Britain will lower its voting age to 16 in a bid to strengthen democracy
https://apnews.com/article/uk-voting-age-16-de7a0dba500ecd4d603d0c4b0756209d?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into International News @international-news-AssociatedPress

Israeli warplanes killed one and wounded at least 20 in a series of airstrikes on Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday. Israel claimed the attack was to 'protect' the minority Druze community in Syria. But there's more to the story.

mondoweiss.net/2025/07/israels…

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza
@palestine @israel

Israel’s latest bombing of Syria, explained

Israeli warplanes killed one and wounded at least 20 in a series of airstrikes on Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday. Israel claimed the attack was to ‘protect’ the minority Druze community in Syria. But there’s more to the story.

^{Qassam Muaddi (Mondoweiss)}

The CNT's prisoners will have to thank the politicians for their release, and that to me who am an anarchist, has enormous implications. I would like to walk free thanks to the efforts of my comrades and not due to the philanthropy of someone whom I have to fight tooth and nail as soon as I am out.
-- Buenaventura Durruti

#anarchism #quote #bot

Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern discuss merger to create transcontinental railroad, AP source says
https://apnews.com/article/union-pacific-norfolk-southern-railroad-merger-36fc5493d5dc1b48abe5dd8374d0076c?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Business and Finance @business-and-finance-AssociatedPress

Honest Reply to a gay-sex addled copium enjoyer:

No, I don't think the US military is currently in charge of anything. The leadership is composed of tranny admirals and five star tranny generals and crossdressers and child molesters just like the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

The rank and file (and much of the leadership) are DEI hires that have done nothing but guard poppy fields to create opioid epidemics in White America, lose forever wars in the Middle East that make jews rich, and sacrifice young Americans for Israel.

They're a global embarrassment that maintains what legitimacy they have through the existence of a nuclear arsenal that they deny other countries.

The country has no soul, no conviction, no homogeneity, and would be a global laughingstock in a real war that wasn't a business venture for jewish bankers. Its people can't even agree with each other because the jewish media has divided them with hegelian dialectic and flooded the population with third world invaders to destroy trust and cohesion with the society.

I would trust a family of otters to defend itself better than the United States, because when the Boomer generation swallowed the diversity lie it took the only possible source of unity and strength out of the nation. America is now Godless, directionless, and eradicating its own people to avoid being called racist. It's a tax farm for pedophiles. The Taliban won because its people were an actual people, that had something worth fighting for.

Our kids going to war now? Hell, they're mostly brown and uneducated and lack the cognition to properly engage in warfare, but they're dying for a Walmart, a guy fucking their girlfriend back home, a cheeseburger, and a rabbi that wants them dead.

Microsoft's "digital escorts" earning barely above minimum wage are supposed to supervise highly skilled Chinese engineers maintaining Defense Dept systems. One escort admits: "We really can't tell if what they're doing is malicious." Nothing says national security like bargain-basement oversight! 🤦‍♂️

slashdot.org/story/25/07/15/13…

#Microsoft #CyberSecurity #DefenseDepartment

Microsoft Uses Chinese Engineers To Maintain Defense Department Systems Under Minimal US Oversight - Slashdot

Microsoft employs engineers in China to help maintain Defense Department computer systems, with U.S. citizens serving as "digital escorts" to oversee the foreign workers, according to a ProPublica investigation.

^slashdot.org

Altar Egos

Michael attempts to have a one-night stand with an attorney whom he doesn't know is not only blind, but the prosecutor who is trying to put his father in jail. Also, Gob gets married on a dare, Maeby pretends to be a girl with a made up disease, and George Sr.'s admirer turns out to be an undercover SEC agent who has truly fallen for him.

wowmachineradio.com/watched/al…

Altar Egos

Michael attempts to have a one-night stand with an attorney whom he doesn't know is not only blind, but the prosecutor who is trying to put his father in jail. Also, Gob gets married on a dare…

^{Wow Machine Radio}

People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

Link: cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ba…
Discussion: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…

Felix Baumgartner, the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound, dies in crash in Italy
https://apnews.com/article/felix-baumgartner-dies-world-record-skydiver-ebbc63d04a4c88e42d847cfbf93a7a00?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into International News @international-news-AssociatedPress

Trump offers regulatory relief for coal, iron ore and chemical industries
https://apnews.com/article/trump-coal-epa-clean-air-exemption-mercury-7b800db8d6cf6fffbee28039f42d2daf?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Politics @politics-AssociatedPress

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

Female nudity, erotics, cute and sexy

#nsfw #sexy #ero #erotic

We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself.

It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.

This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales—because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

-GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"The letter to Epstein bearing Trump’s name is bawdy. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes: 'Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.'"

archive.today/lTObL

Today July 18th 2025 the joke "that's what she said" has been officially decommissioned.

It will never be funny again not once.

Federal Reserve's Waller says central bank should cut rates at next meeting
https://apnews.com/article/federal-reserve-powell-trump-14dc02f2a212067f4343037504cf1d19?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Business and Finance @business-and-finance-AssociatedPress

The WSJ has a suspicious exclusive out that Trump wrote a letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday. I call BULLSHIT on this one.

This is “Trump watches Gorilla Channel” levels of fanfiction.