Alfie Kohn | Lightnews

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 7h

Much as "DEI" and "woke" are used as codes for "not white"

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 10h

And Miller et al. are planning to significantly escalate the assault on immigrants, which means decent people will find the task of protecting them to be even more challenging next year: www.wired.com/story/expire...

‘We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’—Trump’s Mass Deportations Will Only Grow From Here

Militias and far-right extremists believed they would be central to Trump’s mass deportation plans. Instead he militarized law enforcement agencies.

www.wired.com

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 12h

Benevolent but creepy gaslighting when it's grandma. Something much more ominous when it's the narcissist-in-chief.

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 13h

"Hey, our pleasure! Enjoy!"
- the other 99.99% of us

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 13h

AI boom adds more than half a trillion dollars to wealth of US tech barons in 2025

Elon Musk’s net worth increased by nearly 50% to $645bn with founders of Google and Amazon also seeing huge wealth gains A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows. The top 10 US founders and bosses of some of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5tn, up from $1.9tn, in the year to Christmas Eve, according to figures from Bloomberg. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 13h

AI boom adds more than half a trillion dollars to wealth of US tech barons in 2025

Elon Musk’s net worth increased by nearly 50% to $645bn with founders of Google and Amazon also seeing huge wealth gains A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows. The top 10 US founders and bosses of some of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5tn, up from $1.9tn, in the year to Christmas Eve, according to figures from Bloomberg. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 14h

"This administration has exposed how the Supreme Court has made the Bill of Rights almost entirely reliant on the executive branch’s willingness to police itself. If federal police officers can violate constitutional rights with impunity, those rights may as well not exist": tinyurl.com/2dxv7j87

‘We've seen rapid normalization of abuses we once associated with
authoritarian regimes or the old Iron Curtain countries. It's now routine
for masked, unidentifiable government agents to sweep people off the
street and whisk them away in unmarked vehicles. Some of those arrested have been quickly shuttled off to detention facilities in other parts of the country without any notification to their families or attorneys. Others have been sent to a third country, often a country in the developing world to which they have no connection. Still others have been explicitly targeted for their political opinions, their activism, or their journalism.

‘The phrase “your papers, please” has historically been the sort of demand ‘we associated with Hitler's SS or the East German Stasi. Immigration officers now routinely stop people who simply “look like” immigrants and demand they prove their citizenship or legal residency. Legal residents who fail to produce documentation on demand have been fined, and flustered immigrants who fail to produce sufficient records or recall a Social Security number have been arrested.

Marty Lederman @martylederman.bsky.social · 15h

I don't think there's any understanding of the First Amendment under which this ("our Savior") is constitutional. Yet they don't care, and they've eliminated all the attorneys who would've objected.

Kudos to the Goldwater and Cato Institutes for condemning it.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/a...

Trump Administration Emphasizes Religion in Official Christmas Messages

www.nytimes.com

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 1d

Hard to tease the two apart in a theocracy, though...

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 1d

Is this a metaphor for writing?

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 1d

Six-word summary of the "good old days" to which conservatives yearn to return: lots of people suffering in silence

☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️ @schwarz.bsky.social · 2d

Remember the 1920s when nobody was left-handed

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 1d

The 38% of Americans who don't identify as Christian are officially unwelcome in MAGAmerica. (Of course Christians, too, ought to be appalled by this casual contempt for secular democracy.)

Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 1d

Here’s the U.S. government being officially religious in a country with no official religion.

Homeland Security tweet: Merry Christmas, America. We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.

Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 1d

Here’s the U.S. government being officially religious in a country with no official religion.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 2d

"We’re monitoring what you do online. Disseminating, writing, or publishing inciting content online is considered a terrorist crime in every sense and may lead to arrest or imprisonment. We have warned you."

Israel warns Palestinians that posting about their suffering will be considered terrorism.

Israeli occupation forces distributed warning leaflets in Tubas, in the northern occupied West Bank, this morning, threatening Palestinian residents that posting, sharing, or publishing online content critical of Israel would be treated as a terrorist offense, potentially resulting in arrest or imprisonment.

The leaflets stated:

"We are monitoring what you do online. Disseminating, writing, or publishing inciting content online is considered a terrorist crime in every sense and may lead to arrest or imprisonment, as has happened in this house. We have warned you."

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 2d

Y'know, the word "sociopath" is tossed around casually these days, but...

Andrew Perez @andrewperez.bsky.social · 2d

In a profile of Stephen Miller with @swin24.bsky.social, we reported he’s privately laughed off immigrant families’ “sob stories.”

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Speaking last night on Fox about the spiked CECOT story, Miller laughed about how ‘60 Minutes’ is “trying to tell sob stories."

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 2d

"The anti-woke grift been Bari Bari good to me"

honor sachs @drhonor.bsky.social · 2d

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

CNN @cnn.com · 2d

The University of Oklahoma has removed an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.” https://cnn.it/4b6g3rd

Oklahoma instructor removed from teaching for failing a Bible-based gender essay | CNN

The University of Oklahoma has removed an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.”

cnn.it

☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️ @schwarz.bsky.social · 2d

Remember the 1920s when nobody was left-handed

Andrew Perez @andrewperez.bsky.social · 2d

In a profile of Stephen Miller with @swin24.bsky.social, we reported he’s privately laughed off immigrant families’ “sob stories.”

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Speaking last night on Fox about the spiked CECOT story, Miller laughed about how ‘60 Minutes’ is “trying to tell sob stories."

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 2d

From now on we will teach fire safety in schools by setting everyone on fire.

Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸 @rweingarten.bsky.social · 3d

We know students, like the rest of the world, are using AI. Teachers need to be equipped to deal w/all the issues AI creates. Our approach starts with maximizing safety & privacy and empowering educators to make educational decisions, so AI tools can benefit not harm www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

AI has become the norm for students. Teachers are playing catch-up.

At a New York City training session, educators explored how artificial intelligence could support teaching while also discussing their concerns around the technology.

www.nbcnews.com

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 2d

The victims of our country's wholesale deregulation of homeschooling: tinyurl.com/wpj5j7s4

As the number of home-schoolers has surged — from around half a million when I was a kid to around 3.5 million since the pandemic — the country has passively endorsed a nationwide system of blind spots where the fate of home-schooled children has been left almost entirely to their parents. States continue to allow parents to operate with little or no oversight, resigning the fates of millions of kids to the assumption that parents know best, even if evidence abounds that this is not always the case.

Each home school is different, and of course, most home-schooling parents do not abuse or neglect their children. For many parents, the choice to home-school is about prioritizing a child's safety and better meeting a child's special learning needs.

But what home-schooling experiences — good or bad — have in common is that they remove what schools provide: a place where children learn and are with one another, a place where adults outside the home interact with children and can intervene on a child's behalf, and a transparent, public minimum standard of education.

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 2d

We're in thrall to people who don’t understand the difference between utopia & dystopia, or are willing to conflate the two if there’s a fortune to be made by doing so.

andré carrington @andrecarrington.bsky.social · 3d

via The New Yorker, Ellis Rosen cartoon

One panel comic with one person saying to another: Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury. Like so many others in tech, I draw inspiration from completely misunderstanding those authors

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 2d

From now on we will teach fire safety in schools by setting everyone on fire.

CNN @cnn.com · 2d

The University of Oklahoma has removed an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.” https://cnn.it/4b6g3rd

Oklahoma instructor removed from teaching for failing a Bible-based gender essay | CNN

The University of Oklahoma has removed an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.”

cnn.it

Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸 @rweingarten.bsky.social · 3d

We know students, like the rest of the world, are using AI. Teachers need to be equipped to deal w/all the issues AI creates. Our approach starts with maximizing safety & privacy and empowering educators to make educational decisions, so AI tools can benefit not harm www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

AI has become the norm for students. Teachers are playing catch-up.

At a New York City training session, educators explored how artificial intelligence could support teaching while also discussing their concerns around the technology.

www.nbcnews.com

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 3d

And may we suggest some other excellent candidates who might consider switching to a full-time hosting career: Vance, Hegseth, Miller, Vought, Kennedy, Noem...

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 3d

The divide here is that MAGA comes in two flavors: (1) Those who embrace authoritarianism, racism, homo- & transphobia, sexism that can shade into misogyny, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, & (2) Those who embrace all but the last, piously denouncing antisemitism (along with any criticism of Israel).

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 3d

"The campaign against so-called cancel culture...was largely a pretext for placing left-wing speech beyond the protection of the First Amendment in order to justify state suppression."

Read the whole piece:

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 3d

The “free speech” and “cancel culture” panics have led to overt state censorship because that was always their purpose. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

The reason so many of yesterday’s free-speech champions transitioned so easily into today’s pro-Trump censors is that their definition of free speech never included the right of others to talk back. They were not defending a universal right to freedom of speech; they were defending a right to monologue. They could say what they want, and you could shut up and like it. The cynicism of the effort can be known by its fruits: an administration that issues executive orders “protecting” free speech while engaging in the most sweeping campaign of state censorship since the Red Scare.

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 3d

The “free speech” and “cancel culture” panics have led to overt state censorship because that was always their purpose. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 3d

"B-b-but Stephen said I could!"

Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 3d

If they *had* taped a response from someone in the regime, Weiss would have found another reason to kill the segment.

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