the thing is these are good things for their own sake but they do not actually work to increase the birthrate, as the European experience largely shows. pretty much nothing increases the birthrate that we've found so far, whether good welfare state stuff or natalist nationalism and anti-choice shit.

There are just not many undocumented immigrants in Minneapolis. Honestly think mass deportation is falling behind the wayside, in favour of random bullying of people in general

It's incredibly disturbing that the Trump administration (1) is not investigating the ICE shooter; (2) has refused to cooperate with any state-led investigation of the ICE shooter; but (3) aims to go hard after Renee Good's widow.

Gotta say, Instagram's algorithm is pretty good at serving my interests these days

It's 10am in Minneapolis and rapid response is underwater, reports of chemicals deployed already. As others have pointed out, the ratio of feds (with more arriving) to residents and square mileage here is extreme compared to what we experienced in Chicago. We are in freefall.

A former 3 star calling the height of the civil war Iraqi police more professional than ICE is wild ngl (but probably not that far off the mark)

Honestly slightly astonished to see an American into The Streets. Everything about Mike Skinner's work is so profoundly English I wouldn't have thought it would translate. But @jamellebouie.net is damn right

Divvy has higher ridership on these days than any bus route and many L lines

PG Wodehouse did more damage to the BUF than the CPGB did.

Even just that first paragraph hits too close to home, I'm afraid. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I'm FOR the independence of the Fed. I'm AGAINST the attack of Jerome Powell. I HOPE business reacts strongly. But it would be nice if business types, now bestirred, also condemned ICE's attacks on immigrants and Americans--not just Trump's attack on the Fed.

Genuinely interesting article that correctly isolates the affordability problem as largely one about Baumol cost disease and the issue of positional goods generating zero sum battles in a world of higher wealth inequality. Great stuff

I see the fearsome no-bullshit no-snowflake chads running America are frightened about marauding "gangs of wine mums". Don't tell them about the book club triads or the knitting circle mafia, they'll wet themselves.

Just saying, I spent twenty years in Emerging Markets watching countries pull this sort of thing with their Central Banks and am available for lucrative consulting gigs.

Doesn’t game theory suggest that in a stable, cooperative system where powerful agents play by a set of established rules, someone who “defects” & stops playing by the rules wins big for awhile, but then the system gets destabilized, chaos rules, & eventually a new system gets rebuilt on the ruins?

Trump has just declared himself the "acting president of Venezuela" over on Truth Social in case you're wondering about his mental health.

FYI: Judge Ellis (Chicago ICE case) noted in November that video evidence shows ICE "brake-checked other motorists in an attempt to force accidents that agents could then use as justifications for deploying force."

This person specifically alleges that while in federal custody, amidst a brutal assault, agents told her: “Haven’t you learned your lesson? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch,” referring to Renee Good.

In this clip from a longer interview, she says while she was in detention, agents called Renee Good a “lesbian b*tch.” This video belongs to @statuscoupnews.bsky.social and I’ll take it down if they want me to. 2/2

I do not think anybody is prepared for how quickly and how thoroughly things we've taken for granted our whole lives could change

I did not expect this graf in the middle of a story about 401(k) plans: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/b...

Institutions can, in fact, stand up to the President.

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Congratulations to all the bankers, hedge-fund managers, private-equity honchos, tech titans, corporate executives and op-ed writers for backing the man who will do more to undermine the system that made them insanely wealthy than any other presidential candidate in their lifetimes.

The number of one-off structural changes that disadvantage young people vs their parents at the same age is pretty staggering

*whispering* this is the performance of public virtue and should be feted

the reason there are going to be more incidents like this is that you’ve hired a bunch of murderers and told them they’ll be protected and celebrated if they shoot people

Also, by their own standards, the cops protecting the Capitol on Jan 6 should have opened fire all over.

this really is quite something. This is a mayor of a major U.S. city saying that he cannot do what he is legally empowered to do because he doesn’t have enough guns to do it. The thing is arresting agents of the federal government who are breaking laws.

I knew Tyler Cowen was a total fraud when he opposed congestion pricing in NYC. an economist opposing congestion pricing is like a biologist refusing to believe in evolution. direct proof of being an ideological hack and all-around moron

WSJ investigation: In the past 6 months ICE agents have fired at vehicles 13 times, leading to: * 8 people shot * 5 of which were U.S. citizens * 2 died * no victims drew a weapon The playbook: Agents box in a vehicle, block attempts to flee, then fire www.wsj.com/us-news/vide...

'The scale of the unrest now gripping Iran is the largest since the demonstrations of 2009; some veteran Iran-watchers reckon the protests are the biggest since the overthrow of the shah in 1979' www.economist.com/middle-east-...

“When Brexit passed, the economic impact was initially minimal. But a decade later, the UK is estimated to have lost 6 to 8 per cent of GDP relative to its pre-Brexit trajectory. Structural damage reveals itself slowly, and always too late to be reversed.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

British police have killed fewer people in the last 100 years than American police kill in an average month. Policing in America is an ongoing tragedy.

So to return to this: Mussolini had 200,000 blackshirts for the March on Rome in a country of ~35m. Hitler had 400,000 brownshirts in 1932 in Germany for a population of ~60m. So around 0.6% of the population. 0.6% of 340m Americans is just over 2 million. They do not have enough goons.

"...the more one relies on vice signaling as a style of action and communication, the less relevant and powerful the in-group’s moral compass is as a practical constraint on anyone’s behavior." latest for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/emp...

It is difficult to explain how dire this situation is. There are 2,200 ICE agents in Minneapolis right now. They are heavily armed and are operating with no rules. The MPD only has 550 officers. StP even fewer. How can they protect us against an invading army? Because that's what this is.

Not an exaggeration at all to say that the feeling in Minneapolis is that the entire metro area is being treated as occupied territory by federal agents. Impossible to overstate how overwhelmingly people here do not like it. This does not feel sustainable.

In America you drop your kid off at school, get your brains blown out on the ride home, then the Vice President drops everything for a week to call you a terrorist, to slander your family, to protect the circumstances that led to your death so they can do it again. It is government by Alex Jones.

hybridizing regimes that do indiscriminate violence are hybridizing regimes that are failing. failing to consolidate, failing the principal-agent problem, failing at elite coordination.

Ongoing and obvious reminder that firing chemical weapons directly at people's heads like this *is* deadly force.

Walz: "I couldn't help but think, and it scares me a bit -- 'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most important directive.' It certainly feels like that in this moment."

A 23 year old larping as a journalist made a misleading and inaccurate YouTube video that the administration full of chronically online shitposters used to justify the “largest immigration operation ever” and now someone is dead

Mayor Jacob Frey: "They are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit."

With news of yet another DHS shooting breaking, a reminder that DHS’s initial statements should not be trusted without further verification, given previous post-shooting statements which crumbled under further investigation. In addition, be wary of short context-free video clips shared virally.

Whole-of-gov effort (including gov-approved media) going on right now to "root out fraud" with the assumption that blue states have been handing out gifts to illegal immigrants. Iterating on last year's campaign to cut blue state Medicaid $ bc they were giving it to illegal immigrants.

What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids? Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.

The Utrecht morning rush hour in the snow did not disappoint!

It's the only game that matters. My SKETCH of British politicians playing the Trump Game.