Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

"This is not incarceration; it is liquidation.

Incarceration is a penal act. It is controlled by laws. There are well-understood mechanisms governing the length of terms, applications for parole, processes for release.

Liquidation is a political act. It is arbitrary, opaque, and unappealable. There are no controlling laws or processes. There is only power."

~ Jonathan V. Last

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator
/18

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bring-him-home

Seems like a good day to remind everyone that Auschwitz — a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps — was not located in Nazi Germany either.

@woolie @RenewedRebecca @brouhaha I'm still trying to imagine what a good replacement for engineering-oriented Fortran would look like (mostly Fortran-like with aspects of Ada and Rust plus more domain-specific features that fail CS purity tests). Best case, I get some retirement motivation to dig into that problem. Not clear retirement will ever be an option. :/

News: Germany now funding European satellite internet alternative to Starlink for Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/germany-funds-eutelsat-internet-ukraine-musk-tensions-rise-2025-04-04/

As I said once on the old site:

We're pretty close to the end of the American experiment, now that the corrupt Roberts court has basically rubber-stamped Trump regime's kidnap-and-send-to-El-Salvador policy. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-venezuelan-deportations.html

Look, if you don't get what's happening, I can explain it very simply:

The Republican Party exists to tax you and give your tax money to billionaires.

That's it. All the rest, all the bigotry and religion and kidnapping and threatened wars, exists to distract you so that they can continue to steal.

I could write a million words worth of analysis and not get significantly closer to the truth.

https://substack.com/@grrlscientist/note/c-106817058

Went to the rally at City Hall, expecting a few hundred folks and some signs. The rally not only filled the whole plaza/street on the north side of City Hall, but filled Market nearly solid during the march to Independence Mall. In fact, I spent 45 minutes on the Mall, wandering around and reading signs, and then decided I had to leave (family appointments), only to see that the tail end of the parade, still filling the street, had yet to arrive!!

#Philadelphia #Indivisible #Resistance

RFK, Jr.'s pushing of vitamin A code liver oil against measles rather than vaccines may be causing liver damage in children

https://boingboing.net/2025/03/28/signs-of-liver-damage-rfk-jrs-anti-vaccine-propaganda-hurts-kids.html

I look at a lot of space images, but this one made my eyes bug out like a cartoon character.

What you see here isn't a spiral galaxy, exactly. It's a spiral galaxy whose image was bent into a circle by the gravity of an elliptical galaxy visible at the center.

Warped space, right before your eyes!

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2503a/ #space #science #art #nasa #esa

Keep the Congressional switchboard number handy these days: (202) 224-3121

One of many notable takeaways from 'Careless People':

The creators and top execs of Meta do not allow their own children on it.

Think about that.

#carelesspeople #facebook #tech

(Reuters) - A network of companies operated by a secretive Chinese tech firm has been trying to recruit recently laid-off U.S. government workers, according to job ads and a researcher who uncovered the campaign. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/secretive-chinese-network-tries-lure-fired-federal-workers-research-shows-2025-03-25/

Hearing from California, Iowa, Ohio and Oregon that #FEMA and #DHS has not released any disaster grant reimbursements in over 30 days. Most requests were submitted circa 2/20/25 with no funds received as of 3/26/25.

These are critical emergency disaster recovery grants. Lack of approved disaster funding will cripple governments as they work on their budgets. These reimbursements come from American tax dollars that are put into the Disaster Relief Fund.

#doge #disaster #climatecrisis

Oops.

Via Anna Bower:

Yesterday, Michael Waltz claimed that he’s “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Jeffrey Goldberg.

Here’s a photo of Waltz standing next to Goldberg during a 2021 event at the French Embassy.

The event Waltz attended—a Q&A with a French filmmaker—was moderated by Goldberg. #SignalGate

From The Onion #Politics #USpol