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Jesse F Ballenger

@jfballenger.bsky.social

870 followers 3.1K following 460 posts

History of medicine, health humanities, bioethics, critical dementia studies. Self, Senility and Alzheimer's in Modern America. http://bit.ly/3fVOrrU. Chilephile 🇨🇱, climate, cycling, Philly, board games, music, & sundry

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Jesse F Ballenger @jfballenger.bsky.social · Feb 22

To preserve my moral orientation in this terrible time, I'm reading each day's entry in @robertellsberg.bsky.social's beautiful devotional. It's a diverse cloud of witnesses - all affirming the reality of a life greater than the ignorance, cruelty, and oppression this regime seeks to impose.

All Saints 25th Edition Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time

Check out All Saints 25th Edition Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time - This praised and best-selling daily reader presentsshort, comprehensive biographies of 365 saintsa...

bookshop.org

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 1d

This is the response I received from ICE when I inquired about the 13-year-old they abducted from Everett, Mass. on Friday:

Good afternoon, Marisa.
Please see the below from DHS on the 13-year-old alien.
Please feel free to direct any questions to them.
Respectfully,
James

Tricia McLaughlin
@TriciaOhio • 6h
S...
Here are the facts: he posed a public safety threat with an extensive rap sheet including violent assault with a dangerous weapon, battery, breaking and entering, destruction of property.
He was in possession of a firearm and 5-7 inch knife when arrested.

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 1d

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 1d

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 1d

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a source

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a person familiar with the matter.

bloom.bg

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait.

At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 1d

Relevant today, as always.

Don't We Have To Judge People By The Standards Of Their Time?

Many who reach for this cliché want it to function as a shield against judgment altogether.

contingentmagazine.org

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

Border Patrol “attempted to arrest a plumber working inside a Logan Heights home but left empty-handed after the homeowner refused them entry.

The homeowner told agents she would not allow them inside because the warrant they presented did not include her address and lacked a judge's signature.”

Federal immigration operations target San Diego neighborhoods, sparking community resistance

Federal immigration agents conducted operations in Logan Heights and Southeast San Diego on Friday, with community members capturing footage of the enforcement actions.

www.10news.com

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Nick Hedley @nickhedley.bsky.social · 1d

In Germany, power availability to homes and businesses has increased over the years – even as the share of renewables has climbed.

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Laprofmme @laprofmme.bsky.social · 2d

Courtesy of colleagues at Penn

A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 engraving in the Pennsylvania Gazette, published in Philadelphia, in an effort to foster cooperation among the various colonies against the tyrant king of Britain, with the American colonies replaced by the nine universities selected for special collaboration opportunities

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 2d

The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.

The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.

Read that back.

When 400 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.

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Jesse F Ballenger @jfballenger.bsky.social · 1d

In Living with Dementia: Learning from Cultural Narratives of Aging Societies, a new Hastings Center special report, contributors use the tools of narrative analysis to help citizens of aging societies refresh our taken-for-granted assumptions about dementia.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Dementia : The Hastings Center for Bioethics

We can improve the lives of people living with dementia, beginning with using better narratives to talk about the condition.

www.thehastingscenter.org

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 3d

It’s pronounced cyclist.

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Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio @rlmartstudio.bsky.social · 2d

This week in 1988: 1,000+ ACT UP demonstrators shut down the FDA headquarters, demanding (and eventually winning) action on developing HIV/AIDS treatments. ACT UP's militant and creative actions always included powerful visual artwork, and paved the way for movements in the decades to come.

A photograph from the 1988 ACT UP demonstration outside the FDA. Many people are participating in a die-in on the front steps, holding mock tombstones with messages like "RIP - killed by the FDA" and "Dead from lack of drugs." A line of police officers (some with classic 80s mustaches) wearing riot helmets stands between them and the building; one cop wearing white gloves is walking through the demonstrators. Affixed to the 2nd story windows of the building is a series of posters and a large blank banner reading Silence = Death.

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 2d

www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio...

Philadelphia on track to record the lowest number of homicides in 20 years

Overall crime in Philadelphia has been steadily declining. In 2021, the city hit a record number of homicide victims: 562. Now, it is on track to hit the lowest in 20 years.

www.audacy.com

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Jesse F Ballenger @jfballenger.bsky.social · 2d

If you're not hip to who Bad Bunny is and why it's so awesome that he's been tapped for this year's Superbowl halftime show, this is a good place to start.

“There’s a real eagerness to learn,” Meléndez-Badillo said. “I call it the Bad Bunny phenomenon — and I’m here for it.”

WCVB NewsCenter 5, Boston @wcvb5.bsky.social · 2d

Professor collaborates with Bad Bunny to bring Puerto Rican history to millions

History professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo collaborates with Bad Bunny to spotlight Puerto Rican history in the Grammy-winning artist’s latest album, blending pop culture and scholarship to inspire millions.

www.wcvb.com

Jesse F Ballenger @jfballenger.bsky.social · 2d

João Bosco Burnier - Martyr of the Amazon.

Letter to Brazilian Ambassador on Killing of Fr. Penido Burnier

October 29, 1976 Ambassador Joao Baptista Pinheiro Ambassador of Brazil 3006 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20008 Dear Mr. Ambassador: We were d...

www.usccb.org

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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 2d

The new pope is quoting Hannah Arendt. www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

www.cbsnews.com

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 3d

“We can give $20 billion to Argentina but we can’t afford the CDC’s measles experts” is a hell of an argument

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Nancy Levine Stearns 🌎 @nancylevinestearns.bsky.social · 3d

🔥 MIT said NO to Trump’s “compact” terms. “Among them is a cap on international student enrollment, a five-year tuition freeze, strict gender definitions and a prohibition on anything that might ‘belittle’ conservative viewpoints.”

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

MIT rejects White House proposal to overhaul policies for preferential funding

Other universities still mulling proposal while MIT’s president said it would compromise academic freedom

www.theguardian.com

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Michael Mechanic @michaelmechanic.bsky.social · 3d

In related news, Trump's minions are reportedly perpetrating a bloodbath at HHS and CDC right now. Some of them are high-level, critical people, experienced scientists whose absence will have dire consequences when the next major pandemic hits.

Michael Mechanic @michaelmechanic.bsky.social · 3d

It is "incumbent on other democratic nations...to take whatever punitive actions are necessary against bad state actors—the United States sadly now included—to rein them in.”

Two top scientists tackle Trump's idiocracy

In a new book, Michael Mann and Peter Hotez examine the risks posed by entrenched beliefs, corporate greed, and regressive governments.

www.motherjones.com

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𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇 @taras-grescoe.com · 4d

“We assume that car use is an incompressible liquid that must be routed somewhere. But it’s more more like a gas that fills whatever space it is given.”

—Ian Lockwood, Harvard Loeb Fellow, transport planner.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 3d

RIFs can’t be done without agency leadership so this is RFK Jr extending his purge of CDC scientists to help Vought’s shutdown agenda. Genuine public health risks created by aggrieved men.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 3d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Heartland Signal @heartlandsignal.bsky.social · 4d

BREAKING: Masked Border Patrol agents aggressively arrested WGN video producer Debbie Brockman in Lincoln Square Friday morning, supposedly for "obstructing justice." (Video via Josh Thomas on Facebook)

Follow @heartlandsignal for more.

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Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 4d

Wen should direct more attention to incidents like these because Americans are more likely to respond to brutality to pets than to brutality to human beings.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 4d

EL PASO — a family says ICE showed up at their house looking for migrants and shot and KILLED THEIR DOG, then didn’t help them as the agent ran away and was not identified.

kfoxtv.com/news/local/e...

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Lauren MacIvor Thompson @lmacthompson1.bsky.social · 5d

Please acknowledge what is happening to American professors right now.

We do not deserve this.

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The Associated Press @apnews.com · 5d

Pope Leo XIV has blasted how wealthy people live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while the poor suffer. In his first teaching document Thursday, Leo confirms that he is in perfect lockstep with Pope Francis on matters of social injustice.

Pope Leo blasts economy that marginalizes poor while wealthy live in bubble of luxury

Pope Leo XIV has blasted how wealthy people live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while the poor suffer.

bit.ly

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