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Wherever I look, my gaze can find something horrific on which to focus. Whether it be news of atrocities committed by our fascist-leaning governments, obvious acceleration towards environmental collapse, or the Criterion Collection’s glaring omission of the Jackass series, heinous evils are all around us.

Yet, despite it all, I still believe in the unassailable goodness of humanity.

I also believe that the Easter Bunny is a real, tangible creature capable of wielding magic and producing plastic eggs filled with individually wrapped candies.

Throughout human history, righteousness inevitably triumphs over evil. Yes, sometimes the darkness becomes so strong and oppressive that we forget what the light is like. And that darkness can last for so long that people live entire lives in its grip. But eventually, the light always returns.

When the viral video cooled off, people thought the case against the 62-year-old would be dropped. Prosecutors doubled down.

The post Grandmother Faces Trial in Alabama for Wearing Penis Costume to No Kings Protest appeared first on The Intercept.

FEATURES:

• Middle-aged athletes
• Scoobers
• Coke Slurpees
• The unknowable future

In July of 2025, I flew out to Aurora, Colorado, with my wife and some friends to see if we were still the best forty-something ultimate frisbee players in the United States of America. We’d been training for months, and for decades. A gold medal from 2024 hung in my closet in Minneapolis, gave a muted clink when I reached for my khakis, but in the meantime, a whole other crop of mid-forties motherfuckers had sprung up or aged into the grand masters division. They wanted to snatch our gold.

I hope you’re proud of yourself, Harold. That nice Jesus boy has died, and it’s all your fault. He had prospects, that Jesus, a nice carpentry business going. And that voice! He could climb a mount and give a sermon, and you’d be rapt. Rapt, I tell you! And now, pfffft.

All because of you, Harold, you and your sin. That one sin.

Oh, you know perfectly well which one, Harold. Don’t make me spell it out for you. We’ve all seen you. You think we didn’t notice, but a sin like that, how could we not? Any sensible person would tell themself it wasn’t right. A normal person, a good person, would know in his heart that this sin they were doing was bringing on eternal damnation. Not just for you, Harold, but for all of humankind. Such a sin!

We were all going to go to H-E-L-L, Harold, because of that sin of yours. And on a weekday evening. Who sins like that on a worknight? There were children nearby.

Journalist Sarah Posner on how the Christian right’s end times views are shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policies.

The post Trump’s Holy War Abroad and at Home appeared first on The Intercept.

There are only so many actual words to describe our specific emotional states. Why not come up with some of your own?

- by Hannah Seo

Read on Psyche

Humanitarian journalism is a moral calling to document human suffering. But in practice, it’s an ethically murky undertaking

- by Cathy Otten

Read on Aeon

Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Downing Street visit offered him a reunion with the British intel operatives who groomed the former Al Qaeda warlord to become president of Syria. When Syria’s “interim” leader Ahmed al-Sharaa touched down in London on March 31, he was given a much warmer welcome than many once thought possible. As the longtime leader of Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch, the US had been offering a $10 million bounty for information on his location just 15 months prior. Yet here was […]

The post His Majesty’s head-chopper: Syria’s MI6-backed president bows to King Charles first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post His Majesty’s head-chopper: Syria’s MI6-backed president bows to King Charles appeared first on The Grayzone.

The U.S.–Israel war on Iran has reignited a long-simmering front in Iraq, where resistance groups like Kataeb Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq are launching coordinated drone and missile attacks on American targets, including Ain al-Assad airbase and facilities inside Baghdad’s Green Zone. What Washington once declared finished in 2003 is rapidly unraveling into a new phase of war — one defined by blowback, as battle-hardened Iraqi factions degrade U.S. defenses and push American forces out of Iraq.

The post Iran War Blowback: Iraqi Resistance Targets U.S. Forces in Biggest Escalation Since 2003 appeared first on MintPress News.

For years, U.S. strategy has relied on the assumption that sanctions, economic pressure, and military force would weaken adversaries and trigger internal collapse. But as economist Michael Hudson has argued, that logic misunderstands how nations respond under existential threat. “This war will decide whether the U.S. controls the global oil trade — or whether the world becomes independent of it,” Hudson said, framing the conflict as a turning point in the global economic order.

The post Global Energy Shock: Iran Turns Hormuz Into A Toll Gate Challenging Petrodollar appeared first on MintPress News.

A cohort of 42 media organizations and press freedom advocates filed an amicus brief supporting court decisions against Trump’s attempts to censor the press and legal profession.

The post The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund Leads Cohort Fighting Trump’s Unconstitutional Media Attacks appeared first on The Intercept.

A series of arson attacks and alleged incidents targeting alleged Jewish-linked sites across Europe have been attributed to a little-known group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), or Ashab al-Yamin allegedly linked to the IRGC. At the same time, governments across Europe and the UK are moving to formally designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization — a policy long pushed by pro-war, pro-Israel lobbying networks. Many of the same actors amplifying the HAYI narrative are also leading that campaign within Western media to manufacture consent for war and accelerate this political objective of proscription. While raising the possibility that unverified claims of an Iran-linked threat are being leveraged to shape public fear and justify sweeping new security measures tied to the widening war. This investigation examines each reported attack, the sources promoting the HAYI narrative, and how claims of a coordinated campaign may be shaping public perception — fueling fears of rising antisemitism, calls for expanded security measures and proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation amid an illegal war. 

Let me make something crystal clear to members of the press. I didn’t come to Washington to play games. I didn’t come here to pose for the cameras or rub elbows at some swanky Georgetown cocktail party. I came here for one reason only: to represent the good people who live in my walls. Period.

The folks back in my home are angry, and it’s high time I stop being the only one who hears them.

When my constituents in the three inches of space behind my drywall communicate with me through static electricity or the dripping of my faucet, they tell me one thing over and over again: light a post office on fire. Yet when I bring up the issue on the floor, all I get is physically restrained.

Instead of working toward solutions, it seems like everyone in Washington is more interested in silencing the people who can actually speak directly to the founding fathers in their dreams.

Let me remind everyone here, none of this is new. I was extremely transparent about my devoted relationship with the people in my walls on the campaign trail. I said it at town halls. I said it on bodybuilding forums. I said it as I ran unopposed in the Republican primary.

The post Endgame appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

On Thursday, Sanders waded into the New York City race between progressives and socialists to replace Nydia Velázquez.

The post Bernie Sanders Backs Claire Valdez in NYC House Race Dividing Left and Progressives appeared first on The Intercept.

Plant roots don’t have a nervous system, yet can produce sophisticated responses. What does that say about intelligence?

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

Delivering sincere compliments is a skill you can learn – and, done well, it’s an easy way to spread more joy in the world

- by Lisa Pavia-Higel

Read on Psyche