Laura Shields

Protecting the environment and pursuing green policies is so baked into how the public views the Greens that they don't need to make a huge effort to convince people that they are strongest in this field.

That gives them the freedom to pursue other issues

I'm not sure I agree. And I don't see how that would be worse than now.

What do you mean by kill? In this context, both main parties are propped up by FPTP. But it's life support until the next election. PR might mean coalition governments and deals being done with greens etc. But it might not mean imminent death (which seems to be on course for at the next election).

Well, that's kind of my point too. It's not like the two party system has served up stability over the past 10 years. Even with big majorities. Going to PR might force Labour to make decisions about what it actually stands for and who it wants to appeal to.

I'm so bored of questions about changing the leadership. Given what's happening in the electorate, wouldn't a better question be 'when are we going to change the voting system'?

The number of submissions in arxiv is growing exponentially

This is interesting. AI will break the academic publication system. Exponentially more submissions, less reviewers, devaluation of published articles. We are drowning in slop.

I cannot recommend Marty Supreme unless you actively enjoy being simultaneously bored and anxious.

If I wanted that, I'd have had another baby.

And wouldn't have got upset over the lost dog character.

From AI tools to Prince Andrew’s arrest: How newsrooms are digging into the Jeffrey Epstein files Editors from the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Miami Herald and Bellingcat on the tech, communities and strategies helping them cover the story.

From AI tools to Andrew’s arrest: How newsrooms are digging into the Jeffrey Epstein files

Editors from the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Miami Herald and Bellingcat on the tech, communities and strategies helping them cover the story

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/epstein...

Don’t worry Christopher Nolan nails this for us peasants in Tenet. 😘

One advantage of getting old: my 82 year old father swears he has never seen The Birdcage even though we watched it together and he laughed like a lunatic.

So now he gets to see it again for the first time.

This is excellent interviewing

I read this and have ordered The History of Emotions. Can’t wait to read it.

"Shame might be considered the master emotion because it has more functions than other emotions.

...shame is as primitive and intense as fear."

This is why I sense opportunist-populist disinformation actors offer absolution from shame as a core recruitment tool.

www.jstor.org/stable/10.15...

BREAKING: A judge rules Pete Hegseth violated Sen. Mark Kelly’s First Amendment rights by moving to strip him of his retired military rank for reminding troops to refuse illegal orders.

The judge called the defense secretary’s actions a threat to “the constitutional liberties of military retirees.”

NEW: A page from Bondi's burn book. This is a list of the searches by Rep Jayapal of the unredacted Epstein files. That means the DOJ grabbed her search terms from the computers they set up for members of congress to view the Epstein files to use as ammunition. The photo is from Reuters.

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: “.. In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it.”

hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...

A good thing happened today: Haitians in Springfield, Ohio and elsewhere are (for now) safe from the planned ethnic cleansing operation. This happened because people came together — organizers, reporters, and those who care — and made it happen. Let’s take the win and continue the work.

"On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: “America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.”1 More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. See 8 U.S.C. § 1254a (TPS statute). It provides humanitarian relief to foreign nationals in the United States who come from disaster-stricken countries. It also brings in substantial revenue, with TPS holders generating $5.2 billion in taxes annually. See Part VI. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take. [screenshot of tweet].

So says the official responsible for overseeing the TPS program. And one of those (her word) “damn” countries is Haiti. Relevant here, three days before making the above post, Secretary Noem announced she would terminate Haiti’s TPS designation as of February 3, 2026. See 90 Fed. Reg. 54733 (Nov. 28, 2025) (Termination). Plaintiffs are five Haitian TPS holders. They are not, it emerges, “killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.” They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, Dkt. 90 (Second Am. Compl. (SAC)) ¶ 1; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank, id. ¶ 2; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department, id. ¶ 3; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major, id. ¶ 4; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse, id. ¶ 5. They claim that Secretary Noem’s decision violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2), and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Government counters that the Court does not have jurisdiction, and, in any case, the Secretary did not violate the law. Plaintiffs seek to stay the Secretary’s decision under 5 U.S.C. § 705 pending the outcome of this litigation. See Dkt. 81 (§ 705 Mot.). To decide their motion, the Court considers first whether it has jurisdiction. It does. See Part II. It then considers: whether Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; whether they will be irreparably harmed absent a stay; and whether a merged balance of the equities and public interest analysis favors a stay. See Part III. Each element favors Plaintiffs. See Parts IV, V, and VI. Plaintiffs charge that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants. This seems substantially likely. Secretary Noem

has terminated every TPS country designation to have reached her desk—twelve countries up, twelve countries down. See Section IV.A.2. Her conclusion that Haiti (a majority nonwhite country) faces merely “concerning” conditions cannot be squared with the “perfect storm of suffering” and “staggering” “humanitarian toll” described in page-after-page of the Certified Administrative Record (CAR). See Section IV.A.3.a. She ignored Congress’s requirement that she “review the conditions” in Haiti only “after” consulting “with appropriate agencies.” 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(3)(A); see Section IV.A.1. Indeed, she did not consult other agencies at all. See id. Her “national interest” analysis focuses on Haitians outside the United States or here illegally, ignoring that Haitian TPS holders already live here, and legally so. See Section IV.A.3.b. And though she states that the analysis must include “economic considerations,” she ignores altogether the billions Haitian TPS holders contribute to the economy. See id. The Government’s primary response is that the TPS statute gives the Secretary unbounded discretion to make whatever determination she wants, any way she wants. And, yes, the statute does grant her some discretion. But not unbounded discretion. To the contrary, Congress passed the TPS statute to standardize the then ad hoc temporary protection system—to replace executive whim with statutory predictability. See Section I.A. As to irreparable harm, the Government contends that, at most, the harms to Haitian TPS holders are speculative. But the Department of State (State) warns [screenshot]

Dkt. 100 (§ 705 Reply) at 20–21.4 “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason” does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, suitable for return. And so, the Government studiously does not argue that Plaintiffs will suffer no harm if removed to Haiti. Instead, it argues Plaintiffs will not certainly suffer irreparable harm because DHS might not remove them. But this fails to take Secretary Noem at her word: “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” See Section IV.B.2.b. Finally, the balance of equities and public interest favor a stay. The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste. Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them. For the reasons below, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ Renewed Motion for a Stay Under 5 U.S.C. § 705, Dkt. 81.

Even if you don't have time to read all 83 pages of Judge Reyes's opinion barring the Trump administration from rescinding Temporary Protected Status for 350,000+ Haitians, please at least check out the four-page introduction.

It's a tour de force:

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

My current cozy little hobby is reading up on the Nuremberg trials.

One of the key things they did was use Nazi officials' braggadocious speeches as evidence.

Give a speech taking credit for annexing Austria? Ok, that'll be a conviction for annexing Austria.

Well, who would have thought it?

Sánchez asegura que España prohibirá el acceso a redes sociales a menores de 16 años El presidente plantea poner fin a la impunidad de los directivos para que sean legalmente los responsables de las infracciones en sus plataformas si no se retira el contenido que atente contra la legalidad

Sánchez ha afirmado que “las redes sociales se han convertido en un Estado fallido, donde se ignoran las leyes y se toleran los delitos”. Por ello, ha asegurado que España prohibirá el acceso a plataformas digitales a menores de 16 años

Civil litigator here with years of experience of business people’s emails to each other in disclosed evidence for disputes.

As a general rule: the senior the business person, the less effort they put into emails, and the more effort expected from those reading them.

Effectively a mark of rank.

It should not take a court order to get a toddler out of a prison.

There is no world, no scenario, no imaginable or unimaginable turn of events under which the Trump Administration will not end up regretting this stupefyingly idiotic arrest.

Don Lemon today: "I will not stop now, I will not stop ever."

Seems like one of those issues that should greatly concern everyone regardless of their politics.

we are living in the golden age for assholes, there has never been a better time to be an unredeemable asshole than the one we are currently living in

Yes, with the crucial addendum that most of these guys still seem fucking miserable.

You can now leverage being an unredeemable asshole into a total absence of consequences, vast fame, wealth and influence, even political power. You can set mobs on your enemies.

Yet they all still seem so sad.

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Even the cat bongo subredditers are mad at ICE