Gary Brase

Billionaires’ % share of federal election spending in:

2008: 0.3%

2024: 19%

@nytimes.com #GildedAge
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...

pan of cute biscuits decorated to look like faces

same pan baked, a horrific fucked up mass of evil

how it started/how it's going

I grabbed this data from the USDA and made a graph.

I've changed my mind - I think 'population collapse with the survivors remaining enslaved to the whims of their owners' makes horses a brilliant analogy for what happens if fully capable human-like AI ever really did take over our jobs.

Of all the analogies, this one about horses is the dumbest.

great stuff by @davekarpf.bsky.social

"Journal articles aren’t social science. They’re just a unit of measurement. They’re how we keep score. Producing journal articles isn’t what we are actually meant to be doing — we’re supposed to be learning meaningful things about people, power, and society."

A highly complex website showing two betting accounts earning nearly $500,000 and $120,000 on a minimal number of positions.

In case you were wondering, Polymarket had yet another spate of likely inside traders betting that the US would strike Iran by February 28.

Per the due diligence investigation service Bubblemaps, the wallets used were created 24 hours earlier.

The Pentagon Pizza Index has been replaced.

percent of sentences in state of the union addresses since carter that express grievances. HUGE spikes for trump. 12% in 2020, 11% in 2026

a striking chart

www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

lots of good points have already been made on using AI Agents for cheating (e.g. the latest Canvas-bot), it degrades learning, etc.

One additional thing I'd like to point out: if you use this stuff, you're not being clever, you're just an asshole.

to explain:

The Kansas state capitol, in Topeka, next to an image on the campus of the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas.

Kansas May Withhold Millions From Universities With ‘DEI-CRT’ in Gen Ed

The budget bill would also freeze tuition revenue, allow institutions to fire tenured faculty faster and develop plans to eliminate a tenth of positions and expenses from universities’ leadership offices. https://bit.ly/46JE988

Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

Opinion | Affordability and the ‘Epstein Class’ Will Define American Politics

“When Citizens United was decided in 2010, billionaires had spent $18 million on the 2000 election, $13M 2004 and $16M in 2008. Then came the deluge. In 2012 it was $231M, and nearly doubled again in next three election cycles —to $682M in 2016, $1.2 billion in 2020 and $2.6 billion in 2024.” Gift:

An illustration of an organizational chart with stick-like blue human figures standing in the various boxes.

Opinion | Counting Vice Presidents Misses the Point

The growth of administrative titles is not what is hollowing out institutional capacity... It is what happens when leadership repeatedly avoids the more challenging work of setting priorities and enforcing limits. https://bit.ly/4r5vwNw

Link should now be working again. Apologies. tvpollet.github.io/2026-01-30-D...

👇

Do you use SEM because it looks cleaner?

SEM vs. SD = one of the most quietly damaging figure-making habits in biology

Let’s clear it up

(a thread)

US court allows ICE to arrest and pepper-spray peaceful protestors in Minnesota

Appeals Court Stays Restrictions on Federal Tactics in Minnesota The Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request to block, at least for now, a lower court’s injunction limiting how federal agents interact with protesters in the state.

One court decision, two different headlines.

Guardian on the left, NY Times on the right. Which one more directly conveys information and the stakes to the reader?

Headline: "Scientists discover emperor penguin colony in Antarctica using satellite images"

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

Screenshot of a data visualization titled “The Cost of American Exceptionalism,” subtitled “What would change if the U.S. matched the OECD average?” The page explains that each card shows how outcomes would change if the U.S. matched the average of 31 peer democracies. Below, a section labeled “Economy & Inequality” displays eight cards comparing U.S. figures to OECD averages. Highlights include: +$19K per household per year in redistributed income and +$96K in redistributed wealth if the top 1% matched OECD shares; a 71% lower CEO-to-worker pay ratio (from 354× to 101×); 50 million more workers with union coverage; 26 million more people with health insurance; $2.1 trillion saved annually in healthcare spending; $691 less per person per year in prescription drug costs; and intergenerational economic mobility being twice as high. Each card shows the U.S. value alongside the OECD average.

If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:

America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.

What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵

ICE has kidnapped so many people from their cars that the city had to put out this statement. Let that sink in.

ICE has escalated from
Arresting undocumented migrants with criminal records to
Arresting undocumented migrants without criminal records to
Arresting legal migrants to
Arresting US citizens who 'look' like migrants to
Arresting US citizens protesting ICE to
Arresting random bystanders.
Who's next?

so like.... that's just pollution then

Notable how Mayor Frey and MN Sen Tina Smith both used the word fuck.

“Midwest nice” has reached its limit

Trump says Venezuela stole U.S. oil, land and assets. Here’s the history. The government of the oil-rich nation took control of its petroleum industry in 1976, nationalizing hundreds of private businesses and foreign-owned assets.

WaPo Headline: “Trump says Venezuela stole US oil… Here’s the history”

para8: “But US companies never owned oil or land in Venezuela…and officials didn’t kick them out of the country.
“Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil+land from the US is baseless”

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

Wikipedia is truly one of the greatest things on the Internet. It is absolutely incredible, and must be preserved at all costs.

Oh look, a machine for false advertising designed to defeat any class treatment even without arbitration clauses!

THIS THIS THIS. ALL OF THIS

THIS is why faculty resist technological strategies for teaching. There is no engaging with Edtech without this context

DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

One reasonable guess is that censoring this report will actually cause *more* people to watch it and hear about it.

WOW: The DOJ has DELETED an image from its release of the Epstein files that shows photos of Trump in a drawer.

Yesterday, we noted that this image — file 468 — likely slipped through the cracks while officials were attempting to hide materials pertaining to Trump.

Now, it’s gone.