separkinson.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I would expect to see far more usage of private security & "deputized" groups (whether formally or not) to engage in policing, intimidation, & coercion in the US. The gaslight-y, obfuscatory "we don't know who hired them" line is classic authoritarian strategy. Just google "shabiha" or "baltagiya."

submitted 4 hours ago • 1 comment

"One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement. This is part of a much larger pattern of disrespect, even disdain, for the rule of law. We do not need JAG leaders who fit this pattern."-Frank Kendall, former secretary of the Air Force. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/o...

submitted 4 hours ago • 1 comment

It is horrifying watching the government erase a demographic in real time and most people just not really caring.

submitted 6 days ago • 76 comments

The NAACP is re-mixing 1930s-era "don't buy where you can't work" campaigns to confront the neo-segregationists targeting DEI. apnews.com/article/blac...

submitted 8 days ago • 66 comments

“It’s really difficult for me to imagine a world in which the Trump administration’s statements about Ukraine in the last 48 hours were not quid pro quo for Fogel’s release.” Pleasure to chat with @jonallendc.bsky.social for this piece! 👇 www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

We're in the political equivalent of the trash compactor on the first Death Star and our elected officials are less competent than C3P0.

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments

If you've ever used the Polity data, read this from Monty Marshall. tl;dr Polity is coding recent US events as an executive self-coup and an adverse regime change.

submitted 12 days ago • 56 comments

If you’re a Visa cardholder you can let them know you won’t be any longer if they do business with fElon. I called and they said they’re taking comments at [email protected]. Maybe if enough of us complain they’ll pull the deal.

submitted 17 days ago • 200 comments

Looking forward to the day when an Egyptian academic publishes a paper on the Philly ultras and their central role in the revolution. 🦅

submitted 14 days ago • 4 comments

Co-sign. Your phone number can get released unexpectedly if you send it to someone who is FOIA’d or sunshined. Academics, that includes emails to state university colleagues. Nuisance FOIAs are exploding. Send signal usernames.

submitted 15 days ago • 7 comments

higher ed is the largest employer in 10 states and in over 60% of the 100 largest cities. destruction of federal research funds is economic sabotage.

submitted 16 days ago • 12 comments

I was interviewed alongside Palestinian scholars in the west bank, Gaza, and the US about where Palestinians go from here www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/o...

submitted 16 days ago • 6 comments

This Guardian piece starts on the right path re: Orban’s Hungary as the blueprint for US conservatives. However, it doesn’t get into many details of how everything progressed in Hungary. Asked an expert on that topic to share accessible reads for the higher ed aspect. Here’s what they gave me. (1)

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

Scientists and journalists need to figure out right quick how to explain to the average person how a massive change in research indirects will impact the medical care they and their children get (eg at the local children’s hospital), the education their children will get, the price of tuition, etc.

submitted 16 days ago • 105 comments

A lot of regions are about to find out just how much their economies rely on universities. For some places, this could be like the town factory closing shop. Not to mention the brain drain. 69% is a lot for overhead. But 15% will decimate the whole knowledge production ecosystem of the country.

submitted 16 days ago • 5 comments

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

submitted 16 days ago • 271 comments

Honestly, the fact that several of my new media subscriptions this year are the outlets breaking essential stories like this gives me hope for journalism. Have read @wired.com for years, but @404media.co and @marisakabas.bsky.social’s the Handbasket have become indispensable.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

Tired: NYT: Young Musk Fans Learn American Civics, Hands-On Wired: Wired: Those Little Rat Fucks Are Still In The Walls

submitted 19 days ago • 51 comments

Not to restart the "coup v. autogolpe" discourse (don't do it, political scientists), but at what point do we call this a digital coup? Or admit that we really have no conceptual language for an unelected fascist billionaire taking control of the state's sinews b/c the elected president let him?

submitted 23 days ago • 4 comments

"When any institution of higher learning...uses fabricated concerns to silence discussion of inconvenient ethical problems, it demonstrates a lack of institutional concern for ethics. It also erodes the foundations of academic freedom articulated by the [AAUP] in 1915." Esp. urgent w/ EO13899 here

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

This is a good piece on multiple levels.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

the assault begins. please do your part: speak up for public radio/tv, write your representative, donate what you can. the right isn't about free speech; it's about limiting public access to news and info.

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

Grant applications are how organizations, students, and researchers "make the case," Karoline.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

We need to talk more explicitly & directly about how all of this authoritarian nonsense is going to kill people

submitted 28 days ago • 17 comments

"Jordan is not Palestine. Jordanians agree on this, and it is not up to Israelis, or Americans...to insist otherwise." Versions of the "send Palestinians to Jordan" plan have been repeatedly rejected b/c it is ethnic cleansing & a denial of Palestinians' right to self determination. From 2018.

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

The Democratic Party could learn an awful lot from Philly sports fans about how to expend boundless, feral energy wrapping oneself around an institution and threatening anyone who came near it.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

This. I’ve often seen people called out for not speaking about something on social media while aware that they were offering important behind-the-scenes support that a public statement would jeopardize. Folks need to be more careful about what they think they know. There are multiple lanes.

submitted 29 days ago • 2 comments

Watch the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

So much of this is just out in the open if you know where to look. It’s just a matter of assembling the data.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

ICYMI: I asked a bunch of biologists to weigh in on Trump's official definitions of "male" and "female" in his executive order declaring only 2 sexes. They are as "nonsensical" as they are embarrassingly detached from basic human biology. www.huffpost.com/entry/biolog...

submitted 31 days ago • 52 comments

Heads up re: access to federal data for reseachers

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

New from me: It's still unclear what exactly DOGE is going to be doing as part of the Trump administration, but what we do know is that by taking over the US Digital Services, it will likely have unprecedented data access across agencies. @wired.com www.wired.com/story/doge-e...

submitted 31 days ago • 43 comments

"...the position of chief diversity officer at NSF was created in August 2022 with the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which funneled $53 billion to revive the sagging U.S. semiconductor industry and promised to double NSF’s budget over 5 years." NSF is following Trump's order for now

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment