"With the best intelligence systems in the world at their fingertips, they were checking X in the midst of the mission…It felt as if a group of twelve-year-old boys in a basement had been handed control of the most lethal military in history—and were using it to boost their online brands."

with the supposed ice withdrawal, my mother in minneapolis finally ventured out to her community center for her knitting group and saw ICE suvs surround and intimidate two young poc because they are still there

“It’s like going to battle with half your generals in place.” Of the 27 institutes and centers that make up NIH, 16 were missing permanent directors as of Friday, when staff received news of the latest departure. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

"Since 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has paid Palantir nearly $4 million to improve its ability to track down payment for the services provided at its hospitals and medical clinics." theintercept.com/2026/02/15/p...

“‘I didn’t expect this from a friend who lived, ate, travelled, laughed and joked with me. it hurts,’ he wrote. "life as an international student is tough, man.’” www.berkeleyscanner.com/2026/02/14/c...

"Investigators say Gupta and the supposed hitman agreed on a price of $100,000 to carry out the assassination, with $15,000 paid upfront in cash. Yadav allegedly shared detailed personal information about Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, including his New York City home address, phone numbers…"

"Since the start of October alone, over 400 federal judges have determined in at least 4,421 cases that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is unlawfully detaining individuals as part of its mass-deportation effort, Reuters found." americanbazaaronline.com/2026/02/14/o...

"numerous media reports indicate that Slater’s sporadic efforts to actually engage in antitrust enforcement consistently angered a 'den of vipers'…Some of the friction purportedly involved Bondi being angry Slater was directing merging companies to deal directly with DOJ officials and not Trump’s…"

"Perhaps most critically, the Library has completely reimagined its backup and recovery strategy around one central assumption: modern ransomware destroys, not just encrypts. Backups are now immutable, so they cannot be altered or deleted even by someone with administrator credentials."

"I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her…"

These deep dives into the stories of deportees are painful to read

This is a good example of why Section 230 remains critical www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

"If ICE can get them on a plane headed south [e.g. to Texas] before anything is filed in local courts, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling will override whatever rights migrants might have still had access to in the states they were removed from." www.techdirt.com/2026/02/09/5...

"The [test Substack] account was shown separate posts that promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish power and influence and suggested antisemitism was a myth. The algorithm also promoted other extremist content, including newsletters relating to the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory"

"Like AI toy maker Bondu, the creator of 'AI' enabled stuffed animals, which recently left the stored chat logs children have with their polyester-filled automated friends openly available online to anybody with a Gmail account" www.techdirt.com/2026/02/09/w...

"'This is an argument they make in every case and they almost always lose,' said Brian McGoldrick, an immigration attorney in San Diego, who in September won the release of an Afghan refugee and former US military interpreter on similar grounds." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

"'I don’t think anyone here has any trust that will be lasting,' Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, a state federation of more than 200 local labor unions in Maine. 'You can’t turn a tiger into a vegetarian.'" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Bhattacharya knows the truth. But will he actually push back? www.techdirt.com/2026/02/05/n...

This is another reason I’m switching more of my work to Claude www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

“Seeing no option to refuse deployments that she found objectionable, Stewart resigned after a decade of service. She would give up the prospect of a pension offered after 20 years.”

Thank you to No Tech for Apartheid for holding this work down

“‘We’ve fought so hard to protect our community but they want to experiment on us,’ Fiona O’Leary, an autism activist who has spent years fighting the spread of baseless treatments for autism, tells WIRED.” www.wired.com/story/rfk-jr...

I literally just vibe coded one of these: a bespoke nginx log colorizer/summarizer. I use it several times a week, and it works just like magic. arstechnica.com/features/202...

“So as a senior, you could abstain. But then your junior colleagues will eventually code circles around you, because they’re wearing bazooka-powered jetpacks and you’re still riding around on a fixie bike.”

A useful tidbit in the Berkeley war on cars -- only 30% of Berkeley workers drive to work. Berkeley is the fourth lowest city in the country for share of car commuters.

VICTORY: A federal court has blocked ICE’s use of private tax-related data from the IRS! The decision is a win for taxpayers nationwide who have weighed whether filing their taxes exposes them to potential ICE arrest, detention, and deportation. 📰 bit.ly/infosharing-win

BART's newly released concepts for what they'll do if Connect Bay Area transit funding measure fails are terrifying. Phase 1: 63% train hours cut & 10 station closures Phase 2: Cumulative 70% train hours cut, 15 station closures Phase 3 (if required): END BART SERVICE We must pass the measure! 🧵

"Legal experts said that the fake image could hurt the Justice Department’s case against Ms. Levy Armstrong. Her lawyers could use it to accuse the Trump administration of making what are known as improper extrajudicial statements." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/u...

"Vera’s heard her friends say something is happening. And Vera’s taken up a new hobby: setting traps at home. 'I do need to make one because the bad guys are taking mommies and daddies,' she said." rewirenewsgroup.com/2026/02/03/i...

"the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened…to prevent federal immigration agents from taking a local resident into detention…believed to be the first time a local police department in Minnesota intervened in a federal law enforcement action since the surge"

A newborn in Minneapolis hadn’t eaten for a day and a half. ICE agents took her mother when she went to work, trying to make money for diapers. Her 16-year-old and Bri, a local mother of two, saved that baby's life. @chabeli.bsky.social tells their story

Since January 2023, we've documented distinct spikes in anti–South Asian hate online — correlating with moments when political figures like Kamala Harris and Zohran Mamdani were in the national spotlight. 🧵⬇️

🚨Just In: HBA and @aflcio.org, along with over 350 faith-based, labor, and civil rights organizations, sent a letter to President Trump and his administration urging them to reverse their decision to terminate Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Haiti.⁠⁠ #TPS4Haiti

My 10yo just asked me out of nowhere if ICE was going to pick me up. I explained I was a US citizen so this is highly unlikely and that if they did, we would sue the pants off of them. Notably she did not ask her white father. This is where we’re at.

"I need to repeat that. Donald Trump is trying to more than double his personal wealth by simply demanding that the IRS, which he controls, give him $10 billion in taxpayer funds. This goes beyond corruption. You need a different word for this altogether." www.techdirt.com/2026/01/30/t...

"Laufman told us that the Wednesday episode reflects a new reality for law enforcement. The greatest threat to the legitimacy of U.S. elections, he said, now comes 'not from abroad, but from the leadership of our own government.'" www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

"Electrician Fredy, who lived in the United States for a number of years but returned in 2017, said he had been watching events unfolding in Minneapolis. 'Jesus, if they do that to their own people, what will they do to us?' he said." www.thenation.com/article/worl...

"Thanks to the American CLOUD Act and related US surveillance statutes, US‑headquartered providers must hand over European data regardless of where the bytes sit. Exhibit A is that Microsoft has already conceded that it cannot guarantee data independence from US law enforcement."

"There’s an argument to be made that there are secular benefits to teaching kids about Christianity…But what makes this proposal so damning is that Christianity is the only religious book included in the required readings"

Even after his industry is being devastated: "Mehta is a Republican who voted for Trump. So did many of his colleagues in the industry. Mehta still likes Trump." calmatters.org/economy/2026...

After brutally arresting Aliya Rahman, an autistic, disabled woman, in Minneapolis, ICE agents told her that "this wouldn’t have happened if I was a ‘normal’ human being." https://bit.ly/3ZHX3IC

"it means so much less when this (justified) criticism of federal officials is sandwiched between bending the knee to the DOJ and mindlessly insulting people just like the person they (sort of, from an oblique angle) defended in retrospect." www.techdirt.com/2026/01/28/g...

"the Indian government doesn’t actually need Indians in the US to be standing up on its economic and defense behalf…The people you do need to stand up for are the other people…around you every day in the US, who are not only significantly more under attack…but are actively facing the consequences"

Trump’s fundraisers are now using the threat of dispatching ICE against citizens as an email engagement tactic.

WTF? "Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce." www.science.org/content/arti...

Reminder. Here are the House Democrats who crossed party lines and voted to fund ICE. House Democrats who voted to fund ICE: - Tom Suozzi (D-NY) - Henry Cuellar (D-TX) - Don Davis (D-NC) - Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) - Laura Gillen (D-NY) - Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) - Jared Golden (D-ME)

"For Trumpists to infer homicidal intent from the exercise of a right they have fetishized is a Fifth Avenue–level mental reversal. Their view of the Second Amendment turns out to be no different from their view of the First: one whose protections apply exclusively to themselves."

“GPT-5.2 is not the only large language model (LLM) that appears to be citing Grokipedia; anecdotally, Anthropic's Claude has also referenced Musk's encyclopedia on topics from petroleum production to Scottish ales.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

“The agreement follows similar victories for families seeking to block such disclosures by gender-affirming care clinics elsewhere in the country” www.latimes.com/california/s...