Somehow, I can hear the crinkling by simply observing His Magnificence in this photo.

Her first time seeing a balloon, was absolutely fascinated.

[Image description: a brown and white tabby cat sitting in front of a backlit curtain, staring upwards with rapt attention. The end of the balloon ribbon can be seen dangling to one side. The angle of her head emphasizes the roundness of her little cheeks.]

Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration.

“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” The ex-president and GOP presidential frontrunner said to the organization’s annual convention in Dallas, prompting some in the crowd to yell “three!” Politico reported.

Trump has floated a third term in past comments, even mentioning a prolonged presidency while campaigning in 2020. He has also tried distancing himself from this idea, telling Time magazine in April: “I wouldn’t be in favor of it at all. I intend to serve four years and do a great job.”

I really like the modlog feature.

One minute he's an absolute terror and then just flips the switch to ultra chill mode.

When Larry Callies went to the movies as a boy in Rosenberg, Texas, the heroes riding horses and wearing 10-gallon hats were all white men.

But the real cowboys Callies knew were Black. His great-grandfather Lavel Callies was an enslaved cowboy who worked with horses professionally after emancipation. “We’re cowboys for three generations back,” says Callies, 71, who runs the Black Cowboy Museum.

Historians estimate that 20% to 25% of the people who settled the continental US west – a region from Washington state to Montana and New Mexico to California – were Black men and women. They moved cattle on horseback, settled towns, kept the peace and delivered the mail in the wild, wild west. But Black cowgirls and cowboys have been pretty much invisible to most. For nearly 200 years, two separate cowboy narratives, one Black and one white, have trotted side by side in the US. The two have rarely crossed paths. Until now.

The world is on the cusp of an energy transformation that could make the Industrial Revolution look minor. Mike Cannon-Brookes is banking on the Land Down Under to be a major driver of that change.

The billionaire co-founder of software giant Atlassian plans for Australia, where he grew up, to become the hub for the two biggest renewable-energy projects ever. According to Bloomberg, the SunCable project will build a 20-gigawatt solar farm and a 4,300-kilometer undersea transmission cable, called the Australia-Asia PowerLink.

But even he acknowledges this $21 billion undertaking by SunCable is a "completely bats*** insane project." Still, it's the first step in a 10-step outline to move clean energy to Asia from one of the sunniest places on Earth. This cable would run along the bed of the Indian Ocean and feed Singapore's great demand for electricity.

Australia could produce 10,000 times more solar power than it consumes, as reported by Bloomberg, though it is a coal behemoth and exports more than any country besides Indonesia.

It will take governments, companies, the wealthy and powerful, and individuals to fully divest from such dirty energy sources, which are rapidly heating the planet and leading to more severe and frequent storms, wildfires, and other weather events.

Cannon-Brookes compared the energy transition to technology disruption, saying: "Everyone changed to a smartphone over a five-year period."

"Averting catastrophic climate change will require a similar rapid societal shift, including changing how energy is generated and delivered," Brian Kahn wrote. "In BloombergNEF's net-zero scenario, solar will be the world's largest source of clean energy by 2030. To get there will require building the equivalent of the world's largest solar farm every few days by the end of the decade."

Iranian police have arrested more than 260 people, including three European citizens, on suspicion of spreading satanism, the state-run IRNA news agency reported Friday.

The report said the suspects were arrested on Thursday night in Shahryar County, west of the capital of Tehran, for “spreading the culture of satanism and nudity.” It did not elaborate.

It was not clear how such a large number of arrests were made in one night — if the suspects were in one location, at some gathering or party, or not.

Gatherings where unrelated men and women are seen together are illegal in Iran and considered a sin under Islamic law.

There are the only mentions of Gaza:

Voters think Biden is too liberal. The Biden administration has worried about shoring up its left flank, particularly since the war in Gaza. But the Times-Siena poll found that while Biden is losing only 2 percent of his “very liberal” voters from 2020 to Trump, he is losing 16 percent of his supporters who described themselves as moderate and conservative.

. . .

In the Times-Siena poll, 21 percent of voters say the economy will drive their vote, while 7 percent say inflation is their top issue. By contrast, immigration is the top issue for 12 percent of voters, abortion is the top issue for 11 percent, the war between Israelis and Palestinians is the top issue for 2 percent and crime is the top issue for fewer than 1 percent.