Currently reading this harrowing and important memoir by Gazan physics student Wasim Said which comes out in under two weeks and I hope you’ll preorder, read, and take action #BookSky 1804books.com/products/wit...

Even as the stakes are raised ever higher there's still a fair number of people who still fundamentally see being on the left as a cool counter culture whose value is partially constituted by exclusivity.

On the whole I still think this (from here: sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke...) is true. But the people who haven't changed up, who are still orientating their lives around Are Woke College Students The Red Guard? in the year of our Lord 2025, are genuinely embarrassing to behold right now.

Concentration camps with no privacy, guarded by the military, in terrible climate, on indigenous lands. This happened to Japanese Americans. And of course indigenous peoples were “removed” to reservations, that is to say, camps. This is who we always have been as a country.

AOC: "On this point of tax on tips, as one of the only people in this body who has lived off of tips, I want to tell you a little bit about the scam ... the cap on that is $25,000 while you're jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,000 across the US ... while kicking them off the ACA."

What's astonishing about this is that "violence against a military force currently shelling civilians at food distribution points in the occupied territory they have been starving out" becomes equivalent to "calling for a genocide". It's just an insane moral reversal of the actual situation.

The lens to understand the ramping up wars isn't "regime change", it is "country destruction." We are in a new/old story, where the powerful prefers to utterly destroy the enemy rather than having to e.g. occupy it. Genocidal supremacy on the rise, as we see e.g. within Russia, Israel, and the US...

We don't talk enough about how an influential part of the American Right wants to hasten the end of the world through war and environmental destruction.

Militarism is the main tool of a fading, senseless wold order. It is also most likely to end us all. I’ll never understand the boys and their fascination with their toys.

It's pretty telling that the second part of the "Mamdani is a danger to Jewish new yorkers" pitch is always "so vote for sexual harasser shitbag Italian Catholic Andrew Cuomo" and not "so vote for Jewish Progressive Brad Lander"

But the weird thing is my enemies are bringing it down *cos they mistook the nonsense machismo stuff for real strength*. I guess I have not taken fully seriously the role of sheer inept stupidity, raw childish thoughtless emotional indulgence, in world history.

“Two people deeply familiar with the Charleston 787 plant told the Prospect they had particularly acute quality concerns over planes that were delivered to Air India.” 😱

I'm being called immature for my "war is bad" stance, so let me be absolutely clear on this: If being an adult requires accepting brutally murdering, maiming, and destroying human beings en masse rather than sitting down at a table and talking, I'm perfectly fine not being one.

My opinion on the political psychology of many of the Trump true believer devotees is that the aesthetics of army men marching out against the forces of Disorder, being foreign and Urban (ahem) as they are especially, is an incredibly potent high for them. They will seek this out again and again.

John Ganz wrote this after October 7 and I keep coming back to it. www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-trap

French-Palestinian Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan: "If you're seeing this video now, it's because we've been stopped by the Israeli army or their complicit allies. We count on your mobilization to put pressure on the French government to demand our release."

There are going to be people out there who will mourn burned Waymo cars more than they will burned Palestinians.

90!

“Defund the police” was in fact a great slogan.

Rule of thumb of UKHE is that every new procedure to "streamline" a process will make it more cumbersome for the academic end users. I am reminded of this as I discover in horror the new forms to request IT hardware. It's as if they didn't want us to do research, but why?

American science’s demise under the current regime will affect us all…

Can anyone explain to me why the EU can’t or won’t expel Hungary? Aren’t we supposed to be some sort of union of democratic countries?

I'm a big believer in having more Israel hasbara clowns on radio and TV: their callous nonsense is so blatant that it does the work of dismantling Zionist ideology for us. Listening to UK radio journalists getting frustrated with them while they so wish they could defend Israel is something...(1/2)

Bless the students. Also, as a nearly middle aged person, I’ve come to hate how we tell the younger generation that they’ll have to fix the mess we and our parents created. We have more power then the students. Let’s use that power. Rock the boat that these stupid ghouls are steering to the abyss.

The audacity of this woman, claiming that there is a ‘strong tradition of free speech’ in Columbia. The unmitigated gall.

“Socialism or Barbarism!” Sometimes when I scrunch up my eyes it looks like there are other alternatives, other times not so much.

The tax-cut-for-the-rich GOP bill proposal in the US Congress is called "The One Big Beautiful Bill". Yep. I know this silly name is nothing compared to everything else, but it gives credence to my suspicion we live in the Matrix and it is run by the Onion. waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/u...

Shit! Did you also get the email that #SciPost is about to shut down? 😱😭 And only a few weeks ago I got an email from CSIC (my parent institute) where they celebrated another extension of their contracts with Elsevier, Springer & Co. It's simply disgusting...

In short, Starmer has taken a massive hit among Labour voters, for no gain elsewhere, while boosting Farage's popularity, including doubling his ceiling among Labour voters. I.e., the political scientists were right, Morgan McSweeney was horrendously wrong.

The number of Zionists who think international humanitarian law is just a fourth grade recess where everything is fine as long as you say "he started it" enough times is making my head spin

UK research is so fucked. More made-up metric is just what we need. (sarcasm)

That Europe is silent is our eternal shame. Full boycott of the genocidal Israeli regime, now.

You know, when centrists take on the anti-foreigner mantle like they often do these days, the real reason might not be the excuses they give or the focus-grouped trite they sheepishly regurgitate. It might just be that they, too, are bigots.

I didn’t think I could hate Starmer more but, as an immigrant to this country myself, this nativist neo-Enoch Powell bullshit makes me want to puke. This country is clinically depressed because it’s classist and out of ideas. Not because of the foreign nurses who take care of your very sick people.

The White Paper's economic analysis has some silly associations in it. What else happened in this period?

The Economist says that the Gaza health ministry's death toll, criticized by some as inflated and as Hamas propaganda, might actually undercount the death toll (it could be as much as double).

The dripfeed of attacks on universities Ministers have been feeding us for weeks should be read as a softening-up exercise before the sector shrinks radically. Sad, but obviously true. Lot of blame to go around - the major fault is George Osborne's - but just a dash of honesty wouldn't hurt.

Well, without an ankle monitor, what is to stop her from co-authoring another op-ed? 

My new favorite book

Apparently saying “Hey maybe don’t bomb refugee camps or starve kids” is now anti-Semitic. Wild how fast morality vanishes when your favorite apartheid state does the killing.

It is so mad for Labour to chase Reform with anti-immigration tinkering — as if these technocratic goons can ever out-Farage the far-right. Fix income inequality instead! Tax the rich! Build social housing at scale! Increase NHS salaries! You now, what should be Labour policy if politics was sane?…

BREAKING: A federal court ruled that our client Rümeysa Öztürk must be released on bail immediately. She will return home to New England as her case proceeds.

These are real images of exoplanets. Four super-Jupiters, imaged 10 times over 12 years around a star 133 lightyears away. These are real, giant worlds, out there in the dark. And we can see them.

You know that if the New York Times is reporting this, then the situation is extremely dire. Palestinians have been saying for months that famine is happening due to Israel’s siege. That is a war crime, Israel is the agent, the US is the sponsor, and American taxpayers are rendered complicit.

BREAKING: Palestinian activist and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi walks out of ICE detention after a Vermont judge ordered his release. "I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you," he said.

A horrible story but god bless this woman so accurately reading the ICE goons for filth here

They don’t want the American people to link the civil rights movement and the worker’s rights movement. It’s the same reason they call it The March On Washington and not its full name: The March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom.