Yiannis Sakellaridis

I haven’t been in DC for that long, but long enough to have seen the Post be a great newspaper, which I would proudly refer to as “our local paper”. The speed with which US media is collapsing under authoritarian pressure is one of the most depressing aspects of the last couple of years.

Black smoke engulfing a street corner

Corner of w 23 and n Howard in Baltimore

Pete still hasn't mastered secure communication channels, so they had to bring them in to communicate in person.

It was an embarrassing display for this country, but gathering the top military brass and staring at it was necessary in order to make sure that it's not any more Black or female than they are comfortable with. Also, /

Sorry folks, academia has given up most of its mechanisms of introspection, and in particular its ability to care about you... 7/7

As a result, hiring freezes are the first and easiest measure taken everywhere in order to close the budget holes. Where are recent graduates going to work? What about their dreams, efforts, and years invested in their education? 6/

People on the job market this year are not directly going to be affected by cuts in their current institution – their appointments are expiring, anyway. Therefore, they are not considered a constituency that administrators should answer to when making budgetary decisions. 5/

either preemptively or in response, and with varying degrees of spinelessness, but almost invariably retreating from the ideals that they (we) claim to espouse. But it is equally disastrous in how we are about to throw an entire generation of aspiring academics under the bus. 4/

that requires broader partnerships and mobilization, and to serve the priorities of scientific endeavor.

The failure of the model is, of course, conspicuous in the fact that individual leaders get to decide to what extent to give in to the government's assaults on academic freedom – 3/

That said, the corporate-inspired, top-down model that all US universities have adopted (while claiming to be promoting democratic ideals), where administrators answer primarily to their boards, with the interests of a single (their) university in mind, is utterly unable to meet a moment 2/

A LOST GENERATION

I don't envy university presidents and deans these days – never did, but even less so now. They have to scramble to sustain operations that cost way above current Trump-hit revenues, and I believe that most of them are honestly agonizing for the good of their insitutions. 1/

Corporation for Public Broadcasting calls it a day after US Senate panel includes no CPB funding for next fiscal year - will all but close on Sept 30

Official statement

mailchi.mp/cpb/corporat...

Fiscal conservatives.

That’s it. That’s the joke.

If Trump were the president, this war would never have started.

Pope Leo XIV: ‘There Couldn’t Be A Better Time To Get The Fuck Out Of America Forever’

Pope Leo XIV: ‘There Couldn’t Be A Better Time To Get The Fuck Out Of America Forever’

Mario Vargas Llosa, giant of Latin American literature, dies aged 89 Nobel laureate, a star of the international boom in Latin American literature, also once ran for president in Peru * Interview: ‘The Nobel prize is a fairytale for a week and a nightmare for a year’ Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the pivotal figures who ignited a global boom in Latin American literature, has died aged 89. His death on Sunday was announced in a statement from his children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa. Continue reading...

Mario Vargas Llosa, giant of Latin American literature, dies aged 89

Take note law firms and universities.

If Trump & Musk have suffered an unprecedented number of judicial injunctions, it is because they have committed an unprecedented number of illegal actions. We don’t have rogue district judges, we have a rogue president violating the Constitution & breaking the law every day. Watch my statement:

💥A new investigation by Solomon and media partners reveals systemic neglect of hundreds of unaccompanied children trapped in dire conditions in Greek camps.

The EU and the Greek government are aware.

wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-ar...

RIGHT NOW:

Columbia Irving Medical Center researchers are speaking out on how the Trump admin cuts to research funding will cause harm to millions of families in the US and worldwide.

Name a university which cheated on its stats to rise in the rankings, simultaneously failed to protect the right to protest and prevent acts of hate and antisemitism, and declined to defend its academic freedom. Don’t be #Columbia.

From interview of Lee Bollinger, 1st Amendment scholar who served as dean of @UMichLaw, president of @UMich, and president of Columbia University.
www.chronicle.com/article/were...

Undergrad student: Due to the NIH situation, no internships this summer. Gutting the next generation of American inventors.

The performative show of dissent by Mitch McConnell, after he voluntarily refrained from using any of his power to stop it...

The generational politics of the 2020s: Young voters rule

Just posted my evaluation of what happened in the 2024 election, based on CHIP50 data. The TLDR is that the 2020 to 2024 shift was mostly a backlash of younger individuals against what had been a pretty lousy 4 years for them.
www.chip50.org/blog/the-gen...

@hongqu.bsky.social

Jasmine Crockett: "The problem is that Americans thought it was okay to take a full fledged criminal and make him the President of the US and then they want to act aghast when he does criminal things. Let me tell you, we have a thug in charge of the US and if we don't wake up we may not have a US"

A career criminal is breaking the law by firing career prosecutors and issuing executive orders that are contrary to the law of the land. Where is the opposition?

If you are "tough on China," then listen to Taiwan