Trump loses across courts in bruising week of immigration and legal setbacks

www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

Google has privately proposed building a new data center in Nebraska that could require three times the amount of electricity needed to power all of Lincoln during the hottest months of the year, according to documents obtained by the Flatwater Free Press.

🔗 buff.ly/6FlWg7H

Pie chart showing that nearly 2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S.

🚨NEW: Last year, the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. increased again. The driving factor? President Trump’s deportation agenda.

Our annual report, The Whole Pie, gives the big picture of mass incarceration. Here are some key takeaways 🧵

Balcony solar is taking state legislatures by storm In more than half of U.S. states, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would boost adoption of DIY solar systems.

In more than half of US states, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would boost adoption of small plug-in solar panels that sit on apartment balconies and plug directly into household outlets. Canary Media buff.ly/5B79fOA #ShareGoodNewsToo

Any #historians out there with any possible interest in public opinion from 1935 to now? I would be very grateful for anyone willing to chat about how to help historians discover materials in the polling archive. All topics: politics, policy, health, culture, religion #skystorians

Map showing Washington Heights and East Harlem with highlighted areas: Washington Heights BID and 125th Street BID in red, 5-min walking buffer in orange, and 10-min walking buffer in blue, with OnPoint Washington Heights and OnPoint East Harlem.

Opening of overdose prevention centers in New York City was not associated with significant changes in neighborhood foot traffic or consumer spending, suggesting no observed economic harms near these #HarmReduction sites.

ja.ma/403HXgS

Great read.

Musk at World Economic Forum

This guy's smiling photograph is appearing today, in normal news coverage of an elite gathering.

He has killed 215,000 adults and 445,000 children with USAID cuts, as of the most recent estimates. 14 million deaths are expected by 2030.

I’ve been posting a lot today about white fraternities and the first cohorts at elite schools to really experience (and resist) race and gender integration.

Y’all. That’s Gen X.

An experimental finding sure to shock: white evangelicals are especially attuned to slights against Christians, but significantly less likely to view same actions as discriminatory when against a religious out-group. And this double-standard is unique to white evangelicals. doi.org/10.1111/jssr...

Great primer on the birth rate scare

This is quite neat to see and the methodological challenges to do a project like this are fun to consider.

Trump administration sends letter wiping out addiction, mental health grants The Trump administration sent hundreds of letters Tuesday terminating federal grants supporting mental health and drug addiction services. The cuts could total as much as $2 billion.

Estimated 2 billion dollars in cuts to substance use and mental health services. Nothing good to come out this.
www.npr.org/2026/01/14/n...

The Problem With Crediting the Drop in Fentanyl OD to Supply Reduction - Filter In September 2024 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that overdose mortality, which had been climbing ...

The Problem With Crediting the Drop in Fentanyl OD to Supply Reduction
filtermag.org/fentanyl-sup...

In Support of a Public Health Approach to Drug Policy: Position Statement of AMERSA, Inc Katherine Hill 1, Tessa L Rife-Pennington 2 3, Claire Zagorski 4, Katherine Dunham 5, Kimberly L Sue 6, Corey Davis 7 8, Michael Incze 9 Affiliations Expand PMID: 41199684 DOI: 10.1177/29767342251381162 Abstract The United States faces a profound overdose crisis and a volatile, unregulated drug supply. Despite the availability of effective treatments and harm reduction strategies, many individuals who use drugs have limited access to evidence-based interventions. Punitive approaches to people who use drugs have worsened the situation. In this position statement, we assert that there is a critical need for drug policies to be grounded in public health evidence rather than punitive measures. We focus on 2 case studies to exemplify this idea: (1) xylazine scheduling laws and (2) drug-induced homicide laws. Ultimately, the Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance Use and Addiction advocates for a public health approach to drug policy, which is based on the tenets of harm reduction. The organization opposes punitive measures and promotes policies that improve access to healthcare and harm reduction services.

Very excited to share a new publication! We discuss the importance of designing drug policy with a public health approach, laying out the evidence for our argument.

I'm honored to have been a part of this paper, and to have learned from my incredible coauthors.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41199684/

/8 A huge part of what makes it very hard to convict Jonathan Ross for murder was baked into America generations before Trump was President. That’s the primary factor that lets law enforcement kill with impunity, not Trump.

Dick Wolf has killed more black men than Leopold II.

"Tough on crime" types are not really pro-police. They are pro-SOCIAL CONTROL, and (understandably) saw the police as a way to impose that control.

But the loyalty is, first and foremost, to that control. And if the police get in the way of that, the support disappears.

The street samurai flashed his credstick at the vendor, who frowned.

"Sorry, I can't take PoopCoin. It's down 99% since this morning's hack. I accept payment only in mutant pig GIFs or speculative real estate."

Music Albums others
I also really enjoyed:
Boreta - Hear the Listener
Car Seat Headrest - The Scholars
Ooyy - Loom
Ahamefule J. Oluo - The Things Around Us

Music Albums others
The Julien Baker and TORRES album Send A Prayer My Way was an unexpected combination that pulled me in more than I thought it would.

Tourist's album Music Is Invisible was also a great find that came late this year with a December release.

Music Albums (favorite)
Hands down my favorite album of the year was Racing Mount Pleasant's self-titled album. I love the flow of the album and how well the horns are used in the band. Hopefully get a chance to see them live at some point.

Fiction others
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennet
Winner of the 2025 Hugo the fantasy, bio-punk, kaiju, murder-mystery book was a lot of fun. I ended up working through both the sequel and the previous Divine Cities trilogies too.

Fiction others
The West Passage by Jared Pechacek
The imagination and unfamiliar characteristics of so much of this book made it a lot of fun to read. Lots of mystery and strangeness you definitely feel like you are exploring the world with the characters.

Fiction (favorite)
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne De Marcken.
This book absolutely stunned me. Winner of the Le Guin prize in 2024 and I found it while working through the list of nominees. Highly recommend giving this a whirl.

Nonfiction others
I've been working on filling a personal knowledge gap on Native American history before 1776 and read two good books this year.
Facing East from Indian Country by David Richter
One Vast Winter Count by Colin Calloway

Nonfiction others
Tripping on Utopia by Benjamin Breen. Describing the world of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson and their research crowd as they began to work with psychedelics. Good look into their crowd, the experiments, the divergent labs, and the dreams that pushed them.

Nonfiction (favorite)
There is No Place for us by Brian Goldstone was easily the best nonfiction book I read this year. Describing the experiences of five families in Atlanta who are working and can't find a place to live. We are all more precariously situated that we probably want to admit.

A few favorites from 2025: books (nonfiction/fiction) and music albums. 🧵

This was a fascinating read