check out https://riotmedicine.net/ and stay safe “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere" - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
It doesn’t have to be the way it is. -Ursula K. Le Guin
“It doesn’t have to be the way it its. That is what fantasy says. It doesn’t say, “Anything goes” -that’s irresponsibility... Fantasy doesn’t say, “Nothing is” -that’s nihilism. And it doesn’t say, “It ought to be this way”- that’s utopianism, a different enterprise. Fantasy isn’t meliorative. The happy ending, however enjoyable to the reader, applies to the characters only; this is fiction, not prediction and not prescription
It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement.
Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks “what if things didn’t go on just as they do?’ but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise- thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are.
The oppression of children is the wheel that keeps all other oppressions turning. Without it, misery would have to be imposed afresh on each new generation instead of being passed down like a hereditary illness. Children enter the world full of expectation and hope. They are not jaded. They are not cynical or resigned. They see clearly what custom has made invisible to us and are outraged by all injustices, no matter how small. It is through the agency of former children that the revolutionary potential of current children is held in check.
Indian Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday in response to rising pressure from student-led protests.
‘Cockroach Movement’ Forces Out India’s Education Minister
"Indian Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday amid mounting pressure from the “Cockroach Movement,” which demanded major government reforms—starting with his departure. Student activists accused Pradhan of failing to safeguard a competitive medical school exam, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), after authorities concluded that its contents had been leaked online. ...
Without accepting fault, [Education Minister Pradhan] explained that he had agreed to step down in order to prevent “anti-national forces” from exploiting the upheaval.
Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the CJP, celebrated the resignation with fellow protesters in New Delhi on Saturday.
“It's a victory for the people of India,” Dipke said to the crowd. He later posted an image of India’s Constitution on social media, with the caption: “Thank you.” ...
On the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indian President Droupadi Murmu appointed Pralhad Joshi—who already oversees the ministries of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, along with New and Renewable Energy—to oversee the Ministry of Education “in addition to his existing portfolio,” which is a typical arrangement in India following a Cabinet vacancy and does not preclude a later permanent appointment...
CJP Spokesperson Saurav Das said in an interview with local media ANI following the president’s announcement that the party members will be meeting the new education minister “very soon.” ...
What Comes Next for the CJP?
The CJP established its list of demands on May 16. In addition to calling for Pradhan’s resignation, the CJP asked for compensation of 10 million rupees ($104,000) for each student who died by suicide following the leak.
They also sought greater legislative oversight of the educational system, gender equity in government roles, a fully independent media, and certain reforms to the electoral and political system—such as creating a 20-year ban on politicians switching parties before seeking election.
Adding to those mandates, the CJP last week asked that the central government drop any potential charges against protesters, after claiming that several had been “illegally detained” by police.
Following Pradhan’s resignation, representatives from the CJP met with officials from the Indian government to discuss the rest of the party’s demands. In a press conference following the meeting, Das said on Saturday that the negotiations had been successful.
"All our demands have been accepted,” he said, without elaboration. “We request the protesters to withdraw immediately and return home peacefully."
The CJP added during the press conference on Saturday that representatives from the movement would meet with officials again in four weeks to work on broader reforms. Its spokesperson told local media that the fight for a transparent educational system is far from over.
He said that members of the CJP conveyed to officials that if the issues are not addressed, the protesters will reconvene “and demand accountability.”
-via TIME, July 25, 2026. Non-paywall version here via MSN, July 25, 2026
Totally normal for a legitimate for-profit company to refuse to reclaim or stop running their products even after they're no longer being paid to do so. I'm sure it's very normal to just keep running your service for free when your contract's been terminated. Spending money to continue running cameras that supposedly no one is looking at is definitely not an indicator they are just run by the federal government to spy on everyone and only a wacko conspiracy theorist would think so.
July 25, 2026 - Riot police protecting heavily outnumbered neonazi protesters in Wien, Austria, clashed with antifascist counter-demonstrators. The "Identitären" wanted to hold a march through the city center, but found themselves blocked by hundreds of antifascists instead, and decided to ask the cops to help them escape.
Later that day the fascists held a short march in a suburb of Wien to make some videos for social media so they could pretend everything went as planned. [video]/[video]
Today is the 26th of July, 2024, exactly 71 years since the failed assault on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. This failure would later be commemorated by Fidel Castro and his vanguard revolutionary movement as their very name, the name with which they won independence for Cuba from its dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and it's imperial overlord, the United States.
Cuba is still not free, however; crippling US sanctions have hindered its development, stressed their society, and needlessly taken lives. This embargo, now in its 65th year, must end. If you live in the United States, you bear a special responsibility to use every means of pressure, collectively, to pressure your government and your ruling class to end this embargo and finally free Cuba.
Basically, increased co2 concentration in the air makes plants make more carbohydrates, but not take in more nutrients from the soil, so they grow faster but have a lower density of vitamins and minerals. Plus, they're "breathing" more efficiently and actually using slightly less water, so they're taking in even fewer nutrients. And the faster growth can't make up for the rates of damage due to climate instability (droughts, floods, extreme heat etc).
The research shows approximately a 3% drop in nutrient density since the 1980s, particularly in carbohydrate heavy crops (like most starchy staple foods), but so many people around the globe depend on those crops for over half their diet that it's very easy for them to fall into malnutrition without access to more expensive shit like enriched products, supplements, and even just fruits and vegetables. Like all the effects of the climate crisis, this impacts those least responsible first.
This comment was left on a post about making the most of the Libby app. "Excessive use of generous lending policies" is the most absurd phrase I've ever seen anyone use to discuss libraries.
This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles.
This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles. Perched above public streets, they are birdlike things, weatherproof, and they photograph every passing car and file it in a searchable national database.
Somebody cut two of them in half at Washington Avenue and Westcott in Houston, spray-painted the wreckage, and left an American flag on one of them. Police were notified on the morning of the Fourth of July.
Somebody severed a camera in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The police department posted the photograph itself and collected more than twenty thousand comments. “Not all heroes wear capes.” “Give them a medal.”
Here is what the cameras do when nobody cuts them down. Cops use them to hunt immigrants and to follow ICE targets across state lines and to find women who ended pregnancies in states where that is a crime and to watch exes and to watch women they want, without a warrant and without a judge. A cop types a reason in a box and the box does not check.
A man in Burleson, Texas, told deputies his girlfriend had taken abortion pills. He showed them the photographs, the FedEx envelope, the instructions. Deputies opened a death investigation into a non-viable fetus, and the district attorney told them the state could not charge her, and they searched anyway: 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks, a month of everywhere she had been. The reason they typed was had an abortion, search for female. The search reached Illinois and Washington, where what she did was legal. They found her in Dallas.
She came into the sheriff’s office a week later, and they thought she had come to explain the fetus, and she had come to report that the man who called them had put a gun to her head.
A sheriff in Jerome County, Idaho ran his wife’s plate more than seven hundred times in three months. He typed the same reason every time. Test. The attorney general found nothing to charge him with. He retired in April.
The Institute for Justice counts at least twenty-two officers who used the system to track people they were romantically interested in, and calls that almost certainly an undercount.
And the cameras keep falling.
You can report suspected or confirmed IDF war criminals to the Hind Rajab Foundation, and they will try to get the war criminal's country of residence to follow international law by prosecuting them
It's not just that they're doing corruption, but they're doing the kind of corruption that is basically "guy hands over a cartoon money sack with dollar signs on it" corruption.
Here's a source for the analysis, but it probably is not the source.
Workers’ share of US economic output has fallen to its lowest level since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data th
Some points of interest:
Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.
Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.
The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.
The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.
In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households hold 31.7 percent of all wealth. The bottom half hold barely 2.5 percent.
Exodites I cannot be normal about. And their knights? What do you mean I get to spend my life taking care of herds and get rewarded with becoming giant centaur?!
