#BookSky This is a gut-punch of a story, as only the incomparable Ursula K. Le Guin could offer. This is the e-book short story cover, but the tale is also included in her two collections: “The Unreal and the Real” and “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters”. “Omelas” is an anagram of her town Salem O(R).

Just another #DogsofBluesky post. Mandy, my loquacious, bodacious little rapscallion of a min pin. A devious cat soul slumming it in a canine body. She is disdaining me here because I was upstairs petting the two kitties. She is a Highlander Terrier—there can be only one. 😎

So Trump effectively lost the neocon wet dream of war against Iran in a few months. And slammed down the coffin lid on any meaningful future US strategic control over the region and its resources. That’s got to be some kind of record, right? Has the U.S. ever lost a war this quickly?

Lifelong CA native, voting in my first election in a swing state. So if Abdul wins the general, this progressive anti-war candidate will represent my state in the Senate beside former CIA operative, Israel war hawk and establishment mendicant Slotkin. Seems more schizoid than swing to me, but okay…🤔

Congratulations, @abdulelsayed.bsky.social on winning the Michigan Democratic Senate primary! Now onward to defeat Rogers in the general. One of the things that excites me most about his win is that voters are starting to disregard the vast sums of money thrown at candidates.

@abdulelsayed.bsky.social I have voted for Abdul and dropped my mail-in ballot at the City Hall weeks ago. Vote, MI, because don’t we deserve a senator who represents us rather than rich donors and foreign national interests?Vote like your life depends on it because at this point it probably does.

Abdul El-Sayed@abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 2d ago

Michigan, this is OUR moment. Vote Tuesday, August 4th.

Who would have thought that the Cold War would morph into a race to the bottom between two former global superpowers who have become worldwide criminal kleptocracies?

Here’s a great video by Tad Stoermer arguing why impeaching Trump should be done regardless of the probable result. And it’s also a Constitutional obligation on Congress’ part, but the Constitution doesn’t carry the weight it once did in DC. @tadstoermer.bsky.social youtu.be/VMl5bx60xwk?...

A Resistance History of Impeachment

YouTube video by Resistance History with Tad Stoermer

youtu.be

To be clear, I have been dumping on Sony a lot for their decision to stop releasing games on disc in 2028. But watching all these folks talking about how they won’t be buying the PS6 in 2027 ignores a very fat elephant in the room: in 2027, a lot of people will be spending that money just for food.🥲

What if the entire Congress died of a double-whammy of cyclosporiasis and screweorms, and nobody noticed?

In honor of The Odyssey, hear a guy singing it with a lyre in the Ancient Greek Homer would have used. Sounds great! youtu.be/z1zKtQAgbdI?...

Singing Homer’s Odyssey in Ancient Greek (with Lyre)

YouTube video by Literature and History Podcast

youtu.be

I think one of the things that will make The Odyssey such a blockbuster is the near-certainty that no MAGAts will be with us in the theatre. Spaces without them feel so much better. They poison the air with their ugly, braying stupidity. Any movie that they boycott in advance is bound to be great.

This great article on “Ur-Fascism” written by Umberto Eco in 1995 has been criticized for defining it too broadly, but I think it has a lot of insights for us in these times of fascist resurgence. It’s worth remembering fascism’s history and its threat to society. joshuapsteele.com/files/Eco_19...

Holy shit. Have to go out in a hazmat suit…welcome to our choking present and prepare for our burning future, brought to us by Capitalism (TM). I’ve never seen such a high rating, and I moved here from CA so I’m used to wildfire smoke in the air.

I wonder if the demonic experts in the GOP sacrificed Graham to their dark master and claimed his lifeforce for Hell in order to keep McConnell sputtering along for another month or so.

We can’t forget that our communities are under siege by this secret police squad of federal goons.

Mother Jones@motherjones.com · 4w ago

Reminder: Memphis is still “under full-blown occupation” by ICE. Task force members have reportedly killed at least two people in four days.

Damn, the MAGAZion bots and agitators have been all over the place here lately…my Block finger is getting sore. 😎

Just had a thought that in only a couple of short decades, the movie Idiocracy has gone from parody to prophecy to documentary. Thus do many things come to pass… “Welcome to Wal-Mart, I love you!”

The fact that so many people worship a man so evidently criminal, stupid, and morally bankrupt is causing me to seriously reconsider all the PR of “great men” throughout history, from religious to political figures. They were probably all shitweasels and just had a Parade of Horribles like MAGA.

Accept no substitutes!

Human capitalists cause climate change. The Age of Extraction will fall to the Age of Scavengry if we don’t stop capitalism. It cannot be reformed, because they won’t let us regulate it, and now they are causing a mass extinction event, including possibly Homo sapiens. It’s insane to let them.

Trump’s #America250 flop is a preview in microcosm of what this country would look like if the fascists miraculously got their wish and deported everyone but white people. Sparse, hot, boring, brokedown, stupid, shit falling apart, and only the occasional exhibitionist sex pest to alleviate ennui.

The only way to celebrate the insanity of the last 250 days of U.S. history is to pop a disc of Yakuza 0 into my soon-to-be obsolete PS5 Pro with disc drive accessory before Sony comes up with nanites to dissolve all physical discs on Earth. #America250 #GameSky #Yakuza0

As someone who has had to regretfully stop supporting certain living writers & artists because of their SAs, I find that whatever else the enslaver cadre of the Founders may have achieved, the fact that they enslaved, raped, and sold human beings for their profit means I can’t celebrate them at all.

If nothing else, America on its 250th anniversary can stand as an example to the world of just how insane a nation becomes when it lets its capitalists run amok unchecked. A lesson the world would be wise to heed. EU looks like it’s starting to get the memo.

I remember many years ago reading an article that said by midcentury, the U.S. would be a majority minority country. Sounded good to me, as I like living In multiethnic areas, but I feared that the toxic white culture of this nation would rather destroy it than see that ever happen, and here we are.

America’s 250th 4th of July is of course made an opportunity for that multiple felon Trump turd to steal more millions from us. Looting the place without a care in the world. This video may seem boring being from the Democratic House, but his quiet outrage…can’t look away. youtu.be/-ydXJ3HhXy0?...

How Trump Hijacked America's 250th Birthday | Natural Resources Democrats

YouTube video by House Natural Resources Committee Democrats

youtu.be

I think we need to repurpose the ICE detention centers into inpatient rehab centers for the mental health recovery of MAGA. Oh, we can remodel them and we will definitely treat them more gently than they have seen fit to treat immigrants.

I guess from now on the U.S. will only be growing its own food (if it can even manage that) and not exporting anymore. Who wants to buy food laden with forever chemicals and diseases because they gutted the agencies responsible for environmental and food safety?

Let’s see how “A chicken in every pot” does against “a data center in every town” in the midterms…