extremely same

Nothing says “anti-establishment populist outsider” more loudly than a billionaire POTUS, assisted by the world’s richest man with a VP handpicked by venture capitalist P Thiel, who will implement the plans of the Heritage Foundation, a 50 year old DC institution funded by the nation’s plutocrats.

NEW: Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils & paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to detainees and others. After one inspection, the children just “cried and cried and cried,” a mother said. The facility denies the claims. By @mckenziefunk.com @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Learning there's an AI data center being built that is 1/5th of the size of Manhattan and that the centers use so much electricity that they periodically limit how much housing can be built because utilities can't supply the centers and new housing simultaneously might be my joker moment.

I keep reminding people that admins hate English departments because they are popular (read: inefficient), not because they aren’t. AI is in a long line of technologies that promise to solve that problem for them.

The surveillance workplace. This AI chatbot will hear & potentially report everything employees say at work.

Complete necropolitics. Who is more likely to use durable medical equipment? People who are older, disabled, people with chronic illnesses.

You know, it seems like making this your argument when the president is sitting at 38-esh percent approval is not the argument I would be making, but what do I know, I'm just a talking plane.

Me, to no one in particular: Justice Lewis Powell was a real SOB.

NEW from me for @immcouncil.org’s blog: ICE is buying up warehouses around the country. I summarize ICE’s “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” laying out what we know about the Trump admin’s main plan to use the $45 billion they have for detention. www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-buy...

So roughly still 6X pre-surge, down from 16X, and planning for 3X long run.

How AIPAC controls both Schumer and Jeffries, and why both have to go.

You're telling me that word association tools trained on internet comments don't know how to deescalate? www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across. If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers. If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

We had a scenario last semester at Ohio State w/ BlackTom AI, which could log in to Canvas, take proctored exams, & evade the detection tools we have. I have made my classes mostly analog, but our individual solutions won’t repair the decades of institutional & systemic failures. It is grim.

AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says https://gizmodo.com/ai-added-basically-zero-to-us-economic-growth-last-year-goldman-sachs-says-2000725380

Federal court refuses to block Alabama’s “divisive concepts” law, says university faculty classroom speech is government speech with no First Amendment protection. This dangerous development allows lawmakers to dictate what professors say in class. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

"Largest tariffs in 90 years" and also "largest trade deficit in 90 years." Seems like the policy didn't achieve its stated goal.

lol "scoop"

Leo's sick burn is enough to make me un-lapse.

District of Columbia police searched Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer's offices at the agency's headquarters this month as part of its investigation of sexual assault allegations against her husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, according to three DOL officials. tinyurl.com/4vheftuj

This allows the Trump administration to literally condition citizenship on what it defines as acceptable speech

this is the information environment Dems are faced with, especially if media consolidation continues

UT-Austin is hiring a free speech czar. Among the "preferred qualifications" is experience in law enforcement. What could possibly go wrong?

I'm pretty sure as a scholar of immigration, slavery, and race/ethnicity, I'd be teaching "controversial topics". So as fellow alumnus @texasinafrica.bsky.social observed, I too would not be able to teach my subject matter expertise at the very institution that awarded me my PHD.

This is a must-read thread about AI in higher ed.

Our mission, in the words of my Alma Mater’s motto, is “to teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.” If you can’t do that, quit.

I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.

Genuinely we are so cooked.

BOSTON!!! Looking forward to seeing you on April 27 at the Harvard Science Center! I will be in conversation with THE Evelynn Hammonds!!! Can't make that? Don't want to cross the river? I'll be at Brookline Booksmith with THE David Kaiser the next day, April 28 :-)

Right now, I do not think normal American realize how misogyny (in the Kate Manne sense) is driving the Republican Party. A through line exists between the Epstein Files, the refusal to investigate Renee Good’s death, the attempt to “curb” colleges, and finally, the Save Act.

Never has so much US combat power been assembled with so little explanation to the public, allies, or Congress regarding why or how it will be used. Never.

Any Girl Scout troops in the Twin Cities that need cookie sales?

i say let them do it. if i were a senate democrat i would relish the opportunity to let the country know that republicans don't think you should vote if you are a married woman www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/u...

The National Science Foundation’s entire budget is $10 billion.

NH state house passes "CHARLIE Act," which bans teaching, I kid you not, "critical consciousness" & "prohibited world-views," such as that queer people exist, or that slavery involved race, or, implicitly, that the Nazis murdered Jews based on identity. newhampshirebulletin.com/2026/02/19/h...

Something is awry in higher education. Indiana University agrees to pay the football coach more than $100 million, shortly after cutting hundreds of academic programs. www.espn.com/college-foot...

I think as a society we must ask why we care so much about the thoughts of a marketing professor.

Increasingly the stories sound like the stories about tourists picked up in Iran or Russia, for trivial or inexplicable reasons. How long before we start to read them and say, like Russia and Iran, "well, they really should have understood the risks of visiting the United States."

So please: follow them, re-Skeet them, donate, volunteer, and use their maps to see when DHS tries to buy a giant windowless warehouse in your community to hold human beings. 2/

You know how Elon Musk treated Twitter employees after he took over the company, and the institutional impact that had? What if we take an approach like that with some military officers, in particular ones with technical expertise?

No one has flopped harder at being a Catholic than JD Vance.

The arrested state senate staffer is the chair of the Anchorage Young Republicans—or was until the news broke yesterday. alaskabeacon.com/briefs/alask...

Everywhere this family goes, they believe there are too many people of color around them.

The story that Elon Musk committed voter fraud has gotten next to no coverage -- one of those things you can't make come up on a Google search. But I think it's time for Dems to go on offensive abt right wing coddling of this immigrant interfering in our elections. newrepublic.com/post/206857/...

given the narrow margins in the house, if salazar switched parties today, she could probably do a lot to stop the mass deportations in her district. but she won't, and that's what makes her a coward, just like every single republican in congress.

“parental rights” is such an ugly freedom. It’s the freedom of parents to abuse children, to limit what their children learn to their own prejudices, and to keep domestic violence and sexual abuse a secret in the home

A point I’ve been making a lot is that the tariffs are 1) the policy most personally important to Trump 2) the least popular policy with the American people according to polling 3) substantively destructive and incoherent 4) genuinely opposed by large swaths of conservative constituencies.

Kavanaugh Tariff

Looking forward to hearing from GOP electeds down ballot about this exciting new 10% global tariff.