𝙰𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚑 𝙰𝚋𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚑

Pierre Poilievre crosses floor to Liberals OTTAWA - Following three recent floor crossings to the Liberals, the Conservative Party has lost a fourth MP after Alberta MP Pierre Poilievre announced that he would be crossing the floor to join Mar...

Pierre Poilievre crosses floor to Liberals

‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...

A British grandmother with a valid visa detained by ICE for 6 weeks.

"So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. 'Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,' Karen says."

“Yaghi, who grew up in a refugee community in Jordan, said he was inspired by the hardships he endured in a home with no running water or electricity.”

‘Reimagining matter’: Nobel laureate invents machine that harvests water from dry air Omar Yaghi’s invention uses ambient thermal energy and can generate up to 1,000 litres of clean water every day

Invention extracts moisture from air to harvest water (even in desert conditions), is powered by ambient thermal energy, and generates 1K litres of clean water per day (even if centralised electricity or water sources interrupted by drought or storm damage).

Abstract Academic freedom is an unusual and complex set of norms and practices. It arises out of the combination of the corporate self-governance of medieval universities and the spirit of disciplinary scientific inquiry in modern research universities. It combines a principle of antiorthodoxy as to conclusions with the robust associational self-governance of scholarly communities whose members evaluate one another as participants in that shared enterprise. It has never been easily or wholly embraced by wider societies; today it is under wholesale attack. This article combines conceptual, normative, and historical analyses of academic freedom as a general norm with attention to conflicts over it in the mid-to-late 2010s and early 2020s. Some genuinely hard cases and questions tested the meaning of academic freedom and university values well before the current crisis.

Now posted ahead of print:

"Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science.

(Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.)

doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Nobel laureate transferred to prison in northern Iran without warning Concern grows over Narges Mohammadi’s health, family says, after reports of ‘life-threatening mistreatment’

The murderers trying to break and kill one the world’s greatest, most ferocious of heroes. These bloody cowards cower before her.

Oscar-nominated director Jafar Panahi says he will return to Iran despite looming arrest | CBC News Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi says he plans to return to Iran after Oscar season is over, despite the looming threat of his arrest amid a government crackdown on protests that has killed thousands an...

Those who do not cower

Accept your point about judgy judgy, but my complaint was about submitted (not googled) CVs. My thought: Please present info in way that makes it easy for reader to evaluate candidacy, eg can easily see what books you’ve written (rather than having to sift thru 4 edited vols to find your one mono)

Academic CV pet peeve: Serious people listing edited volumes and monographs under the same category? I mean, yeah, they’re both “books,” but you only wrote one of them. Maybe I’ll start listing all the articles I referee under my list of “journal articles.”

Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers Amandla Thomas-Johnson didn't know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena now. Google never gave him a chance to fight it.

R u still using gmail?

"A modern-day concentration camp ... People have been killed by the staff here." Irish citizen Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention since September, despite having a valid work permit and his own business in the US.

ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.

ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.

If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

“In 2020, 3% of all TB in the U.S. occurred among incarcerated people—about four times the rate you would expect based on population demographics—and 327 people were diagnosed with TB in ICE custody.”

Public health scholar Katharine S. Walter on the role prisons play in fueling the spread of TB:

Irish man with valid US work permit held in ICE detention for five months Seamus Culleton, who has lived in US for two decades, faces deportation after being arrested on way home from work

“Two ICE agents said that in Buffalo Culleton had signed documents agreeing to be deported. Culleton said he did not agree and that the signatures were not his. The judge noted irregularities in ICE’s court documents but sided with the agency.”

Opinion | The Globalization of Canadian Rage

“If you are integrating yourself into the American sphere of influence, or whatever Mr. Trump’s national security apparatus calls it, you are integrating yourself into antiquity — or worse.”

The Washington Post downsized its motto. It’s now just “Darkness”

cato is a libertarian think tank

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023 Our analysis in this paper shows that immigrants generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion from 1994 to 2023, that the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American,...

Immigrants in USA:

Paid more in taxes than received in benefits every year 1994-2023.

Generated ~$10.6 trillion more federal/state/local taxes than the gov spending they induced.

Saved $14.5 trillion in debt over 30y period (accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt).

Iran accused of ‘campaign of revenge’ as doctors arrested for treating protesters US state department calls for the release of all detained healthcare workers as at least one arrested surgeon reported to be at risk of execution

There are no bounds to the Islamic Republic’s evil. After massacring thousands, they beat and now plot to murder doctors for having treated the wounded

Trump officials met group pushing Alberta independence from Canada Separatists from oil-rich province try to capitalise on friction between White House and Mark Carney

Ever wondered why separatists in both AB & QC echo MAGA these days?

Straight line to far right US influence on Brexit (Cambridge Analytica/Robert Mercer/Breitbart).

“The [AB] separatist party has adopted similar themes to the UK’s Brexit movement.” Bc Brexit has worked out so well for the Brits.

6300 travailleuses en santé menacés d’un départ en 2026 Des milliers de préposés aux bénéficiaires, d’infirmières et de travailleuses sociales étrangers verront leur permis de travail arriver à échéance en 2026.

!! Près de 6300 travailleuses de la santé, dont beaucoup ont été recrutées à l’étranger dont en France et incitées à venir s’établir ici… , menacées désormais d’un départ forcé du Québec à cause de l’abolition du PEQ par le gouvernement Legault.

Un étudiant sur 3 transgresse les règles à l’aide de l’IA Les étudiants québécois ont été séduits par l'IA et la grande majorité l’utilisent pour leurs études, montre un sondage SOM-Radio-Canada.

Survey of Quebec students: 1/3 of students using AI get it to write part or all of their work; same proportion use it to summarize texts they don’t read.

State of HATE 2025: The Opportunist Extremist: The Strange Radicalisation of Matthew Goodwin Once a respected academic studying the far right, Matthew Goodwin has become one of its most influential figures. Now a GB News pundit and Reform UK fanboy, he’s traded scholarship for reactionary gri...

Some background.

And that is all I will say about MG.

Le Canada est plus dangereux que Trump Depuis sa naissance québécoise, le mouvement souverainiste ajuste son argumentaire au gré des conjectures ambiantes.

🤡

Ottawa plotting a high stakes clean energy strategy After dismantling many of the climate policies put in place by the previous government, Prime Minister Mark Carney has quietly directed his government to craft a national electricity strategy.

After dismantling many of the climate policies put in place by the previous government, Mark Carney has quietly directed his government to craft a national electricity strategy.

Expect PCO clerk Michael Sabia, the former Hydro-Quebec exec, to be heavily involved.

Special Address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada YouTube video by World Economic Forum

With English translation for the French parts

PM Mark Carney speaks at World Economic Forum in Davos – January 20, 2026 YouTube video by cpac

Prime Minister Carney’s “Middle Powers” speech is about as substantial as they can get.

Is your guess that there’s title->citation causation here? Or are people who write more citable articles more likely to come up with pithy title?

LEE CARTER: Trump's approval ratings reveal what legacy media refuses to see President Donald Trump's low approval ratings one year in don't signal failure, but delivery on campaign promises, creating unsettling stability without consensus in divided America.

The most interesting thing about this article?

Average sentence length: 4-5 words.

Written by “language strategist” and “persuasion” teacher.

The key to persuasion, apparently, is to write for 4 year olds.

The fat cat sat on a mat.

‘An Explosion Long in the Making’ • EQUATOR A conversation about ‘the most intense protests’ since 1979, the prospect of American intervention, the surreal resurgence of Reza Pahlavi – and the future of Iranian society

“People are emboldened in part by the weakness of the regime, but also because society has been brimming with energy from both previous national protests & daily claim-making by nurses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, pensioners, oil workers & many others. These protests don’t exist in a vacuum.”