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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️

@dfincham.bsky.social
407 followers 1.2K following 132 posts

Law professor at STCL Houston, writing about art and heritage crime at illicitculturalproperty.com Off the clock: bikes, walking Bruno, BBQ, and a healthy dose of frivolity.

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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 5h
Again, OMB is using the apportionment mechanism to stop funding. Here it is the Smithsonian. I would note: they are not legally binding if exercised out of the scope of the President’s authority.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 17h
There’s a lot of talk about “shadow CVs”, in which you show your overt failures to normalize failure (airplane survival bias meme), but sometimes academics should also just admit that there are parts of our job that are pass/fail
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 16h
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 7, 2020. A Dutch advisory committee told the government the Netherlands must be willing to return, unconditionally, cultural objects looted from its former colonies if the source country asks. #ArtLawAlmanac
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 18h
As someone who teaches law, I find this one hard to stomach. New Treasury sanctions mean the Law School Admission Council will no longer let Iranian citizens or residents take the LSAT. The barrier lands on people who want to study law. 🧵 #LawSky
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Piero Castellano 🇪🇺 @pierocastellano.com · 21h
Great story by the usual suspect @aylajean.bsky.social - ellerine sağlık! www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/10/05/h...
theartnewspaper.com
Behind Turkey’s race to save Gallipoli’s vanishing shipwrecks
A recently launched project called Deep Heritage aims to slow the disintegration of dozens of warships sunk off Turkey's coast during the devastating First World War campaign
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:
science.org
‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research
Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 21h
The demographic cliff is such a problematic term. It’s actually only - a 13-15% decline in college student populations over a fifteen year period (to 2041) — so less than 1% a year. It excuses a lot of administrative poor decisions. www.npr.org/2025/01/08/n...
npr.org
A looming 'demographic cliff': Fewer college students and ultimately fewer graduates
The long-predicted downturn in the number of 18-year-olds is almost here. And it isn't just a problem for higher education. It's a looming crisis for the economy.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
conifergirl.bsky.social @conifergirl.bsky.social · 22h
An American senator travels to the Persian Gulf to see what his country is spending billions on and finds the gates locked. The Defense Department would not let Chris Murphy onto the heavily damaged base from which the Iran war is being
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Fereidoun Biglari @fbiglari.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
At ICAHM 2026, Sonia Shidrang reported the 40-day war damaged 149 historical sites across 20 provinces, including five UNESCO World Heritage properties. She urged international law, documentation, and a protection plan. www.tehrantimes.com/news/530771/...
tehrantimes.com
Heritage is identity: Iranian archaeologist exposes scale of war destruction to historic sites
TEHRAN – An Iranian archaeologist, Sonia Shidrang, highlighted in a global webinar hosted by the International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM), a scientific committee under ICO...
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Jim Wallace @jwallit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Archaeology’s Silence On Israel’s Destruction of Palestinian Cultural Heritage avigail.substack.com/p/archaeolog...
avigail.substack.com
Archaeology’s Silence On Israel’s Destruction of Palestinian Cultural Heritage
If archaeology can’t speak up about the destruction of cultural heritage, what hope is there for the people?
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Hi folks: Today's the deadline for public comments on the proposed removal of federal protection for nat'l forests Hundreds of endangered species will be affected Here's info from the American Bird Conservancy, & the link for comments: abcbirds.org/news/roadles... www.fs.usda.gov/managing-lan...
fs.usda.gov
Roadless Areas | US Forest Service
What's NewOn Aug. 18, 2026, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brook L. Rollins announced that the proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement that recommends removing the 2001 Roadle...
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
However good you think this is going to be, it’s better. Steve just has Alito dead to rights.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Cambridge University Press - Archaeology @cambup-archaeology.cambridge.org · 06/10/2026
📢 'Consequences of decentering the State in international law: a comparison in the field of cultural heritage': a new Call for Papers from the International Journal of Cultural Property! Send in your abstracts by 1 November Learn more: 🔗 cup.org/4y59zAG #archaeology #culturalproperty
Call for Papers: Consequences of decentering the State in International Law. International Journal of Cultural Property.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Also on this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 8, 2020 — two strikes hours apart hit Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shusha (Shushi) during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Human Rights Watch later found it was likely targeted deliberately, a possible war crime. #ArtLawAlmanac
View of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral with the renovated yard in 2018
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 6, 2020 — France's National Assembly unanimously backed a bill to return 26 Abomey royal treasures to Benin and El Hadj Omar Tall's sabre to Senegal, a carve-out from the inalienability of French public collections. #ArtLawAlmanac
Group of statues from royal palaces in Abomey, Benin, as exhibited in Quai Branly museum, Paris, in May 2021
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct 5, 2015, Syria's antiquities director Maamun Abdulkarim told AFP that ISIS had detonated explosives around Palmyra's Monumental Arch, a Roman gateway ~1,800 years old. Only its columns were left standing.
The Monumental Arch at Palmyra, Syria, photographed in 2010, five years before ISIS destroyed it. The weathered, honey-colored limestone gateway has a tall central arch flanked by two smaller side arches. Its faces are carved with bands of ornate decoration. Rows of Roman columns from the city's Great Colonnade stretch away on either side, under a clear desert sky.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
The Wiener Holocaust Library @wienerlibrary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
On 5 October 1938 it was agreed by Nazi leaders that all German Jewish citizens should have their passports stamped with an identifying letter ‘J’. The marking of their passports alienated the Jewish community and constituted an important part of the campaign of persecution.
German passport page from 1939 titled Deutsches Reich Reisepass, bearing Nazi eagle-and-swastika stamps and a prominent red "J" stamped to indicate Jewish designation.Formal 1929 studio portrait of a man dressed in hunting regalia—double-breasted coat with medals, ornate ceremonial chain and feathered hat—standing by an upholstered chair and holding white gloves. The man is Ernst Kamm and the photo is held in the archive collection of the Wiener Holocaust Library
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Roberta Mazza @robertamazza.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
More papyri for sale through InLibris and the threats it faces facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/t...
facesandvoices.wordpress.com
The Nile flood papyrus: Provenance, private collections and the trade
After the two Oxyrhynchus papyri at the centre of my last post, I wish to discuss another papyrus offered by Vienna based InLibris, the so–called Nile flood or inundation papyrus (P. Michael. 4 = T…
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Lucien Lazare, Jewish fighter in the French Resistance, has died at 101. After fighting the Nazis, he was rejected by his synagogue later in life for translating an article saying “Israel, today, is nothing but a formless mass of corruption, oppression and injustice.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/w...
nytimes.com
Lucien Lazare, Jewish Resistance Fighter in Occupied France, Dies at 101 (Gift Article)
He and a small troop of French Jews worked with the Allies to distribute supplies and fight the Nazis, ambushing a German train and liberating a city in the south.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A pretty key & funny theme in Rome worship is that the statues look very austere and white, ie “classical”. And arguably “white” in racial sense, tho I think that’s overstated. But most were originally painted. And they looked very different, more florid and certainly to modern eyes more eastern.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Open Art Data @openartdata.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Bogdanos ‘pointed out recurring artifact seizures at the Met. “The question has to be asked, ‘Why are we the ones doing this?’” he told the Times’
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Open Art Data @openartdata.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
‘All of these objects were “smuggled into the United States and laundered by dealers and collectors through false provenance, exhibitions and museum donations,” according to the D.A. The office seized them from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
My Minnesota friends have already seen this, but I keep thinking about it and want more people outside our state to, too.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Dead since 1014, Bulgaria's Czar Samuel got a fighter-jet escort home, swapped for 48 objects Greece lost in WWI. Heritage diplomacy never forgets. #Repatriation #CulturalHeritage www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10...
aljazeera.com
Remains of Bulgaria’s Czar Samuel return ‘home’ after 1,000 years
The emperor is a symbol of Bulgarian national identity whose repatriation stoked tensions with Greece.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Kristof Smeyers @kristofsmeyers.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Tenure track position for a social/cultural anthropologist here in Leuven, apply before 1 December: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Tanya Pia Starrett @tanyapiastarrett.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
You know what to do @britishmuseum.bsky.social Greece returns priceless relics – and suggests UK should follow suit with Parthenon marbles | Bulgaria | The Guardian share.google/yjU53wh7wwwu...
share.google
Greece returns priceless relics – and suggests UK should follow suit with Parthenon marbles
Greek PM hopes handover of Tsar Samuel to Bulgaria will persuade Britain that time has come for ‘truth, reason, justice and morality’
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Damien Huffer @damienhuffer.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
www.abc.net.au/news/science... Thanks for the good reporting on this important topic. Domestic markets represent exploitable loopholes. @peterdekruijff.bsky.social @counteringcrime.bsky.social
abc.net.au
Ivory still legal to sell in Australia despite 2019 promise to ban it
A new study has found hardly any of the $1.2 million worth of elephant ivory sold or advertised in a six-month period in Australia came with paperwork proving its origin.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 2, 1999. "Sensation" opens at the Brooklyn Museum. Mayor Giuliani had called it sick, withheld a $497,554 city payment, and sued to evict the museum from its city-owned building, largely over one painting. #ArtLawAlmanac 🧵1/x
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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 02/10/2026
texans: you still have three days to register to vote
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Trump tomato tariffs could spell the end of free chips, salsa at restaurants
By Andrew Schneider | Houston Public Media
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
The New York Times @nytimes.com · 02/10/2026
Breaking News: A judge halted border wall construction across the Big Bend region in Texas, a project that has faced fierce local opposition.
nyti.ms
Judge Blocks Border Wall Construction in Big Bend in Texas
The ruling dealt a setback to the Trump administration’s plans for hundreds of miles of barriers that have drawn local opposition.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My final Morning Note—as I watch is happening at Cornell—is that universities have spent since January 2025, running away (or firing) from the faculty and staff capable of managing this moment. The quasi-administrative proceedings under Title 9 are hard to navigate and take serious skills.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Stanford University Press @stanfordpress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Kudos to Costanza Musu for the engaging and thought-provoking Art for War. Musu calls for a relentless and proactive fight against the trafficking of looted antiquities" —Brigadier General Giuseppe De Magistris, Assistant Director of the Istituto Alti Studi Difesa, Rome ow.ly/hO7C50ZStIM
Book cover of Art for War: Heritage Looting, Blood Antiquities, and the International Fight Against Terrorism Financing by Costanza Musu
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
A settlement giving clean title is only as good as the list of heirs who signed it. On an auctioned Pissarro, a Paris court is now testing that, with a decision due Nov 5. #ArtLaw #Restitution illicitculturalproperty.com/a-pissarro-s...
illicitculturalproperty.com
A Pissarro Settlement Seven Heirs Never Signed
Camille Pissarro, Darse de pêche et bassin Duquesne, Dieppe, après-midi ensoleillée (1902), oil on canvas, 65.3 × 81.2 cm. Listed in France’s 1947 Répertoire des biens spoliés, the painting s…
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct 1, 1946, the Nuremberg tribunal convicted Alfred Rosenberg, whose task force "plundered museums and libraries, confiscated art treasures and collections" across occupied Europe. Art looting sat at the heart of a war crimes judgment. #ArtLaw #NaziLootedArt
Former Nazi Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg on trial at the International Military Tribunal war crimes trial. Nuremberg, Germany, April 15, 1946.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Squiddy @dr-squiddy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Nobody could have seen this coming (except for anyone who has visited a previous exhibition at the BM and has spent a few seconds thinking about the logistics around blockbuster audiences and the logistics of having one massive object).
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
During the World Cup.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Gobsmacked by the elite levels of not knowing ball in the Senate today, thinking an NBA team is called the Hawkeyes then, refusing to Google it, then accusing a guy of treason because you didn’t know the Iowa Lady Hawkeyes aren’t in the NBA. Somehow I don’t trust these people to Save Girls Sports.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Texas Observer @texasobserver.org · 21/09/2026
“Art is important because it interrogates the questions that go undiscussed.” New, from our magazine by Brooke Lewis: For the past 50 years, the Ensemble Theatre has brought Houstonians together to laugh, cry, and talk back to plays representing all aspects of African-American life.
texasobserver.org
Houston's Historic Black Theater at 50
For five decades, the Ensemble has brought Houstonians together to laugh, cry, and talk back to plays representing all aspects of African-American life.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
A NY appeals court just handed the Art Institute of Chicago a win in the Schiele "Russian War Prisoner" fight. But it didn't decide who owns the drawing. It held the Manhattan DA used the wrong tool to try. My take on what it means for object-first enforcement 🧵 1/3
Egon Schiele, "Russian War Prisoner" (1916), watercolor over graphite on cream paper. It shows the head and hand of a uniformed Russian prisoner of war, with the artist's signature at lower right.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
A NY appeals court just handed the Art Institute of Chicago a win in the Schiele "Russian War Prisoner" fight. But it didn't decide who owns the drawing. It held the Manhattan DA used the wrong tool to try. My take on what it means for object-first enforcement 🧵 1/3
Egon Schiele, "Russian War Prisoner" (1916), watercolor over graphite on cream paper. It shows the head and hand of a uniformed Russian prisoner of war, with the artist's signature at lower right.
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Haus of Decline @hausofdecline.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Folk music is drastically increasing in popularity. Prepare for an apocalyptic recession.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Andrea Devon @andreadevon.sheshed.rocks · 13/09/2026
This is amazing… They gave the Humanitarian Award to an entire state. At the 2026 Hispanic Heritage Awards, the people of Minnesota were honored for how they came together to support their neighbors during the federal immigration crackdown. Congratulations, Minnesota. 👏🏽 #SheShed #VivaHerAlliance
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
Ethan Jacobs 🇺🇦 @ejacobslaw.com · 21/05/2026
I’ll need to prepare my kids for using AI with Faust. Oh, yeah, it’s useful, but always assume its underlying motivation is to take your soul. Never step into the summoning circle and never believe it’s your friend.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
gregorg @greg.org · 10/09/2026
in the 10 yrs since I last combed through the FBI's National Stolen Art File, a 6ft Luc Tuymans painting jacked from a show in 1996 at young David Zwirner's new SoHo gallery has been added, along with a giant 1976 Ellsworth Kelly, and some more personal—and portable—works greg.org/archive/2026...
a black and white and grey painting of a polaroid of a tv screen, with the rounded edges of the tv tube along the bottom and right edges, of a picture of a padded altar, with a knee bench around the base, surrounded by slightly fussy fancy white chairs and a settee. this image of a sealing room of the salt lake city temple was broadcast on belgian tv where luc tuymans saw it, photographed the screen, and painted it. then this painting got stolen in nyc in 1996.
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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 10/09/2026
US states sue Trump over weakening of endangered species protections aje.news/n6d8ip
US states sue Trump over weakening of endangered species protections
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Sara Cress @saracress.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Thanks to @lonestarleft.com for posting this very cool illustration. I hail from the Pasadena/Deer Park area and didn't know there had ever been a strike at Shell. I just know that throughout my time growing up in that area, dozens of workers died at these plants due to safety violations.
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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Since it's the anniversary of the debut of "Batman the Animated Series," feeling compelled to share this art by Bruce Timm of all the things they weren't allowed to show in the cartoon. Can you guess them all? Answers in the next skeet down.
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Reposted by Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️
The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 06/09/2026
Mary Tsingou Menzel played a key role in a landmark computational physics experiment that helped propel the development of chaos theory and other fields. But it took more than half a century, physicists said, for her to receive appropriate credit.
washingtonpost.com
Her work was key to a landmark experiment. She was credited in a footnote.
Mary Tsingou Menzel, who has died at 97, played a central role in a Los Alamos physics experiment. A half-century later, she finally got her due.
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Chris Kluwe @chriswarcraft.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
As a former professional football player, I can confidently say that this essay is incorrect from every conceivable angle, and contributes heavily to the culture of toxic masculinity that still infests high schools and colleges across the country.
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