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sbeen.bsky.social
'Swas
@sbeen.bsky.social
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sbeen.bsky.social
Whoa
Another response caught my eye. This afternoon, General Tony Thomas, former head of the Special Operations Command, repeatedly responded to top administration officials (Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, et al.) with an image that appears to show Pretti being shot in the back of the head by a masked ICE agents. Thomas was the head of Special Operations Command from 2016 to 2019. It’s a powerful rejoinder to the weekend warriors and Palantir board members who imagine they’ve turned Minneapolis into some version of Anbar Province and that this is somehow a good thing.
January 27, 2026 at 2:44 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
Long time listener first time caller
January 27, 2026 at 2:33 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
Vic Mackey in his cubicle in the season finale of The Shield
January 27, 2026 at 12:24 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
They took away his social media accounts too
January 27, 2026 at 12:21 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
Vic Mackey in his cubicle in the last episode of The Shield
January 27, 2026 at 12:20 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
My understanding has always been that what is exported to the colonies returns to the metropole. But in this case, the brutality feels mostly low tech and domestic. These folks don't even understand logistics.

I know this all academic. Thanks for the response

www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4...
More specifically, the ‘imperial boomerang effect’ is a term for the way in which empires use their colonies as laboratories for methods of counter-insurgency, social control and repression, methods which can then be brought back to the imperial metropolis and deployed against the marginalised, subjugated and subaltern within. With weak moral and legal restrictions, empires are gifted a free hand to test new technologies and social hierarchies on colonised populations. Once honed, the circulation of personnel and knowledge through the empire spreads these repressive methods across colonies – and back into the domestic heartland.
January 26, 2026 at 10:41 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
I have a small question. Do you feel this is an imperial boomerang? I feel like what's happening in Minnesota has deep homegrown roots, of slave patrols and vigilance committees, and frankly the history of policing. The imperial boomerang risk is there but this feels like a domestic terror right now
January 26, 2026 at 8:12 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
On Friday!
January 26, 2026 at 6:21 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Now is the time of mojis.
January 26, 2026 at 2:14 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
So they dropped an ICE contract in 2020 (due to staff backlash) but then picked one up in again in August 2024?

vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/01/21/v...
Vancouver firm Hootsuite provides services to ICE
U.S. procurement records show that Vancouver tech firm Hootsuite is providing social media services to the Department of Homeland Security.
vancouver.citynews.ca
January 26, 2026 at 2:10 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Whoa whoa, Emerald City *and* gen pop? Damn
January 25, 2026 at 10:44 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Weirdly I have been thinking that earthiness is also a feature of The Pitt, which isn't horny but understands that having Michael Nouri play a charming Walmart greeter dancing around in hospital robe and foam donut can make for compelling TV.
January 25, 2026 at 9:04 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
I think about the still-wide applicability of RS Benedict's Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny all the time

bloodknife.com/everyone-bea...
Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny - Blood Knife
The human body has become a strange contradiction at the heart of the modern blockbuster. Sexy, yes. But sexual? No.
bloodknife.com
January 25, 2026 at 8:00 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
As far back as 2015! Has he been keeping a running file or something, just waiting for the fascism meter to tip?
January 25, 2026 at 7:53 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Interesting. I believe it possible there is a New England gradient to the smallest motion that might imply obligation. The range only spans eye contact to nearly imperceptible nods of the head, running North South. I write this with no disrespect to Maine

www.sunjournal.com/2026/01/24/l...
Lewiston anti-ICE protest draws about 1,000: ‘It’s scary to see in our backyard’
<br>The Agora Grand Event Center was overflowing with demonstrators protesting a recent surge in federal immigration enforcement activity in Maine.
www.sunjournal.com
January 25, 2026 at 4:52 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Waterbed explainer, with perfume strips and fruit snacks thrown in

slate.com/podcasts/dec...
“Why Do We Wait To Kill Lobsters Right Before We Eat Them?” and Other Listener Questions
Our answers to your questions about fruit snacks, waterbeds, and perfume strips in magazines.
slate.com
January 25, 2026 at 4:22 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Fair point. I feel like a slight head not of acknowledgement should be involved, but agreed on solidarity.
January 25, 2026 at 4:04 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Yeah not a fan of this sort of snowblowersplaining.
January 25, 2026 at 3:47 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Are we talking sidewalk or front door? Sidewalk is one thing, a communal thing, but doing up to a front door without asking seems a little arrogant
January 25, 2026 at 3:45 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
This is every New Englander's right.
January 25, 2026 at 3:36 PM
sbeen.bsky.social
Sorry, should have said 1985.

But also, they're the same picture.
January 25, 2026 at 5:39 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
Left, 1981, right, 2025
www.war.gov/News/Release...
Promoting high tech.America's emerging industries - advanced computers, lasers, fiber-optics, new materials, biotechnologies and so on - will benefit both from the lower rates in the new tax proposal and from its retention of the tax credit for research and development. BUT more important to high tech is President Reagan's military buildup. Since 1981, about $400 billion has been channeled into new weapons - most depending on advanced technologies. This demand for state-of-the-art products has pulled these emerging industries down the ''learning curve'' to the point where commercial spinoffs are attainable. The six CTAs, Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI), Biomanufacturing (BIO), Contested Logistics Technologies (LOG), Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID), Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE), and Scaled Hypersonics (SHY), are designed to address the most pressing challenges facing the modern battlefield. These technology areas will empower the warfighter to overcome adversarial threats and maintain operational dominance in any theater.
January 25, 2026 at 5:36 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
Past me cannot believe I'm nodding at those two sentences in agreement.
January 25, 2026 at 5:23 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
I more or less said this to someone just yesterday. Like, the early 90s was the -best- we could do? Are you kidding me?
January 25, 2026 at 5:16 AM
sbeen.bsky.social
I think about this picture of Cecil Williams a lot

www.neh.gov/article/ceci...
Coming back from a 1956 trip photographing South Carolina’s segregated beaches for Jet magazine, Cecil J. Williams stops at a filling station, closed at the time, and drinks from a “WHITE ONLY” water fountain. Image captured by Rendall Harper, a friend of the photographer.
January 25, 2026 at 4:08 AM