THiCC PI

Palestinian prisoner Shadi Abu Seed has given a harrowing account of life inside an Israeli prison after his release as part of the ceasefire deal. “I went hungry for the past two years. I swear to God, they didn’t feed us. They kept us naked. They beat us while we were naked day and night. We were tortured,” Abu Seed said. “Until our last day in Israeli prison, they cut us and hit us and abused us. We endured every kind of torture, emotional and physical. “We couldn’t even sleep. They threatened us with our children. They told me they killed my children. They told us that Gaza was destroyed. I arrived here and found that everything was gone. It looked like the end of the world. Everything is different.”

“I swear to God, they didn’t feed us. They beat us while we were naked day and night.

Until our last day, they cut us and hit us and abused us. We endured every kind of torture, emotional and physical.

We couldn’t even sleep. They told me they killed my children.”

- released Palestinian prisoner

Cover of The Rediscovery of America for Young People, by Ned Blackhawk, adapted by Rebecca Stefoff, with a multicolored illustration of Indigenous Americans against a parchment-colored background.

Adapting Ned Blackhawk's National Book Award winner for young readers has been both an honor and a pleasure. I learned a lot while writing the adaptation, and I am looking forward to sharing this book with the world in Fall 2026.

Did anyone else have an NSF Program officer who was an IPA give a (seemingly) abrupt announcement of it being their last day on Friday? Did NSF IPAs get a wide axe on Friday?

Know Your Rights canvassing and education at work!!! Knowing the difference between a judicial warrant (that has to be filled out correctly!) and a nonsense DHS warrant (that is useless for entering private property) can save lives.

CS quick no matter what publishing AND the problem of arXiv papers being glorified blog posts have been a problem… as mentioned here, It may be enacted at an individual level, but it’s certainly a community-level & institutional-level issue

If your invited keynote speaker works for a company started because OpenAI wasn't basing its work enough on science fiction and said speaker uncritically cites TESCREAList, fictional work masquerading as science, you might not have organized a serious academic gathering.

Excited to be at Swarthmore in less than a month for their Just Tech series giving a talk alongside Lib-Tech scholar Deja Workman!
Reppin @digblk.bsky.social and THiCC Lab to the fullest!

Claim: 10 cars rammed ICE
Truth: No cars rammed ICE

Claim: She boxed ICE in
Truth: ICE boxed her in

Claim: She shot a rifle at ICE
Truth: She did not have a rifle

Claim: ICE returned fire
Truth: Only ICE fired

Claim: She drove herself to the hospital
Truth: Paramedics found her

One of the more incredible stories out of LA this year has been how a taco review blog became the best on-the-ground coverage of ICE raids in the city.

They do a dispatch every day, follow-up on the kidnapped people (which almost no media outlet has done), and fact-check government claims.

Republicans post fake image of Oregon protest – using photos of South America A federal judge had blocked Trump’s request to deploy California national guard to Portland

The Oregon Republican Party tried to help Donald Trump make the case for military intervention in Portland with an image of a fiery protest — but since Portland is calm, they had to fabricate one by merging old photos of police in Ecuador and protesters in Brazil www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Two things:

1. The NYT elevated this person to prominence through _opinion_ pages. She has never been a journalist.

2. Substack paid her and several others to come to their platform. I have no idea why so many of you are (still/ever) on there but you need to rethink it.

Apparently House members and Senators get paid during a government shutdown but their staffers and aides do not. (Learned this little nugget from a relative who works for Senator [redacted]).

People have been and are warning that AI is a bubble and that the bubble will burst. With the facists currently in charge, that means maximum pain for those already struggling and maximum gain for their rich friends.

Honestly the perfect coda to the cancel culture panic is one of its biggest promoters being actually so thoroughly uncanceled/unsilenced that she assumes the helm of a major news network

I will be honest in saying that it got me the first time

the congressional building in washington DC, with the well known central dome/tower and stairs

slightly different picture of the building with a spirit halloween banner added to it

september 30 ... october 1

Court Rules in AAUP v Rubio: Trump Admin Violated First Amendment The AAUP and partners sued to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members for ideological reasons.

Once again, it is *faculty*—not administrators—who brought this case and won. Including UC Faculty Association chapters of the AAUP.

Oh look - We might have a violation of ethics.

Love that this guy said this on camera

The endgame for all of this is constructing a military that will obey orders when ordered to fire on citizens. That's the throughline to half of what Trump is doing.

Why would a drunk with white supremacist tattoos and a fondness for war criminals want to make it harder to report racism in the military?

pete hegseth, who you will recall has been accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault, has announced a new policy by which you cannot file anonymous complaints of mistreatment. sex criminal solidarity.

If academics & researchers in AI (like myself) don’t want the coming AI winter to destroy our field, we need to be accountable for how we allowed another hype cycle on our watch. We have the expertise to stop it. We need to speak truth to power in our own institutions!

There is absolutely no good faith reason to use the term “AI” for any technology one is selling.

It serves only for dazzling people into thinking the technology has capabilities that it doesn’t.

If one wants a technology to be trustworthy, just use a transparent, informative term without hype.

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

Bertrand Russell once received letters from Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, inviting him to a debate. Russell not only declined but replied quite generally that “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.” @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

This is a great analysis of the value of moral standards and the power of shame as a deterent to uphold them. We need those norms and the social pressure to adhere to them. The alternative is violence and repression.

the cultural crisis is straightforward: there are no longer any formal consequences for blatantly anti-social behavior, and the rest of us are constantly just getting lectured that we have to put up with these assholes making our lives worse

on today's episode of imperial decline

So in this very short period of time, we’ve seen the mass adoption of AI despite no one really knowing what it does for their business. While at the same time, they’ve abandoned any commitment to diversity because “DEI is bullshit” and all the receipts are now coming up short?