Richmond Eustis

It was funny to see, I don't even remember which US newspaper it was anymore, but an obit of Ali Khamenei said something to the effect of "he lived a paranoid life in which he believed the US and Israel were out to kill him, which eventually happened"

ICE detains reporter Estefany Rodríguez in Nashville - Nashville Banner Reporter Estefany Rodríguez, detained by ICE with no arrest warrant, may face deportation. Her attorneys seek immediate review of the legality of her case.

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there.

They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

Right-wing pundits want Trump to heal the MAGA rift over the Iran war via the mass deportation of American Muslims

Here’s Hegseth buddy Benny Johnson saying earlier this week that we need mass denaturalization and deportations of those with “ideologies that are incompatible with Western civilization.”

They want to start with Muslims. Very unclear they’ll stop there. www.mediamatters.org/us-iran-rela...

The American King Goes to War This is not what the Founders intended.

"The procedural objection is a perennial Democratic favorite. It allows Democrats to complain about Republicans having broken the rules, while letting them avoid taking a position on the actual conflict."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Very Bad.

Not just a large-scale military conflict, but a large scale military conflict with the Parthians

Kristi Noem's DHS killed Americans, stole their property, deported the wrong people, siphoned taxpayer money to her political allies, defied court orders, and ferried her aide/lover on taxpayer-funded jets. To bring America together, Democrats must pledge to never prosecute her for any of this.

Markwayne is dumber than the half-finished can of Diet Dr. Pepper on my desk.

"But that means, at some point, you stopped trying to answer interesting/puzzling questions and started trying to win the publish-the-most-articles race. That isn’t a game worth saving. It was a subversion of actual knowledge-production all along." (2/2)

Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? No. No it can't. Come on, now.

One of the better responses I've seen to the AI menace in multiple scholarly fields.

"If you think Claude Code is a better social scientist than you, then you’re probably right." (1/2)

davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

This is always how empires and white supremacy and America has worked, so in some ways there’s a real clarity in his saying the quiet part out loud.

Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? No. No it can't. Come on, now.

Fantastic work from @davekarpf.bsky.social putting some perspective on the notion that AI can do social science research. It can generate passable journal articles, which is not necessarily the same thing. It's a chance to consider what we should be valuing. davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

"one was left with the clear sense that Trump was at his most animated when describing the bloodied and mangled bodies of other people. This obsession with the body—and particularly with the body as the subject of serious injury, even death—is a hallmark of right-wing politics in America."

A thread 🧵 where I will use maps to try and explain the War on Iran. Hopefully this helps.

Our first map is a true size map from truesizeof.com

It shows the United States compared to the region. Notice how #Iran is much larger than #Iraq and #Afghanistan and its central location.

1/n

Sigh.

uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780909...

I’m sorry I made a joke about the email writing toy that generates horrifying pictures of kids. I’ll try to be more considerate of your preferred workflow in the future, sir.

Remember this whenever you find yourself tempted to believe that the DEA schedules drugs based on “public safety concerns”.

No Help and Few Options for Travelers Stranded by Mideast Conflict

One woman who called the State Department helpline looking for help said they told her to "stop ranting and raving" and hung up on her.

Another woman said they asked her how to spell Oman.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/t...

That sounds like a dream commute. (When I'm working in the NE, I, too, am a Dunkin partisan.)

This is being couched as a Massachusetts thing, but if you come for iced coffee in New Orleans you will provoke extreme unrest. Among yoga moms alone.

Really looking forward to this conference on Andor and the Politics of Star Wars at the U. of Alabama next month. Public screening of episodes, and presentations by really impressive scholars. And also me. Registration is at the link.

Thanks, @whazbun.bsky.social !

sites.ua.edu/whazbun/ando...

Stokes’ Firing Over Kirk Post Chilled Speech at University of Mississippi, Faculty Testify The University of Mississippi’s firing of Lauren Stokes for sharing a post criticizing Charlie Kirk chilled speech on campus, faculty testified.

A chill fell across the University of Mississippi’s campus when Chancellor Glenn Boyce fired Lauren Stokes for sharing a post that called Charlie Kirk a racist.

It left faculty afraid to speak their minds, several testified in federal court, where Stokes is challenging her termination.

Hell yeah: New Orleans EMS just banned the use of Meta's SmartGlasses and any other wearable recording, streaming, transmitting tech while on the job in any way.

Israeli map showing all of southern Lebanon in red with yellow arrows pointing to north of the Litani river

The IDF just ordered the *entirety of south Lebanon* to be forcibly displaced.

They are emptying the land of its population, creating a massive crisis, and will now proceed to further annihilate large parts of Lebanon.

The very nation state of Lebanon is being destroyed.

I know this is asking a lot, but -- please understand that "the Kurds" are not one monolithic, unified, singular people located within the borders of one specific Middle Eastern nation-state.

I think about this kind of thing a lot, which is why all the caveating & showing your work & the limits of what you know MATTERS.

I lived in Jordan for the two years during the Da'ish rampage, and being stranded by battle and ghosted by State would have been the absolute nightmare scenario had things gotten even worse.

Abolish ICE has a +11 approval — which means it is *32 points* more popular than Donald Trump

Ask yourself: does corporate media portray that accurately?

Seriously! I am a scholar of medieval literature and *I* foresaw these consequences!

It's amazing the way these people can speak with such brazen confidence while revealing that they are scrambling for a solution to a foreseeable problem they've obviously never thought about before. Guy who demanded to fly the plane trying to sound cocky on the PA while asking GPT "how do i land."