A tax on luxury vacation homes is ONE OF THE SCARIEST THINGS SHE’S EVER SEEN

Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity Demands for “viewpoint diversity,” a pillar of the Right’s strategy to remake higher education, collide with the pursuit of truth.

calls for “viewpoint diversity” are little more than demands for a quota system for political conservatives who otherwise could not hack it www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

US edges closer to popular vote deciding winner of presidential elections Virginia signs national popular vote bill into law, joining interstate compact with 17 other states and District of Columbia

It's 2026 and the US is still trying to move away from the slaveholder electoral system.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

conservative free speech is when they speak and you listen or suffer the consequences

I suspect the Pope sounds "woke" to many Christian conservatives because the US is steeped in prosperity theology, where the point of worship is to deliver health and wealth to believers. Thus, "feed the hungry" and "show mercy for the poor" sounds needlessly political and "woke."

Trump is running an interesting experiment in how many self-identified Christian Americans have actual religious commitments and how many are just into it because it provides a means for the socially defensible expression of bigotry bsky.app/profile/bria...

Donald J. Trump 9 0 @realDonald Trump Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. He talks about "fear" of the Trump Administration, but doesn't mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart. I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn't! I don't want a Pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don't want a Pope who thinks it's terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don't want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History. Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn't on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo's Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested. Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It's hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it's hurting the Catholic Church! President DONALD J. TRUMP 935 ReTruths 3.07k Likes Apr 12, 2026, 9:03 PM

Deranged anti-Pope Leo screed from the current president of the U.S.

To any Hungarians annoyed that Americans are placing the credit for your momentous victory on the shoulders of our stunningly repellent little weasel of a VP: you are correct to feel that way, I'm sorry, we just want to seize any available oppurtunity to humiliate him specificially

Free advice to the opposition: It's very important that the GOP send the warm, likable, super-relatable JD Vance out on a national tour to campaign for MAGA in the midterms. He's got the touch!

So JD Vance was given two high-profile tasks for the Trump administration -- boost Orban's chances at re-election in Hungary and help strike a settlement in Iran -- and he appears to have failed horribly at both.

I'm sure the NYT will be all over that.

what else can we get JD to do this weekend

A visit from JD Vance is clearly the kiss of death

It's today!
@asc.upenn.edu
@cdcspenn.bsky.social www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/...

We can’t unring the bell of an American president threatening to do genocide

Penn’s open expression embarrassment Guest columnists Carolyn Marvin, Diana Mutz, and Robin Pemantle criticize Penn's new draft of Open Expression Guidelines. 

Three Penn faculty on the University's proposed new Open Expression policy

Professor Marvin has long taught a course on freedom of expression
www.thedp.com/article/2026...

It is such an indictment of the world we live in that just as the vaunted domestic checks and balances in the US have been shown to be basically fantasies, so are any international norm against and ability to stop a nuclear holocaust.

"History will judge-" let me stop you right fucking there, history doesn't do fucking shit, I'm a historian, let's be clear here: elected officials need to do their fucking jobs, right now, before it happens, or future historians will judge THEM. Everyone knows and knew who Trump was.

Oops! All Recommendations YouTube video by History on Film Podcast

NEW BONUS CONTENT ALERT! The show is still on injured reserve, but in the meantime, I wanted to share a few of my favorite things! Including @coldwarhost.bsky.social, @revalmanac.bsky.social, @coletteshade.bsky.social, @llamasjr.bsky.social, @coldwarcinema.com,
+ more!

m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJN2...

I mean, good, but it’s still a sign of profound dysfunction if this isn’t 9-0. A justice who will sign off on this is effectively announcing there’s nothing too flagrantly unconstitutional to get their blessing if a Republican president does it.

Anyone who wants citizenship to be an inheritance linked to blood, such that out-groups can be unrepresented and exploited by the in-groups, is a fucking fascist and needs to be treated as such.

In many/most normal democracies, the failure of the government to pass a budget brings down the government & triggers new elections. In American "democracy," you can control both houses of Congress & fail to pass a budget indefinitely. We are a very serious polity. Please clap.

Communication, Culture & Critique is proud to publish its first thematic issue: "Palestine as Communicative Epistemology." Volume 19, Issue 1 (March 2026). Editors: Paula Chakravartty, Karma R. Chavez, Dina Matar. White letters on red background.

Communication Culture & Critique An Official Journal of the International Communication Association Volume 19, Number 1 March 2026 Special Issue: Palestine as Communicative Epistemology Guest Editors: Paula Chakravartty, Karma R. Chavez, and Dina Matar Forum Why Palestine as communicative epistemology? PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY, KARMA R. CHAAVEZ, AND DINA MATAR The narrative struggle for Palestinian liberation An interview with Prof. Noura Erakat NABIL HASSEIN, MARIA PAZ ALMENARA, AND NADINE FATTALEH Bitification and the Gaza genocide HELGA TAWIL-SOURI On Palestinians’ insistence that Palestinian journalism matters AMAHL BISHARA Fashioning the keffiyeh as a Palestinian anti-colonial medium BERNARDITA M. YUNIS VARAS AND SARAH CATHRYN MAJED DWEIK A breakup letter with media studies NABIL ECHCHAIBI Resonance, or sympathetic vibration: A Black feminist ethic for Palestine VICTORIA NETANUS XAKA Original Articles Framing Gaza: Medical Journals and the destruction of Healthcare OSAMA TANOUS, YARA ASI, WEEAM HAMMOUDEH, DAVID MILLS, AND BRAM WISPELWEY Palestine as a laboratory: Aerial technologies, colonial violence and an origin of information-weaponry systems SEBASTIAN JAMES ROSE AND BURCE CELIK How to unsee Gaza: Israel’s visual politics in a time of genocide REBECCA L. STEIN Witnessing undone: Silence, noise and the enabling of genocide in Gaza OMAR AL-GHAZZI Algorithmic censorship, power, and resistance in the Arab region: A case study of pro-Palestinian content TAMER FARAG, FLORIAN PRIMIG, AND HANAN BADR Book Review The decolonial cautions of Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at the Dawn of Decolonization GOLDIE OSURI

Our Aim: Our goal is to rethink how knowledge about Palestine is produced and shared. We aim to move beyond framing Palestine as merely a 'conflict' or 'laboratory' and instead highlight the lived realities of colonial violence and media complicity. By centering anti-colonial thinkers like Edward Said, Aime Cesaire, Fanon, and Sherene Seikaly, we seek to reveal which facts are communicated, and which are silenced. Ultimately, we encourage scholars to rethink methods in understanding and representing Palestine. White letters on background image featuring destroyed buildings in Gaza.

Read the full issue here: https://academic.oup.com/ccc/issue/19/1. This journal is available through most university libraries. If you are unable to access articles, please email us at cccjournal2024@gmail.com. Thank you to the authors, contributors, and reviewers whose work informs this issue. White letters on red and black backgrounds.

The Communication, Culture & Critique editorial collective is proud to publish our first thematic issue:

PALESTINE AS COMMUNICATIVE EPISTEMOLOGY

academic.oup.com/ccc/issue/19/1

This is largely by design. If we stop thinking about AI as simply technology and instead as part of a political and economic program, its chief function become easier to see: namely to erode interpersonal trust so that ultimately we give up on forms of agreement & negotiation arbitrated by people.

I don't know what SCOTUS will do on birthright citizenship case, it's anybody's guess. But if they endorse Trump's diktat, the only response is defiance. Outright, open defiance by the states. A decision not just erroneous but illegitimate, beyond their power, null and void from the day it's issued.

The Inattention Economy Revealing the unheralded contributions of women of color to the foundation and development of the digital economyThe Inattention Economy challenges the wides...

Here's the link to the free pdf of my new book The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet. Access is so important and I'm grateful that the press is platforming it as one file that is easy to download. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series You can’t without supporting Rowling’s transphobic bigotry.

There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series

Again, the first Tea Party rallies in April 2009 -- heavily promoted in advance by Fox News -- only had about 300,000 attendees across 750 cities, but the media treated it like the Second American Revolution.

There will be multiple *individual* No Kings rallies today that have more people at them.

The Groffies! Honestly I get it

If I knew viewing Guernica would put money directly into the pockets of a still living Pablo Picasso, who had announced publicly that he would be using that money to terrorize, harm, and kill women, not only would I not go view Guernica, it would fundamentally change the meaning of Guernica as art.