This July 4th reminds me that I only learned a few years ago that the Statue of Liberty is an anti-slavery monument created by a French abolitionist back in 1865 to celebrate emancipation, so I tell my little cousins about the broken chains at her feet any chance I get.
Someone sent me this link. If this is true... us people are seriously mental diseased.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@argonaut/116862256637443962
Happy Fourth of July to those who celebrate the nation that we were and that we can be again.
"it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate.”
3/3
Remember: it is we, the people, that rule the United States of America, and only we can enforce or abdicate that power.
Happy Fourth of July.
"All power centres in its bosom; and scarcely an individual is to be meet with who would venture to conceive, or, still less, to express, the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive government;"
2/3
Chapter IV: The Principle Of The Sovereignty Of The People In America.
“Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831.
“In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society governs itself for itself.”
1/3
I can't quote BSky posts as the bridge doesn't allow it, so you'll have to read this thread there. But you should if you want to know the conditions trans people in the US are living under.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:esrrgaktqbyod6pcd7fvh66x/post/3mpr3fjwnik2p
Ars “Technica” @arstechnica seems not to know the difference between kilowatt and kilowatt-hour:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/07/us-home-battery-installations-hit-record-high-in-early-2026/
Journalists are in the business of choosing words and the #BrokenTimes chooses them terribly. "Windfall" is "unexpected good fortune". The correct word is "corruption".
On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against 16-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson, who had been fighting for five years to compete on her school's girls' track team as a transgender athlete. James Dale lost at the same court 26 years ago, after he had been expelled from the Boy Scouts for being gay. Here's an open letter from Dale to Pepper-Jackson, showing his support and admiration for her.
Why are Trump and Vance ruining the Fourth of July? Because it is hard to celebrate the ideals of the Declaration of Independence if you don't believe in them
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/america-250-july-4-idea/687749/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK35gHMHkra7ssspyohng6MUY
AI 'Artists' all be like...
the only thing ai has done very well is showing us how little thinking most people really do.
You know this, I know this, it's still nice to have a comic about it.
@MamasPinkyToe
and the lesson of the kobayashi maru exercise should be that you help others even if you’ll die, because you’ll die anyway, and dying without helping others is dying in vain.
@MamasPinkyToe
life is a kobayashi maru, and no one gets out of it alive. not even that smart-arse kirk.
if one steals from one person, and the police can find what one stole, then one gets detained and pressumed guilty.
if one steals form everybody, and all the police find is an enormous, uncountable mix of things for which provenience cannot be fully traced, then one may be let free and presumed innocent.
or so seem to establish the ai companies and the british museum.
if i tell them something stupid, vacuous, and trivial, that makes them simply chuckle for a second, they like me.
if i help them with a bit of knowledge they did not have that will make what they said better and more complete, they choose to see it as a belittling, a denigration, and don’t like me that much, or at all, anymore.
learning and knowing is hard because we choose to make it hard.