I consistently repeat to folks that they do not in fact ever *succeed* on their own. Sometimes the assistance is visible, often it is submerged. None of the USian billionaires *succeeded* on their own. In fact, most of them continue to benefit from your money, labor, etc....
Part of the history of eugenics is using healthcare and reproductive rights to get people to not have kids if it is seen as a burden on the public good.
The Trump Department of Education wrote a dangerous new regulation that would strip Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) from people based on their "political ideology."
It's a completely naked fascist attempt.
But Senate Dems can stop him—it just requires a few more votes.
Universal basic income is not science fiction. It should exist for everyone. There's enough to make it happen.
Anyway, we have ample research on how living under a state of sustained terror and stress causes life-long health problems as well as intergenerational epigenetic effects. This feels like it's making you sick because it actually is making you sick.
BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV declares the Iran War is “unjust” and “is not resolving anything.”
After suggesting Trump is committing war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure, he called on Americans to contact Congress to help end the war.
Jeff Bezos has $222 billion.
If he paid my wealth tax this year, we could fund insulin in America for everyone who needs it plus free school lunch for every kid in Texas—and have plenty of money left over.
And Bezos would still have $215 billion dollars to spare.
I also used this. Free federal and state tax filing for me.
The US reportedly waited to strike the bridge in Iran a second time until rescue workers and others in the area gathered to help the wounded, which then killed at least eight people. Authorities in Iran are describing it as an act of terrorism.
Iran condemns double-tap strike on bridge as terrorism This is what the government here describes as a terrorist-style kind of action. That’s because the second tap was not expected. Usually, when there is a strike, people rush to the scene to rescue the victims and remove the debris that buries some of the dead and so on, and that’s what happened at that bridge. Those people, including rescue workers and also the workers at the bridge itself, gathered to help the wounded, and that’s when the second strike hit. That’s why the number of casualties is high, and the authorities here are really, really condemning this as an act of terrorism, and also a despicable act that’s not going to force Iran to surrender. It’s a message to the Iranians that if they don’t strike a deal that is to the liking of the US president, they will see more of their civilian infrastructure targeted and more of their civilian people killed.
Al Jazeera
BREAKING: The Supreme Court, in an 8-1 vote, holds that Colorado's law banning conversion therapy regulates speech based on viewpoint, subjecting it to strict scrutiny and likely rendering it unconstitutional when lower courts apply today's decision.
Gorsuch writes for the court; Jackson dissents.
Yet anti-LGBTQ+ therapists now enjoy a First Amendment right that is denied to abortion providers. But as Jackson pointed out, the inconsistency runs deeper. After Chiles, parents who seek to “convert” their transgender children have a constitutional right to do so. But thanks to last year’s decision in Skrmetti, parents who seek to affirm their transgender children with medication have no such right. States can ban gender-affirming medication but evidently cannot ban anti-transgender talk therapy. And the majority does not explain why anti-LGBTQ+ speech receives heightened protections when other viewpoints do not. Surely, Jackson wrote, a state can direct doctors to discourage, and not encourage, smoking cigarettes. It can prohibit doctors “from telling an anorexic patient to eat less” while allowing them to recommend eating more. It can stop doctors from encouraging patients to end their lives. These laws, too, censor speech on the basis of the state’s preferred viewpoint—in Gorsuch’s words, they “enforce orthodoxy.” Why is it, then, that nobody seriously argues that they’d violate the First Amendment, too?
The Supreme Court's "conversion therapy" decision today is indefensible on its own terms. A ton of medical regulations restrict speech on the basis of "viewpoint." Nobody thinks they're unconstitutional. This court just subjects pro-LGBTQ protections to special hostility. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Israel abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes in 1954.
Today they voted to bring it back — exclusively for Palestinians.
BREAKING: Israel's Knesset has passed a law to execute Palestinian detainees.
Death by hanging. Mandatory sentencing. No pardon. 90 days to carry out.
It applies through military courts with a 96% conviction rate. It does not apply to Israelis.
Per Tom Haverford: youtu.be/nxyqvWOxcg4?...
Pope Leo condemns Trump over Iran war in thinly veiled Palm Sunday message: The Pope said God rejects the prayers of leaders who initiate wars and possess ‘hands full of blood’ www.the-independent.com/news/world/e...
#Iran #war #MiddleEast
‘Rowling has been rich enough to pour cash into organizations like this for some time now because she continues to hold primary intellectual property rights to the entire Harry Potter franchise.’
Can’t separate art from artist when the artist is using their royalties to eradicate trans people.
Disabled people are intentionally underresourced and denied services by eugenicist public policy designed to limit expenses by allowing people to die, even if there's great suffering in the process.
I describe it as such as a historian of disability because I want to remind scientists and the world that the history of science IS the history of eugenics, scientific racism and medical racism, and more.
I’m not comforting them with the idea that it was a ‘pseudoscience.’
This is your history.
In what should be a surprise to no one, the US and Israeli attack on Iran has serious climate consequences. Our new analysis, covered in @theguardian.com this morning, tallies the climate costs of the first two weeks of the attacks.
Who is talking to the 2 million people who have lost their insurance because the subsidies weren't renewed?
There's an uptick in people using psychosis to describe violence. Psychotic people actually do not commit violence at any higher rates than anyone else, but what they are is far more likely to be victims of violence. Don't liken the most powerful to the most vulnerable.
More work on Newsom and disability: disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/10/15/r... disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2025/09/04/s... I‘d also read through @disabilityrightsca.bsky.social‘s CARE Court lawsuit: www.disabilityrightsca.org/cases/drc-v-... @sesmith.lol also knows tons about this.
Newsom’s been pushing the expansion of forced treatment and institutionalization of disabled people, particularly people with psychosocial disabilities, for years: www.disabilityrightsca.org/latest-news/... disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2024/03/03/i... I cannot express how awful Newsom is on this.
Come work with The Public's Science team @ the Institute for Advanced Study. Hiring a fellow to develop digital infrastructure for public engagement, and are seeking someone committed to reimagining the social contract for American research. Please share widely.
jobs.chronicle.com/job/37962820...
I answer this every time, and I’m happy to answer it again; detention is a tool of deportation. The goal is not to keep people detained indefinitely, although some people may be held for months, and in some cases even years. Once detained, deportation becomes dramatically easier for the government.
The number of people detained by ICE rose by an astonishing 58% (25,200) between 2025 and 2026; expanded immigration detention accounts for virtually all of the growth in mass incarceration since our last report. www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2...
Some folks treated me like a naive child for believing we had the money to cancel a portion of student loan debt
I went on NPR this weekend to talk about Trump's suggestion that tech companies build their own power plants to power AI data centers. I had just published a 12,000 word report on the topic, so it was hard to distill everything into a 4 minute segment. The "bring your own capacity" (BYOC) idea that Trump mentioned in his State of the Union speech isn't a new one. It's been discussed at virtually every utility commission over the last year. In the broadest terms, BYOC is good policy. The US hasn't been expanding its power grid for the last 10-20 years because electricity demand has been flat. Now data centers are changing the equation triggering huge demand increases. The question is who should pay for the new transmission lines and power generation capacity. Virtually everyone—including many tech companies—agree data centers should foot the bill, not everyday utility bill payers. But electricity policy is complex. There's a federal regulator (FERC), 50 different state regulators, and grid operators that span multiple states. One version of this policy that's become popular is to force data centers off the grid entirely. The idea is tempting, if anything for its simplicity. But it would have some negative consequences. Consider OpenAI's Stargate project in New Mexico. The 2 GW data center will run on its own "microgrid" powered by inefficient gas turbines. That means it will be powered by 100% fossil fuels, which results in far more pollution than a power grid, which can make use of nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, etc. This Stargate project will emit 14 million tons of CO2 per year, according to permit documents we found at Cleanview for our latest report. To put that number in perspective: New Mexico has spent 20 years decarbonizing its economy and in that time has cut emissions by 14 million tons. So in this case "build your own power plant" means wiping out 20 years of climate progress—in a location with more land and solar potential than nearly anywh…
Hhhoollly moly. 14 MTCO2-e for OpenAI's fossil-fuelled Stargate data centre
As @michael-thomas.bsky.social says: "wiping out 20 years of climate progress—in a location with more land and solar potential than nearly anywhere on Earth"
!!!!
www.linkedin.com/posts/michae...
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Border Patrol, is using a broad web of surveillance tools — purchased as its budget has ballooned under this administration — to monitor, apprehend and intimidate the people it seeks to deport and the U.S. citizens critical of its policies.
