"The aliens are already here. They are algorithms and they landed more than twenty years ago."  --Mark Stahlman

“Fidel Castro was a billionaire. Putin is a billionaire. The leaders of communist regimes are always rich. They steal and rob from those they govern.”  --Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

(Trump made over $2 billion in 2025 alone, while in office.)

And happiness is not overrated. It is everything.

We’re constantly trying not to get scammed these days. It’s too expensive to do anything. The planet is too hot. The wars are still happening and certain families are still getting rich off of said wars. The world is uninspiring – even downright depressing – if you look at it from a wide angle, but what are we to do in between fighting the good fight? We should celebrate each other. We should remember that we each have something to offer this world. We should – we must – do something for ourselves. And maybe we should put it out there for others. And whatever happens as a result will be such an adventure.  --Yasmin Aliya Khan, Excerpt from "Audacity and Adventure"

https://yazzzzzk.substack.com/p/audacity-and-adventure

“Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far.” If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few things more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples."  --Teddy Roosevelt uttered these words at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 1901. 

Reporter: “what are your plans for the housing bill?”

Trump: “I don’t— know. I think it’s so— unimportant by compared to— by compared to the Save America Act. the housing bill is a bill that can get approved. they worked on it long and hard. it’s very— bipartisan. that means Democrats like it. and it’s uhhhhh— maybe— even— uhhhhh, it’s, it’s probably maybe more that way, they’re getting things that I wouldn’t necessarily agree to. nobody knows more than housing in the history of the presidency, nobody, nobody, no— well like me, in housing. I made a lot of— I made a lot of money. I made a lot of money with housing.”

"What is lost when birds are lost? Above all, the creatures themselves, in their own splendour and right. And for humans — language, story, beauty, possibility, imagination, lifts of the spirit, ways of being otherwise. Birds are our place-makers, memory-keepers, calendars and clocks. They stitch the world’s parts together: earth to sky, river to woodland, mountain to sea, country to country, hemisphere to hemisphere."  --Robert Macfarlane, The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss

“It's a beautiful world, you know. And kindness is very important, I think, it seems to be forgotten quite a lot.”  --Roger Taylor  (from Queen)