This March 1965 Herblock cartoon about police violence against civil rights activists has added relevance today.

"Socially Liberal but Economically Give All My Taxes To Elon And Build An AI Data Center Bigger Than The Astrodome Next Door To Me So Palantir Can Track My Children From Conception To Crematorium" doesn't have the same ring.

Thinking Russia will easily overrun Ukraine's "they/them" army because a Russian soldier did shirtless pushups in a recruitment ad is basically the same as thinking ICE would easily dominate the "weak, woke libs" of Minnesota because MAGA posts about masculinity and hype videos with hard rock.

im sorry but we just spent the last decade being told the biggest issues were pronouns in emails and a trans kid playing jv lacrosse if you said these things and got paid for it then you need to go away. literally if “woke mind virus” is something youve ever said unironically you need to go away

“More than anything that draws students to our campuses — more than winning sports teams & fancy dining halls, state-of-the-art labs & well-stocked libraries — academic freedom is what makes our universities work." — Belle Boggs, North Carolina AAUP President @ncaaup.bsky.social

This hit so fucking hard today.

A stark moment in this morning's hearing in Minnesota when an attorney for the state is staying this:

Turns out voting for a bunch of buffoons based on whether they can talk shit for 3 hours with some comedians on a podcast was, like, a bad idea.

Charles Yang of Time for Three absolutely slaying me. I would lose my mind if I heard this live. Even crappy phone speakers made me scream and cry.

"Good tsar, bad boyars" is a longstanding trope in authoritarian regimes. See also "if the Führer knew..."

Going to use this in my research writing class next week. Where we have been doing genre move analysis, so students are very ready. #writingstudies #teamrhetoric #cdnwrds

I think about Philando Castille often. He did everything right, he was driving with his family, he was a good man who did food nutrition work for schools. It was a clear cut racist stop and use of his owning of a firearm as a posthoc justification to murder him, and the NRA said nothing about it.

In the early 1930s the SA was roughing people up, creating chaos in neighborhoods, seeking to terrorize with the occasional killing. By the late 1930s it had been supplanted by the SS, which was much better trained.

Tyrants have always tried to emerge on the earth. But they have never carried mankind forward, always backwards. It is the good, the human care one toward another, this is what makes life worth living. Tyrants fall, but human care and kindness remain, they outlive and are greater than all tyrants.

I'm not the first to say this, but once again: ordinary folks throughout the country have shown infinitely more courage than most politicians, business leaders, and university presidents.

The people who spent years defending and even lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse and Ashli Babbitt now want us to believe that an unarmed mother in her car and a disarmed nurse were domestic terrorists who deserved to be murdered by law enforcement.

Republicans when a woman needs a life-saving abortion: State's rights! Republicans when the state wants to investigate a murder: Bow to the king!

This should go without saying, but apparently it does. What officials say happened is not the news. What actually happened is the story. And headlines should reflect the truth as you can verify it, not the official lie.

The way Europe is feeling and expressing their disgust and anger at Trump is how some of us have felt for 10 years and then 5 years again, he is not new. he is awful.

The paid agitators all wear badges

They have repeatedly abducted Native Americans. This is ethnic cleansing, point blank.

It’s something else. Literally half of America is right now out there showing them why they are failed human beings and don’t deserve to be part of this country. And the other half is just sitting back, smiling and enjoying their own lack of humanity.

The reality is that 2024 was a fundamental test of the moral character of the nation and we failed spectacularly. We’re living with the consequences now. Maybe we improve. I hope so.

"Dictators must not win. They must lose power, not gain it." President Zelenskyy delivered a clear message in Davos. russia is trying to prove that violence can be an effective tool of power. The world must not allow this to become the norm.

Wise words from WEB DuBois to gird us today: "It would be shame and cowardice to surrender this glorious land and its opportunities for civilization and humanity to the thugs and lynchers, the mobs and profiteers, the monopolists & gamblers who today choke its soul and steal its resources."

if two people are already restraining someone physically while spraying their face with pepper spray, that is torture, plain and simple. no debate to be had about it

Here's a quick and easy personality test. If you weren't throughly embarrassed by Trump's performance at Davos, then you're a Nazi.

I unironically recommend Karl Jaspers's postwar essay The Question of German Guilt in thinking through these questions

Remember what I said about how when Trump falters, the media inserts a fake, imaginary version of Trump into the news instead?

When things are falling apart ... Who surrenders? who was the first to fold? The billionaires, the institutions, the powerful Who was the first to organize? the marginalized, the queer, the sex workers, the single moms, the old punks, the three sisters

Spot on by @jonnelledge.bsky.social

The Democrats should shut down the government on this sentence alone.

⬜

Has anyone, a pair of philosophers maybe, noticed that the mentality required to survive postmodernity is indistinguishable from schizophrenia

El eurodiputado danés Anders Vistisen a Donald Trump: “Permítame decirlo con palabras que pueda entender: Señor Presidente, váyase a la mierda”.

“nobody is insider trading off his death so it almost certainly didn’t happen” really sums up the state of the world in 2026 huh

The people wanted to burn it all down are slowly but surely getting their way, and I’m locked in a long term lease with these arsonists, and I’m not at all happy about it.

Writing is thinking Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.

So sad, but so true.

Go Maryland!

Worth noting at the one year mark.

Great aurora in Greenland tonight!

A joke for the history buffs.

Not just this, but also, American movies and YA novels receive authoritarianism as something that affects the entire population, rather than oppression of some classes by others (e.g. in American history black people by white people - white Southerners supported Jim Crow, etc.).

more Americans have got to internalize that November 2024 was the last point at which we were gonna get out of this disaster without Americans being (at least) *inconvenienced*. every choice those fighting fascism make during terrifying times like these will have downsides. that is *how it is*.

Grateful Dead Andres Segovia Jackson Browne Bonnie Raitt Joan Jett

"In the immediate aftermath of the death of Renée Good in Minneapolis... an FBI agent in Minnesota conducted an initial review of the shooting and determined that sufficient grounds existed to open a probe into the actions of the officer who shot Good..." www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Here’s a short poem about the power of poetry to change the world.

This is 100% correct and the EU should do it immediately. The USA will break if a bunch of entitled Americans suddenly can’t book get-aways in Paris.