He said that the agents would throw food at them to eat. The agents threatened to withhold food for a week and to beat him up if he didn't sign deportation papers. He said he saw others refuse and get beaten/receive no food. He signed because he was afraid.

Her husband told her that detainees at Broadview had to get up at 5am to get in line for one bathroom. He often peed himself. One time he had to wait until 2pm to use the bathroom. You could only use the bathroom once a day. He said the agents would beat you if you used the bathroom on yourself.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

I helped make a film, out this week, called “Rovina’s Choice,” about the deaths this man without conscience or accountability has caused — already 600,000, ⅔ of them children.

Among other things, Ross Douthat is a truly godawful interviewer

Essentialism will rot your brain

Bringing this back

Against all odds, I think I crushed this one

I am taking particular pleasure in the complete collapse of trans-as-unbeatable-wedge-issue narrative this morning. It might be an 80-20 issue in voters minds, but it has to be on voters minds to matter. The results in VA demonstrate that it is very much not on voters minds.

really nice work here from @robrubsam.bsky.social

Even if they accept the results, they refuse to treat the winners as normal politicians, but as threats to be eliminated. bsky.app/profile/hann...

Earle-Sears ran what felt like 12 billion ads about how much she hated trans kids and I didn’t hear a single pundit say she should stick to real issues that affect real people.

I tried to do justice to the maestra

Kelly Reichardt’s labors of love: defector.com/kelly-reicha...

'For Cookie and Lizzy, art makes life worthwhile, whether life deserves it or not.' Kelly Reichardt's films mean so much to me & i love The Mastermind. Thanks for this thoughtful review @robrubsam.bsky.social defector.com/kelly-reicha...

“Venture Capitalist Aristocracy“ has got to be the ne plus ultra of American conservative thought, real prime grade business school moronity

"Few would describe Kelly Reichardt as an action filmmaker, but I’m about to." [sickos_haha_yes.jpg] @robrubsam.bsky.social with another banger

Selling Zohran: defector.com/selling-zohran

Many thanks to @brandyjensen.bsky.social for letting me write about Kelly Reichardt, our slow action maestra defector.com/kelly-reicha...

You’d never catch one of these coddled kids nowadays “working in the lab late one night.” And the only thing their eyes are beholding is their damn phone

To quote Chris Cooper in Matewan: "If you stand alone you're just so much shit to these people."

"The platformization of human life means that truth and falsehood, fact and rumor, become mere data points of equal value." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/pol...

I reviewed Luca Guadagnino's rock-brained, self-satisfied, ever-so-promising After the Hunt for @commonweal.bsky.social www.commonwealmagazine.org/rubsam-after...

"Nathaniel Redmond, director of the Yale school of public health, said on Tuesday that the “horror, scale and velocity of killing” in El Fasher had left pools of blood visible from satellites" Pity the West simply does not have any tools to pressure UAE, which is the RSF's main funder and supplier

"The removal eliminated a passage that read, “Our founders established ADL with the clear understanding that the fight against any one form of prejudice or hate cannot succeed without countering hate of all forms.”"

I think it is genuinely interesting how this isn't labeled as an accusation of dual loyalty even though that is plainly what it is.

They’re trying to deport a DACA recipient because he objected to the war in Gaza and to the detention of another immigrant. www.cnn.com/2025/10/28/u...

It is astonishingly ugly. People I once thought were decent are spouting delusional, baseless, vile stuff about what they "know" Mamdani believes and about what he's going to do. In NYC, this has turned into a real "Well, now we all know who we are" election. There'll be no bridging that rift.

The more interesting aspect of the Mamdani “aunt” controversy to me is how eager many on the right are to have a reason to insist that Americans weren’t mean enough to Muslims post-9/11, actually.

Camp of the Saints x Halo with a fashwave font. It’s not just trolling and it’s the tone of much government comms now

WILD story. A DHS officer shot at a man he thought was fleeing (a judge dismissed all charges). Bullets went into the driver's side window, through his jacket collar, and into the empty passenger seat. An MPD cop on the scene says he was ordered not to put it in the police report.

I've built a socioeconomic system that depends on everyone to do useful work and act ethically except the people at the top, who get unimaginable rewards for being antisocial frauds and criminals. And I think it will stand the test of time

We have morons studying made up nonsense while the effects of climate change are actually harming us, such as the absolute monster hurricane barreling down on Jamaica

executive chairman of Gloo

NYFF: Festival of Darkness by @robrubsam.bsky.social

The good people at @readliberties.bsky.social let me write up the highlights and misfires of this year's NYFF: libertiesjournal.com/online-artic...

“Homogeneity is for gallons of milk, not communities of people, and social cohesion is something we create every day through our behavior, not something we guarantee in advance by making sure that everybody is the right kind of White person.”

The films of the Canadian artist Stan Douglas ‘prompts us to question the veracity of what we’re seeing, often by revealing what we do not’, writes Robert Rubsam

ALSO ALSO! Monthly Dispatch #28 — ft. @eoghancarrick.bsky.social @robrubsam.bsky.social Bothayna Al-Essa, @matthewkinlin.bsky.social @robmclennan.bsky.social @evawyles.bsky.social + much, much more — goes out Friday ... sign up here: minorlits.substack.com

The U.S. has conducted 10 strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats, killing 43 people. Remember: no judge or jury has found these boats were trafficking drugs. We're simply taking Trump's word for it. He’s unilaterally acting as judge, jury, and executioner. This is a danger to us all.

"Deliver Me From Nowhere is so resolutely on-beat that it suggests the cinematic equivalent of a drum machine" www.theringer.com/2025/10/23/m...

"If de Waal is anywhere close to right, this conflict will have killed 7.5 percent of the prewar population of Gaza in just two years. It already is, in proportional terms, deadlier than the wars in Yemen, Syria, Sudan and Ukraine." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/o...

I'm sure some of these idiots are genuinely afraid that Zohran will establish sharia law courts or whatever, but more just don't want to pay higher taxes and are willing to jam the gutter racism button to make sure they never do

POTUS likes performative, videogenic military action—especially airstrikes against supposed "terrorists." Reality TV commander in chief.

“Medical staff did not give her any food, water, or pain medication for several hours. Much later that evening, after a significant loss of blood, Lucia was transported to an emergency room approximately an hour away, with her arms and legs shackled.” www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Computer, is it good that the wealthiest and most powerful people in America have all lost their grip on reality?

"It is incredible — and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness — that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium." www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/1...

Damn, is no meme sacred... youtu.be/ooOELrGMn14?...

could do with a lot less open advocacy for ethnic cleansing in global politics tbh