Bobbi Wickham

Ahh, the greatest and wealthiest nation in human history has food lines. What a great place, run by the best people. Make America Have Great Depression Bread Lines Again.

a key tension (highlighted in Dave’s piece later in the thread) is (1) opinion leading can happen at any time but (2) most of the media apparatus is owned & controlled by hostile forces, and you can’t create / flood the zone without the infrastructure for it

THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU GIVE UP ON (1)

Why Centrist Democrats Keep Being Wrong About Elections A new 60-page report insists the party is too radical. But the problem isn’t the party platform. The problem is the broader environment.

Other points: as @davekarpf.bsky.social points out in TNR, the dominance and cohesion of the right wing media infrastructure MUST factor into these conversations.
newrepublic.com/article/2023...

My biggest beef with all of it is the insistence on treating public opinion as something that is stable and designed to be mined for strategy/platform rather than something that is malleable and can be shaped when you are value driven.

“Biblical Justice, Equal Justice, for All”: How North Carolina’s Chief Justice Transformed His State and America Paul Newby, a born-again Christian, has turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power. Over two decades, he’s driven changes that have reverberated well be...

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration,” the North Carolina Republican Party's communications director wrote in an email response to us. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”

We didn't. Read the story that he wanted dropped:

Help Secure Our Financial Independence By Infiltrating The Great Blogger Bake Shop | Defector Last year, Defector’s operations geniuses submitted our annual Tip Jar drives for consideration in the Online Journalism Awards category of “Innovation in Revenue Strategy” for mid-size newsrooms. We…

For this year’s Tip Jar drive, we invite you to travel to Philadelphia to either judge (easy mode) or bake along with (chaos mode) Kelsey McKinney and Chris Thompson as they take on another timed baking challenge. defector.com/help-secure-...

New York Times headline reads: Trump Hotel Workers Campaign for a Union, Over the Boss's Objections

New York Times headline reads: Trump Moves to Strip More Federal Workers of Union Protections.

But his assertion that diversity weakens unions ignores two things. First, labor unions have a long history of multiethnic coalitions. Second, it was the capitalists and political elites who tried to *exploit* ethnic divisions to maintain power. There is only one person here trying to stop unions:

This infuriates me. While breast cancer is much more rare among men, they DO get it. I have a friend who's a male breast cancer survivor. Making people starve/die bc political ideology is what fascists do. #BreastCancerAwareness

Listen, I don't believe in Hell, but I think if this is your reaction to folks in need, you should probably go there

Preferably tonight

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declined to comment on ICE’s use of facial recognition technology, with its statement saying “DHS is not going to confirm or deny law enforcement capabilities or methods.” CBP, meanwhile, confirmed it is using Mobile Fortify. “CBP relies on a variety of technological capabilities that enhance the effectiveness of agents on the ground. This is one of many tools we are using as we enforce the laws of our nation,” a CBP spokesperson said in an email.

I think this may be the first time a component of DHS has confirmed it is using Mobile Fortify too. Main DHS declined to comment. So I went to CBP instead. CBP confirmed www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

This is an especially worrying statement when facial recognition can be inaccurate, biased, and generally make mistakes. Basing whether someone should be in the US or not, and ignoring physical media like a birth certificate, is ripe for disaster bsky.app/profile/jose...

They don't have an answer, because they don't ask the question.

It is 2025. If you are a Democratic Party operative in 2025 and you aren't even looking into media ownership and propaganda effects, then you are either a conman or a mark.

Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI | Defector If you don’t work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into th...

Wrote a thing on the hot summer of uni AI adoption for @defector.com

A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social

I think all the time about this interview I did a year ago, where @bartongellman.bsky.social from the Brennan Center told me that, in their authoritarian war games, it was faith leaders who prevented troops from firing on civilians

I still can't believe how the entire IRB and ethics offices are gone.

Big Talk: Treasury Secretary Declares New War on Terror Against the Left Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that his department is in...

The story of NSPM-7 and its many tendrils continues not to get enough attention.

Inside the Clunky Elections to Control Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court The GOP is making an expensive push to end Democrats’ majority on a court at the center of election lawsuits, sparking a fledging campaign season with little precedent or template.

Conservative billionaire Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania, is helping fund the GOP’s bid to oust three Democratic state supreme court justices this fall.

defector.com/tyra-banks-p...

How Seattle Fell In Love With The Worst Hitter On A Doomed Expansion Team | Defector Oyler “couldn’t hit his way out of a room full of toilet paper with a crowbar."

a few years ago I wrote about the most popular player on the doomed Seattle Pilots - a career
.175 hitter who had his own fan club defector.com/how-seattle-...

1)You may remember the articles criticizing liberal students for their hesitancy to make friends with conservative students—alleging that they were less open-minded than their conservative counterparts.

The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI's ChatGPT is to blame The parents of Adam Raine, who died by suicide in April, claim in a new lawsuit against OpenAI that the teenager used ChatGPT as his “suicide coach.”

I mean www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

Also it's an absolute lie that the ChatGPT people cared about mental health

The fog made this photo quite soft, leading to a painterly quality, but I like its Fall vibes.

Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs on vinyl

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5 and Odd Jobs” includes a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” written about a deportation flight crash that killed 28 migrant farm workers in 1948.

🎶 They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves 🎶

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

the guy who caught cal raleigh’s homer was wearing a shirt that said dump 61 here and he immediately took it off and had a shirt that said dump 62 here

Inside the Clunky Elections to Control Pennsylvania's Supreme Court - Bolts The GOP is making an expensive push to end Democrats’ majority on a court at the center of election lawsuits, sparking a fledging campaign season with little precedent or template.

Excellent in-depth and on-the-ground reporting from @burness.bsky.social about the upcoming Pennsylvania State Supreme Court retention elections.

For Democrats it remains critical that all 3 Justices are retained so that the PA Supreme Court remains in their control.

boltsmag.org/pennsylvania...

Never Bunt | Defector PHILADELPHIA — By the top of the ninth inning, the stadium was visibly pockmarked by absences, and people were booing Jhoan Duran’s walkout show. Duran, who was just doing his job as the Philadelphia…

Never bunt: defector.com/never-bunt

There Was a Plan to Save These New Deal Masterpieces. Then Trump Won. A feasibility study was underway about restoring the ailing federal building that houses important Ben Shahn frescoes, Philip Guston murals, and other FDR-era artwork. But the Trump administration put a stop to it.

One of the delights of working for the Voice of America in the Cohen Federal Building was the New Deal era frescoes and murals. Along with VOA and its staff, it now appears these treasured American works of art are to be a DOGE casualty. newrepublic.com/article/20120... #SaveVOA

How Democracies Fall Apart - Dissent Magazine An interview with Adam Przeworski.

It was a true honor to talk to legendary political scientist Adam Przeworski about how he understands the present crisis, what he learned from Chile and Poland, and how to move forward from here www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...