Hannah

This keeps being a “debate” and people like me who say obviously the government is a bigger threat to speech keep being right.

A reporter just asked the U.S. president a perfectly legitimate question about his attorney general's vow to prosecute people for constitutionally protected speech.

He responded by threatening to prosecute the reporter.

The threat itself is an abuse of power. It ought to be an impeachable offense.

under this language charlie kirk would not have been allowed to speak on clemson’s campus

Don’t think we’re at the point yet, but the way things are going I honestly think we might end up seeing private sector employees with plausible jawboning-based 1A claims, feel like I’m losing my mind with all this

Pretty sure Bob Corker got it too, and that was at least pre-2018? I remember Alex Jones running with “Little Marco” but I can’t place it on the timeline. God I hate how much cursed information is lodged in my brain forever

**with apologies to Harvey Silverglate

*dramatic irony. also my opinions are my own and should not be taken as the views of my employer or anyone else

...show people that's wrong. I’m sympathetic to the idea that the danger of “mainstreaming” the views of rightwing extremists justifies deplatforming them, and I don’t think it should be dismissed outright, but I think it’s ultimately a lazy and cowardly way to avoid putting in the work.

4. Someone still needs to be willing to stand up and say that those views are unacceptable. You can't have one without the other. This isn’t “defeat the nazis with the power of debate!”, it’s “make clear which views have popular support.” When they claim that the silent majority is behind them...

...and had never heard the “stone the gays in accordance with God’s perfect law” side seems like a pretty good argument for letting the neo-nazis have their rally. Maybe I can figure out for myself when there’s a nazi in the room, but I need other people to see it, too.**

1. Charlie Kirk made the world a worse place and I see nothing in his life to celebrate.
2. Murdering him also made the world a worse place, and I likewise see nothing in it to celebrate.
3. That post going around about the person who only knew about his normie evangelical conservative views...

The mob-driven censorship of the last few days has me more freaked out than anything I've seen in a long time, so I'm going to post my thoughts publicly if anyone looking for thought crimes wants to screenshot them and send them to my employer.*

People are losing jobs due to social media posts about Charlie Kirk Some GOP officials want to clamp down on perceived expressions of schadenfreude about Charlie Kirk's death. Conservative activists are publicizing social media posts that are "celebrating" his death.

With all the chaos, let's not lose track of the fact that elected officials are (successfully) calling for the firing of private citizens for expressing protected viewpoints about Kirk. www.npr.org/2025/09/13/n...

I don’t know enough about how courts have looked at this for members of the military, but that’s absolutely not the case for public employees. Courts have been *extremely* willing to find “people got real mad about this” sufficient justification to rule for employers on Pickering balancing.

Which work? Calling for gay people to be stoned to death? Blaming airplane crashes on black pilots? Anti-vax bullshit? Election denialism? Pushing Great Replacement Theory?

Kirk’s murder is awful and ominous for this country. But no, we don’t need to honor him or “continue his work.”

Hannah Arendt said 'The death of human empathy is one of the earliest & most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism'

We saw the recent cruelty of MAGA denying empathy to Melissa Hortman

Empathy for Kirk—not because he ever acted like a decent human—but because we are decent humans

Authoritarians thrive on your silence — be loud — for America.

In rebuke to Trump administration, judge rules for Harvard on many key issues in the funding cutoff cases. I’m glad the university held fast rather than buckling under to the bully. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Relatedly I have a cold and am deeply annoyed at the idea that I might need to stay home and “”rest”” to “”””recover””””

Man working in free speech law is the best job in the world

Wow

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET-Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.

History has no arc. It is only by our own hands that justice will come into the universe. It is our duty to do so — to be, ourselves, the point at which the falling angels meets the rising ape.

Ah yes, vaccines that mimic natural immunity, also commonly known as “vaccines.”

The U.S. government has fueled decades of world-leading scientific and technical innovation by funding research efforts through grants programs & universities where researchers controlled decisions.

In the USSR, no decisions were made by scientists alone. Every decision required political approval.

This morning we filed a lawsuit against Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem challenging the constitutionality of two laws they are using to deport noncitizens because of speech they don't like.

Nobody should get a midnight knock on the door for disfavored speech, let alone kicked out of the country.

I am going to be a massive humorless asshole about woo-woo shit, no matter how seemingly harmless, for the rest of my life due to this. astrology, homeopathic medicine, etc etc it's all bullshit and it's not fucking harmless. there are people who will die due to this who would have otherwise lived.

Oh huh just like trans people have been saying for a decade

And of course gender ISN’T simple. I love Joe Biden’s “at least three” answer, and how he refused to discuss it any further. Gender is complicated, and it’s nobody’s business because it doesn’t affect you.

To paraphrase Emerson, wanting gender to be simple is the hobgoblin of little minds.