Join ICE And Fuck Up The Libs (Or Just Film It For The Internet)

Our Panic World episode about ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis is out. You can watch the video version by clicking the embed above and you can listen to an audio version here or anywhere you get your podcasts.

The situation in Minneapolis is escalating rapidly. Last night, the Department of Homeland Security said they arrested eight “rioters,” after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to clear out protesters camped out at the Whipple Federal Building, ICE’s de facto headquarters in the area. And riot squads, likely run by Minnesota state police based on what we saw this weekend, arrested protesters last night at another noise demo outside of the Hilton Canopy in downtown Minneapolis.

There’s a lot of paranoia on the ground right now. There were rumors circulating on Reddit last night that ICE agents are planning an even more massive swarm of the city. Details are still coming in about how big it actually is, but it looks bad. And there is chatter on local Signal groups that ICE is ratcheting up their presence at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport. We didn’t personally see any ICE officers while we were flying in or out of the airport, but we did hear of agents hassling Uber drivers at the airport when we arrived on last Thursday. And MPR News is reporting that ICE detainee flights have significantly increased over the last few days, as the agency flies captured migrants (and citizens) out of the state. ICE agents are also storming hospitals in Minneapolis now, as well. They’ve also been spotted recording crowds with what look to be Meta Ray-Bans.

Meanwhile, a whistleblower inside the DHS reportedly leaked the names of nearly 5,000 employees working for ICE and Border Patrol. You can view the list here. Though, take it with a grain of salt. The claims that this was leaked might be wrong, as some Bluesky users have noticed a lot of it lines up pretty well with publicly availably LinkedIn data. Either way, no, it is not doxxing to know the names of the people who are supposedly working in law enforcement.

Speaking of who is working for ICE, a recent piece from WIRED touches on something that I think is very important. “In a world where ICE agents are shooting US citizens on the street, the need for militias and extremist groups like the Proud Boys to support far-right interests has evaporated,” Reporter David Gilbert wrote this morning. And I’d like to take that line of thinking further.

This weekend, I watched January 6th insurrectionist Jake Lang agitate crowds of anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis and I realized how strange it was that he wasn’t just, you know, officially part of ICE. He could certainly join them, seeing as how their standards are so low they’re accidentally hiring Slate writers. But that’s what ICE’s true purpose is — a state-sanctioned holding pen for Trump’s most violent supporters. Looking back at it, January 6th was likely Trump’s version of the Night of the Long Knives, or at least a first attempt. Just like when the ascendant Nazi party cleared out their paramilitary gangs and laid the groundwork for more official party enforcers, to too do insurrectionists and far-right militia members now have two easily-monetizable paths towards legitimacy. (That aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.) Join ICE and fuck up the libs and brutalize minorities, or film it for the internet.

If this all sounds very scary, don’t worry! The Democrats have finally settled on a response to the roving gangs attacking their constituents. New York Rep. Ritchie Torres proposed the Quick Recognition (QR) Act this morning, which would require ICE agents to wear a QR code that connects to a digital ID with the officer’s name and badge number. Maybe someday soon you’ll be able to scan an ICE agent like a restaurant menu right before he shoots you to death. That’s probably the best we can hope for, seeing as how Third Way, a noxious centrist think tank, is currently telling Democrats that “abolish ICE” is an “emotional” and “politically lethal” stance to take. Hey, at least Minneapolis Gov. Tim Walz finally did a very somber photoshoot at Renee Nicole Good’s memorial. Only took him about five days to get over here. Longer than he waited to mourn The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, in case you were wondering.

We’ll be trying to keep the bulk of our ICE coverage free, out of public interest. If you want to read the rest of today’s paywalled issue, click the green button below.

Chargie Kirk

Scott Adams Is Dead

The fascist, white nationalist creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, died this week. Adams was a prolific poster who died as he lived, being annoying online. He spent the final months of his life begging the Trump administration to help him get access to experimental medical treatments that might have treated his aggressive prostate cancer. Of course, he only did that after spending years touting the effectiveness of MAGA-approved bullshit, like ivermectin. Like Charlie Kirk, his legacy is that he ended up as just another body for the Trump meat grinder.

I had the misfortune of interviewing Adams several years ago. He attempted to hypnotize me over the phone, explaining that he was a very powerful hypnotist and that he could convince me that Donald Trump was the only man who could save America from the evils of China and North Korea. Like every far-right fanatic I’ve spoken to over years, I walked away with the impression that he was profoundly lonely.

An Update On The Bad Times, Economy Edition

This week Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell accused the Department of Justice of threatening him to influence interest rates. Also this week “prediction market” Polymarket was integrated into the Golden Globes. These two things are not directly connected, but I’m sure they will both be covered in the same chapter of a future textbook all about the the lead up to what historians will probably one day refer to as the “hyper recession.”

Polymarket’s appearance at the Globes was a especially jarring, even for an awards show that is usually populated almost entirely by drunk people. Unfortunately, it was also shockingly accurate. According to Business Insider, the “prediction market” actually did predict wins. Twenty-six of the the 28 categories were correctly called by Polymarket users.

This doesn’t mean that these gambling sites are replacements for legitimately polling, but, like every other stupid tech fad of the last five years, we may stumble across a couple use cases where it actually works. Which these companies will desperately point to every time they screw up trying to jam their way into other sectors of culture.

Even AI Devs Prefer Bluesky To X

—by Adam Bumas

We’ve been writing a lot about Bluesky recently. Not just because of how definitively it’s captured the X refugee market, but because it’s now been popular long enough that the site’s communities are starting to mature. This includes communities you might not ever expect on Bluesky, like AI developers.

Bluesky’s open-source AT Protocol encourages people to build on top of it, and there’s a thriving community of creators who do that using AI. They’ve made programs that interface with the platform, like a third party app viewer or a system that bridges posts on Discord and Bluesky.

We first noticed this after a post from developer Tim Kellogg, who said “I really think it’s quickly getting to the point where you HAVE to be on bluesky to keep up with the AI cutting edge. Which is super fucking funny to me given how much anti-AI sentiment there is here.” Which is true, it’s pretty absurd to see things like starter packs of chatbots. But the fact the developers behind them are using the largely anti-AI site, when X is defining the entire AI industry, is another point in favor of our larger take on Bluesky’s outsize importance. 

Simply put, It’s the most prominent new platform of the past decade that allows communities to establish boundaries. Blocklists, starter packs, labelers, these are surprisingly rare tools for modern social media, and a minimal algorithm means the platform isn’t overruling your decisions about what you see. Maybe Bluesky isn’t an inheritor to X, but Reddit — a place where the division between subreddits means AI use is still hotly debated every single day.

A Very Troubling Reddit Post

X user @chipferin tried to post his “Boston cream” sandwich on Reddit and claims that he was flagged by the platform’s mental health bot. Which asked him if he was going through “something painful.”

The post did eventually make to the r/shittyfoodporn subreddit, where users were actually pretty into it. Though the consensus from the community is that @chipferin should have toasted it.

Have You Been Hypnotized By This TikTok Woman?

Actor Cristina Méndez has been posting “orbology” videos on TikTok for the last few weeks. I’ve watched a bunch of them and I’m no closer to understand what “orbology” is, exactly. But, according to Méndez, I need to be on the look out for coincidences. Ok then!

Excited to eventually find out in a few years why the CIA was paying Méndez to make these videos and who exactly they were trying to activate.

Cool Internet Fact

Some Stray Links

P.S. here’s Randall Girl.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***