BlueSky, June 2026 Part 2

The second half of June 2026 (first half here). What can I say? We're about to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with a government hell-bent on stripping any parts that uphold the best parts of the Founders' purpose, and for sure the ones that have come since then. 

This half of the month saw:

• Trump's reflecting pool saga: the graft, then the algae, then arresting people…plus the "great" American State Fair
• The Prairieland defendants sentenced to decades in prison for crimes that pale compared to what the president and his cronies do on a daily basis
• Anti-ICE protestors in the Twin Cities charged and over-charged to stifle dissent
• The Supreme Court super majority continuing on its campaign to uplift oligarchy, kakisotocracy, and white supremacy
• Europe in the midst of the greatest heat wave on record. 

Everything below the line is from the attributed account and in reverse chronological order, except some of the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.
__

Conservatives want to force you to have babies, whose citizenship they can deny. Why oh why? Because they’re weird, sadistic bozos. It is truly that simple.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

Other posts about the Supreme Court's rulings on birthright citizenship and trans kids' participation in sports are here.

Nearly half of the weather balloons in the lower 48 are missing because of DOGE
Erika McEntarfer

In the modern interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, there is the House with 435 members representing districts allocated by Census. There is the Senate, with two members per state, regardless of population. Then there is the Council of Wizards in Robes, who are appointed and serve for a lifetime.
Conrad Lange Zbikowski @czbi.org

Americans are set to lose nearly $250B gambling this year—a record high, up more than 60% since 2019—and that's before counting unofficial betting via prediction markets or crypto. Can anything stop America's gambling boom?


Joey Politano

My therapist told me to be vulnerable with my friends so I let them watch me put on a fitted sheet
lukelukeluke

The youngest Americans who voted in an election where the USSR existed are now 56.
Dr Alex Cruikshanks @alexsaysstuff.bsky.social

me talking to magically resurrected founding father: and so sir you can see how the supreme court has become a deeply illegitimate institution that threatens the very republic you created. 
founding father: there are *how many* papists on it???
BeijingPalmer

Sometimes as an editor you have to actually think about things like why "horseshit" is usually spelled as one word (like "bullshit," the one-wordness of which is pretty universally accepted) while "dog shit" tends to be spelled as two words. We think about these things so you don't have to.
Adam Keiper

Cashier: "Would you like to donate $2 to end world hunger?"
Me: "Holy shit, yes of course…I had no idea we were that close."
@sundaedivine.lol

We are ruled by the Council of Nine. They rule for life and are completely unaccountable. Their agent, the president, is empowered to enact their will but will be placed on a short leash when he displeases them. Congress can raise and appropriate funds the president can use or not to his liking.
Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social

The number of financial side deals the Trump family is running is so shocking it can sometimes be hard to track. According to reuters.com, their crypto ventures alone have delivered $2.3 billion to Trump & co. while creating a similar-sized loss for investors.
Steve Rattner

Barely a day goes by without me thinking about Jim McGuinn being urged by a guru to change his name to something more spiritual and him choosing ROGER:


P.G. Wodelouse

There’s a story like this approximately every other day now: Trump bought as much as $5m in Axon stock before ICE sought $220m Taser deal.
Radley Balko

I would like to live in an era of expanding rights, not contracting rights, and any political party that wants my support must make this the whole of their mission from top to bottom.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

I don't think it's so much that Trump is borrowing fascist symbols as it is that it's all too easy for things we consider American symbols to turn fascist incredibly easy. If we get out of this, we should think about why that is and how to prevent it going forward.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

Every video I’ve seen from the Great American State Fair plays like a scene from a Christopher Guest mockumentary The empty lawns, the sad little arch… “The one area where the Salem witch trials went a little far” is an immensely funny line. This whole thing is like a new genre of involuntary performance art
Rob Sheridan

I don't know how to fix this but it's also an easy observation that very few on the left or in the Democratic party understand that the only way to reduce fossil fuel profits at scale is to YIMBY-max every city in the United States. Walkable/transit-oriented housing is the whole shebang.
Matthew Lewis @mateosfo.bsky.social

If you describe, accurately and literally, without any exaggeration or commentary, how any part of our immigration system works to the average person, they will think you are lying to them
Doc Benway

It actually makes me furious how people will say that immigration is their "number one issue" and then neither know nor care how the current system works.
Mom for Gliberty @fakegreekgrill.bsky.social

The three branches of the United States government, as delineated in the Constitution, are the God Emperor, The High Council of the Six Ayatollahs, and the Federal Reserve
Ned Resnikoff

Ugh. Supreme Court rules in Slaughter, 6-3 that Trump can fire people from the FTC. But in Cook, the Court rules 5-4 that Trump cannot fire everybody from the Fed. Roberts writes both majority opinions
ElieNYC

There's no real difference between the FTC and the FED other than Roberts likes the Fed. The Supreme Court just gave Trump the biggest executive power grab in 90 years. But they still protected the things the Republican justices care about the most: their own money. 
ElieNYC

Pretty wild that America has a whites-only refugee policy in 2026 and no one seems to give the slightest shit about that
Lane Hutson Enjoyer @adlemm.bsky.social

As with some other things, i suspect if we have another dem president we will discover that the court did not so much transfer power to the executive as to themselves, ie they will find novel bullshit reasons to block a dem president the same way the find novel bullshit reasons to enable trump
Adam Serwer

It's cool how I can count on the last week of June being the worst week of the year. Every year.
ElieNYC

need to start thinking now about a full package of judicial reforms: new justices, new circuits, new district courts, ethics reforms, docket reforms, and transparency reforms. i kind of think any trifecta will get one shot at this so this should be a judicial reforms and expansion package on the order of the one that let jimmy carter shape the bench for two decades.
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

5 years ago today, the temperature in Lytton, Canada reached 49.6C (121.3F). The next day the whole town burnt to the ground. 50 degrees! In Canada!!! I really thought that might be a wake-up call
Dr Charlie Gardner

Let's not overlook how crazy it is that Trump keeps saying *six people* have been arrested for "vandalizing" the Reflecting Pool, and officials are presenting zero evidence that this actually happened.
Greg Sargent

It was called Freedom 250 because that's how many people went.
Middle Age Riot

the feds have done more to harass americans angry over good and pretti’s killings than they have to investigate them
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

A dead end system is not going to teach you how to spot its successor.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Cascading infrastructure breakdowns, not polar bears, are what climate crisis means. Can't get around coz roads have buckled; power plants shut down coz rivers are too hot and shallow. Never forget that the "economy" is a wholly owned subsidiary of nature.
Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social

“You cannot make billions of dollars without hurting lots of people. And you can’t hurt lots of people without, in some sense, believing that they’re not really people.” –Cory Doctorow
Gwyllm Llwydd

“How to talk to women” and “how to pick up women” are diametrically opposed concepts
Jessica Shortall

GUIDE: Welcome to the Great American State Fair!
TOURIST: Incredible! And which state are we in right now?
GUIDE: (violently shaking their head) Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
ceej

Mark Zuckerberg is telling lieutenants to pursue partnerships with Polymarket and Kalshi with Meta's new prediction market app called Arena, per sources. Meta is targeting 18-34 year old users with a goal of 100 million regular "predictors"
rat king @mikeisaac.bsky.social

theyre not “predictors” theyre gamblers, hes trying to get 18-34 year olds addicted to gambling
Andrew Lawrence

The scale of the harm that Mark Zuckerberg, a single individual, has done to humanity is unimaginable. And he's not done yet.
Dave Vetter

Pete Hegseth is removing or blocking the promotions of all military officers who he has determined would not participate in an illegal pro-Trump self-coup (auto-coup) in 2028. You can believe me now or believe me in 2028. Either way, stop seeing what Hegseth is doing as random.
Seth Abramson

Getting rid of well-respected high ranking members of the military in order to install loyalists is what you do when you are planning to do the wrong thing and want to make sure the military complies with your orders.
Michael J. Stern

With existing technology, it is possible to reduce aircon's GHG emissions by 97% by 2050. We just gotta do it.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

"You can't correct anti-black discrimination without harming white people" is the con job the conservative movement will feed off of in perpetuity, if it has its way.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

In the concept art this arch was supposed to be a perfect miniature of Trump's planned 250 ft (76m) tall arch. The rushed and limited planning time led to this Home Depot scrap plywood wrapped in vinyl debacle:


Gene Ha

You can’t loiter…at the reflecting pool???
miss andry @defnotadino.bsky.social

Social mobility has been declining for decades but that's fine, we don't need the talents of 340 million people as long as we have the several dozen children of our stupidest oligarchs
Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social

SCOTUS Justice Amy Coney Barrett has 2 Black Haitian kids who she adopted. Today she ruled to expel 700K Haitians who were here legally. Proximity to white supremacy is not protection from white supremacy. And proximity to Black and brown people is not exemption from being a fascist and racist.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.

“Your inferior culture dilutes our superior one” is as vile and pernicious a thought as one can have, is shared by the world’s richest man, and promulgated by the Republican Party. It is an attitude responsible for the miseries we endure, and the joys we let slip through our fingers.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

For years, the anti-immigrant go-to line was that they were anti *illegal* immigration, because they believed in rule of law and had compassion for immigrants who "did it the right way." Now, from the White House and Supreme Court on down, it's openly anti-rule-of-law and anti-nonwhite-immigration.
Nicholas Grossman

We wanted to understand why a Jewish candidate defeated another Jewish candidate in one of America's most Jewish congressional districts. So we talked to three Evangelical Christians at a gun show in northern Idaho.
NY Times Pitchbot

Me: Cities would be better for everyone, including drivers, if there was less car-dependency and more safe, viable choices in how to get around.
Someone:  But I have to drive because [insert reason].
Me: Cities would be better for everyone, including drivers, if there was less car-dependency and…
Brent Toderian

The cost of the Iran War has been massive. Direct military costs will likely approach $100 billion. But the total could be closer to $1 trillion when long-term costs from inflation impacts, debt interest payments, and veterans’ benefits are included.
Steve Rattner


Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social

The biggest threat to "affordability," today and more so every day to come, is climate change. Responsible political leaders would tell their constituents about it.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

John Roberts' Constitution forbids any attempt to proactively ameliorate racial discrimination and racial inequality, but permits open racial discrimination as long as there is a facially neutral explanation available, even if it isn't remotely plausible. This, my friends, is "Colorblindness."
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

With seven decisions with the *same* 6-3 lineup over the last three days, I really can't wait for all of the hot takes from the folks who keep insisting that SCOTUS *isn't* defined by its ideological division.
Steve Vladeck

There’s been more elite Democrat anger at Democratic primary voters than outrage over the life imprisonment of anti-ICE protesters — including a couple whose only offense was printing zines. Look at what they choose to talk about with the media and what they ignore. It’s revealing!
Charles Я. Davis @charliearchy.bsky.social

The right will not stop until they turn abortion into a death penalty crime. They cannot wait to execute women for the crime of having an abortion. They place an embryo far above the life of the living woman. Sick culture. Not pro-life. Banning abortion never ends abortions. NC had a bill THIS TERM calling for killing women who did not properly protect the embryo. Did not pass but they will not stop until it does. ALSO Republicans think an IUD is a murder weapon in need of more regulations than the AR15. Not a pro-life approach. They LOATHE women.
AnneC @annecw.bsky.social

If I were European I would simply solve the heatwave using good old American moxie. But I will not use said moxie to solve the USA's intractable social problems because America is a real country and I am very busy.
Alasdair Beckett-King @misterabk.bsky.social

Trump has decimated the government’s ability to detect and counter foreign influence actions aimed at the US from Russia and elsewhere. But he has provided around-the-clock security for the Reflecting Pool to protect it from nonexistent vandals. That’s a good summary of his presidency.
David Corn

And to put it another way, "Every hurdle you put in the way of people getting what they need is a hurdle that some people will inevitably fail to clear" is a simple fact, and one that everyone making public policy of any kind should have stamped on their forehead in mirrored text.
Angus Johnston

When the team in charge of naming your show secretly hates you:


Tim Carvell

Next time someone says Minneapolis is dangerous, ask if their city has a cat tour that attracts 1000 people started by a dude who doesn’t even have a cat. He convinced people to show him cats and take a walk with him.
Nat @njcherne.bsky.social

The Supreme Court doesn't think Rastafarians enjoy the same religious protection for their hair as other Christians enjoy for their bigotry. To get there, The Court launched a frontal attack on the foundation of civil rights laws.
ElieNYC

Beginning next week, Australians get free electricity for three hours every afternoon. That's what happens when you build out wind, sun, and batteries
Bill McKibben

I've said it before but the rise in adult ADHD diagnoses is just because it stopped being socially acceptable to unknowingly self-medicate with cigarettes as a cheap stimulant and fidget toy.
Willow @rockshrimp.bsky.social

For the first time on record, solar generated more electricity than coal across the entire U.S. - despite active federal policy pushing the other direction.
Katharine Hayhoe

NPR is calling the Mamdani-backed candidates “far left” which I guess is shorthand for “would like to give healthcare to their constituents somewhat”
Denny Carter

"Far left" positions:
- Transit should be fast, functional and maybe even free.
- Everyone has a right to healthcare, childcare, housing, and food.
- Collective punishment and genocide are bad, actually.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

One of my "favorite" dumb Musk things is his deeply held belief that other people aren't real. One of his first moves after taking over Twitter was to try to fire "ghost employees," of which he thought they were many. He's a murderous bigot but he also thinks Fake People are robbing him blind.
David_j_roth

hey look it's the iwo jima photo but embarrassing:


burn it all down @russbengtson.bsky.social

An Orlando green card applicant was given permission to travel to Egypt after his father’s death. When he returned, ICE sent him to a Pennsylvania concentration camp for six months. During which he suffered vision loss and lost 45 pounds. He wasn’t informed of kidney disease diagnosis for 2 months.
Tyler King

America where it is illegal to touch water in public but if you touch children on private islands you will become the president of the US
Robin Bradshaw @en4rab.bsky.social

this is what is insane about this case and these sentences. this isn't a sandwich throw. real violence happened here. a cop got shot. but by framing the protest as a conspiracy people who literally were uninvolved in the violence got de facto life sentences
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social

Gorsuch, speaking for the stolen majority: “Non-Christian (Black) prisoners have no rights which prison guards are bound to respect” (accurately paraphrasing.)
DocDanPgh

there's no such thing as internet "age verification." What we call "age verification" is actually *mass surveillance*, so invasive and pervasive it makes the ad-tech industry's surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia
Cory Doctorow

Watching BBC News and they just did 5 minutes with a doctor about how this heatwave is life threatening and the interviewer closed it with "well, it's just an opportunity to have ice cream for breakfast!!" Amazing clip of how the BBC seems just blissfully unaware of what is happening.
Ketan Joshi

If other news was reported like climate change:


Aoḋán Ó Conġaile @tinydonkey.bsky.social

Remember the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve? Maximum sentence handed down to anyone charged for that was 3 years. Leaders of that armed domestic terrorist occupation were acquitted. Fuck this system.
Harillen

i mean, on the one hand, [the reflecting pool] is funny, but on the other hand, this shit belongs to us, the money he’s wasted on it belongs to us, the money he’s wasting on guards and fences to try to cover up his failures, all that belongs to us
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE

The ultra-rich only have themselves to blame for people detesting them at unprecedented levels. They had choices for how to behave.
Brent Toderian

I don’t want to hear another word from establishment Dems about cooperating with Republicans. Don’t want to see another stupid bipartisan photo about “seersucker suit day” on the Hill. Nine people who protested ICE at a detention camp were just sentenced to 50-100 years in prison. WAKE TF UP.
Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin @ecmclaughlin.bsky.social

The worst part of US city planning is that living somewhere where one doesn't need to personally use car tires almost always mean having to breathe more amount of other people's tires 
Alfred Twu

A cartoonist named Daniel "Des" Rolando Sanchez Estrada was tried as a terrorist [in the Prairieland case] and sentenced to 30 years in prison for having anti-Trump comics in his car. Prosecutors connected him to a 2025 anti-ICE protest he didn't even attend because he was in the same book club as others who were:


Ryan Estrada

SCOTUS has evolved from asking if corporations have civil rights to asserting that only corporations have civil rights. Seems bad.
Leah McElrath

The Trump regime publicly promised it wouldn't go forward with its $1.8B slush fund to reward Trump's treasonous co-conspirators. But it won't put that pledge in writing for a judge. 
The regime knows perjury is a felony, but it thinks lying to the public is just good politics.
Mark Jacob

It's really cool that we now have a mostly internet-based game show called "how will the Supreme Court kick America further into the pit of no return round up."
Joe Kassabian @jkass99.bsky.social

We build vehicles that weigh 9000 pounds with 1000HP, can go 0-60mph in 3 seconds and market them recklessly. We then ask people to wear construction vests to cross the street. This is all so beyond absurd and it's truly incredible that we've normalized this.
Tom Flood

Hard to overstate just how much of the Brexit campaign was based on lies. Looking back it’s a sad case study of a country voting to immiserate itself due to the mendacity of right-wing politicians and tabloids. But it’s almost never framed that way in UK media.
Michael Hobbes

The number of people enrolled in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act plans fell by more than 5 million in the last 12 months.
Ian Weissman, DO

It struck me the other day that they spent ~$12,000 in taxpayer money to replace these banners just to change the logo from America 250 (the real bipartisan effort) to Freedom 250 (the trumpy one):


Musicology Duck

In a new court filing, the Souther Poverty Law Center provided evidence that the prosecution into the org came directly out of a letter that extremist groups sent to Stephen Miller complaining that they had been included in SPLC's Hate Map. 
emptywheel

I am *never* going to get over the Supreme Court holding that targeted student loan forgiveness was a "major question" that Congress needed to weigh in on, but refusing to intervene to stop the dismantling of the entire cabinet agency overseeing the student loan program.
Luke Smith Morgan

There is no grand database that allows the government to run everyone’s name through a computer and immediately know who is a citizen, and who isn’t. The Trump admin is trying to hastily cobble together a version of that, despite knowing that existing data is not fully reliable.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

People will look at a chemical with a 1 in 1 million chance of causing cancer and go apeshit to ban that chemical while looking at the 1 in 98 of being killed or 1 in 2 chance of being permanently disabled by a violent driver and think, "Meh, what's to be done, I like driving."
Matthew Lewis @mateosfo.bsky.social

Reminder that any remotely rational "MAHA" would focus on cars. Cars sicken & kill Americans far far more than f'ing "processed foods" or whatever.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

This chart is really something. And the stuff about A-pillar visibility is something I've noticed anecdotally, but the data seems to back it up. They don't go into it but chonky C-pillars and tiny high rear windows also are low speed back over incidents more likely, I'm sure:


Avocadoplex

The plastic soda bottles we turn in for a nickel deposit would be the most impressive piece of tech most medieval kings had ever laid eyes on. 
Me: “I have brought you a flask, sire.”
King: “A flask?”
Me: “Yeah, but it’s a cool one. Can’t break, can’t leak, weighs nothing, entirely transparent.”
King: “You have brought me an enchanted flask?”
Me: *shoves spyglass, Bic lighter, and MP3 player back in pocket* “What? Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
Angus Johnston

the same guy who leveled the east wing is very mad about vandalism
shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social

Over the past 13 years police in the United States have killed approximately 16,000 people. Over the same period in the UK, the figure is 34
Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social

Our country is tolerating Donald Trump presiding over severe national decline because the majority of white voters (who vote Republican) thought living under a Black president was worse than this. Not a popular or media-savvy assessment... it's also not wrong either.
Alexander Ross @hardpolitics.bsky.social

My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday:


Polly Mackenzie

The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.
Aaron Rupar

Fascists are people who realize that they've already lost the future. Our moment is one of both ascendent fascism and dying fascism. Which way will we go? Hard to say. They're residual culture, and they've got nothing to lose.
Jen Mercieca

nobody in British politics seems to want to say it but the single biggest driver of their inability to keep a prime minister for any length of time is that Brexit was stupid and ruinous and made everyone’s lives worse
Micah @rincewind.run

Amid the ongoing moral panic over e-bikes/e-motos it's always interesting to see the silence over teenagers in my town ripping around in Broncos, F-150s, and lifted Wranglers.
Gravel Influencer

Two weeks in Scandinavian cities and I’ve not seen a single fire truck. Lots of vans. No ladders. No engines. It’s almost like if you don’t send them out on the 97% of calls that aren’t fires you need fewer of them and can use cheaper and faster vehicles for those.
Jason Cox

Yes! The first time we saw one of these little guys out & about was a watershed moment. Like a golf cart emergency response vehicle perfect for old city streets where most responses aren't fires at all:


Sip Coffee, Build for Change

The reflecting pool was a nice little spot that was a nice little part of many nice little days. Now, thanks to a vile man’s sloppy whims, it’s a problem site, in need of repair, where police harass and detain visitors. And it’s  the least of the ugliness the fascist Republicans have saddled us with
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

Just, in terms of cheap metaphor, the incredibly corrupt guy who ran on “Drain the Swamp” creating a new, heretofore-unseen level of poison swamp and arresting people for going near it feels like final-season writers’ room behavior.
Tim Carvell

Algae are prolific producers of oxygen (and consumers of carbon dioxide), en masse producing a huge proportion of the oxygen we breathe, which means that the greening of the Reflecting Pool might be the most pro-climate thing Trump has ever done.
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

the brady bunch relies upon the early deaths of two parents. beneath your frivolous merriment there lies a foundation of bones
robert j bennett, ceo, results omega

yeah unfortunately the point at which security agents started manufacturing crimes to so they could arrest people to support the delusions of a single personalist ruler was the point at which the story stopped being silly heavy-handed metaphor and started being of real concern
Anjali Dayal

It doesn’t have to be fancy or over-programmed, just a pedestrian square in the heart of every neighborhood, one designed for the people who live nearby:


Qagggy!

Your neighborhood could have this.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

"The Americans can't get the slime out of their capital's monument pool and will arrest you for touching it," sounds like the sort of lie they'd tell us in the Soviet Union so we'd stop bitching about bread lines.
Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com

Arresting people for touching the failed coating in the reflecting pool feels like a resounding “yes” answer to the question, “Can things get any dumber?”
Schooley

National Park Service iconic uniform is being switched out for bulletproof tactical police uniforms; vehicles will have POLICE emblazoned on side
Boystown Chicago

Kitty paw prints on a Roman clay tile! A tiny moment in time preserved in clay some 2,000 years ago when a kitten walked across this wet clay tile which was lying out to dry before firing. Lullingstone Roman Villa, Kent. Photo by me:


Alison Fisk

Nothing will ever convince me that JD Vance believes in Jesus Christ or Catholicism. This creature of pure ambition—who has had so many names—wears masks to attain power. Behold the avatar of Thiel, “hillbilly” hater of the poor, anti-Christian to the bone.
Gil Durán

Weird how any negative framing of our auto culture is automatically anti-car and radical yet the billions of dollars spent on aggressive car ads and auto first infrastructure isn't framed as anti-pedestrian, anti-bike, anti-transit, anti-person, anti-senior, anti-child or anti-planet.
Tom Flood

Donald Trump will soon be flying on a 1) major national security vulnerability, 2) crime scene, and 3) impeachable offense
David Ryan Miller

Mass immigration and culture blending are what made the United States the world's dominant economic and cultural power. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. If you don't love immigrants and diversity then you don't love America, period.
Kim McCauley @kimischilling.bsky.social

America has an extremely well funded, powerful, *minority* contingent that thirsts for an apartheid state. Its interests are represented by Republicans. Your support for Republicans is support for apartheid. Those are the stakes (always have been).
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

fulton cabins, diagonal view 1, route 1, pembroke, maine, 1995:


old roadside pics

A total cyclist system weight of 150kg moving at 20 km/h (i.e. me and my e-bike) carries 2,315 joules of energy. 2000 kg of car moving at 30 km/h carries nearly 70Kj of energy. I know which I'd be more concerned about disobeying laws....
Old Man Yao Guai @hgn-732b.bsky.social

FAA, next year: "no one could have predicted that directing air traffic with hallucinatory AI would cause this series of devastating accidents."
Nathan Kalmoe

i simply don’t have time for people putting more energy into cynical discourse than they are putting into real action
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com

You're not supposed to say this, but conservatives hate HPV vaccines because they think that removing the risk of cervical cancer from sex incentives women to be sluts. It's been a Christian thing since way before RFK Jr. was around, everybody knows what it's about, but you have to pretend not to.
Nathan Goldwag

Know what TV show actually wouldn’t get made today? The Twilight Zone. Half of these fuckin’ episodes are about fascism.
Ben Collins

Good morning with good news: Solar overtook gas in Asia to become Asia's third-largest source of electricity! China's exports of solar to Asian countries doubled to 39 GW in March 2026. ~81 GW of planned gas in Asia were cancelled in 2022 & 2023.
John Hanger @jrfhanger.bsky.social

You couldn't stage reality these days


costrike

One of the hardest things to accept is “my ideas are correct but unpopular” and it’s particularly tricky for leftists who romanticize “the people”
BeijingPalmer

I know for certain car dependency is evil and we should pedestrianize 50% of the streets. I also know that to about 90% of the citizenry that sound totally bonkers and ravings of a socialist lunatic. Fair.
Pedestrianize it @mplsdromomania.bsky.social

At some point this claim from white rurals and their advocates that "You can't get along with different people" means that they are the different people with whom we cannot get along.
Shoe

Does it ever hit home that the ascendancy of AI is taken to be assured, but the shifting of human society to fit into earth system limits is seen as everything from a head-scratcher to a longshot to an impossibility?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Died (alas!) on this day in 1464, in Brussels, the incomparable painter Rogier van der Weyden. Here, himself, in a detail from a tapestry after his design:


Dr. Peter Paul Rubens

Just a friendly reminder. If the US had taken only a small fraction of the money and military equipment it has squandered fighting and losing to Iran, and instead helped Ukraine, the Middle East would be more stable and Russia would be facing defeat.
Phillips OBrien

"Why are they even bombing us? Where is the air defense?" The day of rhetorical questions for Moscow residents.
Anton Gerashchenko

"why are they even bombing us" is truly one of those questions that, in its context, encapsulates the modern russian mindset
Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li

"Why do innocent people flee the police?" I don't k now, maybe the fact that they kill newborn babies and puppies might have something to do with it. Just saying.
Sheryl Weikal @leftistlawyer.com

"These streets weren't made for bikes" says a guy driving a pick-up truck so large it can't fit into a standard parking space
Gravel Influencer

the stock photos for "prayer" are crazy. come to jesus moment etc etc:


Sarah Taber

Entire Iran war was like a bully marching up to a smaller kid on the playground and punching him the face for no reason only to be left tied up hanging upside down from the swing set. Also the smaller kid gets $300 billion.
Dave Levitan

The only truly consistent thing about Trump is that he will inevitably make fools of everyone who supports him.
Chris Hayes

NEW: Almost a year after Trump’s domestic policy bill passed, at least 770,000 children are no longer receiving SNAP benefits. In Arizona, the number of children receiving SNAP has dropped by more than 200,000 since July 2025 — a 55% decline.
ProPublica

Here's a fun fact about Elon Musk: in 2020, his (nominal) net worth was $20b, and today it's $1t (nominally). But *that's* not the fun fact; *this* is: everything he's done since 2020 was a flop.
Cory Doctorow

if you have a notional net worth of a trillion dollars and you're actively fomenting racial violence and notions of "reconquista," the existential threat to the planet is you
e.w. niedermeyer

Donald Trump inheriting a situation that was suboptimal but honestly fine, deciding to personally intervene, and making everything significantly worse at great taxpayer expense is a perfect synopsis of every single thing he has done as president both times.
Craig Harrington @craigipedia.bsky.social

It is now illegal to post this image with the caption “become ungovernable.”


Norm Charlatan

i will say it again: “grieving” a child (in this case a 30-year-old fully grown adult) for being gay/trans because you expected and wanted something different for them is a sign of a bad parent and should be widely regarded as unacceptable.
jj skolnik @supremenothing.myatproto.social

Quintessential Trump: In 2025, Trump axed the program to combat New World Screwworm, stating that they had "saved" $1.5 million a year. In 2026, the Trump announces a $1 billion emergency program to combat the Screwworm outbreak. $1 billion would have funded the old program for 667 years.
Ambassador Ken Fairfax @portlandken.bsky.social

Literally there are conversion therapy manuals that start with isolating your child from all potential sources of safeguarding and supportive information and cutting them off from unmonitored internet access so they can find the number for ChildLine while you're not watching is right up there.
Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog

A lot of the “kids online safety” proponents actually are anti-LGBTQ extremists and fundamentalists who want kids to have less freedom and don’t care if that actually makes them tremendously less safe too
Kat Tenbarge

No Rights for Some, Rights for Others — for Now

More to hate from the Supreme Court today.

Trans people don't have equal protection under the law. And even though the majority upheld the obvious meaning of the 14th Amendment in the birthright citizenship case (Trump v. Barbara), it was essentially a 5–4 decision, because Kavanaugh's statement shows his decision was not based on that.

Here's a head start on the last half of May BlueSky report. Note that these are in chronological order, the usual reverse-chronological.

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed post.

____ 

These are the posts I noted so far about the anti-trans ruling:

The Supreme Court today addressed one of the most pressing threats to the nation today: banning this high school sophomore from playing school sports with her friends:


Parker Molloy

One thing (among many) that makes me nuts about this – is that they fail to understand sports as a life-affirming thing you do with your friends that you will never be a professional at, and only see sports as a competition in which everyone gets ranked. It's a sick worldview in multiple ways."If a trans woman plays sports she will injure the dainty women". Dude, I played Pop Warner with a guy who got held back twice and was 6ft tall with a mustache. It never went to the Supreme Court. The scariest OL in our league was a girl. These are kids amateur sports.
wesinjapan

*nodding solemnly with full comprehension* yes, I see. there’s a special kind of kid who can’t play sports or go to the bathroom
Tricia Lockwood

The ban is heinous for what it does to transgender athletes. But if you think cisgender girls and young women won’t be caught up in the fallout, too, you are woefully ignorant:


Nancy Armour 

Minnesota Republicans suggested *internal* and external genital inspections for 6-year-olds, so states controlled by Republicans will probably pursue that.
Erin Maye Quade

It’s really important to install an entire federal discrimination system so somebody’s cis daughter can finish 14th at her swim meet.
Kashana

And these are the ones about the birthright citizenship case, particularly its narrow margin:

5-4 for what it explicitly says in the constitution is incredible. They were this close to undoing the civil war entirely.
Adam Serwer

Among other things, a 5-4 ruling on birthright citizenship is an invitation to try again.
Moira Donegan

Very funny listening to NPR doing serious analysis of the dissents to the birthright case as if it's not all just Calvinball where the conservative justices compete to find the most obscure references from 17th century English common law to make their arguments
Gravel Influencer

The birthright citizenship ruling should be a wake up call to any Democrat who is still on the fence about court reform. We are essentially one seat change away from the Court undoing Reconstruction by fiat.
Ned Resnikoff

With this ruling, the birthright issue is not going away. The right hasn't really begun *organizing* around getting rid of the citizenship clause. Like Roe, this will be their fight for a generation. And if the Democrats just say "we won" and ignore it, like Roe, the Republicans will eventually win.
ElieNYC

About Trump v. Barbara: Do not give the Court ... credit for reading and upholding the Constitution. It's a travesty that this is not a unanimous decision... it's also a travesty that the Court let this question percolate for a year, giving credence to a crank theory of citizenship.
Melissa Murray @profmmurray.bsky.social

alito quite literally sounds like the unreconstructed opponents of the 14th amendment, right down to the notion that his citizenship is degraded by the fact that it is equal with that of someone from a lower station than him.
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

The Court can't go on like this. The Constitution as plainly as possible says people who were born here have an unequivocal right to citizenship. Four people whose ONLY job is to read the Constitution for the rest of their lives just tried to overturn it because they're tired of brown people. Pack it in.
Ben Collins

Alito's use of the term "birth tourism" is as sure a sign as any that his brain has been fried by X, Fox News, and other rightwing media.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

Can't wait for the 'founders surely foresaw AR-15s (but not citizenship)' ruling that's sure to follow.
Nolan Hicks @ndhapple.bsky.social

people got mad at me yesterday when i said the democrats were not ready to take court reform seriously. 5-4 for non-racial citizenship is not a win, it's a reprieve
Adam Serwer

In a sane world (an alt reality) today's dissents would sufficient to warrant Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito's impeachment and removal from office. If you defy the plain words, meaning, intent, history, precedent of a black letter constitutional injunction u are abusing your power and should be removed.
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social

I think a lot of people underestimate how complicated life could get if your birth certificate wasn't accepted as prima facie evidence of US citizenship, absent some new federal bureaucracy that vetted and registered qualified births.
Patrick Chovanec

I'm far from the first person to point this out, but declaring birthright citizenship void means that the vast majority of Americans have no provable citizenship at all. Which I imagine is a feature for the fascist Republicans since it puts everyone at the government's mercy.
The Infinitely Prolonged @wowbaggert.bsky.social

People, for the love of God, please stop treating birthright as some kind of sweeping victory. It was 5-4 on the constitutional issue. The dissent laid out a fucking ROADMAP for what Trump should do next. The court always gives Trump multiple bites at the apple WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU HAPPY ABOUT?
ElieNYC

Very interesting to me that Alito [in his dissent] can be like "but you don't understand, there are now aeroplanes that can deposit birth tourists by the score in this country, that didn't happen back around the Civil War!" now and then is like "I'm sorry I'm not allowed to consider if gun lethality has changed."
Courtney Milan

One short thread took a different tack, which I find reassuring in a non-reassuring way:

The Supreme Court is not just a broken institution, it has been a vehicle for keeping this country in line with conservatism for the vast majority of the last 250 years. Real change will not come until we create new systems and institutions to protect our rights. Today’s decisions went as expected — disappointing but not worst case scenarios. The Court will always maintain a motivation to keep the country in line with a conservative status quo, this oscillates now and then but always returns further to the right. We will not be liberated by this Court or any court invented by this current system. We need to lean into the imagination of what else can we create. If we know the system will continue to work against us, it is what we do for ourselves that matters.
phoenix @phoenix-rights.bsky.social

Two Things About June

The Supreme Court makes me hate June.

As climatologist Peter Gleick said on BlueSky a few hours ago, 

Do I have this right? The Supreme Court affirmed that Donald Trump is a sexual predator, and then gives him unprecedented power to fire those who provide independent oversight at federal agencies? 

Tomorrow they will issue their ruling on birthright citizenship (and consensus seems to be that they will uphold its existence because... duh), but that the majority six will find wrongly on the other two remaining cases. 

Conservative Patrick Chovanec put it this way:

Over the past year or so, the Roberts Court has batted around a .500. But the half they get right merely hold the line, while the half they get wrong build the foundations for a dictatorship, brick by brick. 

It finally became summer here in Minnesota today, so it's over 90°F with high humidity. I have to go do the daily picking of black raspberries regardless of conditions, nationally or locally.  They always ripen at the end of June, just as the Supreme Court begins announcing all of its big decisions. 

Some day we will have a court structured for justice instead of whatever this travesty is. When that time comes, the berries will still need to be picked every day, but I won't be dreading the news from Washington as I find my way among the thorns.

Tracking Technology in Fiction

I mentioned a few days ago the need for some escapist reading. I decided to finally dive into the Cork O'Connor books by Saint Paul's William Kent Krueger. If you don't know about them, they revolve around a small-town sheriff (or former sheriff) in a county in far-northern Minnesota. A place where, it seems, lots of people get done in by bad people. 

Unlike many in this area, I've never read a single one of them. 

I'm now four books in to the 20-book series. The first one was published in 1998, and as I was most of the way through the second book (published in 1999), it occurred to me that it presented a fairly painless chance to document technological change. It happened when I noticed the main character using a pay phone.

I will report back on what happens when, and if I can, the effect it has on the plot. As time goes by, will people leave their cell phones at home? Will their batteries conveniently die? I'm sure the books' location near the Boundary Waters will have bad cell service generally, so that will always be available as an excuse, when needed. Will the technology itself become part of the plot in later books?

It may also be a museum of forgotten tech. In the fourth book, for instance (published 2004, but I think occurring in 2000?), there's been a reference to a Palm Pilot.

The Collins Concrete Murals

Today, I learned of the existence of the artists Henry Collins and Joyce Pallot Collins, who created concrete public murals in the U.K. between 1969 and about 1980. 

It started from this thread on BlueSky, which asked:

Does anyone know of a definitive list of the concrete murals of Henry Collins and Joyce Pallot? This Surbiton example is a favourite of mine, and their work in places like Colchester (where they were based), Southampton and Newcastle is well known. But what of the rest?

A couple of the Surbiton images that were shared:

Responses led a number of places, especially this site about their work in the city where they spent their life together and began doing murals, Colchester. 

The page about the Collinses on that site says,

They understood the public context of the work and employed an array of unlikely tools including spoons, spanners and even a nutmeg grater to produce a variety of finishes. The texture of the work was important to its overall look, while also discouraging graffiti.

Some visual samples of those varying textures:

A number of their murals are no longer in existence, while others have been moved, some restored, and others exist in degraded condition, given their age. This one in Gloucester is in the latter category:

There are a few more photos, including a close-up of it, in the BlueSky thread. 

The Collinses' murals appear to be an under-appreciated part of Britain's visual culture, if it takes a thread on BlueSky to pull together a thorough list of their murals. 

My speculation is that it comes from a combination of elite bias against the concrete medium and the locations, since the vast majority of their work is not located in London.

Some of the linked pages with images:

• Pallot and Collins Murals – Bexhill on Sea
• Joyce Pallot and Henry Collins – Gwent House Cwmbran (southeast Wales)  (keep scrolling on this page for the best photos)
• Droitwich Spa since Roman Times, St Andrews Shopping Centre, Droitwich, Worcestershire 
• Hitchin History Mural, Paynes Park, Hitchin, Hertfordshire 
• Cowley's Concrete Mural (near Oxford) 

Rush to Grab Power Before the November Elections

One name: Russell Vought. 

He wants to put himself (or people he controls) in charge of deciding how all the U.S. government's grant money — our taxpayer money — is spent. All of it: not just scientific grants. Yes, really.

Here are a couple of pieces about this proposed rule change, which is clearly illegal, but that means nothing these days: 

• A brief bit on Science Friday from today. 
• A story in The Nation, which should be accessible if you sign up for a free account. 
• And this thread on BlueSky by the author of The Nation story, epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves.

I'm going to quote Gonsalves's thread in full, because it's in keeping with why he wrote the thread:

Russell Vought is an evil man. This plan is nothing short of a personal take-over of federal grant-making. It will affect ALL of us. Political commissars will now be in charge of all agencies, reporting to him. But we are not powerless. See what you can do below.

First, write a letter to Congress. Personalize it. Get your friends and family to do the same. Will take 2–3 minutes of your time. 

Next write a comment on the proposed rule BEFORE July 13th. If you're not a scientist, this post explains what's at stake for your community here [and has great instructions and the comment link at the end].

If you are a scientist, this post has a primer for that too! 

This piece on Forbes also has a great piece about how the rule will affect your community.

And people need to know about this new proposed OMB rule. Consider writing an op-ed for your local paper.

This is it folks. All hands on deck. We need everyone now working to stop this. Please, please spread the word. Get five, better yet ten friends to take action.  

As the non-scientist explainer linked above put it,

Federal grants are not peripheral to how states and communities function. They represent, on average, 36 cents of every dollar a state spends. This rule puts that entire financial partnership between the federal government and the states under political control, without an act of Congress, effective October 1, 2026.

Vought's minions will be able to terminate any granted program at any time for any or no reason. New programs, of course, will have to align with Trump's ideology. Of course, all of the usual "anti-woke" words are used in the rule-making, so it's pretty clear what will not be funded.

The availability of grants will not be open and public, so — surprise! — this is an additional opportunity for graft. There will be no appeal process when applications are denied, and "organizational affiliation" can be used as the basis for denial. 

As usual, I find myself outraged that we need to write specifically formatted comments explaining to our government why it should not be trying to kill its people and destroy the infrastructure our tax dollars have been spent on for decades. But that's where we're at under the Trump regime as they rush to grab power before the November elections.

Write comments, write to Congress, write everywhere.
 

Three Stories About Policing

Three things I saw today about policing.

Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data (from Reuters):

U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than “fighting crime.”

Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report. Research has shown that the practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy, the report pointed out....

Here's a fine example of exactly that from our local press. Don't let the slightly weird headline fool you: Hennepin County sheriff conceals bodycam footage by calling officers 'undercover.' A 26-year-old Black Minneapolis man was stopped by two Hennepin County sheriffs for no reason. They assaulted him, arrested him, and charged him — even though all of this was witnessed and recorded by other people. The story is about whether their body camera footage should be considered privileged as part of them being undercover (even though they were wearing the word SHERIFF on their vests) but the basics of the story are part of the egregious pattern described in the Reuters report. 

And then there's this: 

American police killings are rising, even as murder rates fall (from The Economist). More aggressive cops are less restrained. 

Two Podcasts Make a Pair

I've mentioned the War on Cars podcast just a few times since I started listening to it in 2024 (here and here).

Two of its recent episodes are excellent.

One is called Changing Lanes. That's the title of a documentary that tells the story of what it has taken to win the electoral and policy fight to rebuild a dangerous car-oriented boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There are many lessons in their experience, and it sounds like even more can be learned from the documentary – so I hope to be able to see it soon.

The most recent episode is with Ian Loader, Oxford University professor of criminology. It's called Rethinking Criminal Consequences for Drivers Who Kill. 

Contrary to what one might expect of a biking advocate, Loader does not want drivers to take more criminal responsibility within the current system. These are his concluding words in the podcast, but to understand what he means, you really have to listen to the whole thing:

The standard chain of logic with how we deal with road safety at the moment goes something like this: that driving is basically safe. It only becomes unsafe if individuals do it dangerously. And then therefore the chain of intervention goes something like: individual responsibility [to] enforcement [to] punishment. 

My alternative goes something like: the starting point is that mass motoring is a system of harm production even when people are driving carefully and considerately. And that the chain of intervention should be: start with systems, think about structure, and then bad driving has consequences — not necessarily punishment.

How we get any of the types of changes Loader describes to happen is the main problem. The work described in the Changing Lanes is part of the solution.

Today, Ugh

I'm overwhelmed by today's bad news (multi-decade sentences to the Prairieland defendants in Texas and multiple 6–3 SCOTUS decisions that wipe out various civil rights for everyone except corporations). The destruction continues.

I need to finish reading The Overstory, which is excellent but anti-escapist, and find something more diverting. 

The World Cup is not my thing, so I don't have that to fall back on. 

I must spend more time outside, and talk to more people. 

How to survive in the present moment.

Sometimes You Just Have to Say It

In the past few days, Facebook has shown me a couple of statements that resonate with the political situation we are in. First, this:



It reminded me of things said by people who live in completely Republican-dominated states. 

For instance, a few days ago, Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social posted this:

It’s wild to talk to folks about Missouri only to hear someone blame “the Democrats.” What Democrats? We’ve had a Republican legislative supermajority for over two decades and haven’t had a statewide elected Dem since 2018. Everything you see in this state is due to Republican authoritarianism.

That's in keeping with posts Piper has made at other times: whatever ills exist in Missouri, Republicans clearly have been in complete power for long enough that they have had every chance to at least begin to fix them. Instead, just about every measure of human well-being has gotten worse: schools, roads, health care, air. (They've had a trifecta since 2017, and controlled both houses of the Legislature continuously since 2003. When there was a Democratic governor between 2009–2016, all he could do was veto things, not pass anything positive.)

Lyz Lenz has said the same about life in Iowa since Republicans have dominated over the past decade. Everything has gotten worse for everyone since a Republicans became governor in 2011 and particularly since their trifecta began in 2017. 

And now we, of course, have the same thing on a national level. Alexander Ross @hardpolitics.bsky.social wrote this today:

Our country is tolerating Donald Trump presiding over severe national decline because the majority of white voters (who vote Republican) thought living under a Black president was worse than this. Not a popular or media-savvy assessment... it's also not wrong either.

Here's the second thing from Facebook:



We have to get these people out of office as soon as possible.

Late

The day got away with me. 

I spent part of it (re)watching Gosford Park, which I remember liking when it came out in 2001, but as is often the case with me, I had almost no memory of it. Lots of English people at a country house. Sometimes I had trouble understanding what they were saying. 

Now I see it through the lens of Downton Abbey, not surprisingly since it was written by Julian Fellowes. 

And I think there were too many aristocrat characters and not enough attention paid to the mechanics of character differentiation. How many bland, young blond men do you need to cast, really?

I do like to see Helen Mirren playing characters who aren't glamorous, though. That was nice.

Surely It's Pure Talent

Kristen Gillbrand should resign.

She's a good example of why Democrats like Angie Craig should not be in office when we here in Minnesota have a choice for U.S. Senate, if we are to overhaul what's wrong with this government. 

Obviously, Trump and the Republicans in Congress who have gone beyond enabling him are worse, if that's what the choice comes down to, but the corruption of corporatism, finance, and tech have gone beyond the Republicans.

The son of Sen. Gillibrand (an established crypto-booster) has just raised $30 million to set up his own digital asset exchange. His startup company has been valued at $300 million. Based on what? 

Well, gee, it must be the fact that he's 22 years old and graduated from Stanford a few days ago, is in bed with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, and his mother is a U.S. Senator. (Story here.)

Probably mostly that last one led to the other ones, ya think?