Janet Burge

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

God says trans rights

I will believe that these people love Lord of the Rings when I see any evidence that they can read.

Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without telling me you don’t understand risk pools

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

We have had enough winning.

by Senate Democrats

This is your friendly reminder that Obamacare isn’t just the exchanges! It’s a set of laws that force insurance companies to actually. You know, insure people!! You can read my full graphic explainer here: aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/it-could-b...

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Not passing the mirror test

So meet with the Dems. Extend ACA premium subsidies. No more rescissions, put it in writing. CR till January. Stop whining, get back to work, and just frigging do it.

Man, do you know what rules? Actually loving other people, reminding us that we deserve a government that cares for us, and inspiring us to meet our neighbors.

COMMENTARY: Choose people over politics in helping our neighbors through the government shutdown

Life Goes On---riding the subway in Kyiv, Ukraine.

I am dying laughing as one kid, who took a little longer to pick bc he didn’t want candy (braces), saw the Declaration of Independence and then had to run to catch up w/ his friends, unsuccessfully yelling over their howls and hoots “Guys - guys, guys - GUYS! I GOT A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!!!”

This is why Gavin Newsom is a non-starter for me.

Sure, he's "a fighter" who's landed a few good punches on Trump, but that's not the same thing as a leader.

A real leader doesn't fight back against an authoritarian takeover by using the most vulnerable as his shield.

I keep seeing people say, oh, trans people must take a hit for the greater good and, first of all, no, you don't get to discard someone else's rights and second, we know from past experience that marginalized communities like theirs are merely the first to be targeted. They'll come for you next.

I don't know why universities are surprised that (many) faculty are more leery about LLMs in higher ed than they seem to be as institutions--ITS OUR FRICKING JOB to a) ask for the evidence, b) read and assess the evidence, and c) come to conclusions based on the evidence, and our own experience.

The impracticality is clear.

I also bet you dollars to donuts that admins intend to use an AI tool to analyze all these new, incoherent metrics to discipline academic labor and rationalize labor cuts.

We can participate in democracy and be flawed while also having non-negotiable. No nazis. No racists. We aren’t abandoning trans people. Triple the minimum wage. Universal healthcare. Reproductive freedom. Etc etc etc. Stand for something! Appeasement accomplishes very little.

The rise of the frog resistance People in inflatable animal costumes are making a mockery of Trump’s lies and the cosplaying Immigration and Customs Enf

“You do not look like the good guy when you’re breaking up a dance party and running behind someone wearing a child-like blow-up frog outfit to force a chemical irritant into it.” Read Shalise Manza Young’s latest on Portland’s mockery of ICE.

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

The government is shut down because Trump and the Republicans are hellbent on taking health care away from you.

And they won’t even come to the table to talk to us about it.

This is not about politics. It's about people.

Let’s break it down:

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down from @sivav.bsky.social

newrepublic.com/article/2013... via @newrepublic.com

Concise summary of the Trump admin’s proposed “compact” with universities: “In other words, this is the most sweeping pile of unconstitutional conditions that any American constitutional lawyer has ever seen in the wild.”

Tawny owl

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

David Tandberg (center) rented an apartment above a garage when he was a student at Adams State University in Alamosa. Today, he's the school's president. Part of his job is ensuring low-income kids have the support he had back then.

www.cpr.org/2025/10/03/i...

To be clear, federal research / education funding is supposed to be allocated by government in accordance to specific laws & allocation methods. It's taxpayer-derived funding intended to further national priorities. It's not intended as discretionary funds for executive branch culture-war leverage.

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.

Thank you all the program officers at NIH that persisted through the 2025 fiscal year and were able to fund 99% of the total FY2024 budget. I know this has take a toll on everyone at NIH. Thank you for supporting important health and behavior science and helping to keep the U.S. a leader in science.