Articles of Distraction

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Makes sense. I know when my own faith needs rejuvenation, Russia is at the top of my list.

Boru

[Angrboda]

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/ai-reli...s-chatbots

[Angrboda]

Last year, America’s crop farmers lost $34.6 billion, and farm bankruptcies surged to numbers not seen since 2020, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. This year, 70 percent of farmers surveyed claim they cannot afford all the fertilizers they need. Fuel costs continue to rise as the Iran conflict remains unresolved and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Ninety-four percent of farmers reported that their financial situation has “worsened or remained the same” since last year. Fifteen thousand farms closed in 2025 alone. The New York Times chronicles the closing of American family farms: Bankruptcies were up 55 percent in 2024, 46 percent in 2025 and 70 percent by May of this year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...rade-iran/

[Paraselene]

Rupert Everett has said he’s “almost crippled” after he “ruined” his body in the gym lifting weights in the 1980s and 1990s.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/06/02/r...980s-body/

[Angrboda]

Four years after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the most important part of Justice Samuel Alito’s legacy may not be the end of Roe v. Wade, but the transformation of doubt into a constitutional weapon.

Historians have long documented how tobacco companies and the fossil fuel industry strategically manufactured uncertainty to weaken support for consumer and environmental protections. Today, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority increasingly deploys a similar tactic in constitutional law, using doubt to erode protections for reproductive rights, voting rights and racial equality.

In Dobbs, a decision authored by Alito, the court did more than overturn Roe. It normalized a jurisprudence in which uncertainty itself becomes grounds for rescinding constitutional protections. Historical ambiguity, contested social science, and speculative state interests are no longer obstacles to judicial intervention. They are its justification.

Long-settled rights are reframed as major questions. Meanwhile, speculative state interests — where states claim, without evidence, to be motivated by vague concerns related to election fraud or general moral panic — are accepted with near-total judicial deference.

The Supreme Court’s decision this spring in Louisiana v. Callais, again authored by Alito, demonstrates how quickly this logic has migrated to other issue areas.

In Callais, at issue was whether Louisiana’s congressional map diluted Black voting strength unlawfully under the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court approached the problem through a framework increasingly characteristic of Alito’s decisions: raise doubt about evidence that structural racial discrimination exists and then show substantial deference toward state assertions about possible harm to states.

In short, Alito’s invocation of doubt is not a neutral part of normal jurisprudence. It is invoked to serve the conservative legal movement and the Republican Party.

The same asymmetry is now trickling down to lower courts....

How doubt became a weapon against constitutional rights

[Fake Messiah]

Another restoration

Jesus & Virgin Mary statues left looking like goth rock band after amateur artist bungles restoration

Depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ, the statues at the Calvary monument on the Praça do Cruzeiro public square in Carmo do Cajuru, Brazil, had decayed due to time and weather exposure.

The Brazilian parish commissioned the restoration work that later sent shock waves through the deeply religious community.

Before the chosen painter’s heavy-handed paint work could be hidden, residents shared before and after images of the statues, which have since had the new paint stripped away and covered up.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/39423165/j...ed-brazil/

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Yeah, the lowest bid is not always the best choice. 

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

No wonder Tom has such a fanatical need to play perfect, larger-than-life heroes in movies. He is obviously compensating for being a failure in real life.

Suri Cruise legally severs ties with estranged dad Tom

The 20-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes legally dropped Cruise and changed her last name to Noelle, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

Public records show Suri registered to vote in Pennsylvania — where she currently lives — in October 2024 during her freshman year at Carnegie Mellon University.

She registered in Allegheny County using the moniker Suri Noelle, indicating that is her legal name.

Suri Cruise has officially severed ties with her estranged dad.

The 20-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes legally dropped Cruise and changed her last name to Noelle, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

Though the rising thespian hasn’t had a relationship with Tom, 64, for most of her life, she first made headlines for not using his surname in the ceremony pamphlet of her graduation from LaGuardia High School in June 2024.

https://pagesix.com/2026/07/27/parents/s...d-dad-tom/

[Fake Messiah]

Oh look what popped up in my browser:

Celebrities Who Have Shared Their Abortion Stories to Help Women Feel Less Alone

I guess this story drew my attention:

Ireland Baldwin

Baldwin said, she got pregnant unexpectedly with her boyfriend at the time, whom she was “very unhappy” with, “and he made it pretty clear that he never wanted kids or marriage. He barely wanted to be in a serious relationship.”

“I chose to get an abortion because I know exactly what it felt like to be born between two people who hated each other,” she shared.

Baldwin said “maybe, maybe not” when addressing whether she could have had the baby and put him or her up for adoption, “But choosing to raise a baby without my own financial security, without a loving and supportive partner, that wasn’t gonna work for me.”

https://people.com/celebrity-abortion-stories-12027981

What, she didn't have financial security to raise the kid? But couldn't her uncle, Stephen Baldwin, the born-again Christian who is a staunch opponent of abortion, help her out? I mean, how does one get to be fanatically against abortion and yet not even be willing to help his niece with emotional support, babysitting, and baby bills?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Oh look what popped up in my browser:

Celebrities Who Have Shared Their Abortion Stories to Help Women Feel Less Alone

I guess this story drew my attention:

Ireland Baldwin

Baldwin said, she got pregnant unexpectedly with her boyfriend at the time, whom she was “very unhappy” with, “and he made it pretty clear that he never wanted kids or marriage. He barely wanted to be in a serious relationship.”

“I chose to get an abortion because I know exactly what it felt like to be born between two people who hated each other,” she shared.

Baldwin said “maybe, maybe not” when addressing whether she could have had the baby and put him or her up for adoption, “But choosing to raise a baby without my own financial security, without a loving and supportive partner, that wasn’t gonna work for me.”

https://people.com/celebrity-abortion-stories-12027981

What, she didn't have financial security to raise the kid? But couldn't her uncle, Stephen Baldwin, the born-again Christian who is a staunch opponent of abortion, help her out? I mean, how does one get to be fanatically against abortion and yet not even be willing to help his niece with emotional support, babysitting, and baby bills?

I am blissfully unaware of the Baldwin's family dynamics, but I can easily come up with some reasons why Uncle Stephen may have not helped out with the sprog.

I think you also left out a telling bit of her story.  

'I chose me, and I would choose me again. It's your life, it's your choice,' she concluded.

Boru