Anthony Reed

Cass Sunstein was pushing prediction markets as a fairer alternative to deliberation (e.g. committees, juries) back in 2008. (This and "nudging" in lieu of policy.) The quant asshole revolution of the Obama era laid the groundwork for the gambling, scams, and bullshit vibes paradigm of today.

Really compelling thread of US foreign policy that also gets to the whys of yesterday's attacks and assassination.

It is actually Not True that "the US" doesn't benefit from striking Iran when the destabilization of BRICS is considered to be a primary objective.

Jesus Christ.

I should mind my business and almost everything is more important but why is Major League 3: This Time It's Cars a Best Picture nominee?

Kenya More than 600 Kenyans in Cambodia, who say they were victims of human traffickers, have appealed to the courts in Nairobi to force their government to bring them home. Cambodia's interior ministry said it recovered them during a crackdown on online fraud centers run by organized criminals. According to the Kenyans, they were tricked into traveling to Cambodia with the promise of legitimate employment but were then made to work in heavily-guarded compounds where they were subject to attacks and abuse, including stabbings. Cambodian authorities have given them until February 28 to leave the country or face potential imprisonment but they say they cannot afford flights back to Kenya.

This is also the political economy of digitalisation.

notes from fallow on distortion

Since it’s Audre Lorde’s birthday, here is part of my ongoing engagement with her thinking.

open.substack.com/pub/keguro/p...

"It's not artificial intelligence. It's African intelligence."

Michael Geoffrey Asia, the secretary general of the Data Labelers Association in Kenya tells @jasonkoebler.bsky.social about the notoriously brutal and underpaid work of training AI.

Watch now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH65...

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

YouTube video by Isaac Hayes - Topic If I Had A Hammer (Live - (Finale))

Isaac Hayes with Jesse Jackson, "If I Had a Hammer" Live at Wattstax 1972

Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, dies aged 84 A fixture in civil rights and Democratic politics since the 1960s, Jackson was once close to Martin Luther King Jr

Rip Jesse Jackson.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Jesse Jackson – a life in pictures The US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a pioneer of progressive Democratic politics, close ally of Martin Luther King Jr, and two-time candidate for the presidential nomination, has died at 84

“Jackson is arrested in 1993 after blocking 5th Avenue as part of a group protesting against the Clinton administration’s policy of maintaining a detention camp for Haitian political refugees who were HIV positive”

Remember this history as we remember this man.

New from me.

Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants

Melinda Cooper on the household servitude economy in general, and in extreme form (Epstein).
www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

A Timeless Take on Autobiography: Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name I remember exactly where I was when I learned that Audre Lorde had passed. It was an evening in late fall, already really cold in that characteristically Chicago way. I was at the Guild Literary Co…

A Timeless Take on Autobiography: Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

@seminewblack.bsky.social Remembers the Poet’s Innovative Excavation of the Self
lithub.com/a-timeless-t...

Sept. 28, 1829: An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World David Walker published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, one of the most important documents of the 19th century.

Coming soon from me is a zine about the significance of David Walker's Appeal published in 1829. Hard to overstate how incendiary it was. It engendered a censorship frenzy in Southern states. www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ap...

Opinion | ICE Is Watching You

We should all read this recent essay from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social as it illuminates the path we've been following re privacy regulation for the past 30 years or more, driven by tech industry lobbying that warns of anything that might "stifle innovation." /1

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...

This is one of the most important cases that galvanized Black people in the late 40s through the 1950s. Almost every major Black leader had a comment about it. It is also one of the most successful defense committees that was organized in the 20th century. Almost no one knows about it today.

EMERGENCY RENT FUND: Support Workers in Minnesota Rent is due FEBRUARY 1st. Support our Emergency Rent Fund for Minnesotan workers and families facing eviction due to ICE Raids. We are calling for a rent moratorium, but regardless of if that happens ...

Trusted friends in Minneapolis tell me that this fund is supporting many people but does not have enough money. If you can give, please do: chuffed.org/project/1671...

This is the standard pattern. State actors provoke, people respond peacefully, state actors escalate violently. Media reports say “protests turned violent” or “protestors clash with law enforcement“ which normalizes further escalation.

State terror facilitates its own escalation by design.

my Blackest opinion is that the presumption of conflict between "America has a long and deeply rooted history of violence" and "we can and should fight against today's version of that, as did those who came before us" is less a philosophical debate about how to treat the past and more a skill issue

The Salt Eaters and Song of Solomon immediately come to mind. I haven't read John Edgar Wideman's The Lynchers in a while, but I liked its emphasis on people geographically and otherwise marginal during the era.

Renee Good's Murder and Other Acts of Terror An interview with Robin D. G. Kelley on how to think about ICE—and the broader history of police violence.

I did an interview with Robin Kelley about the murder if Renee Good — and what we know from history about strategies of resistance to armed agents of the state. www.bostonreview.net/articles/ren...

Thread. [the shorthand about her that is often uplifted on social media always does her a disservice and also does Rosa Parks one too. Glad for this thread]

I'm not saying we should look “upon all previous history as a crude heap of irrationality and violence” [Engels] but that perspective's not a bad starting point to counter the many fascist teleologies currently motivating the worst people right now to conjure a false destiny to recover.

Glad to see people noticing that the work of violence workers is, in fact, political violence.

Once you understand that you're dealing with murderous liars, you stop entertaining what they say as possibly credible and legitimate. The fight against them is about stopping them from terrorizing and killing by any means, not winning debates about your reality versus theirs.

I wrote about reporters’ refusal to use “act of war,” “invasion” or “coup” when covering Trump’s brazen attacks on Venezuela, instead echoing WH-approved euphemisms, and the broader trend of our press dutifully giving Trump’s lawlessness the vague whiff of international legitimacy when it has none.

if you are talking today about how bad maduro was and were alive, at all, during the run-up to the iraq war you are potentially the dumbest person to ever live