Michael Leo Owens

4 Screenshots from the movie "Airplane II: The Sequel" (1982): First, a middle-aged lawyer in a brown suit and tie stands in a wood-paneled courtroom, addressing the judge and jury with a serious expression. The subtitle reads: "On March 5th, 1980, flight 209 into Chicago lost its crew in midair." Second, the same lawyer, now looking slightly more intense, continues speaking with the subtitle: "I'd like to call one of the passengers from that flight..." Third, the lawyer smirks slightly, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head as he finishes his statement with the subtitle: "...if it pleases the court." Fourth, a shot of the judge, an older man in black robes, sitting at the bench with large grins on their faces.

Mar 5th 1980 - Ted Striker, an ex-fighter pilot and traumatized war veteran, saved the lives of everyone on-board Flight 209 after the flight crew became sick with food poisoning. The date was mentioned in Airplane 2 (1982)

📽️📅 Airplane! (1980)

Text from the National Museum of African American History and Culture: "Oil on linen portrait of Breonna Taylor. Taylor appears standing against a light blue-grey background, wearing a flowing blue dress. Her proper right hand rest on her hip, her left hand at her side. A delicate necklace with gold cross pendant is around her neck and an engagement ring is on her left hand. She gazes directly at the viewer."

How soon before they call for the removal of Amy Sherald's glorious portrait of Breonna Taylor from The National Museum of African American History and Culture?

Justice Department rescinds Biden-era ‘no-knock’ warrant policy Policy launched after the police killing of Breonna Taylor restricted when law enforcement could burst into a home without knocking.

Reversing another hard-fought federal policy from and for the "Racial Reckoning" with police violence.

#fishbone

Trump said the U.S. is “doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly.” Then he gives the U.S. a 15 out of 10 grade for the Iran war. 🥴

Six Americans are dead and he’s grading it like a game.

Different angle, showing the lead-up:

A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.

Good candidate! I should’ve posed my question with the timeframe of… in my lifetime. LOL

Like… Just turn off the lights, close the doors, and exit as you hand ALL the keys to the Capitol to Tyrantosaurus Vex. It’d be more dignified and make more sense than the utter cravenness the WHOLE world is watching.

🫠

Has the US Congress EVER been so useless to America?

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Hamdi Mohamud’s Case Against St. Paul Officer Who Framed Her - Institute for Justice Today, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari filed by the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of Hamdi Mohamud. The petition asked the […]

St Paul Police informant attacks group of random teen girls w a knife, cop arrives & realizes arresting him would ruin a case he's supposed to testify in so they arrest the girls instead. Judge finds the same cop framed at least 30 other people but they receive no punishment. ij.org/press-releas...

ICE under Trump 2.0 built an unprecedented media operation - deploying videographers to raids, pumping out edgy social posts, swiping pop music for hype videos - and the main metric for evaluating its impact shows that Americans now hate ICE more than ever

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

And now… 😵‍💫🤯😵

Emmanuel Damas in a patterned dress shirt and striped tie leaning against a metal railing on a sunny residential street with red brick rowhouses and flowering trees in the background.

Emmanuel Damas, 56, died in ICE custody on Monday.

Damas came to the U.S. from Haiti seeking asylum. After six months in ICE custody—the last four at CoreCivic's Florence Correctional Center—he died from complications from a tooth infection.

A tooth infection.

1/3

tucson.com/news/local/b...

3 Screenshots from the movie "Idiocracy" (2006): First, a barren landscape filled with mountains of garbage and a dilapidated vehicle perched on top, under a hazy sky. Second, a man in drab clothing stands amidst a pile of trash in a dimly lit room, appearing contemplative. Third, a magazine cover with bold text reading "HOT NAKED CHICKS & WORLD REPORT" dated March 3, 2505, featuring a woman's face.

Mar 3rd 2505 - The Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505. This awoke Joe Bauers from a long forgotten suspended animation experiment.

📽️📅 Idiocracy (2006)

Reports of Ukraine’s Demise Are Still Exaggerated Four years after Russia began its invasion, some pundits are still forecasting doom and gloom. Never trust a weatherman.

Russia "has captured some 1.4 percent of Ukrainian territory, most of it reduced to charred ghost towns; its total area of control in the country is around 20 percent, with much of that in Russian hands since 2014." That's...not Russian victory.

“The 11th-hour betting, which totaled about $855,000, ‘makes you think it was someone who knew something about the timing,’ said Eric Zitzewitz, a professor of economics at Dartmouth, who has studied prediction markets.” 🤫🤑 www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...

@bishtoons.bsky.social

I don't mean to pick on this person, but I'm begging folks to recognize that Sec 2 does most of its work at the local level. While pre clearance was operative, 50% of all blocked policies were *local vote dilution schemes*. Congress matters but local politics are the ballgame here

"Oh, the state of the nation (state on the nation)
Is causing deprivation
Oh, the state of the nation (state of the nation)
Is causing deprivation..."

The Bloody Show In an unhinged State of the Union, Trump brought necropolitics to primetime

Johnathan M. Katz argues in The Racket that Trump's State of the Union speech was a form of necropolitics, invoking Achille Mbembe's work.
theracket.news/p/the-bloody...

The war's limited objectives:
-Destroy nuclear program
-Degrade ballistic missile capabilities
-Bring the armies of the world together to fight at the End Times and bring about the return of Christ

The Criminal Justice team at Arnold Ventures is looking for a pending/recent PhD with strong causal inference skills, for a remote, part-time consulting position.

This is a great opportunity for someone considering a transition from academia to the policy space.

Deadline: March 15

Please share!

the state of public history, 2026:

with one eye on the Trump administration, NPS staff worries that describing the murder of an abolitionist "might denigrate the murderers"

I'm not an economist, but I don't think it's good that the US markets seem to have largely adopted the "lol nothing matters" mindset.

"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

Elena Ceaușescu cosplay

The ‘Board of Peace’ started World War 3 so fast.