uncle of the second class
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nerves.bsky.social
uncle of the second class
@nerves.bsky.social
340 followers 1.2K following 2.9K posts
I have just read Against the Day, and I will not be taking questions at this time. Chicago, he/him.
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Reposted by uncle of the second class
en.afp.com
Israel's government has approved a process to register land in the West Bank as "state property", drawing condemnation from Arab nations and critics who said it would accelerate annexation of the Palestinian territory.
u.afp.com/S6N8
u.afp.com
February 16, 2026 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social
Evidently, something was broken with the other link. So, here, I've written about the right-wing attacks on PME and civilian educational institutions.

othermeans.substack.com/p/the-myth-o...
The Myth of the Warfighter
The Soldier and the Educational Institutions
othermeans.substack.com
February 16, 2026 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
radleybalko.bsky.social
Oh, okay. I'll bite.

The right to vote is enshrined in the Constitution.

The "right" of armed federal cops to arrest, beat, and kill people with anonymity is not.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 5h
Emmer: "Another reform they claim they want is they want ICE agents to identify themselves, to show identification. But they don't want identification for voters in elections. I mean, this stuff is just intellectually inconsistent."
February 16, 2026 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
icij.org
Among financial hubs, Dubai stands out for its deep financial ties to Africa, not only through the presence of large emirati firms on the continent but also through the emirate’s role in illicit financial flows and commodity-based money laundering.
Asian financial hubs are reshaping Africa’s offshore economy - ICIJ
A new report shows how Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong have courted African elites and companies with tax breaks, light regulation, and secrecy.
buff.ly
February 16, 2026 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
noraflanagan.bsky.social
Still processing this choice by @chicagomag.com. No matter how they couch it, they’re elevating an unapologetic bigot. There’s a lot of real estate between ignoring him and ranking him among the most powerful people in Chicago (ahem, Berwyn), and Chicago Magazine jumped over all of it, eyes closed.
jtischauser.bsky.social Jeff Tischauser @jtischauser.bsky.social · 1d
Chicago Magazine named Nick Fuentes #7 in its list of Top 50 powerful Chicagoans of 2025.
7, Nick Fuentes White Nationalist Streamer. Loathe him or loathe him, the 27 year old shock artist and Berwyn resident has an unnervingly large following. An antisemite who praised Hitler (“really fucking cool”) and a misogynist who says women shouldn’t have the right to vote, Fuentes is on the fringe of the fringe — but his influence has grown massively in the past year. The Lyons Township High School graduate loosely leads an army of far-tight fans known as the Groypers who aim to take over the Republican Party. However far-fetched that sounds, it became likelier after an October interview with Tucker Carlson in which Fuentes rallied against “organized Jewry in America” and caused a firestorm that split the MAGA coalition. Yet despite denunciations of Fuentes from mainstream Republicans, conservative cultural critic Rob Dreher says he’s been told 30-40% of young Republicans staffers in D.C. are groypers. With millions of followers turning into his racist screeds that would make Father Coughlin blush, we ignore Fuentes at our own peril.
February 16, 2026 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
maiamindel.bsky.social
It's kind of funny how Hayek's (mostly correct) argument against central planning because concentrating that much economic power in one place inevitably lead to totalitarian behavior is also a pretty strong argument against like, extreme concentrations of wealth and market power
marlownyc.bsky.social Marlow Stern @marlownyc.bsky.social · 1d
pretty stunning chart
February 16, 2026 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
owasow.bsky.social
One of the more compelling data visualizations produced in recent years is the following representation of measles incidence from 1928 to 2003 by state produced by the Wall Street Journal graphics team: Heatmap chart titled “Measles” showing reported measles cases by U.S. state over time from roughly 1930 to 2010. States are listed in rows on the left (e.g., Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, etc.), and years run along the horizontal axis. Each small square represents a state-year, colored by number of cases using a scale from light blue (near 0) through green and yellow to orange and red (highest, up to about 4,000 cases). A vertical black line around 1963 is labeled “Vaccine introduced.” Before this line, many states show frequent yellow/orange/red squares, indicating large outbreaks. After the line, the grid shifts mostly to very light blue with only occasional darker squares, indicating a sharp and sustained drop in measles cases following vaccine introduction. In the two years after its release, many prominent data journalists, designers, and developers have analyzed/applauded the design decisions in the chart, which urge the reader to its take-home message: the introduction of the measles vaccine drastically reduced the incidence of the virus.
February 16, 2026 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
jeffhauser.bsky.social
When I have spent 15 years suggesting that the Obama lawyers were inadequately committed to cracking down on elite criminality.... even I didn't envision that one of them was going to become a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
February 13, 2026 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
quantamagazine.bsky.social
Parallel universes, mysterious collapses, divided worlds. These are among the interpretations of quantum theory’s relationship with reality. It’s no wonder that everyone still has questions.
Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning To Dissolve? | Quanta Magazine
Columnist Philip Ball thinks the phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide.
www.quantamagazine.org
February 16, 2026 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
profgabriele.com
in other news, please post about something else than dem primary discourse. we cannot do 2028 dem primary discourse this early. dear lord.
February 16, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
naomikritzer.bsky.social
Haven Watch is the group that meets people who are being released from Whipple (usually because they were illegally detained), often without coats or phones or any way to get home.
raisingonebrow.bsky.social bowie deschanel @raisingonebrow.bsky.social · 11h
Haven Watch released an Amazon wish list that will help them continue their work. If you have the ability, please consider gifting one or more of these items:

www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/...
Check out my list on Amazon
www.amazon.com
February 16, 2026 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
sltrib.com
US Magnesium has operated next to the Great Salt Lake for decades, and has long been an environmental headache.
Why Utah bought one of its biggest polluters — and what it means for the Great Salt Lake
US Magnesium has operated next to the Great Salt Lake for decades, and has long been an environmental headache.
www.sltrib.com
February 16, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
propublica.org
Louisiana has refused to reconsider the convictions of 1,000+ mostly Black men sentenced by split juries, despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2020 that such convictions are unconstitutional and based on an inherently racist law.

By @richardawebster.bsky.social
What One Man’s 45-Year-Old Case Tells Us About the “Jim Crow Juries” Haunting Louisiana
Today, a split verdict would mean a mistrial. But in 1980s Louisiana, when nonunanimous juries were still legal, 19-year-old Lloyd Gray, a Black man, was sentenced to prison for life — even though the...
www.propublica.org
February 16, 2026 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
iansociologo.bsky.social
With sundown towns, census figures indicated that racial terrorism had taken place. We'll see a similar story related to the current atrocities.
Census research A first step, then, is to look up the census information on racial composition in various years. Data at census.gov provide the racial proportions of every town in the country with more than a few hundred inhabitants for 1990 and 2000. Included is information as to age and sex in the black population and number of households with black adult householders. This information is particularly useful because it allows us to avoid misattributing residential status to African Americans living in institutions such as colleges or prisons or within white households as servants. For 1860-1980, the racial composition of your town will be in the printed census in the bound volumes of the census, probably at your local library and certainly at your nearest university library. Get the actual census figures, decade after decade. They are also online at http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html. However, in some years breakdowns by race are provided only for towns larger than 2,500 and in one decade only for towns larger than 4,000. For smaller towns, you can count the number of blacks listed in the “manuscript census,” described in the next paragraph, for 1930 and prior decades. For small towns, the census in many years, especially before 1940, does not list population by race, but you can amass it yourself from the “manuscript census” for any decade between 1860 and 1930 inclusive (except 1890, most of which was destroyed by fire). This is the raw data of the census; much of it is on the web at various sites, usually by state. Large libraries and genealogical collections also have it on microfilm. You may find sharp drops in black population, which are of course suspicious. If you only find low numbers of blacks, decade after decade, that too is suspicious, especially if blacks are hardly absent from nearby towns and counties or if the town’s total population is increasing.
February 16, 2026 at 3:03 AM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
ddayen.bsky.social
Republicans handled the IRS surge from Biden by clawing it back to a nub. Democrats can do the same thing with immigration enforcement, and by Republicans' own admission it wouldn't threaten public safety. prospect.org/2026/02/16/i...
But there are other arguments as well. If we look at this from the centrist end of the telescope, ICE and CBP should be defunded because they aren’t doing their jobs. If immigration enforcement is an important task, it is going undone. Instead, the Trump administration is wasting tens of billions of dollars kidnapping people semi-randomly, many of them legal residents or even U.S. citizens. The appalling nature of this has led thousands of Department of Justice lawyers to quit their jobs, and the resulting flood of lawsuits has totally overwhelmed the ones that remain. Basic functions of federal law enforcement have collapsed in favor of a psychotic effort to deport people like an Irish drywall contractor who has lived here legally for 20 years and is married to an American woman. Even if you accept that some police force must maintain order at the border and perform all of the other tasks given to ICE, like customs inspection, it’s plain as day that they already have enough money to do that. If Tom Homan is to be believed that ICE is leaving Minneapolis, with future operations geared only toward targeted enforcement, what does ICE need an extra $75 billion reserve for? The easiest way to draw that money down is to deny baseline funding for the duration of Trump’s term.
February 16, 2026 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
fangraphs.com
2026 Top 100 Prospects blogs.fangraphs.com/2026-top-100...
2026 Top 100 Prospects
The prospect team presents their 2026 Top 100 Prospects list, with reports for each player.
blogs.fangraphs.com
February 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
mcbridetd.bsky.social
Andrew Bailey led the Georgia election raid. His Missouri record should be a warning missouriindependent.com/2026/02/16/a...
Andrew Bailey led the Georgia election raid. His Missouri record should be a warning • Missouri Independent
When the FBI carried out its controversial raid last month at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, Andrew Bailey was there.
missouriindependent.com
February 16, 2026 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
reuters.com
Exclusive: Ecuador prison deaths climb again despite Noboa security strategy, data shows reut.rs/4bY6Ulc
Exclusive: Ecuador prison deaths climb again despite Noboa security strategy, data shows
After hundreds of Ecuadorean inmates were killed in prison riots in 2021 and 2022, President Daniel Noboa made restoring order in jails one of the central pillars of his security strategy when he took office in 2023.
reut.rs
February 16, 2026 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
kanejim.bsky.social
🎁 🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
bloomberg.com Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 15h
Predicting the next economic crash or financial crisis has always been more art than science. Today there’s an added complication — the increasing shortage of information about what’s really going on in the economy and financial system.

Read The Big Take: bloom.bg/4kJLf2u

🎨: Grace J. Kim
February 16, 2026 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
leahlitman.bsky.social
There’s also a progressive candidate running who HASN’T taken money from Palantir partners @mikesacks.bsky.social :

www.mikesacksforcongress.com
February 16, 2026 at 1:25 AM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
wajali.bsky.social
Will it be national news? Will it cause performative outrage? Will he be censured?

Nope. Forgotten by tomorrow.
February 16, 2026 at 1:19 AM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
aselrod.bsky.social
Broadly speaking: reality tv is bad for democracy, influencers are bad for democracy, streamers are bad for democracy, YouTubers are bad for democracy.

Exceptions to all categories exist, but it’s astonishing how absolutely clogged our political and media ecosystems are with low-info narcissists
February 15, 2026 at 9:37 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
yonahfreemark.com
Paris region launched its Tzen 4 bus rapid transit line this week. The 14 km (9 mi), €123 m electrified route serves cities in the southern part of the metropolitan area; it's expected to serve 47,000 daily riders. It uses 24 m (79 ft) buses.
Tzen 4 buses, source: https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/tzen-4-ile-de-france-mobilites-hess-alstom-kiepe/ Tzen 4 station, source: https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/tzen-4-ile-de-france-mobilites-hess-alstom-kiepe/ The Tzen 4 route; source: https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/en/le-reseau/projets/tzen4
February 15, 2026 at 8:46 PM
nerves.bsky.social
I don't have a way out of this Platner thing, but left wing voters have been clamoring for new blood for years now, and the party came up with... a 77 year old. Difficult to see how they've improved the situation.
February 15, 2026 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by uncle of the second class
chi.streetsblog.org
Yikes! Juan Rangel, the once-disgraced head of Urban Center, which promotes anti-Archer traffic safety project rallies, isn’t just “centrist” - he’s a full-on Trump supporter. 😬

@swcollectivechi.bsky.social @betterstreetschicago.org @chicritmass.bsky.social @atalliance.bsky.social @bikegridnow.org
Juan Rangel: How Latinos found their voice in Donald Trump
The election outcome was the culmination of concern over the direction of Latino values on family, faith and an aspiration for upward mobility.
www.chicagotribune.com
February 15, 2026 at 7:16 PM