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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 3h

Friday night: ~1,250 fired in CDC, immediate pushback.

Saturday: administration says layoffs were in 'error'.

*But* does not specify how many.

Now, @axios.com reports ~600 remain RIFed by an admin that blends incompetence & malice to public health.

Mismanagement should have consequences.

Axios @axios.com · 3h

About 600 CDC staff in offices dealing with health statistics, injury and violence prevention, congressional outreach and human resources are out of work as a result of the Trump administration's mass layoffs of agency workers Friday, sources familiar said.

CDC purge hits 600 workers in key offices despite reversals

The casualties include employees working on health statistics, injury and violence prevention, congressional outreach and human resources.

www.axios.com

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j-salvo.bsky.social @j-salvo.bsky.social · 4h

Word to the wise: do not fly internationally into Logan. All of the major public detainments of Legal Residents and Citizens at airports have been out of Logan.

Kat Stuart @luckykatstuart.bsky.social · 4h

Anyone in Boston an immigration lawyer or know one who can help this woman? Her husband is detained at Logan over a dismissed misdemeanor from 2017. He’s a legal resident of the US. She just asked for help an hour ago.

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 3h

Isn’t imputed income usually about employer-provided benefits that relieve you of costs like transit or housing as another type of remuneration rather than social services provided by the government?

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 3h

I haven’t encountered a situation in which social services are taxable imputed income in the US, perhaps because when I’ve accessed those services (during paid parental and pregnancy leave, for instance) I didn’t exceed the foreign earned income exclusion. Can you say more?

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 3h

Just for clarity, the 2025 Foreign income exclusion (before you begin being double taxed by both nations on the excess) is US$130,000. It adjusts annually with inflation, so has been rising substantially in the last few years.

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 3h

Plus paid parental leave and lower risk from guns, and knowing that your taxes are paying for none of your family or neighbours to go bankrupt from illness or injury….

All quite apart from civil liberties that are rapidly disappearing in the US.

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 4h

Sign that your 9YO may have two lawyers for parents:

Me: “You’re not complaining, are you?”

9YO: “No. I’m just stating my feelings in an aggravated tone!”

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 8h

As an American academic in Canada, it’s always worth considering how much of the difference in taxation you get back in social services (i.e. healthcare) that you would have to pay for separately in the US.

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BronSays @bronsays.bsky.social · 10h

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests."

Meta AI adviser spreads disinformation about shootings, vaccines and trans people

Critics condemn Robby Starbuck, appointed in lawsuit settlement, for ‘peddling lies and pushing extremism’

www.theguardian.com

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Marco Rogers @polotek.bsky.social · 10h

I want to take this opportunity to connect some dots. This is not a mistake. This is on purpose. The right wing ethos hates government oversight. They try to take over government precisely so they can make it less effectual. We see this everywhere that has Republicans in charge.

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 15h

Last I checked the GOP controls all branches of our government.

Tweet from MeidasTouch: “Wow that’s crazy. Who’s running the federal government?”
Below, Acyn’s tweet quotes Rep. Mike Johnson: “If you look at polling, people’s faith in the federal government is at an all-time low. Why? Because they don’t see that it’s being done well.”
A C-SPAN screenshot shows Johnson speaking with another man standing beside him.

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Mallory Harris, PhD @malar0ne.bsky.social · 10h

"The administration may claim that some of these RIFs were ‘errors’. By extension, they may try and argue that many RIFs were ‘correct’. We should assume otherwise: the wholesale use of RIFs is a form of political retribution that does not serve federal agency missions. This is a failure by design."

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 1d

New post:

With Malice Toward All and Charity for None:
Oct. 10-11 CDC (Un)Firing Edition

joshuasweitz.substack.com/publish/post...

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 10h

Hi Sally. When Weiss published a supposed expose on the death of George Floyd, a veteran criminal justice reporter showed in deep detail that the piece was not just wrong but filled with falsehoods and misrepresentations. Weiss did not retract the piece. What do you think of that?

Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 12h

This is really smart. Amazed at the hysteria over the ascendance of a woman entrepreneur who clearly knows how to cover and sell news and who's not afraid to take on a mob. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss

The new editor in chief of CBS News triumphs over her critics.

www.theatlantic.com

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 10h

“Democrats see”? “Allegations of”?

He said it on camera!

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 11h

President Trump’s move to cancel projects in Democratic states during the government shutdown has prompted allegations of partisanship.

Democrats see a pattern of inflicting pain on places that are politically unfriendly.

Trump escalates his use of federal power to target Democratic states

Democrats see a clear pattern of inflicting pain on places that are politically unfriendly, while Trump has declared his intent to hurt liberal areas and policies.

www.washingtonpost.com

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 14h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 15h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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Kevin Reuning @reuning.bsky.social · 1d

Trump straight up murdering people in the Caribbean and the NYT writes this

The Trump Split Screen: A Peacemaker Abroad, a Retribution Campaign at Home

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 12h

I’m teaching The House of Bernarda Alba next, and am always surprised by Lorca’s emphasis on how *white* that prison of a house is, when I imagine it as shadowy.

So now I’m imagining a production that stages it in the abusive interior-designed world of trad-wife influencers, à la Ruby Franke.

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 15h

“Imagine feeling threatened by human rights dressed up as a frog”

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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 16h

ChatGPT free for students

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 21h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 22h

"The chancellor approved it"

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 17h

The Trump administration has promoted the anti-vax, anti-science movement which has now produced an epidemic www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Hundreds of U.S. students quarantined amid measles outbreaks

At least 270 unvaccinated kids are staying home from school as measles continues to spread nationwide. "Expect more," one expert said.

www.nbcnews.com

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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 16h

Sora2: Extremely realistic videos

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 21h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 22h

"The chancellor approved it"

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 19h

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

Well – no. Bluesky may or may not be, as one centre-right friend who felt unwelcome put it, “self-righteous island”. But the idea that’s why we went is nonsense. That I’ve largely stopped posting on a site that’s done more to shape my career and social circle than the rest of the internet combined is less about avoiding rival opinions (I love arguing with people who are wrong!) than with the fact the site simply became unusable. It stopped generating the things (good jokes, interesting debate, clicks) I wanted; it became extremely good at generating the things (racists, pornbots, racist pornbots) I did not.

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Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 1d

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 16h

Breaking:

Joe Biden is a Time Lord.

Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 16h

That’s a nice trick, since Biden wasn’t the president on Jan 6.

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Ariel @sycoraxpine.bsky.social · 17h

In fact, I would say tariffs are the least of it. Trust is based on basic decency. When we elect monsters who taunt, insult, and betray our neighbours, they never forget.

ℳatt @matttomic.bsky.social · 1d

Once again, it's not just the tariffs. If the tariffs ended tomorrow and Jack Daniel's showed back up on Canadian shelves, there'd be no pent-up demand for it. We're talking about a full-blown cultural/consumer shift.

Cheryl in Nova Scotia 🇨🇦🍁🍁 @minibubbly.bsky.social · 1d

American spirit exports to #Canada 'plummeted' 85%, says U.S. trade group

Distilled Spirits Council of the United States CEO urges 'lasting return to tariff-free trade'

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

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Natalie Sedacca @nataliesedacca.bsky.social · 21h

With immigration raids across the US devastating the agricultural workforce, the conditions for bringing in new guest workers have been made even more exploitative by allowing employers to charge for housing, on top of employer tie and prohibition on organising www.freedomunited.org/news/agricul...

Temporary agricultural worker policy has exploitation baked in - FreedomUnited.org

Immigration raids have devastated the agricultural workforce in the US but Americans don’t want the jobs. To bring in affordable guest workers a new rule has been added that is full of exploitation lo...

www.freedomunited.org

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