Todd Brakke

“I Have Been Here Too Long”: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility Hundreds of children are currently being held with their parents at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas. In letters and drawings, eight kids convey the pain of feeling trapped with no end...

Please take the time to read what the children detained in Dilley wrote me in their own words: www.propublica.org/article/ice-... 10/

In the past, Super Bowl commercials were snapshots of the cultural moment. The past few years they've felt like projections of a future elites want to force us into against our will.

The Washington Post—for which I wrote editorials for nearly a decade—has closed its Kyiv bureau.

@lawfaremedia.org has not—and we will not.

We now employ more people in Kyiv than the Washington Post.

Let me tell you about what we have done in Ukraine over the past year and why we are not leaving

It's always tempting for me to default to Airborne Toxic Event's Songs of God and Whiskey, but more recently it's hooking some Dido directly into my veins (esp. Still on My Mind). Plus, it's got a song with this literal vibe textually in the lyrics ("Some Kind of Love").

Nothing to see here; just the division that funds (or not) all of us in the environmental sciences, including atmosphere, ocean, ice, Earth, climate, hydrology, whatever.

“I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China”

America 2026 apnews.com/article/immi...

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

It’s worse than it looks in Minneapolis But locals are organizing to keep each other safe from ICE agents.

As Homeland Security’s siege on Minneapolis enters its third week, locals are volunteering for patrol shifts, protesting in the streets, and keeping one another up to date in group texts.

Read more from @scottmeslow.bsky.social in Minneapolis:

This. If it weren't for a lot of the Detroit/Michigan sports guys still being only on the hellsite, I'd never open that tab again. Really grateful for your presence here, Omari. Thank you for the work you do on the beat!

I’m seeing posts from people (outside of MN) about how US citizens should carry their passports.

And let me say that *inside* MN, we are calmly responding to requests with: “No, I don’t have to show you any documentation.”

Because that’s how you protect everyone, regardless of immigration status.

I feel attacked.

Rx Inspector: ProPublica’s New Tool Provides Drug Info the FDA Won’t We’ve launched a first-of-its-kind app to help you find out where your generic drugs come from and see the track records of the factories that made them.

Consumers don’t know if their medications came from factories that used dirty water, were infested by insects or birds, or were outright banned from shipping drugs to the U.S.

Our new tool provides answers that the FDA won’t 👇

You are not in Minnesota. You are a US citizen. You think you are safe. You think your kids are safe.

You are wrong but don't realize it yet. We are not safe when secret police operate this way.

They trample rights freely and with great vigor.
bsky.app/profile/ziib...

a man in a red and black uniform is making a funny face and saying `` not happy '' . Alt: a man in a red and black uniform is making a funny face and saying `` not happy '' .

Found out the hard way today that Star Trek DS9 DVD purchases off eBay are exceedingly likely to be counterfeit.

By "guardrails," surely you must mean, "the law"? Media orgs' constant use of obfuscating language to appear unbiased may not be the cause of all this madness, but the unwavering and constant normalization of the deeply abnormal is not helping anyone. Please do better in 2026.

Verge headline: Reality still matters by Sarah Jeong Photo illustration depicts a mass of hands recording an ICE officer, a crashed vehicle and ICE shooting victim Renee Nicole Good

As Trumpism and technology erode our shared understanding of the world, ordinary people in Minneapolis put their lives on their line to record the truth.

Read more from @sarahjeong.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/policy/85905...

Like those before it, that insane, vile DHS statement about the Minneapolis shooting isn't about covering anything up. It's performative lying.

They aren't trying to persuade anyone that their agents did nothing wrong. They're trying to project that their agents can get away with anything.

Live: Mayor Frey blasts ICE in fiery response to fatal shooting The mayor called for calm after a fatal shooting by an immigration agent in south Minneapolis. ICE said the agent acted defensively.

My very smart colleagues are doing excellent coverage of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis today. I would urge you to follow along with local sources familiar with the area and the residents here.

Why it’s a mistake to ask chatbots about their mistakes The tendency to ask AI bots to explain themselves reveals widespread misconceptions about how they work.

As people continue to ask Grok to explain itself, feel free to point them to this article: arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/w...

Also this:
arstechnica.com/information-...

A meme Top half of the image is a still from Disney's The Three Musketeers, showing four Musketeers standing together. Bottom half of the image is Star Trek TNG's Captain Picard's face during the well-known "there are four lights" scene.

It's way too early for me to be laughing this hard. 🤣

Extract from Rob Reiner's Wikipedia Filmography 1986 - Stand By zme 1987 - The Princess Bride 1989 - When Harry Met Sally 1990 - Misery 1992 - A Few Good Men

Rob Reiner: I'm going to make a coming of age drama, a fantasy adventure story, a romantic comedy, a psychological horror and then a courtroom drama.

Us: Across your entire career?

Reiner: In a 6 year period.

Us: That sounds-

Reiner: -Each one will be arguably the best movie in that genre.

Moore is one of those guys that, as a fan, you look at and want to believe is a dude you can root for and the right fit for the job. And then you watch the actions and nervously tug on your collar a bit. Then he gets fired for *this*, and you're not happy he's out, but you're not not-happy about it.

Measles is one example of a virus that can linger in the body after an individual recovers from an initial infection. It can then re-emerge years later potentially fatal consequences.

@viraldrmaggie.bsky.social explains why and how this happens on Public Health On Call.

🔗 youtu.be/n0M3B2iP5Ug

Can avow: The situation does not get any better after you've crossed 50.

"I'm way past that now. I've seen the light. You can trust me." -- the Scorpion

Right? And people dump on the Finn arc (or say he doesn't have one), but you watch TFA, and at no point is he concerned with the resistance. For him, it's Poe and Ray (mostly Rey). TLJ picks right up on that. He needs Rose & DJ playing angel & devil on his shoulders to figure out who he wants to be.

This thread does such a great job unpacking TLJ. My friends and I can't even talk about the flick anymore, because few of them really see everything going on in that flick and how deliberate, carefully thought through, and *consistent* it is with the journeys the characters were already on.

Imagine, if you will, that NASA updated its website to suggest gravity might not exist, prompting CalTech and CERN to release statements saying, "With great sadness, we can no longer recommend listening to NASA."

This is what's happening in epidemiology.