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That's a lot of sites
While it's self-proclaimed, it's easy to believe that this is the largest collection of links to free sites on the internet.
Powerful Speeches from Trans Dems Flip 29 Republicans on Anti-Trans Bill
Transgender Reps Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell delivered powerful speeches on the Montana House floor on Thursday. “When the sponsor closed on this bill, he said, this bill is needed… and I quote his words… ‘because transgenderism is a fetish based on crossdressing.’ And I am here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. My existence is not a fetish. I was proud within a month ago to have my son up in the gallery here. Many of you on the other side met him. When I go to walk him to school, that’s not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family. This is what these bills are trying to come after… not obscene shows in front of children, we have the Miller test for that, we have laws for that. This is a way to target the trans community, and that is in my opinion, and in the speaker’s own words.”
The real SotU: AOC owns Trump -- and made her own sweater!
AOC responds to Trump's Congressional Address - "It's all about Medicaid. It's all about what they're not saying. Don't you find it interesting that Donald Trump, if you listen to that speech, Donald Trump said a lot of things, he said a lot of random things about studies and waste and all this other stuff. He did not talk about Medicaid. Not once. And as a certain right-wing operative likes to say: MAGA's on Medicaid. And MAGA Trump is coming for your Medicaid. MAGA Republicans are coming for your Medicaid. And the reason they are rattling off all of these things because -- listen, where there is waste, we should address it, where there is corruption, we should address it, where there's fraud and abuse, we should address it -- but don't you think that if you found a bunch of money in the couch cushions that you would put that to expanding Medicaid, improving schools, fixing our roads, right, but that's not what they're planning on doing." [more inside]
calibre e-book manger
calibre is one of the preeminent pieces of open-source software of our time, and it just reached Version 8, so I thought I would make a post about it. [more inside]
Don't forget, Europe's been through all this before.
As they politely remind us here, ca 2017, I'm sure we remember why. As I run into things that might help us all I will try to keep them up here.
"Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji"
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining.The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling. [Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic]
Trump urges Supreme Court to limit judges' power to impede his agenda
With sweeping actions, Trump tests US constitutional order [ungated] - "With a Congress controlled by Trump's fellow Republicans largely falling in line behind his agenda, federal judges often have emerged as the only constraint on the president's torrent of executive actions since his January inauguration." [more inside]
SomaFM
"SomaFM is an independent Internet-only streaming multi-channel radio station, supported entirely with donations from listeners. SomaFM originally started broadcasting out of founder Rusty Hodge's basement garage in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, as a micropower radio station broadcast at the Burning Man festival in 1999. The response to the project was sufficiently positive that Rusty Hodge launched it as a full-time internet radio station in February 2000."* [more inside]
The clarity of crossword clues meets the parsability of LISP
Want to iteratively unpack a series of cryptic clues to collapse a horrifying nest of brackets to resolve down to a heavily obscured headline? Want to do it once a day? Good news: Bracket City is here to make you feel alternately like an entire idiot and then kind of a genius.
Perhaps the most important archaeological discovery in New Zealand history
A waka, or Polynesian voyaging canoe, has been discovered in the bank of a creek on Rēkohu (Chatham Islands). It is astonishingly complete, with elaborate carvings, obsidian decorations, and even intact parts of sails and rope. [more inside]
The She Made Him Do It Theory of Everything
"The rhetoric and logic of the abuse of power operates similarly at all scales, which is why I've found feminism such useful equipment for understanding authoritarians in public and political life. Because no matter what abusers take from their victims, they don't want to take the blame. And one of the prerogatives of power is to be in charge of blame, and abusers routinely exercise that power to make their own acts someone else's fault."
The world is riddled with maggots
A song by Chumbawamba that isn't Tubthumping Chumbawamba is often thought of as a one hit wonder, but there's a lot more to them. They're anti-fascist, pro-union, and loved to do protest songs. This one is even more relevant now.
"Black hair looks or moves a certain way"
The tight curls of black hair are considered difficult to mimic in animation. But A.M. Darke, a black female artist, developer, and professor aims to fix that by breaking the process down into algorithms, as covered in this PDF of the research paper she co-authored, "Curly-Cue: Geometric Methods for Highly Coiled Hair", and with the Open Source Afro Hair Library, which was co-created by Darke.
Three major elements of animating black hair (phase locking, period skipping, and switchbacks) are explained verbally and visually in this fantastic and quick Instagram reel by popculturebrain
Three major elements of animating black hair (phase locking, period skipping, and switchbacks) are explained verbally and visually in this fantastic and quick Instagram reel by popculturebrain
Tinned Fish Recipes
Timeline Cleanse
NHK World presents A Cat's-Eye View of Japan, 42 5-minute episodes showing various places in Japan as seen by the cats who live there.
Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)
When you’ve spent years watching how some tech bros break the rules in pursuit of personal and economic power at the expense of safety and user protections, all while wrapping themselves in the flag of “innovation,” you get pretty good at spotting the pattern.
“I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said.
Terrifying reporting from ProPublica about the SSA describes a meeting held by acting head of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek in which he seems to admit that the "DOGE kids" may very well actually break the social security payments process and tries to disavow all responsibility because he is clearly alarmed by what he is being asked to do. [more inside]
Never gonna give up dancing at the Pink Pony Club
Because somebody might need this today: Rick Astley covers Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club.
Erdoğan's endgame: outlawing the Turkish opposition
For more than 20 years, Turkey has experienced steady democratic backsliding under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) founded on the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk has remained fierce. Following the failed 2016 coup attempt that Erdoğan leveraged to push through a constitutional overhaul centralizing power, social democrat Ekrem İmamoğlu emerged as the opposition's brightest star, winning a 2019 Istanbul mayoral race that authorities first nullified, then watched him win again by an even larger margin. Further gains for the CHP in municipal contests last year amid lingering economic dysfunction gave renewed hope that Erdogan could finally be ousted. That hope faded this week as the government launched an unprecedented crackdown, pressuring the cancellation of İmamoğlu's (required) college diploma, jailing him on corruption charges, and investigating over a hundred others. The shock move, which has sparked mass protests in the streets and widespread censorship, threatens to move Turkey firmly from a "competitive authoritarian" system (where the political landscape is merely biased) towards outright autocracy.
“You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”
Trump Administration Live Updates: Trump and Vance Loudly Berate Zelensky in Oval Office (SLNYT, archive.ph)