In recent years, conversations among certain non-white and non-Western revolutionaries have been growing and deepening. We have encountered each other at gatherings, actions, workshops, assemblies, and the frontlines of insurrectionary upheavals, where we have begun to articulate our frustration with the existing political frameworks on offer for “people like us,” and expressed a desire for another language, another orientation.

When you fire the statistics collection people for true-but-bad news, you guarantee that you fly blind going forward, as people wont tell you bad news anymore.

We simply can't trust government stats after this.

Shithole state cements republiQan hegemony. Check your state today.

• Consolidates power by stripping non-partisian chair from hiring duties
• Does so in surpise five-minute vote without discussion
• Blocks Lyft from offering discounted rides to polling stations
• other shitty things

“This is a last-minute request I was not aware of until five minutes ago,” Fervier said.

“Life’s full of last-minute things that happen,” Mills responded.

The back-and-forth over hiring authority came after the board hired a new paralegal and assistant to the executive director who was criticized for not having a legal background or formal legal training.

The new hire, Hope Coan, is the wife of former executive director Mike Coan, a Republican ex-state lawmaker who left his board position earlier this year.

The nonpartisan chair Fervier tried to raise concerns about the appointment, but was cut off by the new executive director Mills.

“I do not think this individual meets the necessary qualifications for this job, and the hiring process itself was improper,” Fervier said. “That is out of order,” Mills replied.

Hope Coan’s LinkedIn says she is president of Coan Construction. The staffer she is replacing was certified as a notary public, completed a paralegal certificate course and had worked for more than a year as a paralegal at a law firm.

Democratic member Sara Tindall Ghazal said she was not included in the search at all.

Imagine the number of homeless people who could be housed with the King's latest fancy...

Haha! TACO chickens out again 🙂

reducing collection by roughly 20% certainly isn’t the same as stopping or radically reducing data collection. But it’s not nothing. Statistical models can improve the quality of collected data. But they can’t really replace it. Statistical models can clear up the signal in your data or extrapolate what the data would be in areas where there are collection challenges — say, estimating the population of transient immigrant and/or undocumented populations for the Census or getting the opinions of low-trust male voters for political pollsters. But the more you’re relying on “imputation” or modeling for your data, the lower the quality of your data becomes

President Donald Trump has said that Canada's support for a Palestinian state will make any trade deal between Washington and Ottawa "very hard."

In a post on Truth Social, Trump referred to comments made by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that Canada was planning to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September.

Trump wrote: "Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh' Canada!!!"

He's not planning on leaving.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34000758

Rashid Khalidi
Fri 1 Aug 2025 06.00 EDT

Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an-anti university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34000402

Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles
Fri 1 Aug 2025 06.00 EDT

“Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer” but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June,” Khalidi wrote.

Columbia announced last week that it would pay more than $200m in a settlement with the federal government after the White House claimed the university failed to adequately address alleged antisemitism on campus amid protests over the Israel-Gaza war, and threatened to pull significant funding.

Six out of 10 Americans fault president for financial struggles and eight out of 10 worry about tariffs’ impact

Americans are struggling financially, grappling with debt and the rising cost of living, and are blaming the Trump administration and corporate interests for worsening economic outlooks for working families, according to a new poll.

Six out of 10 Americans place blame on the Trump administration for driving up their cost of living, according to a poll conducted by Morning Consult for the Century Foundation, which asked 2,007 Americans how they are managing the high cost of living in the US economy, who they think is to blame and what are the solutions.

63% said Trump had had a negative impact on grocery prices, and 61% said he had had a negative impact on the cost of living. Nearly half, 49%, said the Trump administration had had a negative impact on their finances. Nearly eight out of 10 Americans, including 70% of Republicans, fear that Trump’s tariffs will increase the price of everyday goods.

US President Donald Trump recently warned a Jewish campaign donor that his MAGA base was beginning to turn on Israel, the Financial Times reports.

“My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump is quoted as having told the unnamed donor recently, citing a Mideast expert, also unnamed, with contacts inside the Trump administration.

“This report is a searing indictment of DOGE’s false claims. At the very same time that the Trump Administration is cutting health care, nutrition assistance, and emergency services in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘savings,’ they have enabled DOGE’s reckless waste of at least $21.7 billion dollars,” said Blumenthal. “As my PSI investigation has shown, DOGE was clearly never about efficiency or saving the American taxpayer money. I urge Inspectors General to take up our investigation’s findings and initiate a comprehensive review of DOGE’s careless actions.”