Reblogged terriwriting
Reblogged wtf-skittens
Amazing.
Reblogged vermillionquinn
QPID
Let's be honest, this episode was really starring Worf.
Reblogged beesandwasps
The faces are different, but it’s the same authoritarianism. Keir Starmer’s team might not look or sound like Donald Trump’s, but its policies on protest and dissent are chillingly similar. So is the reason: coordinated global lobbying by the rich and powerful, fronted by rightwing junktanks. Last week, six young women were having tea and biscuits in the Quaker meeting house in Westminster. Twenty police officers forced open the door and arrested them on conspiracy charges. Had the police discovered a plot to blow up parliament or to poison the water supply? No. It was an openly advertised, routine meeting of a protest group called Youth Demand, discussing climate breakdown and the assault on Gaza. I spoke to one of the arrested women, Jennifer Kennedy. She says she is not an activist, but a student journalist who was covering the meeting. Her phone, camera and laptop were confiscated. She was held incommunicado for 16 hours: in other words, like the others arrested, she was not allowed to make a phone call, so family and friends had no idea where she was. This is a tactic that is used for serious organised crime, terrorism or espionage, to prevent suspects from disposing of evidence, intimidating witnesses or alerting other spies. While she was held, she says that the police searched her flat, looking through her books and frightened her flatmate. The police justified the raid by claiming that Youth Demand plan to “shut down London”. What this has meant previously is 10-minute blockages of individual roads: “shut downs” of the kind YD has carried out many times before. -Police forces claim to be under-resourced. But they spend vast sums and launch huge deployments against unthreatening protests. Last year they sent over 1,000 officers from 39 forces, spending £3m, to shut down a climate camp and arrest 24 people, on the grounds that they might have been planning to occupy a road outside a power station. At the same time, they fail even to investigate serious organised crime, citing insufficient resources. The police, governments and the media have sought to conflate peaceful protest with extremism and terrorism. Protest methods used for centuries, such as blocking roads, have been recast as the end of civilisation.
continue reading
Source: theguardian.com
Reblogged cyborg-alchemist
hey it's probably a really good idea to download a copy of your Master Promissory Note since most of them stipulate that your loans are *specifically owed to the Department of Education* and if you intend to dispute the debt in the wake of the DoE dissolving that will be really good to have
log in and then go to My Documents and download a copy of it. i'm serious. if trump dissolves the DoE entirely it may make the debt uncollectable depending on exactly how they do it, and he's too stupid to listen to lawyers that tell him when he's breaking the law. worst case you have an extra PDF on your computer. best case your student loans go away because you signed a contract to pay DoE and no one else. go download a copy.
Love the spirit of this, but they will probably use a debt assignment to legally transfer the debt to a new entity.
Investopedia has an article about the practice here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/debtassignment.asp
Always a good idea to have a copy of your note, though! And the proper transfer process is described in the FDCPA (an act of congress), so if the new debt owner fails to provide appropriate notice, you may have relief options there. (Potentially dependent on the CFPB continuing to function, which it….might not…)
~not legal advice, just work experience in finance~
I stated this elsewhere but the Higher Education Act has specific language about when debt is allowed to be sold - they can't just sell it at any time for any reason, and all the terms of the Act would still apply to the loan since in most cases the MPN stipulates as much (since the actual terms of a promissory note can't be altered without consent even if the payee changes). Specifically, they cannot sell the debt if it "result[s] in any cost to the Federal Government". Reassigning the loans to another agency would incur a massive cost since that agency would have to hire new personnel and build new infrastructure, eliminating the possibility of a sale within the government, and a sale to a private third party would made debt validation very tricky for that party since FERPA would prevent disclosure of a borrower's SSN, student ID number (ergo, the account number), and the itemization of the debt without written consent, meaning in that scenario the borrower could most likely* refuse this disclosure, dispute the debt, and win pretty easily.
*not a lawyer
the bottom line, if they attempt to reassign your loans anywhere... REQUEST DEBT VALIDATION BEFORE PAYING A CENT.
Reblogged theabigailthorn
A comic based on this poem
Reblogged justsayin59
Reblogged
I know most people don't care about anything unless it has to do with the U.S. but can we please start talking about the Canadian election.
Please don't vote for Poilievre. He's basically the Canadian Trump and plans to put in place laws that harm trans youth, and lots of other shit.
Please vote istg this is the only way anything will get better. Poilievre has been kissing millionaires and billionaires asses. He'll make life even harder, and he loves Trump.
Reblogs are appreciated, especially if you aren't Canadian.
Reblogged truth-has-a-liberal-bias
Source: pinterest.com
Reblogged reading-writing-revolution
Heather Cox Richardson just handed us the clearest, most unflinching blueprint of how the U.S. government is being dismantled under the second Trump administration—and she backed every word with receipts. Her March 27, 2025 dispatch isn’t analysis. It’s evidence. It’s a field report from the front lines of a soft coup.
The scale of what she wrote felt too outrageous to be real.
Venmo payments with eggplant emojis tied to a Signal chat about bombing the Houthis?
A Department of Government Efficiency that’s already cost the U.S. $500 billion?
The IRS gutted. HHS torched. Social Security collapsing?
Surely this was speculative—some dystopian metaphor.
It wasn’t. Every detail she cited came from real reporting by real journalists in Wired, The Washington Post, Reuters, NBC News, The New York Times, and more.
Richardson didn’t theorize—she documented. And the result is devastating.
Here’s just a fraction of what she laid out:
• DOGE, Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” has cost $500 billion—10% of all IRS revenue from last year.
• 20,000 IRS employees fired, especially in enforcement. Billionaire audits? Gone.
• HHS cut $12 billion in mental health and disease tracking grants, then laid off 10,000 more workers, including 3,500 from the FDA and 2,400 from the CDC.
• Social Security’s website crashed 4 times in 10 days. New rules require in-person ID checks for people without internet.
• A Tufts student was detained by ICE after writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed.
• The Department of Education is being shut down.
• FEMA is next.
• Columbia University had $400 million withheld until it complied with Trump’s cultural directives.
• Mike Johnson is openly floating the idea of eliminating federal courts.
• Words like “climate crisis,” “diversity,” “segregation,” and even “peanut allergies” are being purged from federal communications.
• And J.D. Vance is now in charge of purging the Smithsonian of what the administration calls “anti-American ideology.”
This isn’t dysfunction. It’s doctrine.
It’s Project 2025, written by Russell Vought, now head of the Office of Management and Budget, and championed by Vance, who once said:
“Unless we overthrow [the current ruling class]… we’re going to keep losing."
and
“We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power.”
Heather Cox Richardson took that ruthlessness seriously. She traced it from the eggplant emoji to the ICE van. From the IRS to the Smithsonian. From the layoffs to the list of banned words.
She didn’t write a warning.
She wrote the truth.
And she deserves our full attention.
Reblogged justsayin59
Reblogged terriwriting
Apparently the US have been detaining European greencard holders, upon their return to the US after travels. Some have been deported to their countries of origin, some are held in prison in the US. A French man has been rejected entrance into the country over him having messages on his phone criticial of Trump, he was sent back to France after overnight detention. A German woman with a tourist visa was equally rejected and send back after overnight detention without access to her medication.
As of yesterday Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Canada have revised their travel guidelines for the US. This includes warnings over being denied entry despite a visa, detention and the US no longer recognizing the X gender marker in passports.
For the first time, the UN has advised all staff in New York to carry their UN IDs and copies of passports and visas at all times in case of being stopped by authorities. This precaution is due to increased scrutiny by U.S. immigration authorities under the trump administration, even affecting those with legal residence status.
Reblogged justsayin59
Hey, y'all! I made these today! I release them into the world to support the cause! They're sized for 8.5x11 printer paper. Take 'em. Print 'em. Post 'em EVERYWHERE.
Reblogged transcatgirl551