Weird to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Am Rev while living under a government that has a) sent armed troops to occupy cities perceived to be too rebellious, b) rendered largely irrelevant the representative branch of government, and c) claimed imperial right to rule other countries.

This was indeed the point. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/o...

Anderson Cooper is now getting his chance to receive “extensive editorial feedback” from the new CBS News editor in chief. Via @oliverdarcy.bsky.social elink.mail.status.news/ls/click?upn...

China's fentanyl crackdown led to a stunning drop in U.S. overdoses, research says

Imagine just leaving this team

While the Catholic Left hosts theology panels no one understands and writes essays no one reads, MAGA Catholics are winning elections and consolidating power. It’s time to stop talking to ourselves and start building a movement that reaches people, wins elections, and defeats authoritarianism.

Amanda Gorman wrote this poem for Renee Good and that’s it for me tonight.

Expect to see a surge of proud ignorance and proplawganda about what you can say about ICE agent Jonathan Ross, identified by local media as the person who shot and killed Renee Good. In particular, expect a repeat of Rittenhouse-era “accusing him of murder is defamation” rhetoric. It’s not. /1

I’m ready. Why stop at two popes.

Mary Sue drug confirmed. Tirzepatide + Taltz (an IL-17a MAB) significantly improved psoriatic arthritis symptoms and caused significant weight loss at the same time in data published this afternoon. @rheumcat.bsky.social @mikejohansenmd.medsky.social investor.lilly.com/news-release...

There is so much money and power to be had by selling out everyone's rights to fascists, and the people who do it make me sick. I'm specifically referring to JD Vance here but the list this applies to is long.

The criminal legal system is not set up for justice. And every day, someone learns this for the first time.

kids, don’t forget to eat a steak soaked in milk every day so you can grow up looking like RFK Jr

Just to back up Anthony as a medievalist, that’s one of the dumbest fucking claims imaginable. There have never NOT been people from continental Europe, Africa, and Asia moving to/ from the British Isles for 2000 years. In early modernity, this included the Americas!

My very limited take away from the new food "guidelines" is that we don't talk about gout enough.

This is bullshit. They absolutely have jurisdiction.

We don't stop statins just because your LDL is now 70. Same for blood pressure. It's controlled by medication. Same rules apply here with obesity treatments.

This is for a state crime.

Sub “anything” for “sports” and that’s me

If you are a newspaper/aggregator with a national audience and your headline today isn’t that ICE murdered a women in cold blood and the Trump admin is defending the murderer, you are part of the problem.

They are gonna leave anyway so orgs like ABA, SACS, etc. should spend more time crafting good policies and enforcing them (instead of trying to appease)

I watched this last night. The top two women's skaters in the US are queer women, with pride flags waving in the audience in support. That really meant something to me in this moment.

The Chair of MSU's Steering Committee - hour highest body for shared governance - has taken the job as Vice President for Research at Texas A&M. To me, this is a curious choice. stories.tamu.edu/news/2025/12...

An associate dean told English faculty “literature with major plot lines that concern gay, lesbian or transgender identities should not be taught in core-curriculum classes…faculty may assign textbooks with chapters that cover transgender identity, so long as they do not talk about the material.”🙃

I'm really proud of this academic freedom syllabus language that the @aaup.org CDAF fellows developed. Having language like this opens up an opportunity to talk with your students about what academic freedom is (and is not). If you add it to your syllabus this semester let me know how it goes!

AOC: This has now become what we feared most about ICE for a long time—that it would be used as an anti-civilian force with no accountability. At the end of the day, what we saw today was a murder, and murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted.

@chrislhayes.bsky.social: “A 37-year-old American citizen, the mother of a young child is dead tonight. She was shot in the face by an agent of the federal government, and that government has spent the day telling despicable lies about her.”

Rep. Wesley Hunt: "The bottom line is this: when a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep you life"

Texas A&M has forbidden the teaching of Plato's "Symposium." As Corey Robin notes, there was bound to be a "showdown between, on the one hand, the right's claim to be defending the great books and the western canon and the classics, and... #edusky dailynous.com/2026/01/06/texas-am-bans-plato/

"They carried her body out, just like by her limbs, they didn’t even have a stretcher," a witness says. "She was carried out like a sack of potatoes."

Tim Walz: "Our administration is going to stop at nothing to seek accountability and justice. The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is working on the investigation."

one thing I like to do when I have a new technology with no domain-specific purpose that soaks up time and does various harms to its users is to test it out first in hospitals and schools

Dr Mehmet Oz announces the latest FDA dietary/health guidelines regarding alcohol consumption: "Don't have it for breakfast"

Also you will never convince me that this isn't a gender/masculinity thing www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/w...

Lol this is an actual South Park episode.

re-upping for the feral hordes of archeologists and classicists descending upon san francisco today now this very moment

It took careful work to recover the UNIX V4 operating system from the 9-track magnetic tape. The software is foundational for most devices used today, including iPhones.

From an email to one of our faculty members.... Not even Plato can escape censorship at Texas A&M!

!!!!

The most unsubtle, heavy-handed claims made by pomo academic types have turned out to all be true. Gender is a relation of domination that requires constant, affirming witness. Capitalism will require extractive colonial relations. There’s no subtlety. Every day is like a 101 seminar at Oberlin.

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

i realllllly want to stress that this change is most likely going to be stopped in court, and quickly. but the confusion rfk jr. is spreading is also part of the project. that’s long term damage

"Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching." I expected nothing less www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

I didn't know these levels of shamelessness existed and that's on me

Wrote this before yesterday but it gets at what undergirds that (and lots of other things in politics). "The internet universalized subjectivity instead of objectivity. … We have reverted from acting on what we *know* to acting on what we *think*."

They’re speedrunning the worst of every awful presidential term with ket, roids, uppers and social media brainrot.

And there ya have it… Officials from top Wall Street firms will be traveling to Venezuela to investigate “investment prospects” of the country. “The trip will feature about 20 officials from the finance, energy and defense sectors.”

Cicero wearing a crown, flanked by Cato and Caesar, triumphing over the Catilinarian conspirators Bodleian Library MS. Barlow 40; Cicero, De inventione rhetorica; 12th century, 2nd quarter; Italy, North? or French, South?; f.1r @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

"I’m going to walk y’all through why this is very bad, and I’ll attempt to make it as clear as possible to outline the unnecessary risks and complications Trump is now forcing upon our country and the people of Venezuela and international stability."