Worth remembering that a few years back, the AP (I believe) adopted a policy of not quoting police departments saying after a police shooting that "officers feared for their lives" without independent confirmation, bc of reliability concerns.

Not gonna lie, now I'm sort of annoyed that Fordham has been so consistently supportive of its faculty's academic freedom. I'm angry on here all the time, and I've got a ton of college bills in my immediate future. I could really use a suspension-then-compensation right about now.

What does this mean, genuinely? What is the “insurance product” that I buy separately from the doctor? He does know that Blue Cross doesn’t do arm surgery, right? But also? This man has clearly NEVER seen an actual medical bill, bc hospital price >>> insurance price.

As someone who had come to feel that fact-checking did basically nothing, I am happy to be fact-checked abt my skepticism of fact-checking. It’s not a panacea by any stretch, but it’s also not nothing.

Just came across this, on the final narration of the Twilight Zone episode The Obsolete Man (in which Burgess Meredith plays a librarian on trial in an authoritarian state), and Rod Sterling’s final narration definitively hits hard right now.

… and I personally don’t think anything comes even remotely close.

"Tough on crime" types are not really pro-police. They are pro-SOCIAL CONTROL, and (understandably) saw the police as a way to impose that control. But the loyalty is, first and foremost, to that control. And if the police get in the way of that, the support disappears.

REALLY important to note homicide has dropped sharply all OVER the place, in places that have a lot of diff policing tactics. That doesn’t mean that what the NYPD did was irrelevant, but also def means that you can’t simply say “we did x, then crime fell,” bc a lot of not-xs saw similar drops.

"Tough on crime" types are not really pro-police. They are pro-SOCIAL CONTROL, and (understandably) saw the police as a way to impose that control. But the loyalty is, first and foremost, to that control. And if the police get in the way of that, the support disappears.

It's ironic that the people who use Greek or Roman busts as their avatars to show their Love of The One True Western Culture are likely cheering the banning of ... Plato. Our higher ed system was the envy of the world and a source of amazing soft (and economic) power. And we are eviscerating it.

Strong strong strong strong strong strong STRONG STROOOOOOOONG seconding of this. Historically stunning declines in homicide, with accompanyingly stunning degrees of under-coverage.

This post is going to live rent-free in my head forever. "It's not a social safety net if it's paid out of taxes" is ... wow. It's a take so hot it pushed up global temperatures a bit more.

It's always frustrating how often people don't bother to look up two or three numbers and do some simple math. I see this w prison stuff. So much written on how prison spending "crowds out" other stuff. In most places, it's like ~3% of the state budget. It's not crowding anything out!

Can’t be a welcoming place for all if you welcome one group dedicated to making another group feel unwelcome (to put it ridiculously mildly). Tolerance is a substantive value, not a procedural one. It is not welcoming to welcome those who are unwelcoming.

I’ve only really experienced it once—when the tankies got mad I said the ACA did some good—and yeah, it’s miserable, and I know I had it relatively easy, but also? For all the flack they (rightly or wrongly) take, the developers here have created some legit effective tools.

I had missed this, and it’s absolutely wild that Trump is so aggressively authoritarian that he’s radicalizing normie legacy paper comic strips.

Cannot recommend this strategy enough. Ignoring aggression rather than engaging with it nips so much bad behavior in the bud.

“Stupid neoliberalism,” my kid whines, as I tell him to turn off his PlayStation bc it’s bedtime. “Well, if it hasn’t been for that neoliberal pass interference call, we’d probably have won,” the coach said. “Ugh, neoliberalism!” the kid said, spitting out the food they hated.

I haven't read the SCOTUS-favors-the-rich paper yet, but think this post is an excellent discussion of how important it is to look at how a paper chooses to define something as subjective and mushy as "pro-poor" or "pro-rich." A LOT can turn on those definitions, and here they def seem contestable.

Sincere political science question: do a lot of studies about ideological polarization see a divergence right around the one we see here? It strikes me as plausible, given that's when the 2-in-1 Democratic Party (Northern liberals and Southern racists) stopped being 2-in-1. The parties changed!

Wild that a federal agency with thousands of armed men and a budget in the billions is @-ing corporations as if it were a random stranded passenger at an airport trying to get better customer service by publicly shaming United. Just the most juvenile too-online admin of all time.

There’s a seen and unseen to how this works. An outrageous attack on somebody big and famous might seem ineffective or even look like it was defeated. The point is people who don’t have such fame and resources know they will fare much worse if they become a target. The chilling effect is the goal.

I’m curious who the main offenders are here, not to name-and-shame (but …), but bc I wonder abt institutional breakdown. I’m guessing they’re more likely to be from higher-ranked schools? My sense has been the elitemost law faculties—the ones w the most reputational clout—have been the quietest.

Not the main point, but the legendary Catturd saying that Venezuela is now more free than NYC is just … I mean … I’m genuinely curious what these MAGA types think my day is like. Not even being snarky. What do they think is oppressing me? And how? What really is their mental image of this place?

I mean, that’s a pretty decent color for a steak cooked in a garbage bag of lukewarm water stuffed between taped-together cardboard boxes lined with styrofoam.

Steaks are in. Now we wait, while regularly adding hot water.

My HSer’s engineering class assignment is to cook a steak sous vide … in a sous vide machine they have to make themselves. This is theirs. I’m the official taste tester. If this account goes silent after tonight, you all will at least know why, and it’s been fun getting to know y’all on here.

Want to see what Canadian comedians are posting these days about their long-time close political and cultural ally to their south? Literally laughing (or perhaps more accurately lol-sobbing) at us. And rightly so.

Gearing up for 2026. It's clear that there is only going to be one option, I think, and it's this. I'd note, too, that this cut scene is actually optimistic (an optimism I share). The only way you can go THROUGH hell is if there is something else on the other side. Otherwise you're IN. Through.

Just read Batman: Holy Terror, and ... damn. It's a alternate-timeline Batman origin story set in a Christofascist US that emerged from an England where Cromwell didn't lose power. It was written in 1991, but ... man. It hits really really close to home right now.

Want to see what Canadian comedians are posting these days about their long-time close political and cultural ally to their south? Literally laughing (or perhaps more accurately lol-sobbing) at us. And rightly so.

One of my teens just asked me what the M in MTV stood for, then asked how they were able to stream the videos in the 1980s.

Mexico? We are now threatening Mexico? Mexico. We have lost our damned mind.

Thread, on the “appalling” conditions (that’s the word a Fed judge used, thus the quotes: not just me saying it) at MDC, the Fed jail where Maduro is now being held. A place defined by violence and, even more so I think, neglect. Which makes it the norm, not the exception.

I love that every time I want to get printer ink, good ramen, or the Kit Kat flavors they don’t usually sell in the US, the words “Donroe Doctrine” will involuntarily be forced into my mind.

Putting the Algonquin Table to shame. And, I’ll just reiterate, bc I thought my thread was clear but clearly not, I REALLY dislike our plurality first-past-the-post, bc it makes every election a lesser-of-two-evils choice. But … it just does.

@johnpfaff.bsky.social joined us after Daniel to talk criminal justice reform, the history of ICE, crime and its causes, mass incarceration and so much more! John sheds some light on areas that the current administration would prefer were left dark, & we are all better for the education to be sure!

As someone who has publicly called for shortening the time murderers spend in prison, it’s wild to me that the angriest, most spittle-flecked replies I’ve gotten (here OR there) are when I said on here that: 1. The ACA wasn’t all bad; and 2. Dems and GOP aren’t identical.

Oooh! I just discovered Bluesky offers a mute-reply-for-everyone feature! You can nuke the trolls in your replies reply-by-reply if need be. That’s a nifty one I hadn’t seen.

And to the “yes they are the same” types who inevitably pop up: Would a Harris admin have done this? No. Abolished USAID? No. Deployed ICE/CBP as an army? No. DOGE? No. Demand voting data? No. Gut vaccines? No. And on and on and on. You know this. Just don’t want to own it.

Or the “it’s my vote to do with what I want” crowd. Or the “the two parties are basically the same” crowd. The man doing this won the job fair and square, and everyone who actively or passively brought that about bears responsibility for that.

Then call for impeachment, yourself. Force the vote, force the GOP onto the record, force the media attention. You have the power to do it directly, yourself:

And I say that as one of your constituents, who will be voting in the primary that is shaping up in the 10th. The people in your district will definitely be paying attention to what you do here.

You only get to do so if you’re already convicted and serving time in a US Federal prison. The hypocrisy isn’t surprising. The naked brazenness of it, tho, indicates the contempt with which they view the political media. Bc he smugly thinks—prob rightly!—that he’ll completely get away w it.

And to head off the inevitable (but not entirely incorrect) wet blanket, in per capita terms it is still higher than 1965 (when pop was 3.5M vs 2.7M), but likely lower than in 2000, when pops were roughly the same. So lowest in 21st century, lower than the end of the Great Crime Decline. Huge win!

I hadn’t read Mamdani’s speech, but this line is AMAZING. Like a SCOTUS opinion that is full of elegant phrases and overdone citations that imposes some savage harms on ppl is never called out for its actual savagery.

Today’s lesson: outdoor snow is not the best way to refrigerate all drinks.

Reading Batman Year Zero, and this seemed fitting for the first day of Mamdani’s administration.

Every time someone reposts a self-glamorizing picture that ICE puts out to make itself look tough, they should include this picture, of a guy on a bike escaping from a cadre of over-armored, out-of-shape ICE guys in Chicago. They want to appear as Seal Team Six, but are not. Deny them their “aura.”

Maybe it was just on Hulu, but I appreciate the Turkey tourism ad tonight, in the waning moments of the Adams “administration.”