Blanca Heredia

The Kind of Thing Dictators Do The decision to deport Mahmoud Khalil is most remarkable for its pettiness, its insecurity, and its failure to grasp the spirit of America and of academia at their best.

“One of the more insidious erosions of American power is the implication, by this move, that the United States can no longer withstand the criticism of people like Khalil, and would be stronger without them.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Resistance is strong!
#Resist

“We can mock, but the lesson here for countries faced with Trump is an encouraging one: give him something that he can call victory.”
The deceptively negotiable Donald Trump FT

One Response to Trump’s Tariffs: Trade That Excludes the U.S. A growing number of countries, including American allies, are striking trade deals as the Trump administration erects a higher fence around its global commerce.

One Response to Trump’s Tariffs: Trade That Excludes the U.S. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/b...

Trump Tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China Are Expected: Live Updates

Trump "is expected to eventually sign an executive order putting the tariffs into effect and could do so retroactively. But the lack of clarity...created even more uncertainty ." Live Updates: Canada, Mexico and China Brace for Tariffs; Consumer Bureau Leader Is Fired www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02...

If you do not know how to engage with your community for whatever reason:

It’s never too late to see what events your local library is having. They could use the traffic, you could get a movie or book and maybe, depending on your library, have fun learning something new.

Buy the books.
Buy the movies.
Buy the games.
Physical media is more important now than ever.

Republican Lawmakers in Florida Rebel Against DeSantis in Rare Power Move In a special session on Monday, leaders seemed to be declaring their independence from a governor who has wielded so much power that legislative sessions have become largely predictable rubber stamps.

In a remarkable sequence of events at the State Capitol in Florida, Republican legislative leaders rejected Gov. Ron DeSantis’s call for a special session on illegal immigration and overrode one of his budget vetoes.

Labeling Mexican Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Could Expose U.S. Companies to Sanctions Isolating U.S. companies from cartel activities could be almost impossible given that the criminal groups operate in sectors like agriculture and tourism, leaving some American businesses vulnerable t...

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/w...

Opinion | Who Is Russell Vought? Probably the Most Important Person in Trump 2.0. He could continue to enact and accelerate the radical, sweeping agenda he began to implement in Trump 1.0.

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/o...

Costco's unionized workers vote to authorize nationwide strike The Teamsters union released the results of the strike vote on Sunday evening.

Costco's unionized workers vote to authorize nationwide strike

The company was rightly praised for standing firm on the importance of DEI, but how it bargains with/treats its unionized workers is important too

After Trump’s Threats, Mexico’s Leader Says She’ll ‘Always Defend’ Her Country On Tuesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum responded point by point to President Trump’s executive orders on migration, trade and other issues.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico responded point by point to President Trump’s executive orders on migration, trade and other issues, saying that Mexico would support its nationals in the U.S.

The Forgotten Woman Who Transformed Forensics In the 1970s, Martha Goddard invented the rape kit. So why did she die in relative obscurity?

In the 1970s, Martha Goddard invented the rape kit, a powerful instrument for women’s justice. So why did she die in relative obscurity while a man took credit? Sheila McClear on Pagan Kennedy's new book, "The Secret History of the Rape Kit":

The Conscience of Words: Susan Sontag on the Wisdom of Literature, the Danger of Opinions, and the Writer’s Task “A writer ought not to be an opinion-machine… The job of the writer is to make us see the world as it is, full of many different claims and parts and experiences.”

Susan Sontag (who would have been 92 today and would have had a whole lot to say about our predicament) on the conscience of words and the writer's task in the age opinion

A black-and-white portrait of David Lynch. He is looking straight into the camera. A headline reads: "1946-2025: David Lynch, Visionary Filmmaker, Dies at 78." Photo by Sara Hirakawa for The New York Times.

Breaking News: David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker, has died at 78. He was known for his surreal style in films like “Eraserhead” and “Mulholland Drive,” as well as the TV series “Twin Peaks.” nyti.ms/3WphQj8

New important research by Guillermo Trejo & @natanski.bsky.social on violence against local journalists in Mexico's drug war.

"Silencing the Press in Criminal Wars: Why the War on Drugs Turned Mexico into the World’s Most Dangerous Country for Journalists"

Link here: bit.ly/4h1R74j

La geopolítica de los 'papers': conocimiento libre contra la millonaria industria de las revistas académicas - El Orden Mundial - EOM Las bibliotecas pirata y el acceso abierto buscan liberar el conocimiento de una industria académica que lo cobra y no lo paga

¿Cómo funciona la industria de las publicaciones académicas? ¿Quién era Aaron Schwartz? ¿Qué es LibGen, el repositorio que Meta ha usado para entrenar a su IA sin pagar copyright?

Estos y otros temas, en este artículo que escribí para @elordenmundial.bsky.social

elordenmundial.com/sci-hub-revi...

First post on Bsky! Hello world!
👇Since December 2024 the LIS & LWS databases contain more than 1000 datasets. This enables research on more than 30 Mio. households and 90 Mio individuals.
Explore our databases here: www.lisdatacenter.org/our-data/ #LISdata #inequality #poverty #research

🤔🤔🤔

Optimismo económico, en su nivel más alto en 30 años: Encuesta LB En México, seis de cada 10 personas cree que, en el 2025, mejorará la situación económica del país, revela estudio de Latinobarómetro.

www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/202...

Coupling and Fertility are Falling.

In Finland, Mexico, Peru, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and the US, both are going down.

Superb column by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social

A must-read for anyone interested in why fertility is falling, and how to respond.

🧵

2024 was the hottest year on record, breaching a critical climate goal and capping 10 years of unprecedented heat | CNN It breaks the previous record set in 2023, and pushes the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus.

It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus.

Tras reunión con Sheinbaum, Taddei anuncia ampliación presupuestal para elección judicial

México, 9 de enero.- Guadalupe Taddei, consejera presidenta del INE, anunció que habrá una ampliación presupuestal para realizar la elección del Poder Judicial. Lo anterior, después de una reunión en Palacio…

LA restaurants offering free meals to fire evacuees:

Yeastie Boys (Multiple locations)

Bar Etoile (East Hollywood)

Fiorelli Pizza (Venice)

Bé Ù (Silver Lake)

Danny Boy's (Downtown + Westwood)

Oy Bar (Studio City)

Sunday Gravy (Inglewood)

Dudley Market (Venice)

LaSorted's (Silver Lake)

The Anti-Social Century Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.

Chosen solitude may be the most significant social fact of our age, @dkthomp.bsky.social writes. The emergence of the anti-social century is changing childhood social development, our physical infrastructure, and even our relationship to reality.

Canadians join the fight against Los Angeles-area wildfires | CBC News Firefighting aircraft provided by the Quebec government and a B.C.-based company are helping to battle the massive wildfires tearing through the Los Angeles area.

Canadian 🇨🇦 water bombers helping with the LA fires. Because that’s what friends and allies do, they help and support each other. Not bully, berate and antagonize!

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Map from BBC showing the scale of the Palisades fire, labeled "how does the Palisades fire compare in size with New York and London?"

This visual from the BBC compares the size of the Palisades fire to NYC showing how it would essentially be like everything in Manhattan below 42nd street being on fire at the same time. And that's only one of the fires raging in LA. Terrifying. Please stay safe everyone: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Canada is doing more for Los Angeles than either Trump or Musk.

Film stars, celebrities lose homes, flee from Los Angeles wildfires Billy Crystal lost the Pacific Palisades house where he had lived since 1979. Paris Hilton watched her Malibu beach mansion burn down on live TV.

Billy Crystal lost the Pacific Palisades house where he had lived since 1979. Jamie Lee Curtis, James Woods and Mark Hamill were among other celebrities forced to evacuate as fires in LA swept across some of the most lavish real estate in the world reut.rs/4282OSr

some good news as daylight creeps around the corner:

sunset fire shrunk from +60 to 42.8 acres, evac orders partially lifted
lidia fire held & evac orders/warnings lifted!
eaton fire static at 10.6k acres
woodley fire is OUT
growth for hurst & palisades fires have slowed

🤞