brass solidarity band covering sounds of blackness βhold on (change is coming)β at the abolish ICE festival taking place across the street from where federal agents murdered alex pretti in minneapolis
How do everyday people in authoritarian regimes think about politics? And how do the public's attitudes shape the way autocrats govern? Tony Zirui Yang and I have a new chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Authoritarian Politics that reviews academic research on these questions: doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...
there's a thing I like to call "load-bearing assumptions", that you don't notice until they're suddenly gone (e.g the air you breath has oxygen in it).
the post-ww2 order is a load-bearing assumption for basically the entirety of american life. trump took a sledgehammer to it in the last 90 days.
Gosh, things really changed after 2020. What could have happened since then?
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
And thereβs Keith whose career went from coal miner to access course to professor of history. Adam Tickell wouldnβt have wanted either of them.
One of my most interesting recent students has no A-levels, mostly because she lived in 14 childrenβs homes in 18 years. She has however a burning desire to learn and has read widely and deeply. Tickell would throw her on the scrap heap.
This appalling fat cat wants to shut the door on all my mature students, many of whom left school after GCSE and give up a lot to go to university. I can tell him that theyβre the hungriest for education and far from being unable to graduate, they regularly get the highest grades. Hateful man.
By the excellent @timothysnyder.bsky.social
Damn, might have spoken too soon. Let's see where this goes.
At least this clarifies matters -if the government pursue Mahmood's proposals on "earned settlement"/ILR they will be explicitly allying themselves with Lam and Jenrick's ethnonationalist agenda.
The Oligarchical Corridor
open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...
Starmer may have found his moment in not being Tony Blair.
π’ Birmingham UCU members β the Employment Rights Act 2025 is now live and itβs a big shift for us in HE.
Key points for staff at UoB:
Unfair dismissal: qualifying service will fall to 6 months and the cap on compensation is going, increasing the risk to employers who sack staff unfairly.
1/4
This is my district. Worth pointing out Rodney Sadler isn't just a rhetorical activist; he's actually been arrested at protests. Contrast with Cunningham, whose vote was "decisive" because it gave the GOP the final vote they needed to *override the governor's veto* of the ICE compliance bill.
Labour quoting Hannah Spencer's victory speech.
This is what happens when you have a military lead by the kind of people who think wars are fought like Call of Duty games.
Taking the sign out of the window.
Spanish PM Pedro SΓ‘nchez on Iran: βSpain is against this disaster. Because we understand that governments are here to improve people's lives, to provide solutions to problems, not to make people's lives worse.
1/2
What an absolute bunch of fuckwits.
Added to Glasmanβs unique way with words and the βwhat we did over the summerβ memo, the defining feature of Blue Labour appears to have been acting like macho, βdeeds not wordsβ guys while writing flowery sixth form poetry in the guise of campaign strategy.
Proud moment: our air purifiers are being rolled out to more than 200 schools across London, UK. Schools should be among the first places to have cleaner air.
Antonio Guterres is up first at this Security Council meeting. He condemns this morningβs strikes by Israel and the US on Iran, and the return strikes by Iran on countries in the region. There is, he says, no alternative to the peaceful settlement of disputes
Genuinely wild how this administration isn't even *trying* to make a case for this war
"If President Trump wants to use military force in Iran, he should first seek authorization from US Congress"
Agree: 67%
Disagree: 17%
Disagree Among:
GOP: 36%
IND: 11%
DEM: 4%
YouGov / Feb 23, 2026
So weβre just going to spend billions in bombs, kill the Ayatollah, temporarily degrade their military, then walk away and hope they learned their lesson? Thatβs the plan?