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Ian Sinclair

@imsinclair

appellate counsel || democracy, inequality, segregation, baked goods || former city planner and low-level bureaucrat || imsinclair.substack.com/

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Latest posts by Ian Sinclair @imsinclair

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FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

05.03.2026 07:15 πŸ‘ 17103 πŸ” 5970 πŸ’¬ 513 πŸ“Œ 493

β€œAlmost all the 165 people killed in the attack were girls aged between seven and 12, according to local officials. There were around 170 girls at the school in southern Iran’s Minab at the time.β€œ

A double-tap strike on little girls at school.

05.03.2026 01:32 πŸ‘ 1875 πŸ” 984 πŸ’¬ 38 πŸ“Œ 69
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Trump Has Been Sued 198 Times for Withholding Funding. It Hasn’t Stopped Him. (Gift Article) Immigration demands for highway dollars, D.E.I. rules for homeless grants: how Trump has tried to wield spending to get his way.

An important piece showing that losses in court haven’t stopped Trump from seizing Congress’s spending power and targeting dissenters and β€œblue states.”

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

04.03.2026 11:30 πŸ‘ 220 πŸ” 126 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 7
Preview
The least human thing you can do I read a story just now about a man in Chicago who saved a baby after its carriage had been blown into the harbor by heavy gusts of wind. Lio Cundiff – who is a trans man not that it should matter her...

Expecting us – with good reason based on history – to all thank them for their service. Fuck your service and fuck you.

Saving a life is brave. Being instructed to kill and saying no I will not do that is brave. But killing like this? It is the least human thing you can do.

28.02.2026 17:58 πŸ‘ 1426 πŸ” 379 πŸ’¬ 12 πŸ“Œ 26

A reminder that Girl Scouting of America has welcomed trans and nonbinary girls from the first one that asked, has always had lesbian and bi members and adults, never declared bankruptcy to avoid paying for sexual assaults, and never poached the other side to recover from said bankruptcy.

27.02.2026 18:08 πŸ‘ 2191 πŸ” 712 πŸ’¬ 26 πŸ“Œ 27

They found him. He died.

Another murder by our immigration goon squads

25.02.2026 20:29 πŸ‘ 11843 πŸ” 5324 πŸ’¬ 387 πŸ“Œ 295

Please read this article to the end. Even before ICE got involved, this started because this *blind man who speaks no English and uses a curtain rod as a walking stick* got lost on a walk and some Karen called the police on him and they tasered and beat him bc he didn’t drop the rod. WTF

25.02.2026 20:41 πŸ‘ 15491 πŸ” 8146 πŸ’¬ 853 πŸ“Œ 542

I once told a friend that congress is the writer, Supreme Court is the editor and the President is the Publisher/reader depending on the situation and order of events now congress doesn't write and the the Supreme Court uses an AI summary based on facebook memes to make their decision

24.02.2026 15:34 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Smartphones, Online Music Streaming, and Traffic Fatalities
Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, Michael Liu & Anupam B. Jena
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Working Paper 34866
DOI 10.3386/w34866
Issue Date February 2026
Modern smartphones present new threats to road safety beyond talking and texting, but the real-world effects are difficult to study. One way to causally assess the impact of smartphones on road safety is to identify arbitrarily timed events during which smartphone-related distraction may exogenously increase – i.e., a situation that relies not on plausibly random variation in who uses smartphones while driving, but when smartphones are used. We investigated the impact of smartphones on road safety by examining traffic fatalities on days when smartphone use likely surges: the release of major music albums. Using event study analysis, we show that music streaming – an indicator for smartphone use, where streaming most often occurs – sharply increases, by nearly 40%, on dates of major music album releases, while U.S. traffic fatalities increase by nearly 15% on those same days. Mobile device use while driving is a known safety issue, but today’s smartphones present new and greater opportunities for driver distraction. Our study indicates how features of these phones may have important impacts on distracted driving and traffic fatalities.

Smartphones, Online Music Streaming, and Traffic Fatalities Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, Michael Liu & Anupam B. Jena X LinkedIn Facebook Bluesky Threads Email Link Working Paper 34866 DOI 10.3386/w34866 Issue Date February 2026 Modern smartphones present new threats to road safety beyond talking and texting, but the real-world effects are difficult to study. One way to causally assess the impact of smartphones on road safety is to identify arbitrarily timed events during which smartphone-related distraction may exogenously increase – i.e., a situation that relies not on plausibly random variation in who uses smartphones while driving, but when smartphones are used. We investigated the impact of smartphones on road safety by examining traffic fatalities on days when smartphone use likely surges: the release of major music albums. Using event study analysis, we show that music streaming – an indicator for smartphone use, where streaming most often occurs – sharply increases, by nearly 40%, on dates of major music album releases, while U.S. traffic fatalities increase by nearly 15% on those same days. Mobile device use while driving is a known safety issue, but today’s smartphones present new and greater opportunities for driver distraction. Our study indicates how features of these phones may have important impacts on distracted driving and traffic fatalities.

On days when major albums are released, people use music streaming services on their smartphone 40% more, and U.S. traffic fatalities increase by 15% www.nber.org/papers/w3486...

24.02.2026 23:55 πŸ‘ 119 πŸ” 53 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 1

Biden had a trifecta and got a shitload of legislation passed, that not resulting in any political rewards is a different conversation

22.02.2026 23:40 πŸ‘ 182 πŸ” 13 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 0

You’ll really should read Schlesinger’s trilogy because he very clearly lays out why the new deal coalition came together, not because FDR was like:

22.02.2026 23:38 πŸ‘ 132 πŸ” 11 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

The New Deal did not happen via executive fiat

22.02.2026 23:35 πŸ‘ 640 πŸ” 66 πŸ’¬ 13 πŸ“Œ 0
Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. β€œI don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. β€œI am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.”

So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. β€œIndividual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.

Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. β€œI don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. β€œI am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.” So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. β€œIndividual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.

Border Patrol is operating as bounty hunters.

Agents are apparently getting paid for each person they put in detention. Even if those people are grandmothers traveling on valid tourist visas.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

22.02.2026 01:40 πŸ‘ 687 πŸ” 321 πŸ’¬ 27 πŸ“Œ 19

Not used to a world in which Newsweek breaks anything

21.02.2026 09:21 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

Next para: "A regime of secret policing has no place in our society. Here, the Government’s power is derived by the People, and the People must be able to identify the Government when it acts to infringe on their liberty."

21.02.2026 00:56 πŸ‘ 2128 πŸ” 381 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 15

Page 34: "An anonymous government is no government at all. It cannot be held accountable. A masked agent freely uses force without justifying his actions, and the public cannot name him to challenge his conduct."

21.02.2026 00:55 πŸ‘ 2657 πŸ” 495 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 15

Page 29: "Absent genuine, particularized necessity, the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement prohibits government officers from executing a civil arrest while systematically concealing their identities in a manner that eliminates contemporaneous and subsequent accountability."

21.02.2026 00:52 πŸ‘ 2200 πŸ” 293 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 8

Incredible opinion. It holds that the common ICE tactic of jumping out of an unidentified rental vehicle and seizing suspected noncitizens while masked violates the Fourth Amendment because the *manner* of the seizure is incompatible with a free society governed by the rule of law.

21.02.2026 00:51 πŸ‘ 11815 πŸ” 3925 πŸ’¬ 107 πŸ“Œ 128

The thing about the press conference is that Trump didn't say he would ask Congress to override the Court's decision, which is what a strong president whose party controlled both houses of Congress would do.

20.02.2026 19:44 πŸ‘ 93 πŸ” 14 πŸ’¬ 8 πŸ“Œ 1

So SCOTUS, with its fabricated-out-of-thin-air immunity doctrine, has actually made American presidents less accountable than LITERAL royalty.

19.02.2026 10:50 πŸ‘ 11210 πŸ” 3143 πŸ’¬ 30 πŸ“Œ 139

In the concentration camp universe, this is what's known as a filtration camp. A government preemptively takes a whole class of people to interrogate and detain extrajudicially in order to inflict duress on them while arbitrarily assessing their (supposed) culpability.

19.02.2026 02:20 πŸ‘ 5540 πŸ” 3037 πŸ’¬ 61 πŸ“Œ 55

We fought a revolution over this stuff, supposedly.

16.02.2026 20:05 πŸ‘ 217 πŸ” 39 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Lincoln 1851

"I am not a Know-Nothing. As a nation, we began by declaring "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics."

16.02.2026 04:47 πŸ‘ 279 πŸ” 87 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1
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No, ICE isn’t β€˜retreating.’ It’s loading up to invade your town. | Will Bunch A much-hyped ICE pullback from Minneapolis is a blip in a looming nationwide surge of arrests, concentration camps.

Gift article. Philadelphia Inquirer is well worth subscribing to.

share.inquirer.com/wjEzal

15.02.2026 18:38 πŸ‘ 95 πŸ” 47 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 4
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Yes it’s Valentine’s Day. But it’s also the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass who was born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. He escaped from slavery & rose to become the most eloquent and forceful voice for the abolition of slavery & for Black voting rights in the U.S.

14.02.2026 18:45 πŸ‘ 13998 πŸ” 3733 πŸ’¬ 232 πŸ“Œ 133

"White people are becoming second class citizens in America because of the radical left agenda." Is it Jeremy Carl in 2026, or an Oregonian's white supremacist screed written in 1959 in opposition to a proposed Civil Rights bill?

15.02.2026 00:31 πŸ‘ 412 πŸ” 160 πŸ’¬ 15 πŸ“Œ 9

I've repeatedly used the Roosevelt HS case because it's so unexplainable.

Like, imagine the MPD was chasing a suspect and the chase took them through a high school at dismissal...

And then somehow they ended up getting into multiple scrums with students and arresting two teachers? What???

14.02.2026 08:03 πŸ‘ 314 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

Some people automatically go into this β€œWell, what’s the other side of the story?” pose. But the answer is that there is no other side. They’re 100% doing the things we accuse them of, and then lying, despite voluminous evidence.

14.02.2026 08:00 πŸ‘ 678 πŸ” 66 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 1

One of the terrible things about the ICE occupation of Minneapolis is that they’ve been doing stuff that is so crazy that people assume it’s some kind of exaggeration, despite being widely documented on video. Following observers home! Lurking outside elementary schools! Black-bagging citizens!

14.02.2026 07:54 πŸ‘ 1134 πŸ” 221 πŸ’¬ 12 πŸ“Œ 6
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Glad this is getting covered, but also… Completely surreal to read the NYT report on this as recently disclosed info, and just an allegation. This happened to every observer I know! It happened to me twice! I have it on video both times! www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/u...

14.02.2026 07:48 πŸ‘ 2952 πŸ” 847 πŸ’¬ 49 πŸ“Œ 34