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nickphilbeck.bsky.social

@nickphilbeck.bsky.social
90 followers 139 following 0 posts

Bass Singer. Restorative Justice Practitioner and Advocate.

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Reposted by @nickphilbeck.bsky.social
Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 24/08/2026
Underappreciated: US farmland *already substantially produces energy, not food*, and does so very inefficiently. Corn ethanol (~40% of all US corn) requires about 100 times more land per vehicle-mile driven than solar photovoltaics -> electric vehicles. Shifting corn to solar *would free up land*.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
In addition to being morally abhorrent, this is both factually wrong as to the people who ICE has killed and legally wrong as to when lethal force can be used.
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
This is almost too generous. It’s not if there IS another motive; it’s if the court can IMAGINE another motive.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
The new racist double standard set up by Alito in the TPS ruling: if there’s any other motive in addition to the racism, the racism doesn’t count, but if the state wants to *prevent* discrimination against black people, that is racist and unconstitutional www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Roberts Court has been turning anti-discrimination law upside down for years. Its approach came into particular focus in May, with Louisiana v. Callais, in which it determined that not allowing Louisiana’s government to dilute Black votes was racist. In that case, Alito insisted that forcing the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district would be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” because Republicans were entitled to discriminate against Black voters if they argued that their purpose was partisan instead of racist. The Court reaffirmed that position in a subsequent case dealing with Alabama, after a lower court had found ample evidence of deliberate racial discrimination, as opposed to the discriminatory effect of the Louisiana map.

Mullin now sets up an even more impossible double standard. If the government wants to discriminate against Black people, any pretext will do. “As long as there is a plausible basis—any plausible articulable basis—for the government’s action, then the Court will look to that basis as sufficient,” Aderson Francois, a law professor at Georgetown University, told me, “even in the face of evidence that government actors were motivated by animus.” If a Black person wants to prove they’ve been discriminated against, however, no amount of evidence will suffice.
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Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
My previous standup special People Pleaser came out this week (I think) in 2022! I think you might like this one as well! If you already did, I'd love if you'd let someone else know! Okay that's all!
tubitv.com
Josh Gondelman: People Pleaser (2022)
The comic who just wants everyone to have a good time explores the pressures of appearing in his friends’ dreams and choosing the right wedding DJ.
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Marcelius Braxton @marceliusb.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
The U.S. and European powers have always targeted Haiti/Haitians because Haiti's story is one of Black resistance, and these powers (still) try to invalidate and denigrate the first self-made Black republic at every turn. But its struggles are linked to colonial powers attempting to destroy it. /1
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 11/05/2026
it's worth reflecting on the crisis in Lowndes County, Alabama, in light of the Supreme Court eviscerating the Voting Rights Act Black residents wouldn't be forced to live in filth if they had political influence and a government that responded to their needs ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...
ballsandstrikes.org
Trump DOJ: Providing Basic Sewer Services to Black People Is Actually “Illegal DEI”
The Trump administration has nixed a 2023 settlement that was building modern sanitation infrastructure in Lowndes County, a predominantly Black county in Alabama.
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tamara nopper @tamaranopper.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Since redistricting and the VRA are rightfully getting attention, here‘s info about prison gerrymandering. If unfamiliar, prisoners are counted as part of population of area in which they are held captive and not where they’re from, despite felony disenfranchisement. www.prisonersofthecensus.org
prisonersofthecensus.org
Prison Gerrymandering Project
Legal and factual research to support advocacy campaigns to end prison-based gerrymandering focusing on the Census Bureau, and state and local redistricting.
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Man, that sounds terrible. Killed with impunity by agents of the state for just being on the street and protesting? Hard to see how regimes like that can continue to claim a popular mandate.
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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
This kind of framing is a choice. And it's a choice that needs to keep getting called out, over and over.
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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
I want to scream, but I just can't anymore. This is SO common. "Tough on crime" types always get the credit, even if we need time to flow backwards and sideways to give them the credit. Always. Over and over. And smart policies never get credit, and any success is framed as strange and tentative.
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 12/02/2026
"When ICE's ordinary operations require protection from law rather than obedience to it, abolition is not a radical slogan but a natural conclusion."
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
This must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.
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Emily Tamkin @emilyctamkin.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
This is very very good
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
It’s ironic that they’re like “if we do ethnic cleansing we’ll have a high trust neighborly society” and then Minneapolis is literally doing high trust neighborly society and they’re like nooooo
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Brian Hughes @bmhughes.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 15/10/2025
This is the result of a lot of people pretending racism is one of the greatest taboos in our culture while failing to address racism substantively. People are appalled by the idea of being called racist while being totally committed to upholding racism throughout society.
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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
this is as open an admission that an entire agency is engaging in routine constitutional violations that I can imagine
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
All right, I wrote about it:
campaign-trails.ghost.io
The White Civility Council
As the nation reckons with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, there has been a notable trend from mainstream pundits and press outlets. They have tended to downplay or outright i...
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
This is an important, essential thread.
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
they think they can just erase trans joy and trans freedom. they can't. they can make things a lot harder and more painful. but that joy and that freedom is not theirs to take and it is incumbent on all good people to say so.
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
From an excellent piece by @dziblatt.bsky.social. www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/hitl...
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Imagine if "combating homelessness" meant housing people, not brutalizing and disappearing them.
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 30/07/2025
the Republican goal here is to drive more money and power to right wing propaganda companies pretending to be local news broadcasters (like Sinclair broadcasting) but as usual a reader would have absolutely no idea of this reading U.S. journalism coverage of it
deadline.com
FCC Chair Launches Inquiry Into NBCU Over Treatment Of Local Affiliates
Brendan Carr wants to look at network affiliation agreements.
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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Du Bois on what these assholes were really like
The Southern planter suffered, not simply for his eco- nomic mistakess-the psychological effect of slavery upon him was fatal. The mere fact that a man could be, under the law, the actual master of the mind and body of human beings had to have disastrous effects. It tended to inflate the ego of most planters beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets; they issued commands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and self-abasement; they were choleric and easily insulted. Their "honor" be- came a vast and awful thing, requiring wide and insist- ent deference. Such of them as were inherently weak and inefficient were all the more easily angered, jealous and resentful; while the few who were superior, physically or mentally, conceived no bounds to their power and per- sonal prestige. As the world had long learned, nothing is so calculated to ruin human nature as absolute power
over human beings.
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David Kaib @davidkaib.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
‘ Immigration enforcement’ isn’t about safety. People without papers are not dangerous. Armed state agents assaulting, kidnapping, and caging people are.
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
memorize & internalize this important social media history. then, do a kickflip
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/05/2025
did some yapping about this youtu.be/9e6nJ8-9kms
youtu.be
Trump's Insane Oval Office Meeting with South Africa's President
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/05/2025
i think it should be a bigger story that the president held a meeting with a foreign head of state where he ranted about the most gutter white supremacist propaganda you can find on the internet
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 25/04/2025
relatedly there are times when this song hits me a certain way and i burst into tears
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 25/04/2025
listening to some stevie and i kind of think that you could bring a good chunk of americans back from the abyss if you could just get them to listen to “As” and force them to hear him sing/growl “did you know that you're loved by somebody?!?”
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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
New from me: an essay on the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and its remarkable 30 year history of witch hunts & blacklists. It chronicles the progression of how industries & academia went from capitulation to defiance,& what we can take from that today www.lawfaremedia.org/article/proc...
Process as Punishment: An American History of Political
Spectacle
Renee DiResta
Monday, April 14, 2025, 12:00 PM

American political theater isn't new.
The House Un-American Activities Committee operated for decades— until targets learned to fight back.
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Coryn Wolk @corynwolk.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
This is an expansion of methods/infrastructure that have been going on for +-10 years. Not in a "this isn't new!" way, but in a "they are maximizing existing systems" way. Ruha Benjamin and Dorothy Roberts have laid it out well. psmag.com/social-justi...
psmag.com
Gang Databases Are a Life Sentence for Black and Latino Communities
Ending up on a gang database if you're brown or black is easy—you only have to be suspected of association. Getting off a gang database? That's much harder.
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MJ Slaby @mjslaby.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
@aleksappleton.bsky.social and I teamed up to write about what President Trump's executive order to "facilitate the closure of the Department of Education" could mean in Indiana: www.chalkbeat.org/indiana/2025...
chalkbeat.org
Trump order on closing U.S. Department of Education met with support and skepticism in Indiana
Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner and Gov. Mike Braun support the move meant to reinforce state and local control in education. Other experts are more cautious.
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Read the book Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @jphillll.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Jesus fucking Christ. ICE tortured a green card holder just because. Just because that’s who they are. The American Gestapo that has state backing to do this now.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 03/03/2025
one thing about this is that it shows how terminally online these people are
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 26/02/2025
a guy I had a crush on many moons ago just texted me about my new article on the Supreme Court's latest bad decision, Lackey v. Stinnie, so now instead of only being mad I'm also happy for 21-year-old Madiba you can make 33-year-old Madiba happy by reading it too ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/lacke...
ballsandstrikes.org
The Supreme Court Just Made It Harder For Poor People to Vindicate Their Rights
Congress passed Section 1988 to expand access to justice. In Lackey v. Stinnie, the Supreme Court decided to limit that access instead.
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
because they have trained themselves to think of politics as a social game in which they are participants, and not as something that determines whether people live or die
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Prison Policy Initiative @prisonpolicy.org · 21/12/2024
Pretrial detainment hurts people for the rest of their lives. It's time to start protecting the presumption of innocence so people receive a fair shot at justice — a meaningful & achievable reform Other promising changes to fight for in 2025: www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/winnab…
Infographic explaining the importance of ending pretrial detention and cash bail
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Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Bluesky right now feels a little like all the Whos gathering to sing after the Grinch stole their floofloovers and jingtinglers.
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