A Conspicuous Spider

Look, mid-day it was 35 degrees, but I SWEAR it briefly felt like we were in a heatwave. It was wonderful and very confusing.

How am I adjusting to life in Cambridge? It’s been 35 and very sunny. I met a student for tea in a cafe and we sat by the windows. A few minutes in, I’m like, “sorry, can we move to another table? I’m hot.”

Does…does he think you can *pass* legislation via a filibuster?

A large banner of Donald Trump was hung outside of the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, DC, emphasizing the White House’s control over the nation’s top law enforcement branch that once pursued criminal prosecutions against the president. https://cnn.it/4cBCqW7

March 27, 1936: Portraits of the Führer are raised on official buildings across Berlin. This one at the Potsdamer Railway Station reads "Freedom - Peace"

J.I.B.C. is 19-years-old and has pending applications for Special Immigrant Juvenile status and asylum. (J.I.B.C. Decl. ¶ 1.) On January 13, 2026, he was leaving TMobile when another car struck his own. (Id. ¶¶ 3–4.) Agents surrounded him, opened the car doors, and wrenched him out. (Id. ¶ 4.) J.I.B.C. offered to show the agents his immigration documents, but the agents said they did not need to see them. (Id. ¶ 6.) When he pulled out his cell phone, the agents

threw him to the ground. (Id. ¶ 5.) The immigration documents were left inside his car. (Id. ¶ 6.) Several hours after arriving at Whipple, J.I.B.C. was allowed one phone call. (Id. ¶¶ 8, 12.) There was no privacy—it was a shared phone, located in a hallway between cells with agents nearby. (Id. ¶ 12.) J.I.B.C. told his girlfriend he had been detained; she said she would find a lawyer. (Id. ¶ 13.) Agents told J.I.B.C. to tell her that he was going to El Paso, Texas. (Id.) That day, J.I.B.C. was transferred to Texas. (Id. ¶ 15.) During his weeklong detention, he was allowed only two calls. (Id. ¶ 22.) Officers pressured people to sign voluntary self-deportation papers; many did. (Id. ¶ 23.) Agents told J.I.B.C. that he would be detained longer if he fought his case. (Id.)

ICE agents crashed directly into a 19-year-old refugee's car, pulled him out from the wreck, threw him on the ground, then rushed him off to detention before he could locate the immigration papers in his car that proved he's here lawfully. democracyforward.org/wp-content/u...

Between this and Prince Andrew, feeling a lot of jealousy for functioning legal systems today

This is what you get when you take that song out of the movie version of "Annie".

Was in an event with Canadian government officials, and they still are using pronouns, land acknowledgements, and descriptions of what they are wearing. Wild counterfactual.

I think you're giving the average undecided voter too much credit.

Feel like it would be cheaper to acknowledge Noem and Lewandowski are having an affair than fund their secret fuck palace in the sky

ICE Has Doubled Its Presence in Notorious Brooklyn Jail Rep. Dan Goldman learned of the expansion on Wednesday when he became the first lawmaker to visit the federal facility since it began detaining immigrants last June.

They're denying treatment to ICE detainees with HIV in the prison where Nicolas Maduro and Luigi Mangione (and, I feel obligated to add, the guy who shot Jam Master J) are being held.

we couldn't use government funds to buy coffee (like, folgers ground coffee) when i worked on a CDC outbreak emergency response

Thread. Elite accountability is hard, but not impossible. This is the most acute form--criminal wrongdoing. There are other processes for policy or governing debacles (congressional oversight, a thing we used to do; political costs, ditto). Not fast or easy, but processes that need revitalizing.

"excuse me sir, there must be some mistake- i voted to create the camps, not live in the zone of interest" is like every trump voter

This idea of powerful people not being able to get away with enjoying the privileges of their status was offensive to our “populist” overlords who successfully convinced millions people that they had something similar to lose

all this stuff makes much more sense if you understand “anti wokeness” as a general backlash to elite accountability more generally, even if you have criticisms of left wing egalitarianism bsky.app/profile/kevi...

you can't get a copy of "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" in a public school library, but the State Dept. is going to build an online portal so little German boys & girls can read Mein Kamp without drawing the scorn of their community.

ALRIGHT.

Patreon post header image for 'Do You Believe Me Now? (Medicaid DataSet Update)' by Matthew Cortland, dated 02/18/2026. The left side shows the post title and byline against a dark teal gradient background. The right side displays a screenshot of the Paragon Health Institute website showing Brian Blase, Ph.D., listed as President, with a partial bio noting his role as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House's NEC from 2017-2019. The bottom of the image shows a faded line graph and the Patreon branding: 'Shouldn't Need to Be a Lawyer' with the URL patreon.com/mattbc

I warned that Paragon Health Institute would weaponize the DOGE Medicaid data release. Yesterday they published a brief targeting HCBS, autism services, medical transportation, and addiction treatment, core services disabled people rely on, as inherently fraudulent.

www.patreon.com/posts/151112...

Okay so this is true *but* not in the way most people think. Antibiotic overuse is not “I had five ear infections in a year so I took antibiotics five times this year”
It’s
“Farmers feeding antibiotics to chicken to make them fatter and more profitable” and “labs dumping chemicals into the river”

Y’know when the characters in a movie go to see a movie and it feels really meta? Well, with an “Ultimate Double Feature,” we play the first movie up until the point when they enter a cinema to watch a different film… then we play that film… then we go back to the first film to finish that story.

sometimes I close my eyes and dream of a world where we went all in on renewable power instead of data centers to power calculators who can't math, and I get mad all over again

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

So it seems like my once radical position of “the existence of a border implies the violence needed to defend it so in order to end all war we must abolish all borders” is becoming mainstream

Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance.

And you know why?

Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.

It seems nuts to me that CNN has partnered with an online gambling site (Kalshi) and hypes their betting lines as “news” to report.

Time for Mayor Mamdani to live up to his campaign promises and ensure care is kept safe for New York trans kids.

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social @mayor.nyc.gov

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be tooksmaxxing

you need to MOGG (Meditate On Great Genres of literature)