Reporters, if you wrote about learning loss due to covid school closures, you can write about learning loss due to state terror.

For giving, this is a very good resource for mutual aid orgs, personal fundraisers, and nonprofit/community org donations. www.standwithminnesota.com Besides that, the best thing you can do is prepare your own communities. If it can happen here or Lewiston, Maine, it can happen anywhere.

As I reported yesterday, at least one woman who was an ICE observer in Minneapolis, found that her TSA pre-clearance had been revoked after CBP used facial recognition software on her.

actually what you have is an application where data persistence has been abstracted away ow ow ow stop pepper spraying me

“ha, you guys seem really upset. that’s crazy. you’re crazy,” i say as i drive a supertank through every individual house in minnesota

This story really gets at a fundamental misunderstanding about ICE that I’m seeing outside of Minnesota. Folks think that ICE could terrorize undocumented immigrants and that it wouldn’t affect the broader community. But of course it does. The very fabric of social life is unraveling.

In lighter news, I've got this song stuck in my head, except instead of "you're the cream in my coffee" it's "you're the hair in my buttcrack"

One of the MOST significant things about this — and an important lesson to highlight, not obscure, for national/international readers — is how widespread local opposition is. I’ve never seen more normal folks involved. The overwhelming broad consensus local support lifts me up when I let it.

When I was in high school I did a constitutional debate program and witnessed this exchange: JUDGE: what’s your favorite amendment? KID: the third JUDGE: why the third? KID: because if there’s soldiers in your house, the other ones really don’t matter BORN READY FOR 2026

There is going to come a time in your life when you are chatting with a guy, at a barbecue or something, a new coworker maybe, a dad at school drop off, and he tells you he used to be in ICE. You’re going to need to spit on that guy

I read the news, I want to cry, I post a respite for the eye

I always feel roguish to make such a basic point, but bias is an intrinsic feature of _data_, and transitively of any system of analysis or decision-making based on data. The fact that this point has to keep being demonstrated over and over for more complex systems is crazy-making to me.

I think people outside Minnesota don’t quite realize that we are more or less in a war, except our own federal government has all of the weapons, power, and impunity.

In happier news, I finally made something for Valine-tine's Day! I've wanted to do something for years, but nothing ever really came to me, until now: enantiomearrings. I am pleased. If you want some, let me know!

#TubulinTuesday!

the sheer scale of it all is almost impossible to comprehend if you're not experiencing it. this is not just a few, very high profile operations making news. this is an invasion, an occupation. "have I seen any ICE agents?" there isn't a person in this city who *hasn't*

there's a pervasive skepticism about the depth, breadth and *visibility* of it all. "I know it's bad, but surely they're not abducting citizens at bus stops in broad daylight? there's simply no way they'd ram random cars on the street and kidnap the drivers or point guns at observers." wellllllll...

Minneapolis and Saint Paul have basically mobilized into a war economy of mutual aid and non-violent defense. I’ve never seen anything like it, even during Covid. People who barely vote are guarding their schools from ICE and doing the shopping for neighbors in hiding.

I can see into the future, and I'm seeing everyone confused how we ended up with squirt-gun control before actual-gun control

I understand there are certain limits 😇

More like status whoa amirite

Fun mouthfidget alert: "ligand_embiggened"

No too many outside the city and probably this space understand this. My relatives in Central Illinois have no clue what's going on there. They just know that some "crazy lady" (lesbian) got shot. Completely serious, they don't know. That's how my mom phrased it.

Our language is a shorthand that we have been twisting and trimming and gluing parts on for short term gain since the continents were different shapes. It is not a square hole in the heavens that everything must fit within to achieve harmony. It is a meat grinder

pulling this reflection on white silence/fear over here, too:

Sadly with a few extra hours of training the ICE agent would have known not to throw flashbangs at babies

[Tates, mames, kinderlekh, boyen barikadn]

Non-protesting dad just trying to hustle his kids, as young as 6mo, out of the neighborhood. ICE threw a flash-bang INTO HIS car, all 6 kids in the hospital now. If anyone wondered how things turn against occupying armies there's a case study playing out in front of you.

Ppl keep asking me what it's like here and like obviously there is tension. I walking around w my passport when I shouldn't fucking have to and watch my community get assaulted but I also say it's push-pull bc I have never more strongly felt these are my people. These community bonds are so strong.

Plain and fucking simple in 4 sentences.

Having seen several abductions up close, it is really hard to convey how much the thing they’re doing is roaming in military convoys until they see someone who is alone and isn’t white, and then jumping out in large numbers, pulling them into a van, and screeching off, all in 90 seconds or so.

We're already in the phase that each of us (Iranians) by now know someone killed/injured in our circle of friends/family. And this is despite the continued internet blackout, when millions haven't still managed to hear from their family/friends since Thursday, January 8th. This tells a lot ... 😥😥

This. Trying to describe what was happening in Chicago when we were the target MN is now was an exercise in surreality. People saying, "But...that sounds like living in a war zone. Like an occupied territory." And sometimes realizing they thought you exaggerated the violence, the fear, the rage.

Google Meet have conflicts decide which meeting is more important

Uber piggyback

First of all oh my god, second of all fuck you, third of all fuck you, fourth of all oh my god

My 7yo niece came home from school with a drawing of herself fighting ice in her backyard with a knife

#TubulinTuesday!!!

In case it helps anyone else: when I've heard something unthinkably awful and I'm trying to minimize brain damage, my version of playing Tetris is watching an unfamiliar video and trying to match the speaker's words as closely as possible.

Every time I think about speciation I get a new type of headache

Wasps are always finding new ways into my kitchen, presumably so they can benefit from my wisdoms

If you want to show someone how ICE is operating but you don't want to share a soul-searingly awful video, this might be a (relatively) less horrifying place to start

This goes for people even in first ring suburbs if they’re not online much. There is just not much in the regular local new media, apparently, and it’s weird to think I live in a different world from my colleagues 10 miles away.

My immigrant coworkers are some of the most brilliant people I have ever met in my life. They are carrying passports around terrified.

just a reminder that we aren’t even seeing the worst of what is happening in Minneapolis from someone detailed at the Whipple Federal Building yesterday

Heads up to my sensory history followers--TOMORROW Tuesday Jan 13, Massachusetts Historical Society's #envhist meeting is virtual and all about changing the smellscape. Join us! www.masshist.org/events/Indus...

In case it helps anyone else: when I've heard something unthinkably awful and I'm trying to minimize brain damage, my version of playing Tetris is watching an unfamiliar video and trying to match the speaker's words as closely as possible.

This is the sort of statement that was expected from every university president and law firm partner over the last year. That those statements weren’t made played a huge part in where we are now and people will remember.

Meanwhile: I recently googled 'diva cup boof' to see who else has said it, and the AI output that google pushed was of course ludicrous, providing me a handy mental image I'm reminded of whenever I'm tempted to even glance at that stupid AI 'summary'. Wonder what SFW queries have the same effect...

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).