Minneapolis residents are trying a new tactic to slow and deter federal agents from entering city neighborhoods. Called filter blockades, they’re pop-up block parties in the middle of city streets, and they’ve already earned the ire of Trump border czar Tom Homan (1) www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

gotta say, moving from "the camps" being rows of wooden shacks to metal warehouses where you will never see the sun, the lights are on 24/7, and you sleep in chain link pens on concrete floors with foil blankets and one no-partition toilet for every couple dozen people - somehow it truly seems worse

Glad that Will asked me to comment on concentration camp history and the current detention plans for a warehouse in Tremont, Pennsylvania.

Reading through Sourav Roy and Tuhin Bhowal’s fine anthology of contemporary Hindi poetry, PERENNIAL, I was stopped cold by Seth Michelson’s razor-sharp translation of Rati Saxena’s devastating “Refugee”—a poem for our time, for all times. “…like kites holding tight / to the ruins…”

"they settled on this land the way ice floats on a glass of juice"

managing to slowly turn the most pro-US country in Europe away is quite a feat

a relevant question for the Polish govt as well

"If Mandelson's links to Jeffrey Epstein disqualifies him from holding power, why does the company controlled by Epstein's business partner and co-owner retain access to the UK's most sensitive national security infrastructure?" Peter Thiel. Jeffrey Epstein. Palantir. The UK Government.

Someone I know in Minnesota, and trust completely, is raising money for someone in a truly harrowing and heartbreaking situation due to ICE. Non-Minnesota people whose networks aren’t tapped out, want to help, and trust me, you can venmo me at @wrigleyfield & I will pass on the donation immediately

And taken from David Wojnarowicz's jacket at Seize Control of the FDA protest (1988)

icymi

truly cannot wait to see this play out

something ACTUP! did well during protests which the French also do well is they had fun - they sang songs, they did silly things, they cooked food, even as they cried and screamed and threw the ashes of their dead friends

if you don't know the source of this phrase it was made famous by the ACTUP! movement when queer activists threw the ashes of friends who died from AIDS on the WH lawn

The suburban observers, heavily women, say they share a personality type. “Many of us have encountered bullies our entire lives...I think that turns you into somebody that, even if that bully is wearing full tactical gear, I'm not interested in laying down for you.” www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Suburban observers say ICE has only been more aggressive since Homan: “I think they’re getting angry that we’re winning and the country is rallying around us. We’re so organized and we act with such integrity. They don’t want to admit they feel threatened by us.” share.google/ei9giIFLsuEJ...

more evidence this is an occupation, not normal law and order

a class analysis of actually existing US fascism

for me personally Polish is even harder than Russian; this doesn't feel right, I can't explain it, maybe it's me, I dunno, but I just find learning Polish so much harder than learning Russian and learning Russian is already very hard!

regret to say that Polish is even harder than people tell you 😅

today's Polish exercises, practicing the Genitive singular and plural

still kinda wild to see the Speaker of the House double down on not needing a warrant to break down your door

keep thinking about this bc it's also about lefty gatekeeping; one reason so many Left academics rejected the fascism framing was bc they wanted to maintain a monopoly over what that word meant (see Danny Bessner, et al)

I'm convinced one of the reasons epstein was able to coast for so long is that for many sensible people including and especially educated liberals, viewing the world through a conspiratorial lens was always seen as vaguely distasteful and rube-coded

One of the underlying ideological projects of the right is a the return of women to a position of child-like dependence on men, which they hold up to be both a social and sexual ideal. This erases the boundary of the child because women are not supposed to ever become real adults with equal rights.

Hey... ...GM 🖤

this is a form of civil war promoted by a Cherokee Nation citizen from Oklahoma; during the original Civil War the Cherokee were split, slaveholders fighting for the Confederacy and many others fighting for the Union - whoever Markwayne's ppl fought for then, he's chosen the Neo-Confederacy

Reading about Saddams personal thugs for no reason at all

Ashes and Diamonds review – Poland faces bleak postwar realities in Andrzej Wajda’s 1958 masterpiece

as a teacher who has watched teens navigate around blocks like this, I heartily agree - we have to start looking at social media as publishing platforms like airwaves, radio, etc and apply similar laws; bans like this will only encourage teens to find the drugs their parents are hiding

today on the good news front: journalism in Oklahoma is still alive and kicking ass (also donate to Frontier if you can)

🔥

1, it's nice to see them backed up against a wall and incapable of operating 2, when fash are backed into a corner, well, things can get pretty bad

asking for myself as well; anyone know the answer here?

They're literally running out of lawyers in a state where the district judges are practically at war with the administration.

Those who listen to pundits such as Mehdi Hasan should ask themselves why he draws the line at this point rather than at Noam Chomsky's years of genocide denial, lobbying for authoritarian regimes, and justifying Russian war crimes.

*drum roll* Here is the cover for my book, which will be published by @cornellupress.bsky.social on 15 April 2026! I thought it would be nice to share a bit of info on who these men were and how their lives and interests inspired the design...

Maidan, famously free of fire

this is a form of civil war promoted by a Cherokee Nation citizen from Oklahoma; during the original Civil War the Cherokee were split, slaveholders fighting for the Confederacy and many others fighting for the Union - whoever Markwayne's ppl fought for then, he's chosen the Neo-Confederacy

Niet zalig de armen van geest, maar zalig de Duitsers van geest. De AfD, die o.a de banden met Rusland wil aanhalen, nazi-militairen uit WOll wil eren en alle immigratie wil stoppen haalt de banden met het conservatieve kerken aan. Niet ethisch maar etnisch. www.trouw.nl/buitenland/d...

Having a hard time distinguishing this from actual 1930s German propaganda now

Featured story: The last time Democrats won statewide office in Texas was 1994. That year coincides closely with an important index of organizational power: peak union density in the state.

The disclosure noted that Pretti suffered “multiple gunshot wounds” from law enforcement and died that day at HCMC. Otherwise, it offered no further specifics from the autopsy.

Experts have described Dilley as “a hellhole” and decried the lack of proper medical care. Court records claim food is filled with worms, and the water is undrinkable. As a result, reports have spread of children are hitting themselves in the face and wetting themselves long after potty-training.

single most reassuring thing about what DOGE did is that all the evil things this admin wants to accomplish are now 20 times as hard - they don't have the staff, they broke the systems, and nobody normal wants to work for them - that's a very big hurdle!

def still bitter about losing my federal job with Natl Archives; in the dark ages of Summer 2023 when I was hired a fed job was one that, as long as you showed up and did your work, you could stay with until you retired; they were hard to get, they mattered, and a lot of those desks are still empty

thing about firing so many federal employees is that then you don't have enough staff left to pay and insure the ones you want to keep

The Montreal Canadiens are playing the Minnesota Wild in Minneapolis tonight. The players have been recommended to stay in/eat at the hotel, take the team bus to the arena, and carry passports. Perhaps we shouldn't be hosting the World Cup and the Olympics...

been using caffeine in this way for decades - it is by far the most effective way to help me through the winter blues; a 2nd tier affect is it helps me get out there and exercise which also helps the blues -