Posts tagged “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement”

• Okay, I am late to the party on this one, but my heart just grew two sizes when I discovered that Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr managed to surreptitiously, throughout the course of the 2022/23 NBA season, insert all the lyrics from the Taylor Swift song All Too Well into his post-game press conferences.
• The story of the Archimedes Palimpsest is fascinating. I saw someone mention it on Instagram and couldn’t believe it was true, but it appears to be a legitimate tale.
• The team at The Athletic put together a compelling argument that not only is Mahomes worth his new half-a-billion-dollar contract, but he might actually be better than Brady.
• I doubt you need me to tell you this, but Sally Field is just incredible in Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix. The movie is wonderful and we loved it.
• Renewables have surpassed global coal power for the first time in over a century! (The last time coal lost its lead as the world’s largest electricity source, the Treaty of Versailles was in review and Congress had just established a national park in Arizona named for its big hole in the ground.)
• Shohei Ohtani meets 100-year-old Nagasaki survivor
• Sure, they may be trying to jump on the Wordle bandwagon, and it’s a bit tricky to play, but the new Catalogues game from The New Yorker is pretty fun once you get the hang of it. – hat-tip @heidiyounggrasshopper
• You can’t produce a Field Notes edition of The Maltese Falcon and not expect me to automatically purchase it.
• This Smithsonian article explaining The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life was pretty interesting.
• Some good news on the public health front: Florida Republicans Refuse to Take Up DeSantis Bill Loosening Vaccine Mandates
• Need another reason to stop eating meat? A flesh-eating cattle parasite is spreading beyond Texas.
• The Voting Rights Act Was the Nice Version
• Asian jumping worms, an invasive, soil nutrient-gobbling earthworm that can leap a foot in the air, are moving rapidly across the country.
• A second detainee has died at an ICE facility in Louisiana where a recent inspection report found insanitary conditions, problems with medical care, and the use of excessive force.

• I cannot remember where I found it, but this World Monitor App is wild. You can configure your own sort of hyper cyber dashboard of world news and events like you always see in pretend CIA headquarters in spy movies.
• WalkmanLand pays tribute to the pocket tape devices of yesterdays. (My entire life changed when I got my first Sony Walkman, sometime around 1986.)
• I am loving these incredible color photos of Rome that Jason found at the Library of Congress. And I might have already blogged this, but in case you missed it he also found these awesome Real Photos that Look Fake.
• Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible
• Drew Struzan: The Man Behind Your Favorite Childhood Movie Posters
• I dig this cool odometer effect implemented purely with CSS. – via cassidoo

So Much Bad News:

• The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.”
• Students in Savannah grieve teacher killed in crash with driver pursued by ICE.
• A Call to Conscience, by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago
• A little-known group stacked with lobbyists for the artificial intelligence industry has been sending congressional staffers on upscale trips over the past year to tour AI companies in San Francisco, London, New York City, and Los Angeles.
• The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Current Administration Officials Scrapped It.
• Department of Homeland Security leaders removed top privacy officers who objected to mislabeling government records to block their public release.
• Administration Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms

• I love these Big Tuskers! – via johansiggesson.com
• Why Apple's Move to Video Could Endanger Podcasting’s Greatest Power
• I haven’t been able to play the best video game ever made — Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (1997) — in over a quarter of a century, though I still have my old Microsoft Sidewinder in storage somewhere for it. Could the DOS Retro-Emulation Arena for Maniac Mansion™ (DREAMM) allow me to play on a Mac? We shall learn soon!
• Speaking of Mac software, I am not sure if I’ve ever mentioned how much I love Grand Perspective. If you are a Mac user, this is a must-have utility for analyzing where all your hard drive space is being used. I’ve had it for years and years and use it often.
• Are prediction markets just sports betting by another name? is a good primer on all the hooplah around them if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
• A new meta-analysis of nearly 100,000 people found that the more you watch short-form videos, the more likely you are to struggle with attention and cognitive control. The scientists found that watching short-form videos affects your ability to stop impulses and redirect focus. And it had a negative effect on mental health, specifically increasing stress and anxiety. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Goonies Never Say Die is a lovely essay by Dan Sinker that hit this GenXer right in the feels.
• A Rant about Daylight Saving Time: Chronobiologists and sleep researchers have reached a near-unanimous conclusion that making Daylight Saving Time permanent would subject the entire population to a kind of chronic, low-grade jet lag, one that never resolves because the clocks are perpetually misaligned with the sun.
• Do you have any ancestors who were from Canada? Great news: You are eligible for Canadian citizenship. – via my dad
• I don’t understand why the 1983 classic WarGames – one of my all-time favorite movies – isn’t required viewing for anyone and everyone who works in any way, shape, or form with the United States military, because AI really likes using nuclear weapons in simulated war scenarios.
• Radiohead tells ICE to take down a video using their song, writing, “It ain’t funny, this song means a lot to us and other people, and you don’t get to appropriate it without a fight. Also, go fuck yourselves.”
• The US struck an Iranian school where a blast killed at least 165.

• Italy’s famous Lovers’ Arch collapses into the sea on Valentine’s Day – via my little sister
• What the? There’s a species of mushroom that makes everyone who trips on it think they’re seeing dozens of tiny humans. As far as we know, it’s the only hallucinogenic that makes everyone have the same hallucinations. – via Kottke
• A startup called LightBar is paying everyday internet users to probe AI models for outputs that rip off copyrighted film and TV content, then packaging that evidence for studios to use in lawsuits, settlements, or licensing deals.
• Research suggests that drinking 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee per day (or 1 to 2 cups of tea) is associated with a lower risk of dementia. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• My uncle had two small parts in the 1990 Tom Cruise NASCAR film, Days of Thunder, which was filmed partly in Daytona Beach and the surrounding area. He’s at the very beginning of the film for a few seconds as a reporter interviewing one of the racers and he appears again in the fake police officer prank as a Florida Highway Patrolman. He’s the very tall trooper with a mustache. Uncle Dic (Domenic Albanese) was a supreme exaggerator and teller of tall tales, but for some reason I always believed him – because it sounded so authentic – when he told us that while they were waiting to film the scene he and Robert Duvall got in a farting exchange that had Tom Cruise in stitches. (I am also in the movie. You can see me during the celebration after the last race, right behind Cruise’s car. I’m the dumb teenager wearing a leather jacket in Florida.)
• Take a few minutes to read the fascinating backstory behind the Benjamin Franklin medal that was used in the coin flip at Super Bowl LX and how Topps selected its list of the 75 best baseball cards of all time.
• The official trailer has been released for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Winter Olympics

• I don’t know if there is any possible way NBC could do a worse job this Olympics. Several times now I’ve managed to avoid all social media and my email, flipped to NBC to start watching, and caught the end of the local news team spoiling everything I was about to watch. Peacock doesn’t help much, either, as it seems every time I try to watch anything there I see a message telling me the event has just concluded or hasn’t started yet, or I click to watch speed skating and am shown women’s hockey instead. It’s all very frustrating.
• France’s Viral Ice Dancing Team Has A Dark Backstory
• Ukrainian Vladyslav Heraskevych is the most important athlete at the Olympics right now
• SNL always has great sketches for the Olympics. I liked this year’s about the terrified luge racer, but it doesn’t top the All-Drug Olympics or Jason Priestley (with Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman announcing) as the worst ice skater in history.
• Norwegian skier Atle Lie McGrath, grieving his grandfather’s passing at the start of the Olympics, was so distraught from losing the men’s slalom gold medal that he threw his poles, unstrapped his skis and walked toward the nearby woods to be alone.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things:

• The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner.
• Cardi B slammed the Department of Homeland Security after it mocked her for saying she’d “jump” ICE if they came after her fans during a show.
• A Florida handyman who received a pardon from POTUS for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been convicted of multiple state charges of child molestation and exposing himself to children
• A Pennsylvania Olive Garden employee killed himself by plunging his head into a hot deep fryer. (When I was a teenager a broken piece of fryolator equipment caused me to submerge my right arm up to the elbow in 425°F peanut oil. I got second and third degree burns all over my arm and where the oil splashed, and it was easily the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced.)

• 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