“The U.S. National Science Foundation X-Labs (NSF X-Labs) initiative is designed to launch and scale a new generation of organizations focused on independent research, development and innovation.” We have those, thanks, they’re called universities and national laboratories.

Cool, so NSF is now going to be used to essentially launder money to tech bros because universities are just too cumbersome and disciplinary oversight and regulations and accountability are all just too stifling for innovation. $1.5B for “X-Labs.”

In 2017, Criselda Vasquez painted this portrait of her parents and titled it "The New American Gothic." Last month, her father, the man in this portrait, was abducted by ICE after being in the US for 30+ years. The family is now struggling with bills. A GoFundMe has been started: gofund.me/456d8a193

Congratulations to our new union comrades at Penn State! Especially glad to hear the union covers temporary and part time faculty as well, to head off attempts to pit adjunct and TT against each other. www.centredaily.com/news/local/e...

The losses to HE continue to mount. This time please donate to colleagues at Nottingham trying to save jobs and departments.

For further context: almost everyone in the Faculty of Arts is at risk of redundancy. Music, Modern Languages & American & Canadian Studies courses to close completely. History will not close but staff numbers will be significantly reduced. This is what 'right-sizing' looks like, apparently.

#skystorians Please sign and share. Petition to save the Humanities at University of Hertfordshire c.org/kK5v9MTdNr

Very tough week here in Nottingham. 40% of academic posts in my School are being made redundant and the numbers are even higher elsewhere - modern languages and music are being cut completely. The scale of the HE crisis in the UK is almost impossible to comprehend.

Today’s jobs: - Writing my department’s counter-proposal to the plan to sack over half of us - counselling students - dealing with Canvas hack fallout - trying to imagine what might be taught next semester and by whom (this bit failed).

"Children as young as 4 are being forced to repeatedly appear in court and provide updates on their case, at times without legal help, within a matter of weeks. "Children are feeling 'enormous pressure' and some wet their pants when they have to go to court..." www.cnn.com/2026/04/28/p...

This is one of the most quietly revolutionary things any city can do to improve kids' lives & outcomes. If you genuinely care about kids having access to education or safe after school spaces & activities, then fund your libraries, staff your libraries, & make every public school ID a library card.

some good news FOR ONCE “Perhaps most damaging for the regulator meant to oversee freedom of speech, the accusation of bias in the process was also upheld.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

Who Digitized your Sources? Exploitative Prison Labour and the Hidden Costs of Online Archives activehistory.ca/blog/2026/04...

“Most people would see a set of stairs or a bench, but skateboarders see these places differently"

To address the harms chatbots can cause, we need to start at the beginning, D&S exec director Janet Haven tells @npr.org: "Chatbots are designed to be agreeable & validating, and that can become really dangerous when users are spiraling or contemplating harmful actions." www.npr.org/2026/04/23/n...

Why is ICE buying so many warehouses, and what does this have to do with the warehouse's shifting place in the US economy? In Places Journal, I chronicle the long arc of Warehousing's carceral geography and the speculative building boom that ICE is absorbing. placesjournal.org/article/the-...

The same week the NYTimes was devoting its significant resources to producing this ridiculous piece about Lauren Sanchez Bezos's call for rich people to not worry and be happy, Ryan Hass, an independent journalist in Oregon, was investigating this horrifying story about a death in an Amazon plant.

i firmly believe that kennedy wants preventable diseases to rip through american communities since, in his warped mind, those who survive without vaccines will have proven themselves “healthy.”

I'm one of those trans women. I worked ground ops for Artemis I. I am torn between celebrating the success of my friends and peers and grieving how my dream of working for NASA was shattered by hateful assholes in Tallahassee

“Jonathan Caravello, 38, faced up to 20 years in prison if he was convicted of the charge. The verdict is the latest blow to the Trump administration, which has thrown baseless assault charges at people who protest its mass deportation operations — but has repeatedly failed to secure convictions.”

Anyone complaining about college students not protesting a) doesn't spend much time on a college campus, b) has never been to an anti-war protest, c) doesn't understand how much time sustained mass mobilization takes to organize, and d) is oozing disdain for young people leading the charge.

Why choose geography? 🌍 Professor Emma Mawdsley, Head of Department at University of Cambridge, explains why geography is like no other subject. She spoke at our school member lecture this month, sharing insights for teachers and students 🎤 Explore more events and resources at www.rgs.org/schools

“why aren’t college students protesting”

This is also why it's so gutting when Mamdani doesn't fund libraries. The threats are very real. And as big content pushes us towards a post-ownership world, libraries are going to be even more critical resources.

People in this country go about our daily lives as our government commits atrocity after atrocity. I don’t have words for it.

An Israeli strike targeted a marked press car in southern Lebanon on Saturday, killing Ali Shoeib of Al Manar TV, reporter Fatima Ftouni of Al Mayadeen TV, and her brother, freelance cameraman Mohamed Ftouni.

After Claudia Goldin became the first woman to win a solo Nobel in economics, she got hundreds of invitations. She accepted three. One was advising WNBA players on a labor deal. She helped players land the biggest % raise in US sports history. www.wsj.com/economy/wnba...

Spain closes airspace to US planes involved in Iran war, defence minister says

Wow. This is wild. If they applied these guidelines throughout the school they'd be banning half of the English curriculum.

Too many students are convinced by their own universities, by some of their teachers and professors, and by the AI companies themselves that ‘using ai to study is getting ahead of the game’ But the process they seek to get ahead of is the point.

US just sold $16bn to countries currently under attack because of a war the US started and because they they are hosting US airbases… www.usnews.com/news/top-new...

"Black women ...comprise 6 percent of the overall U.S. labor force and 12 percent of the federal labor force. But of the almost 300,000 federal jobs slashed in 2025, Black women were a stunning 33 percent of those cuts."

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony

This was also a nightly observation in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz. I’m so glad some reporting is out on it now.

“For years, companies have employed bots or orchestrated fake ‘AstroTurf’ campaigns to create the appearance of grassroots opinion on an issue, but the introduction of AI technology could make it even harder for elected officials to engage in earnest with the public.”

The most relevant sentence in this article: “The Washington Post has a content partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI.”

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan. darksky.org/news/two-sat...

I spoke with Dr. April Lockley, medical director of the Miscarriage and Abortion hotline, who has fielded questions from hundreds of people managing their abortions at home. Since Roe v. Wade fell, many callers are filled with concern: “If I go to the emergency room, will they call the police?”

MAJOR: Twin Cities Tenants joins five labor unions, together repping 25,900 members, to launch a rent strike drive, vowing to withhold rent March 1 if @governorwalz.mn.gov fails to deliver an eviction moratorium and rent relief. If launched, this would be the largest US rent strike in 100+ years.

Academic and research writers are often told to write accessibly. Rarely are we encouraged to write artistically. Yet scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Karl Marx wrote about their data and theories as artists, using literary devices, humor, sarcasm, drama, poetry, and beauty.

These are concentration camps and its our duty as citizens to ensure these things don't get built.

“The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently rolled out a new policy that permits university officials to record classes without notifying the instructor. It’s a practice administrators have used in the past to investigate professors but have now formalized in writing.”

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

“Black” is being flagged as a potentially prohibited word violating anti-DEI law at multiple Florida Universities. My interview this week with @grundrza.bsky.social documents his event being flagged because the flyer said “Black.” Racial authoritarianism is here, it’s just unequally distributed.

"Investors must act fast; this is the most exciting get-rich-quick opportunity since Bitcoin started accepting Bitcoin in transactions for Bitcoin."

I talked with three Minneapolis organizers, including Andrew Fahlstrom and Susan Raffo, about community defense in Minneapolis, the social fabric of collective care under federal occupation, and how people around the country should be gearing up for the long struggle ahead. Audio + transcript:

I think one thing people outside Minnesota don't understand is that after Good and Pretti were killed by feds while observing, the most normal people you could imagine have made peace with the fact that they could be next, and they are still out there because they say it's the right thing to do.

It’s not like there’s anything happening in the Middle East that affects US national politics or involves Trump and members of his family and administration, right?