cc: @doughenwood.bsky.social

Research on whether merging school districts saves money or helps students is mixed.

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

Hello again, algorithm. Just published in JDSR: My new article explores how social media shape far-right and liberal fantasies of security, belonging, and “love” through affect and algorithmic power. Thanks to WASP-HS & @pledge-project.bsky.social for their support. publicera.kb.se/jdsr/article...

This is part of a bigger trend of the political valence of oil disconnecting from the actual economics of O and G. I keep telling people to do a little humorous anthropology and read the industry sub Reddit. Half the posts are joking that the industry boosters are morons or old and out of touch.

Love this from Guillermo del Toro

We are... definitely getting sanctions before this term is over, right

Is this MAHA or nah?

A major use-case for AI is reality destabilization.

yep. i can identify any number of structural issues but at the end of the day the basic problem is the republican party. this has been apparent for at least 20 years. it is also an incredibly unpopular observation to make among “serious” people.

All this "means testing" and "rooting out fraud" is just thinly veiled cover for finding increasingly absurd ways to deny people aid. Surveillance systems suck up money and resources that *should* go to recipients. We're led to believe poor people lose their privacy rights and liberty to save a buck

We are obliged by international law to prevent *other* countries from doing what we are now threatening to do. Do you know how fucked up this is?

It would be so cool if the United States Congress still existed.

Administrations have come up with lots of flimsy rationales for why their wars don't need congressional authorization over the years, but this might be the most transparently bad faith and facially absurd.

Tim Kaine voted to give Trump $901 billion in military spending last month, after accepting $785,000 from arms companies last election.

I want to remind everyone that the US has sanctioned members of the International Criminal Court for going through a formal legal process to identify international leaders who engaged in war crimes, making them vulnerable to arrest.

Typically when the US embarks on an illegal or dubiously legal regime change we use noble words about democracy, rule of law, spreading freedom, etc. to justify our actions. Trump has not done that. He offers few noble words as eulogistic covering. It's a crass power & oil grab, according to Trump.

Teenage me who decided to become an oil reporter in '03 because of the Iraq war 🤝 this moment Here's NPR's explainer about Venezuela's oil industry🇻🇪 🛢️ (and Guyana's too 🇬🇾 🛢️) Featuring @paashamahdavi.com @fmonaldi.bsky.social and more

Tapping the sign once again, this time in honor of the fact that we are supposedly now running Venezuela (even though the current government of Venezuela seems to disagree).

this is basically ricks' argument in THE GENERALS: that the structure of the american military (and political leadership) has generated an enormously competent professional force... that consistently generates useless results because of a void of strategic thinking at the top

For all that the media has spent years freaking out about what social media does to our brains, I don’t understand why there appears to be little effort to grapple with the fact that these chatbots are, for some not insignificant portion of the population, literally psychosis machines

OpenAI is now facing a total of 8 wrongful death lawsuits from grieving families....who claim that ChatGPT, in particular, the GPT-4o version, drove their loved ones to suicide. Soelberg’s complaint also alleges that company executives knew the chatbot was defective before it pushed it to the public

Looks like the Trump administration is going to force the oil companies to rebuild Venezuela's oil infrastructure so they can seize the country's reserves, which the companies neither want nor need. Let's hear it for free enterprise! www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

"Fascists strive impotently for a bigness the shrunken aspirations of their soul can never reach. Fascism is the banal dream of tiny men and deserves its place in the sewage of history." Good @mattpolprof.bsky.social on fascism's hatred of left, relevant now: www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-fas...

Don't forget folks: allowing yourself a vision of the future you'd want for our country and planet - not the one you'd settle for, not the one you fear, but the future of your dreams - isn't naive, it's a vital cognitive skill. That's how we articulate what we most value. What's worth fighting for.

tfw your entire job and worldview is at stake

In an effort to win this contest, China is building hegemony by exporting not just its green products but also in a structural shift exporting its technology, engineering, supply chains, and financing. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bri... www.ft.com/content/e517...

Im in my late 40s, and im just flashing back to every ‘justified’ regime change and invasion for decades, every ‘weapons of mass destruction’ lie, every ‘evil communists’ trope bought and sold by politicians, journalists and people, and all the incredible suffering that followed

Did you know Sarah Marshall @yourewrongabout.bsky.social has made a 16-part @cbcradiocanada.bsky.social podcast called “The Devil You Know” about the satanic panic? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Trump is probably focused on the money he wrongly thinks he'll make from Venezuelan oil. But he's not a details guy and nobody has thought through the details. Essentially, the US has taken over Venezuela by mistake. Stranger things have happened, but not many. open.substack.com/pub/arthursn...

1) Venezuela has a government. 2) This is being thrown together at the last minute by people who—amazing as it sounds—are even less intelligent, qualified, and competent than the GWBush-era dunces who tried to make imperialism happen in Iraq & Afghanistan and failed miserably. What could go wrong?

No wonder they wanted colonialism off our syllabi

finally, we're living through precedented times

Trump is trying to force US oil companies to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields that are too expensive to invest in at current crude prices while a full blown energy revolution is happening with cheap solar and electrification growing exponentially. This is a dying empire shit.

We are living downstream of nobody facing any accountability for Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis

A point that Wallerestein made often: as overall US power declines, it overplays its best card—military force. But each time it does so, it accelerates the decline of its overall power. SeeVietnam, Iraq. Violent coercion is the strength of the weak.

The kidnapping of Maduro inaugurates a highly dangerous era of U.S. empire that for perhaps the first time in an era of mass media is not pretending to be anything other than a violent, extractive enterprise of domination.

Like I said, they're running this like a hostile takeover by a private equity firm.

What if none of these things is a distraction from the other things and instead they're all just horrible things

Trump and his cronies can try to dress this up, but it is an illegal act of war to replace Maduro and grab Venezuela's oil for his billionaire buddies. Full statement below:

And there ya have it… Officials from top Wall Street firms will be traveling to Venezuela to investigate “investment prospects” of the country. “The trip will feature about 20 officials from the finance, energy and defense sectors.”

Last month, 115 Democrats in the House and 28 in the Senate voted to give Trump $901 billion in military spending. Dems may stomp their feet about Trump illegally bombing Venezuela and abducting its leader, but if they truly opposed the attack, they wouldn't have voted to fund it.

kinda miss the times when people asked me why the study of colonialism / imperialism was relevant tbh

This too is a kind of climate politics.

We’re all owed an apology from rightwing and centrist scholars and pundits who assured us for decades that US war-starting would NEVER be motivated by oil.

Specifically, a protest song about how the sons of the rich were able to avoid fighting, like fighting-age Donald Trump who got four deferments for being in college and another for bone spurs.

it’s interesting to see the start date different people attach to this condition of existential american embarrassment. ten years ago, twenty, sixty. everyone’s sort of right