If you see a politician or a pundit or even a "civil rights" leader who is not talking about clawing back this unprecedented funding for surveillance, militarized invasions, and privatized concentration camps, then you know this is not a serious person. It's an easy litmus test.

Unions matter

NEW: ProPublica went inside the detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.

we have a list of them with their full names. We know exactly who and probably where they are. It's wild that everybody acts like this just can't happen, or like it would take a lot to make it happen, when it wouldn't, really. It would just require one decision and a single act of force. That's it.

That Ring “search party” ad was unsubtle enough that even my 10yo watched it and was like “are they gonna use this for ICE?”

You know society wouldn't even skip a beat if we arrested all the billionaires tomorrow, right? They're not adding anything to society. They're provably taking everything away. Everybody could keep on doing the same thing that they're doing now and things would immediately start to get better...

this all does make some very compelling points

I'm hardly the first person to note this, but it's enormously instructive that our President and his followers saw the message "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE" and understood it, correctly, as an attack on them

How do I watch a replay of the bad bunny halftime show?

Seriously though. There is an America that is beautiful and love and will fight for and it is this one

My ideal version of America is what I saw Bad Bunny encapsulate: multicultural, multigenerational, queer, empathetic, and full of raucous love.

Holy shit

The ads look expensive but that is all

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.” Conditions in a San Diego concentration camp, via message hurled out in a bottle.

Reporters! any of you on the data center beat? i'm involved in a fight against a proposed data center in Monterey Park, and would love to talk to you and connect you with other residents fighting it. we think there are shenanigans going on with the company's use of unions in their propaganda

Watching some twilight zone and realising this is probably where the phrase fifth dimension comes from and a nice thing about getting old is, with a little work, how much context you can add to things

MAMMALS/3DCAT.GIF

Anyway, I wrote about a whole slew of reports saying that DHS is using abusive administrative subpoenas to track down Trump's online critics, show up at their door, and intimidate them... And the "free speech warriors" who insisted Biden was censoring people online are somehow silent.

Kiddies who made it out of the ICE dungeon report sighting a schoolmate. Before this, the school district had no information on their whereabouts. The family has now been connected with a lawyer. Youngsters who escape a govt dungeon are the only way to track abducted children? This is fine!

I'd approach the next election differently. I think it is an election where we need a candidate who has a vision for the country and democracy. I think newsom is transphobic and would be a republican if that was a better path to power. But more importantly, I don't think he has a vision

This is the shit. These people aren't heroes, they are characters in a morality tale. Asshole is Midas and thinks that is a compliment.

Ammon frickin’ Bundy, of all people, having the slowly dawning realization that all his compatriots were just looking for the Right boot to lick.

This is one of the most important cases that galvanized Black people in the late 40s through the 1950s. Almost every major Black leader had a comment about it. It is also one of the most successful defense committees that was organized in the 20th century. Almost no one knows about it today.

I said, I will climb the palm tree, I will take hold of its boughs. Let now thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, the fragrance of thy breath like apples, And the taste of you like the best wine that goeth [down] sweetly, causing the lips of the slumbering to murmur.

Our tax dollars at work

So what is the LA version of whistles? I'm not sure they would be loud enough here

Great piece on Los Angeles cutting down trees to reduce shade out of some misguided belief it will reduce crime and not just make the city more inhospitable. This place could be so amazing if city leadership weren't such a mess. lareported.substack.com/p/shade-remo...

I see defense of billionaires being discussed. If you take a billion, and all this discussion is about people who have more than one, and put it in an ok high yield savings account you'll make $30 million a year.

Getting home from #criticalmass and if there is one thing that will make you optimistic, it might be that bike ride

Stewing in social media has been good for people, I don't see why it will be bad for the bots

Think about it like this. This ICE agent was on camera and unmasked — fulfilling one of three "demands" Democratic leader Chuck Schumer just issued in order to agree to save Republicans and give DHS even more money. And he was still threatening to kill someone.

It’s really difficult & disorienting but the feds hit LA extremely hard today. There were kidnappings all over & reported cluster raids in Chinatown, East LA, Ktown. This list shows to 1130 AM but they haven’t stopped all day Just because the media attention stopped doesn’t mean the abductions have

"They told us what they were going to do. They published it. They put it on a website. And when it happened, the press was surprised." Hoo boy, everyone should bookmark this @parkermolloy.com piece & make sure everyone involved in media reads it.

DAILY MEMO: ICE Continues to Use CHP and Local Police Resources Despite California's Sanctuary State Policy Around 40 people were kidnapped from Santa Paula to Riverside, with more than half from the City of L.A. in the last three days. @eltragon.bsky.social

I need the next VC backed fad with no path to profit like crypto or AI to be something useful like bridges or trains. Then when it all falls apart we are left with bridges or trains, not half finished data centers

worst “what would you do for a Klondike bar” scenario ever

What if some of the "principled conservatives" of the bush year were actually principled, unlike our current Democrats. And now they are showing it. Or maybe they have a moral view and can learn?

Just watched a pretty solid kazoo solo

Starting a novel from spain set during the start of their civil war and the translator provided a little history as part of his preface and framed it as one of the reasons the civil war happened was because of a shallow belief in democracy from the non monarchists.

A literal handful of bigots are responsible for like 90% of bookbans. A half dozen British terfs flood the internet loudly enough to sound like a crowd of transphobes. A few hundred ICE swarm into a single city to give the illusion of being an army.

lithub.com/just-a-few-h... 11 people were responsible for 60% of the book bans in 2021.

Click through, folks, in only takes a second. If their handle has changed and they have a ton more replies than posts, just block 'em

High fiving as you go off to poop in separate bathrooms is a tier 1 modern luxury experience

Arden: i did not write about fuckable santa! Arden: i wrote about morozko! Arden: he's a totally different mythological character from your santa claus! Barker: he is pretty fuckable, tho Arden: yeah well, duh!

Do you think it is coincidence that both Zach Taylor and Taylor swift write a lot of songs about living in NYC? Or is it just that it is the cool, walkable city we dream about?

Zach Bryan's numbers when saying fuck ice, the Boss still talking politics, Green Day opening the super bowl, Beyonce's cowboy carter, Bad Bunny. Minnesota. I won't mention tv, movies, whatever but these sad angry men looting our country sometimes feel like a violent, destructive death rattle

DJing is inherently conservative.

I'm the hairs on my ear are getting long enough to accidentally pull old

Not fully boycotting commerce tomorrow here in LA because we need to hit up the local bike shop and realistically will probably eat some tacos, but building in at least a little time to hold a rude sign outside a target or home depot.