#EAGLE STAMP

[alkyls]

would it be a bad idea to make america stamps on july 4th...

[little-candy-store-of-horrors]

Hetalia Sticker sheets for a con/artist alley this weekend! Can you spot all the historical references?

[bunabi]

I dreamt gameplay showing Iron Bull running around the suburbs leaked and I was trying to convince @strawberrynoir it was actually a Bioware x Fortnite collaboration and not new Veilguard footage

I tried sending screenshots of the deleted video but my phone kept freezing

And then I woke up 🧍🏾‍♀️

[susiestamps]

US 1988 22¢ Bicentenary of Australian Settlement

[80smovies]

[ad-j]

WATCHLIST 2023: Legal Eagles

[nonooddo]

Oddo OK’d & Oddo OK’d & Oddo OK’d …

Following the latest Olathe City Hall approval of yet another of Oddo’s plans for world domination - one small Midwest city at a time - rumors are rife that our town is about to be renamed - “Oddosville”…

Advertisement

Olathe Monopoly Apartments - Fun for all the Oddo Family. Watch Daddy Oddo race round the board using ALL the playing pieces - stomping on locals with his Old Boot, racing through one gateway to Cedar Creek after another in the Racing Car - all while wearing his C19th capitalist’s Top Hat. (Dogs are no longer allowed — these are monopoly APARTMENTS after all!)

The object of the game is to try to get in or out of Cedar Creek WITHOUT passing Go Go Oddo (I.e. an Oddo development. (Playing tip - you can’t! The man has a MONOPOLY …!)

Oddo just put another Cedar Creek gateway (College) into his big bag of “Approved”…! This follows an earlier Oddo OK on Valley and of course the Oddo OK in Lenexa and.. you get it, right?

For sure they are gonna be ditching the name Cedar Creek - that’s becoming Oddo Creek. (Or maybe Cedar Rick!) Either way that goes to a ‘vote’ of the planning commission sometime soon - but the result of the vote has already been released: “Approved”!

After all - when College Blvd AND Valley Parkway are BOTH now under the shadow of Oddo “Approved” plans - why would we still be stuck with the old Cedar Creek name? Didn’t Potter gain control everything in ‘Its a Wonderful Life’ and then the town was eponymously renamed…? “A great movie” the young Rick Oddo was once heard to say, adding: “pity the ending went all wrong…! But when I grow up…”

And now that he is all grow’d up - he never forgot his boyhood dream ‘I’ll own everything - and be happy…’!

And doesn’t he look Happy…!!

Valley Pkwy

College Boulevard

Cedar Creek Parkway

WHY MUST ALL 3 ROADS IN AND OUT OF CEDAR CREEK HAVE CITY APPROVED ‘ODDO APARTMENT COMPLEXES’? WHY OLATHE…? WHY, MAYOR BACON…? Ask Him: Mayor Bacon, City of Olathe, City Hall - 100 E Santa Fe, Olathe, KS 66061

[littlestampcollection]

[lickmystamp]

US postage stamp, 1989 “Eagle and Shield” Scott #2431

Issued: November 10, 1989 - Virginia Beach, Virginia Quantity: 4,080,600 Designer: Jay Haiden Printed By: American Bank Note Company (Photogravure)

The second self-adhesive stamp issued by the US. Only on sale for 30 days in 15 cities on an experimental basis. Sold in booklets with a 50¢ premium to cover costs

[witekspicsoldpostcards]

Postcards from German colonies in China: TSINGTAU (photos) and KIAUTSCHOU (stamps). The Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory was a German leased territory in Imperial and Early Republican China from 1898 to 1914. Covering an area of 552 km (213 sq mi), it centered on Kiautschou Bay (Jiaozhou Bay) on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula. The administrative center was at Tsingtau.

[extra-photo-space]

I have this $20 bill with two stamps on it. I’m not sure what they’re for…

[postcards-and-postcrossing]

Golden Eagle

Postcard from Hong Kong. The stamp: Hong Kong, China – 2022 Brachiosaurus

[pillarboxstudio]

[cherrysnax]

i ate so many baby carrots.. and I know I’m gonna eat more 😭

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Blue states should play “constitutional hardball”

NEXT WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Nothing's more frustrating that watching the GOP smash norms and decency to advance policies that harm millions of Americas, unless it's that, plus Democratic officials stamping their feet and saying, "C'mon guys, play fair."

The GOP's game is called "constitutional hardball." Think: Mitch McConnell refusing to hold confirmation hearings on Obama's federal judiciary appointments, not never for Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat – then filling the Federal judiciary with the least-qualified, most FedSoc-addled lunatics in US history, all for lifetime appointments.

As bad as this is at the federal level, it's even worse at in the states, especially the Republican "trifecta" states where the GOP holds the governorship and the state house and senate, where shameless gerrymandering and legislative attacks on hard-won ballot measures are the order of the day. GOP-held state governments engage in rampant interstate aggression, targeting out-of-state abortion providers, publishers, and journalists.

This is a one-sided Cold Civil War, because state Dems, for the most part, are unwilling to play hardball in return (the closest they come is when, say, California sets strict emissions controls and manufacturers adopt them nationwide, rather than making special cars for the giant California market). Republicans engage in constitutional hardball and Dems refuse to fight back, a phenomenon called "asymmetrical constitutional hardball":

https://columbialawreview.org/content/asymmetric-constitutional-hardball/

Writing for The American Prospect, Arkadi Gerney and Sarah Knight make the case for symmetrical constitutional hardball:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-18-playing-hardball/

The pair argue first, that the best way to get Republican state houses to play fair is to credibly threaten them with retaliatory action. They cite the recent attempt at a last-minute change the way that Nebraska's Electoral College votes are apportioned, which would have given all of five the state's EC votes to Trump. Maine threatened to effect the same change to its Electoral College system, which would have given all four of its EC votes to Harris. Nebraska surrendered.

But there's also a second advantage to playing Constitutional Hardball: it makes blue states better. For example, Minnesota gives free college tuition to exceptional low/middle-income students. Neighboring North Dakota got tired of losing all its smartest kids Minnesota schools and created its own subsidy. As Gerney and Knight point out, Minnesota (and other blue states) still has a huge advantage when it comes to attracting top talent, because attending university in a state with legal abortion is vastly preferable (and safer) than doing a degree in a forced-birth state.

Red states are bent on making life horrible for some really great people. The hardworking, talented Haitian migrants caught in the Springfield pogroms that Trump incited would be a fine addition to any blue state town – anyone who's got the gumption to haul ass out of a failed state and make their all the way to Springfield is gonna be a fantastic neighbor, citizen and worker, just like my refugee grandparents and father, who endured a million times more hardship than their neighbors ever did, getting to Toronto, finding jobs, and starting their family.

Influxes of young, hardworking immigrants are especially good for rural towns with dwindling populations. No wonder rural towns with above-average net migration swung for Biden in 2020.

All over America, families are despairing of their lives in red states. Whether you're worried that you or someone you love might need to terminate a pregnancy, or you're worried about gender-affirming care for you or a loved one, you can put your worries to rest in a blue state. Same goes for nurses and doctors who are worried they can't do medicine unless it accords with the imaginary dictates of Bronze Age prophets as claimed by pencil-neck Hitler wannabe Bible-thumper with a private jet and a face from Walmart. Fill the blue states with great schools, libraries and hospitals, and invite everyone who wants to do their job in a free country to come and work at 'em. Line every state border with abortion and mifepristone clinics, and set up billboards advertising the quality of life, the jobs, and the freedom in blue state America.

Every blue state public pension fund should ban investments in fossil fuels, and invest like crazy in renewables, especially in Texas, to hasten the bankrupting of the petro-kleptocracy that controls the state. Blue states should tack surcharges on goods imported from "right to work" states where unions are effectively banned, to compensate for the additional product testing needed to ensure that scab products are safe to use (ahem, Boeing).

Create joint occupational licensure rules across blue states: if you're certified as a teacher, nurse, hairdresser or auto-mechanic in New York, you should be able to carry that certification with you to Minnesota, California, or Maine. Create multi-state funding pools to build public housing. Offer med-school scholarships to the smartest red state kids, at universities where they'll learn evidence-based obstetrics rather than the Lysenokist nonsense taught at the Roy Moore College of Pediatrics and Obstetrics.

Dems have to get over their fear of "states' rights" and start playing state-level hardball. This doesn't mean escalating cruelty. Quite the contrary: every cruel measure enacted as red state red meat is a chance for blue states to extend a kindness, and capture even more of the best, brightest and kindest of the nation, creating a race to the top that Republicans can only win by abandoning their performative cruelty and corruption.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/18/states-rights/#cold-civil-war

[recareels]

take it slow just as fast as i can

character: boothill notes: i just rly, genuinely think boothill would be obsessed with feeling every fucking inch of you, that’s all c: | title credit: body like a back road by sam hunt warnings: 18+ minors do not interact, fem reader, thinly veiled body worship, mentions of scars + implied stretch marks and cellulite, marking (biting and bruising), implied multiple orgasms, tiny bit of angst right at the end words: 830

boothill knows your body better than he knows anything else in the cosmos. 

boothill knows your body better than he knows his own—better than he knows his scorched, excavated homeland, better than he knows the smooth metal ripples and ridges, cold curves and contours of his own so called ‘body’, better than he knows his cherished 9mm revolver—the ivory grip, pretty pearlescent nacre shimmering up at him delicately from between the gaps of mechanized fingers, stamped with that gilded eagle sigil; the artfully notched cylinder, embossed with decorative arrows—six, one for each chamber—and the angular hammer, piped with shimmering aureate; the golden barrel, intricate inclinations carved to sharp, exquisite perfection. 

boothill knows every curve, every dip, every edge of your form—all of your lines and dimples and scars, and could map them out with his eyes closed and recite each corresponding story: a single metallic fingertip tracing along the jagged strikes of silver etched into your skin; his hard thumbprint pressing into the dents peppering your thighs, a cool knuckle skimming over that scar on your knee. 

and boothill loves appreciating them, appreciating you, appreciating how it all comes together to create one of the most magnificent masterpieces he’s ever had the pleasure of touching, the privilege of loving. 

it’s become somewhat of a ritual now to take his sweet time admiring your figure before he fucks it, feeling every part of you plush and pliant beneath his grooved palms, revelling in the soft gasps that stutter your chest and dainty shivers that ripple your flesh as he kneads it. 

he fills his touch with it, grabs healthy handfuls and squeezes—so soft, so supple—alternating between harsh groping, iron fingers sinking into your thighs, your hips, your tits, and gentle caressing, bullseye gaze watching with sheer wonderment as his palms glide over your silhouette, slick lips parted and damp with panted breath.

sometimes he’ll just let his hand rest on your ribs, observing the way it rises and falls with each of your quiet breaths, feeling oxygen expand your lungs as it flows in, then feeling your chest depress with every exhale pushed up your throat. 

he loves to experience the thrum of your pulse beneath his fingertips—nothing more than a faint fluttering pressure against his receptors, but present nonetheless—an undeniable confirmation that you are indeed here, alive, his. 

so beautiful, he murmurs from between your thighs, one large hand pressed flush against your heart, his chin resting on your stomach. a work of fudgin’ art, baby, I swear to the stars. 

it all gets him going so goddamn easily, instils a hunger in him so ferocious that it chews on his wires, zipping through the cables in sparks of desire until it devours his brain, gorges every thought and notion until all he can conceive, all he needs, is you. 

he can’t help but lick and kiss and bite and suck, desperate to leave his own impermanent marks on this gorgeous canvas. bruises blossom in the shapes of his fingerprints, sprouted in clusters of five across your form. engravings of razored teeth litter your thighs and hips, his gnawing just a hint shy of too strong, leaving behind wide crescents of thirty-two little crimson pinpricks. petals of thick saliva dry hard and stiff on your stomach and neck and collarbone, planted into your skin by puckered lips and chaste kisses.

it’s customary that he murmur sweet nothings into every claim he creates, knowing that his words will seep into your tissues in the form of gentle vibrations, knowing that they will stay, even after his marks fade.

your body is art, too, you tell him softly, after he’s made you cum several times on his cock, iron shimmering with a thick coat of your arousal, slick he refuses to clean off. a tender finger traces along the tears laden across his torso, rough and saw-toothed—scars he refuses to let heal. 

no, he murmurs, rubbing his mouth into your shoulder as he speaks, eyes closing briefly with a slow, deep inhale. not the way yours is. 

your body is a storybook of your life, inscribed with tales and memories—the way your body developed as you entered womanhood, too quick for your delicate skin to keep up with, procuring shimmering streaks across your breasts and bum; the time you flipped your childhood bicycle, kneecaps scraping concrete, bloody and raw; that dark dash seared along your inner arm, a constant reminder of an earnest mistake, when you accidentally nudged the rim of a pot filled with boiling water. 

his body was carved in a lab, too precise to be real, too perfect to be human, constantly torn apart and put back together; rearranged, scrambled, chock full of modifications he never asked for, never agreed to. a true horror story—a weapon of death and destruction, a film of inevitable demise clinging to the metal.

he fears that’s all it ever will be.