Interesting.

“[James Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said.

Also, based on the small sample known to me: yes there were, and they were unhappy, all the more so because they had no name for what they felt or who they were.

Wow.

It's like ICE is completely ignoring every lesson that moderately competent police forces are forced to learn, like "don't do high speed chases in densely populated areas with low risk targets"

definitely seems like you're safer from any kind of punishment for being in the Epstein Files than for, say, just to pick two examples totally at random, attending a college protest for Gaza or tweeting that you weren't very sad Charlie Kirk died

Normally this would be a 24/7 news story and instead it's like the 47th craziest thing happening right now.

Wow. French police are raiding institutions linked to Epstein They are treating the Epstein saga like a bunch of crimes, not just a scandal

I have a post up on this and the Boston Globe piece today on the Kennedy/Trump-led destruction of US biomedical al research infrastructure. At Inverse Square and Balloon Juice. balloon-juice.com/2026/02/16/t...

Gift link. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/h...

Interesting. Those in a position to bail are bailing rather than work under fash-curious/degenerate leadership at CBS/paramount. Sad. www.status.news/p/anderson-c...

Moral philosopher here: a moral panic is when you act as though something is a danger that must be combated even though it either doesn’t exist or is not actually a danger at all. The reaction to the Epstein files is an appropriate response to genuine horror.

No.

All right, this just about wrecked me

Sign of the times that there are multiple members of the Chicago Cubs who haven't been able to enter the U.S. because Trump's immigration crackdown has made getting visas impossible www.si.com/mlb/cubs/ons...

One thing I've learned in the last couple of decades is that there can be instances of stupidity so intense that they cause me literal physical pain. I'm not even sure what the physiological mechanism, but it's real.

Ongoing thread.

HELL yea

This is a nice move in an interview www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/u...

You know who focused on military considerations to the exclusion of political and diplomatic issues? No, not him; Ludendorff. There was a military case for attacking US ships that were supplying the UK during WW1. There was also a case against it, namely that it might draw the US into the war.

RIP Legend

Judge Rufe's opinion ordering the Trump administration to restore truthful panels about Washington's ownership of enslaved persons from the President's House site in Phila is here. (I jailbroke it from PACER.) TL;DR: Gov't acted arbitrarily, capriciously. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

FBI won’t provide Minnesota investigators with evidence in Alex Pretti killing, state says minnesotareformer.com/briefs/fbi-w...

Gift link. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/w...

Thread.

if you want 100% nonfictional stories from measles patients and their families, follow voices for vaccines! more: voicesforvaccines.org/resources/blog/

Some folks may be aware of this, but for those that may not be: (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

My god do we need UBI “Researchers have found that when a new plasma center opens in a neighborhood, foot traffic at local grocery stores increases, interest in payday loans declines and crime goes down, an indication of the way money from plasma props up households’ finances for necessities.“

Mood.

What if we just make our own *Gift Link*? Yes, this is a very depressing story. and an important one. archive.is/202602121455...

Thread.

I think we are bringing it back right now, by doing so many shameful things.

My peeps!

Again, when folks say this 2nd thing 👇, I have no idea why they believe this is case. Xi Jinping is 72, just purged the military, & the amount people in 🇪🇺 & elsewhere know about 🇨🇳 internal politics, relative to what they know about 🇺🇸 domestic politics/Trump, is miniscule 🤷‍♂️ bsky.app/profile/mcop...

“Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said the issue of Greenland had “distracted in ways that I don’t think that any of us could have anticipated.” How can you possibly fail to anticipate this? How is this a thing any adult, let alone a US Senator, can say?

It’s not just that they were “deported to Cameroon.” They are being kept in a facility that they can leave only if they agree to be deported to their home countries. The ones courts have ordered that they not be returned to.

@bostonglobe.com Why no gift links? Not even one? In any case, this is depressing: www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/09/m...

I imagine Musk is trying to say “Scots-Irish” (i.e. Ulster Protestant planters, not Irish Catholics), but who knows what really goes on in his ketamine-soaked cream cheese brain except straight-up racist nonsense motivated by whatever desperate, howling need propels his stupid maunderings.

This message from the US State Department about "not wanting allies to be shackled by guilt and shame" is a pretty direct call-out to the German far-right argument that Germany has spent too long feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and needs to move on and stop doing remembrance.

The acting director of ICE told Congress, under oath, that local law enforcement in Colorado leaked raid plans, allowing gang members to escape. After 9NEWS questioned ICE's claim and its timeline, ICE deleted the claim from its social media platforms.

Some of my ancestors fled England because of persecution. One fled the Netherlands because he was wanted by the police. My mom came because she married my Dad, but I don’t think that was because of his anglo culture.

This always gets me. I have been lucky enough to know a lot of genuinely brilliant people, and the only President in my lifetime who was clearly brilliant was Obama. (Obligatory note: OF COURSE you can be brilliant and also an awful person. It’s just that this criticism was so plainly false.)

I have seen serious street violence in Berlin. It was the autonomen against the police, who were remarkably calm, using their shields to protect themselves from the cobblestones that were being thrown at them as though they were hockey goalies, and not responding to calls of: Wie heißt du? SS!

Propaganda during WWI and WWII in fact

Yep. The first time I read early 19th century American writings on the Irish, I was aghast.

The Dow was at 43,488 when Trump took office. It just hit 50,000. So if you had invested $43,488 in the US, you would now have $50,000. But if you had invested the same amount in the rest of the world, you would now be worth $60,000. Lemme do a expla-youtube-nation www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYL5...

Thread.

This city is home to people of countless faiths. But no matter what you believe, one thing unites us: we are all New Yorkers. We will not allow ICE to terrorize our neighbors. youtu.be/uoU9Img_B40