inqnel @inqnel - Tumblr Blog

The levels of traditional Chinese architecture by 扇子有画

it’s been years since i’ve first seen this comic and i still think it has one of the best punchline delivers of anything i’ve ever seen

ogrebattle128-deactivated201404

eternal classic

clarenecessities

By Korean artist Yang Young-Soon

castlewyvern

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

lleyksie

let’s be primitive horses with mama

heatherwitch

Remember Keith Porter, who was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve (December 31st, 2025).

Remember Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old man from Cuba, who died in ICE custody on January 3rd, 2026. His cause of death was reported by ICE as “medical distress and under investigation”. Witnesses saw guards hold down and strangle Geraldo. The county medical examiner determined cause of death to be “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression”, and ruled his death as a homicide.

Remember Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, a 42-year-old man from Honduras, who died in ICE custody on January 5th, 2026. His cause of death was reported by ICE as “complications related to congenital heart failure”.

Remember Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, a 68-year-old man from Honduras, who died in ICE custody on January 6th, 2026. His cause of death was reported by ICE as “heart-related health issues.”

Remember Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by ICE on January 7th, 2026.

Remember Parady La, a 46-year-old man from Cambodia, who died in ICE custody on January 9th, 2026. His cause of death was reported by ICE as “anoxic brain injury, post cardiac arrest, shock and multiple organ failures following severe drug withdrawal”.

Remember Víctor Manuel Díaz, a 36-year-old man from Nicaragua, who died in ICE custody on January 14th, 2026. His cause of death was reported by ICE as “a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation.”

Remember Heber Sánchez-Domínguez, a 34-year-old man from Mexico, who died in ICE custody on January 14th, 2026. His cause of death is “currently under investigation” according to ICE.

Remember Wael Tarabishi, whose health declined and ultimately led to his death on January 23rd, 2026 after his father and primary caregiver, Maher Tarabishi, was taken by ICE. The Tarabishi family are once again asking for Maher’s release, this time so he can attend his son’s funeral.

Remember Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by Border Patrol on January 24th.

Additional sources:

ICE website (filter to detainee death notifications)

Wikipedia: List of Deaths in ICE Detention

2025:

The Guardian: “2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody.”

Previous post on ICE-related deaths in 2025

This post is a list of ICE-related deaths in 2026. It has been edited to include Keith Porter since he was killed just hours before the new year, and Wael Tarabishi.

This post was last updated January 28th, 2026.

(Click here to check for updates)

afloweroutofstone

The "value of a statistical life" is a wonky and heartless-sounding concept that's hard to explain to normal people, but sometimes you have to explain it, because if you don't then people won't notice it when something huge like this happens.

New York Times [no paywall version]:

...What is the value of a human life? Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the answer has been in the millions of dollars. The higher the value, the more the government has required businesses to spend on their operations to prevent a single death. But for the first time ever, at the Environmental Protection Agency the answer is effectively zero dollars. Last week, the E.P.A. stopped estimating the monetary value of lives saved when setting limits on two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone. Instead, the agency is calculating only the costs to companies of complying with pollution regulations. “The Trump administration is saying, literally, that they put zero value on human life,” Marshall Burke, an environmental economist at Stanford University, said in an email. “If your kid breathes in air pollution from a power plant or industrial source, E.P.A. is saying that they care only insofar as cleaning up that pollution would cost the emitter.” ...[the change] appears to shelve a powerful tool, known as the value of a statistical life, that agencies have used for decades in the cost-benefit analyses that justify new regulations.

To estimate the effects of a policy, analysts conduct a cost-benefit analysis, a model used to weigh the policy's pros and cons against one another. In order to do that, you have to have an estimate of how much a human life is worth.

Many people object to this morally under the premise that human life is infinitely valuable, but that's an unworkable assumption. If every life is worth infinite dollars, then the appropriate maximum speed limit for drivers would be zero. Every unit you raise the speed limit by trades the additional benefits of driving that fast (mobility, economic value, reduced time costs) against the additional costs of the lives lost by new auto accidents. If the value of a human life is truly infinite, then it would be unacceptable to allow any road deaths, meaning that driving should be illegal at any speed. A society which does not allow for any risk of human death is one which cannot reasonably function.

We already make implicit assumptions about the value of human life when discussing our policy preferences, we just keep this value vague and undefined in our heads rather than setting an actual dollar amount out loud. The Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) is a concept that turns our implicit assumptions explicit, attaching a specific dollar value to a life to allow for the calculation of cost-benefit analyses.

The higher you set the VSL, the more likely it is to suggest that regulations are worthwhile. The costs of a safety rule might outweigh the benefits when you assume a VSL of $1 million, while the opposite would be true if you had a VSL of $5 million.

For this reason, the exact benchmark for the VSL is highly contested. In fact, different government agencies often adopt different standards in different contexts. The HHS guidelines from 2024 provide a range of VSL values from $6.1 million to $19.9 million for that year.

The EPA formerly valued a statistical human life at about $11.7 million. Under this estimate, clean air regulations have benefits that massively outweigh their costs (NYT offers a ratio of about 30-1). But by setting the VSL to $0, practically all life-saving government regulations at the EPA are now unjustifiable. By taking the largest benefits out of the equation and counting only costs, virtually all regulations will appear inefficient. It doesn't matter if a rule costs businesses only $1 to save 100 lives, that $1 in costs will be enough to reject the rule (unless other benefits are sufficiently large).

They're doing something similar with another concept called the "social cost of carbon;" by ignoring it, they can make pollution appear harmless on paper even as it remains destructive in real life.

So long as this policy remains under the second Trump administration, regulatory rulemaking at the EPA will be heavily biased in favor of big business while entirely ignoring the value of human life.

collapsedsquid

Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture. The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August.

str-ngeloop

i love bizzarely specific hallucinogens

str-ngeloop

The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August. One must be careful to cook it thoroughly, though, otherwise the hallucinations will set in. "At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'" says Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica. "It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there." [...]

He and his team are still trying to identify the chemical compound responsible for the hallucinations in L. asiatica. Current tests suggest it is not likely related to any other known psychedelic compound. For one, the trips it produces are unusually long, commonly lasting one to three days after an onset of 12 to 24 hours, and in some cases even causing hospital stays of up to a week. Because of the extraordinarily long duration of these trips and the chance for prolonged side effects such as delirium and dizziness, Domnauer has yet to try the raw mushrooms himself. These mega-trips might help to explain why people in China, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea do not seem to have a tradition of purposefully seeking out L. asiatica for its psychoactive effects, according to Domnauer's findings. "It was always just eaten for food," Domnauer says, with hallucinations being an unexpected side-effect. There's another curious factor: other known psychedelic compounds also usually produce idiosyncratic trips that vary not only from person to person but also from one experience to the next within the same individual. With L. asiatica, though, "the perception of little people is very reliably and repeatedly reported", Domnauer says. "I don't know of anything else that produces such consistent hallucinations."

str-ngeloop

The patients saw these figures "moving about everywhere", the researchers wrote – usually, there were more than ten tiny beings on the scene. "They saw them on their clothes when they were dressing and saw them on their dishes when eating," the researchers added. The visions "were even more vivid when their eyes were closed".

friend-crow

Apparently ICE now has agents posing as utility workers to get into people's homes. The electric and gas companies have posted information on how to tell if it's one of their workers, and numbers to call to confirm whether they've sent someone to do utility work on your house.

Stay safe, friends.

alexwrekk

Oregon state Rep. Ricki Ruiz said three people were detained in his district after ICE agents posed as utility workers.

parsio

Some people have shared stories of suspicious “sales representatives” knocking on homes, asking about the home owners and who lives there, fishing for phone numbers, but do not provide business cards, company id, company phone numbers, etc when asked.

They come in pairs, never one person though one may hag back a bit. They have been seen using cars with significantly tinted windows, no business logos anywhere on the vehicle, or parking close to the home they walked up to only to drive away right after without visiting other homes, almost as if they’re not real sales people.

True door to door salespeople need a sort of peddler’s license, subject to city and county law, to solicit at your door. You can ask to see this permit. If they don’t provide one or make an excuse, they are likely bogus.

They wear a jacket with a company logo but likely don’t wear name tags and the Don’t provide id.

Tell them you’ll call the company about a noncompliant representative. Make them leave. Better yet not to open the door to them, and tell them nothing.

Actual sales reps also generally do follow “no soliciting” signs. Be aware, be safe, don’t give out your information or that of others under duplicitous means.

mariacallous

perfectlyvalid49

I want to be very clear on this. You can be out drinking with your friends on Friday night and dead on Sunday because of meningitis. Does that sound a little specific? Guess why I have such a specific scenario in mind.

And getting vaccinated is an easy way to prevent that. There is no medical reason to stop recommending that vaccine. There's no new study that shows that it's unsafe, there's no replacement that's better. This is literally the government making its citizenry less safe for no reason.

seljepw

This is the most accurate vaccine schedule as laid out by the AAP, who have stated that they think Mr. worm-for-brains is bullshit:

If you have a kid, either download this or print it and confirm with your pediatrician that this is what you want to follow.

the-local-bohg-witch

Do not forget the other victims of ICE

as much as we must mourn and stand in solidarity with Renee Nicole Good, please do not forget the other victims of ice raids, who are not white. Silverio Villegas González, a cook from mexico who was dropping his son off at daycare and was murdered Jaime Alanis, a farmer from mexico who fell off a green house at the farm where he worked to send money to his wife and daughter Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who was hit by a car Josué Castro Rivera, a garden from Honduras who was struck by a car And so many others who were killed or are dying in detention centres, prisons ect racial bias is always something we must be aware of, Renee will be focused on because she was a white woman and a US citizen, but do not forget all the other victims of ICE, may they all rest in power

byjove

Rest in Peace to Renee Good. ICE shooting an innocent 37 year old mother attempting to protect her neighbors is not an accident or an act of self defense, it is an act of terror designed to dissuade other people from stepping in, documenting ICE violence and reminding immigrants of their rights. Her son is now an orphan and the president of the United States is calling her a ‘professional agitator’ on social media.

stripedroseandsketchpads

The head of ICE is calling her a violent terrorist and claimed her attempt to back her car away was actually an effort to murder the ICE officers present.

There’s a reason that the Right have all rallied so quickly behind this narrative: it’s happened before, with ICE’s approval.

Renee is the ninth person to have been shot by ICE since last September; and in all of those shootings the victim was in a vehicle and the agents claimed that the vehicle was “a threat”/trying to “run them down.” One other shooting, that of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, was also lethal.

This is pretty clearly a sanctioned tactic being used by ICE repeatedly with an eye towards using the vehicle-as-weapon excuse later.

Edit: to put this in perspective, ICE is doing this on average every other week.

ryotouzukai

Haven't seen anyone talking about it here, but vocal transfeminist and writer Tara Knight has been sent a threat from the fbi insisting that she stop speaking about "radical gender ideology" and get rid of the past 3 years of her work.

A black trans woman is getting personally threatened by the fbi for being a transfeminist. What the fuck. Hopefully this gets more reach than my usual posts so that people who are able to can support her.

yeahcanigetuhhhhh

Why the FBI targeting a trans woman of color affects all of us and how we should respond.

closet-keys

"The ultimate goal of this specific act of repression is not just to subjugate trans people, but to erase the very fact of trans existence from public life and legal recognition. They’re not afraid of people like this building an army, they’re terrified of them building an audience. I am here to suggest that maybe they should be afraid of us building an army."

afloweroutofstone

We do not know who is currently in control of Venezuela. Because only President Maduro has been captured, it is presumably Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who is next in line under the Venezuelan constitution. This would be an unusual arrangement if it lasts, as there are only limited benefits to the US for deposing Maduro while leaving his loyalists in charge.

The Venezuelan opposition, despite its many promises of being ready to step in and set up an alternative government should Maduro fall, has always been deeply divided. The nation's opposition movement contains many groups who disagree about basically everything except opposition to the current government. Unsurprisingly, the US government has cultivated close ties with the most internationally-connected parts of the movement's neoliberal right-wing.

The most prominent opposition member at the moment is a member of this neoliberal right wing: María Corina Machado, the recent winner of a Nobel Peace Prize despite her advocacy for violent military action against her home country. Machado fled Venezuela in December and is now believed to be somewhere in Europe, and she has celebrated Maduro's ouster this morning.

Unless they have someone else up their sleeve, Machado is most likely the US government's preferred replacement for Maduro. She has spent months promising that she would "privatize all our industry" and that US businesses would "make a lot of money." In November, she released a "Freedom Manifesto" promising "a free marketplace of ideas and enterprise," a government that does not "[exert] a heavy hand on the marketplace," and to "reeestablish alliances" in the western hemisphere.

One line in particular jumps out at me: "It is time to return power to the people, to the citizens, to the private sector." What an incredible sleight-of-hand, to promise the surrender of your nation's resources to foreign capitalists in the name of empowering "the people." It seems to me that Machado is offering to swap Venezuela's political dictatorship with an economic dictatorship.

afloweroutofstone

At a press conference which is live right now, Trump says that the US will run Venezuela "with a group" until "we can do a transition." Machado doesn't seem likely to take over immediately. Delcy Rodriguez has allegedly been sworn in and, according to Trump, she sounds receptive to US demands. "For a period of time," the people running Venezuela will be "the people standing behind me": US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other US officials. Trump says he'll work to make sure that the US will "make a lot of money."

afloweroutofstone

The US government's military operation in the Caribbean is supposedly intended to target "narco-terrorists." In my latest article, I explore the history of the term to argue that "narco-terrorism" is mostly a myth— a "political slogan" which does not accurately describe the world. By focusing our attention on foreign suppliers, this myth distracts us from more important factors, including the US government's own history of supporting drug trafficking.

Framing “Operation Southern Spear” as a battle against “narco-terrorists” is a desperate attempt to commit new violence using old excuses, o

To say that “narco-terrorism” is a myth is not to deny the obvious violence associated with the black market drug trade, but to acknowledge that the term does more to confuse than to clarify. The idea does not accurately explain the complex dynamics of the global drug trade; instead, it radically oversimplifies the problem. By portraying military intervention as a response to drug trafficking, the “narco-terrorism” myth allows politicians to ignore all of the ways in which military intervention is a cause of drug trafficking... Perhaps the greatest flaw of “narco-terrorism” is that it encourages us to believe that complex human problems have simple military solutions. Sociologist C. Wright Mills once astutely criticized US elites for accepting a “military definition of reality,” a distorted perspective which prevents them from imagining policy solutions that do not involve military intervention. So long as the government insists upon seeing non-military problems through a military lens, they will never be solved.

afloweroutofstone

It is important to remember that the US government’s case against Maduro is almost entirely fictional

hungwy

theo van gogh was the one who suggested that his older brother vincent start seriously painting. as soon as theo was gainfully employed he gave vincent around 15% of his own yearly salary for art supplies, lodging, and food. about 2/3rds of vincent's surviving letters were to theo (including vincent's earliest and last letters), all of which were found stored in theo's desk. theo's child, vincent willem, was born on january 31st, 1890, and vincent was so delighted by his nephew that he painted almond blossoms for him. vincent shot himself half a year later on july 29th, 1890. theo's distress at his brother's death worsened his syphilis symptoms and he died half a year after his brother on january 25th, 1891 (four days before vincent willem's first birthday). theo was reburied next to vincent in auvers-sur-oise at the request of theo's wife johanna.

nutropes

Almond Blossoms, 1890, Vincent van Gogh

emilyofjane

cannucks-addiction

And that love lived on Theo's wife, Johanna, who was the one who pushed for the preservation of Vincent's paintings. Johanna who made sure that her husband's beloved brother would not be forgotten. Johanna who fought tooth and nail so that Theo and Vincent would never be forgotten. Johanna who carried the family legacy, who made sure that the works of Vincent would be kept in her possession. And then Vincent Willem, named for a uncle so loved, carried this legacy and founded the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.

The van Gogh family history is deeply interwoven with love. It was the love of a brother that gave a young man the courage to paint and the resources to do so. It was the love of a woman for her husband and her husband's beloved brother that made that story known. And it was the love of a nephew, who was so deeply loved even if for such a short time, that made it possible for the world to know Vincent van Gogh.

elbiotipo

immediately started seeing these kind of takes on twitter and I know they will reach here and you have to understand this isn't happening because the US is the country of cartoon villains who does things because it's evil. It's imperialism. The US has an empire and it wants to keep it and extend it. When it does not use diplomatic and political means it uses financial and economic control, when that does not work it tries to use intelligence operations and when that does not work it uses military action. Venezuela has gone and suffered through all the stages of this and now it's being struck with direct military action.

And again, the reason why the US does all this is not because "thirst for blood and chaos", it's because it's an empire. It wants the natural resources of Venezuela. It wants to keep its imperial dominion over Latin America, it wants to erase potential rivals on the region and keep it under their control. They have said it so. Explicitly.

Stop thinking things happen because of craaaazy guys like Trump or just because the US is "cursed" or whatever the fuck. These things have reasons behind them. Learn that the US is an empire, that it has economic and political interests behind the actions they do, that Latin America and the rest of the global south, and also the US people themselves, have to resist and challenge this empire, and that the only way for this empire to end will be the dismantling and destruction of the US capitalist oligarchy and the triumph of socialism and anti-imperialism.

ralfmaximus

Whistleblower on Reddit rage-blogs about how the food delivery company he worked for as a developer is ripping customers AND drivers off.

Main post screenshotted here in case it gets yanked; the whole thread is worth a read.

Posted January 2026.

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