Tim Walz is not playing. This was a heinous murder by ICE. Every law enforcement official I talked to today was shocked by the heinous killing ICE did today of an unarmed woman in a car

⚠️🎤🛟 Let us erase history at Texas A & M and erase historical memory, so that generations to come are unaware of U.S. history and are only taught propaganda. You know how to fight this? Students resigning en masse from the university-transferring. It'll convince school to "have a change of heart."

Heard Tears for Fears ”Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and I am like, “Yep, especially the U.S.” At least its current leaders.

Peaceful, easy feeling.

"Secret police" is often misunderstood to mean a force that operates covertly, with all their operations secret. But a secret police force's actions are often public. The secret part is hiding their identities, because they're breaking laws to hurt politically disfavored people, and fear reprisals.

Take a deep breath and a long stroll 😊 Santa Cruz, California #art #nature #photography #redwoods

In a nutshell.

Here…in the familiar texture of your days…Love has come to stay. (2/2)

May you sense, in the marrow of your being, that God has chosen to dwell within the ordinary rooms of the world: the kitchens filled with quiet conversations, the long corridors of worry and weariness, the tender spaces of laughter and tears. (1/2)

Rubio is claiming that they did not need Congress permission because it was a law enforcement mission. The US is behaving as a global police state, extending its own arbitrary legal decisions to the whole world. This is not a problem just for Venezuela.

One thing that bothers me about world leaders and governments is that they play with our lives and throw the whole country under the bus. A lot of us just want to live peacefully. There are at least 75m people who wanted none of what is happening.

It's an old and obvious pattern. An unpopular president - failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home - decides to launch a war for regime change abroad. The American people don’t want to “run” a foreign country while our leaders fail to improve life in this one.

If you are a foreign president who commits crimes overseas, America will come get you, arrest you, and lock you up. But if you are a US president who commits crimes here in the United States, America will give you immunity from prosecution, reelect you, and bribe you with billions of dollars.

Good morning, BlueSky. It's hard to feel like posting much right now, but here is a shot from the Great Falls National Park (MD side) for #stunday #greatfalls #md #water #potomac #river #nature #eastcoastkin #photography

It would be so cool if the United States Congress still existed.

“I walked along the river until I came to another corner. I went around the corner to look for spring.”

I think Max is right.

Norbert Wiener, "The Human Use of Human Beings", 1950. Wiener is considered the father of the field of cybernetics and he wrote about what happens when people assign agency to complex machines.

“We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do. But when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires or unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money very easily. To me it belies a lack of moral priorities that people have right now.” 😎

mood

Bernie Sanders publicly swears in Zohran Mamdani as NYC mayor

Kukuck's Falls on the Slate River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula for #WaterfallWednesday!

Happy New Years Eve 🌳 #nye #trees #woodland #treeclub

Happy New Year. May everything fall into place for you in 2026.

Trump has done so much damage to democratic institutions not via clever, well executed strategy, but by acting on authoritarian/bigoted/corrupt impulse, then stubbornly barging ahead if he meets pushback. Manufacturing charges against Abrego Garcia only after deportation failed is a good microcosm.

illustration by the Austrian artist Felicitas Kuhn (1926-2022)

"Language becomes emaciated if it loses its connection with silence." - Max Picard, 1952

White-tailed Eagle from the door of the cottage. #birdingScotland.

Remember: The oligarchs who control our economy and democracy seek to divide us so they can become more powerful. They want us to turn on each other so we don't look up and see where all the wealth and power have gone. Don't fall for it.

Poverty is a policy choice. Concentrated wealth is a policy choice. Inequality is a policy choice. None of it is natural or inevitable. Remember: We have the power to build a system that serves the many, not the powerful few.

How we beat back the corporate takeover of America: 1. Break up corporate monopolies 2. Continue building union power 3. End Citizens United and get big money out of politics Let’s keep working to unrig the system.

Truth 👇

Two Thoughts At the End of 2025: One Encouraging, Another A Warning/Heads Up open.substack.com/pub/christia... No talk of New Year's resolutions here! Thank you for taking a moment to read it!

One of my pastors, Doug Cullum, “Herods still abound, in this land, in other lands, maybe in your workplace. This is the world Jesus came into.”

Amazingly, reaction times using screens while driving are worse than being drunk or high—no wonder 90 percent of drivers hate using touchscreens in cars. Finally the auto industry is coming to its senses.

The "nobodies" doing "nothing" are the ELITES and most of the politicians representing you. PEOPLE in their communities are in motion, everywhere. You just have to pay attention and importantly you have to JOIN THEM.

Here’s to 2026

I’m receiving an increasing number of messages from some of you who are concerned about me. Please don’t be. I’m not going to stop speaking out. Some thoughts... https://robertreich.substack.com/p/please-dont-worry-about-me

And now for something completely different. Irl watercolor birb

This message hits hard.

Many of us are exhausted having worked to learn the truth of our own history on our own, but also having to learn the history of American white people that most white ppl refuse to learn. That is partly why when you say “why are you surprised” it’s so annoying. Believe me, we are not surprised!

One of the few silver linings that have come from this harsh year of deportations and ICE raids is that it has clarified which people and institutions will use their voices to push back and which will choose accommodation.

I have been told I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps to escape rural poverty & become an affluent MD. My bootstraps had another name. They were called survivors benefits & included gov. provided housing, food , job and advanced educational funding. No one succeeds w/o help. Many can with it.

When one has no boots one has no bootstraps by which to pull one’s self up.

And telling poor people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps while taking away their boots is an added layer of cruelty.

Casual reminder that the myth of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is a cruel hoax designed to convince poor people from all walks of life that the injustices they face are a result of their own actions, rather than an oppressive system rigged against them.

Via Carmille Lynette:

"If all of us at every level would stop accusing others & instead acknowledge our own faults, asking God for forgiveness, & if we would truly enter into the suffering of others & stand in solidarity with the weak & the oppressed, then the world would change." — Leo XIV www.vatican.va/content/leo-...