Among so many reasons to feel hopeful in recent days, yesterday the center-left Socialist beat the extreme-right candidate in Portugal's presidential election in a record-breaking landslide. The Iberian peninsula is a beacon of hope for the world to follow. Adoro o país que escolhi! 🫶 🇵🇹

"Bomb them until they cry Uncle," has been tried many, many times over the last 115 years of flight. We know what happens, and hate and unity is the first and longest stage.

A poll of electorate view of whether ICE is doing too much, about right, or not enough. The "not enough" number for Republicans is 27%, right on the ride-or-die percentage of sworn Trumpers. www.npr.org/2026/02/05/n...

Lucidity. No, sanity. See the next pane. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...

I taught a class on “hope” last year and the few theorists who’ve written on it all point out that hope is the harder choice - that despair is easy and too often fashionable

Democracy Dies In Darkness. Newspaper Dies In Ignominy. I'm so mad at the decisions leadership made. I, a person in Minneapolis, used to subscribe, before they surrendered. What a fucking tragedy.

That means ~815k Minnesotans participated in the shutdown and ~310k in the strike. That would make Minnesota’s January 23 general strike one of the largest in history.

Let's see... ADHD: Never had it. High Functioning Anxiety: Never had it. Perfectionist Procrastination: Got over it in my 20s Oldest Daughter: Check Spiritual Journey: Not sure what this is, but sure. 2/5

Bad Bunny - “Ice OUT” #Grammy

My weird career trajectory was right there in college in seed crystal form. The procedural mind for CompSci work, while also a head for people-systems.

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college: 1. Literature of India 2. Ethical Systems 3. Intro physics 4. Computer Graphics (Toy Story 1 released during that class) 5. Parallel computing

And it was so debilitating a year ago I had to write a whole formal risk analysis to regain useful perspective. That is how I got the abyss to stop murmuring dark omens.

I'm seeing calls for another general strike this Friday, but I'm NOT seeing labor federation buy-in. That was CRITICAL to making Minnesota's strike last week work. Critical.

Across several platforms and publications over the years, I have covered the last-days litigation of virtually every execution to take place in America since 2014. To keep up with and support my death penalty coverage, subscribe to Law Dork: www.lawdork.com

I imagine the WELS churches gave that logistical training, too... just... needs some fine-tuning

Apparently this shirt from a year ago was oddly prescient.

Here is a recipe for Swedish egg coffee that isn't for 50-100 (the only way I know how to make it) www.thespruceeats.com/egg-coffee-2...

Hearing else-net that a white guy with a gun doing nothing getting killed seems to have brought a big slug of people into the anti-ICE coalition that weren't there last week.

UPDATE: TIKTOK IS COOKED. Our videos went from tens of thousands to 0. (seemingly a direct result of Trump & Bibi’s friends taking over)

A number of responders were quite opposed to the idea of giving ridealongs to The Atlantic (I understand their frustration with the outlet). But I drove these guys around for two hours and they witnessed abductions, confrontations with the public, tear-gassings. The lesson: let the world see.

So many journalists I would otherwise give money to, but they're on substack. Grr.

And George Floyd's memorial isn't that far away either.

This is a good read describing the utter peril Governors face with their command of National Guard in the face of Federal provocations. Also, why Walz *can't* call out the Guard to protect observers.

ice has caused, by commiting them, a 200% increase in the murder rate in Minneapolis. The stats on assault are worse. dhs, please eject these foreign invaders. they're bringing drugs. they're bringing crime. they're rapists. and some of them, i assume, are good people.

Yep, checking out of socials for an hour to let actual news percolate out.

Minnesota is the best of us.

What they actually discovered with leaf blowers in Portland is that the police are not stupid and they will just go arrest everyone with leaf blowers and steal them. If you have a way to turn their weapon back on them or shields to block their projectiles they just take them away and arrest you.

I HAVE heard about the exploding tree thing, but I believe it was during the mid 1990s cold wave so it's been a long time.

As I've told people around me where I live, Minneapolis lived through this five years ago and a lot of that organization was still there. This merely leveled it up, they're not starting from scratch.

The last two days Greenland/Tariff news cycle had me trying to remember what TACO means. Trump Always Chickens Out. This is a callback to the tariff yoyos of April and May.

if you can have a data lake then you can have a data superfund site

1. In a major victory, Democrats have managed to get all anti-trans riders stripped from the final appropriations bills. This includes HHS and Ed, which had the worst provisions in congressional history. If it passes, it will be a big win for 2026. Subscribe to support our journalism.

To the the tune of “If You’re Happy & You know it”: If they’re inciting you to violence, they’re a Fed! If they’re inciting you to violence, they’re a Fed! If they’re inciting you to violence, your best response is silence; If they’re inciting you to violence, they’re a Fed!

Body cams and training was the compromise after George Floyd, look how that worked out.

The U.S. auto industry is burning their clothes to stay warm. In punting on EVs, they abandoned their one golden opportunity to take a better approach.

Not sure who needs to hear this, but the Insurrection Act isn’t the same as “martial law.” It authorizes the molitary to engage in civil law enforcement. And not clear that even then, whether they can enforce state criminal laws

Something I wrote. (See the second pane.) foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/13/t...

I am completely certain that the ICE occupation of the Twin Cities will be one of the key milestones of this Administration in textbooks 20 years from now.

Unions and community orgs are calling for a Minnesota-wide shutdown in 10 days to protest the ferocious assault by federal immigration agents. They're saying on Jan 23, no work, no school, no shopping. SEIU Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, & others are supporting, w/ more to join. By me, Amie Stager

Minnesota lawyers: this doc is intended to serve as a living, iterated-on clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities. It's very much a work in progress, but I'll be updating it as resources develop. Everyone has something to contribute regardless of practice area or experience. Let's get to work.

An open letter is merely a blog post with a salutation.

I wrote book reviews for a while for the WSJ well over a decade ago, and Bari Weis was my editor. One of her special tricks was to try to insert a sharp rightward slant into my essays *after* it had been copy edited, as a way of slipping her viewpoint in at the last minute.

CRYSTAL SINGER (1981)
 Acrylic - 20" x 30"
 
Most of my sketches for this cover dealt with the interrelationship between the protagonist Killashandra and the black crystals she has a special affinity for. 1/4

Many places have reported lower militia activity now that ICE is on a hiring spree.

A funny thing happened when the national guard got called out in LA to support ICE activities: a lot of people started talking about the realities of Martial Law in the US. It was quite informative to me. I've lost the key quote's source, but it was:

#stl #stlco Brentwood vigil for Renee Good. #abolishice