". . . a growing and troubling list of unexplained fatalities among high-ranking executives in Russia’s energy, nuclear, and industrial sectors since the full-scale war against Ukraine began."

The right gets a new ally: "See! Everyone understands the righteousness of our cause!" The left gets a new ally: "What took them so long? Are they even sincere?"

Sounds like the segregationists in Connecticut are having a grand ole time “While waiting for the police to arrive, the old Karen’s friend said, ‘You’re not the minority anymore.'” www.blackenterprise.com/alex-okeefe-...

Is this possible now, or still only in the planning stage? Are there real world examples of such alternative Bluesky communities?

Lost in news about Trump declaring that H-1B visa holders will have to start paying $100,000 a year, is the news that they plan to completely phase out "employment-based visas that offer paths to citizenship, including for professors, scientists, artists and athletes" (cont'd)

Why and how to delete your academia-dot-edu account right away. Read carefully so you can do so without first agreeing to their awful new policies:

Disco Elysium is truly the most leftist game of all time, the studio immediately collapsing into bitter infighting demonstrates the depth of its authenticity

David Frum and David French and even Tucker Carlson are showing up more on Kimmel and the awfulness of state repression of speech than most of the assholes who signed the Harper's letter about cancel culture. I guess those guys are still more worried about Oberlin undergrads.

What's being "protected" is not "free speech" but rather the RIGHT for white men to be white supremacists in public without any criticism or any consequences. I hope that's clear.

1. Just so we’re clear, this is the clip that got Jimmy Kimmel’s show shelved by ABC. If I’m missing any other clips please let me know.

I worry that my mental health is far too invested in the success of @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

according to an immigration attorney representing several arrested workers, ICE agents chose to arrest the Korean workers to fulfill the quota of 3,000 daily immigrant arrests set by Stephen Miller www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

Taiwan: [exists] Beijing: Stop provoking me! Useful idiots writing in the NY Times: Yeah, stop that.

"I never stood with Bibi."

Me in graduate school: "Althusser's ideological state apparatuses, Gramsci's hegemony, Foucault's discourse, and Bourdieu's concept of the field should not be conflated . . . " Me now: "Fascism. Bad."

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

I have to admit, I was brainwashed by Hollywood into thinking there was some kind of consensus that fascism and genocide were bad.

College professors at national universities already have to do this. Even if you are just changing planes …

When a scholar blurbs another scholar's book as "monumental," I hear "TLDR" . . .

I don't know . . . If I had billions of dollars, I'd want to spend my time making art, traveling, learning new languages, not destroy democracy and accelerate global warming. But that's just me.

New Bill Would Give Marco Rubio “Thought Police” Power to Revoke U.S. Passports

How it started. How it’s going

A single exercise session may slow cancer cell growth, new study shows Exercise may not only help prevent cancer but also could fight it at a cellular level.

The state of "free speech" in America: Pentagon staff fired for negative Charlie Kirk posts by service members US officials plan to punish foreigners ‘making light of’ Charlie Kirk death UC Berkeley shares 160 names with Trump administration

Cat: All mice should be chopped up and turned into catfood. Dog: Cat and I had our disagreements, but I respect Cat's right to express her opinions. Mouse: WTF?

"Details of his life, by turns mundane and chilling, emerge from the cache: He purchased more than 600 items on Amazon, including an FBI agent costume, teeth whitener, a leather bullwhip, a pair of size 12 Crocs, a prostate massager, girls school uniforms and a box of Nabisco Nilla Mini Wafers."

They actually have a lot more common ground than people might think:

I mean, it kinda makes sense—if you think you are smart because you are rich ...

LOL. So now Silicone Valley is defining AGI (an impossible goal for LLMs by traditional standards) in terms of profit? “provisions that would limit Microsoft's access to OpenAI technology once the company reaches so-called AGI … AI systems capable of generating at least $100 billion in profit.”

Wild how political alliance with Zionism sweeps all sorts of wild statements about Jews under the table

"The worst person to ask about what socialism is is a Republican, who doesn’t know what socialism means, and will tell you that everything is socialism. The second worst...is a leftist college professor, who...will tell you that nothing qualifies" wrecked www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/new-york-s...

lot of people out here laboring under the misapprehension that uni is just further high school and there is some higher authority on content than the professor who is a live, working researcher in the field

Nothing should shock me anymore, and yet . . .

OK, but do you remember that guy who posted photos of Chinese government officials with expensive watches they couldn't possibly afford on their salaries?

The news that Oliver North has wed Fawn Hall brings to mind one of the best political documentaries ever made, Brett Morgen's Ollie's Army. No film better foretold our current political moment. It came out in 1996. It isn't available anywhere on streaming, but here's the synopsis for you: 1/4

The @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social campaign is keeping a smile on my face, even in these dark, dark days. Love this "dramatic reading" about how all the richies are having a sad www.youtube.com/watch?v=x__C...

Heard today: “Harvard can’t use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions."

In my father's poli sci classroom in 1970s Taiwan, he would always call out the 'spy students' in the back: "Take good notes! Spicy bit!" The class would titter. Even the report-maker would look a bit abashed. In this A&M student's righteous "Dear Leader" invocation, there was no shame felt at all.

Weeks ago, Hamas agrees to an Egypt & Qatar deal (similar to a US deal Israel agreed to before). Israel doesn't. This week, Hamas repeats it wants a deal. Trump sends one. Hamas goes to Qatar—where the largest US base in the Middle East is—to hash it out. Then Israel bombs them.

Look at that. And New Mexico is not a rich state. Just one that figured out some priorities.

The headline out of this morning's Times poll of the NYC mayoral race is that Mamdani has a huge lead. But the bigger story is that we're past the halfway point of the general election campaign, and Cuomo has made up exactly zero ground in the last two months.

Welcome to McCarthyism 2.0. The difference this time is that it’s not a relatively junior Senator doing it via committee hearings, but the White House doing it with full cooperation from virtually every arm of the federal and red state governments.

The death of democracy, in three acts: Bush v. Gore (2000) Citizens United v. FEC (2010) Trump v. United States (2024)

Slightly diminish a book Dream of the Brown Chamber

"If being a firefighter…is not sufficient to earn you a place in American society, what is? If it’s not even enough to afford you a modicum of respect from the goons enforcing our new immigration regime, who can hope for kinder treatment? The answer is obvious: no one."

Migration Scholars' Global Solidarity and Resistance Network The Global Teach-In/Teach-Out 11 November 2025 migrationscholarsmobilize.org/new-page

Fine wrap-up on the $1.5B settlement for Anthropic's use of pirated books. Apparent lessons: 1) Using books for training AIs is OK, as it's transformative as per copyright law; 2) But you have to *buy* the damn books--you can't download a database of pirated books, as Anthropic did; ...