Next Major USA Nationwide Mobilization June 27th: "All of Us 250"

subdee — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:29:11 GMT

This year marks the 250th Anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence, and our country is at an unprecedented crossroads. At a time when our country should be coming together to celebrate all that we are, how far we've come, and commit to finishing the work to make America a place where freedom and equality are truly for all, a white supremacist faction is pushing our country in the opposite direction. We refuse to comply. Join us on June 27th for a unifying day of marches, rallies, and protests to reject the whitewashing of our past and future.

Of the 150 million appropriated by Congress for bipartisan celebrations, only 25 million is being used for its original purpose, while 100 million has been diverted by the Trumpists for their white supremacist and Christian Nationalist agenda and Trump glorification projects.

As Heather Cox Richardson says, "Replacing Americans' civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects."

See the event partners here. Major events are currently planned in Washington DC, Oakland, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago and NYC. You can sign up to host an event in your town here. There will be a nationwide organizing call for event hosts on June 6th.

Personally I wanted to make this post because I'm angry about the 1.1776 billion dollars Trump & co are pretending is a "settlement" for Trump's fake 10 billion against the IRS, which was about to be thrown out by the judge because Trump was directing both sides of the lawsuit.

Congressional democrats are correct, this is not a judicial settlement overseen by a court, it is a slush fund and a way for Trump to pay January 6th riots including the child molesters millions of dollars of taxpayer money with no oversight and no Congressional approval.

***

Anyway. If you're as mad as I am about these corrupt, treasonous, seditionist mofos trying to steal "1776" and the entire concept of a truth and reconciliation commission for their project to end US democracy, make a plan to attend one of these rallies on June 27th. And help spread the word.

Two reports of speakers being booed at graduation

Rash — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:50:57 GMT

Slate: The Class of 2026 Is Sick of Hearing About AI; and Karl Bode, AI Rage Is Inextricably Fused With Justified Loathing of the Extraction Class. 'Deal With It'

Brunchlords?

Chasing the Bullet

storybored — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:03:11 GMT

The secrets of the Shinkansen. Japan is the land of the train. 28 percent of passenger kilometers in Japan are travelled by rail, more than anywhere else in the developed world. France achieves 10 percent, Germany 6.4 percent, and the United States just 0.25 percent. Travel in Japan is over a hundred times more likely to be by rail than travel in the United States....

It also puts pressure on the idea that the demise of rail is the inevitable consequence of cars. All countries saw some shift to cars in the twentieth century, and all rail industries had to respond to that. But public policy had an enormous effect on how successfully they did so. The rise of zoning restrictions on density, excessive price controls, nationalization, and vertically disintegrated privatization have hampered Western rail in remaining competitive against cars since the 1920s. By maintaining and restoring the institutions that built the first railway systems in the nineteenth century, the Japanese have created the mightiest railway system of the twenty-first.

Condensed math: rewriting maths' foundations with condensed sets

kliuless — Thu, 21 May 2026 06:42:52 GMT

Two Researchers Are Rebuilding Mathematics From the Ground Up - "I think it's fair to compare Peter to Grothendieck in this sense. He is reinventing everything somehow."[0]

How Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics - "Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he's known for his unusual life, if he's known at all. But what were his actual mathematical contributions?"[1,2,3]
Alexander Grothendieck and the Architecture of a New Mathematics [ungated] - "In 1958, Grothendieck was appointed a research professor at the newly founded Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS), located in Bures-sur-Yvette, outside Paris. What followed — the twelve years from 1958 to 1970 — is simply one of the most extraordinary sustained eruptions of mathematical creativity on record."

Then, in 1970, it ended. Grothendieck discovered that the IHÉS was receiving a portion of its funding from French military sources. To many people, this might have registered as an inconvenient administrative footnote — the kind of institutional compromise one quietly accepts and moves past. Not to Grothendieck. His father had been gassed at Auschwitz. He had spent part of his childhood hiding in the woods to avoid being handed over to the same machinery of state violence. His pacifism was not a political position he had arrived at through argument; it was something closer to scar tissue. He resigned from the IHÉS immediately. He never returned to a permanent mathematical position of that kind. The mathematical community, for its part, never fully recovered his attention — and given what he had produced in those twelve years, that loss is worth sitting with for a moment.

also btw!
A ranked list of fields of math, in order of difficulty to master and understand :P

King Charles III (1948 - 2026+)

Wordshore — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:42:58 GMT

Guardian: "Due to a computer error at our main studio, the Death of a Monarch procedure, which all UK stations hold in readiness while hoping not to require, was accidentally activated on Tuesday afternoon (19 May), mistakenly announcing that HM the King had passed away." Euronews: "Caroline has been pleased to broadcast Her Majesty the Queen's and now the King's, Christmas message and we hope to do so for many years to come," he said, referring to the monarch's traditional Christmas Day message to the nation. "We apologise to HM (his majesty) the king and to our listeners for any distress caused," Moore added.

A graphic novel wins the $60,000 Stella Prize for the first time ever

chariot pulled by cassowaries — Wed, 20 May 2026 07:26:13 GMT

Graphic novel wins $60,000 [US $42,654] Stella Prize for first time in award's 14-year history. Lee Lai's debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit, was longlisted for the Stella Prize in 2022. Four years on, she's won the prestigious award for her latest book, Cannon.

As long as the roots are not severed, all will be well in the garden

kliuless — Sun, 17 May 2026 06:42:12 GMT

We May Be Entering A Second Axial Age - "The quality of what grows above the ground depends on the quality of the soil beneath it... When the social soil is healthy — when trust runs deep, when shared reality holds, when people can communicate and sense together and act from it — everything above ground flourishes. When the social soil is depleted, no amount of structural reengineering can compensate. Structures become hollow. Coordination fails. Conflicts and wars increase. The system eats its own foundations. We are living through a moment of radical depletion of our social soil."

This is soil depletion at a civilizational scale. We see it manifest in the deepening of ecological devastation, such as climate change and biodiversity loss; in social divides, including polarization and war; and in spiritual consequences, like hopelessness and feelings of insignificance. And so we find ourselves at a threshold, one where the planetary polycrisis demands not just better policies or technologies, but a shift in our structure of consciousness.

viz. Eyebrows McGee: "I do think we're going through a second Axial Age. Most large religions and major philosophies were born during the first one, when the old religions couldn't answer the increasing complexity of the world and no longer spoke to people's experiences and concerns. In that way, all our religions are struggling to cope with modern technology and communication -- and most importantly, with climate change. I don't think any will survive the 21st century in their present form, because no major religions are equipped to deal with how rapidly human society is changing."

cf. David Graeber on the Axial Age - "The phrase the 'Axial Age' was originally coined by Karl Jaspers to describe the relatively brief period between 800 BCE – 200 BCE in which, he believed, just about all the main philosophical traditions we are familiar with today arose simultaneously in China, India, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Here, I am using it in Lewis Mumford's more expansive use of the term as the period that saw the birth of all existing world religions, stretching roughly from the time of Zoroaster to that of Mohammed." (previously)

oh and speaking of soil biology, (mefi's own! ;) mathowie on Why do Oregon farms plant red clover every spring? "I must warn you that because of my masters degree in soil chemistry (that has laid fallow for over 30 years), I will go full Cliff Clavin on you whenever I'm given the chance."

also btw...
The Path to Good Health is Made of Soil - "When the soil is healthy, humans tend to be healthier. Soil health and fertility directly influence the nutritional quality of food. Healthy soils provide those essential nutrients. Soils are the medium in which food is grown and determines the quality and flavor of food... So, what is healthy soil? There are different definitions. I will characterize three. The first one is having a diverse community of a large number of microorganisms in the soil. Second is soil organic matter, which is made up of decomposed plants and animals that provide living plants with nutrition. And lastly, it is a well-developed structure so the soil is able to withstand floods, droughts and erosion by retaining water. Good soil structure also allows plant roots to reach deep into the soil and gather more nutrients. Soil health is not only one of the strongest pathways to improve the quality of nutrition, but it also increases soil's capacity to sequester carbon and support healthier ecosystems."

Cris Derksen, 1981 - 2026

jokeefe — Wed, 20 May 2026 03:21:27 GMT

The brilliant Indigenous Cellist and Composer Cris Derksen has left this world. Canadian musician and composer Cris Derksen, member of the Tallcree First Nation in northern Alberta, a founder of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, collaborator with Tanya Tagaq and many others, was killed on May 15 in a car accident while returning home from their father's funeral service.

The Canadian music and Indigenous arts worlds are in mourning. The Globe and Mail obituary (archive link), and from the Winnipeg Free Press; more tributes can be found on their Facebook page. A list of her compositions with some Youtube links is here.

Standard colour photography is a lie

TheophileEscargot — Tue, 19 May 2026 06:16:21 GMT

You've never seen a real photo . Video that explains Lippman Plates, the 130 year old colour photography technology of interference patterns. (18 minutes including 4 min of sponsored content at the end.)

"You seek followers? Seek zeroes!"

chavenet — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:25:27 GMT

I do not experience this as mere automated correction, but as true violence. I swear it doesn't just happen at the initial moment of typing the word. The machine will keep trying to disappear that last letter, like some Perecian evil demon, using every opportunity, even as slight as the chance passage of the cursor over the word, to do its tradition-hating work. If word-processors had been in use 400 years ago, you can be sure they would not have functioned like this.

Declining America

slater — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:23:27 GMT

"I'm Canadian and as a matter of principle feeling negative about visiting a neighboring country whose leader has repeatedly threatened our sovereignty and shown massive disrespect for our nationhood."

Declining America [sltb]

An old-timey radio dial for the internet

chavenet — Mon, 18 May 2026 07:56:33 GMT

An old-timey radio dial for the internet [via mefi projects]

I am going to do this the way I want to do it

jomato — Thu, 21 May 2026 04:41:14 GMT

"Mei Semones is an artist creating jazz influenced indie pop songs with lyrics in both Japanese and English, currently based in Brooklyn, NY." Her debut album is Animaru.

Music videos:

wordfind in reverse

mittens — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:08 GMT

Uncrossy is a fun game by Rob Jagnow where you move linked words to make other words, clearing them from the board. The goal, a clean slate with no words at all.

Simplicity gets complex quickly

chavenet — Tue, 19 May 2026 09:18:00 GMT

The thread of Neumann's career runs back to that breakfast with Einstein. Multics, PSOS, IDES, SEN, RISKS, CHERI—each was an argument that complexity in computing is not merely an engineering nuisance but a moral problem, because complex systems hide their failures and harm their users in ways simpler systems do not. In Memoriam: Peter G. Neumann (1932-2026)

Elite controllers

goo — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:09:22 GMT

My diagnosis seemed like a death sentence – how have I survived for another 40 years?

An elite controller is a person living with HIV who is able to maintain undetectable viral loads for at least 12 months despite not having started antiretroviral therapy (ART). Elite controllers are rare: for every two hundred people living with HIV, approximately one may be an elite controller (0.5%).

Every intellectual enemy also happened to be deeply unethical

chavenet — Sun, 17 May 2026 20:10:36 GMT

Now, more than a decade later, we are still struggling with the social ramifications of a contemptible WordPress post that got way more attention than it deserved. Behavior of the sort which previously would not have been tolerated in the most toxic of online spaces is now lauded from the South Lawn of the White House. Media has all but completely lost its credibility. The Republican Party has a serious nazi problem (as in, that's what almost all of them now are), and the Democrats are little more than controlled opposition. All this because the human embodiment of Jabba the Hutt saw an opportunity to capitalize on video games becoming a little too 'woke.'

"My life was better before I knew you."

Kattullus — Sun, 17 May 2026 21:25:25 GMT

In 1907 Edith Wharton fell head over heels in love with William Morton Fullerton, a fuccboi avant la lettre. This tumultuous relationship inspired her to write an all-timer break-up letter and a cycle of eight sonnets called The Mortal Lease. In 2023, Finnish jazz vocalist and composer Josefiina Vannesluoma released an album where she set those sonnets to music. Some of her performances with her backing band Mortal Lease can be found online.

Choughs reappear at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall after decades of absence

chariot pulled by cassowaries — Tue, 19 May 2026 07:48:06 GMT

Choughs reappear at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall after decades of absence. Choughs are considered Cornwall's national bird and feature in its coat of arms but vanished as a resident from the far south-west of the UK in the early 1970s, largely because of the decline of their grazed clifftop habitat. Their disappearance was keenly felt across Cornwall but particularly, perhaps, in and around Tintagel because of the bird's connections to the legend of King Arthur. (Cornwall, South West England)

Sesame Street has a long reach

Higherfasterforwards — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:45:23 GMT

A fish related to the seahorse has been named Mr. Snuffleupagus due to its resemblance to the character.

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