Downtown Madison landlords commission study that concludes there's no need to build more UW dorm capacity. Students who are rushed to sign leases 9 or more months before moving day to pay upwards of $2k/month in rent might disagree. madison.com/news/local/b...

This is from @status.news, and it is gross. FCC chairman Brendan Carr sat down with Ben Smith of Semafor so he could "shower praise" upon David Ellison and Bari Weiss, and then hint around at who he might sue next. www.status.news/p/politico-e...

Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. www.msn.com/en-us/news/w...

Madison should try to host curling nationals. They held the mixed doubles here about four years ago, but bringing the men's and women's here would be quite popular, I have to think. I wonder how many curlers there are in Charlotte.

Patel promised Senators in confirmation hearings: “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI.” He lied. He just fired another 10 agents who served in Jack Smith's investigation. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/u...

The creator of Einstein wants to free students from acquiring the skills and experiences that their diploma certifies they have acquired. Similarly, meanwhile, I would like to free myself of having to have the $$ in the bank to cover checks I write.

There's a gif of DVO left hanging by Trump last night, if you're into that kind of thing.

Trump points at Democrats and says, "these people are crazy. I'm telling you. They're crazy." (Note that Pete Hegseth and the rest of the cabinet are standing and cheering.)

Rep. Jonathan Jackson confirms that Mike Johnson rejected a request to have a tribute for his father Jesse Jackson in the US Capitol

There's a term in sports for this behavior: jock sniffing. If you're not on the team, it's embarrassing to try and get into the locker room. I once heard the political author John Heilemann say that he gets backstage at U2 shows because he knows the band, like he was Cool by association. Yeah, no.

A former ICE instructor is expected to testify that new agents are trained to run roughshod over constitutional rights, including the right against a home invasion, and that the federal agency is “broken."

To eat a pancake, you need a fork. To catch a mouse, you need a trap. Voting is a right. None of that other stuff is.

Politicians of all stripes are not trusted because they don't say what's obviously true: riding the bus shouldn't include witnessing urination up close and it's okay to say so.

Among the many changes I've experienced in the last 30 years. Everyone I know buys parmesan cheese in a triangular slab, grates it by hand. When I was a kid, the only option was the green can. Unless you were at a spaghetti dinner, in which case there was a bowl with a spoon. Consistency was powder.

Listening to Brewers baseball (spring training) on the radio thank god

The FBI Director, everyone. You paid for it.

The Trump administration is apprehending and designating immigrant kids as “unaccompanied,” even as their parents in the U.S. search for them.

You will know them by their friends, or words to that effect. Russia is a malign actor in sports, too, but the push to bring them back is happening

President Trump is asking the federal government for billions of dollars in damages, putting his own Justice Department on the spot and creating an unprecedented ethical morass.

This guy is just out there doing normal scandals, it’s so refreshing.

Branding solutions.

Can't wait to watch Republicans pushing to expand and pack the court on Sunday talk shows.

Some of the best drone shots from the 2026 Winter Olympics. [youtube.com]

“[Trump] has not explained why he has chosen this moment to confront Iran instead of, for example, North Korea, which in the years after Mr. Trump’s failed negotiations in the first term has expanded its nuclear arsenal to 60 or more warheads” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/u...

New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF

Yes. Keep hammering on the connection between detention conditions and people giving up their cases. documentedny.com/2026/01/30/t...

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who has held the position for the longest amount of time in Wisconsin's history, announcing that he will not be seeking reelection this year.

"Rather than a one-off event, management has slowly enacted the firings over the course of weeks and told employees that the process will continue through the end of this month."

america (2026) www.404media.co/man-opposing...

"Everything is so expensive. Taxes are up. It's hard to find labor. Right now is about time to sell [our] building and say sayonara.” isthmus.com/news/news/Re...

We watched more than 50 hours of dashcam and bodycam footage taken from the first night of the ICE sweeps in Nashville in May. During one arrest, an agent finds an immigrant's ID and notes he's a manager at a Mexican restaurant. “The guacamole is never going to taste the same,” the agent laughs.

in america, if you go over your 3 minute allotment to speak, men with guns come to take you away.

It's acceptable to lionize and mythologize athletes until you're 16. Then you've gotta grow up. Sports is a business.

2026 basically

It seems nuts to me that CNN has partnered with an online gambling site (Kalshi) and hypes their betting lines as “news” to report.

After blaming a (non-existent) staffer for the Obamas-as-apes video, this is quite a remarkable statement by Leavitt.

This is like a play in squirts. "You guys head to the boards and pass it back to Kyle, let him take it in."

The Big Ten will once again feature two ranked women's basketball teams facing off, but the game will have almost no viewership because it's on the paywalled BIG+ streaming service. awfulannouncing.com/league-netwo...

"It’s hard for me to decide what’s more troubling about this process: That Wisconsin thinks it’s OK to keep taxpayers in the dark, or that elected officials appear to be clueless on some of the basics of NIL." Good stuff from Jim Polzin in the State Journal: madison.com/sports/colum...

A photo from the early '80s for an Isthmus story about downtown prostitution. credit: Brent Nicastro

College coaches responding poorly to questions from college students persists. Many of these guys have no perspective on why they even have jobs.

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.” - 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas. Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children. www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

This interview with Stephen Colbert and James Talarico was censored by the Trump administration. youtu.be/pFLvH78QVGM?...

me and the fellas slipping past the ticket taker at Skateville

A MAGA memecoin run by Steve Bannon went off the rails, according to a lawsuit, with $2.7 million missing and investors' money frozen. My latest False Flag newsletter for @thebulwark.com: www.thebulwark.com/p/steve-bann...

One of my favorite Ebert lines, from his 1997 reappraisal of THE GRADUATE

Grateful to Paul Gewuerz for having me on his "Small Press, Big Ideas" podcast to talk about @isthmusmadison.bsky.social and local news! You can listen on the podcast app of your choice or watch it here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoJW...

(10/11) Dubal’s research showed that dynamic rates are coming for wages too, with Uber drivers with identical workloads and performance getting different pay based on the lowest amount the algorithm calculated they’d accept. www.columbialawreview.org/content/on-a...

Photo from r/madisonwi: UW students left all this trash on the Lake Mendota ice Saturday.

Morons Morons are in charge www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/u...