TheCactus

One does not escape that easily from the seduction of an effete way of life. You cannot arbitrarily say to yourself that I will now continue my life as it was before this thing, success, happened to me. But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, body and brain, are forged in a white hot furnace for the purpose of conflict and that with the conflict removed, man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all vanities, conceits and laxities that success is heir to-- when then with this knowledge you are at least in a position to know where danger lies. Tennessee Williams, Where I Live, Selected Essays.

Quanto accaduto oggi a Modena, dove un uomo ha investito diversi pedoni e poi avrebbe accoltellato un passante, è gravissimo. Esprimo la mia vicinanza alle persone ferite e alle loro famiglie. Rivolgo anche un ringraziamento ai cittadini che con coraggio sono intervenuti per fermare il responsabile e alle Forze dell’ordine per il loro intervento. Ho sentito il Sindaco e resto in costante contatto con le autorità per seguire l’evolversi della vicenda. Confido che il responsabile risponda fino in fondo delle sue azioni.

Terror attack in Modena, Italy 2 victims already deceased, 8 fighting for their lives. One woman was seen with both legs detached.

BREAKING: Suspected terror attack in Modena, Italy. A 2nd-generation North African migrant has rammed a crowd of people. He then got out of the car & stabbed people. Unofficial sources speak of 2 dead & 8 seriously wounded. A woman was seen on the ground with both legs missing

You've never once asked why women aren't 50% of sewer workers. Never asked why women aren't 50% of oil riggers. Never asked why women aren't 50% of combat deaths. But a meeting with chairs? Now it's an emergency. Your priorities are a joke Gita

A car has been rammed into a group of people in the Italian city of Modena the attacker has also stabbed people.

🚨🏆 OFFICIAL: Pep Guardiola has now won 20 TROPHIES in 10 years at Manchester City. 🏆 1x Champions League 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 x6 Premier League 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 x5 League Cup 🏆🏆🏆 x3 FA Cup 🏆🏆🏆 x3 Community Shield 🏆 1x UEFA Super Cup 🏆 1x FIFA Club World Cup

🚨 BREAKING: Xabi Alonso has accepted to become Chelsea next manager, HERE WE GO! 🔵🔜 The agreement is set to be completed. #CFC prepare official announcement for the upcoming days, but Xabi said YES. 💣

I have witnessed this club go from doubters to believers, and from believers to champions. It took hard work and I always did everything I could to help the club get there. Nothing makes me prouder than that. Us crumbling to yet another defeat this season was very painful and not what our fans deserve. I want to see Liverpool go back to being the heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear and back to being a team that wins trophies. That is the football I know how to play and that is the identity that needs to be recovered and kept for good. It cannot be negotiable and everyone that joins this club should adapt to it. Winning some games here and there is not what Liverpool should be about. All teams win games. Liverpool will always be a club that means a great deal to me and to my family. I want to see it succeed for long after I have moved on. As I’ve always said, qualifying to next season’s Champions League is the bare minimum and I will do everything I can to make that happen.

After four years full of challenges and hard work, it's time to move on. I leave with the feeling that the mission is complete. 4 seasons, 3 championships. I will never forget the love I received from the fans from my very first days. Catalonia is my place on earth. Thank you to everyone I met along the way during these beautiful four years. A special thank you to President Laporta for giving me the chance to live the most incredible chapter of my career. Barça is back where it belongs. Visca el Barça. Visca Catalunya 💙❤️ @fcbarcelona

And at that exact moment, the guy realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Three seconds of confidence. Followed by instant regret. 🎥😅

Not many are talking about it, but this is one of the most underrated things India is shipping right now and every Indian must know what this is all about. Let me explain; The system is called DIGIPIN and the username layer sitting on top is called DHRUVA. Built by the Department of Posts in partnership with IIT Hyderabad and ISRO's National Remote Sensing Centre. Officially launched on May 27, 2025. Here's how it works. DIGIPIN divides all of India into 4 metre by 4 metre squares. Every single square gets a unique 10-character code like 829-4G7-PMJ8. That's down to the level of your front door, your shop counter, your hospital entrance, your village home, even a fishing boat in territorial waters. The entire country is now a digital grid. But remembering a 10-character alphanumeric code is hard. So DHRUVA sits on top of it. You convert your DIGIPIN into a simple readable handle like rajesh@dhruva. The handle stays with you for life. If you move houses, only the underlying DIGIPIN updates. Your handle doesn't change. Exactly like UPI replaced 16-digit bank account numbers with simple handles. malay@ybl instead of remembering an account number. But why is our government building this? Today roughly 20-25% of Indian addresses are unstructured. Slums, tribal areas, unplanned colonies, rural homes without proper street names. An average Indian spends 8-12 extra minutes on an average in finding an address in India versus 2-3 in the West. Ambulances reach late because nobody can describe the lane. Banks reject mortgages because they can't verify the property location. Insurance claims get delayed because addresses don't match across documents. Quick commerce loses crores in failed deliveries every day. DIGIPIN solves all of this with one open-source standard. The full source code and documentation are on GitHub. Any government department, private company, or startup can integrate it for free. This is exactly the India Stack playbook. Aadhaar (identity), UPI (payments), ULPIN (land), DigiLocker (documents), and now DIGIPIN (address) are all open public infrastructure that private companies build on top of. Of course developed countries already use a version of this. But India is building the best of the lot. > UK uses postcodes plus house numbers. Works because they have structured street planning from the 1800s. We don't. > Dubai built Makani numbers. 10-digit codes tied to building entrances. Government-only, not open. > Japan uses block-based addressing that relies on physical signage and local familiarity. India just built the best version of all of these. Open-source, geo-coded, privacy-first, with a human-readable layer that even a non-tech grandparent can use. And it's free to integrate. Once this gets rolled out, the government expects that; > Ambulance response times improve by 40-60% in unplanned areas. > KYC verification becomes instant. No more manual address proof. > Rural credit unlocks. Banks can verify property and ownership in seconds for loans. > Disaster response improves. Floods, fires, earthquakes. Rescue teams know exact homes to reach. > Insurance pricing becomes location-precise. Same building, ground floor versus third floor, different flood risk, different premium. > E-commerce delivery accuracy goes from approximate to exact. Failed deliveries drop sharply. > Privacy too gets better. You share your DHRUVA handle, not your physical address. The delivery agent gets the GPS coordinates without seeing your full address. Less data exposed, less misuse. Boring infrastructure rarely gets any hype. Everyone laughed at UPI for the first two years. Now it processes 16 billion transactions a month and seven countries have adopted it. DIGIPIN will be the same story. In 5 years we'll wonder how we ever functioned without it. In 10 years it'll be quietly running underneath every delivery, every emergency call, every loan approval in India.

Happy “Nakba” for those who celebrate! — the day Palestinians rejected a state and eight Arab nations launched a war to massacre the local Jews and got their ass handed to them for the first time.

It’s not 'radical' to believe in meritocracy, secure borders, and safe streets. These used to be the baseline for a functioning society. The fact that they are now considered 'right-wing' tells you everything you need to know about how far the goalposts have moved.

NEW: Türkiye is drafting legislation to give President Erdogan personal authority to declare a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone — covering fishing, mining, and drilling rights in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, where Greece and Cyprus have competing claims. Source: Bloomberg

.@POTUS on Iran: "I'm going to do what's right. I have to do what's right... The Strait will be opened, they will not have a nuclear weapon, and the world will go on."

NOW - U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz claims a "huge outcome" of Trump's China visit was China agreeing to back away from Iran.

Pakistan is having second thoughts on pushing too much for a ceasefire and a deal, now that a new wave of U.S. strikes on Iran appears to be just around the corner. By being perceived as Iran's lawyer rather than a neutral mediator, Pakistan has ruined its relationship with the UAE and that's just the tip of the iceberg of the fallout.

The scene inside the apartment building where Hamas chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad was targeted by the Israeli military on Friday.

Check out Aston Villa

BREAKING: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has sold 100% of its Microsoft, $MSFT, position which was a total of 7.7 million shares.