Setting the playbook for 2029. Elections have consequences (laudatory)

We must stress: The only violence is coming from CBP/ICE. They are rioting in the face of sustained nonviolent protests by thousands of Americans across the country. They are today’s Alabama State Troopers at the Selma bridge. They are Bull Connor’s police with firehoses in Birmingham.

The Anacostia and the Paint Branch.

We could end this whole farce if somebody just brought him a damn globe.

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.

This is how you do it. Corrupt institutions depend on your compliance to enact their cowardly and oppressive policies. Don't back down, always escalate the conflict, and make them eat their own shit.

Hard, hard disagree. You do not need a constitutional amendment to abolish ICE or disestablish DHS. We can do this - but not this year. A new American coalition can do it, but it'll be long after this bunch of soulless opportunists are flushed from government.

Better yet, disestablish all of DHS, and undo the nightmarish idiocies that we created in a panic 25 years ago. Reestablish the INS, get rid of ODNI, fix the damage from the Patriot Act, etc.

On a lighter note, here are the best books I read in 2025: Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake (twice!) Jon Peterson, Playing at the World 2e Neal Stephenson, Polostan Benjamin Labatut, The Maniac Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel 1/3

This has moved out of the sciences and become a massive problem in all fields. I now have to teach my English grad students about the warning signs for the predatory journals that keep cropping up in their research. But this is far from the only problem in academic publishing. 1/

I am a befuddled private eye stumbling from bizarre episode to bizarre episode in a world that is rapidly sliding into fascism. Unless it's the last book I finished? Then I'm a perma-DM who was accidentally sentenced to life in prison. Not sure which is closer to reality.

Mark 15:24 “And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.”

Babel is a fantasy in which linguists and bibliophiles wield absolute power because they understand the secret magic of words, which also does not trust its own readers to understand its extremely obvious message without direct intervention from the author.

"Why do you think I wear a belly like a bowl full of jelly -- can't armor my head --"

The RDJ announcement reeked of flop sweat. This is a little better, I guess, since Evans will be playing the character people love (and that character adds a much-needed element of sincerity to the focus-grouped smarm). But it's still the mark of a franchise that is looking backward.

I'm always down for any recommendation to read Red Plenty, but this is an especially good reason.

the #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go, oh FUCK YEAH

I would bet money that the answer is contained in this chart, and everything else is just wishcasting to flatter your own ideological preferences.

If ICE can do this to her, they can do this to anybody. The first chance we get, we need to prosecute the people responsible for this, and we need to abolish ICE.

Unfortunately, the Iron Law of Institutions also applies to academic disciplines.

The Agatha Christie title for this post would be "How to Murder a Dead Man."

This Graham Platner fundraising email is really going hard against (((AIPAC))). I guess the guy with the death's head tattoo knows who his real base is.

I’d guess I’m not entirely alone in having assumed it would continue to mean Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics…

"Some [teachers] complained about the effect of technology on students’ stamina for reading and interest in books. But more pointed toward the curriculum products their schools had purchased from major publishers." That about sums it up. "Curriculum products" are killing education.

Yeah, I bet that does piss you off.

Great thread on spurious historical comparisons. No, a family earning the minimum wage today is not worse off than Bob Cratchit.

I continue to have no sympathy left for whinging about how the public are rude about AI and feel threatened by it when the biggest players in the AI space have spent years very vocally and constantly *threatening the public*

This video is a must-watch for people who loved Samantha Harvey's Orbital (and Orbital is a must-read for people who love this video).

I'm genuinely torn on this one. This thread is filled with the entitled customer mentality that is ruining higher education. Students are not customers; you are clients paying a professional service, and that's pointless if you don't accept the professionals' judgment on what you need to learn.

So great that our political media spent 2024 obsessing over the age and health of Joe Biden, only to drop the matter entirely once he was no longer in the race.

By all means, ICE, please pick a fight with the Catholic church. In Boston. #AbolishICE

Of all the faces that ever begged to be eaten by leopards, these might need to be eaten the most.

So many of my son's classes have moved completely over to apps and "learning management" platforms and it has tanked the quality of instruction. We're seeing ripple effects now with college students. Tech is destroying education.

The series went horribly off the rails in season 3 and despite its best efforts, season 4 had to expend too much energy trying to get it back on track. That plus the general descent into memes instead of characters meant there was no coming back.

I think this is true of every career. I've met more than my share of teachers who hate teaching and researchers who never seem to do any research. Somehow, all of them have tenure while the people who want to do the work struggle to land full-time jobs.

I keep thinking I've seen the coolest Tom Stoppard story, and then...

Amazing research.

Dorothy Gale was clearly acting with malice aforethought when she steered her house into that twister.

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen Rolling Stones Billy Bragg and Steve Earle Soul Coughing Ex Hex Pulp

The best response to this post is just a picture of Watto or Nute Gunray. They're all shit films, but Phantom Menace went out of its way to reach a whole other level of shit.

Against all odds, Batman/Deadpool is a great love letter to all things weird and wonderful in DC and Marvel. It's also a great sequel to Grant Morrison's 100% in-continuity death in an old issue of Suicide Squad. It's been a while since I enjoyed a Morrison comic this much. More please!

Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.

Amazing (also cyclopean, eldritch, and batrachian)

The internet was a lovely place once. "My scheme blinded them all, as if by fog But for these medd'ling kids and this their dog."

I‘m tired of being nice about this; “abolitionism” has had years to develop a non-idiot policy program and the best they’ve come up with is ”murder without even the pretense of juridical process.” And I am not nut-picking; this is all over abolitionist writing.

Elite institutions are folding right and left, but when the rank and file stand up, we can win.

Thinking a lot about how everyone in media hated The Wire S5's Templeton storyline, which turned out to be one of the most accurate depictions of modern media creatures.

Growing up in a time when “selling out” was the most shameful thing you could do and then being forced to live through the 2020s feels like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

It all would have been much easier if, as would have happened if we were remotely a serious country, it all ended with the Access Hollywood interview.

This about sums it up. I spent the afternoon in a meeting where my colleagues wheeled out one moralistic excuse after another not to penalize students for using AI to write papers (academic integrity is "surveillance" now). It's the 21st century and nobody wants to do their goddamn jobs.