"In other words, people do not join organizations, support them, or adopt their political positions, symbology, and general dispositions en masse because they agree with them. They do so because these organizations exhibit competency and strength of spirit."

Balk's 3 laws of the internet: Balk’s First Law: Everything you hate about the Internet is actually everything you hate about people. Balk’s Second Law: The worst thing is knowing what everyone thinks about anything. Balk’s Third Law: If you think the Internet is terrible now, just wait a while.

Trump admin is refusing backpay to furloughed federal workers while insulating DHS from the worst effects of the shutdown.

"...it’s insidious for Anderson to use a movement of men and white leftists that was heavily criticized in its time by other Black revolutionaries and make a Black woman the face of it for the plot alone—a plot in which she doesn’t even get to actively participate!"

Crucial point here: federal discretion plays a massive role in defining the terms and limits of immigration policy; and the use of discretion is one way to get at what is novel in Trump's enforcement regime. radleybalko.substack.com/p/yes-the-tr... via @radleybalko.bsky.social

In many ways the Border Patrol can be thought of as the vestiges of an era of policing that had been stamped out in many major police departments nationwide - the era predating efforts to create a more “professional” police force.

Eagleton and Cunningham were playing in the pocket on this one. From the "Slant Manifesto" (1966).

"In retrospect, we pretend to understand why history took a particular course...The brutal fact that we find it so difficult to predict what will happen under our current circumstances is evidence that we do not have theories we can rely on."

Submitted without commentary.

91% of homeland security personnel are exempt from the "shutdown," including most of ICE, Border Patrol, TSA and other agencies: www.kenklippenstein.com/p/ice-border...

Incredible vibes at this local public library in Paris.

"With no operational free cash flow to cover preferred dividends, Strategy must keep issuing new common shares to raise funds. It is the corporate equivalent of diluting common Peter to pay preferred Paul."

Just caught One Battle After Another at a theater in Paris. Crowd was quiet save for a ripple of laughter when Leo flips on La Bataille d'Alger in his living room.

Hardcore centrist getting a back tattoo that says 𝕻𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖚𝖆𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓

Thinking of this classic for no particular reason. Note the author.

Insightful piece on the relationship between elite/media framing and desire. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Male friendship? In this economy?

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

“If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.” - Marx & Engels observablehq.com/d/7a4d1a11c2...

The fact that Tucker Carlson is Trump's most high profile foreign policy critic from the right suggests there is ideological space for this kind of pivot. The path is narrow but it's certainly not beneath him. High level move if he can pull off the grift without jettisoning Islam.

Recognition of Palestine is welcome, but the time has come for more direct measures. States should consider e.g. naval escorts for the Sumud flotilla. Israel has no legal right to block humanitarian aid while committing genocide.

Recognition of State of Palestine by Canada, France, UK etc is not only performative it is dangerous. It doesnt commit to ending genocide or implementing arms embargo and sanctions. Plus, explicitly calls for demilitarization of Palestine and disarming resistance. Reviving Oslo is not an option!

Homan, all too Homan.

"This was a direct challenge to the liberal model of economic development, by which the private sector earns profits and the public sector provides public services. For municipal ownership advocates, you could lower taxes if the public sector did both."

The mind reels. And yet...

Real this guy hours.

So you're telling me Kimmel was pulled...

The thing to emphasize here is that this treatment is *utterly normal.* It's part of the system of detention which has existed for decades. Folkston has been like this for many, many years,

“At no point has any international actor considered what the Palestinian people want or even what they would accept. This is not merely a moral question, but a strategic one, for without public support, solutions will go nowhere.”

If "neutrality" can't be found, just invent it. This piece resonates as the media works overtime to spin up a false reality around Charlie Kirk. bidoun.org/articles/hou...

Analytical distinctions the regime will not respect: 1. Charlie Kirk's views 2. Charlie Kirk's death 2. Opinions on CK's views 3. Opinions on the use of violence 4. Personal feelings about #1 or #2 irrespective of #3

Exactly. The real story here is that Trump is unwilling or unable to reign in workplace raids despite half-hearted rhetorical gestures to the contrary.

the amount of Chinese investment in green manufacturing plants around the developing world is mind boggling. www.netzeropolicylab.com/china-green-...

Nativist industrial strategy working as intended.

RIP

Over the past few years, I’ve been fascinated with one of the largest federal investigations happening in Georgia, known as Operation Blooming Onion. So I partnered with Zaydee Sanchez to uncover the untold story of an unnamed victim at the heart of the case. 🧵

Mike Glass and I argue for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social that we’ve tried the #abundance incentive-based approach to housing crises before. But lack of oversight + incentives produced fraud, profiteering, and inflated rents -- and the Trump family fortune. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/add...

Absolutely not a part of the plan.

Violence is constant. Its politicization is selective. Exercise judgment.

"...in the days following [the DEA raid] people in Harlan looked through online jail rosters and found that at least 13 people had been...booked into...a county jail seventy miles away...the roster listed all the cases as “Immigration,” and that no one had been charged with a drug offense."

ICE's Detained Population Now at Record 61,226 People ICE's latest data show record detention numbers, growing GPS ankle monitor usage, and dip in arrests since June. austinkocher.substack.com/p/ices-detai...

"All told, it appears some 33,000 employees from OTHER federal agencies have been dispatched to help support ICE. Add in state and local police...that have also been reassigned to support ICE and there are over 42,000 people who have other jobs...that have been subsumed by ICE."

Excellent read on the evolution of Israel's military and defense industry since 1948. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/isr...

Oh you think that people’s accounts of their own motivations are pathetic delusions, and that all human behavior is actually dictated by innate, universal, pre-social “drives”? I’m shocked, shocked that you wound up as a social conservative.

I did not foresee the specific bombing boats in the Caribbean angle, but it has been readily apparent for years that Trump 2.0 would seek to use military force for ostensibly counter-narcotic purposes. From July 2023. www.crisisgroup.org/united-state...

Cinema has its ambiguities. I saw Apocalypse Now in the theater when it was released. When the choppers attacked the village, the audience cheered. What were they cheering? American imperialism? Pure violence? Action cinema?

"Thoughts without content are empty, vibes without concepts are blind." - Immanuel Kant

transphobia is so society-warping it literally has English politicians rallying behind the right of Irish Catholics to incite violence