Tootfinder

"MediaMatters for America" is good to read. ALWAYS. Here's their story about how media is reporting on, and ignoring, our own governments plans to implement NAZI "ethnic cleansing" deportations.
https://www.mediamatt…

Mainstream media ignore Trump’s planned Office of Remigration, a term for ethnic cleansing
Mainstream media outlets almost entirely ignored news that the Trump administration is reportedly reorganizing the State Department to include a new “Office of Remigration.” “Remigration” is a term long used by far-right extremists to describe ethnic cleansing. 

A report on Gregg Wallace substantiates 45 allegations made against the former BBC presenter, including claims of unwelcome physical contact (Michael Savage/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/14/report-g…

Sources: ByteDance is working on a lightweight MR device that resembles goggles, tethered to a compute puck, and has a team working on the device's custom chips (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedance-developin…

ByteDance Developing Mixed Reality Goggles in Challenge to Meta
Competition in mixed reality devices is heating up. TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, is working on a lightweight mixed reality device that resembles a pair of goggles, according to three people with direct knowledge of the project. It’s following in the footsteps of Meta Platforms, which has been ...

Calamus 33 No labor-saving machine
Another poem in a style I don't care for. A series of negations, Whitman declaiming all the things he is not doing. On a theme I also don't care for, Whitman talking about his own legacy.
The nice part is what he does imagine his legacy to be:
these carols, vibrating through the air, I leave,
For comrades and lovers.
I love that phrase "vibrating through the air", delicious poetry. And once again Whitman's declares his passion for comrades and lovers, a return to the central gay theme of Calamus.

MAGA Sen. Mocked for Absurdly Calling Dem Assassin 'Marxist' (The Daily Beast)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-senator-mike-lee-mocked-for-absurdly-calling-dem-assassin-marxist/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250615/p73#a250615p73

Kamizdat – Access Frame: Autonomy
#byncnd

I asked AI to design a challenge coin* for the U.S. Marines for their campaign in Los Angeles against the American people.
Here’s what it suggests. Are you few the proud yet?
*medallion recognizing membership/achievement/boost morale, often collected or exchanged.
#USpol #USMC

Belarus shoots down Russian drone, Ukraine's HUR claims: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/14/belarus-shoots-down-russian-drone.html

Calamus 34 I dreamed in a dream
On the surface this short poem is a sort of City on a Hill vision. But I'm going to go with a more radical reading.
This poem reads to me as a fantasy of a gay society. A city of men, lovers, set apart from the rest of the world.
a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth ...
the quality of robust love ...
the actions of the men of that city
And in all their looks and words.
I can't plausibly argue Whitman conceived of a city set apart in the way I imagine. Although all of Calamus is him constructing the idea of a society of lovers, comrades, brothers, robust love. That to me is very gay.
Intriguingly, in the unpublished Live Oak draft of this poem it is even more explicitly gay:
I saw them tenderly love each other ...
Nothing was greater there than manly love
It seems to me he dreamed a very gay city.

The Big Circus Project – Iris
#alternative