

1/2 Election scholar Dan Tokaji (fedsoc.org/bio/daniel-t...) dismisses concerns such as voting machine security. Yet back in the early 2000s, Tokaji was fine with paperless electronic voting machines, even though now our elections are supposedly safe bc we have voter-verifiable paper records.

Ouch. Even Grok acknowledges that the “declassified documents [to which Trump referred] do not contain evidence that foreign interference or fraud successfully manipulated results to change any past election outcome, including the 2020 election.” (I personally asked Grok about this.) 1/

Prayers for the loved ones of Lt. Feehan and Private Gonzales, and gratitude for their service.

Pentagon Identifies 2 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Jordan (Gift Article)

Both were active-duty soldiers, the Defense Department said. They were killed in action after an Iranian strike on a U.S. base on Friday.

nytimes.com

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-war...

1/2 When you think you can't be any more shocked... DHS will now investigate itself in cases of confrontation between ICE agents and civilians. So no more civil rights investigations. Quote: "Homeland Security Investigations does not have jurisdiction to investigate civil rights violations, so ..."

Federal Agents Were Told FBI Will No Longer Investigate ICE Confrontations (Gift Article)

Senior officials deny such a change is in the works, despite guidance shared with agents around the country in recent days.

nytimes.com

In the past week, two more American service members, and at least 50 Iranians, have died in a war that it's impossible to see as anything but a pointless disaster. Americans owe our fallen the best citizenship we can muster.

16 US service members have died in the Iran war, reflecting a conflict fought largely in the air

The U.S. military reports two more service members have been killed in the conflict with Iran, bringing the total to 16.

apnews.com

It’s important to protect federal agents doing their jobs, but this review of ICE cases shows the agency has lost its way and needs drastic reform. I feel for my friends who worked at ICE when it cared about professionalism and safety. Gift article. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/18/u...

They Were Charged With Assaulting ICE Agents. The Cases Are Crumbling. (Gift Article)

The Trump administration has lost or abandoned hundreds of criminal cases against protesters and immigrants, a Times investigation found.

nytimes.com

Something inspiring for a Sunday morning. "All of these things and more helped revive fish, turtle, and dolphin populations to numbers not seen in over two and a half decades. Layer by layer, the ocean floor had rebuilt itself until the results were visibly undeniable. "

Florida dumped half a million oyster shells into the Gulf of Mexico. No one expected the results to be this good.

Dumping trash into the ocean seems like a bad idea, right? Wrong.

upworthy.com

BREAKING NEWS | Two U.S. service members were killed Friday in an Iranian attack in Jordan, bringing the total number of confirmed U.S. military deaths in the U.S.-Iran war to 16, U.S. officials said.

Iranian attack in Jordan kills 2 US service members, leaves 1 missing

Two U.S. service members were killed Friday in an attack in Jordan, bringing the total number of confirmed U.S. military deaths in the U.S.-Iran war to 16.

stripes.com

The good news: The courts are resisting bad ICE-related prosecutions. The bad news: That most of these charges have been brought at all. And it's time to revive the conversation about amnesty for immigrants who contribute to society and are otherwise law-abiding. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/18/u...

"The document went on to state that both China and Iran wanted Trump to lose. But it included a chart documenting each country’s known efforts. Only Russia was marked as having been known to have engaged in “targeting, accessing, or manipulating election processes or election-related systems."

Trump says these documents prove his false claims of election fraud. Here's what they really say

President Donald Trump has released a trove documents that he claims prove voter fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election.

apnews.com

Isn't Elon's knowledge of voting computers enough to overcome voting machine vulnerabilities? From January 2025: www.newsweek.com/donald-trump...

It’s so interesting how, time and time again, this US government keeps reaching the conclusion that Russiagate is completely true

Mike Nellis@mikenellis.bsky.social · 3w ago

Trump's own file release tonight says Russia was working to attack Biden and boost Trump's re-election campaign.

$300 billion a year to end extreme poverty throughout the planet. 2-minute video in which Berkeley prof Joshua Blumenstock shares that finding. $300B is half of what the world spends on cosmetics and a seventh of what it spends on alcohol.

Watch: Ending extreme global poverty is within reach — and we know the price tag - Berkeley News

UC Berkeley Professor Joshua Blumenstock uses machine learning and AI to solve the world's biggest global development challenges.

news.berkeley.edu