thread. related, my impression is a lot of higher ed administrators are significantly oriented toward making a mark on an institution in the short term so they have a claimable on their CV to get their next admin job elsewhere. that incentivizes vandalizing institutions, whether by AI or otherwise

Throwback to Pam Bondi’s campaign ad for Florida AG:

“I’ll fight to put human trafficking monsters where they belong. Behind bars.”

The ad aged. The internet remembers.

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.

My Alma Mater continuing to break my heart and destroy its legacy.

It was transforming the biggest NFL stage in the world into a sugar cane plantation that did it for me.

Like, the multiple layers of turning an American icon into a plantation and highlighting the history of exploitation of Black and Brown bodies by the NFL and American colonialism simultaneously?

😕

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance. But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain. He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again. He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.

ICE told nurses this Minneapolis man “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.”

What actually happened is that they pulled him from a car, beat him so viciously with a steel baton that he had 8 skull fractures, 5 life-threatening brain hemorrhages, and couldn’t remember he had a daughter.

If every Republican elected official does not condemn the truth social post of Trump they should be seen as likewise racist sacks of shit and will be shunned in history.

My suggestion is that the NY Times profile politicians who are not just thinking about kids detained by ICE, but actually doing something about it, rather than enabling it.

ice sculpture reading prosecute ice at the minnesota state capitol on february 5 2026

This morning at the Minnesota State Capitol.

An ice sculpture that reads "PROSECUTE ICE". I'm told the organization behind the sculpture is Common Defense.

It is really infuriating to see how misogyny really does unite men across the sociopolitical spectrum. And, in so far as the Epstein files go, they sort women into two categories: fuckable or irrelevant. When they near a hint of accountability they complain about not being able to make women prey.

thinking about this type of $129 water bottle (with “self cleaning” light magic!) ending up at Salvation Army in a couple years

NYT: “Playing politics with the idea of fraudulent voters and stolen elections comes at a real cost to American confidence in our elections. It’s an affront to our democracy and to all those who work to deliver free and fair elections.” 🇺🇸 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/o...

Thank you feels wholly inadequate these days. I am grateful to @herberthistory.bsky.social for inviting me on and that at least one person may learn a little more about Cherokee history and Cherokee women as a result of this podcast and/or my book. ᏩᏙ

wow -- with Trump standing behind him, a man (not sure who he is) offers this prayer: "We pray that he would be mindful of the poor and that he would be invested in the alleviation of suffering happening in the families preparing to bury their loved ones in Minneapolis."

👇🏽

Timely piece on the rhyme of history: www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

Our founders, though deeply flawed, understood that democracy requires an informed citizenry and a government accountable to it people. That’s why the press is the only profession protected by the Constitution. It’s also why autocrats and oligarchs seek to control and destroy it.

Yes, the GOP’s new Voter Suppression bill, the so-called “SAVE Act,” would also disenfranchise many of the 69 million women who took their husbands’ last names, as explained in my one-page summary below. Tell your Senators “NO on SAVE!” 5/

According to the New Yorker, Donald Trump and his family profited off the presidency by an estimated $4 billion in 2025 — mostly through shady crypto deals.

That amounts to $456,621 per hour.

But how are you doing?

I'm in Arkansas, and the response to data centers here has been enlightening. Too many people got burned by crypto miners dumping a shipping container full of servers running 24/7 in their backyard, and now they want blood. It's a very broad coalition of people.

More
www.propublica.org/article/segr...

The administrators of Columbia, Penn, Brown will do their best one day to gaslight us into believing they did the best they could, but it’s harder when others made different choices.

Opinion | Democracy Dies by Database

"You need only know this: Whatever is happening with your data, it is important enough to the most egregiously lawless administration in American history that it be collected and consolidated." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...

Trump said: “The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Which outlet do think got it right with its headline?

How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive

The idea that the Court should operate entirely in secret is a modern phenomenon. The idea that the Court should be separated from the public is a modern phenomenon. Earlier generations did not accept a powerful, isolated & secretive Court and we shouldn't either 1/6

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

In the techno-dystopian future, rural communities don’t deserve the same level of, quite literally, *humane* care as those living elsewhere. Got it.

Just wait until they find out the Feds will sacrifice them & that qualified immunity by calling them contractors not employees

So if you want to hear what I’ve been up to since my last book, which has been a minute, listen in.