Anna Lewis

Indiana University banned its student newspaper from printing just days before homecoming weekend — after firing the paper’s advisor when he refused to censor critical coverage. That would be bad enough on its own, but FIRE is taking this one personally, as the Indiana Daily Student reported this hostile campaign was due in part to its coverage of FIRE’s ranking Indiana University as the worst public university for free speech. You read that right. The school’s response to the news that they are bad at free speech … is to censor the news. It’s ironic — and not just in the Alanis Morissette sense — that these actions will likely push its overall ranking even lower next year. At least we can’t fault them for consistency.

Why did Indiana University attack and cut its own student newspaper?

Well, in a twist of irony any English professor would call clichéd, it turns out IU did it because they were angry about the students' reporting on a FIRE report naming IU as the worst public university for free speech in the US.

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

👇🎯

Internet Archive Wayback Machine logo

Nearly 30 years ago, Brewster wrote: “Our goal is to help people answer hard questions.”

That vision still drives the Internet Archive in 2025: building a reliable memory for a digital age that forgets too quickly.

#Wayback1T

Page from March 1997 Scientific American featuring Brewster Kahle’s article 'Preserving the Internet.' Text describes the Internet Archive’s mission to save digital information. Includes a photo of a Smithsonian exhibit with 1996 U.S. election web memorabilia.

In 1996, Brewster Kahle wrote "Preserving the Internet" for Scientific American. Nearly 30 years later, it’s striking how many of his predictions about digital preservation came true—and how many challenges remain.

Let’s compare 1996 vs 2025 🧵

Aging Libraries Could Offer Cities a Unique Opportunity to Build New Housing While Improving Public Services Since 2000, more than 1,800 apartment units have been built in combined library-housing developments. These projects not only address local housing needs but…

Cities are developing a new approach to developing housing: Integrating it into mixed-use library projects. These investments improve neighborhood vitality, add housing & improve services.

In new research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, I create a database of such projects & point to success stories ⏬

Oh

Courtesy of Prof Bagenstos, the statutory provision is 31 USC 1341(c)(2)

They could have perp walked Trump, multiple times, for multiple offenses. They could have convicted him in the Senate, as a bipartisan majority of senators voted to do. When you decide not to pursue justice, this is the result.

Have to agree and ask why didn't Biden do something when #SCOTUS said he had complete immunity.

Radical yes but we would not be in this fucked up position right now if Biden had his full faculties and understood the moment he was in.

There was a huge list that needed to go the Bolsonaro route.

Text from "They Knew" by Sarah Kendzior: As I wrote in Hiding in Plain Sight, the oft-recited claim that "nobody saw it coming" is an admission of whom the speaker considers to be nobody. In the United States, "nobody" historically included women, immigrants, poor people, and anyone who is not white. People dismissed as nobody are those most likely to be affected by a terrible situation and therefore the most likely to warn about it in advance. "Somebody" is a similarly convoluted category. For centuries, to be somebody in the United States meant to be a wealthy white man or to be treated like one. This idea of "somebody" is baked into the founding of the country, in which only white male landowners were granted the right to vote. White, land-owning men who deviated from the establishment were often punished for their efforts: castigated as troublemakers or conspiracy theorists. The goal was to reduce them, at least in their ability to gain institutional support, to the status of "nobody."

I always think of this quote (from They Knew by Sarah Kendzior) when people say this.

"'nobody saw it coming' is an admission of whom the speaker considers to be nobody"

Really want to encourage libraries - especially school libraries - to put no-AI content into your collection development policy. At the very least, if you have a clause in there about requiring accurate information, you can use that to weed out or prevent genAI purchases.

It's a pretty big deal that the NYC Bar Association--one of the most prominent and respected bar associations in the country--is accusing the President of ordering the "unlawful summary execution," i.e. murder--of civilians in violation of US and international law. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

Yet another good reason for locals to resist data centers: "electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas located near significant data center activity"

Gift link from @bloomberg.com

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

AI is just microplastics for software. It's polluted every app and slowly killing them.

How "Free Speech Culture" Is Killing Free Speech: Part One Blurring The Lines Between Official Censorship And Individual Criticism Built The Intellectual Foundation For Trump's Assault On Free Expression

Breaking character: Ken White has a fantastic post about how "free speech culture" undermines free speech. It's something I've thought about a lot before, but Ken knows way more about it than I do and explains it really well.

www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...

How a secret recording of a gender identity lecture upended Texas A&M Officials have struggled to detail the exact reasons for the A&M professor’s termination, citing a technical issue with her course description. Faculty say the move was politically motivated.

Thanks to the Texas Tribune for this comprehensive, fully reported account of the firing of the Texas A&M Instructor for teaching “gender ideology.”

www.texastribune.org/2025/09/19/t...

Rid me of this meddlesome priest, Pam! How mob boss Trump sped through all of Watergate in just a single weekend.

Let’s be clear: What Donald Trump said in public, in plain view, on his own social media feed is more corrupt and dangerous than anything Richard Nixon was caught on tape saying in the White House tapes. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/rid-me-of-...

Censorship Is the Authoritarian’s Dream The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things.

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history."
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

I refused to placate the bully. Then I refused to placate the institutions who placated the bully. Then I refused to placate the shills who placate the institutions who placate the bully. I'm still standing; the rest are down.

Never placate the bully.

Many media outlets hid the full truth of Trump -- his background in organized crime, his Epstein ties -- out of fear, only to be obliterated by him in the end. Had they not self-censored then, they might not be state-censored now. When you hide the truth, you face the consequences.

This moment is disturbing even in the mundane: I’ve started taking screenshots of historical sources I’m using in research from the national park service, the smithsonian, and the national archives, just in case they get taken down. It’s now a part of my process and takes time I have to plan for.

Tunnel Vision Do you remember September 9?

"There is no longer 'news' in the US: only speculation, propaganda in oligarch-run newspapers, dark money posts disguised as articles, the occasional well-researched but paywalled piece, and independent reporting blocked by algorithms."
sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/tunnel-vis...

"The assault on university life is part of a broader authoritarian agenda. Fascists seek a society where people lack not only the motive to learn, but also the means. Alternative avenues of education — libraries, search engines, archives, museums — are being shut down or restructured to curtail access to knowledge. Curiosity and community are under attack." -- Sarah Kendzior, "The End Times of Academia"

Curiosity, Nabokov once wrote, is insubordination in its purest form. It is also, as @sarahkendzior.bsky.social shows, a means of moral and imaginative survival that becomes more crucial by the day. Highest recommendation! open.substack.com/pub/sarahken...

Powerbrokers pretend time is not a weapon, but a neutral or even positive force: a force that benefits the bereft by giving them hope. They pretend that hope is not a weapon either. But hope is the deadliest weapon when wielded for decades without sincere intent. Hope without deeds is an empty cup that turns, over time, into a poisoned one. It poisons the people who drink it, and it poisons the people who proffer it, as they serve it up again and again.

This @sarahkendzior.bsky.social quote pops into my head every time I see liberals getting excited about Gavin Newsom

The US government may have taken years off my life, but they are not taking my morals. I can’t fathom punishing ordinary folks because of where they happen to live in 2025 when the real villains are wealthy sadists who are blunt about their desire to eliminate all of us.

sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/mafia-stat...

Trump Delayed a Medicare Change After Health Companies’ Donations The president posted talking points provided by one firm that donated millions, and his administration delayed a change on coverage of pricey bandages that could have hurt the company and others like it.

A biotech company donated millions for access to a dinner with President Trump. The next day, Trump posted the company's talking points opposing a pending change that would have restricted Medicare reimbursement for the company's products, and his administration later delayed the change.

widespread adoption of crypto
+ proliferation of AI
+ softening of the labor market
+ enforcement “replaced by crypto industry toadies”

= “It is a great time to be a scammer.”

These Wisconsin video game workers were first to unionize at a major U.S. studio. Three years later, they have a contract. The deal at Raven Software in Middleton affects quality assurance testers, some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It caps a saga that included a strike and a purchase by Micro…

"The deal is the latest development in a saga involving some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company, leaving the roughly two dozen testers to negotiate with one of the world’s largest tech companies."