Derrell Durrett

@derrelldurrett.bsky.social

3205 Followers 1009 Following

Ex physics. Software. Life-long observer of the public morality. Devoté of Poe's Law. Potentially voluble. Boulder Colorado Born at 318 ppm CO2.

Since spring 2025, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office arrested more than a dozen suspects with alleged ties to Chinese organized crime who officials said were traveling across the country and using stolen credit card information to purchase gift cards and launder money. In a review of cell phones seized in connection with the cases, investigators found the suspects were using special apps that contained the stolen credit card information but disguised them as games to evade detection. “They look like anime games. They kind of look like Pokemon characters,” said Lawson, who’s been investigating the fraud ring. “We would just kind of start tapping on them … and we would find the ones that were the actual tap-to-pay apps.” On a national level, Homeland Security Investigations’ Project Red Hook targets gift card fraud and other forms of digital retail crime. So far, it has led to at least 239 arrests since January 2024 and is targeting some of the largest Chinese organized crime groups operating in the U.S., HSI said.
A cat looks somewhere besides the camera.
Text of Article VI is pictured. Section 3 reads: 3. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Image of text from article: And yet we’ve reached the stage where we can peer through the fog and see how this grand experiment might be heading toward its conclusion. Much of the country has eased into a comfortable equilibrium of sclerosis; local veto power either prevents the construction of factories, housing, energy, transportation, and other infrastructure, or delays it by decades, or raises the cost to multiples of what other rich countries pay. The past has become more valuable than the future to many Americans; they cling desperately to the power to enforce stasis, preserving a facade of the country they grew up in at the expense of the very dynamism that made that country great.
Image of text from article: Lets start by saying this is blatantly anti-constitutional, though of course it’s possible that the corrupt Supreme Court will allow it.
Text from image: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Image of text from article: Now, it is important to say that even as we use the language of motion to describe election results, the fact of the matter is that the outcome is set at the moment the polls close. Someone won; the job of election officials is to count the votes and say who that was. There is no “blue shift” or “red mirage.” Nothing changes when a candidate starts strong and then falls behind; that movement is nothing more than an artifact of the order in which ballots are counted.
A white flower with long frilly bits and absurdly long stamens.
A ragdoll cat naps on a pillow.
Text from article: "I am deeply concerned about the situation in Toledo tonight," Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement. "Summer festivals should be safe spaces for families to spend time together without fear of violence."
The famous Matt Bors cartoon (@mattbors.bsky.social). Four-panel comic: Panel 1: Woman looking at phone: My GAWD these Trump people are racist. MAGA guy: That attitude is what's pushing me to be racist! P2: W: Say what? MG: Might as well! You say I'm a Nazi, so, fine, I'll be a Nazi if that makes you happy. P3: W: It doesn't. MG: I bought this Waffen SS uniform for Halloween. You'll cry "Offensive!" so maybe I'll just wear it every day. P4: MG, shaving his head, getting a swastika tattoo: I just hate to do this. I feel bullied, really.
Two fledgling American robins just prior to leaving their nest.
A very furry cat licks her front paw while curled on a futon.
A cat loves on some shoes.
A very furry cat cleans herself lying on a couch.
A ragdoll cat looks slightly left to the camera as she lounges on a bed.
2880 Diagonal Hwy Boulder from satellite on Google maps.
A weird lenticular cloud above a parched brown landscape.
Image of text from article: For many years, a robust norm held in American politics: You could be in favor of legal immigration while still opposing illegal immigration. The two were fundamentally different, the thinking went, and supporting one while opposing the other was a coherent, mainstream position. That norm is now in danger of collapsing—under pressure not only from the right, but from left-leaning immigration advocates and scholars who have coalesced around the idea that all immigration restrictions are indefensible, abandoning the legal/illegal distinction in the process.
Image of text from article: How the hell did we manage to do this? I mean, the objective reality is that this was never going to be... Maybe it wasn’t even going to be doable. There were reasons why we didn’t go to war with Iran, particularly why we didn’t go to war in a way that basically became an existential threat for the regime so that they have no compunction about creating lots of damage because the alternative result is annihilation for them personally. But everybody who thought about it even for a couple of minutes, anyone who knew anything, particularly anyone who’d been paying attention to four years of war in Ukraine … we know something about what modern war looks like and about the inability of countries that have conventional superior forces to avoid major damage from drones and missiles. So this was completely, unbelievably stupid. How did we get there? Well, there was a very good article by Tobin Harshaw in Bloomberg, and mostly I’m just riffing off what he wrote, but I think that it deserves wider circulation. He resurrected a book I had forgotten about, a 1976 book by Norman Dixon called The Psychology of Military Incompetence. It was very British oriented, but the lessons apply; Dixon looked at the great military disasters of British history.
A sign outside a shower room in a public rec center which has a "shower emoji" above the text "Slow the flow/Save H2O" (except written like a chemist there at the end).
À giant mobula swims above the camera.
A dolphin swims around the camera and then away into the briny deep.
A plaque under water marking the location as the Archipelago de Revillagigedo as "bien natural de patrimonio mundial."
Image of text: Mr. Trump has displayed growing frustration over how the war is disrupting the oil supply, telling Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and sail through the Strait of Hormuz.
A Lalo Alcaraz cartoon depicting a patch for "Operation Epstein Fury" where many smart weapons are aimed at a box labeled "Epstein Files". The Lalo touch is that the patch is basically head shaped and there's a red necktie where Donald Trump would wear it.
A black cat named Nazgûl stares quizzically into the camera.
A Lalo Alcaraz cartoon in which two masked ICE agents wearing red armbands with a black T on a white circle background stand next to a burning trash can in which a copy of the Constitution burns. There is a trail of blood behind them staining the snow, and an SUV parked in the background. One says, "Well, I'm kinda sad we're leaving Minnesota." The other replies, "I won't miss the weather. But we did some good work here."
Image of text from article: If you’ve never seen a laser shoot an aircraft out of the sky, the experience can be unsettling. The weapon fits comfortably into the trunk of a car. It makes no noise and emits no light, not even the glowing red beam that’s so familiar from the movies. When a team of Ukrainian soldiers and engineers took me to see their prototype the other day, it seemed easy to use. Almost too easy.
Image of text from article: “There are no real safeguards anymore,” he said, “until people recognize that we’re all potential targets.”
A Lalo Alcaraz cartoon, in which the president, wearing a KKK hood ear patch, is restrained and bound in a padded room whilst reporters aim microphones at him, asking "Mr President, how's your immigration crackdown going?" and he responds loudly, "Pretti! Good!"
Image of text from article: “What’s worse, you get stopped, you exercise your rights, and you risk forcibly being taken away?” she asked herself. “Or you just give in?”
A Berkeley Breathed "The Bloom County Boys" 4-panel comic. Panel 1: Steve's mom answers the door, with a variety of guns pointed in her face. Steve's mom: Goodness, fellas! So late for an ICE raid! Faceless goons: We're here for the Pluto peace ingot left behind by the alien immigrant invaders. Panel 2: Steve's mom: Oh, but first Boopsie-Daisy's special hot whiskey toddies! Panel 3: Steve's mom makes said toddies whilst Opus looks on "Hmmm hmmm." Panel 4: Steve's mom: Down the hatch! (Mostly Horse Tranquilizer, says a bubble that points at the toddies.) Goons: Yum!
A woman in a wheelchair beams while looking up at the stage during the 2024 GOP national convention. She's wearing a baseball jersey with "Alabama" written in a script font, and is holding a sign that says "MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW!"
A clearly decaying Donald Trump (wearing a KKK ear patch) is seen chasing Greenland, which is holding a Nobel Prize medal in this 2026 Lalo Alcaraz cartoon.
Image of text: The Supreme Court is running into a problem: There appears to be a gap between what the court writes in its opinions and what the justices in the majority actually mean.
Image of text from article: Is this America now? A country where unaccountable and poorly trained government agents go door to door, arresting and beating people on pure suspicion, and shooting people who don’t obey their every order or who try to get away? “When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life” is a perfect description of an authoritarian police state. None of this is Constitutional, every bit of it is deeply antithetical to the American values we grew up taking for granted.
Image of text from message: Rent is on the way. We got paid our tips and such today as we now only get them every Tuesday so just waiting for it to clear into my omaha account and then can Zelle the rest. Sorry for it being late. I tried to see if I could get paid when I worked Sunday and it was a no go. My cb bank doesn't zelle or anything so it takes a little bit longer to get it from here to there. She ( my boss) almost took cash tips away that we used to get at the end of every shift and was going to do them via paycheck. We begged her not to do this so the compromise was all tips paid out only once a week. Thanks for your understanding!
She's out there somewhere.
A racoon sleeping in a tree.
The playbill for Waiting for Godot, starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.
A photograph of the book, "This Year: 365 Songs Annotated" by John Darnielle, in my lap.
Image of text from article. An agreement to transfer U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to help it build a civilian nuclear energy program and diversify its economy away from oil, a central part of Bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan.
A post from Matt Novak quoting a post from Marisa Kabas, in which Greg Bovino is Heinlein classic Starship Troopers.
An image that depicts actual growth of installed solar electric generation capacity as against projections from the IEA. Said capacity has risen from about 50 GW to about 700 in the en years since, and every projection from the IEA has either been flat or has expected a decrease, when instead it has increased all but two years in the middle of the first Trump administration. Text from the article: 3. Solar is spreading faster than we thought it would. Solar power has been the largest source of new electricity generation for the last three years. Most of this new solar infrastructure is coming up inside China, and Chinese companies are making so much surplus solar equipment cells, modules and everything that goes into them that prices have plummeted. Forecasts keep underestimating solar growth Source: IEA STEPS via BNEF and Embe Today, solar panels hang from apartment balconies in Germany and cover vast areas of desert in Saudi Arabia. Solar and onshore wind projects offer the cheapest source of new electricity generation. Little wonder, then, that in India's electricity sector, more than half of the generation capacity now comes from solar, wind and hydropower.
An image that depicts actual growth of installed solar electric generation capacity as against projections from the IEA. Said capacity has risen from about 50 GW to about 700 in the en years since, and every projection from the IEA has either been flat or has expected a decrease, when instead it has increased all but two years in the middle of the first Trump administration. Text from the article: 3. Solar is spreading faster than we thought it would. Solar power has been the largest source of new electricity generation for the last three years. Most of this new solar infrastructure is coming up inside China, and Chinese companies are making so much surplus solar equipment cells, modules and everything that goes into them that prices have plummeted. Forecasts keep underestimating solar growth Source: IEA STEPS via BNEF and Embe Today, solar panels hang from apartment balconies in Germany and cover vast areas of desert in Saudi Arabia. Solar and onshore wind projects offer the cheapest source of new electricity generation. Little wonder, then, that in India's electricity sector, more than half of the generation capacity now comes from solar, wind and hydropower.
A spider hangs in its web, with Somo Somo Strait on the background as seen from Taveuni.
Image of text from article: ... With a sure psychological aim that philosophers would envy, Klein strikes each intended victim at precise-ly that sore point where he is most vulnerable to persuasion. What motivates Klein? Only idealism. And if we open our eyes we find idealism everywhere, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Near the California coast we are greeted by the two white towers of the Lick Observatory, the work of an idealist and hundredfold millionaire. More of that later. I have often asked myself which is the more remarkable fact about America: that millionaires are idealists, or that idealists become millionaires. What a fortunate land!...
Crazy MAGA stuff with a lot of words. They're meaningless.
A woman holds two trombetta squash that are each at least a meter fifty long.
Boulder Colorado No Kings protest two hours in
At one point, President Trump instructed several prominent conservative media figures present — all of whom said they’d been victimized by Antifa for reporting on them — to share their knowledge with top national security officials. “Do you know the name of any of the funders?” Trump asked the roundtable. “Because if you do, I’d like you to give them to Kash or Pam or Kristi — as soon as you can." The floundering attempts to actually find an organized Antifa entity reflects a virtually 180 degree turn from previous government articulations of the group. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that although Antifa is a “real thing … it’s not a group or an organization.” Wray instead likened Antifa to “a movement or an ideology.”
Image of text from article: As journalists walked out of the building, taking our collective centuries of experience on the beat with us, we passed dozens of locked doors leading to secure rooms that we have never entered. Inside those rooms sat career military officers and civilians, some of whom believe that the oath to protect secrets and the responsibility to engage with the American public through the press are two values that can coexist. In recent days, mid-level troops have been reaching out to me, unsolicited, and promising that they would keep providing journalists with information, not to snub their civilian leaders but to uphold the values embedded in the Constitution. Retired spokespeople have written to me to say that they, too, have felt like they are losing something with the media’s departure. As I said goodbye to the cleaning crews, the Pentagon police, the troops, and the longtime civilian staffers, what I heard was, in effect, a collective sigh. I repeatedly heard stories of people asking themselves, How long can I stay here? Some said they were tired of watching colleagues be pushed out, fearful of when they themselves would be asked to sign new rules that they felt went against their oath to defend the Constitution or their personal ethics. “I am tired of new rules,” one civilian told me. “They clearly don’t want us,” an Army colonel said.
A woman with a glass of wine on a patio
A ragdoll cat on the back of a couch in the soft light of a skylight.
Image of text from article: Given all this, the opposition — to be an actual opposition — has to find the sources of power it has at its disposal and use them to their absolute limit. Most of that power, as we’ve discussed, is in the independent sovereignties of the states. The need for votes for “continuing resolutions” to fund the government is basically the only locus of power for the congressional opposition. They not only have to use that power for whatever they can get with it, they need to show there is an opposition out there willing to fight the imposition of a presidential autocracy. If they’re not, who else will have the courage or inclination to take any risks and fight? An opposition requires morale to remain in the fight and endure while its opponents are holding most of the power.
Image of a card in Google News with text saying: At Marine Corps Base Quantico, top military leaders convened as General Dan Caine warned of aligning adversaries. "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth announced rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War, prioritizing warfighting readiness and "peace through strength." President Trump also addressed the leaders, discussing significant military investments and emphasizing merit. The rest of the text says that it's from DWS News, and links to YouTube.
Image of text from article: But while gatekeeping can be abused, it played a valuable societal role. Much as the Paradox of Tolerance explains how the one thing a tolerant society cannot tolerate is intolerance, a rule of law democracy cannot tolerate lie-based rejection of election results, treating any group as subhuman, or a standard under which one politician can break laws without consequence. A democratic society needs people in Ezra Klein's position to treat Charlie Kirk's anti-democracy stances as disqualifying, rather than pretend they're just another policy opinion like tax rates. Media leaders are among those responsible for making sure ideas relegated to the dustbin of history stay there. In this specific instance, the impact is giving people who didn't know of Charlie Kirk the false impression he was a supporter of free speech gunned down because others can't tolerate open dialogue. That in turn provides some cover for crackdowns on free speech in Kirk's name. But in the aggregate, this glaring media malpractice brought fascists into the mainstream, laundered their arguments, and cultivated complacency the fascists were happy to exploit. And still are.
Image of text from article: The longest known drop-kicked field goal in college football was a 62-yard kick from Pat O'Dea, an Australian kicker who played for Wisconsin. O'Dea's kick took place in a blizzard against Northwestern on November 15, 1898.[32]