Michi the Adorable Tiny Demon

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One of the first things I learned as a professor is that accommodations don’t make the class/assessment easier — they just make it inclusive. Doing a moral panic on accommodations is just gross and ableist.

It was in those spaces, in the late 2010s, that I realized that the fundamentalist Christians I’d grown up with weren’t the only people enforcing rigid ideas about how others should think. After arriving in New York with mainstream Democratic views, I took classes heavy on critical theories that fixated on identity categories and reflexively decried capitalism and the West. Within influential LGBTQ organizations, gay rights had given way to radical queer politics, and academic theories about sex and gender had hardened into doctrine. Widespread revulsion toward Donald Trump had narrowed the boundaries of permissible discussion on the left. The more Trump and his followers opposed something, the more we were supposed to support it. The prevailing view was that any debate within our side would become ammunition for the right.

For a long time, I feared that if I didn’t keep my thoughts to myself, I would lose the only community I’d ever really belonged in. As controversy flared up nationally about pediatric gender medicine, though, I started voicing concerns, rooted in my own experiences, over what looked to me like a rush to medical treatment. For all the sloganeering about protecting trans kids, I heard no discussion about protecting effeminate gay boys from unnecessary medicalization. When I and others asked whether progressive norms might be nudging effeminate gay boys to think of themselves as girls, no one wanted to hear it. Instead of answers, we were given the LGBTQ community’s official line. “Gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things,” the Human Rights Campaign asserts. But the confidence with which people claim that the two have nothing to do with each other is hard to square with research findings: According to data collected mostly before the recent surge in pediatric-dysphoria diagnoses, most prepubescent children who experienced gender distress went on to experience same-sex attraction and ultimately did not pursue a gender transition. Of 70 adolescents whom Dutch clinicians subjected to puberty suppression from 2000 to 2008, the overwhelming majority were attracted exclusively to people of their biological sex.

Straightforward right-wing agitprop. The idea that thousands of kids were pushed into gender-affirming surgeries because the left shuts down debate is a laughable conspiracy theory. The overwhelming social pressure is to be cis, not trans!

“Black voters are voting for Jasmine Crockett because she’s Black!”

Meanwhile in Michigan John James (also Black) has 0 Black support.

Zero.

Y’all don’t understand us at all and never try to.

So again moderation is turned over to an external source ( usually a woman)

While the data is corrected by an outside source ( usually someone in a heavily colonized country)

While it boils the earth

So one person can have the experience of having a digital yes man …

... Just what exactly does he think the point of Robin Hood's myth is and why it's immensely appealing at this particular point in time?!

"I had to punch that guy because I could tell he was going to hit me back once we jumped him" is just a description of jumping a guy

alt text. this is deranged oh my god

“The memo, addressed to U.S. diplomats, local staff and family members, said that if the ‘extended time’ with your spouse ‘results in the birth of your next child in about 9 months, I of course expect that you will want to name the little bugger after me!’”

I really don't give a crap about how "strong" a candidate's social media game is or how good their zingers are (looking at CA's governor here but he's certainly not alone in getting credit for excellent work done by others), it's not a reliable indicator of how good they'll actually be on the job.

Every primary season is an exhausting wealth of reminders that the increasing number of "candidates running on vibes rather than solid, proven records of doing the real work" is truly a non-partisan problem.

Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate🧧

The last Year of the Fire Horse began in '66 & saw anti-war protests & civil rights struggle. It was the year Rev. Jackson left seminary to join Dr. King’s Freedom Movement.

May 2026 bring New York the same bold change people deserve.

The most disappointing thing about studying administrative capacity is that it's disheartening for your theories to be proven correct. Diminish capacity; things break.

I keep thinking about Executive Order 9066 - Japanese (and Okinawan) Interment. The *hundreds of millions* - likely several billion in 2026 dollars - in property that was seized by the government, stolen by neighbors, damaged, looted, taken over, stolen from Japanese Americans & immigrants.

Brendan Reilly is basically Paul Vallas if Paul Vallas sometimes got punched in the face and tossed out of bars.

Instead of "the left isn't paying enough attention to these machine gods" they're claiming to build, perhaps we should write an article about how effective altruists brand themselves "left", ask who is writing these articles, and trace their cults and sources of funding.

It was so... TAME. Like if Trump didn't want this dude getting any airtime, this whole mess is the exact opposite of what they should've done. OH WELL?

CBS spokesperson Phil Gonzales provided The Verge with the same statement claiming Colbert was not blocked from broadcasting the interview that was given to Variety and other outlets, but refused to attribute it by name per The Verge's background policy. Asked for a name, Gonzales wrote, "Respectfully, you don't need to use the statement. We will keep that in mind next time verge as us to reply [sic]."

Phil Gonzalez from CBS, welcome to the Verge’s background policy www.theverge.com/policy/88000...

MAJESTIC REALTY CO. STATEMENT RE: BUILDING IN HUTCHINS, TEXAS “While we were contacted about the potential sale of our building in Hutchins, Texas, Majestic Realty Co. has not and will not enter into any agreement for the purchase or lease of any building to the Department of Homeland Security for use as a detention facility. We’re grateful for the long-term relationship we have with Mayor Mario Vasquez and the City of Hutchins and look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth.”

BREAKING: Majestic Realty, who owns one of the warehouses ICE was planning to purchase to create a detention camp, announced today that it would not sell to the agency. More at DMagazine.com shortly.

There have been hugely successful campaigns to fight prison and jail construction across the country, especially in rural areas. These bring together hunters, environmentalists, Indigenous people, prison abolitionists, and immigrant advocates as well as people concerned about land use.

A Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured ICE is not required to report any use-of-force incidents against the public. So The American Prospect created our own running tally.

Linda Davis, a K-8 special education teacher, was killed today after ICE pursued a driver fleeing a traffic stop in Georgia.

Linda Davis is one of many people who have died after coming into contact with ICE. The government doesn't record these deaths, but we do.

Haven’t folks figured out by now that this kind of cruelty is a feature not a bug for those guys? Sigh.

It’s not nuts . They are bragging .

I regret to inform you that I have gone further down the terrible rabbit hole that is Elsie the Cow.

If you squint at enough eBay listings trying to read the words, you find a saga of a marriage gone mad.

How The Times Is Digging Into Millions of Pages of Epstein Files

Familiar theme: It would help to have a clearer view of how the sausage is made, and judgment calls are called, inside @nytimes.com

Here is a very useful and interesting step in that direction. Four NYT reporters talk w Patrick Healy on wading through Epstein files.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/i...

About today’s Olympic skating upset, is anyone on the horn to the Vatican for an entire rink’s worth of Holy Water before the pairs & women do their competitions bc this was some potent Friday the 13th vibes holy forkballs 👀

Fucked up, we all know the correct way to watch Ninja Scroll is late at night on an nth generation VHS bootleg, the volume one notch above mute and your finger on the Source button at all times

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Fiber in your diet is great and honestly I don’t understand why one wouldn’t leave the skin on potatoes, like a nicely crisp skin on a baked Idaho is just delicious.

The Ridiculously Interesting History of Weird English Words | Culture Study Get more from Culture Study on Patreon

If you're a moderate to intense word nerd who's always wondered why WEIRD is such a weird word (or yacht, enough, tough, or so many other rule-defying English words) wow do I have the episode for you

www.patreon.com/posts/ridicu...