404 Media has a story out today that is a compilation of unhinged AI fliers and posters for businesses or other community events. It’s getting wild out there.
404 Media has a story out today that is a compilation of unhinged AI fliers and posters for businesses or other community events. It’s getting wild out there.
I’ve read a lot of pleasant toddler books, but every once in a while you encounter a certified banger.
📚 Kids books: Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia
Seeing these sorts of artifacts makes me wonder about what archives will be featuring 500 years into our own future as our feeble attempts at understanding the cosmos.
A blog about planetaria housed in the Library of Congress::
Armillary spheres are the oldest of the three main planetaria. Used by ancient astronomers, they consist of small round balls representing either the Sun or Earth, surrounded by interlocking, solid rings representing planetary orbits, the zodiac, constellations, and sometimes the equator.
Nova ac generalis orbis descriptio. Caspar Vopell, 1543. Photos by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division.
Some Konmari strategy for your social feeds from Austin Kleon:
Good phone hygiene: “Open your most-used social-media app. Ask yourself one question about six of the accounts you follow: Does this expand me or shrink me? Not: Is it entertaining? Not: Do I agree with it? But: After I engage with this, do I feel more curious, more grounded, more kind—or do I feel smaller, more anxious, more numb? Unfollow the ones that shrink you. Bookmark the ones that genuinely expand your clarity, kindness, or courage.”
Tyler Pager and Anatoly Kurmanaev:
In the six months since U.S. forces blew open Mr. Maduro’s bedroom door and snatched him in the dead of night, Mr. Rubio has become the de facto viceroy of Venezuela, holding sway over a sovereign nation in a way that no American official has since L. Paul Bremer III arrived in Baghdad in 2003 to run U.S.-occupied Iraq.
Mr. Rubio now effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials and people close to both governments in Washington and Caracas, who provided details about his involvement in steering the country’s policies. Many spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private interactions and internal discussions.
📷 Hello There.
Adrian Carrasquillo in The Bulwark:
Surreptitious extremism is still extremism, and ICE remains an undertrained, overly aggressive organization. Which is why, in this shooting just hours after Homan’s remarks, we see all too clearly what happens when armed agents swarm blue-collar working parents fearing for their lives.
Okay FINE, here’s the new Ghost in the Shell TV show’s opener followed by GITS:SAC and 2nd GIG:
I don’t want to speculate too much here based on a movie trailer, but if Denis Villeneuve found a way to play up Chani and Paul as quasi-adversaries I’d consider it an improvement to Dune Messiah (which was already one of my faves in Herbert’s).
🎓 Reading work by Brooklyn Walker and Paul A. Djupe this morning: “I am a Christian nationalist”:
Most identity work has focused on identities with long histories – race, ethnicity, religion (in broad strokes, like ‘Christian’). When we study these identities, we are asking about groups that have existed as groups, often for hundreds of years. But with Christian nationalism, we get a unique opportunity to watch a new identity develop. The ideas of Christian nationalism have been around for a long time in American history. In this study, we document that a new label is now being applied to the worldview, and that people are changing how they think about themselves as a result.
I haven’t seen a movie in theaters yet this year, but Coyote vs. ACME might get me there.
Approx 15-20 years back I recall reading a biography about Golda Meir that made frequent reference to her ‘kitchen cabinet’ where key government officials would gather over cigarettes and cups of coffee to make hard national decisions. Given the reporting I’ve read on Kevin G’s decision to stay at MSU, and the behind the scenes influence of figures in the Athletics department and University Advancement, I wonder if a similar cabinet here could be called the ‘varsity squad.’
📷 Building on a post from yesterday, I’m not the only person in my household enjoying the summer bloom.
📷 The midsummer bloom is in full swing
Why should athletics be the only department at an institution subjected to transfer portal shenanigans?
📷 The midsummer bloom is in full swing
DC as a microcosm of our national moment:
The white nationalist org Patriot Front marched in DC on July 4, 2026 before the evening’s ostensibly bipartisan festivities. A more historically informed observers pointed out that the KKK held a similar march in 1926. Elsewhere, a massive copy of the Constitution’s preamble was carried through the streets.
Our new birth of freedom remains an ongoing difficult labor and delivery.
A convenience of getting married on a holiday is–all other considerations or current events aside–you’ve always got something to celebrate. 14 years and counting of moments worth celebrating.
🇺🇸 From Public Domain Review for today:
Read the first edition pamphlet of Frederick Douglass' famous 1852 “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?” speech. After he finished speaking there was “a universal burst of applause” and 700 copies of the pamphlet were subscribed to on the spot: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/frederick-douglass-fourth-july-speech #July4th
One of my favorite observations about tradition comes from G. K. Chesterton, who famously wrote that tradition is “the democracy of the dead.”
Tradition gives our ancestors a vote.
Hello there.
Living under an extreme heat advisory, just in time for July. These periods of heat always have me wondering how people who wear lots of synthetic fibers (like athleisure wear or super stretchy stuff) maintain their sanity.
Public Domain Review’s (@publicdomainrev@mastodon.social) Sunday Read this week features depictions of Cholera and infrastructure failure. Maybe in the face of defunding public health and deregulation we should dust off some of these prints.
