Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates dear Eddie: this golden pheasant is an emblem of your spirit/heart/soul. you give so much to others whom you don't know. Edward Elderman @edwereddie · Golden pheasant also known as the Chinese pheasant, and rainbow pheasant.

The Midterms in a Nutshell, as of June 13, by @RBReich open.substack.com/pub/robert… In the Senate now: 53 Republicans - 47 Democrats (or independents who caucus with Dems). Democrats need to gain a net 4 seats to gain control of the Senate.

Juan Hernandez began his career at SpaceX as a welder earning $28 per hour. When he became a full-time employee, the company granted him $10,000 worth of stock, a nice perk, but nothing that seemed life-changing at the time. Then came SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO. Those same shares are now worth more than $1 million. Juan wasn’t the only one. Thanks to SpaceX’s generous equity program, thousands of employees, from welders and technicians to cafeteria workers and engineers, have also become millionaires. His story is a powerful reminder: sometimes the greatest rewards don’t come from your hourly wage, but from owning a piece of the mission you help build.

Why would anyone be against this?

Neerja Bhanot, a 22-year-old flight attendant, was on duty aboard Pan Am Flight 73 when it was hijacked during a stopover on 5 September 1986. The hijackers ordered her to collect the passengers’ passports so they could identify and target individuals of certain nationalities, particularly Americans. Recognizing the grave danger this posed, Neerja, along with other crew members, quietly hid many of the American passports. Some were slipped under seats, while others were discreetly discarded down the rubbish chute, making it far more difficult for the hijackers to single out their intended victims. After nearly 17 hours of terror, chaos suddenly erupted inside the aircraft. Neerja quickly opened an emergency door. Though she had the chance to escape first, she instead chose to remain behind, heroically helping passengers — especially unaccompanied children — to safety. Her extraordinary bravery and selflessness cost her her life. Neerja’s courage not only saved countless lives that day but also played a key role in preventing the plane from taking off. One of the children she helped, who was just seven years old at the time, later grew up to become a captain for a major airline. He credits Neerja with inspiring his career and says he owes every single day of his life to her sacrifice.

Elisabeth Abegg, a brave German teacher who openly opposed the Nazis, saved over 80 Jews by hiding them in her Berlin apartment throughout the war. Honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1967:

🧐🤔YOU WANTED A WALL, TRUMP? YOU’LL HAVE ONE. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, responded to Trump’s threats: “So you voted to build a wall. Well then, dear Americans — even if geography isn’t your strong suit, and you see America as a country rather than a continent — you should know that on the other side of that wall stand 7 billion people. And if the word ‘people’ doesn’t resonate with you, let’s call them ‘consumers.’ Those 7 billion consumers can switch from iPhone to Samsung or Huawei in less than two days. They can trade Levi’s for Zara or Massimo Dutti, and within six months replace Ford and Chevrolet with Toyota, KIA, Mazda, Honda, Hyundai, Volvo, Subaru, Renault, or BMW — brands that are already more popular in many places. They can cancel DirecTV. And even if they choose not to, they can stop watching Hollywood films and turn instead to higher-quality productions from Latin America or Europe — with richer storytelling and better filmmaking. Believe it or not, people can skip Disney and visit the Xcaret resort in Cancún instead — or explore destinations across Mexico, Canada, or South America. Even in Mexico, you can find better burgers than McDonald’s — with higher nutritional value. Have you ever seen pyramids in the United States? Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and Sudan have ancient wonders — none of them in the U.S. If they were, Trump would probably have bought and resold them by now. We know Nike isn’t the only sneaker brand. There’s Adidas — and even Mexican brands like Panama. We understand economics better than you think. And we also know that when those 7 billion consumers stop buying American products, unemployment will rise, and your economy — trapped behind its own self-imposed wall — will begin to collapse to the point where you’ll be begging for help. We didn’t want to do this. But you wanted a wall? Well. You’ve got one.” Her approval rating has reached a historic level — according to a recent poll, it stands at 85%.

🚨 A man was shot in the head and cured of mental illness: A 19-year-old man who attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head inadvertently cured his own severe, debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 1983, a teenager identified only as George was trapped in a relentless cycle of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), washing his hands hundreds of times a day and taking endless showers. Unable to cope with the debilitating illness, which had forced him to drop out of school and quit his job, George attempted to end his life by shooting himself in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. Remarkably, he survived. The bullet lodged in his brain's left frontal lobe, and while surgeons managed to remove most of it, some bullet fragments remained permanently embedded. What followed puzzled and amazed his medical team: within three weeks of the incident, George’s obsessive-compulsive behaviors had virtually disappeared. Over the next five years, he achieved an astonishing recovery, successfully reentering society, securing steady employment, and maintaining straight-A grades in college. His treating psychiatrist, Dr. Laszlo Solyom, explained that the bullet had precisely destroyed the localized brain tissue responsible for his OCD while sparing his overall intelligence and cognitive abilities. While doctors strongly warn that this was a highly dangerous, near-fatal fluke, the case remains a landmark in neuropsychiatry, demonstrating the profound and still-mysterious link between physical brain structures and mental health. source: The New York Times. Brain Wound Eliminates Man's Mental Illness.

A six-year-old Jewish girl in the Minsk Ghetto was murdered in 1942, buried alive during Nazi mass execution. Roza Libenson was born in 1936 in Minsk, then part of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, into a Jewish family led by her parents Mona and Lyuba. Her early childhood began in a city that would soon become one of the epicenters of Nazi occupation violence in Eastern Europe. In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and quickly captured Minsk. What followed was a rapid and brutal transformation of the city. Mass killings began almost immediately, and the remaining Jewish population was confined to the Minsk Ghetto, where more than 80,000 Jews were forced to live under extreme overcrowding, starvation, disease, and constant fear of executions. Roza was only a child during this period, growing up inside an environment defined by hunger and terror rather than safety or normal childhood experiences. The ghetto system was not designed for survival but for control and gradual destruction through forced conditions and systematic violence. On 2 March 1942, the children’s home in the Minsk Ghetto was liquidated. The children were removed from the building and taken to a mass killing site outside the ghetto. There, they were thrown into a pit and murdered, with witnesses later describing the extreme brutality of the event, including psychological cruelty inflicted on the victims in their final moments. Roza Libenson was six years old when she was killed. Her death represents the systematic targeting of children during the Holocaust, particularly in occupied Soviet territories where mass shootings and executions were widely used. Today, Roza is remembered as one of the countless children whose lives were destroyed in the Holocaust. Her story stands as a reminder of the human scale of genocide—each name representing a real child, a family, and a future that was deliberately taken away.💔🙏

Stick Boy's of Ethiopia's Banna Tribe who use long sticks to avoid snakes in the Omo Valley [🇪🇹 shirley.films]

Your money — whether it’s a 401K, a pension, or a college endowment — is now tied up in Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Guess who will be stuck holding the bag when the rocket crashes?

whoever runs as the Democratic nominee should sign a pledge that they will not graciously concede the election to the GOP candidate if there is anything suspicious about the voting especially in the swing states & especially if the trillionaire has been actively involved in the campaign; or, at least that they will not graciously concede immediately.

A crowd gathers outside the Myers family home, trying to scare away the first black family in Levittown, Pennsylvania, 1957.

Batyeats

The world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk, in an email to Jeffrey Epstein: “Do you have any parties planned? I've been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose.”

Jesus!

Van Gogh, of course.

Steinbeck's letter to Marilyn Monroe

Landscape at Auvers after Rain. June 1890. Oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

Misandrist