One of the stories that makes me the saddest out of this ICE invasion is one out of the Minnesota Star Tribune today about ICE agents eating at a little Mexican restaurant in the small town of Willmar, Minn, —and then, when they were done, arresting some of the workers.

Witnesses in Iran comparing (in private coms to diaspora analysts) the violence now against past protest suppression. Said in past used batons, even armed units fired cautiously. This time sustained and constant fire at full volume against crowds, including with machine guns.

I grew up in rural America and agree with this 100 percent.

Dropkick Murphys are releasing a new song called "Citizen I.C.E." The lyrics go: "Too scared to join the military/ Too dumb to be a cop." consequence.net/2026/01/drop...

This is the dynamic across most of America: Liberal cities generate revenue, which state governments then transfer to benefit conservative rural areas, whose residents despite city-dwellers and consistently vote to harm them. But politicians endlessly pander to rural voters and demonize cities.

begging people not to preemptively hand Trump powers he does not have and has no practical means of accomplishing the scope of his actual abuses is quite bad enough on its own

I think we can call that a wrap on Giving A Shit About The Nobel Prize

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

Holy hell, what an obituary

As I wrote about yesterday:

The other thing is, in 2020, the locus of anger was internal, which is destabilizing. But this time, we ARE UNDER ATTACK. We are INVADED. All my neighbors are friends. All the feds are the enemy. No one wants to turn their rage on local streets or businesses; we are, specifically, protecting them.

“we have the masses to oppose this but do we have the leadership?” is a question I regularly ask because I don’t like the answer

This is what it’s all about! Daddy issues.

"A brush with History is scary, but it’s time to seize the opportunity it provides. The old world is played out, there is no going back to the former social and world order anymore...The world is going to be remade either way..." open.substack.com/pub/jasonteb...

I think we need a Carrie A. Nation for online gambling.

I had to look up Lizardman's Constant: the 4% of people who will tell a pollster lizard people are taking over the world, ie the minimum answer you will get for even the most absurd question.

There are years in my life when I felt like I was living in a moment of capital H History: 1989, 2001, and 2020. 2026 could soon join the list if the Greenland invasion happens.

does feel like a lot of american elites do not believe that there *can* be negative consequences for self-destructive or evil acts

I see we’re at the, “C’mon, the Alabama state troopers were really being treated disrespectfully at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Also, a couple of them got scratches that day,” level of ICE apologetics.

Our researchers found at least 450 posts on Telegram dating back to 2020 that shared the song mentioned in this reporting. Nearly all the posts we found were from explicitly neo-Nazi and white supremacist channels. And a review of our datasets found it hasn't circulated much outside those circles.

I'm struck by how the media, especially print media, sticks to enforced neutral language even as it is obviously being gamed by fascists. We need a wave of 1890s muckracker journalists. ::old timey radio voice:: Horrifying scenes in Minneapolis today as federal agents brutalize the citizenry!

It’s a small comfort if you’re not religious but this is one of those things that sends you on a direct flight to Hell after you die.

Aging is funny. In my 30s I disdained my attitude in my teens and 20s that most people were full of shit and a waste of time, and now that I'm 50 I'm like, nope, my 16 year old self was actually right.

One of those “listening to Scott Walker while sipping whiskey and staring off into the middle distance” winter evenings.

take a second to really wrap your head around this.

joe rogan is a very dumb guy, that very dumb guys are realizing that ICE is evil is good.

Ngl it’s always funny to me TMZ gets these videos before everyone else

And at Fort Snelling, which was built for the army to suppress Native Americans!

god that's so funny. Dilbert did not have a mouth

What's funny about reactionary centrists IRL is that they are like they are in the public sphere and online: they just don't stop talking! It's wild. They just filibuster and take up all the oxygen to prevent their "common sense" from being challenged.

Hakeem Jeffries is afraid of a bad poll, meanwhile the observers and neighbors here on the ground in Minneapolis are afraid of being beaten senseless, dragged into a car, and raced out of their neighborhood. They’re not yielding but he is. Consider new leaders, Democrats

Dude never caught and ate that leprechaun, but he still got his pot of gold in the end.

the democrats are right we should focus on kitchen table issues. for example there is a guy at my kitchen table who wants to shoot me in the face with a gun

So, fellow educators, how are you handling the increased levels of dishonesty shown by students? I am not talking about anti-cheating/anti-AI tactics, I know plenty of those. I am talking about handling the psychological burden of cheating being treated as baseline behavior by our students.

The case against Graeberism and for Mamdanism dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...

Dow is up today so at least six more weeks of fascism.

Market reactions will tell the tale this morning for our political future like a financial groundhog. No big reaction from markets means many, many more weeks of political winter.

a rather significant portion of the founding was based on “no guys like Donald Trump in particular” they really specifically wanted to avoid this type of know-nothing demagogue

Powell is emboldened by the fact that SCOTUS has basically said the Fed is the one thing Trump can’t touch.

BREAKING and HUGE news for transgender people: The bipartisan final negotiated text for these spending bills REMOVED language to restrict gender-affirming care as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. docs.house.gov/billsthiswee...

Well looks like 2026 could be one of those years like 1848 or 1989 that becomes a kind of shorthand.

I cannot stress how broken the moral compasses of our wealthy elites currently are. Gilded Age Robber Barons used to dig their way out of capitalistic guilt by competing to fund the grandest civic infrastructure. Now they feel no guilt or shame and compete to dismantle civil society…

I’m begging people who seem offended by criticism of AI to understand that this technology is having wildly different impacts based on fields people are in. In education it has been incredibly destructive and because I mention that I’m not poo pooing its coding uses.

Ken Howery (below) is Trump’s ambassador to Denmark. He: Co-founded PayPal & The Founders Fund w/ Peter Thiel & attended the Jan 2025 inauguration party at Thiel’s mansion. Thiel’s Oct 2024 Hereticon event included a talk titled: “Manifest Destiny: Greenland, Cuba, & the New American Colony” 1/

It is impossible to overstate the degree to which the entire national political media's coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign, especially once Harris won the nomination, was deeply, fundamentally, shamefully unserious about the stakes & the candidates.

The same goes for Musk

A crucial thing we are seeing is that even progressive Americans are living in a media ecosystem that sanewashes Trump, and people in other countries see things far clearer.