Even if you, or your friends, don’t use the safe bike and roll network, there are thousands and thousands of your neighbours that do.

PROVIDENCE, RI—In the hours following a violent rampage in Rhode Island in which a lone attacker killed at least two individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This […] The post ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens appeared first on The Onion.

Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the National Science Foundation "will be breaking up" the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

The Trump administration is seeking to dismantle the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Facebook Bluesky Twitter LinkedIn Months after the East Lansing City Council adopted ordinance changes that limit the powers of the East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission, commissioners are growing more and more frustrated about the new constraints put on their speech and the information that can be shared with the public. In October, the City Council voted to approve ordinance changes that some council members said are necessary to comply with a new collective bargaining agreement the city reached with a police union, though oversight commissioners have contested that the changes go beyond what is required in the bargaining agreement. Since the amendments were adopted, some changes have been apparent at meetings. For example, commissioners are no longer allowed to use ELPD employees’ names at meetings or in reports. At certain points during Wednesday’s meeting, commissioners would slip up and mistakenly say Police Chief Jen Brown’s name, instead of just saying her title of police chief. They would then be reminded of the rules by other commissioners or stop themselves. “Brown’s name is not in it,” Chair Ernest Conerly said when referencing a motion to file a complaint against the police chief. “Damn – I mean – the person that works for the [city] manager, who runs the department. [Her] name is not in here. [This is] utterly ridiculous.” East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission Chair Ernest Conerly speaks at the Oct. 14, 2025 City Council meeting. (Brian Wells for ELi) Commissioner Amanda Morgan said she thinks the new rules violate her first amendment rights. “The most conservative Supreme Court justice would strike this down,” Conerly said. Even though the changes were put in place in October and have been broadly discussed since the spring, members of the oversight commission are still unsure about some of the requirements under the revised ordinance. For example, during a discussion about the commission’s 2024 annual report, commissioners agreed they needed to redact officers’ names, but were unsure if officers’ titles need to be redacted as well. There is language in the agreement that says the commission cannot identify ELPD employees in reports, and commissioners disagreed about if a title is enough information to identify some ELPD employees. A paragraph in the Police Oversight Commission’s 2024 annual report draft. Commissioners are not allowed to name ELPD officers in reports, and are unsure if they can include the titles of ELPD employee, such as “deputy chief,” “lieutenant,” etc. When the City Council passed the _ordinance amendments on Oct. 21,_ it passed a version that had been amended days prior to the council meeting that had not been reviewed by the commission, leading a commissioner to tell an ELi reporter she had “no idea” what council had just passed shortly after the vote. Many questions commissioners still have about the ordinance changes – like if the commission has the ability to hire an investigator and if officer titles must be kept out of commission reports – remain unanswered. “Most of the questions we have are how do we use the ordinance. Not how did we get to this point? Not discussing what whatshername did or the city manager,” Vice Chair Kath Edsall said. “How do we work with this document and what limitations does it put on us?” Commissioner Chris Root said at yesterday’s meeting a city attorney told a group of commissioners that city attorneys would answer questions provided by commissioners, but if they have follow-up questions about those answers, they would need to be addressed in a closed-session meeting. Commissioners had concerns about talking about the amendments in a closed-door meeting, saying the public should understand the new rules and that discussing the amendments in closed-session could violate the Open Meetings Act. “It is clear that what the city attorney is allowed to discuss with a body that normally meets in open-session during the closed-session involves strictly legal advice,” Root said. “A number of questions we might have wouldn’t actually be about strictly legal advice.” Commissioner Michael McDaniel, who is an attorney, said City Attorney Carlito Young had unexpectedly called him that afternoon to tell him he was surprised the commission did not want to meet in closed-session. McDaniel said Young was concerned that the conversation would drift into questions about an incident where an ELPD officer deployed pepper spray on young men downtown in August. In that incident, an officer deployed pepper spray on two men downtown before arresting them. Brown defended the officer’s actions and helped write a press release that named the men arrested. However, the attorney for the men later released security footage that contradicted the police narrative and charges against both men were dropped. The incident and press release are now the subject of a lawsuit filed in a federal court. This is not the first rift the commission has had with the city’s attorneys. Last month, the commission opted to skirt a recommendation from Young when filing complaints against officers involved in the pepper spray incident. Young said filing the complaints could be against the city’s interests due to ongoing litigation, but members of the volunteer commission said their duty is to oversee the police department. **Commission asks that city investigation look into police chief’s actions, be made public.** The commission was initially slated to vote on a motion to file a complaint about Brown’s actions following the pepper spray incident. However, after a discussion the commission amended the motion to ask that an independent review of the police department that the City Council ordered in October look specifically into Brown’s actions following the pepper-spray incident. A photo of Police Chief Jen Brown. (From City of East Lansing website) The commission’s ability to have an investigation carried out is limited by the new ordinance and when the oversight commission files a complaint, it is investigated by ELPD. “I’m not comfortable with the police department investigating themselves,” Commissioner Kathy Swedlow said. “I think that anything that would come from that [investigation] in some eyes would be necessarily tainted because you’re investigating your boss.” As a way to get more information, Swedlow suggested the commission amend the complaint motion to instead request that the review into ELPD already ordered by City Council investigate Brown’s actions after the pepper spray incident. The motion also requests that the investigation be made public after it is completed. The commission has raised concerns about Brown’s actions during and after the pepper-spray incident because she did not intervene to ensure the men pepper sprayed received medical care when they asked for it. Additionally, Brown played a central role in writing the misleading press release about the incident. The amended motion passed unanimously. While commissioners are hoping the investigation shines more light on the controversial August incident that city officials have mostly stayed quiet about, some are already raising doubts about the prospect of the investigation being made public and the attorney, _Michelle Crockett_, council hired to conduct the review. “There’s no transparency in this investigation as far as we can tell,” Commissioner Simon Perazza said. “When we heard we had a civil rights lawyer who was chosen, we looked up the civil rights lawyer and saw they actually specialize in protecting corporations and municipalities from harassment and discrimination cases. I’m concerned about the lack of transparency and the choice.” **Commissioners are troubled by police force data.** For the first three years of the oversight commission’s existence, monthly reports would be attached to meeting agendas that give short narratives and demographic data around incidents where ELPD officers use force. Under the new bargaining agreement, those reports must be kept confidential by commissioners – though ELi did obtain a redacted version of the October report through a Freedom of Information Act request. Edsall said she is troubled by demographic data in recent reports, namely the racial and age breakdown of who ELPD is using force against. Edsall highlighted data in reports that cover August through October, over those three months ELPD used force in interactions with 108 individuals, of which 78 were Black and 17 were white. Additionally, the average age of individuals in the September report was 21.5, Edsall said. When you take out three middle-aged outliers, she added, the average age drops down to 19.5. “What we’re seeing here is what we’re seeing around the country,” Commissioner Sharon Hobbs said. “We’re getting an increase because that increase is being stimulated. That gives the powers that be the opportunity to say… ‘Look at what happened with all those people who came in there.’” Hobbs continued to say this could preempt the city and ELPD to “send in the troops” as a way to “Make East Lansing Great Again,” referencing President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. “I am worried about that,” Morgan said. “I do worry that East Lansing is going to be a focal point for an increase in bias and prejudice and militarization of law enforcement.” _Correction 12/5 6:00 p.m.: This story initially stated the commission filed a complaint about Police Chief Jen Brown. The commission amended its motion to ask the city’s investigation be made public and look into Brown’s actions. The commission did not file a complaint against Brown._

A raccoon was found passed out in the bathroom of the Virginia ABC Store in Ashland after breaking in and ransacking shelves, according to Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter.

Unfortunately, though I have made the world’s best booty shorts and deployed them with great skill and aplomb, there are still those in our society who refuse to heed my message, and also to learn basic history. This fact was brought to my attention once again this past month when a terrible take floated across my serene feed over at bsky.app (which, incidentally is the place you are most likely to find your girl posting of late). In this case the terrible history in question was this: Read more: On contrarian history Fun fact: this man then blocked me when I made fun of him for being woefully ignorant on the subject and suggesting he should probably not try to opine on things when he hasn’t done the reading. Because of course he did. Of course, I know you are not an ignorant blowhard, and indeed, because you are here, I assume I hardly need to relitigate the fact that the term Dark Ages does not refer to a period of intellectual or cultural decline. You are all aware that it simply refers to a time of limited source survival. And you all also understand source survival and how it works. What is interesting to me here in this take, other than the continued and wilful ignorance of individuals who wish to see themselves as better than medieval people, is that this view is only possible if we don’t consider the material conditions of average people. Because of how source survival works, or indeed, how architectural survival works, we are often encouraged to think of the past as a place populated entirely by the wealthy elite. After all, it is the wealthy elite who write the majority of historical sources, in that they are often the only people trained to be literate. This is by design in order to create an elite population, of course. This tactic will persist into the modern era with, for example, forced illiteracy on enslaved populations.[1] The facade of the Library of Celsus, comissioned c. 110 CE by the counsul Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, to commemorate his father Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, the former procounsul of Asia. That is who has libraries and tells you exactly why they build them. Further, it is elites who have the ability to preserve documents. You need libraries to keep documents safe, and those are expensive and difficult to keep from burning down. The sort of person who has that kind of ready cash will ensure that the documents preserved are those which show them and their ancestors in the best possible light, and which reinforce their own cultural and economic control of the society. So you mainly just hear about rich people and what they owned as well as a lot of justifications for why you can’t be mad at them for resource hoarding. It’s quite dull. If we are thinking about buildings, the same is also true with some added factors. Most ordinary people’s houses, especially in Europe, were made out of organic materials. There’s rather a lot of building with wood and/or wattle and daub going on. This cannot survive for millennia. What can survive is things that were made out of stone. This privileges the survival of things like monumental architecture (such as the colosseum in Rome, for example), or religious architecture (temples, churches, and cathedrals) and the homes of the wealthy. From a Roman standpoint the homes of the wealthy are, for example, villae. Much is made of said villae. ‘Romans had underfloor heating! Roman houses were decorated with beautiful mosaics!; Now, technically both of those statements are true – but you need to ask yourself _which_ Romans enjoyed those things, and how it was that they managed to do so. The answer is a violent, crushing, and brutal slave empire. A mosaic of an enslaved person being beated, from the Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily. Heow hartwarming. Every Roman villa where we find the owners enjoyed underfloor heating was actually kept warm by the enslaved people keeping the system’s fires going. Sometimes, the beautiful mosaics include images of enslaved people being beaten. The lavish lifestyles that the people inside enjoyed were made possible by brutally controlling the local population of wherever they had reached, and forcibly taking their goods and sometimes just the people themselves. But we don’t get to hear from the people doing all the actual work around here very often, because of their position in society. And lest anyone attempt to convince you that all of those workers were just happy to be part of the giant violent slave empire, I very much encourage such parties to read the excellent _Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire_ by Sarah E. Bond, which is full of examples where workers attempted to band together to argue for better conditions and pay. These are not the actions of people who are happy with their lot. * * * _If you are enjoying this post, why not support the blog by subscribing to thePatreon, from as little as £ 1 per month? It keeps the blog going, and you also get extra content. If not, that is chill too._ * * * Further, anyone who would argue that actually it’s great being enslaved is encourage to consider if it would be great _for them personally_. Because here is the thing – if you go back in time to the Roman Empire you are not going to be a senator. You will be a peasant. Further, if you went back in time to say, Pergamon in the first century CE, then according to Galen (c. 129 – c. 216), there’s about a twenty-five percent chance that you would be enslaved.[2] If we keep in mind that in general we think enslaved populations decline in the late antique period, depending on when and where you are born, some estimates about enslaved people in the Roman Empire go as high as forty percent of the population being enslaved. I, personally, do not believe that is good, cute, or worth it so that twelve guys can have really cool mosaics in their dining rooms. Enslaved people serving wine and carrying towels, from Douga, Tunisia. To be fair to Romans (though why I should be is anyone’s guess) there are some good things that Roman rule provided via taxes – roads, for example. And sure, Roman cities did indeed look pretty cool, and I am pro-city as a general rule. However some of the things that your taxes would pay for – like ampitheatres – are just bad. I do not think it is cool to make enslaved people fight each other to the death. I do not think you should import exotic animals and then slaughter them before a crowd. Again, those who would defend these practices are encouraged to consider whether they would volunteer to be a prisoner of war ritualistically slaughtered before a crowd, or whether they think of themselves as the Emperor enjoying the spectacle. I think it is important to think about which scenario is more likely. At any rate, all of this – the spectacle of conspicuous consumption, the violent games – is neither here nor there when we begin to speak of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the transformation of Europe in the early medieval period. Because here is the thing – yes I do think that it is good and also cool when slave empires collapse. Because then they can’t do wholesale enslavement. That’s one thing. The other reason it is good? Because the collapse of said Empire doesn’t actually mean that there is a collapse in industry, and in fact is usually linked to increased life expectancy in local communities. A reconstruction of an early medieval metal workshop on the island of Islay. You can read more about this very cool archeological find, here. Case in point – post-Roman Britain. There has been some really interesting archaeological research in this area of late, and one thing they have found is that after the Romans fuck back off to the continent, things like metal production actually _increase_ in volume. Yes there was an eventual crash in that production in the sixth century, but that happens because everyone got the Justinian plague.[3] Even if you like Empires because you are a weird sicko, I am afraid you have to admit that they do not, in fact, somehow curtail the spread of plague in a world without germ theory and antibiotics. The Roman Empire, therefore, is actually not necessary for keeping industry going. Further, analysis of the skeletons of people in Britain after the Romans left shows us that their health improved quite a bit. As a general rule this is seen as consistent with a more balanced diet and increased calorie intake. Over time this leads to an increase in height as well as a _longer life span_.[4] Considering these factors – who is eating what, what is being made, who is consuming it – is at the heart of understanding history. You will never be able to convince me that the society that starved a native population so a couple of rich guys could have a fancy house and go watch prisoners of war be killed for sport is better than the one that sees the average person become healthier and live a longer life. I do not care if those rich people were enjoying goods imported to the region from North Africa. Those rich people were a vanishingly rare segment of the population and their consumption patterns were only made possible through horrible crushing violence perpetuated on average people. And here’s the thing, that is not ‘contrarian’ that is called ‘historical analysis’ which is done by ‘historians’ when we do things like ‘analyse primary sources’ and archaeologists when they ‘dig up bones’. That is what we do. That is the work. Further, the fact that there is no such thing as a ‘Dark Ages’ and that a term we used for source survival has escaped containment and been rendered meaningless by a bunch of poorly read self-congratulatory dolts is, in fact, what we call ‘settled academic fact’. This isn’t a debate! That is literally what is true! A section of wall from the Roman ampitheatre in London, now under Guildhall. It’s grim. Of course, there is at the heart of this sad man’s idiotic rant the standard irony: he is arguing that the ‘Fall of Rome’ crated a ‘Dark Ages’ which was bad and is a term that is pejorative from a place of total ignorance. This man has never read an actual history book. He knows nothing about the early medieval period. If I asked him to describe the system of governance in Visigothic Iberia, for example, he is unlikely to even understand what I am asking. Yet he has a deeply held opinion on this era which he chooses to put about online. And he will block medieval historians such as myself if we take offence to his positioning _us_ as contrarian. It is contrarian to argue in defence of a system which steals from workers to give to a vanishingly small segment of a wealthy population. It is contrarian to refuse to learn about a subject and still think your opinions on it are valid. It is contrarian to ignore experts when they correct your profound and deep-seated misunderstanding. However this man, and the legions of those who will go to bat for a violent and oppressive Empire, do not see themselves as contrarian because they are not engaging with actual history, they are engaging with a hegemonic historiography. They believe in the glory of the Roman Empire and its inherent good because they themselves currently live inside a violent empire that exists to funnel money to a wealthy elite. If you begin to question whether Rome was bad for the average person – if you start to ask why there was money for some people to have underfloor heating, while there wasn’t enough to adequately feed the population of Brittania – you may start asking questions about what is happening around you. There is no such thing as revisionist history. Writing history is a constant process of re-evaluation of sources and attempts to control for the biases of the past as well as our own. Anyone who calls the people doing that work contrarian, or accuses them of attempting to ‘rewrite history’, fundamentally doesn’t understand what history is and what it does. Or perhaps they do, and they want to prevent historians from questioning the world around us. So, take your pick: are you ignorant, or just a bad person? I can’t answer that for you. * * * [1] Cornelius, Janet. ‘”We Slipped and Learned to Read:” Slave Accounts of the Literacy Process, 1830-1865’, _Phylon (1960-)_ 44, no. 3 (1983): 171–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/274930. [2] Ramsay MacMullen, ‘Late Roman Slavery’, _Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte_ , vol. 36, no. 3, 1987, pp. 365. [3] CP Loveluck, MJ Millett, S Chenery, et al., ‘Aldboroughand the metals economy of northern England, c. AD 345–1700: a new post-Roman narrative’,_Antiquity_. 2025;99(407):1320-1340. doi:10.15184/aqy.2025.10175 [4] Alvaro Luis Arce¸ _Health in Southern and Eastern England: A Perspective on the Early Medieval Period_ , PhD Thesis, University of Durham, 2007. https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2595/ <Accessed 24 November 2025> * * * For more on myths about the medieval period and empire, see: There’s not such thing as the Dark Ages, but OK I wasn’t taught medieval history so it isn’t important is not a real argument, but OK On successor states and websites On colonialism, imperialism, and ignoring medieval history * * * Support the blog by subscribing to the Patreon, from as little as £ 1 per month! It’s the cool thing to do! My book, The Once And Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society, is out now. © Eleanor Janega, 2025 ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Like Loading... ### _Related_ ## Author: Dr Eleanor Janega Medieval historian, lush, George Michael evangelist. View all posts by Dr Eleanor Janega