Americans Are Now a Target in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown A WSJ investigation tracked the U.S. citizens caught in the crosshairs of an aggressive federal campaign to detain and demonize dissenters.

Gift link:
www.wsj.com/us-news/immi...

Does she get to keep the costumes?

This guy again. He was also convicted for poaching a rare strain of steelhead trout

I mean the starting five was Santos, Post, Moody, Pat Spencer, and Podz. I love all those guys - they have a lot of heart - but the Hampton Five they are not

How the National Park Service Is Deleting American History

A sign at California's Muir Woods National Monument explaining that redwoods soak up planet-warming greenhouse gases has been removed by the Trump administration. One of many ways the National Park Service is now silencing science and history: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/c...

Only a small segment of the public votes on “issues,” or even thinks about the world that way. Those people are over-represented in the media (and also among professional advocates and campaigners).

Love that dude. He was playing so well too

Acceleration of enshittification cycle.

It was supposed to get better first.

The Endangered Species Act Meets the Klamath River Basin - Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West Jacques Leslie is the author of Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for its “elegant, beautiful prose....

New ESA and Klamath from @jacquesleslie.bsky.social
dornsife.usc.edu/icw/2026/01/...

Turns out Common Sense still has a lot to say—about tyrants and gangsters, representative government, religious freedom, wealth, political equality and the universal rights of humankind. And that famous quote. I created an excerpt sheet open.substack.com/pub/brianjay... but read the whole thing

In a band named for the Hofstadter article which you raally should read harpers.org/archive/1964... and Peter Holsapple on guitar, the effect is like a Beltway Jenny Lewis fronting the dBs. Right up my alley.

The Paranoid Style The Paranoid Style was a special committee convened in 2012 in order to address our country's many pressing problems.

This must be the first time I've found a new band because I recognize their byline. Here’s the Paranoid Style theparanoidstyle.bandcamp.com with the music critic Elizabeth Nelson @paranoiacs.bsky.social as singer and lead songwriter.

It still has a lot to say—about the nature of tyrants and gangsters, the benefits of representative government, the desire for religious freedom, and the downsides of wealth, not to mention political equality and the universal rights of humankind. All that plus the case for Independence.

"Common Sense" Turns 250 In an era where people are questioning the first principles of the American experiment, we might re-learn what those principles are — and why they are worth defending

Thomas Paine published Common Sense 250 years ago this week. I can't stop thinking about it so I compiled some quotes and added a little commentary.

brianjayjohnson.substack.com/p/common-sen...

Thank you

Sutro Tower from the Oakland hills against a red sunset

When capitalism bites you in the ass.

The Oceans Just Keep Getting Hotter For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat in 2025. It was equivalent to the energy it would take to boil 2 billion Olympic swimming pools.

“Last year was a bonkers, crazy warming year—that's the technical term,” Abraham joked to me. “The peer-reviewed scientific term is ‘bonkers’.”

www.wired.com/story/the-oc...

Copy editors and all other headline writers should have bylines so people can scream at whoever actually wrote the headline instead of the reporter(s) who wrote the story

That song is so damn good. Didn’t even know her before - now I’m a big fan

He’s true to himself, even when what he says is false. Lots of people value that type of authenticity (or mistake it for being a straight shooter) more than they value carefully-crafted accuracy.

He says what’s on his mind, exactly what he’s thinking. In that sense, it’s authentic — even if it’s bullsh**. Most people have mental filters. Those filters scan as fake for politicians, even if the person is just pausing to make sure what they say is accurate.

Forgot alt text - it's a youtube link for the Freddy Mercury and David Bowie isolated vocals from Under Pressure

Under Pressure (A-Capella) - Only Vocals YouTube video by MisteRhapsody

On repeat this morning - isolated vocal track for Under Pressure. So so good.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMQb...

If I ever heard someone say the Pixies were derivative of Nirvana I would have to speak up

That’s how “diversity” programs work in real life. You know his admissions essay was an early draft of Hillbilly Elegy. Elite schools eat that sh** up.

We pitched it using literal slides until Intel invited me to present at a developer conference and turned my slides into a PowerPoint because it would have been embarrassing. EPA lacked the technology.

(I named it and was the first project manager.) One of these days I’ll write up a history of the early days. I found some old clippings in a folder. We mailed the logo to computer companies on floppy discs that I bought because EPA procurement wouldn’t have handled it. They thought it was hilarious.

Great news, and thank you for the gift article. I’ve been worried they’d just shut it down without waiting for Congress to say yea or nay. Maybe one of your readers will be able to help on the Q of how much damage has already been done. It’s done better than we imagined.

Not saying this is the “right” way. In normal times it definitely would not be. Right now it’s a closer call.