Bluesky, February 2025, Part 1

The first half of February 2025: the ongoing paramilitary occupation of the Twin Cities and Minnesota continues. Supposedly at began to end, with the Department of Homeland Security initiating withdrawal of its agents, but there was no clear sign that such was the case. But even if they do withdraw, DHS is preparing to build a network of huge prisons across the country.

Other than that, there was the Super Bowl, and Bad Bunny's performance. More of the Epstein files and what we can and cannot see in them: who is hiding from responsibility and trying to create distractions. Republicans got part of the way to passing the voter-suppressing SAVE Act, and Democrats in the Senate managed a minor victory in not funding DHS. Pam Bondi melted down in front of a Congressional committee. And CBP shot an illegal laser at a party balloon near El Paso. Remember that?!

Oh, and the Olympics started.

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account, and is in reverse chronological order, except some of the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.
__

Non-Minnesotans, be clear on this: the *one and only* thing they do is racial profiling. The *only* thing. Ask anyone here! If you look nonwhite, Latino particularly, ICE will target you. It’s really as simple as that
Ash Chudgar


Judah Mac 'n' Bees @snacksonsnackz.bsky.social

Biked by the Whipple building today. Cars with masked feds were still coming and going every few minutes. On a Sunday. What was this drawdown Homan was talking about?
meshm

Seems bad that it's about 1000x easier to impersonate law enforcement, without local police batting an eye, than it was last year when a guy using the tactic went on an assassination spree.
Wedge LIVE!™

guys who are angry at everyone: "women vote with their emotions"
bad futa

Disappointed to learn that "jestermaxxing" just involves "being silly" and not "telling the king uncomfortable truths that other courtiers would get executed for saying."
Stentor Danielson @chefstentor.bsky.social

I live in Minneapolis and personally know 6 people who’ve been pulled over/had interactions with ICE. All of them are citizens. Care to guess their ethnicities? Spoiler alert: Not white.
MFD @midefd.bsky.social


strangepuppy

It shouldn’t be harder for a woman to register to vote than a man…
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

“Nobody dies to defend a 'multicultural economic zone'” –Elon Musk. Alex Pretti did.
Lee Rosenberg

We must speak plainly about the agenda Elon Musk and other MAGA leaders are pushing. It’s white nationalism. There’s no room for Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, Native, Jewish or all other Americans in Musk’s monocultural vision. Multiculturalism is superior. We can’t allow Musk and others to end it.
Tom Joscelyn

Who the Save America Act could disenfranchise:
- 146 million without passport
- 69 million married women who took spouse's last name
- 21 million without ready access to citizenship docs
- 21 million without current drivers license
- Rural voters forced to drive 4.5 hours to show docs at election office
Ari Berman

Can’t believe we are still doing this:


Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social

The cost of car infrastructure and car ownership is the primary force behind the affordability crisis. I will die on this hill. I am not persuadable.
Bryan @bryanformhals.com

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.
Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social

Being a news and politics junkie when undiluted evil dominates both kinda sucks.
Leah McElrath

They talk and act exactly like Nazis in pursuit of the exact same objectives as Nazis using the exact same tactics and rationales as Nazis but it would be wrong to call them Nazis until they grow the little mustache.
A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social

A Trump administration official said Moderna might have more luck with its vaccine application if it resubmitted with a little “humility.” Does that sound like the “gold-standard science” RFK Jr. promised? Or a mob boss threat?
Citizen Cohn / Jonathan Cohn

The stock market is not the economy:


Yarwanaw

The current MAGA meme that the "English-Scots-Irish" bloc stands for "real" [ie, nearly as white as Swedes] Americans skips over oceans of blood shed by English, Scots, Irish in fights against one other. (MAGA could at least have watched Braveheart. Or Peaky Blinders.) 
James Fallows

While few in history have achieved their full egalitarian potential, THE CITY is humanity’s greatest achievement
clumsy_machinist

The vast majority of Republican politicians would rather be officeholders in a dictatorship than citizens in a democracy. They have chosen to be traitors.
Mark Jacob

Went to a kids march in St Paul with my kids, age 7 and (almost) 11 today. Watching these kids with their friends and their friends’ families gives me so much hope. History has its eyes on us. let’s build a better world for these kids:


Lindsay M-B @lihuma.bsky.social

“DHS traps people with serial killer methods” arrives in the news one (1) day after “DHS taunts jailed children with Nazi methods,” for those keeping track
Rob Sheridan

The South did not economically recover from slavery until FDR forcibly began to break the good old boys network and force the dumb motherfuckers to realize that cruelty does not actually get you anything of value.
Wandering Hoo @wanderlib.bsky.social

I still don't understand why our government did this to Minnesota.
Nate Pentz

how we got here:


Lora Kolodny

How do you even reach a political ideology where you wish for every 'other' in your society to be deported, but are then shocked when that turns out to include you...
Thomas I-G

Pretending the rise of the far right and the focus on issues such as immigration or trans people comes from the "legitimate concerns" of "the people" is not just factually wrong, it's a deeply political point. Refusing to see this as primarily top down processes is to protect the status quo
Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.com

Explaining the plot of Scooby-Doo to my daughter and realizing the central irony of the show is that the gang cruises around looking for magic and mysteries that never pan out, while the only truly supernatural element is the talking dog they all ignore.
Django Wexler

it's worth asking why swiss housing co-ops can afford 20 elevators and 3 and 4-bedroom homes in 4 story buildings, when all we seem to afford are single aspect 280sf microstudios with 1 or 2 elevators for a hundred units
Mike Eliason @holz-bau.bsky.social

As an American Jew born at the luckiest time and place to be a Jew, perhaps ever, I feel a moral obligation to call a concentration camp a concentration camp.
LOLGOP @thefarce.org

You know who doesn’t get mistaken for being an ICE agent? People wearing overalls:


Laura G Mitchell

If we were a healthy society looking toward the future, we'd be giving out work permits to undocumented folks instead of terrorizing and deporting them.
Katie @ohweebeasties.bsky.social

I seriously have no idea why it’s legal for Trump to sue constituents as President
Grudgie the Whale

The commander in chief telling troops who they have to vote for is itself a presidency ending impeachable scandal.
Ian Bassin

I'm not as drunk or stupid as my typos on this site suggest.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob.bsky.social

Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found. The government keeps doing it nonetheless. 
Brad Heath

secondsightvisuals projecting ICE Out protest art onto the State Fair water tower on Snelling Ave:


Maplehood United

The $38.3 billion they are going to spend for internment camps could fund the annual budget of NASA, the EPA, and all clean energy R&D at the Department of Energy—combined.
Costa Samaras

Pleading with people to understand the scope of this. The camps won’t just be for immigrants. They will use them to detain anyone they deem as an “other.” The disabled. The homeless. Trans people. Political dissidents. Your tax dollars will be spent incarcerating people without due process.
Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social

this is repugnant and horrific on a human/moral level, obviously, but also seems to me colossal financial mismanagement. immigrants boost economic activity, so we're spending vast sums ($38 billion is more than the total annual spending for 22 states) to injure the economy. cruelty is expensive
Jessica McKenzie

In my experience, you can't really oversimplify slavery, because it *is* simple.  Those who say it is complex are really saying "There are good kinds of slavery."
Special Pleading Service @ftzpltc.bsky.social

Weird that despite having no agency conservatives get to vote
Academician Prokhor Zakharov @shake1n1bake.bsky.social

Happy Valentines Day:


Matt Massarella-Gill @3788mg.bsky.social

Not sure who needs to hear this but the voter fraud rate is a mere 0.000003%. Anyone telling you otherwise is making shit up so they can take away your right to vote.
sher12.bsky.social

you know, it still seems like it should be an even bigger issue that the president has been sending armed forces to kidnap and assault people in an ethnic cleansing campaign, with a specific geographic focus on regions that didn't vote for him in the last election
Doug Mack

And so concludes another week with no news briefing at the Pentagon. The last on-camera briefing was held for an alternative right-wing press corps more than two months ago, on Dec. 2. The press space has been mostly vacant since the traditional press departed in October.
Dan Lamothe

All those kids and nurses and mechanics and service workers that we are deporting? It costs us $133,333 a head. Again: we are spending $133,333 per migrant worker that we deport.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

MAHA: Eating a giant steak cooked in butter alongside beef tallow fries and washing it down with coffee spiked with butter
Not MAHA: Clean air, clean water, health insurance, vaccines, disease monitoring, scientific research, food assistance, food safety, bike lanes
Gravel Influencer


Listo Entertainment

Me at 20: I’ll have it all figured out by the time I’m 40.
Me at 40: wtf do you mean they rearranged the grocery store
Rori @sweetrori.bsky.social

What if the real frauds were all the feds we met along the way
Kyle Nelson

I'm all for pardons and second chances. But it's a hell of a juxtaposition to pardon millionaire NFL players convicted of drug distribution while you're summarily executing impoverished fishermen making a few hundred bucks to shuttle drugs around the Caribbean. Note: I should have added "at worst" to the line about the fishermen. We don't know how many were actually even doing that. Also, as with the brazen, wildly exaggerated lying, the hypocrisy is itself a projection of power. They want you to see that there's no pretense of justice or fairness.
Radley Balko

Why are the masses so easily swayed to stereotype entire ethnic groups but hesitate to do so where billionaires and the aggregators of wealth and power are concerned? We’ve internalized the idea that the uber rich ARE better than the rest, but they are among the sickest people alive.
Silja JA Talvi

Hulking dark SUVs used as troop carriers. Sedans for kidnappings. Rafted multi-vehicle agent convoys. Speeding, red light running, blacked out windows, utter lawlessness. The story of American Republican terror is told on our streets through the violence of cars and trucks. How perfect.
MaryMM


Grady Booch

The arrest rate among CBP agents is higher than the arrest rate among undocumented immigrants.
Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social

"Sure, ICE is bad, but we need to deport illegal immigrants." No you don't. If immigration enforcement leads to concentration camps and roving death squads, maybe it's time to just get rid of the concept of illegal immigration entirely. You've tried it, it's a bad idea in practice, so bin it.
Casey Explosion

And the only reason immigration enforcement exists, aside from the racism that underpins it, is to create a disenfranchised class of workers that can be more easily exploited. It is repugnant and it always has been.
@edvtercero.bsky.social

if AOC is too right-wing for you to support, you do not believe in electoral politics and should just be honest about that
the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social

Cocaine has gotten a pretty bad rap given that having “cocaine money” seems like a far more reliable indicator that you’re a shitty person. We criminalized cocaine instead of making it hard to have cocaine money. What were we thinking? We could have solved the issue right there.
Nissa Mitchell

Gun Owners of America is lobbying Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which would require a majority of Americans to show a passport to register to vote. But GOA opposes any law that requires showing a drivers license to buy a gun. These are not serious people.
Nick Wilson

ICYMI:


Charlie Sykes

Put it this way: if you are trying to predict Trump's actions, "what would a committed racist/minsogynst do?" will get you about a 95% hit rate. "What would a desperately insecure narcissist who is deeply afraid of weakness and drawn to bullying strength do?" will get you 100%. Like yeah Trump hates women, he hates black people, but he also hates immigrants, trans people, care workers, woulded vets... there's clearly something deeper that ties all that together. It's authoritarianism! It's fear. It's a gut-level, instinctive, intense aversion to weakness or vulnerability.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

Noem fired the first female Coast Guard commandant, moved rent-free into her waterfront home, uses Coast Guard jets for personal travel, and is blocking her replacement so she can keep the house. She's worth $5 million. Now a shutdown may halt Coast Guard pay. She's a squatter with a badge.
Ms. Misanthrope @lilmsmisanthrope.bsky.social

I never thought dismantling the federal government would be so stupid
Molly Jong-Fast

first couple times I saw this drift past on the timeline, I assumed it was a joke but no, he actually said it:


Tom Tomorrow

Doctors say that vaccines protect children from dangerous diseases. A nepo baby who barbecues dogs and snorts cocaine off toilet seats says that vaccines make children vulnerable to 5G radiation. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.
NY Times Pitchbot

At least for now, there is no longer a legal basis for the EPA to take action on climate change. History will see this for what it is — an embarrassing, anti-scientific backslide that will jeopardize the well-being of billions of people and countless ecosystems for centuries to come.
Eric Holthaus

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

It’s a mass murder suicide
Laura Bassett

Q: What do you tell Americans who are concerned that repealing the endangerment finding comes at a cost to public health and the environment? 
Trump: I tell them don't worry about it
FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social

The SAVE act also forces states to submit their voter registration lists to the DHS! I know we’ve been focused on voter ID but that’s only the tip of the iceberg!
Kayla B @queenofthesouth.bsky.social

A cheery Mr. Therm on the cover, ad infinitum, on the cover of a c.1960 publicity recipe book from the North Thames Gas Board, who served N. London and surrounding areas — Mr. Therm's Cookery Book:


Mike @mikeyashworth.bsky.social

If we are required to show a passport in order to vote, doesn’t that make passport fees an illegal poll tax?
A Snarky Grandpa (Bruce)

"ICE is a legitimate federal law enforcement agency" is not the type of thing you say if you're winning the argument
Chris Ingraham

It's not over until we finish the job. Put a stake through the fetid heart of this monster. Abolishing ICE is only the beginning. They started it with Minnesota, let's be the ones to end it.
Daniel Suitor

WHY DOES CBP HAVE ACCESS TO HIGH-ENERGY LASERS? They've done such a good job in American cities, right?
larry.earth (he/him)

I want to frame this photo (from Saint Paul, not Minneapolis) and hang it on my wall so I will always remember these days no matter what happens:


Dax (David J.) Schwartz @snurri.bsky.social

Re: Minnesota I think it's important to both recognize they're lying about a full retreat and recognize it as a victory that they're cognizant enough of the PR disaster to feel the need to lie.
Cape Cod Demon Hunter @gonebabygone.bsky.social

it’s still abolish ICE baby, it’s always abolish ICE
em cassel @biketrouble.bsky.social

I am old enough to remember Dukakis getting blasted for one guy who got released. How Jan 6th pardoned assholes have gone on to commit crimes?
Steve Saideman

Rhetorical question but how is it ice's job to go after agitators
Atrios @eschatonblog.com

dohman's donuts sign, vicksburg, mississippi, 1982:


old roadside pics

I really wish people who lied would actually have their pants burst into flames
Ms.Yvonne @curatednews.bsky.social

Not a single reporter asked Homan how many DHS troops would remain in the Twin Cities after the surge “ends.” Journalism is so dead
Ryan @smithboyrd.bsky.social

Rich people think they live in a higher tier of society full of better and more brilliant people, but it’s actually just the same society except the people have more money to waste and lose. So much of what they do is just wealth-induced hallucination
Will Stancil

Please who say "beautiful, clean coal" should be made to stand in a coal mine and try breathing for 20 minutes
Rishika Pardikar

Three months of ICE flight observations at MSP: since November 10 there have been 84 known ICE Air flights operating through Twin Cities, with an estimated 3,563 detainees, in shackles, sent away from their homes in and around Minnesota:


Nick Benson @ottergoose.net

A fact that sounds like bullshit but is actually true: There is more square footage of parking *per car* in the US than there is square footage of housing *per person.*
Warren Wells, AICP

People not involved with coding may not realize that the hardest part of coding is getting a coherent answer from the client on exactly what they want.  If you can describe it to an AI well enough that it can write it, you are already a coder.
Topher @greenfret.bsky.social

The most frustrating impact to me from AI is the change to my workflow. Instead of meticulously assembling a complex puzzle, I am now supposed to supervise the world’s neediest junior developer, that will _never_ be trustworthy enough to handle any amount of responsibility fully autonomously.
breaksthings

The Only Thing Stronger Than Hate Is Love: Minneapolis version:


Rebecca Solnit

I'm still waiting for some billionaire to figure out they could become a beloved folk hero just by taking a day or 3 and funding every single GoFundMe for rent relief and legal aid in Minnesota for a couple months. $30 Million would go A LONG way, and they'd barely notice.
Marje, another F*cking Bitch @minn-finn.bsky.social

They crush the local economy, deplete city budgets, illegally withhold congressionally allocated funds. In exchange we get masked Texans running wild in the streets, paid for with tax money that was supposed to be used on our healthcare. Thank you to our federal partners.
Wedge LIVE!™

It’s fun starting a new hobby with ADHD because I never know if I’ve found a new lifelong passion or if I’m going to spend $2000 on stuff and immediately lose all interest
lukelukeluke

If someone kidnapped my kid and then took him to McDonald’s that person is still a kidnapper
Elle Ess @viamarsala18.bsky.social

Baffled by transphobes insisting that the name on your birth certificate is Your True Name Forever when it was common in my grandparents' generation to just...pick a name you like and use that, no big deal. I literally found out both of my grandma's birth certificate first names FROM THEIR OBITUARIES.
August Brown @skullamity.bsky.social

I tried to take a photo of a grasshopper on my windshield, but now it looks like a gigantic bug destroying the town.


Ozma @psychicozma.bsky.social

so much of our present misery is just a giant, prolonged backlash to integration
Soraya Nadia McDonald

It is very funny that Elon talks about building a city on Mars or a city on the Moon when we all know him building a city in Indiana would be an unmitigated disaster
Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social

Living in Minnesota right now feels like being in the emergency room. Literally everyone is suffering in different ways, even if it's "just" a badly twisted ankle rather than a kidney stone or a full-on heart attack. The staff are working as hard as they can but energy and resources are dwindling.
Doug Mack

Why do Trump and MAGA think it's good to spend billions on huge prison camps and divert massive law enforcement resources away from child and drug trafficking to arrest and detain non-criminals who would otherwise be contributing vitally to our economy?
Greg Sargent

Easy: They hate America. They hate Americans. They desise our multicultural multiethnic democracy and the dream of freedom and egalitarianism for all and they're stamping it out.
Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social

This is why domestic "shuffle" flights between ICE detention centers have skyrocketed, much moreso than ICE deportation flights. When you are moved to a different jurisdiction, you have to refile your habeas petition all over again. They want to wear people down so they'll give up on their cases:


Gillian Brockell

Habeas cases filed by immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have taken off to levels we have never seen before. Just look at that chart:


Ken Schwencke @schwanksta.com

lotta folks still trapped in the idea of American exceptionalism, "it can't happen here, they won't get away with it." folks it can happen, it is happening, and they are getting away with it
Craig Johnson

Sorry to be Radical Left but I don't think we should put people who haven't committed a crime, and aren't even accused of committing a crime, into any sort of "Detention"
Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social

This is the 38th time that the U.S. military has unlawfully killed civilians on the orders of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. At least 130 people — never charged with crimes, their identities unknown to their executioners — are now dead.
Charles Я. Davis @charliearchy.bsky.social

We are murdering people and it is basically just background noise at this point.
Patrick De Klotz

They have now removed the Pride flag from the Stonewall Inn. Erasure. Just like the Nazis.
Michelangelo Signorile


Leon @jph1973.bsky.social

Every February, it's as if there's a competition to see how egregious the racism can get during Black History Month. Because how dare we take a month for ourselves? An entire month? The sheer audacity.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.blacksky.app

I say this regularly. People use performative as a substitute for 'inauthentic' and we could all just say the words we mean to say. Erving Goffman helps us to understand that we perform all of the time in real life. Life itself is often a performance of self.
Prisonculture

Wild fact from Bill Mckibben's latest newsletter: "The last colder-than-average month on planet earth was in February of 1985, which means that no one under the age of forty has ever known one."
David Roberts @volts.wtf

i'm not getting into a debate about "is it good to knit a hat;" the answer is yes; then you have a hat at the absolute bare minimum.
It’s Ruby @ruby613.bsky.social

If you widen that highway, you won’t reduce emissions or congestion. What you WILL do is spend a lot of public money to induce even more cars, emitting even more GHGs and pollution in the same or worse congestion, with people still demanding that you widen the highway. Period:


Brent Toderian

NO SECRET POLICE IN AMERICA. It's easy to understand, and hard to argue against.
Patrick Chovanec

The right’s response to the Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance is pretty close to a straightforward demand for white pride worldwide.
Matthew Gertz

Reminder that Spanish is one of the dominant languages and cultures in the history of Western civilization, in case you ever wondered what their preoccupation with elevating and preserving "Western civilization" is actually all about.
John Brooks

MAGA are so culturally bereft. The OG fascists are least had Leni Riefenstahl or Ezra Pound. This lot has Kid Rock and Brett Ratner. They're like a dying grotesque vaudeville act pulling into town full of sad clowns and sick circus animals.
danjac.bsky.social

The dull-minded fucks who are running things these days are not normal. They're not a majority. They're fucking weirdos and freaks, scared of their own shadows. Humans are creative, cooperative, and curious, they like novelty and diversity, they like movement and evolution and *life*. Fuck this death cult.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

Extremely or very confident Donald Trump acts ethically in office:
White evangelicals 40%
US adult avg. 21%
Unaffiliated 10%
Black Protestants 7%:


Conrad Hackett

Remember when "America has many groups of people in it and that's good and makes us strong" was an uncontroversial – even cliched – viewpoint that was universally endorsed across the political spectrum? We can go back! We just have to get rid of the tiny handful of bitter, angry men in the way.
Will Stancil

I noticed that Trump said "nobody" can understand Bad Bunny's songs. There are 43 million Spanish speakers in the US that he just called "nobody." I wonder if they will forgive him. I wonder if Dems can capitalize on this.
Greg Gabrielse @newtons-third.bsky.social

GOP: voter rolls everywhere need to be purged because they are not a perfect reflection of reality in real-time
Also GOP: ICE can imprison anyone indefinitely based on whatever slapdash recordkeeping they care to rely on
tomprogers

Because context is everything, a "flags of the Americas" display accompanied by a "love over hate" message packs an emotional punch. Unremarkable to generations of elementary schoolers. But in 2026, it's either rage-inducing or liable to make the adults cry.
Wedge LIVE!™

The right will act like nobody has ever heard of someone like Bad Bunny, who has sold billions, then insist some shitty right wing band at a TPUSA event is the Beatles. They’re a bunch of weirdos and we ought to say so.
Oliver Willis

Happy SuperbOwlSunday! Here’s a lovely limestone plaque carved with the face of an owl! From Egypt, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period, 400–30 BC. Metropolitan Museum. Photo by me:


Alison Fisk

Super Bowl ads dominated by AI and GLP-1s suggest our corporate overlords think we are living in the WALL-E future, but actually we are living in the Andor past.
Ana Marie Cox

It's been said many times, many ways: the fascists thought winning an election would mean winning the culture, and the fact that hasn't happened is making them rabid.
Nash @radiodeadair.com

“We cannot just abolish ICE!” Bestie, you are older than ICE.
Veerender Singh Jubbal

The current regime took a week to abolish USAID, which is three times as old and was not in the news every day for brutalizing children
Cape Cod Demon Hunter @gonebabygone.bsky.social

Florida A&M University can't use the word Black on anything posted around campus related to Black History Month, to stay in compliance with Florida state laws against DEI. Black students can't use the word Black at their Historically Black College during Black History Month.
Allenk_81

Will it be national news? Will it cause performative outrage? Will he be censured? Nope. Forgotten by tomorrow:


Wajahat Ali

We’re a few legislative sessions from these schools being targeted for closure imo
Doghouse Reilly @chadstanton.blacksky.app

people who say that all creative endeavor can be replaced with AI probably need to reckon with the fact that all televised sports events with human athletes could easily be replicated by high-definition computer-animated simulations….and yet we don’t do this and no one seems to want to.
Faine Greenwood

in an era when carnivore diet influencers are in charge of the american nuclear arsenal we have to admit the "annoying vegan" stereotype barely ever actually existed and the "all meat diet guy" is real, increasingly omnipresent, and way more annoying and inconvenient to actually be around
lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com

Heads, Bodies and Legs (1946) was an early mix-up child's book created by Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping. The two artists, who lived together for over 70 years, entered a civil partnership a few years before Chopping's death in 2008:


Neglected Books

I love all the AI commercials telling viewers about shortcuts for life during the Olympics, a sporting event famously known for athletes who have put the hard work in for decades to get where they are. Just perfect.
Josh Sternberg

Where is Jonathan Ross? A month ago he killed Renee Good. Is he on the streets, armed and ready to take more lives? Is he in a cushy office somewhere, living a good life off the taxpayer dime. Is he at a training facility, teaching feds to step in front of cars, kill, and say they were afraid?
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

So, the March for Life appears to have brought Measles to DC. 
Melissa "Snack Lady" @melondc.bsky.social

The media moved on when trump said he had a new tone because as the constitution states the president is the editor in chief of all news outlets
Matt Negrin

Coda: in my opinion, WEB Du Bois' personality is basically entirely explained by the fact that all his life he was the smartest person in every room he ever walked into, had a brief moment in German grad school when the world responded accordingly, but was mostly stuck in a racist America that spurned him.
lastpositivist.bsky.social

i don’t know if it’s the jaunty bow tie or what but i cannot stop laughing at this:


shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social

just a reminder that the united states is essentially operating a network of torture camps holding individuals in arbitrary detention, without access to appeal and rarely to counsel.
David Kaye

ads are so depressing now: its all just for medicine, gambling and AI
Don Moynihan

The Turnaway Study found that NINETY-ONE PERCENT of respondents who had SOUGHT abortions but were denied them nevertheless chose to keep their children. Lots of people want to adopt babies, but essentially *no one* wants to surrender one. The National Council for Adoption has millions of dollars, reflecting the lopsided “demand side” of the industry: affluent hopeful adopters. Birthmothers, by contrast, repeatedly tell us that if they had even a little more financial stability, they could have chosen to keep their children. Adoption is not social welfare. It is what happens because we *reject* social welfare — because we do *not* help those who need it most. Adoption is a *business*: the business of making affluent people into the parents of less fortunate people’s children.
Tony Corsentino @notalegalrecord.net

It won't stop with trans kids. At the end of the day, it all boils down to "this is not the child we ordered, this one is defective, why can't it be normal and obedient and not annoy me? Back in the Sparta Frank Miller imagines we'd have thrown this one off the cliff." That's it. That's all it is. No more, no less.
Q. McLamore @ghawinriver.bsky.social


Bruce Little

It’s the same damned phenomenon with antivaxxers and their autistic children, hence the determination to “fix” the autistic child and get their “real child” back. This, I think, is a big reason why so many antivaxxers are also transphobic.
David Gorski, MD, PhD

Love that Tom Homan’s public strategy is essentially if you sell your neighbors out, we wouldn’t need so many agents. How about you fuck off?
Norm Charlatan

NBC editing out the booing of JD Vance [at the Olympics] is a disgrace. It’s an international event. Americans have the right to know what the world is saying. NBC has bowed down to Trump.
Steven Beschloss

Regardless of one’s feeling about it, such a public response to a political leader is news, and deliberately failing to mention it is self-censorship. It’s like if reporters agreed not to report on the man who threw a shoe at George Bush. 
Patrick Chovanec

How I let folks know I'm not an ICE agent:


Anders @derzquist.net

Every instance of "AI democratizes the arts, you're classist and ableist and a gatekeeper for trying to stop it" is a slap in the face to the literally centuries of poor, disabled people making art on the margins and a crass lie in service of a machine that strips down and regurgitates dreams
Gretchen Felker-Martin @scumbelievable.bsky.social

Democratizing the arts looks like universal income, low-barrier grants for both emerging and working artists, well-funded municipal arts and recreation programs, vibrant third spaces, and a well-funded public school system with progressive curriculum. Not a free pass for corporate-owned slop engines.
Avery Alder @lackingceremony.bsky.social

if everyone could take on the “what if we just did the thing instead of waiting for it to happen” energy that much of minneapolis has right now, the world could be pretty good
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com

Mongolia Winter Olympics uniform, it’s over, no contest:


Jesse Hawken

My very most cringe, normie opinion is that the Obamas are extraordinary people — the smartest, kindest, funniest, most self-aware and self-possessed human beings involved in US public life in this century. They modeled decency — called the country to decency — and the country said No.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

On a similar note, as Mamdani continues to notch W after W you’re going to start seeing opinion pieces about how this could never work in any city other than New York, etc., etc. Do not engage! It’s just entrenched power bullshit and that’s all! Don’t let them make that a conversation!
the Mountain Goats

One thing I deeply appreciate about Amadeus is it's one of the few films that accurately depicts the creative process (being clammy, pale, and sitting in your bed).
Sarah @thebasementtan.bsky.social

odd feature of our time in how many liberals and progressive are bog standard monogamous family types—Serwer, Bouie, Hayes, AOC, etc--and how many Traditional Family Values conservatives are fuckin drugged up perverts
ryan cooper

An Etruscan vessel in the shape of Charun, the demon of death. Dating around 400 BC. On display at Antikensammlung München. Photo by me:


Nina Willburger @drnwillburger.bsky.social

not to brag or anything but i never thought fake internet money you cant use anywhere was a good investment
Andrew Lawrence

Pour one out for every professional political pundit, writer, consultant whatever that has spent the last decade trying to pretend that the Trump phenomenon was about trade or opiates and not a big chunk of white america losing its mind over having a black president. The entire anti wokeness nonsense of the past decade was about making this kind of gutter racism [Trump's retweeting of the Obama ape video] broadly acceptable again.
Adam Serwer

One cool thing is how I've been lectured by conservatives my whole life about morals and civility and decency just so they can all line up to support a racist pedo
Max Kennerly

One of the comments called this photo “Beige Against The Machine” and I made a noise that startled the dog:


Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com

we should not refer to federal officials as "czar."
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Trump job approval rating by news platform:

🟢 Twitter/X: +9
🔴 Facebook: -7
🔴 Cable TV: -10
🔴 Podcasts/YouTube: -14
🔴 Local TV: -17
🔴 Instagram: -21
🔴 Broadcast TV: -28
🔴 TikTok: -28
🔴 Newspapers/news sites: -33
🔴 Reddit: -40
Poll Tracker

I’m not sure we’ve properly addressed how profoundly disturbing it is that America can largely shrug at the stashing of human beings in giant warehouses.
Schooley

For like 150 years Iowa had a reputation as a kinda hokey sorta-progressive Midwestern state with a good education system and a history of civil rights victories and in the last 10 years, the freaks have endeavored to turn it into fucking Florida. God I weep for the children of Iowa
@scoopsstp.bsky.social (reacting to news that Iowa Republicans are trying to get rid of K–12 vaccine requirements)

I love the combination of this statement with this headwear:


Don W @whitesided.bsky.social

I do not think the most significant cultural shifts will come from a World War, Class War, Race War, or whatever other battle people weirdly fantasize about. I think it’ll be an integration of the idea that children are people and not the property of their parents.
Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social

Miles Taylor (former DHS Chief of Staff) said on Deadline White House earlier this week that though he previously resisted the dismantling of Homeland Security, he now believes DHS is beyond repair and should be broken up. I agree with him.
melaguas

Swear to god, ICE could just announce they're leaving a city but not leave and the media will just stop covering that city completely even though ICE never left. It's what ICE and the media did with LA and they're doing it with Minneapolis too
Chad Loder

Let's remember the power of what imagery/symbols we participate in spreading while we choose what to amplify:


Indigiqueer Hummingbird @riotousmuse.bsky.social

Dudes who fantasize about the Bronze Age wouldn't last a year in the actual Bronze Age. They'd get some disease and die.
Patrick Chovanec

one condition of abolishing ice should be that $1 billion dollars is given back to twin cities city budgets
functional moron @fiveburger.bsky.social

A large CAVA bag stuffed with what it says is $50,000 for White House Border Czar Tom Homan. It’s been reported Homan took bribery money when he was recorded by the FBI accepting a bag full of $50,000 in cash. Minneapolis February 4, 2026:


daviss

I don't post enough about the other central pillar of my politics, aside from anti fascism: being anti car. cars are bad in almost every way, especially in cities. if you go to even large, bustling cities that are actually dense, they are quieter than US cities because you can get away from cars
Craig Johnson

The big winners in Minneapolis? The sheet glass and auto glass manufacturers and installers. Are people tracking the wanton property damage happening?
Kristina Newhouse @askingwhynow.bsky.social

One thing the Epstein stuff has made clear yet again is that awful men believe that all men are awful.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

Perhaps it was coincidental timing, but nothing underscores the collapse of the Washington Post like firing most of the Pulitzer prize winning climate reporters the very same day as their opinion pages publishes a BS screed by climate misinformer Bjorn Lomborg.
Peter Gleick

Well this is interesting:


Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

We are deciding right now whether we want to be a country with ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.
Timothy Snyder

Jeff Bezos’s wealth has increased an average of $70 million every day of 2026, meaning that he could have offset The Post’s losses with what he’s made since Monday.
Philip Bump

one of my strongest beliefs is that we're in our situation right now because some of the most prominent talking heads (e.g. joe rogan, andrew schulz) are learning about politics in their 40s and 50s, instead of their teens and early 20s, and we have to go along for the ride as they learn basic things. i say this with love because everyone starts somewhere, but it's just that, sometimes you see someone with a massive platform and they're like "it kind of seems like republicans favor the rich?"
derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social

Withdrawing 700 feds while 2,000 remain is like me riding my exercise bike for 15 minutes and then eating an entire bag of bbq potato chips dipped in sour cream.
amityf

bell boy motel sign, wichita, kansas, 1979:


old roadside pics

When we say "occupied Minneapolis," we're using a shorthand. We mean all of this. St Paul, and Columbia Heights and Richfield and Brooklyn Park, and St Cloud, and Fridley, and even fucking Ely. There is nowhere ok.
Wiredferret!

The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023. The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets:


Cato Institute

Heads are going to explode. The Cato Institute just nuked the lie. Immigrants have cut U.S. deficits by $14.5 TRILLION since 1994, slashing the national debt by a third. All that “immigrants are bleeding us dry” noise? Absolute bullshit.
Immigrants:
- Pay more in taxes and take fewer benefits
- Work more, earn more than the average native-born worker
- Cost less in retirement, they do not drain Social Security for decades
- Barely touch welfare, there is no free ride
Undocumented immigrants alone saved $1.7 trillion.
Christopher Webb

Between Jeff Bezos' evisceration of The Washington Post, Bill Gates' appearance in the Epstein Files, and, you know, every single thing Elon Musk has done, at least we'll see the end of the Myth of the Benevolent Billionaires.
Kevin M. Kruse

”Provocative” is like “intellectual.”  If other people use it to describe you, maybe you are.  If you use it to describe yourself, you’re more likely just an asshole.
Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social

worth noting that the second rich people stopped being afraid of mobs tearing them limb from limb, they stopped building libraries and opera houses and stuff and started ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of society instead
mattie lubchansky

Inscribed in 1934 on the Department of Justice Building in Washington as a daily reminder to all who work there:


Peter Norton

I’ve been out of Minneapolis for 48 hours and haven’t heard a single whistle. I’m clenching my jaw less and my shoulders are looser. It’s a reminder how all-consuming and ever-present the federal occupation is, even for those with a ton of privilege (like me).
Laura G Mitchell

Whatever ICE's mandate may have been upon its creation, it clearly now exists specifically to break laws and to subvert the constitution. Any leader insisting on the institution's reformation over abolition is in effect supporting the maintenance of democracy destroyers.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

A thing that is funny about the moral grandstanding by Repubs re: Christopher Columbus is that nobody knew or cared about him 100 years ago. His "holiday" is barely 50 years old and was pushed through by Italian-American lobby groups in response to...anti-immigrant prejudice.
G. Willow Wilson

Sometimes you just want to ask John Roberts, you destroyed the United States for ****Donald Trump*****
Denny Carter

We want ICE abolished and their agents hauled before Nuremberg style tribunals. Anything less is a policy failure.
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net

BECOME UNGOVERNABLE:


Uncle Duke @uncleduke1969.bsky.social

One by one, Europeans mentioned in the Epstein files who still hold political office are beginning to resign or are being forced out of office. Meanwhile, ruled by an administration almost entirely made up of Epstein associates, the US carries on as if nothing really happened.
Jim Russell @jazzyrussell.bsky.social

Bezos fucked the paper and instead of fixing it he’s destroying it despite the fact that he could spend the money to make things right without even noticing its absence. I personally do not think some rich man should be able to buy an institution like the Washington Post like a toy and then break it when he doesn’t want to play with it anymore.
Adam Serwer

If we want a free and fair society here in America, eventually there will need to be a major party that champions the freedom of movement as a political virtue, and demands universal dignity as a moral one. Until then, we’ll keep tap dancing with this fascist menace.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

one thing the trump era has made clear, i think, is that the american people themselves are far more committed to the values of our founding documents than our elites
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

The best part of the country is the lies we told ourselves about who we are, and that some of us still try to live up to that. The worst part of the country are the people who know they are lies and act accordingly.
Jeremy Chao

This cannot be something a civilian law enforcement agent is allowed to wear in the US — and an agency that has a culture that tolerates this cannot be saved:


Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social

My favorite (derogatory) climate denier argument: emissions reduction in one state will not fix all of climate change, so we shouldn’t do anything. A perfect distillation of the sterile cult of individualism, right there.
Arkady Martine @byzantienne.bsky.social

Rebellions are built on hope. Resist ICE. Pearl Park. Minneapolis, MN. 2/2/26:


Moth @walkingminnesota.com

Absolutely NOBODY from the Epstein Files is currently being pulled over and getting their window smashed by masked agents yelling to see their passports or challenging their right to be free citizens as if they aren’t  everything Noem and Miller accuse migrants of being.
Sidney Coles PhD @westernwriter.bsky.social

Confused as to how Josh Shapiro thinks it is appropriate to compare student protestors to the KKK but inappropriate to compare ICE to the Gestapo
Emissary Of Night @diplomatofnight.com

This is nonsense to cover for the fact that a lot of police departments don't like speed cameras and automated enforcement tech (except plate readers) in general because (A) they get ticketed breaking the law and (B) they see it as a threat to police jobs:


Darrell Owens @idothethinking.bsky.social

I want to live in a forgiving society. But forgiveness means demonstrating genuine remorse with both words and actions, working to undo the harm that was done - not just everyone shrugging and saying “no biggie.”
Patrick Chovanec

The original purpose of camouflage was to help one blend in with their surroundings. Macho cosplaying has turned it into the opposite, and it now serves to actually get the wearer noticed, in order to intimidate.
Pelgridge Spedder

It’s been a month of Nazis flying a helicopter directly over my house nearly daily. Nothing has changed. Nothing has been de-escalated.
Brandon Long

it's just so wild how the Qanon message board cult somehow missed the freely operating pedophile sex trafficking ring comprised of America's biggest, richest assholes
Karl Bode

I think it’s Bad that trump personally sent his top spy to a swing state to “investigate” why he can’t just win every election no matter what
Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the position of the Trump Republican Party is: “constitution, nonstarter.”
Karen Schwartz @pithywidow.bsky.social

Double Up on Beautiful Things:


Jamie Glass @jglass8.bsky.social

It does worry me that a kid's odds of getting out of a tortuous detention center are mostly dependent on whether a random bystander got a perfect picture of them looking sad
Jill Twiss

I am once again stating the obvious by saying that the whole “low information voters” thing is a media tactic to normalise Trumpism because what do you mean these people have the capacity to find EVERY conspiracy theory about climate change and trans people, but none to believe Trump is evil.
Nikita Gill

We will forever regret not doing something about PFAS.
David Ho

Palantir needs to be obliterated the same as ICE, and Peter Thiel can face the Truth and Reconciliation committee he’s spent his entire life trying to negate. If we want to fix our country, this is non-negotiable.
Chris Kluwe @chriswarcraft.bsky.social

TIL that Joe Manchin got Epstein to procure his yacht for him 
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

If a president does something impeachable and isn't impeached, then it's not an impeachable offense. He needs to be impeached for each of his crimes, one at a time, to set the precedent. Yes, a president should be removed for that. Yes, for that. And for that. And that. And that. That. That. That. They should be impeaching him every single day. New crime, new impeachment. They should keep impeaching him once he’s out of office. They should keep impeaching him after he’s dead.
A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social

Less glibly, we have given the Feds a HUGE array of poorly understood databases and surveillance powers (not just in the Patriot Act, tho obvs there too) which need to be scaled back. Generally, scaling back investigatory power is politically really hard—but I wonder if Trump abuses open a window.
John Pfaff

Yuuuuup…


Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

Healthcare fraud in Minnesota, sensationalized by Trump and Rupert Murdoch, is trivial compared to healthcare fraud in Texas and Florida, which lead the nation in this category. News you'll never see on Rupert Murdoch TV. 
Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social

Sean Duffy's position is that riding the subway is unacceptably dangerous because sometimes you share a train car with a homeless person, but it should be effectively legal for a driver to run you over if they're late for work.
Ned Resnikoff

6 Minnesota-based CVT clients, all torture survivors, all with legal status, have been taken by ICE and flown out of state. Only one was released. The situation is what they fled from. “The majority of our clients are essentially under house arrest,” said Sara Nelson
Center for Victims of Torture

The President of the United States is going around blowing up national landmarks like he's the aliens in Independence Day
Ned Resnikoff

Since a lot of the coverage is omitting this detail: The Kennedy Center HAD a $250 million renovation and expansion just a few years ago, in 2019. In less than a week the Kennedy Center has effectively closed and our local DC paper has been gutted, both by billionaires. I don’t think immigrants are our problem in this country.
Rebecca Fachner


Tom van de Laarschot

Nobody but sorry D-listers will play the Trumpified Kennedy Center and he’s going to shut it down rather than endure the humiliation.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social

Report: Tesla shifting brand perception from “nazi car” to “pedophile car” to boost bullish outlook in 2026, per analysts
TeslaTakedown LA

It’s 2026. There is a measles outbreak in the prison for babies
Jorts (and Jean) @jortsthecat.bsky.social

'measles outbreak at the child prison' seems entirely avoidable, it's really the kind of thing that only happens if you do several unthinkably evil things on purpose all at once
molly conger @socialistdogmom.bsky.social

Two years ago, as the Israeli assault on Gaza was in its early months, a US cable warned of an ‘apocalyptic wasteland.’ It was suppressed by then-U.S. ambassador to Israel Jack Lew and his deputy, “because they believed it lacked balance.”
Shibley Telhami @stelhami.bsky.social

An ornately convoluted double-handled wine cup (cantharus). Detail from a 4th century AD Roman house found in 1899 at Olga Road just outside Dorchester. Now preserved in the floor of the wonderful Dorset Museum. Photo Sept 2024:


Durotriges Dig

BREAKING: punxsutawney phil has fled the country
Ygrene

Very on the nose that in the US, a rodent has replaced scientists. It currently feels like 6 more years of winter.
David Ho

I genuinely have no idea how to convey this to the American people, but I think the biggest impediment to any kind of immigration reform is that people are convinced that "legal" and "illegal" are immutable, intrinsic categories instead of a rapidly shifting arbitrary constellation of regulations.
Nathan Goldwag

The amount of fucking money people have had to dump into legal cases that didn't need to happen vs just spending that money on ANYTHING ELSE to benefit the community is pissing me off
@itsthebrandi.bsky.social

The fact that the three ICE/CBP agents involved in the two Minnesota killings have nearly 40 years of combined experience should be the nail in the coffin of any "training" rhetoric
Gravel Influencer

Passing legislation to make immigration work how people THINK it works would create one of the most progressive, accessible systems to ever exist.
Travalanch

Trump’s America is Stalin’s Russia:


David @david414.bsky.social

Next time someone asks you about energy and land use, maybe remind them that the ~35 million acres that currently grow corn for ethanol in the US could produce ~15 PWh per year of electricity from solar photovoltaics. That's ~3.5 times more than *total annual generation from all US power plants*.
Kevin J. Kircher

Not a judgment and I don't know how you overcome it but...it's striking that every time a fresh national news story drops about ICE in the Twin Cities (ProPublica today), a lot of people respond with "Wow, I didn't realize it was that bad" and everyone in Minnesota goes "Yes and it's a hundred times worse"
Doug Mack

James Comer spent every day for 2 years and millions of US taxpayer dollars trying to link Joe Biden to Hunter’s appointment to the Burisma board in 2014, but has zero interest in UAE putting $500 million into Trump’s crypto company then getting advanced AI chips from the US.
Ron Filipkowski

DFL legislators need to insist on a compensation fund of tens of millions of dollars to offset economic harms of the ICE siege. It infuriates me that Mercado Central has to hold a $500,000 bake sale to hold onto their building. Tens of fucking millions.
David Brauer

Liam has been on my mind constantly the past 2 weeks. This picture was seared into my brain; it is evidence of the total lack of humanity within this administration. Many thanks to Danila Waart for allowing me to recreate this beautiful work as crop art:


Athena Hollins

For the record, I'm fine with open borders. Especially if this is the alternative. Fuck this.
Courtney Milan

Pretty sure every single ancestor of mine came here when we had open borders before so why would I want to deny that to others.
la flaneuse

If our "environmental protection" frameworks can stop an affordable housing project but can't stop a detention center or a highway expansion we really need to start talk about ripping things up root and branch.
Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social

Each time I point out that the Republican platform is simple (they want to sexually abuse children, and they want you to pay for it), a few people think I'm exaggerating, and usually some small number of people think I'm being sardonic or something. I mean it quite literally.
Anil Dash