Black Swallowtail in the front garden.

#SilentSunday #Stunday #blackswallowtail #photography #butterfly #butterflyphotography #butterfliesofmastodon #ButterflyAndFlowers #insect #insectphotography #zinnia #gardening

Pretty cool. Android phones could soon warn you of “Stingrays” snooping on your communications.

Now if they could only warning me of fake numbers and scams.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/future-android-phones-could-warn-you-about-data-stealing-fake-cell-towers/

Happy Fourteenth Amendment Day for those who observe.

“ALL PERSONS born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein their reside.”

What could be clearer?

💗😽Every year, in #Minneapolis, cat people tour their neighbourhood to see each other's cats!

#Cat #Cats #CatsOfMastodon #CatsOfFediverse #Caturday #EveryDayIsCaturday

Okay, I've mentioned this a few times, but let's talk about The Orange Alternative. It's Poland in the 80's and an art history student noticed that when someone would paint an anti-authoritarian message, it would very quickly get painted over by the government. He decided to paint a dwarf with an orange hat any time he'd see the white paint that covered these messages. Soon other people were doing the same. They embraced this kind of absurdism, what the government was doing was ridiculous, so they leaned into it. The paintings of dwarves soon became organized street parties. They would all wear orange pointy hats and walk through the streets with banners, chanting Dwarf Dwarf Dwarf! They would pool what little extra funds they had together and buy things that people needed like toliet paper and tampons, and would have street fairs with food and dancing, and hand them out. At Christmas, they would dress as Santas, and do the same. The police were flummoxed by what to do, if they arrested people for wearing hats and giving out tampons, they looked foolish and would be embarrassed, not sure what to do with these surreal forms of protest.

There is so much more to this, definitely read up on it, but it was an effective form of protest, creating community, spreading joy and absurdism, because authoritarian governments are absurd. Protests are going to look like a lot of different things, and this is just one of them.

In Russia, they have created Little Picketers, tiny rough clay figures holding banners, that they press into people's hands to remind them, that they aren't alone.

So, don't believe the propaganda, you aren't alone in caring, you aren't alone in wanting a different world, put on your goofiest hat, and let people know they aren't alone either.

For the indefinite future nothing good is going to come from the federal government, and that is horrible.

But let us use federalism and the 15 blue state trifectas where we do have power in the meantime.

For example, we can move forward with CalCare to show universal health care is possible in other states.