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If youβre wondering why I keep posting about my nonfiction legal history book on the origins of American migration and citizenship that is out on March 24 (see bio for link)β¦.
New from 404 Media: Proton Mail, the privacy-focused email service, gave authorities data that let the FBI unmask an anonymous 'Stop Cop City' protester. It was payment data linked to the anonymous email account. From that, FBI ID'd them, then tracked their movements www.404media.co/proton-mail-...
Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.
This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.
A UC Berkeley student spoke out forcefully this week after a hit-and-run driver struck her at Zachary's Corner β 17 years after a little boy was killed by a driver at the same intersection.
βI am angry that the city that I love allowed an accident that should not have happened."
www.berkeleyscanner.com/2026/02/28/t...
At what point will this city demonstrate even a shred of competence? Just assign a guy to go out there and pour concrete tomorrow. No public input! You can simply do things!
The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. How it works:
The University of Texas System has passed a set of rules regulating the teaching of "controversy." The administration of each university in the system gets to decide what constitutes controversy. I've published an op-ed in the Austin Statesman respoonding.
NEW: Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils & paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to detainees and others. After one inspection, the children just βcried and cried and cried,β a mother said. The facility denies the claims.
By @mckenziefunk.com @micarosenberg.bsky.social
These are βlow enrollmentβ majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.
join me: www.zeffy.com/en-US/donati...
NEW: A hobbyist has created Nearby Glasses, an app that warns you if someone close by is wearing smart glasses. 404 Media spoke to the creator who said he was inspired by our coverage that uncovers how men are wearing Meta's Ray-Bans to covertly film massage parlor workers.
In just a couple of weeks @bcnm.bsky.social will be hosting our Native Seas series, a week-long educational program with several traditional navigators, including students and relatives of Papa Mau Piailug, from the Northern Mariana Islands!!
Check it out!
bcnm.berkeley.edu/events/13/ar...
'In the UT system nearly 46% of the population is Latino. And where Latino students are the majority in public schools, calling the histories, literatures, and political realities of these communities βcontroversialβ is not about neutrality. It is about deciding whose knowledge is expendable.'
FREE FENTONβS FOR LIFE????? apple.news/ABtjlZBxlS-2...
Artist Edward Goreyβs βThe Iron Tonic: Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valleyβ (1969) that depicts a cemetery with the words βThe monuments above the dead are too eroded to be read.β
βMy mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible...because thatβs what the world is like.β - Chicagoβs very own Edward Gorey, who was born on this day in 1925.
Reminder for tomorrow π£
Help shape Berkeleyβs behavioral health priorities at a community input meeting Tuesday, Feb 17, 6β7:30pm at North Berkeley Senior Center.
Learn more:
"It's very possible that comedy podcasting will turn out to be the reason God put me on this Earth.
Isn't that disappointing?"
-Elliott Kalan, "Joke Farming"
@flophousepodcast.com
Another great clip from our HIGH ROLLERS ep, featuring @jordanmorris.bsky.social
flophousepodcast.com
I fear poking the AI bear, but do you think law profs should have to disclose AI use?
I have yet to use AI (under the old school assumption that I am being paid to create original scholarship and it should be mine alone). I know others have different opinions.
But should folks have to disclose?
Posting the preliminary list with alt-text, and to also comment that this is literally just a list of the top schools in the nation.
It seems like someone looking for the best and brightest would be working to find ways to get their top brass into these institutions.
404 Media bought a superbowl ad, and it's the charming, feel-good story you need today www.404media.co/watch-404-med...
The new training from the Texas Medical Board comes nearly 5 years after the state passed its strict abortion ban in 2021. ProPublicaβs reporting has shown that pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effec www.propublica.org/article/texa...
The undergrads on my campus are having a retro-nostalgia party⦠for the wayback year of 2016.
The FBI was able to access Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's Signal messages because she used Signal on her work laptop. The laptop accepted Touch ID for authentication, meaning the agents were allowed to require her to unlock it. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
Feb 1
You know we always kick off with the Statue of Liberty.
This is especially relevant this year, when we're pretending that fascism against immigrants is a new low for the US, by ignoring fascism against Black people.
Read the whole linked thread.
SCOOP: 404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, a tool Palantir made for ICE which brings up dossiers on individual people and provides a βconfidence scoreβ of their address.
The full user guide here:
Archaeologists have discovered a 1,400-year-old Zapotec tomb in southern Mexico, adorned with complex carvings, which has been called βthe most significant archaeological discovery of the last decade.β https://cnn.it/3M2MzQP