@femmenoire
Pprofessor. Black environmental literature, war, and 19th century Black life. President of C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists. Plant and poetry lover. Forthcoming book: Captive Ecologies: The Environmental Afterlives of Slavery (Duke UP). D.C.
"Palantir CEO Alex Karp says his AI technology will lessen the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men."
Just saying it right out loud now.
newrepublic.com/post/207693/...
NEW: The Iranian drone strike that killed 6 U.S. troops in Kuwait at the start of the war was far more devastating than previously disclosed.
Dozens suffered traumatic brain injuries, burns, and shrapnel wounds. At least one required an amputation. More than 30 remain hospitalized. (CBS News)
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.
I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here's what I can share:
A DOGE staffer assigned to the National Endowment for the Humanities to flag grants for "DEI" tries to explain what "DEI" is. This deposition is part of a lawsuit by the @acls1919.bsky.social, @historians.org and @modernlanguage.bsky.social.
Grammarly declined my request to interview CEO Shishir Mehrotra today. But it told me that in response to criticisms, it will allow experts to opt out of the feature by emailing expertoptout@superhuman.com. The company gave me this statement over email: We’ve heard the feedback about this tool and appreciate the engagement from those who have taken the time to raise thoughtful questions about the functionality and the experts surfaced. We agree that the product experience can be improved for both users and experts. The agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship that add value to their work. We want the people behind those perspectives to have greater control over whether their name is used, while providing new ways for influential voices to reach new audiences. Our goal is to improve Expert Review to deliver this outcome.
NEWS: Grammarly tells me it will let "experts" like me opt out of having their names used against their will and for no compensation as part of its "expert review" feature www.platformer.news/grammarly-ex...
The NYT will clean it up for him, per usual
Like a top
People need to witness this
This. Aside from his utterly ignorant and offensive position on "identity politics," his beliefs are closest to mine. But he lost the primaries, and that's an indication that he was not viable nationwide. I just hate when people are so *certain* he would have been elected. It's speculation.
Picture of DOGE guy Nate Cavanaugh
Screenshot of my DOGE letter “Dr. Joseph Rezek Dear NEH Grantee, This letter provides notice that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is terminating your federal grant (Grant Application No. FEL29509824) effective April 3, 2025, in accordance with the termination clause in your Grant Agreement. Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes, as outlined in 2CFR§200.340. For instance, NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda. The President's February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions. See Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, E.O. 14217 (Feb. 19, 2025). Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. Any objections or appeals to this termination will be managed in strict accordance with the President's Executive Orders,
Last year, this guy (left) from DOGE used ChatGPT to find NEH grants that were too “DEI” for Trump, and canceled them, including mine, as shown by the letter I received last April (right). Huge new NYT article on the back story link below
I've made 7 free online courses to help you read Karl Marx
Reading Marx's Capital v1 (2019 & 2007 eds)
Reading Marx's Capital v2
Reading Marx's Grundrisse (2023 & 2020 eds)
Marx, Capital, & the Madness of Economic Reason
The ABC of Contemporary Capital
davidharvey.org/reading-capi...
Nice!
A great conversation.
Let me be clear: I’m glad Kristi Noem was fired. But we still have to abolish ICE.
Cover of Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculative Fiction by Justin L. Mann. The cover features the Pillars of Creation, a star forming region in the galaxy, in orange and warm hues against a brilliant star-filled sky. The title is directly over the image in a bold, white sans-serif italicized text. The subtitle is smaller in the same white type in the bottom right corner. The author's name appears in the top left corner in the same type.
Save 30% on #NewBook "Breaking the World," in which Justin Mann @scottsvisor.bsky.social analyzes the work of Octavia E. Butler, Colson Whitehead, Janelle Monáe, and other Black artists to show how their practices of speculation counter the antiblack world of the security state. buff.ly/SKMFg6E
It doesn't get better
Not going to lie, my immediate thought is that that professor should be fired.
My colleagues, do your fucking jobs yourselves like god damn adults. If you don't want to grade it, don't assign it.
morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/blm-announ... there's info on who to complain to to try to stop this at the end of the article, lets share this message and try our best to stop it.
It's all of a piece. There's a reason that children & teens torturing and killing helpless animals is a key indicator of later psychopathy.
Even more of a reason to ask
JFC
Who'da thunk it? No one with a single brain cell is in charge and the whole world is going to pay
Tr*mp is saying that the Obama agreement legally permitted Iran to develop nukes. He continues the time-honored Republican tradition of making shit up to get the country into Mideast wars.
Yes. All of the ways since Vietnam have been started under Republicans. There's rhetoric you use to prove to male voters you are tough as nails (and I hated that line) and the reality of Biden-Harris policy regarding the U.S. military, which was constraint.
The president didn't bother to make the case for war in a marathon State of the Union address and then he fucked off to his sweaty gilded country club so he could literally phone in an unconstitutional war.
Every single Democrat needs to be screaming about this at full volume.
I think people forget that all of the wars we have been in since Vietnam were started under Republicans.
I hate that we have let Palestine suffer, and they are absolutely complicit in that. But that doesn't mean they would out of nowhere start a war that they did everything possible to avoid!
This frankly illogical. Violent regime change in Iran was not their policy, nor was containing nukes by non diplomatic means. Obama-Biden didn't do it (they negotiated the nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of). Biden-Harris didn't do it during their term and in fact got us out of the Mideast.
I remember arguing with someone who claimed that if Al Gore had won over Bush, he would have invaded Iraq. What? That war was a Bush-Cheney concoction that they lied to get us into for their own idiosyncratic reasons (to avenge the elder Bush and oil).
Trump in 2011: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”
