it is so funny that it is now apparently a bedrock principle of originalism that the unitary executive applies to everything except for the Federal Reserve which is different because we said so
There are a lot of reasons why I am running for Congress.
This scared-of-our-shadow nonsense in the face of a brutally repressive agency like ICE is one of them.
I will unapologetically fight to abolish ICE. Candidates like me cannot do it without your help. mattortega.com
ICE may be shooting people in the face, sending people to concentration camps, and illegally occupying our cities but, apparently, the Democrats think saying, "abolish ICE" is "emotional" and politically "lethal."
The response to the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good is not what the White House was expecting.
Like with their hiding of the Epstein files, part of the fundamental problem they are facing is that the stories the Trump administration has built their movement on are being shown for their emptiness.
In case you weren't sure, no, Bari Weiss still hasn't cleared 60 Minutes (@60minutes.bsky.social) to air their piece on the Venezuelan men being tortured at CECOT.
Instead this week, it's humanoid robots, figure skater Alysa Liu, and a Dutch improv comedy troupe.
Duffy on his demand that air travelers not wear slippers or pajamas: "It honors our country ... don't take your shoes off and put your feet on the chair ahead of you"
PBS News’s Lisa DesJardins confirms that the Trump health care plan, which was intended for announcement today, has been postponed at least through this week, after pushback from House Republicans.
PFT attempts to change the subject to coyotes, attempting to coerce the mayor into allowing him to do so, and he is rejected. He suggests the coyotes could eat the rats?
Apparently there are a lot of coyotes (or rumors thereof?) in North Cambridge.
Done with the Manager's Agenda.
one strong statistical finding which has been commented upon somewhat less than I think it should, is that young women have extremely unfavorable views of the Republican Party
In the #CambMA municipal election, voters came out stronger for the School Committee vote than in prior years.
Typically turnout is only 90-92% of the Cambridge City Council turnout. This year it was 98%.
Did the SC vote end up influencing the CC result? A data anomaly suggests it's possible:
For the Netroots community, for everyone who knew @arjunjaikumar.bsky.social when he was a guy posting on DailyKos and SSP as "brownsox" who loved writing about elections, today is a joyous day as he's been elected to the Cambridge School Board with the strong backing of the local teachers' union.
BREAKING: Democrat Abigail Spanberger flips control of the Virginia governorship, becoming the first woman to lead the state, NBC News projects. nbcnews.to/47Ljn7Z
Incredible quotes from @arjunjaikumar.bsky.social.
Been extremely impressed by him over the course of the campaign.
One of the most clear eyed candidates for school committees.
Both able to bring together a wide coalition from the ALA to teachers union and good sense of what moves the needle.
Diversity doesn’t weaken unions. Racist bosses like Vance using racism to divide workers by race so they can exploit them weakens unions. All this stuff is arsonists complaining about the temperature in the building they set on fire. bsky.app/profile/diew...
JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing.
Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵
Spanberger knocked off Dave Brat in 2018 after saying in debate
“I am not Nancy Pelosi…Abigail Spanberger is my name”
She never voted for Pelosi for Speaker
This is 4th campaign in a row GOP trying to make the connection
But doesn’t look like it will work this time either
I can't stress this enough: in ranked choice systems like Cambridge has, your best bet at getting the council & school committee you want is to rank candidates in order of your genuine preference.
That means you should give your #1 vote to the person you most want to win.
The point of this effort by Councillor Zusy is to kill all green multifamily inclusionary homes, which would increase Cambridge’s carbon emissions and send rents through the roof.
I think @arjunjaikumar.bsky.social saw one of those foxes on a recent trip to London, and then we saw a seal in the Thames in the middle of London last month. Too small to get a decent picture though. It's like "I swear, that little tiny blob in the water was a seal head."
We'll see whether I can stick it out to the end, but I'm remote attending the CHC meeting on 17 Story St. Devs propose to relocate & preserve the historic Harriet Jacobs House on the same site, and demolish a 3-story building, to build a hotel and 50 apartments. Harvard Sq Conservation District.
We have always had corruption in America but right know the whole country is being operated like a criminal enterprise, including kickbacks to the mob boss from universities, the media, law firms and now tech companies.
Exactly. Thinking in good/bad binary about AI is so dangerous especially while we still are getting our heads around the tech. It’s complex and complicated - and we shouldn’t be rushing to implement it in classrooms, or for that matter, to ban it — until we have a better grasp of it.
So much this. Letter counting and state names are gimmicks, not primary use cases. Frontier models are already remarkably capable for many quite difficult tasks despite still, of course, failing in important ways. We should be able to recognize this fact without uncritically accepting industry hype.
I'm remote attending to the Cambridge Historical Commission meeting today, as the A.J. Spears Funeral Home (124 &132 Western Ave) is up for demo review.
These two properties will be sold to developer DND Homes to become a 6 story bldg w/50-60 homes, 20% affordable, contingent on demo permits.
In answer to those basic questions about the process itself, not requests for personal details or anything, this is the response from the mayor, Cambridge Day reports: “There could be no answer, Simmons said, because members of the selection panel needed to respect the integrity of the process.”
And apparently there’s more to come on this story. But in the meantime I’ll note that crap like this is why @arjunjaikumar.bsky.social is running for Cambridge School Committee. And it’s why transparency, which can maybe sound generic, is one of the things he talks about most.
Went down to support @local26-unitehere.bsky.social and walk their picket line amid the rain. Aramark workers deserve a living wage!
If you want to support, you can still attend and enjoy the games: just don’t buy food or drink in the park. You can bring food in (or pregame)!
To my friends & followers, from what I've read UNITE-HERE Local #26 is saying boycott concessions. They consider that to be the picket line.
They are not asking you to boycott the Red Sox or Fenway Park.
Go to the game. Don't buy food & drinks from scabs.
Walk the line with any picketers.
Looks very similar to attacks on Black scholars.
*Complaint of some sort of academic misconduct
*Rufo and Times boost the story, giving it legitimacy
*Complainant turns out to be a eugenicist! Congrats everyone!
A reporter teaming up with and granting anonymity to a race science guy who had hacked admissions data isn’t against the rules at the NYTimes but criticizing that reporter is.
Fascinating.
The New York Times is not beating the allegations.
Uncritically accepting hacked information from a white supremacist, whitewashing his academic credentials, using it to run a baseless hit piece on a Democratic politician.
Must be a day ending in Y.
The saga of the NYT's anti-Mamdani story taken from notorious white supremacist Jordan Lasker (they call him an "academic") gets even more amazing: Lasker's only impactful paper, which claimed white people are smarter, is infamous: it misused data so badly it got his tenured co-author fired. 2/
The saga of the NYT's anti-Mamdani story taken from notorious white supremacist Jordan Lasker (they call him an "academic") gets even more amazing: Lasker's only impactful paper, which claimed white people are smarter, is infamous: it misused data so badly it got his tenured co-author fired. 2/
Spreading misinformation about trans people being responsible for bad things happening is a great way to reinforce transphobic feedback loops and that's exactly why the right loves doing it.
it is unfortunate that extremely dumb people elected a government that is going to ruin their lives. we tried to stop them but they refused to listen, again. only hope is the ones that survive learn something from the experience
Northwestern just announced that the university will meet the funding needs of any research that is being impacted by stop orders. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO! #edusky#academicskywgntv.com/evanston/nor...
During the campaign, Trump said it would be so easy to end the war in Ukraine he could do it in 24 hours and in fact would do it before being inaugurated. Three months after his inauguration, his chief diplomat now says it is so hard he may stop trying. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/w...
This headline needs to include the word “illegal”. As the article states, it is against the law for the president to order the IRS to target specific entities. Everyone is talking about how bad it is without talking about how it is 100% illegal
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/u...
I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.
“It’s amazing that others in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science. It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr, very fast.”
— Seth Rogen’s censored remarks presenting the Breakthrough Prize
Such transparently BS reasons given. They are trying to criminalize dissent from legally present international students, and they will move to criminalize all dissent from US citizens next. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/n...
I had been doubtful that we were going to have a "this is the crisis moment" with Trump, as opposed to "everything about this is a destructive catastrophe."
But the Abrego Garcia case is the crisis moment.
1/
When it came out, I felt The Force Awakens cut world-building corners to repeat A New Hope, but 10 years on, its depiction of a world where embittered fanboys lean into totalitarianism and extremely recent history has been forgotten (if not repressed) seems prescient. My bad, JJ Abrams.
The four law firms that it was announced are now Trump collaborators -- Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher, and A&O Shearman Sterling -- ALSO agreed today to "Disavow DEI" as part of a settlement with EEOC.
Why would any new associate join such a place? Why would any partner stay?
The four law firms that it was announced are now Trump collaborators -- Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher, and A&O Shearman Sterling -- ALSO agreed today to "Disavow DEI" as part of a settlement with EEOC.
Why would any new associate join such a place? Why would any partner stay?
The fear among academics and lawyers now talking on the record on just about any topic that involves the federal government or the White House is really extraordinary and worrisome, and getting worse, it seems to me, every week. Dissent by an establishment figures becoming verboten in the US
It's unfortunate that so many in the media played (or got played) into claiming that the threats were from the Left. It's amazing how shouting down public speakers could even be remotely compared to - defunding entire schools unless they bend to Trump's will. Seems much worse.
The fear among academics and lawyers now talking on the record on just about any topic that involves the federal government or the White House is really extraordinary and worrisome, and getting worse, it seems to me, every week. Dissent by an establishment figures becoming verboten in the US
My mother died in 1992. There were four children. Our family collected survivor benefits.
"… a child can receive up to half of the parent’s full retirement or disability benefits. If a child receives survivors benefits, they can get up to 75% of the deceased parent’s basic Social Security benefit."
NSF just slashed its graduate research fellowships by 51%.
This prestigious program has trained & nurtured at least 42 scientists who went on to become Nobel laureates.
We're destroying it, at exactly the time we claim to worry about our "sputnik moment" with China
bsky.app/profile/davi...
NEW Economist/YouGov Poll, April 5-8
43% of U.S. adult citizens have a favorable view of Donald Trump
54% have an unfavorable view
Net -11
Last week:
45% favorable
52% unfavorable
Net -7
d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/ec...
In the #CambMA municipal election, voters came out stronger for the School Committee vote than in prior years. Typically turnout is only 90-92% of the Cambridge City Council turnout. This year it was 98%. Did the SC vote end up influencing the CC result? A data anomaly suggests it's possible:
