Posts tagged “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement”

• Research from dozens of clinical trials suggests that improving your sleep quality leads to meaningful reductions in depression, anxiety, and repetitive negative thinking… and the more your sleep improves, the bigger the mental health benefit. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• I was pulling for the New England Patriots, but I have to admit it was cool to learn that Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald and the NBC reporter who interviewed him on stage after the game, Maria Taylor, went to high school together. See also: Sam Darnold and Kenneth Walker III riding the tea cups at Disneyland.
• AI Doesn’t Reduce Work. It Intensifies It. – via mergesort.me
• A new study suggests apes can pretend, an ability once thought unique to humans.
• The night before Super Bowl LX, at a North Carolina men’s basketball game, Jordon Hudson – girlfriend of former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick – wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo for ORCHIDS OF ASIA, the massage parlor where Robert Kraft – owner of the Patriots – was arrested a few years ago for soliciting prostitution. (The charges were later dropped, but still…) – via TMQ

Winter Olympics

• Sarah Schleper and son Lasse skiing for Mexico will make history as they become the first mother and son to compete at the same Winter Games.
• Olympic organizers are investigating with “maximum attention” after a spate of medals have fallen off their ribbons during celebrations on the opening weekend of the Games. – via Rodger Sherman
• German ski jumper Philipp Raimund won gold, which is quite a feat for someone afraid of heights.
• Norwegian biathlete wins bronze medal, then, totally unprompted, reveals he cheated on his girlfriend, she left him, and he wants to apologize publicly hoping she takes him back – via @rodger

A Functioning Democracy Does Not Imprison Children:

• Eric Swalwell: “You said you wanted to see a deportation process that was ‘like Amazon Prime but with human beings.’ How many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom 3 times in the face?” – via @atrupar.com
• RFK Jr. Went Dinosaur Bone Hunting with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – via What A Day
• Ha! Paul Thomas Anderson and Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) Want Melania Doc to Remove Phantom Thread Music
• ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. – via @jamellebouie.net

• I’m pretty sure I’ve already linked to The Labyrinth Locator, but it’s neat enough to warrant posting again in case you haven’t seen it.
• What was your favorite Super Bowl LX commercial? (I thought the Sabrina Carpenter ad for Pringles was the best one.)
• What it was like to be a bush at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance
• Rockhopper Penguins’ Athleticism Makes Them the Daredevils of the Animal World
• I am cautiously optimistic about both the upcoming Ryan Gosling sci-fi flick, Project Hail Mary, and The Adventures of Cliff Booth, the Brad Pitt/David Fincher sequel to the Quentin Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
• The first in a wave of legal cases alleging that social media is dangerously addictive is now on trial.
• Here’s a great line from an essay about the death of programming: Someday years from now we will look back on the era when we were the last generation to code by hand.

Winter Olympics

• U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn — who has arguably been the biggest story of the Winter Olympics — crashed during her fifth Olympic Games. So she won’t go home with a medal, but she will go home with the heart of a champion.
• “The summer games are about pleasant activities — swimming! running! playing games with your friends! — and the winter games have 11 separate terrifying ways to almost die hurling your body at maximum speed down an icy mountain.”
• US reaches first Olympic curling mixed doubles final, will face Swedish siblings for gold
• Hot Mic At Winter Olympics Catches NBC Announcer Call Snowboarding Big Air Final ‘So Boring’ – via @blobcostas

A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission)

• You are probably getting brain damage from all those COVID infections.
• How TikTok 2.0 Became a Weapon for ICE – via @scalzi.com
• Children trapped in Texas immigration facility recount nightmares, inedible food, no school – via @letatcestmoi
• Heartbreaking: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility
• The President’s online drugstore isn’t what it seems.
• POTUS shares racist video depicting the Michelle and Barack Obama as monkeys
• Dr. Mehmet Oz, of all people, urges Americans to get the measles vaccine as cases rise across the country.
• “Life on Peptides Feels Amazing,” says everyone who’s buying from looksmaxxers on Instagram or AI bots in China and injecting them into their bloodstream.

• For the first time in nearly 25 years, an Asian elephant gave birth to a calf at the Smithsonian Zoo. – via What A Day
• Got kids? Send them a link to Ian’s Shoelace Site!
• Super quick and easy way to send a message to your reps asking them to stand with the people of Minnesota against ICE: ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA NOW – via @bhay
• NSS: The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023. – via @jfallows
• Leslie Jones shares what her reaction would be if she were a reporter and the President insulted her.

Winter Olympics

• Lindsey Vonn says she is competing this weekend despite rupturing the ACL in her left knee just a few days ago.
• Winter House is definitely a better name than the original.
• Where, when, and how to watch the Opening Ceremony
• How to watch Mikaela Shiffrin live at Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics
• As law enforcement officials continue to search for her mother, Savannah Guthrie will no longer be part of NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage – via @latimes.com

What fresh hell is this?

• In an interview with NPR, Melinda Gates confirmed that she ended her marriage with Bill Gates because of allegations contained in the Epstein files.
• Operation Dirtbag, Swamp Sweep, Operation Catch of the Day, the Speedway Slammer, the Cornhusker Clink, Alligator Alcatraz, and Deportation Depot are just some of the degrading, dehumanizing, and disgusting names the current administration has been using for ICE operations and facilities.
• Health officials in New Mexico are warning against consuming raw dairy products after a newborn baby in the state died from a listeria infection that they say was likely contracted when the baby’s mother drank raw milk during pregnancy. – via @philplait
• The POTUS urged Republicans to seize control of elections and place voting under national authority, one of his most explicit signals yet that he plans to interfere with the workings of democracy. – via @marcelias
• ICE confirms measles outbreak at Dilley family detention center – via @pgourevitch

• Evidence is accumulating that the shingles vaccine also protects against Alzheimer’s disease and can slow biological aging. – via The Progress Network
• Mr. Math Blog is a great tool to keep in your back pocket if you have an elementary school student learning algebra.
• Reasons To Watch The Martian For The 47th Time, Ranked – via Lauren
• I highly recommend Night Thoughts, the new stand-up special from Kumail Nanjiani on Hulu.
• The Wirecutter published a quick and easy overview about keeping your text messages secure.
• Wil Wheaton on losing Rob Reiner
• Oh, man. RIP to one of my favorites: Catherine O’Hara – via TMZ
• For decades, Eve Baer remained convinced that her son, unresponsive after a severe brain injury, was still conscious. Science eventually proved her right.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:

• America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker
• An unidentified man dressed as Batman angrily confronted Santa Clara city officials for allowing ICE to operate at the upcoming Super Bowl in the city. – via What a Day
• He reached to grab a toddler he said he thought was falling. Then he spent weeks in jail before the case was thrown out.
• ICE Agents Arrested Don Lemon. Then the Story Got Even Darker. – via @gregsargent

• Symbol Salad is a great resource for those in need of special keyboard characters, like ¢ and ½.
• Organ Donation & Pascal’s Wager – via mergesort.me
• The current administration does not want to FAFO with an organized gang of wine moms. – via @froggyb
• Speaking of FAFO: I can’t believe this academic admitted to losing all his AI-generated research.
• The Ottawa Senators are selling jerseys with the names of the HBO Heated Rivalry characters for $325/ea (and donating the proceeds to a local queer hockey group) and they can’t keep them in stock because they sell out so quickly. – via The Athletic
• Rhode Island might ditch Mr. Potato Head license plates after Hasbro moves to Boston
• Well, fuck. Swearing Actually Seems to Make Humans Physically Stronger and There Really Is Something Soothing About Saying The ‘F’ Word
• This is absolutely wild: Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows (I mostly quit eating beef about 15 years ago and haven’t missed it at all. But now I’m going to feel even more guilty about the milk in my coffee.)
• It’s “Mental Illness Doesn’t Do That” Season Once Again
• This will be the first time the Patriots have been to the Super Bowl since Bill Belichick‘s girlfriend graduated high school. – via @bgoad85
• And now for the bad news:
  • Since beginning operations seven years ago, Brightline, which runs high-speed trains between Miami and Orlando and is the only private rail service in the country, has killed nearly 200 people. – via longreads.com
  • The South Carolina measles outbreak has surpassed the recorded case count in the 2025 Texas outbreak.
  • Immigration agents operating near Vail, CO placed branded ace of spades playing cards — similar to “death cards” left on corpses by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War — in cars left behind after immigrants’ arrests.
  • “FYI, a masked, anonymous, armed paramilitary force denying due process and breaking into people’s homes to arrest and detain people in camps is exactly what fascism looks like.” – via @darrigomelanie
  • Death of Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Is Ruled a Homicide
  • America’s Would-Be Surgeon General, Casey Means, thinks improving health is a spiritual project?!

• Please enjoy watching this 45-second clip of a group of penguins meeting a kitten for the first time in their lives.
• Alzheimer’s Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say
• If You Give A Crocodile A Kawasaki Ultra 310LX
• I’m excited to build this Andor LEGO MOC of the Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) Covert Resistance Art Gallery with my son.
• America’s Most Reliable Public Transportation Subway Belongs To A Thriving East Coast City – via my dad
• A Little Good News on a Saturday Night
• Pioneering Olympic snowboarder Ueli Kestenholz dies in Swiss avalanche
• Meet the Aphantasics, Those Who Can’t See Mental Images
• None of This Is Normal:
  • “It’s shameful that the government can come out and lie about what happened when there’s video and witnesses who have all come out and disputed what the government is saying.” – Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr – via @benross
  • The laws of armed conflict forbid combatants from feigning civilian status, a war crime called perfidy. The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first boat attack off the coast of Venezuela. – via @kylegriffin1
  • Jonathan Gerlach was arrested as he walked back toward his car with a crowbar and a burlap bag in which officers found the mummified remains of two small children, three skulls, and other bones.
  • Six federal prosecutors quit amid the Department of Justice push to investigate the wife of Renee Good, the mother killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week. – via What A Day
  • ICE detention has expanded rapidly under the current administration, both in terms of the number of facilities and people held.
  • I Was Kidnapped by Idiots

• Renewable energy was the world’s leading source of electricity in the first half of 2025 for the first time ever, knocking coal off its longtime throne. – via The Progress Network
• Narrative String Theory (NST) is an awesome collection of movies, television shows, and other assorted media that feature detectives (or conspiracy theorists) connecting pictures on a wall or whiteboard with thread.
• Taylor Swift gave her Eras Tour crew jaw-dropping bonuses because of course she did.
• Mississippi State will face Wake Forest in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, which requires head coaches to sign an agreement saying the winner will accept having a bucket of mayonnaise dumped on his head.
• RIP Tom Stoppard
• The Athletic did a great story on the current value of the sports collectibles seen in Home Alone.
  Related: Meet the family that pulled the most expensive Shohei Ohtani baseball card to date.
• Why do we have two nostrils instead of one big hole in our face? – via Jason
• 51% of the animals in farms across the world are shrimp. – via Tom Whitwell
• I know I’ve linked to this already, but I’m going to once again urge you to read the fascinating backstory of the Duck Tales theme song, history’s catchiest single minute of music.
• I’ve certainly experienced the Abilene Paradox plenty of times. I didn’t know it had a name, though. – via cassidoo
• Can Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player in the world, beat a novice while facing increasingly-difficult disadvantages?
• Jingle Bell Rock:
  • WTF? White House installs plaques mocking former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden
  • WTF? Liam Neeson Narrates Anti-Vax, Pro-RFK Documentary
  • WTF? Fake social media accounts attempted to push a ridiculous narrative framing Taylor Swift as a white supremacist.
  • Massachusetts Catholic Church Angers Conservatives with Its ICE-Themed Nativity Scene
  • Am I the only one thinking that there’s something really sus about this whole insane Venezuela lunacy? They’re not flooding us with drugs. We don’t need their oil. Why all the trumped up aggression? I feel like we’re living in the first few chapters of a 007 novel and we’re soon going to learn 90% of some critical part of cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence computer chips can only be found buried underneath some mountain range there or something like that.
  • “It makes my blood boil. It’s so ridiculous, so petty, so small minded,” wrote Maria Shriver, about the latest stupidity out of the current administration.

• When ancient Romans felt wronged, they didn’t ask for revenge from the gods. Instead they scratched their anger into thin lead sheets called defixiones, folded them carefully, and buried them in wells, graves, or temples, trusting that some power beneath the earth would take care of the rest.
• Buckle up, buttercup. This essay is going to be tough to swallow. Collagen Sits on a Throne of Lies: How the supplement industry took meat garbage and turned it into a $9B business
• A single HPV vaccination appears just as effective as two doses at preventing the viral infection that causes cervical cancer.
• Finding it impossible to stop thinking about The Chair Company? You can get a Tecca t-shirt or hat, but they’re sold out of chairs.
• One of the hardest parts of being a parent is attempting to balance, “Please study! School and your grades are very important,” with, “Don’t be stressed! This one history test isn’t going to matter at all in twenty years.” – via me
• Have you ever wondered how a touch screen knows you are touching it?
• Chindōgu: The Japanese Art of Unuseless Inventions
• How a UF engineer found purpose Below Deck
• Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
• “Anyone who was born an American and therefore feels superior to someone who had to work to become an American doesn’t know the first thing about being an American.” – via @harrymccracken.com
• Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
  • A 6-year-old boy is missing after ICE arrested him and his dad in NYC last week and shipped them to separate facilities. – via @clauirizarry
  • Zillow has removed climate risk scores from over a million real estate listings after realtors complained that information such as how at risk a home is from wildfires was causing them to lose sales. – via @carnage4life
  • Crucial is shutting down — because Micron wants to sell its RAM and SSDs to AI companies instead. – via @papapishu
  • “You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” – Penelope Hegseth to her son, Pete
  • The Supreme Court is siding with the current administration 84 percent of the time; it sided with the Biden administration only 53 percent of the time. And of course only one of those administrations is habitually laying waste to the rule of law.
  • Lawsuits allege USA Gymnastics, SafeSport failed to prevent sexual abuse by coach

• Three brothers cleaning out their late mother’s attic discovered a remarkably well-preserved copy of Superman No. 1, which sold at auction for a record-breaking $9.12 million.
• Everyone in Florida should be thankful for alligators. – via my dad
• What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows. – via @heidiyounggrasshopper
• I love this research into whether the mere presence of someone in a Batman costume makes people act nicer. (Spoiler: It does.)
• Why do NFL refs keep botching the overtime coin toss?!
• Clues by Sam is a daily brain teaser that manages to be both cute and maddening – via The Athletic
• On the evening of October 9, 1992, a meteor weighing more than two tons punctured the atmosphere. Sonic explosions accompanied its descent as it broke apart while screaming across the sky before a small chunk of it went through the trunk of a parked car in Peekskill, New York.
• Does Harrison Ford Know His Lines?
• The ultimate dad gift? A World War II Aircraft Advent Calendar
• War Is Over If You Want It:
  • The people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least.
  • Higher Ed’s Rush to Adopt AI Is about So Much More Than AI
  • The current maliciously-ignorant dotard running the most powerful nation-state in the history of mankind decided to demolish the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden (established by first lady Edith Roosevelt as the Colonial Garden in 1903) in addition to leveling the Rose Garden and felling two historic magnolia trees (commemorating Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt) adjacent to the East Wing in his craven lust to install a self-aggrandizing and pointless ballroom.
  • A 17-year-old U.S. citizen and high school senior was detained by immigration officers in Oregon on Nov. 21, 2025.
  • Driver Denny Hamlin breaks down in tears as the first witness testifying at NASCAR antitrust trial
  • Indigenous actress Elaine Miles of Northern Exposure was detained by ICE at a bus stop. When she showed them her Tribal ID, they told her it was fake. – via @phillewis

• The Philadelphia Eagles have produced yet another awesome and fun Christmas video. – via The Kids Kickoff
• Missing Flamingo Thought to Be Living in France
• Beginning in the 1970s, Alan Rosen – the Indiana Jones of vintage sports cards – professed that there would always be a market for older cards and memorabilia, and history has proven him right.
• The Fascinating History of Tarot Card Decks: From the Renaissance to the Modern Day – via kottke
• It’s tough to argue with anything on this list of 100 small steps you can take to live to 100. And some of them are even pretty fun. – via hurly
• The Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new blueprint for the regulation of bespoke drug therapies, a way for these treatments to quickly get to market if they meet certain standards.
• A cannon, three coins, and a porcelain cup were among the first objects Colombian scientists recovered from the depths of the Caribbean Sea where the mythical galleon San José sank in 1708.
• This Is Fine dot gif:
  • Over 30,000 Charlotte, North Carolina students skipped school in protest of ICE operations in the area.
  • The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state: How the AI Crash Happens
  • Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives
  • I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. Students chose to actively avoid learning because it’s boring and hard.
  • Paul Bojerski, a 79-year-old who was born to Polish parents in a WWII German refugee camp and who legally emigrated to the U.S. when he was 5, has been abducted by ICE in Florida. – via @oliviamesser
  • Prominently displaying the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom is a clear and obvious violation of the First Amendment. How is this even an issue?
  • Sex Workers & A Secret Charity: The Story Of Cory Mills’ ‘F*cking Bananas’ Afghanistan Mission – via @ronfilipkowski
  • This story is simply heartbreaking. A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself. Can the Chatbot Be Held Responsible? – via New York Times Magazine

It’s easier to put your hand in the next guy’s pocket if he’s illiterate.

American society is dominated by wealthy mountebanks and literally demented politicians who are happy to take on all the risks of AI because it promises to create workers who cannot even conceptualize quitting, much less striking.
from We Used to Read Things in This Country, by Noah McCormack