Scott M. Strand

Political monster, music lover, mad poet, escapee from reality via movies, hermetically sealed lunatic.

[King David @Aaron710David]

A six-year-old boy trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto died in 1942, his life lost to hunger, violence, and silence forever

Mendel Blank was born in 1936 in Mazowieckie, into a Jewish family led by Aharon and Helen Blank. His early childhood should have been shaped by family care, learning, and the ordinary rhythm of growing up in a small community before war disrupted everything.

When Nazi occupation spread across Poland, Jewish families were forced from their homes and concentrated into ghettos under harsh and inhumane conditions. Life rapidly shifted from normal existence to survival under restrictions, fear, and constant uncertainty.

Mendel and his family were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto established during the Holocaust. Overcrowding, starvation, disease, and violence defined daily life, as hundreds of thousands of people were confined to a space never meant to sustain human life.

In 1942, at just six years old, Mendel died inside the ghetto. The exact circumstances are unknown, but conditions were so severe that children often perished from hunger, illness, or violence. Every day in the ghetto carried constant risk, especially for the youngest and most vulnerable.

His name remains preserved as part of Holocaust remembrance, representing a child whose life ended before it could truly begin. Mendel Blank stands as one of many children lost in silence, reminding the world of the human cost behind the history of the Warsaw Ghetto.💔🙏

[Christopher Webb @cwebbonline]

Respect and support from the U.S.
✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼

[Chris Meder @EVCurveFuturist]

IKEA has installed 1M+ solar panels, owns 49 wind farms and 26 solar parks, and now matches 94.8% of its electricity use with renewables.

A furniture retailer has become one of the world's largest corporate renewable energy investors.

The transition is bigger than utilities.

Ingka Group (the company that runs most IKEA stores worldwide) has already invested €4.3 billion into renewable energy and plans to lift that to €7.5 billion by 2030.

Its wind and solar assets already generate enough electricity to match the annual consumption of more than 1.47 million European households, while rooftop solar continues rolling out across IKEA stores and warehouses worldwide.

This is what mainstream disruption looks like. Companies aren't waiting for governments or utilities to lead. They're investing billions because renewables increasingly offer the lowest-cost path to long-term energy security and resilience.

Furniture retailer? More like a clean energy company that happens to sell flat-pack furniture.

[LPC @landpalestine]

Greta Thunberg explains why Palestine is the most important humanitarian issue and why we must talk about the Israeli genocide all the time

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

I wholeheartedly agree with Joe!

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

James Stockdale spent seven and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton. He was tortured fifteen times. He disfigured his own face with a razor so the North Vietnamese could not use him for propaganda.

He built a tap code that turned solitary confinement into a network. Prisoners who could not see each other kept their sanity through the walls.

Stockdale was a Navy commander when captured. He became the highest-ranking American prisoner of war in Vietnam. That rank made him a target.

The North Vietnamese wanted him to sign confessions. They wanted propaganda broadcasts. They wanted him on camera endorsing statements against the American war effort. Stockdale refused every request.

The refusal cost him. He endured physical coercion fifteen times. Rope bindings, beatings, and painful positions left permanent damage to his legs. He spent four years in solitary confinement. Two years were in leg irons.

When guards said he would be paraded before journalists, he went to his cell. He used a razor to slash his scalp. He beat his face with a wooden stool. Swelling and bruising made him unfilmable. The guards found him bloodied and abandoned the plan.

On another occasion, when guards threatened to harm other prisoners if he did not comply, he broke a window and cut his wrists. It was not surrender. It was a signal he would rather die than comply. The guards treated him and reduced their demands.

Stockdale’s greatest achievement was building a community inside the prison. He developed a tap code using a five-by-five grid of the alphabet. Each letter corresponded to its row and column, tapped in two sequences.

Messages traveled through walls, under doors, and between buildings. Prisoners who could not see each other communicated. They shared news, jokes, and orders. Stockdale passed commands down the chain and received information back.

The tap code gave structure, leadership, and the knowledge they were not alone. He established rules: resist as best as possible. Do not volunteer information. Recover after every interrogation. The rules gave broken men a framework to regain dignity. Resilience, not perfection, was the goal.

Stockdale was released on February 12, 1973. He walked out of Hoa Lo with permanent leg injuries. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.

He said, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.”

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

🚨 Trump's new Medicaid rules just made it official: having cancer is not enough to be exempt from work requirements. You have to PROVE cancer is stopping you from working. While you're in chemo.

This week, the Trump administration released its final 400-page rule on how states must enforce the Medicaid work requirements that were buried inside last year's "One Big Beautiful Bill." Starting January 1, 2027, most low-income adults on Medicaid must prove every single month they are working, volunteering, or attending school for at least 80 hours — or lose their coverage.

For months, advocates for cancer patients and people living with HIV had been pushing for a blanket medical exemption. What they got instead was a trap. The new rule ties the definition of "medically frail" — the exemption category — directly to a person's ability to work. That means cancer patients who are still capable of working, even in between chemo rounds, do not automatically qualify. A woman with early-stage breast cancer receiving radiation treatment? May not qualify. A man living with HIV who takes medication and still reports to work? No exemption.

And here's the part that should stop you cold: Harvard health policy professor Adrianna McIntyre told reporters that even cancer patients who ARE technically exempt could still lose coverage — because the paperwork process is so complex that "a recently diagnosed cancer patient who is employed might lose Medicaid coverage due to errors in completing the necessary paperwork." Cancer will not wait while a Medicaid office sifts through forms.

The American Cancer Society ran the numbers. Researchers at the University of Chicago published a study in JAMA Oncology projecting that over 1 million mammograms and colorectal and lung cancer screenings will be missed within the first two years of these rules. That translates to more than 2,300 undetected cancer cases — hundreds at advanced stages — and an estimated 155 avoidable deaths from just three types of cancer alone.

A coalition of 48 patient advocacy groups signed a joint statement calling the rule "life-threatening." The American Academy of Pediatrics said it will "harm those whom Medicaid is intended to support." The HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute's director said bluntly: "We will lose individuals from Medicaid, and many will become ill and die as a result."
68 million Americans depend on Medicaid. The CBO says at least 5 million will lose coverage. And Dr. Oz went on TV to defend it by saying Medicaid recipients watch too much television.

[John Podlaski @pdoggbiker]

Sean Flynn, son of Errol Flynn, was a photojournalist covering the #Vietnamwar. He and a mate, Dana Stone, went into Cambodia in 1970, were captured, and disappeared. Never to be seen again. More about the journalists that covered the war: https://t.co/OiwT3z93iQ

[Mazelit Airaksinen 🎗🇺🇸 🇮🇱 @Mazelit_]

Moriya Or Swissa, 24, from Herzliya, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

She just wanted to dance.

Moriya's mother told news that Moriya called her shortly before 8am that day but she didn’t answer, and she never heard from her again.

Her mother, Sandra, eulogized Moriya as a “a girl of great light.”

“Her big smile and her kind and sparkling eyes will remain engraved in every person she met along the way,” wrote her mother.

“She was a girl who loved humanity, loved people no matter their age, gender or color, she loved animals on land and water. She loved nature and she had a blind faith in God. A girl of strong values of love, joy, huge generosity and gratitude for what she had.”

RIP Moriya Or🎗️

[𝐎𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐑𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞 @opolot_ronnie]

During Barack Obama's historic 2009 presidential inauguration, Denzel Washington was one of the first people to arrive & waited hours to see history

[NXT EU @NXT4EU]

Armenia has chosen EUROPE!

The exitpoll indicates that the Pro-European party has gotten 56% of votes.

Russia has tried to sway the vote by a variety of tactics, but Armenians have put their back towards them. The Pro-Russian party has only 17% of votes.

Europe ❤️ Armenia

[King David @Aaron710David]

A five-year-old caught in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre, where a ghetto collapsed into mass graves and thousands vanished in two days.

Frida Zlotnik was born on 10 May 1935 in Kamianets-Podilskyi to Gersh and Dora Zlotnik, a Russian-Jewish family living amid the shifting political realities of the Soviet Union. Her early childhood unfolded during a period of growing repression, uncertainty, and violence that affected countless families across Eastern Europe.

In 1939, Frida’s father, Gersh, was killed by the NKVD. His death left Dora to raise her young daughter alone, carrying on through years marked by fear, hardship, and political turmoil.

In the summer of 1941, Frida traveled to Kamianets-Podilskyi to visit her grandparents. Soon after, German forces occupied the city. Jewish residents were quickly forced into a ghetto, where overcrowding, deprivation, and constant fear became part of daily life.

On 27–28 August 1941, Frida and thousands of other Jews were murdered during the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre. Over the course of just two days, approximately 23,600 Jewish men, women, and children were shot and buried in mass graves outside the city. The massacre was one of the largest mass shootings of Jews carried out up to that point in the Holocaust.

Frida Zlotnik was only five years old when she was killed. Her mother survived the war and later had another child, but Frida’s life had already been cut short by one of the earliest large-scale massacres of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.

Today, her story serves as a reminder of how entire families and communities could be destroyed within days, leaving behind only memories, records, and the responsibility to remember.

✡️🕯️

[Police The Police 2.0 @PoliceThePolic1]

A New York trooper who rammed an SUV during a 130‑mph pursuit, killing 11‑year‑old Monica Goods and then falsifying reports to blame her father, has been sentenced to prison after years of delays and public outrage.

https://t.co/mMZyDtegmp

[Angelica Shalagina🇺🇦 @angelshalagina]

Four years of full-scale war.
Still standing.
That says everything🇺🇦

[King David @Aaron710David]

The twins Yisrael and Zelig Jacob | Died Auschwitz, May 1944

Born 1932, Hungary

Aged 12, deported from Carpathian Ruthenia in May 1944 during the Hungarian transports. Photographed together in the "Auschwitz Album" walking toward the gas chambers at Birkenau. They were murdered within hours of arrival.

Their image is one of the few visual proofs of children arriving at Auschwitz.

We remember Yisrael and Zelig Jacob.💔😭🙏

[Dorothy Eubanks @DorothyEubank16]

Never forget!