Maggie Fritz-Morkin

How Kansas Republicans weaponized the law to target 300 trans driver's license holders SB 244 was put into effect virtually overnight, causing chaos, panic and fear in the trans community.

New — I spoke to eight trans people in Kansas about the new state law that invalidated their driver’s licenses overnight, what’s it’s like to live there right now, plus details of two DMV emails exclusively obtained by The Handbasket that shed light on the law’s chaotic and cruel rollout:

A putto is sitting on an early modern type case, a box made for the different types during the hand-press era. One needed to pick up each type for a letter or symbol etc. and compose each word, text, and page. The putto blows also soap bubbles: in each bubble is a letter, and the word formed is VANITAS, meaning "vanity". This detail was published in a German speaking newspaper, "Monatliche Nachrichten einicher Merkwürdigkeiten" in 1751. VD18 90722892.

A putto blowing soap bubbles, sitting on a type case full of type, and the letters in the bubbles read as: VANITAS (vanity).

A beautiful reflection of human writing and publishing, #skystorians

1/2

Blurry nightime photo of the Washington Monument, DC lights, and an emoji poo where the capitol is

#SOTU (derogatory)

UNC Power Brokers Roll Into Raleigh With Tuition Hikes And Speech Rules On The Line UNC System leaders will vote on tuition hikes and a new academic-freedom definition this week.

The UNC Board of Governors is trying to rewrite the definition of academic freedom, restricting what faculty can say & do in their classrooms & in public.

This is a broader effort to limit open inquiry & free debate in higher education.

We know what the aim is. We can’t let this happen.

Me Donald Trump
🤝

Really can’t afford a new floor

just me reading my lil horror book

So far I love the weather ☺️

I saw an academic department chair do Six Seven in a research lecture and friends, we’ve done it, we conquered the children. Eff them kids

#RenSA26

Lyfting out of SFO and all the billboards are for AI. ew

TIL that if you forget to bring your instrument to 7th grade band, your punishment is having to spend the whole class period copying the dehumidifier manual by hand

💀💀💀

Drawing of a horse head with worried googly eyes.

Happy Year of the Horse

Please consider joining us--the new restrictions on academic freedom are coupled with a move to make all syllabi public and secretly record our classes--UNC's status as a top public university is at stake

Here's a QR code so you can share our petition:

Jesse Jackson ‘88 campaign button

The first political event I remember was a Jesse Jackson primary campaign stop in Green Bay. My parents got me a button. We shook his hand. I must’ve been 6

Fired NC State worker the latest in response to controversial secret recordings Right-wing activists have been releasing secret recordings of unguarded comments about diversity policies. The latest is at NC State.

carolinapublicpress.org/74487/fired-...

Wow.

They can pry my em dashes from my cold dead hands

Stay up writing three different service documents that will be read by no one and a robot?

Yes I think I shall

ChatGPT cuts in action

DOGE allegedly used ChatGPT to identify 1,400 NEH grants it said were DEI. Grants were terminated April 2025, according to a court filing. E.g.

Film: 1873 Colfax massacre
Film: first female pilots flying for U.S. military in WWII
Film: “Untold Story of Jewish Women Slave Labor in the Holocaust"

lets be honest if they hadn't died in unrequited love and had got the families to sign on, the inevitable divorce between Romeo and Juliet would have been legendarily toxic

Judge quashes small town's climate change suit against Duke Energy Carrboro, North Carolina, claimed that Duke Energy should be responsible for damage from climate change-related weather.

“A small town north of Raleigh”

Judge quashes small town's climate change suit against Duke Energy www.courthousenews.com/judge-quashe...

Perfect

All-muppet Game of Thrones, with human Jon Snow

There I said it

UNC-CH AAUP opposes classroom recording for any reason without the instructor’s consent. We were shocked to learn on 2/9 that the Interim Provost had drafted a new policy allowing the recording of classes to go into effect on 2/16.

Read our statement: unc-ch-aaup.org/assets/state...

Found an additional graphic that gets even more of these quotes together.

I've kept "I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees" pinned above my desk since I first started studying evolutionary biology as an undergraduate. So relatable to get extremely frustrated with your study system.

We have whistles. They have guns. The asymmetry is real, and the danger is not rhetorical. But the history of state repression does not turn on weapons and violence alone. It turns on whether isolation succeeds and fear fragments those subjected to it, or whether coordination interrupts that process. A whistle cannot revive lives lost, but it can prevent disappearance. It generates witnesses, produces visibility, and transforms individual vulnerability into collective agency. It functions not as a substitute for law, but as a refusal to wait for law to secure what it has already failed to protect. This is not a call for refinement or recalibration of immigration enforcement following months of federal occupation in Minneapolis. It is a call to name failure plainly. When ICE's ordinary operations require protection from law rather than obedience to it, abolition is not a radical slogan but a natural conclusion.

Hey, read this. lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

As an academic librarian, I'm deeply concerned that my profession is becoming one focused solely on compliance. And even more concerning, that many of my colleagues seem just fine with this. I'm not naive enough to think this is new, but I feel it EVERY day now and it's getting worse.

Detail tucked into the @rsaorg.bsky.social instructions page for their conference next week, re: items to be picked up at the Registration Desk: "Complimentary bag of dates to break the fast for those observing Ramadan."

Just about broke my heart to see such a small but thoughtful act of inclusion.

Probably they figured that if Mary was 14, Alibech could be too…