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Black Sites

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Trump Is Asking the Supreme Court To Let Him Have Black Sites (Slate)
In a court filing, the government acknowledged that it had deported at least one migrant to El Salvador due to an "administrative error"—but argued that the individual had no right to contest his imprisonment because he is in the custody of a "foreign sovereign." This argument confirms what's been clear for weeks: The government intends to treat the prison as a black site where migrants have no constitutional rights whatsoever and may be subject to any treatment whatsoever—including indefinite detention, forced labor, torture, or death.
Abrego Garcia's deportation was unambiguously illegal, and his lawyers swiftly filed suit demanding his return. On Monday, the DOJ responded with a bombshell admission: Abrego Garcia did have a right to remain in the U.S. and was shipped off to CECOT only because of an "administrative error." The DOJ then declared that there was nothing the plaintiff or the government could do to fix this confessed mistake. Abrego Garcia, it wrote, would need to file a writ of habeas corpus, the traditional procedure for challenging unlawful detention. Indeed, it argued, Abrego Garcia's claims "can proceed only in habeas"—he has no other way to fight his imprisonment. And yet, the department concluded, no federal court can hear his habeas claim, because he is "not in United States custody." He thus has no remedy whatsoever and must remain in CECOT indefinitely.
...
These arguments, taken together, show how the Trump administration is transforming CECOT into a black site to which migrants can be disappeared forever. It is even worse than Guantánamo Bay, because that facility is at least under American control—a key reason why the high court ruled that its inmates have habeas rights. CECOT, by contrast, is run by El Salvador, so the U.S. government disclaims any authority over its operations. Once a migrant is locked up there, the government says it has no power to demand his return, let alone any say over his treatment behind bars.
Would it be legal for Trump to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador's jails? (NPR)
The U.S. is "just profoundly grateful," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, for El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's offer to incarcerate criminals being held in American prisons — including U.S. citizens and legal residents — in his country's jails.

Rubio called the offer "an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country." But the prospect that the U.S. might consider deporting its own citizens to serve prison time in another nation's jails quickly drew a backlash from people saying such a plan would be illegal.

It's unclear how seriously the Trump administration might pursue such an idea, but President Trump said on Tuesday that he would welcome it — if it were legal.

"I'm just saying if we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat," President Trump said when asked about El Salvador's offer on Tuesday. "I don't know if we do or not, we're looking at that right now." Experts, however, are adamant it is unconstitutional.
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billyhopscotch
11 hours ago
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No, we’re not a startup — and that’s fine

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Turn ideas into reality

Inadvertently, the other day, I became one of those people.

My team and I were sitting together as part of a week-long summit; some attendees were in New York City, while others attended remotely. I was taking them through the principles that I believe are important for developing software for our newsroom: a laser focus on the needs of a real user, building the smallest thing we can and then testing and iterating from there, shortening feedback loops, and focusing on the most targeted work we can that will meaningfully make progress towards our goals.

And then I said it:

“I see our team as a startup.”

Oof. It wasn’t even the first time the words had left my mouth. Or the second or the third.

One of my colleagues very kindly gave me feedback in a smaller session afterwards. She pointed out that this has become a cliché in larger organizations: a manager will say “we act like a startup” but then will do nothing of the sort. In fact, almost nobody in these settings can agree on what a startup even is.

And even if they did, the environment doesn’t allow it. Big companies don’t magically “act like a startup”. The layers of approval, organizational commitments, and big-org company culture are all inevitably still intact — how could they not be? — and the team is supposed to nebulously “be innovative” as a kind of thin corporate aspiration rather than an achievable, concrete practice. The definitions, resources, culture, and permission to act differently from the rest of the organization simply aren’t there. At best it’s naivety; at worst it’s a purposeful, backhanded call for longer hours and worse working conditions.

But when I said those words, I wasn’t thinking about corporate culture. I was remembering something else entirely.

I often think back to a conference I attended in Edinburgh — the Association for Learning Technology’s annual shindig, which that year was held on the self-contained campus of Heriot-Watt University. There, I made the mistake of criticizing RDF, a technology that was the darling of educational technologists at the time. That was why a well-regarded national figure in the space stood up and yelled at me at the top of his voice: “Why should anyone listen to you? You’re two guys in a shed!”

The thing is, we were two guys in a shed. With no money at all. And, at the time, I was loving it.

A few years earlier, I quit my job because I was certain that social networking platforms were a huge part of the future of how people would learn from each other and about the world. My co-founder and I didn’t raise funding: instead, we found customers early on and gave ourselves more time by earning revenue. Neither one of us was a businessman; we didn’t know what we were doing. We had to invent the future of our company — and do it with no money. It felt like we were willing it into existence, and we were doing it on our own terms. Nobody could tell us what to do; there was nobody to greenlight our ideas except our customers. It was thrilling. I’ve never felt more empowered in my career.

There is no way to recapture that inside of a larger organization. And nobody should want to.

The most important difference is that we owned the business. Each of us held a 50% share. Yes, we worked weird hours, pulled feats of technical gymnastics, and were working under the constant fear of running out of money, but that was a choice we made for ourselves — and if the business worked, we’d see the upside. That’s not true for anyone who can be described as an “employee” rather than a “founder”. Even if employees hold stock in the company, the stake is always orders of magnitude smaller; their ability to set the direction of the company, smaller still.

Another truth is that almost nobody has done this. If you’ve worked in larger institutions for most of your career, you’ve never felt the same urgency. If you’ve never bootstrapped a startup, the word might conjure up memories of two million dollar raises and offices in SoMA. Maybe a Series C company with hundreds of people on staff. Or Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, backstabbing his way to riches. In each case, the goal is to grow the company, make your way to an IPO or an exit, and be a good steward of investor value. In places like San Francisco, that’s probably a more common startup story than mine. But it’s an entirely different adventure.

So instead of using the word “startup” and somehow expecting people to innately connect with my lived experience on a wholesale basis, what do I actually want to convey? What do I think is important?

I think it’s these things:

  • Experiment-driven: The team has autonomy to conceive of, design, run, and execute on the results of repeated, small, measurable experiments.
  • Human-centered: The team has their “customers” (their exact users) in mind and is trying to solve their real problems as quickly as possible. Nobody is building a bubble and spending a year “scratching their own itch” without knowing if their user will “buy” it.
  • Low-budget: The team is conscious about cost, scope, and complexity. There’s no assumption of infinite time, money, or attention. That constraint is a feature, not a bug.
  • Time-bound: The team is focused on quick wins that move the needle quickly, not larger projects with far-off deadlines (or no deadline at all).
  • Outcome-driven: The point is to help the user, not to spend our time doing one activity or sticking to a known area of expertise. If buying off the shelf fits the budget and gets us there faster, then that’s what we do. If it turns out that the user needs something different, then that’s what we build. Quickly.

That’s what I was trying to say. Not that we’re a startup — but that we can and should work in a way that’s fast, focused, and grounded in real human needs. We don’t need the mythology or the branded T-shirts. We just need the mindset — and the permission.

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billyhopscotch
9 days ago
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Ben really captures something here
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For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue

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A.R. Moxon:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.

For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.

Yeah, this is basically why I don’t waste time anymore railing against the many hypocrisies of conservatives — they’re not gotchas that you’re catching them in, they’re part of the domination.

Tags: A.R. Moxon · politics

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billyhopscotch
10 days ago
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cjheinz
10 days ago
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Wow. Everyone needs to know & understand this. I didn't.
Lexington, KY; Naples, FL

An Alternative to Hope

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Emily and Amelia Nagoski discuss how to cope when you've either lost your hope or never had any. Emily and Amelia made the Feminist Survival Project podcast in 2020. In 2025, they brought it back. In a recent episode, they discuss what to do when you don't have hope.

Notes I took from the podcast:

* Emily has to say that her hope is "broken" rather than "gone" because people get freaked out that you're not going to try any more.
* Hope is measured in pathways and agency. Pathway: "I can think of many ways to get what is important to me, I can see a way forward." Agency: "I can meet my goals." But the problems on the news are too big for any individual to think their way out. This would take collaboration on a massive scale, and no one has that individual power except for maybe four people in the world, who are the actual problem right now.
* Hope doesn't take scale into account. Hope is a general sense of positivity. Faith is a belief in something and is more specific.
* The Monitor keeps a ratio of effort to progress and "has a very strong opinion of what it's supposed to be." It objects when you put in a whole lot of effort and don't make much progress. If no amount of effort will make progress, such as constitutional crisis...How do you keep the motivation to keep on trying when nothing you do will make any progress?
* Emily's answer is faith, even if she's an atheist.
* Stillness, time and rest help you heal. Stay with the people who care about you.
* "Hope is a scam." It's great if you have access to it, but if you don't, there are other options that are very good.
* What people fear is that if they lose access to hope, they think there are no other ways through the jams of their lives, they have no agency or pathways, they become stuck or isolated. My brain has decided that if I can't change these things, I can't change anything.

Step 1: ask for help. Have a list of 3 people at minimum, one of whom should be a professional.
Step 2: Numb intolerable pain in whatever way helps. Do whatever it takes, whatever way helps. Food, drugs, television, whatever lowers the pain to a tolerable level. Do things that help you to release the pain, clean the wound.

Emily also wrote a Substack article and did a separate video on the topic. She lost her hope 20+ years ago, how's she been doing since then?
"Hope is justifying your feelings, thoughts, and plans based on your assessment that a desired outcome is possible.
I had a series of life experiences that broke the link between my assessment of whether or not a desired outcome is possible and whether or not I think, feel, or plan anything about that desirable outcome. I lost my ability to justify my thoughts, feelings, and plans based on what I thought was possible.
That noncontingent sustaining energy is an unimaginable hope.
What's it called, when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference? What's the name for that emotion, when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?

What's broken in me is not my ability to imagine but the sense that I'm justified in believing I can create the outcome I imagine.
What's not broken in me is my sense that I am justified in believing I'm working to create what I can't imagine, the vast unknowable. Faith is an unimaginable hope, a hope for something we believe without reason is on the other side of the mountain."
Amelia has their own follow-up video on the topic, from the POV of someone who never had hope, citing fiction books as well as their own book, Burnout (notes on the book here).
"Hope is maybe not the thing, all the time."
"I think there is an alternative power that can pull you through, and that's love."
Related topic: NYT: How I Lost Hope and Took Up Singing
"When I had given up hope altogether, my sense of abandonment was colored in sadness, for sure, but also with shades of profound relief. Feeling angry and powerless gave me a new freedom to do anything I wanted. I was enjoying the moment, instead of worrying about the uncertainties of the future or mourning the past life that would not return. We can't live without hope forever, but sometimes it can be OK to let go of it. What you find instead may even help you get through."
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billyhopscotch
24 days ago
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The February 28 Economic Blackout

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an illustration of a rabbit surrounded by text about the economic boycott on Feb 28

A broad range of Americans are organizing a 24-hour economic boycott on February 28th to protest the ongoing actions of the Trump administration and to send a message to corporate America. From The People’s Union USA website, here are the details:

  • The boycott runs all day on February 28th.
  • People are urged to not make any purchases that day. No online shopping or in person.
  • Do not spend money on: fast food, gas, or at major retailers. “No Amazon, no Walmart, no Best Buy.”
  • If you need to buy essentials (food, medicine, emergency supplies), do so at small, local businesses and try to pay cash.

The idea is to show corporate America, using the thing they best understand (money), how much power Americans have when collectively organized. Organizers have billed this as an initial move (“if they don’t listen…we make the next blackout longer”) and have planned follow-up economic actions.

Awesome rabbit illustration by Martha Rich.

Tags: 2025 Coup · business · economics

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billyhopscotch
35 days ago
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Let's go!
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Just go for it. Or just sleep on it.

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Inside my ADHD brain are two wolves…

  1. The wolf that overanalyzes everything.
  2. The wolf that says “YOLO” and leaps off a cliff.

The overanalytical wolf gets bogged down in details.

If I’m planning out some code, I’ll get lost in the weeds and the various specifics of the “right way” to structure things. If I’m thinking through a strategic problem or a design decision, I’ll fret over the “right way” to address it.

To quote the great sage Van Wilder

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.

Bad code can literally kill people, but you’re not there yet. You’re trying something. You haven’t shipped it.

Worst case scenario: you try something, it fails and you toss it out, but now you’ve learn what to do differently next time.

But ADHD brains like mine also sometimes lack impulse control.

This can be a gift! ADHD folks can be a lot more likely to take healthy risks, not just bad ones. This makes you exceptional innovator. That voice that tells someone not to explore a new idea because it’ll never work? You don’t have that! You just go for it!

But it can also cause ADHD folks to just blow everything up and start from scratch when we feel bored or overwhelmed. And that’s not great.

When you’re feeling like you’re spinning tires, don’t just go for it.

Step away, sleep on it, and come back in a day or five with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.

Like this? A Lean Web Club membership is the best way to support my work and help me create more free content.

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billyhopscotch
36 days ago
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