And sometimes they just say it out loud: business and profit > human life

The blast radius of how much this is going to suck is going to be huge. Best practice for creatives in Hollywood, for crude self interested reasons alone, is to stay as far away from whatever the fuck is going on at Paramount as possible

I saw, during my reporting in Hungary, how much putting friendly oligarchs in charge of the media matters in authoritarian consolidation.

That's starting to happen in the United States. www.vox.com/politics/462...

Hey all, apparently many book preorders have the effect of extending the life of the book, so here is where to preorder mine, with a 30% discount when you order it through the U of Minnesota Press website using the discount code: MN93640 @uminnpress.bsky.social www.upress.umn.edu/978151791990...

Down to Extract with Zac Efron and Ewan McGregor: How Streaming Travel Docuseries and Sustainability Discourses Map Racial Geographies in Central America This article examines the growing number of streaming travel documentary programs. Often anchored by white male Hollywood actors, I interrogate how these series represent the Global South and Centr...

I wrote about the onslaught of streaming shows with male celeb hosts traveling the world in the name of "sustainability," and how they promote extractive practices in Central America. Part of an awesome issue of Environmental Communication on Green Storytelling www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NKRYK...

An distant overhead view shows a camp with large white barracks tucked amid grass and vegetation in Florida.

A vintage black and white image shows rows of barracks in an austere landscape in far southern Chile.

On the left:
Trump's immigrant concentration camp in the Everglades

On the right:
A camp built for high level political prisoners by the Chilean military during the early Pinochet regime — located on Isla Dawson, near Tierra del Fuego.

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy.

I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

This is how you get a police state.

the president does not actually have the power to fire a university president or a museum director, but if elites simply roll over under pressure, then effectively he does

I wrote about HBO's Looking, Omar Apollo and the instability of Latinx Brownness for Aztlán (all inspired by Apollo's TinyDesk concert) Check out both!
online.ucpress.edu/aztlan/artic...

I wrote about HBO's Looking, Omar Apollo and the instability of Latinx Brownness for Aztlán (all inspired by Apollo's TinyDesk concert) Check out both!
online.ucpress.edu/aztlan/artic...

ICE Moves to DNA-Test Families Targeted for Deportation with New Contract Advocates worry the tests will pave the way for the Trump administration to separate children from their caregivers.

I'm repeatedly struck that all the scenarios the critical data studies / algorithmic bias / smart cities scholars warned us about over the past 10-15 years are now manifesting simultaneously

something to be said about how these people view americans as inputs to be used up by capital

feels like the next big societal divide, far beyond any mere generational or ideological gaps, will emerge between those who do their best to hold onto real and tangible creations and skills, and those who outsource all facets of everyday life to middling bots

‘Fireflies At El Mozote:’ Salvadoran Civil War Drama Starring Paz Vega Lands North American Distribution Deal The film was written and directed by Ernesto Melara.

Intrigued that they are making a film about El Mozote...but the cast is not inspiring confidence deadline.com/2025/04/fire...

“Am I White?”: Race, Ethnicity, and Emotion in Latinx DNA Reaction Videos on YouTube In this article, I analyze a set of videos published by Latinx YouTube channel Pero Like, entitled “Latinos get their DNA tested.” The videos, uploaded between 2016 and 2022, each feature 5 Latinx ...

Published in a new journal, Communication and Race, which has one of the most amazing editorial boards I've seen, so many scholars whose work has shaped my own. I examine Latinx DNA Reaction videos and how they trouble the principle of mestizaje.
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FG6MQ...

“Am I White?”: Race, Ethnicity, and Emotion in Latinx DNA Reaction Videos on YouTube In this article, I analyze a set of videos published by Latinx YouTube channel Pero Like, entitled “Latinos get their DNA tested.” The videos, uploaded between 2016 and 2022, each feature 5 Latinx ...

Published in a new journal, Communication and Race, which has one of the most amazing editorial boards I've seen, so many scholars whose work has shaped my own. I examine Latinx DNA Reaction videos and how they trouble the principle of mestizaje.
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FG6MQ...

SCOTUS cited Reno v Flores, a case fired by four Salvadorian teenagers 40 years ago! Salvadorian people, including children, have fundamentally shaped the social, legal, and political contours of the U.S.

We hear *about* Salvis but don’t hear *from* Salvis. Again: diversify your go-to experts.

Why do people keep thinking this man doesn’t mean his threats when he has delivered on each on of them? He’s telling you he’s turning the USA into a dictatorship. Believe him and act accordingly.

Bill Gates: Within 10 years, AI will replace many doctors and teachers—humans won't be needed ‘for most things' Over the next decade, advances in artificial intelligence will mean that humans will no longer be needed "for most things" in the world, says Bill Gates.

It’s patently false, but notice that “humans won’t be needed” to these people is identified as the desired future rather than the deeply dystopian vision that it actually is.

Why El Salvador Is Doing Trump’s Dirty Work Why is a foreign government incarcerating hundreds of immigrants on the United States’ behalf?

For Slate, I wrote about the deportations to El Salvador and how Bukele is selling out the country

slate.com/news-and-pol...

he thinks he’s king. he issues executive orders (royal decrees) and the entire society is expected to obey

Together, Trump and Musk are trying to rewrite the rules of the American system. They are trying to instantiate an anti-constitutional theory of executive power that would make the president supreme over all other branches of government. They are doing so in service of a plutocratic agenda of austerity and the upward redistribution of wealth. And the longer Congress stands by, the more this is fixed in place.

Again, if Musk had been elected to some office, this would still be one of the worst abuses of executive power in American history. No one in the executive branch has the legal authority to unilaterally cancel congressional appropriations. No one has the legal authority to turn the Treasury payments system into a means of political retribution. No one has the authority to summarily dismiss civil servants without cause. No one has the authority to take down and scrub government websites of public data, itself paid for by American taxpayers. And no private citizen has the authority to access the sensitive data of American citizens for either information gathering or their own, unknown purposes. The thing, of course, is that Musk isn't elected. He is a private citizen. He was neither confirmed for a cabinet job nor formally appointed to a high-level position within the administration. He does not even have a presidential commission; he has been designated a "special government employee." Musk says that he is acting on the authority of the president of the United States. Even still, it is not as if the president nftha lInitad Ctatachne the authoritietn

Clear-eyed, direct NYT op-ed by @jamellebouie.net using the kind of non-euphemistic language the headlines should embrace: