Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
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leafwarbler.bsky.social
Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
@leafwarbler.bsky.social
Reconciliation ecologist working towards decoloniality at a Land Grab University on Saponi lands • Writer • Alien of extraordinary ability • 🏳️‍⚧️ parent • 🐦‍⬛ 🦚 🪶 📽️ 🏏

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A Reconciliation Ecologist's Testimony at a People's Hearing

Something I had the honor to speak last week, to an auditorium full of Indigenous, Black and Brown, really a rainbow of environmental justice activists in Greensboro, NC.

(and yes, this also launches my newsletter, so please subscribe!)
A Reconciliation Ecologist's Testimony at a People's Hearing
Spoken in Greensboro, NC in June 2025
reconciliationecology.beehiiv.com
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Which sort of begs the question of who this week’s particularly odious campaign is supposed to appeal to? The answer, I suspect, is high school boys who will soon be old enough to join now that the age has been dropped to 18. They’re not trying to convince the public, they’re recruiting.
DHS Gives Santa ICE Makeover in Deranged Christmas Video
In the wild AI video, Santa cuffs detainees and loads them onto a plane.
www.thedailybeast.com
December 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
There’s a sort of conventional wisdom that the teams are inexperienced, terminally online kids given free rein to post whatever garbage appeals to their basest instincts— and that’s more or less the image they’re reporting to the Post. But it reads much more clearly that this is driven from the top.
December 25, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
The last 24 hours have seen some of the most dehumanizing, disgusting posts of the year. This reporting is about internal comms from the team that makes them. The things they were instructed to show are horrifying, but the things they were told to remove or de-emphasize are even more revealing.
We read thousands of internal ICE chats. They show how officials make raids go viral
Thousands of internal ICE messages show how its public affairs team has coordinated with the White House to satisfy Trump administration demands for viral arrest videos
washingtonpost.com
December 25, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
everyone here is darling but I'm absolutely plotzing at the sweet teeny tiny bb omg
From my family to yours, Happy Holidays!
December 25, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Look, I'm sure that Nolan's adaptation of "The Odyssey" will be fun, but I highly doubt it will be as good as the original.
December 25, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Just wow. @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy came out swinging in this article. He's right though and that's the coolest part.
December 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Yes, everything is shittier, more expensive, and more and more stuff requires you to pay a subscription shakedown fee to operate it, but hey, the sloplords are richer!
The essence of Trump's economic measures is a mass transfer of wealth from the middle class and into the pockets of tech billionaires, particularly those who generously supported Trump. Federally privileged AI process are a central part of these maneuvers.
AI boom adds $500bn to net worth of US tech billionaires in 2025
Elon Musk stays on top as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang powers up the rankings on an AI-fuelled surge in fortunes
www.ft.com
December 26, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Meanwhile a survey of more than 500 historians finds the vast majority curled up into a ball and weeping softly.
April 23, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Make a Bond movie academic

No Time To Write
Make a Bond movie academic

For Reviewer 2’s Eyes Only
Make a Bond movie academic

Live and Let Cite
December 26, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Another amazing thing I found in the archives - with the help of @otsapina.bsky.social - was the journal of a Civil War soldier who visited a plantation where Solomon Northup had been held captive. I wrote about it here.
web.archive.org/web/20140120...
The horrors ‘12 Years a Slave’ couldn’t tell | Al Jazeera America
What a Civil War soldier’€™s diary tells us about Solomon Northup’s ordeal
web.archive.org
December 27, 2025 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
I'm in this!
Back when Twitter was useful, I asked historians and archivists about the things they found in the archives that made them go 'wut?' and wrote this piece about it.

theconversation.com/i-asked-hist...
December 27, 2025 at 4:19 AM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and those who can remember the past are like, what the hell, man?
January 22, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
If you want to learn more about this trial and what it tells us about Americans and race 100 years ago at a time similar to our own, check out Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness. www.amazon.com/Property-Rit...
Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness
Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness [Smith-Pryor, Elizabeth M.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness
www.amazon.com
December 26, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
A heartbreaking story that provides a damning illustration of the ways American racism tells everyone, including Black women and WOC, that they simply aren't deserving of love because they aren't white.

Moreover, because they are not white, they are to be regarded as corrupting, lying jezebels.
A Revelation Tore Apart Her Fairy-Tale Marriage, and Shocked the Nation
www.nytimes.com
December 26, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
"During closing arguments, Mills urged the jurors to imagine Leonard as their own son. 'There isn’t a father among you who would not rather see his son in his casket than to see him wedded to a mulatto woman,’ he said."

Markle may be basic, but the ugly vitriol she gets comes down to this.
A Revelation Tore Apart Her Fairy-Tale Marriage, and Shocked the Nation
www.nytimes.com
December 26, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
I see this on the right - the idea that the existence of foreign academic staff and faculty are evidence of discrimination against natives. It's not discrimination, its selection: academia is a global marketplace, the US is the biggest center of that market. So yes, some foreign talent will win.
Striking nativist editorializing by the federal judge who just upheld the $100,000 tax on high-skill immigrants.

She opines that it’s “troubling” that universities hire talent from abroad at all, instead of only native grads.

Then admits (!) that opinion is irrelevant (So why write it? Venting?)
December 26, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
This is related to the idea that if white people don't have 100% of high-prestige jobs, awards, recognition etc it's evidence of discrimination against whiteness. It's where "great replacement" logic leads you. bsky.app/profile/donm...
I see this on the right - the idea that the existence of foreign academic staff and faculty are evidence of discrimination against natives. It's not discrimination, its selection: academia is a global marketplace, the US is the biggest center of that market. So yes, some foreign talent will win.
Striking nativist editorializing by the federal judge who just upheld the $100,000 tax on high-skill immigrants.

She opines that it’s “troubling” that universities hire talent from abroad at all, instead of only native grads.

Then admits (!) that opinion is irrelevant (So why write it? Venting?)
December 26, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
I imagine Applebaum means this rhetorically, but in case others really are wondering: turf, oil, China, and, probably the biggest distinct factor, the wildly outsize influence of the Nigerian Christian Right in the US Christian Right. One element of the attack was fan service for fundamentalists.
Not sure I understand why the Trump administration cares about Christians in Nigeria and not Christians in Ukraine
December 26, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
The US is becoming like other, less prosperous countries, only at a dramatically bigger scale. People can’t just decouple from it, it’s far too big for that, but they will move away on the margins, and hedge their bets.
December 26, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
This piece is a great illustration of how the long-term effect of Trump’s destruction of US institutions won’t be felt in a dramatic market collapse, but rather in permanently worse economic conditions, and lower prosperity.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... So long, American exceptionalism
So long, American exceptionalism
For the first time, investors are talking about ‘US risk’
giftarticle.ft.com
December 26, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
"we're trying to shut down science that produces results we don't like, it's a very worrisome trend. And we have seen this other times in history, and it never really ended well."
White House pushes to dismantle leading climate and weather research center
The Trump administration says it plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, which is the nation’s premier atmospheric science center. The center was founded in 1960 a...
www.pbs.org
December 27, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
White men will discover they dominate 94% of a market instead of 99% and declare national emergencies
December 27, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
My female Afghan judges and prosecutors had to do this regularly for years, even during the 20-year American occupation of Afghanistan. And then the Taliban took over and killed many as we scrambled to get the rest out of the country. Sigh.
"One judge moved house. Another had to freeze her credit cards after a security breach.

Other judges have taken actions to adapt to the changing landscape by upgrading home security systems, changing the route they drive to work."

This is fascism. This is what terrorist intimidation looks like.
Judges who ruled against Trump say harassment and threats have changed their lives
More than 100 pizzas were delivered to the homes of judges and their families this year, some with signs of foreign involvement. Judges say the message is clear: We know where you live.
www.nbcnews.com
December 27, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
It was fascism when they were regularly doing this to abortion providers, too. They have merely broadened the list of targets.
December 27, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Reposted by Madhusudan 🦉 Katti
"One judge moved house. Another had to freeze her credit cards after a security breach.

Other judges have taken actions to adapt to the changing landscape by upgrading home security systems, changing the route they drive to work."

This is fascism. This is what terrorist intimidation looks like.
Judges who ruled against Trump say harassment and threats have changed their lives
More than 100 pizzas were delivered to the homes of judges and their families this year, some with signs of foreign involvement. Judges say the message is clear: We know where you live.
www.nbcnews.com
December 27, 2025 at 3:10 PM