If you took $1 billion and gave it to the endowment of a different small college each day, they could each provide a free college education to several hundred students per year in perpetuity. Instead we are using that money to bomb schools and kill students in Iran, for no clearly stated purpose.
In small town Northwest Pennsylvania, I recently had a conversation with a guy at the bar who thought the government funding Head Start was going way too far and such things should only be the parents’ responsibility.
i live in small town in the no man's land of pennsylvania between philadelphia and pittsburgh. i am exposed to plenty of right wing thinking. not really worried about making my social media experience less pleasant in order to "get out of my echo chamber."
Congress should authorize postal banking *and* allow USPS to ground lease its land to multifamily homebuilders (provided any project on a lot holding an operating post office includes a new, renovated post office on the ground floor).
Maybe - and I know this is so crazy - but maybe Democrats should just go out and campaign against Trump and his policies bc they are massively unpopular and start worrying more about being seen as insufficiently tough and less about how to be a somewhat Republicany Democrat. Just a thought.
Seven years ago, we published our first piece, a gorgeous essay by @kerileighmerritt.bsky.social. Since then, we've published nearly 400 pieces and paid every single contributor for their work. Thanks to everyone who's donated to, read, and taught with our magazine over the years!
I strongly suspect some of these financial issues are not new nor sudden, but the reactiveness of boards appears to be
Rather than telling ourselves that we have to “catch up” to some imagined goal of normalized AI use in higher education, Columbia should take advantage of its prominence as a university to propose something better, like classrooms free of screens, oral examinations, and an end to slippery, relativistic standards on AI use from university administrators. Our response to AI is an opportunity to distinguish Columbia as a reservation where minds are developed without the crutch of a chatbot.
As long as I'm quoting I should also cite this excellent paragraph by the student author:
Burn it all down
Previous generations of rich people knew that it was important for them to shut the fuck up and build libraries and parks and hospitals since that was the only way we would tolerate them in society. This generation of rich people have forgotten why this was necessary. We should remind them.
rice is life, and I got a thread to share about rice: Park Chung-hee's obsession to make South Korea rice self-sufficient in the 1970s changed everything about the country, including your favorite Korean foods and the urban environment 🧵
I use Camscanner
Climate change coverage fell 14% globally in 2025, while the world endured record heat, raging wildfires, and devastating floods.
The crisis intensified. The headlines didn’t.
Less coverage = less urgency.
www.colorado.edu/today/2026/0...
A book: Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy by Judith Resnik.
So glad to see Judith Resnik's crucial new book.
American culture of the 1840’s would have been *very fucking surprised* to see the Irish considered as co-founders.
Elon’s an ahistorical dipshit, but its always worth saying some stuff out loud: if you‘re a fellow Irish-American and you aren’t 100% pro-immigrant, you’re a fucking embarassment.
One of my students made the same point the other day when we read a similar line in Hiram Evans’s 1926 “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” which led us to a discussion about the elasticity of whiteness
That leads to another rule when hiring:
When trusted people around you get strong negative vibes, listen to them.
My friend and colleague Eladio Bobadilla will soon publish a new and timely book, *Dangerous Migrations: Mexican Labor and the Fight for Immigrant Rights* -- a labor history of migration and struggle from below. Pre-order with discount using the code below.
www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p0...
Regulations are what keeps ordinary Americans healthy and, often, alive.
It took spoiled meat and rodent droppings out of our food. It took harmful lead out of our gasoline and paint. It took poison out of our water.
Deregulation only achieves one goal: making rich corporations richer.
I've said it before, but the first school that promotes itself as "AI-free" is going to corner the market on folks committed to learning. (gift link)
My team at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman.bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) has shared a big data update, covering all recorded US protests through Jan 2026. Some key takeaways 🧵:
I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it.
I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.”
1/
Sometimes I remember Reagan removing Jimmy Carter’s solar panels and I think we’ve been enduring this shit for way too many years.
I very much appreciate the comparison generative AI to a very fancy parrot
Well hello there @dygottlieb.bsky.social! So excited to jump into this! Congratulations!
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
Like a full 30% of the current US was Mexican territory until the mid-nineteenth century, that culture and heritage and language didn’t up and vanish after the Alamo or whatever, acting like Spanish isn’t a huge part of the American tapestry is super short-sighted and ahistorical
The local journalists delivering truth about our history.
FAMU 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.
The Wright Museums Instagram page is HILARIOUS. Think The Office but it's the staff at a Museum for Black History. Better believe this is on my list of places to visit.
Gentle Spades
"I'm a veteran"
