Grumpy Wisecracks

Opinion | I'm a Minneapolis sociologist who studies violence. Here's how ICE observers are helping. Research into how violence occurs shows that disapproval from the people around you can help reduce it.

For @msnownews.bsky.social, I wrote an article about how ICE Watch is grounded in sociological theories of violence prevention.

The reality is that most men will only commit public violence in extremely specific scenarios and ICE Watch disrupts the conditions necessary for escalation.

They've certainly been encouraged by the administration to be their worst selves. I think they're also playing up the campaign narrative that they're going after violent criminals (by creating the violence).

Great news I've been short listed for the FIFA Prize in Chemistry for my work in never even a little bit trying to do chemistry.

A screenshot of a Facebook post where a person named Andy ask the Well now “What the hell is transgender?” The Royal Canadian Air Force account response with “That’s a pretty big question asked in a pretty small way, Andy. ‘Transgender’ putting describes someone whose gender – who they know themselves to be – doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not a fad. People have lived this experience for as long as people have existed; we’re just finally talking about it openly. You don’t have to fully understand it right away, most learning takes time, but we can always start from a place of respect. That’s how decent folks handle things they’re still getting used to.”

Massive shoutout out to whoever handles the Royal Canadian Air Force’s social media account. They responded to every single comment on their already very solid Trans Day of Remembrance post and they responded like this…

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/national-security-presidential-memorandum-nspm-8/

Trump's mechanism to pay the troops during the shutdown is by far the most illegal budgetary action he's taken as POTUS, potentially setting the stage to break everything.

It's also needless because Congress would easily pass a troop pay bill if Johnson were willing to gavel in.

Long thread.

If the gap between how smart you think you are and how smart you actually are is big enough, it almost doesn't matter how smart you are anymore.

When a reasonably smart person gets way outside their lane and is sure they know better, they look really really stupid. More humble people more aware of the bounds of their knowledge and skill think to gather more information or lean on others' expertise.

I've had a related thought, broader and less insightful, that apparent or practical intelligence is actual intelligence divided by self-estimated intelligence.

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest. There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day. What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid. It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

Trump breaks things doing whatever lawless nonsense, but you can't do lawless nonsense to fix things because one of the broken things is people's acceptance of lawless nonsense.

I've a thought I can't quite articulate, but it's something like: how do you rebuild the system when this regime falls- as it will, eventually - when the thing you need to rebuild is adherence to law, the very adherence to which will prevent you from fixing the things these people broke.

Acts of political violence aren’t acceptable. Non-political school shootings aren’t acceptable. Sacking the legislature isn’t acceptable. Military occupation of peaceful American cities isn’t acceptable. Abductions conducted in courthouse hallways by masked agents of the state aren’t acceptable.

I'd argue this is universal, not just Windows. Do one thing, do it well, or else it becomes a mess

Is this that free speech they promised?

That's interesting. I also use them as a software developer but it sounds like your experience is different than mine. Even with all the tools, results improve, but we're still kinda crossing our fingers, hoping for the best, and skeptically reviewing.

If you have proposals for solutions, I'd love to know. I want better results too. But so far in your replies, I'm only finding what you want it to do, not how an LLM can do that with an understanding of how LLMs work.

If it could do that, wouldn't it have gotten it right in the first place? I think we're circling around the problem here–LLMs don't "think", they probabilistically produce things that look like answers. It's a wonder that they're right as often as they are.

I've tried, and sort of? They really, really like to guess. And when I try to instruct one to stop if it doesn't have the information available, it will usually do as much as it can infer, even if it veers slightly off-task.

Trump is an idiot, but he has the fascist cunning: he knows how to pick out weak groups that stronger people are afraid to defend. he is doing that right now. we can either explain how they'd need to be different to earn fuller and louder protection, or we can just defend them

I think this should have been clear as soon as he won the second election. J6 proved Republican lawmakers would continue to back him no matter what. And if he amasses so much power in the office of the president, he and his party can't afford to let Democrats win it.

The man cannot handle being corrected or contradicted. At this point, it's not about the election, it's about being unquestionable.

"What makes you so much worthier of your peace?" is bang on.

What a weenie

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

In my line of work, it makes good, experienced workers better but inexperienced and thoughtless workers worse. I imagine that's true of many jobs.

It is important to remember that this fight is between those for the rule of law, and those against rule of law. Not liberal vs. conservative, or left vs right. Right now, we have to dispense with our reflexive tribalism.

Stepping back, this is also a part of a larger discussion — one that I think of as the “there’s no point“ nihilism approach to the administration. There absolutely will be people on the left who take that approach — just as there were in the Reagan years and in the George W. Bush administration — but I think that is both wrong and in some cases dangerous. Not all challenges will succeed. The point, though, as I see it, is (at least) three-fold: First, the Trump administration must be forced to defend its actions that veer afield of or ignore the law. Second, the courts must be forced to weigh in. We must not allow Trump’s actions to pass by without forcing the court to either stop illegal acts or, in essence, own those acts that clearly violate federal law. Third, particularly in light of the current failure of congressional Democrats to unify in opposition to Trump’s actions, every effort possible should be taken by others to reduce the harm imposed by Trump administration will be important. Some efforts will not even aim to stop an action, having a purpose of reducing harm. It will take work and it won’t always succeed, but it is always important.

*taps sign with small type and way too many words but it's important so*

Not everyone can fight Trumpism and Trumpists directly. But remember this: kindness, decency, and fidelity to American values are defiance in the face of Trumpism.

So be kind, decent, and faithful, particularly to the many kinds of people despised and attacked by Trumpists. That’s revolutionary./1

Still trying to work out how Trump's proclamation of an energy emergency is consistent with his efforts to cut back on wind energy.