Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

@AndyLowry @DeanObeidallah
Propaganda does that! As a child in middle school I remember being shown what propaganda looked like so we would be able to determine for ourselves. That was a Republican initiative.
It's so strange seeing Russian sympathizers in our top government offices now, with Americans older than me supporting them. Used to, being called a Russian sympathizer was fighting words, now it's a Trumpists calling.
Real Americans don't support countries who wage war & break treaties.

I used to be married to an active, vibrant, happy young woman who decided one day to hang a bird feeder in the back yard, and now I’m married to a glassy-eyed, unwashed maniac that stands at the kitchen window all day screaming at squirrels.

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Ukraine's survival, Zelensky's triumphant speech - none of this was inevitable. Let's try to imagine what would have happened if the US and Europe had not helped Ukraine, if Russia had occupied the country, if the Ukrainian political class and creative class had been wiped out, if Russian troops were now based along the Polish border. What would the world look like now?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/zelensky-congress-speech-us-ukraine-support/672547/

Shadow Diplomats Have Posed a Threat for Decades. The World’s Governments Looked the Other Way.
--

ProPublica & ICIJ identified more than 150 current & former consuls accused or convicted of #TaxEvasion #fraud #bribery #corruption or #MoneyLaundering.

Nearly 60 were tied to #drug or #weapons offenses, at least 20 others to violent #crimes.

https://www.propublica.org/article/honorary-consuls-shadow-diplomatic-immunity-governments

ANNOUNCEMENT: We're leaving Twitter and will be using Mastodon along with our already existing social media accounts.

See our reasoning and our other links in the editorial below.

https://doublesidedmedia.com/2022/12/21/we-are-leaving-twitter-heres-why-and-where-you-can-find-us/

Any pundit who is criticizing Pres. Zelenskyy's attire is failing to read the room, but moreover, they're just completely missing the point.

A country and its leader under immediate and existential threats have no time for suits and neckties.

He has no visible rank or medals or nametapes or epaulets or brass buttons or starched creases. He's wearing what women and men who are fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine are wearing.

He's wearing the urgency of the moment.

That's the point.

THIS JUST IN...

Hallmark Researchers Say They are Very Close to Developing a Second Movie Plot!

Someone please give Marjorie Taylor Greene a hundred bucks and send her to Charles Entertainment Cheese tonight, so she doesn’t embarrass us during President Zelensky’s address to Congress.

A reminder that Matt Gaetz had $482,321 in PPP loans forgiven.

Matt Gaetz doesn't own a company.

I'm losing my heart all over again to this 11.5cm tall #stag, carved from a single piece of wood & originally covered with gold leaf, with its vast branched leather antlers. Made in the 5thC BC as a finial for a #prehistoric #Scythian headdress, it was one of the artefacts in the #BritishMuseum's 2017 Scythian exhibition.
There's more about the exhibition at https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/introducing-scythians. /1

💰Conservative Peer Lord Prior introduced a company called LumiraDx to Lord Bethell. The firm was awarded Covid contracts worth over £45 million.

Hominins, including Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis, travelled the Aegean sea 450,000 years ago.

This was about 150,000 years before Homo sapiens (us) emerged in Africa.

#Science #Archaelogy #Geology

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618222002774

"And may all your active galactic nuclei be bright" 🎅🎄

Lovely new #JWST NIRCam image of the face-on spiral galaxy, NGC7469, in Pegasus.

The big red eight-pointed diffraction spike is due to bright long-wavelength emission from hot gas & dust spiralling into the central supermassive black hole, surrounded by a ring of vigorous star formation.

More info on the data & the GOALS project they come from: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2212a/

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans

#astrodon

It makes a good point.

Proud to be a #TwitterQuitter. I deactivated my Twitter account and I'm not creating revenue for Elon anymore.

I could wish that my article on the Heart Sutra in Tricycle Magazine had gained more traction. It's still there though... https://tricycle.org/magazine/heart-sutra-history/ #buddhism #heartsutra #prajnaparamita