Jeff

Why I love my Soviet Labubu A wistful Lafufu.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that labubus are just knock off cheburashki.

The man who leads the U.S. military is proud of the people who killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the U.S. military.

Cool Bike Art (@coolbikeart1.bsky.social) "Coventry to Birmingham and Back, 35 Miles, in 4 hours and 10 minutes, with Passenger 12 Stones Weight" ca. 1885

Where can I get this as an EBike?

Kyrgyzstan Adopts Controversial Media Law Kyrgyzstan’s new media law hands sweeping control to the government, raising fears of censorship and shrinking space for independent journalism.

Kyrgyzstan’s new media law hands sweeping control to the government, raising fears of censorship and shrinking space for independent journalism.

www.occrp.org/en/news/kyrg...

Bakhytzhan Toregozhina fined for social media post

Human rights defender from #Kazakhstan Bakhytzhan Toregozhina fined for social media post via Front Line Defenders

www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/bakh...

make believe “Soviet mosaic with episodes from the Nart Epic and Circassian history inside the Palace of Culture in the village of Gabukay. Mosaic author: Teuchezh Kat (Теучеж Кат) Also on the mosaic there is a...

Look at these mosaics

The flag of suburban America “town” if they followed Eastern European Vexillology formulas

I’m fairly certain I’ve seen urbanist memes that look almost exactly like this 😅

Facts Will not Save You AI, history, and Soviet sci-fi

Facts Will Not Save You
hegemon.substack.com/p/facts-will...

Tapestry by @iconfactory.com is one of my favorite ways to consume socal media, but it really needs a better way for power users to manage many feeds into timelines. I'm hoping the upcoming Mac app will solve this problem.

Kazakhstani Human Rights Lawyer Found Guilty of Spreading Disinformation - Аналитический интернет-журнал Власть Последние новости Алматы и Казахстана от интернет-журнала Власть. Новостной портал со своим мнением. Будьте в курсе событий!

Kazakhstani Human Rights Activist Found Guilty of Spreading Disinformation
Bakhytzhan Toregozhina has been outspoken in her support of political prisoners

vlast.kz/english/6588...

🧵 (1 of 6) Community members recently placed memorial ghost bikes in honor of friends and loved ones.

This includes new memorials for loved ones who were killed while bicycling sometime in the past year and a half, plus previous memorials that were in need of care and replacement. ❤️‍🩹

#BikeDC

Occasionally I come across an article in the foreign press that’s strikes me as so important that I want to share it with you. The following was originally written by an Israeli professor of law named Orit Kamir. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/a-betrayal-of-the-victims-of-the

Incredible perversion of the purpose and the standing interpretation of the act

As I detailed in WHITE FLIGHT, segregationists in Atlanta absolutely loved public services -- buses and trolleys, parks and pools, golf courses and tennis courts, etc. -- right until they were forced to desegregate and "stolen" from them. They abandoned them and built up private alternatives.

Helsinki's population is about 690,000 in the city itself. Washington DC's population is about 690,000 in the city itself.

Helsinki chose to prioritize the lives and health of its people. Mayor Bowser's Washington DC chooses to prioritize cars.

A better world is possible.

Kyrgyzstan bans online porn in crackdown on internet freedoms Kyrgyzstan has banned access to online pornography and imposed state control over internet traffic under new laws signed by President Sadyr Japarov, his office said on Tuesday.

Kyrgyzstan bans online porn, but more worryingly the government imposes a monopoly on the internet, requiring all international internet traffic to go through a state-owned company

www.reuters.com/business/med...

Wake up. It's 2007.
• Games don’t have in-app purchases
• Software isn’t sold as a subscription
• GenAI art doesn’t exist
• Desktop apps look like this

Picture of the Jawa Sandcrawler giant tank machine thing with the text "North Americans be like: opps we're out of milk I'll just run to the store to get some"

As seen on Reddit

www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/c...

I did not expect my favorite bikepacking site to publish such an impassioned, compelling case against private equity.

Quote from Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers: You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply bbis. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

I really hope that you read _Psalm for the Wild Built_ by Becky Chambers, and that it makes you feel good about being alive.

The Enshittification of American Power — WIRED First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.

The full Wired article is worth reading as well. apple.news/A3LU76yjeSGe...

The enshittification of American hegemony "It's MAGA baby ... it's a brave new world"

"hegemonic enshittification"

Urban Garbage on Instagram: "Soviet-time heritage is rarely appreciated in post-Soviet countries, and buildings are the most visible, most striking leftovers of a past both painful and unerasable. It is therefore a delight to see the headquarters of the former Ministry of Highway Design in Tbilisi in such great shape, renovated and appreciated worldwide. Now, unfortunately, it’s The Bank of Georgia (aka corruption paradise), and recording there was a living hell due to the amount of cars around it and a very persistent bodyguard. But we would do everything for the content. #bankofgeorgia #sovietarchitecture #postsoviet #georgianarchitecture #tbilisi #georgia🇬🇪 #georgechakhava #zurabjalaghania #structuralism #brutalism #architecture #communism #sovietdesign" 27K likes, 270 comments - urban_garbagebin on July 20, 2025: "Soviet-time heritage is rarely appreciated in post-Soviet countries, and buildings are the most visible, most striking leftovers of a past both painful and unerasable. It is therefore a delight to see the headquarters of the former Ministry of Highway Design in Tbilisi in such great shape, renovated and appreciated worldwide. Now, unfortunately, it’s The Bank of Georgia (aka corruption paradise), and recording there was a living hell due to the amount of cars around it and a very persistent bodyguard. But we would do everything for the content. #bankofgeorgia #sovietarchitecture #postsoviet #georgianarchitecture #tbilisi #georgia🇬🇪 #georgechakhava #zurabjalaghania #structuralism #brutalism #architecture #communism #sovietdesign".

Fun, nuanced take on Soviet brutalist architecture in Georgia.

Hanse Mina (@hanse_mina@mastodon.social) Attached: 1 image Foreign oil tankers are being temporarily barred from loading at Russia's main Black Sea ports following new regulations, effectively blocking exports from Kazakhstan handled largely by a consortium partly owned by U.S. energy majors. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kazakh-black-sea-oil-exports-halted-by-new-russian-regulations-sources-say-2025-07-23/ #Ukraine #Russia #US #Kazakhstan

What is Kazakhstan getting punished or blackmailed for this time?

When something new makes so much sense that you’re surprised it didn’t already exist.

If you think electric bikes are bad, there’s a much bigger menace hitting our roads Electric bikes are a menace. They go almost as fast as a car (if the car is parking), they’re whisper...

By now, we’ve all seen the headlines. Cities are cracking down on e-bikes. Lawmakers are holding emergency hearings. Parents are demanding bans. “Something must be done,” they cry at local city council meetings before driving back home in 5,000 lb SUVs.

electrek.co/2025/07/20/i...

If you are a taxpayer in the United States of America, as I am, you are paying for this.

gijn.org Fossil Fuel Investigations: How to Find Stories Using Oil and Gas Supply Chains

The oil and gas industry is complex and notoriously opaque. But with new tools, it’s become easier for investigators to dig into this field.

Here, the @acdatacollective.bsky.social and Data Desk share their commonly used resources. https://twp.ai/9PTQTf

America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This Trump’s Qatari jet was just the beginning.

'Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit from the presidency... including a Trump tower in Saudi Arabia, a Trump hotel in Oman, and a Trump golf club in Vietnam. “We’re the hottest brand in the world right now,” said Eric Trump.'

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...