Katie Duffy

Maud Lewis sits at a small table in a brightly decorated room, smiling warmly while holding a paintbrush and a small object in her hands. She wears a floral apron over a green dress and a headscarf. Around her are painting supplies, including jars, brushes, and a dark container on the table. The walls and nearby surfaces are covered with colorful folk-art paintings of flowers, animals, and simple scenes, filling the small space with bright reds, yellows, greens, and blues. Sunlight from the right side illuminates her face and the cluttered painting area.

If there was a surface, Maud Lewis painted on it.
She turned her small home into a colourful work of art.
While she was born with birth defects, she never let that stop her from capturing the beauty she saw in the world.
This is her story.

🧵 1/12

"I define consciousness by experiencing it."

- Frank Herbert, via Leto 2 I think, paraphrased.

me 🤝 Proton's comms person

explaining that you cannot simply decide a court order doesn't apply to you just because you don't like it

I did the math once and the cost of covering gender healthcare Medicaid for all 180,000 trans recipients is around $1 billion dollars. For *ten years.*

That's the amount of money being burnt in Iran every single day, to bomb schoolchildren.

Let’s talk about Graham Platner’s Big Lie, finally. In 2009, at the height of the Gulf War, the Marines barred him from active duty. Platner claims it was his forearm tattoos. But his one forbidden tattoo was the Nazi symbol on his chest. He knew - and he left the Marines rather than give it up. 1/

I’ve heard news about this and other intranasal vaccines, but I’ve never heard of one being widely available. Is it a cost issue? An efficacy issue? A “maximizing share price” issue? I ask honestly. I know many people who would prefer this method, but it never seems to be possible.

Hieroglyphics with translation texts below them that reads I made my body evolve through my own effectiveness. I am the one who made me. I built myself as I wished, according to my heart.

Just reminded myself how hard the ending of Coffin Text Spell 714 goes

Thank you, Sir, for speaking plain truth.

Sometimes, when things are rough and the world feels heavy, it helps to imagine a future where we have crushed these sons of bitches and are left to the actual business of constructing a world that we deserve and is fundamentally kind and good.

It won't end with the midterms or his death. It won't end w/ the likes of Vance, Hegseth, etc. being removed.
It only ends when the underlying ideology is stomped into the ground & racism, intolerance, misogyny, & American exceptionalism are exposed for the insidious, empty-headed beliefs they are.

This is especially true for people in rural areas, who have been suffering from a lack of investment and a lack of jobs for decades. An example from my home state: www.communitysolutions.com/resources/ru...

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

James Baldwin

This is a good overview of a thought process I find very useful: identify what people in your life are good at & appreciate that, instead of trying to get them to fill roles that they neither suit nor want. Accept who they are rather than pinning hopes on who you want them to be.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history - which is no doubt true - but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

From Hunter S. Thompson’s ESPN page 2 column one week after 9/11.

world-altering decisions are being made by a cabal of gambling addicts hell bent on self enrichment no matter the cost to humanity, we should look into that.

In hindsight, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t get a job at the Plain Dealer all those years ago. I either would have been laid off and replaced with a plagiarism machine, or I would have been expected to work with one.

Killing schoolgirls in Operation Le Epic Bacon so people forget about the dead economy and the president's pedophile best friend for ten minutes.

Remedios Varo Spanish, active Mexico 1908-1963, Still Life Reviving (Naturaleza muerta resucitando), A work made of oil on canvas.

Still Life Reviving (Naturaleza muerta resucitando), by Remedios Varo
Spanish, active Mexico 1908-1963
1963

More info: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/272394

a white PowerPoint slide that says "The Poster's Madness Rat King Special 2026: A Streaming PowerPoint Telethon for Mutual Aid" at the top against an orange oval with a sassy little green cartoon rat smirking with a lopsided crown on his head. Below it the text says "Updated total: $25,841.20"

Happy Friday, everyone! What a way to end the week. We added a few donations that rolled in after the buzzer and the updated total we got from the folks at the Marsha P. Johnson Fund, which officially brings us over $25,000 raised. We're in awe of you all. BLUESKY STILL HAS THE JUICE

Just finished the Behind the Bastards episodes on the impact of Jeffrey Epstein. And like a takeway is that he started funding anti-trans research because he allegedly SA'd a trans girl (she was 16 at the time) who turned around and sued his ass for it and he was mad that she sued him.

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account Our national project of elite impunity

After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Handbasket 100% independent journalism by Marisa Kabas

Now that CNN and WBD are set to become state media in a sale to Paramount/Oracle/TikTok, it is especially important to support independent media.

Off the top of my head:

www.thehandbasket.co
404media.co
www.garbageday.email

Add your favorites in the replies. Fuck state-backed media monopolies.

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." ~ Henri Bergson

The mass media mergers sound a death knell for television as we know it

But if you are looking for creative, cutting edge episodic shows, I strongly recommend Actual Plays of role-playing games (which you yourself might never play)

The improv & the drama & the character development will amaze you

Seized Art, Eavesdropping Guards: Parents Describe a Clampdown at Dilley Detention Center as Kids Shared Their Stories Detainees told ProPublica that art supplies have been removed in room searches, immigrants have lost access to Gmail and staff hover within earshot during video calls.

NEW: Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils & paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to detainees and others. After one inspection, the children just “cried and cried and cried,” a mother said. The facility denies the claims.

By @mckenziefunk.com @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Here it is! The latest episode of Third Country Radio features some great music from @itsgothdad.bsky.social, @twintribes.bsky.social and many more. Check it out over on @bff.fm!

It's Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto - FuelArc News We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to comp...

The Ford Pinto had a death rate of 85 people for 10 million cars sold. The Cybertruck hasn't sold 10 million, but the fatality rate so far maths out to 1,452 people killed per 10 million sold.

The Cybertruck may be the deadliest road car, for the occupants, ever sold.

fuelarc.com/evs/its-offi...

The billionaires' eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science Edge - Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon - was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds, writes Virginia Heffernan. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-lo...

Really important article, that delves into the same territory we'll be discussing in Part 4 of our new Epstein eps next week. Well worth your read!

www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

Former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank: “I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution.”

In an Intense Election Year, New Post Office Rules Could Trip Up Voter Registration - Bolts A change in how mail is postmarked could lead some voters to miss key deadlines, including voter registration. Advocates worry the people most affected will be those already facing voting barriers.

NEW: The USPS changed its rules on how it postmarks ballots.

This may affect elections at every stage at which there's a mail deadline.

An underplayed one: VOTER REGISTRATION.

Many voters who send in their registration forms by mail could be postmarked late, missing out without realizing it.