Daniel Laurison

I'm not reposting the images out of Tehran but my thoughts are with the people there and my friends and everyone else worried about their families.

Totally. I'd give $ to get to hang out with my kids at 2 & 4 again (for a few hours). But I still don't get what the poster can't access.

So the grievance is not actually visible in the picture, it's that kids don't play in public playgrounds anymore wherever that poster is? That is sad....

I am so mystified I am almost tempted to go on Twitter and ask. Or at least look at the replies and see if I can figure it out.

Or maybe it's a troll account and this isn't actually a real* conservative grievance?

*real to them, at least.

My very immediate neighborhood in Philly has a lot of fairly well-off professionals (and a range of other class positions too) but Philly overall is a poor city. There are parts of the city with much worse playground access, and ours aren't as good as e.g. the ones in richer places I've seen. But.

Serious question: I just do not understand what in this picture is no longer available, aside from being a kid in 2003.

There are at least 3 playgrounds that look more or less like that within a 10-15 minute walk of my house in Philly.

Did they take down all the playgrounds elsewhere?

The one that costs $35 - if I read the sign right - for a one-time pass?

I also did see a few seats in an "arrival" hall and in the MARC waiting area, but none where they used to be in front of the gates.

Ok 2 was going to be that the guy I sat next to on Amtrak was watching TV on his phone without headphones but he's stopped now.

Also my train was/is so far on time. So my main complaint is now just I'm tired and I wish I had a seat to myself.

Peopling Politics

I had a great 3 days of symposium/conferencing, and I'm very proud of what we've put together in peoplingpolitics.com.

And I'm very tired so I am just going to post some travel complaints:

1. When did they get rid of ALL THE CHAIRS at Union Station?? Whose idea was it and can we put them back?

Police body cam footage shows DOGE knew Institute of Peace was private property during raid Footage obtained by The Handbasket’s lawsuit shows a hostile takeover on March 17, 2025.

SCOOP — Body camera footage obtained as a result of my lawsuit against the DC Metropolitan PD confirms DOGE and the Trump administration openly admitted they were entering private property when they raided the building on March 17, 2025. That didn't stop MPD from breaking down the doors.

My report:

Cover of Tey Meadow's book, Trans Kids.

If you were at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting today and you did not come to Tey Meadow's Robin M Williams lecture, you missed a brilliant, moving, engaging, important talk.

If you have a way to invite Tey to your campus or community, do it.

I am once again tapping the "support independent, worker-owned, billionaire free news" sign. the most powerful people in the world should not be deciding whether or not we know about this sort of thing. putting Marisa's subscription link below

The Bygone Era of Supreme Court Support for Voting Rights Sixty years after upholding the Voting Rights Act, the Court has dismantled most of it.

Tomorrow marks the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. It also marks the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court first upholding the Voting Rights Act.

We have gotten so, so far away from a Court that cares about democracy.

New from me at @brennancenter.org:

The first edition was great, I used it to teach. Highly recommend.

I accidentally bought three of the first edition because I was so excited about it (then used it to teach a class).

How much new and different in the 2nd edition? I will just get one.

Psyched to be here at Peopling Politics, Bringing the People Back in, a symposium on race, class and inequality in US politics.
Excited to hear some of my longtime intellectual heroes outside of psych like @daniellaurison.bsky.social , @alondra.bsky.social and @povertyscholar.bsky.social

We were promised that the rich were going to leave NYC after Mamdani won and instead we have this...

This was at least 15 years ago.

Other people seemed to be enjoying themselves. I was not but I was trying very hard to be a good sport.

My dancer said no words and gave me no instructions for the entire million years (4ish minutes) of the piece, except to sometimes move me to a different part of the stage. At the end she said thank you and I said sorry.

I was the only audience member on stage for what seemed like eons. My dancing skills are stereotypical awkward nerdy white man skills. I just tried to sort of bounce to the beat as best I could. Eventually the other 10-15 dancers came on stage with their audience members

They have a number where they go into the audience and bring people on to the stage. I did not know this. I was sitting on the aisle. I made eye contact with the first dancer to come off the stage into the audience, she took my hand and took me up to the stage and started dancing.

I danced like I was in that nightmare where you're on a stage and you don't have any idea what you're supposed to do. But I don't have that nightmare anymore.

I have danced on stage with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater company. In front of people. A lot of them.

I am entirely unsure which kind of engineer my maternal grandpa was!

Mom's dad - I believe "engineer" but that's all I've got, he died when she was 15 and I didn't get more info before she got Alzheimer's. Not sure if she HAD more info though, my kids when they were 15 knew I taught college but would have been fuzzy on much more.

Your replies must be very gen-x/our age-ish! Lots of grandpas who were war age during WWII.

Dad's biological dad - all I ever heard was he came back from WWIi an abusive alcoholic, and my grandma kicked him out and was a single mom for 5-6 years.

Dad's stepdad - tugboat captain. He wasn't very nice either but he was gone 2-4 weeks at a time, and my grandma thought that was fine.

Saw a thoughtful thread about AI, don't want to QT or argue. But. The biggest rage factor with LLMs is the people who, because genAI is transformative for coding, think it's transformative for everything else, because they devalue every other form of work and labor and knowledge.

This is exactly the same kind of general category error that so many Smart Boys seem to make—they may know a lot about one specific thing so it stands to reason that they are capable of understanding anything and everything else in the world with ease

Nice pull and an important reminder that, no, things haven't always been like this.