Karen Leick
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kleick.bsky.social
Karen Leick
@kleick.bsky.social
1.5K followers 4.3K following 300 posts
Teaches at University of Illinois at Chicago. Modernism, Professional Writing, Gertrude Stein, middle-brow writers, periodical studies, DH. Always happy to see your pets. she/her
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Reposted by Karen Leick
newsjennifer.bsky.social
This photo was taken by @chicagotribune.com photog @mandophotos.bsky.social this past Saturday in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. Chicago's local news journalists are doing a helluva job capturing the aggressive tactics CPB & ICE are using here.
bsky.app/profile/mand...
junlper.beer onion person @junlper.beer · 17h
a new genre of photo in the last year is federal agents working for ICE pointing guns directly at photographers
November 11, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
pftompkins.bsky.social
This how I find out I have a son??
November 9, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
tedunderwood.com
Our School of Information Sciences is running four searches, and we can hire more than four candidates. Here’s the first link, for a job that might appeal to people working in history of information, history of science, or digital humanities. +
Assistant/Associate/Full Professor in Information, Culture & Society - School of Information Science
Duties & Responsibilities
illinois.csod.com
November 6, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
katz.theracket.news
It is, and what goes unsaid is that the piece in question a) opened with one of the most blatantly racist ledes I’ve read in years* and b) was by Jeremy Peters, who for the last decade has functioned as effectively a Heritage Foundation-type operative inside the Times newsroom
November 9, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
librarian.bsky.social
Librarians or others, would you like a helpful one-pager zine that you can print to let people know how to report ICE?

Available for Chicago, DC, Philly, Portland, NYC, CA, CO, FL, DE, MA, MD, RI, VA, WA, WI, WY & other metro areas. Thanks @meganpiont.bsky.social

drive.google.com/drive/folder...
SALUTE zines **BE SURE TO PRINT AT 100%!** - Google Drive
drive.google.com
October 25, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
maxkennerly.bsky.social
modified NYTimes heading: Opinion interesting times Should Men Be Allowed To Drag Their Itchy Buttholes Across The Carpet Of Society? A viewpoint just as valid as the tripe this paper constantly platforms via conservative dullards. Nov. 6, 2025
November 6, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
dansinker.com
What’s more Chicago right now than handing off 200 whistles in a Portillos bag.
200 whistles packed in a Portillos bag
November 6, 2025 at 1:54 AM
Reposted by Karen Leick
paulandstorm.bsky.social
[P] Found a higher-quality photo; IT *IS* TAPED UP SHEETS OF PAPER!
photo of a sign outside the door of the Oval Office, reading "The Oval Office" in gold bullshit script, made out of three sheets of paper Close-up image of the same sign
November 5, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
ramirez.house.gov
This morning, ICE unlawfully kidnapped a day care worker in front of parents and children.

We’re demanding accountability for every way that DHS is violating our rights, breaking the law, and acting with impunity. We must resist.

WATCH.
ICE Abduction Inside Daycare: Press Conference
YouTube video by U.S. Representative Mike Quigley
www.youtube.com
November 5, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
timcarvell.bsky.social
“Oh wow, how bad could a rebranding be?”

[two paragraphs into the story]

“Oh.”
Headline: Director of Philadelphia Art Museum Is Dismissed After Unpopular Rebranding The Philadelphia Art Museum's board of trustees dismissed its director and chief executive Tuesday morning in an email that stated she was being terminated for cause. Sasha Suda, 45, was just three years into her five-year contract at the museum. She recently oversaw an effort to subtly rebrand the institution as the Philadelphia Art Museum, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art - its name since 1938. While some had praised the campaign, it largely failed to gain traction in Philadelphia, where locals started to mockingly refer to the 149-year-old institution as "PhArt," instead of its suggested nickname, "PhAM."
November 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
gregpak.net
So many times SO MANY TIMES I have said I don't trust any politician who throws trans people and immigrants under the bus.

Look at this dude. LOOK AT THIS. He's here for ALL OF US.

There is NO EXCUSE for any politician who doesn't step up like this. No excuse.
gregpak.net Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 6d
"in this moment of political darkness, new york will be the light

"whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community one of the many black women that donald trump who has fired from her job... your struggle is ours too"
November 5, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Karen Leick
sorayanadiamcdonald.com
if not Ponzi, why Ponzi-shaped?

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
Screenshot text from The Atlantic: For now, money is still pouring into the AI industry. But there’s also something circular about these investments. To wit: OpenAI has agreed to pay $300 billion to Oracle for new computing capacity, Oracle is paying Nvidia tens of billions of dollars for chips to install in one of OpenAI’s data centers, and Nvidia has agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as it deploys Nvidia chips. Attempts to illustrate these circular investments have produced a series of byzantine charts that one software engineer referred to on X as “the technocapital hyperobject at the end of time.” The consensus seems to be that although this is legal, it likely cannot go on forever.
November 3, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
royalpratt.bsky.social
Experts warn this aggressive approach will likely fuel greater abuses of civil and human rights, heighten public anger and lead to more warrantless arrests, straying far from the previous stated focus on “the worst of the worst.” “Spectacle, not security.” www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/02/b...
November 2, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
newscientist.com
Enshittification is a term coined by Cory Doctorow in 2022. In his new book, Doctorow lays out how tech companies have made our lives progressively worse, finds Matthew Sparkes
Has life today been enshittified? Cory Doctorow's new book explores
Enshittification is a term coined by Cory Doctorow in 2022. In his new book, Doctorow lays out how tech companies have made our lives progressively worse, finds Matthew Sparkes
www.newscientist.com
November 2, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Reposted by Karen Leick
royalpratt.bsky.social
Homeland Security says the man was grabbing the agent’s genitals so that’s why he hit him. A screen grab circulating raises questions about that account. If you know the man being punched, please get in touch.
November 1, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
richraho.bsky.social
Chicago Auxiliary Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado at ICE detention facility: “Being here is an act of holiness…soon we will seek access to the facility to bring the Eucharist to our brothers and sisters; if they say no again, we will keep praying.”
November 1, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
mattseybold.bsky.social
The culture in your classrooms, enabled by you, at your unrepresentative institution, is not a barometer of socio-political phenomena.

Profs need to talk openly about what they see, especially with each other, but extrapolating from specific scholastic circumstance to “woke is real” is demented.
nkalamb.bsky.social Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 11d
This is an absolutely incredible thing to say. As someone in Ivy-ish (Duke) classrooms from 2016-2022… I call bull.

Or she was saying offensive shit.
Jill Lepore reports in the NYT that halfway through Obama’s second term students became rather difficult in the classroom
November 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
peternickeas.bsky.social
Border Patrol grabbed workers from the front yard of a home in Edison Park this afternoon then took them behind an office building in Niles and passed them off to a prisoner van. Woman came out to MF them and said "you're in the most conservative neighborhood in the city and nobody wants you here."
October 31, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
Maybe the thing that gives me a pulse-pounding throbbing headache is when I think of how techbros sold ChatGPT to universities as ‘revolutionizing’ higher education and our institutions just forked over money without even asking for actual evidence
drjoehanson.bsky.social Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 14d
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.

Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning
Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when
academic.oup.com
October 28, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
kashana.blacksky.app
Excited to be going to Chicago tomorrow to talk about my novel the Payback and its student debt-laden characters attempt to heist a better world.
The Payback: Creative Writing, Student Debt, and Heisting a Better World | Institute for the Humanities | University of Illinois Chicago
huminst.uic.edu
October 28, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
paleofuture.bsky.social
We live in an episode of Veep
Andrew Desiderio V @AndrewDesiderio X.com Funny moment just now in the Senate: Lindsey Graham whispered something into his phone and then Siri responded with full volume: "Calling Sean Hannity mobile" 8:57 AM • 10/28/25 • 276K Views
October 28, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
kendrawrites.com
I'm halfway through this article and I have two questions that are not a critique of the article.

The first: why don't we openly talk about these kinds of approaches as what they actually are - experimenting on children with little oversight and the potential to cause real lasting harm?
Parents Fell in Love With Alpha School’s Promise. Then They Wanted Out
In Brownsville, Texas, some families found a buzzy new school’s methods—surveillance of kids, software in lieu of teachers—to be an education in and of itself.
www.wired.com
October 27, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
jessicacalarco.com
Why did Indiana University attack and cut its own student newspaper?

Well, in a twist of irony any English professor would call clichéd, it turns out IU did it because they were angry about the students' reporting on a FIRE report naming IU as the worst public university for free speech in the US.
Indiana University banned its student newspaper from printing just days before homecoming weekend — after firing the paper’s advisor when he refused to censor critical coverage. That would be bad enough on its own, but FIRE is taking this one personally, as the Indiana Daily Student reported this hostile campaign was due in part to its coverage of FIRE’s ranking Indiana University as the worst public university for free speech. You read that right. The school’s response to the news that they are bad at free speech … is to censor the news. It’s ironic — and not just in the Alanis Morissette sense — that these actions will likely push its overall ranking even lower next year. At least we can’t fault them for consistency.
October 25, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Karen Leick
josie.zone
Pajama Pants Guy turns out to be a former prosecutor and gave an interview to the Trib

He really, really gets it

You have to envision yourself resisting so you're ready to resist when the time comes

archive.is/651BA
Kolp, a former prosecutor with the Cook County State's Attorney's office, sprang into action as he sometimes wondered he would have to do throughout the Trump administration's "Operation Midway Blitz" these last two months. He didn't even have time to put on his shoes or change out of his pajamas, he said, drawing jeers from one of the agents as he screamed "Nazis!" and "Gestapo!" at the agents, "Quite honestly, when all this started happening, I thought to myself that if the opportunity ever came my way to have to get involved in one of these situations, I was certainly going to do what I could to make sure that they weren't openly and flagrantly violating the law or the Constitution, Kolp -said."And yet, they just went ahead and did it anyway."
October 26, 2025 at 12:34 PM