I'm at a cafe working next to a group of 70-year old women who are knitting. They are currently alternating between discussing health issues and their thoughts on Pulp Fiction. Division between those who think "it's a strange movie," and the ones who "just love to watch John Travolta dance." 😂
Posts by Matthew Blanton
IYKYK
Piers Morgan: "If the wisdom of the crowd is anything to go by, there’s now a greater chance of impromptu regime change in the US than Iran. And it may well be both"
Wow. What a stunning visual
After a series of fatal strikes involving civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress directed the Pentagon to reduce civilian casualties as part of a 2019 law. During the Biden administration, the Defense Department created the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response initiative. The civilian mitigation teams – cut by 90% by Hegseth – work with military commanders on target planning, and making sure that targets are actually military sites. The teams help come up with "no strike" lists, including religious and cultural sites and schools
I knew that the Department of War shot a missile into a school & killed 175 civilians, mostly children.
This is learned today:
Secretary of War Hegseth had cut the teams assigned to prevent such tragedies by 90%.
www.npr.org/2026/03/11/n...
This map shows widely dispersed dots representing the guesses of US survey respondents about the location of Iran on a world map. 23% placed a dot in the correct area.
Where is Iran?
Each dot represents an American's guess.
pro.morningconsult.com/articles/can... 🌐
Amazing reference. No notes. Chef's kiss.
Today @cato.org published our report providing the first look at the fiscal effects of the wave of legal & illegal immigration over the last 3 decades. It shows immigrants created surpluses every year, by a combined $14.5 trillion, even as deficits grew www.cato.org/white-paper/...
. @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social My wife, kids (4 and 7) and I have been hunting birds for almost a year with the Merlin app. I told them early on we would have a "bird party" when we hit 50. Well we did it today! Red-bellied Woodpecker. Now I actually have to plan the party! 😅 Any ideas?
Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses: The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The second is simply "Jesus wept."
Astonishing thing for a judge to do.
Of course not, but I thought they would have at least tried to not make it so obvious
Do you have a database of these anywhere? Or any kind of list? Thanks!
You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.
If you're in New York, please take two minutes right now to call Governor Hochul and tell her to support and sign New York 4 All, which would prevent state and local agencies from collaborating with ICE.
518-474-8390.
This is important.
The most incensing thing was people up in arms about the church protest and the kids there who were "traumatized" without a mention of anything else. You couldn't get a worse, more anti-Christ response to the events if you designed it in a lab for making Christians look bad.
ICE is now responsible for 66% of the homicides in Minneapolis this year.
Elliot Morris map of Trump approval derived with MRP at the Census PUMA level
Wow, @gelliottmorris.com made a detailed map of Trump approval *at the sub-county level.*
Of course, there are assumptions that have to be made, but it's quite rigorous. Certainly the best info in the public domain.
👀 southern Texas 👀
Check it out: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/a-very-det...
This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
The summer undergraduate internship is a paid opportunity during the summer of 2026. Interns are expected to work a minimum of 30 hours/week and are paid $18.50/hour. This internship is available to undergraduate students with an interest in public opinion, survey research, and data science. Pew Research Center is an office-based workplace, with all staff working in the Center’s Washington, D.C., office three core days weekly (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday). Staff have the flexibility to work remotely up to two days per week. A modest relocation stipend is available for candidates who need it. Internship dates: June 1-Aug. 14, 2026 (with alternative dates of June 15-Aug. 28, 2026 also available) Education/Training/Experience College students who are pursuing a bachelor’s or associate degree and have completed a minimum of two years (in other words, rising juniors and seniors).
Please share - multiple summer 2026 in-person undergrad internship opportunities at @pewresearch.org!
- religion
- digital
- social trends
- data journalism
- global
- news
- internet
- AI
- admin
- race
- science
- methods
- politics
Apply soon!
pewtrusts.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Center...
👀👀🙃
This is really important investigative work and deeply troubling.
Remember right after ICE murdered Renee Good when they shot a second person, this time in the leg? They put out an elaborate story about the man assaulting ICE agents, ramming them, etc.
Only one problem: it was all a lie, as shown by multiple videos and the transcripts of calls to 911.
ICE lies.
To encourage reuse of our data, Pew Research Center, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, invites researchers to submit proposals for new research publications that use one or more of the following datasets (collectively, Datasets) from the Global Religious Futures (GRF) project: Global Restrictions on Religion 2007-2022 dataset. This cumulative dataset includes measures of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion in nearly 200 countries and territories. Spring 2024 Survey. This dataset includes measures of religion and spirituality in 35 countries. (Comparable data was also collected in 2023 and 2024 for the United States. The downloadable materials which accompany the international dataset include additional information about U.S. data.) Dataset of Global Religious Composition Estimates for 2010 and 2020. This dataset includes estimates of the size of seven major religious groups in more than 200 countries and territories. We encourag
Please share: Pew Research Center will provide $3,000 each for 19 new papers using our recent global datasets. We encourage reuse of our Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures data!
www.pewresearch.org/2026/01/16/seeking-resea...
New research: Noncitizens Were Underrepresented in Welfare Fraud Convictions in 2024. Noncitizens were 8% less likely to be convicted of welfare fraud in 2024, and they were 28% less likely to be convicted of fraud that imposed monetary losses to the government.
Looks great! Thanks Conrad
There is going to some interesting polisci research that goes on after this about what happens when guys like this to come out of his "cushy house" (his words) and make explitive filled rants about government overreach.
Spoiler alert: it's not good for the regime
When self-employed software engineer Nick Benson put out the call for dashcams online, he thought he’d get maybe 10 people to donate. More than 500 have shown up on his front porch. Here's how one guy crowdsourced 500+ dashcams for Minneapolis to film ICE www.404media.co/how-one-guy-...
This agency is out of control if leadership is no longer checking violations of constitutional rights. Congress absolutely must step in before more people are kidnapped/killed.
NEW: Data released by ICE shows that virtually the entire growth of detention in the last few months has been among people with no criminal record at all - no prior convictions (no matter how minor) and no pending criminal charges.
I'm grateful to @austinkocher.com for articulating this position so well.