"To persist, to try, to take risks, most people need hope. They need the confidence that people can in fact change their conditions, and that collectively, they can do more together than they can apart." As always, @mskellymhayes.bsky.social invites us to engage with each other and practice hope.

NEW — My first true foray into AI haterdom is about how those of us not convinced by AI’s inevitability are a real constituency worthy of a voice. Give it a read:

Love today's @marisakabas.bsky.social on AI hate (good for the body, good for the soul, good for the culture).

remember when Google offered unlimited digital storage to colleges and universities and then when adoption reached the right levels rescinded that promise, capped everything, and started pricing those services without the subsidies? idk man just something I think about a lot

This is an absolute travesty. The 5th circuit is imposing a nationwide restriction on accessing abortion medication. This is such a blatant power grab and perversion of the law. www.reuters.com/world/us-cou...

This week, the Supreme Court finally killed off the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I've spent the past decade studying the VRA and the attacks on it, so I thought I would offer some historical perspective, and where I think we're headed. This will be a long thread; buckle up.

Instant classic article by Carlson, Logan, and Won on segregation in the United States over the last 120 years (tl;dr ... it's about the suburbs, but how it's about the suburbs differs a bit around the country) academic.oup.com/sf/article/1...

The Flytrap's big big 20%-off memberships sale ends TODAY so GO GET YOUR ASSES SOME INDEPENDENT, WORKER-OWNED, FEMINIST JOURNALISM

I encourage you to take some time and listen to this beautiful and important conversation about the power and necessity of hope.

I really can't tell you how much better it feels to choose your lane and to go hard there. Focus on one or two things and get some traction there. Keep inviting people to join in. Most will not and some will. Keep going.

Young Americans are very low trust, sometimes bordering on nihilism. It’s up to us to build institutions that make them want to act with social trust—to make an effort at school, to vote, to have normal social interactions in public spaces, to date, to not shoplift or evade fares, etc

My PhD dissertation on how the separation of work and home shaped gender identity in 19th century America would have been prohibited in 21st century Texas

All adults and some children on ICE flights—some 50 flights a day now—are shackled at the wrists and ankles attached to a chain around their waists. I have spoken to migrants and their attorneys who report being shackled for 50, 75, and 82 hours while being deported. Flight data backs this up.

Something cool: @appalachia100.bsky.social launched a project to capture Appalachians’ reflections on America’s past, present, & future. People (and especially young folks!) in the region can submit videos, photos, voice notes, writing, etc. that captures their responses to prompts. Check it out!

Get Becca's book!!! Help make sure folks in your community have access to an incredible abortion resource!!

So excited to share that Diversityland: Hiding Racial Inequality in an American Suburb is available for pre-order! Use code UCPSAVE30 to save 30%. www.ucpress.edu/books/divers... @ucpress.bsky.social

The @archive.org 's Wayback Machine, a digital time machine that has preserved over a trillion web pages over the past 3 decades, is facing systematic blocks from major media outlets. www.gadgetreview.com/23-major-new...

"The petitioners are asking ASA members to gawp at human misery, death, and destruction as dispassionate experts, blink, and proclaim that they shall not speak on the issue, as it is very complex and contested." Roi Livne and an anonymous co-author respond to the recent petition on scatterplot

The push for institutional neutrality, like the so-called “free-speech crisis,” was always a right wing ploy to get universities to stop pointing out obvious things like “fascists are ascendant” and “racism is bad.” It is sad that so many university “leaders” took the bait.

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health. 'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

I think my 90th essay at my newsletter is one of my best there. A meditation on cooperative power versus violence, with detours on Iran/Vance/Orban/Swalwell, and a zen ending, literally.

Making tenure count, for MSNOW I wrote about my employer, The University of Iowa, creating a center for intellectual freedom. It's a reactionary project built on decades of conservative propaganda about higher ed.

I need everyone to understand this is eugenics in action—not just “quackery.” Much like the “anti vax” movement as a whole.

While our school shut down these depts/programs and majors, the state leg launched a new barrage of bills vs the university, targeting teaching content, president hiring rules, residency quotas/visa limits, and trying to mandate “civics” courses for all students—but only taught within this center.

"The right’s characterization of higher education is a fiction. Students across the ideological spectrum feel free to express themselves, think their education is worth the cost and don’t think their views are silenced." Only 3% of Republican students feel out of place on campus for their views.

we’ve talked a lot about how AI might con people into believing bad things, but it is sad to think of how it will also make us stop believing in wondrous things too

One of the comments to this is like “of all the things to be mad about, not being able to get a credit card is low down the list” and y’all being able to leave shitty men is so important and cannot be done without money.

This is propaganda.

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

Put differently: most Americans would rather hold out hope of someday being in on the grift than hold grifters accountable to the law.

you do not have to hand it to tucker carlson or marjorie taylor greene or alex jones or megyn kelly. they're all rats who see trump as a sinking ship and they're getting ready to jump in preparation for their next act. you do not have to fall for it.

There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel has been bombing Lebanon non-stop since last night. If anything Israel is expanding its war on Lebanon. You are being lied to

“Survival is a collective process. We weren’t meant to do it alone, just as we weren’t meant to solve problems larger than ourselves alone. We are social beings who need each other to survive. Our courage and our potential are collective, and we will only find our way out of this together.”

Anyway, we have ample research on how living under a state of sustained terror and stress causes life-long health problems as well as intergenerational epigenetic effects. This feels like it's making you sick because it actually is making you sick.

Resources for people in the U.S. military who wanna resist. GI Rights Hotline: girightshotline.org About Face –– Veterans Against the War: aboutfaceveterans.org War Resisters League: www.warresisters.org/gi-rights-re... Center on Conscience and War: centeronconscience.org

I think it's a good thing for politicians to call for his removal from office. They need to get to work on removing him.

Also a perennial reminder that in times of fast-moving news, a TON of unverified photos, videos, audio, and 'news stories' circulate, go viral, and perpetuate misinformation. Please take time to double-check things before posting and/or sharing! Verifying reports can take time.

So, if you're not sure what to do, but you're not willing to give up, if you're still thinking and trying—if you're willing to take a stranger by the hand, to try to make some hope—just know I'm here with you. I think a lot of us are, even if it feels lonely where you are right now.

They want you to become listless and hopeless. They know that's easier for many of us than inhabiting uncertainty. I get it. I don't do well with uncertainty. But I'm gonna stay here, in this ugly, messy uncertainty—grieving, refusing, denouncing, and trying to figure out what to do next.

Claims we have no power to impact what happens are nevertheless an intervention in what will happen, by discouraging participation, by encouraging passivity, surrender, acquiescence. If you insist that a given outcome is inevitable, you are lobbying against resistance.

You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.

An opposition party would not be on vacation right now. They would have coordinated message to the public about the fact that a President in cognitive decline is threatening more war crimes. They would be BLASTING the message on all available platforms.

only so many families who can afford/want private school also want their kids taught by AI instead of teachers. but it’s way easier to scale your “market reach” if you can get contracts with whole desperate districts, taught to seek out “innovative solutions” that involve less teacher time...

Want the full story of how the end of coveture is linked to slavery and indigenous custom? Read “Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era” (with Benton Wishart) in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

On the 58th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, it's time to reckon with the media's troubling role in the civil rights struggle. (I pitched this to @nytimes.com who found it "fascinating..[but] the news is making deeper & certainly more historical pieces very hard." But they're the news.) A 🧵

In light of the conversation about how hard it is to promote your own book: Post a link to buy your book here and I’ll boost it cause you destroyed yourself to get it done, your publisher won’t help you sell it, and you deserve cheers and admiration for your accomplishment.

It's indeed possible to beat bad things backed by big money

Actually we should just give citizenship to every undocumented person in the United States who wants it. Walking over an imaginary line isn't some great moral atrocity. Making people live in the shadows as a permanent underclass absolutely IS.

FYI, this gallery has all the photos NASA is sharing from Artemis II in one place, with descriptions.