#[IC] Cornell

[macleod]

A Cornell University PhD student earlier this month sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the president’s order aimed at foreign students accused of “antisemitism”. Days later, lawyers at the justice department emailed to request that the student “surrender” to immigration officials. Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of the UK and Gambia, is one of three Cornell students who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to block the enforcement of Trump executive orders aimed at deporting foreign university students and staff involved in pro-Palestinian protests.

“Only in a dictatorship can the leader jail and banish political opponents for criticizing his administration” — Momodou Taal

Source: The Guardian, Maanvi Singh, March 21 2025

[musicmags]

[jessabelles]

Momodou Taal, dual citizen of Gambia and the UK, and Ph.D. student in the department of Africana Studies at Cornell University is being targeted for deportation a 2nd time for his involvement in pro-palestine protests on campus.

"What we're seeing now isn't just a crackdown on pro-palestinian speech, even though that cannot be divorced from that. But we're seeing that any criticism of the state of Israel, any criticism of the United States government, or trump's administration, ...can be liable for deportation. So if you ask me what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to challenge this and we're asking national injunction. Not just to protect myself, but also to protect anyone in the country who might be in a similar situation." ~Momodou Taal

"...I've heard nothing [from the Cornell administration] in terms of support, protection, other than some series of vague emails that go to the whole campus saying what to do if ICE comes, and how they will not allow certain things to happen. But again, there's nothing by way of support of me." ~Momodou Taal

"I think for me Palestine, fundamentally, holds up a mirror to the world and asks the question: what kind of world do we want to live in... As tough as this moment is for me personally, it pales in comparison to what the Palestinians are going through. And I think this is, for me, a generational defining moment. A generational defining issue. And I think if the numbers of eighteen-thousand children do not move people to action, then I don't think that this is a world that we can be a part of, or be proud of, or want to even continue. Because we have to ask ourselves, why is it [there's a] Palestine exception? What is it about the Palestinian issue that goes at the heart of this country?... What does it say, what questions does it force us to interrogate and engage with the world in this moment?... I think, fundamentally, I'm still a human being. I have an alive heart, and I cannot retire my moral conscious." ~Momodou Taal

"Thank you so much for the support, and I know things are scary, and I know things are unfortunate in this moment, but i don't think the time is to keep quiet, i think the time is to double down. Escalate, keep going, and keep raising the issue of Palestine." ~Momodou Taal

ICE has demanded he appear in court today (march 25th, 2025) in Syracuse

[onlytiktoks]

[myimaginationplain]

this is what jon snow looks like to #me

[particularj]

It’s fascism. Plain and simple.

If anybody can be arrested, deported, or otherwise penalized because of who they are or for protected free speech, we are all at risk.

I hope New York State / Cornell don’t cave like so many others have.

What can we do? Continue the campaign against Musk. If you are an alumnus of one of these particular schools, make sure you use your voice with the Alumni associations; if you are planning to attend a post-secondary school, avoid those like Columbia who either aren’t protecting their students and/or are literally facilitating their students’ turnover to these Nazis. Donate when you can to legal non-profits leading the lawsuits against this administration. Participate in targeted boycotts against companies that support Israel or who have caved and dropped DEI goals and policies. Don’t stop speaking out.

[agmagazinescans]

Pest Control

American Girl Magazine, November/December 1999

[Ko-Fi Donations]

[anaquariusthatlikestowrite]

Ice cube is not a good person neither is Cornell West.

[theonion]

As nearly a dozen prospective students were forced into the back of a car with tinted windows, a Cornell University campus tour reportedly ended Tuesday inside an unmarked Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle. “Over there you can see our student center, which boasts its own bowling alley, and then, if you all will follow me, it seems these masked gentlemen want us to wrap things up in their black SUV,” said tour guide and Cornell junior Jacob Geisner, who was preparing to describe the college’s housing options and meal plans when three ICE officers in street clothes rushed up and, without identifying themselves, demanded the group of 16- and 17-year-olds come with them immediately.

Full Story

[thefirsthogokage]

Fuck AMPTP and the bullshit going on. I'm tired, might not do this well:

(link to article in above picture) From The Article

Receiving positive feedback from Wall Street since the WGA went on strike May 2, Warner Bros Discovery, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount and others have become determined to “break the WGA,” as one studio exec blatantly put it.

To do so, the studios and the AMPTP believe that by October most writers will be running out of money after five months on the picket lines and no work.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it “a cruel but necessary evil.”

The studios and streamers’ next think financially strapped writers would go to WGA leadership and demand they restart talks before what could be a very cold Christmas. In that context, the studios and streamers feel they would be in a position to dictate most of the terms of any possible deal.

[Image IDs: Twitter thread by David Slack posted July 12th, 2023 that reads in totality:

And right on cue, here’s the inevitable Deadline article claiming that the AMPTP and their CEO bosses are ready to wait us out and let us “go broke.”

They’re not. They can’t. This studio propaganda, and here’s why.

In the increasingly mega-merged and hedgefundified Hollywood, these companies live or die on their quarterly earnings reports. It only takes one bad quarter for their stock price to plunge, putting the company and the CEO’s job in jeopardy.

But their stock prices are holding steady, right? Right. For now. Because our industry is a pipeline that starts with writers. The TV and movies they’re releasing now are shows we started making for them 4-12 quarters ago. But what happens when that pipeline runs dry?

What happens is they run out of product. No new shows in streaming to drive and sustain subscribers. No new shows in broadcast and ad-supported to bring in ad revenue.

No shows, no money.

No money, bad earnings report.

Bad earnings report, bye-bye stock price. Bye-bye CEO.

After 70+ days with no writers to create their product for them, the pipeline is running dry.

Their stock price isn’t tanking yet. But if they don’t make a deal with us, it will.

And they know it.

If they make a deal soon, they might be able to weather it. Stretch out releases. Rush some new stuff through.

But the longer they keep us out, the longer that pipeline runs dry, the more unavoidable a catastrophic dip in new high-quality shows becomes.

And they know it.

So yeah, the studios are planting articles in the trades that make it sound like they’re so determined not to pay us the 0.02% of company revenues we’re asking for that they’re willing to hold out forever.

Bullshit.

I’m sure the AMPTP bosses would love to break our union. But they love their jobs more. They love money more. They can’t make that money without us.

And they know it.

Ignore the trades, walk the line, stand together, and win. #WGAStrong

/End ID]

Bonus: John Rogers' Reaction

[Image ID: A tweet from John Rogers that he posted July 12th, 2023 that reads:

I was trying to be cool and professional about this strike, but this AMPTP “we want to drive them to homelessness” shit means I’m going to be dug in at WB Gate 4 like Hiroo Onada. They’re gonna have to send @ellenstutzman with a bullhorn to order me out of the bushes.

The second image is Ellen Stutzman's Twitter bio that says:

Cheif Negotiator for WGA MBA, Assistant Executive Director, Writers Guild of America, West; Cornell ILR and UCLA Anderson alum. Views are my own.

/End ID]

EDIT: Please see the update on this HERE

[vague-humanoid]

Black Student Under Attack! Protect Momodou Taal.

The union that represents graduate students at Cornell University is demanding that the institution bargain over the suspension of Momodou Taal, a British PhD student who was suspended after participating in a pro-Palestinian protest that shut down a career fair on campus.

Because Taal is an international student, his visa is linked to his enrollment at the university, meaning suspension and withdrawal from the university will force him out of the country.

Over 150 demonstrators with Cornell Graduate Students United marched to Cornell’s Day Hall on Wednesday to protest the decision, which some described as a pattern of mistreatment by their university and employer.

“Cornell wants to appoint itself judge, jury and ICE agent just when graduate workers disagree with it,” Sadie Seddon-Stettler, a union member and physics PhD student, told the crowd.

The union is currently engaged in negotiations for their first contract with Cornell and recently reached a memorandum of agreement governing graduate worker discipline until a contract is agreed upon. The agreement includes the ability to bargain on suspensions from employment.

[mysticstronomy]

IS THERE WATER FLOATING IN SPACE??

Blog#420

Saturday, July 20th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe.

The body of water is notably significantly larger than all of the water on planet Earth. And according to the scientists, it is the equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world's ocean.

There is little chance you would spot it looking through your own telescope however, as the body of water surrounds a huge feeding black hole called a quasar, which is more than 12 billion years away.

Pretty mind-bending, right?

The observations made by the scientists have revealed a time where the universe was just 1.6 billion years old.

Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, spoke of the discovery and said it showed that water can be found throughout the universe.

"The environment around this quasar is unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water,” he said. "It's another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times."

Quasars are considered massive celestial objects and emit large amounts of energy. Gas and dust falling into a supermassive black hole, that are at the centre, emit electromagnetic radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Both groups of astronomers studied a particular quasar called APM 08279+5255, which harbors a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns. So a fair bit.

Bradford’s team was able to get more information about the water, most notably its incredible mass as they detected several spectral signatures of the water.

Prior to this discovery, astronomers had never found water vapor present this far back in the early universe. There is water elsewhere in the Milkyway - however, most of it is frozen in ice.

Astronomers are hoping to learn more about the distant universe and those in the study proposed a 25-meter telescope to be built in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

In 2020, the telescope’s name was changed from Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) to Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) after Cornell alumnus Fred Young supported the telescope for about 2 decades with 16 million dollars.

Originally published on https://www.unilad.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, July 24th, 2024)

"HOW LONG CAN A HUMAN FLOAT IN SPACE??"

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

How Russian colonialism took the Western anti-imperialist Left for a ride

Blindness to Russian colonialism distorts Westerners’ view of the Ukraine war

"Fucking shit Russian car," my driver spat as a Lada sedan passed us on the highway from Georgia's capital of Tbilisi to Stepantsminda during my trip there in 2019, shortly after our long conversation touched on Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia.

His momentary flash of anger was an eye-opening glimpse at the consequences of Russia's steadfast refusal to let go of the 14 nations whose independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union dictator Vladimir Putin infamously called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" – not to mention the ethnic minorities still under Moscow's yoke – and its brutal punishment of Georgia and Ukraine for daring to seek a bright future outside of Russia's sunless orbit.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has cast a long-overdue spotlight on Russian imperialism and colonialism, yet many Westerners fail to grapple with how Russia's colonial legacy continues to this day and is part and parcel to its war against Ukraine and descent into fascism. Consequently, many end up whatabouting, excusing and even overtly sympathizing with an empire whose colonial practices mirror those of historical Western European empires in cruelty, chauvinism, thievery, exploitation, cultural erasure, racism and genocide and that is now ruthlessly attempting to conquer one of its neighbors.

Russia displayed that ruthlessness last week when it lobbed missiles at Odesa, damaging port and grain storage facilities as well as its historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

"They're interested in lands and influence and a buffer zone between them and the West, in sea access – but not in people and not in culture," said Ukrainian Parliament adviser Yuliia Shaipova who, together with her husband, Aspen Institute NextGen Transatlantic Initiative member Artem Shaipov, was at home in Odesa after hiding in a nearby bomb shelter.

Yet, Westerners safe from bombardment like long-shot third-party presidential candidate Cornel West continue to accommodate Russia. In a July 13 interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, West called Russia's invasion "criminal" but insisted it was "provoked by the expansion of NATO" and is a "proxy war between the American Empire and the Russian Federation," adding Neville Chamberlain-esque icing on the appeasement cake by proposing Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia.

The tell in West's remarks was calling the U.S. an empire but referring to Russia by its de jure name, implicitly erasing its imperial, colonial character. It's a common tendency among the segment of the left to which West belongs, one that Kazakhstan-born Pitzer College sociology professor Azamat Junisbai attributes to ignorance and a myopic, know-nothing focus on American imperialism to the exclusion of imperialism by other nations.

"They're kind of imperial about their anti-imperialism," Junisbai said. "There's something very provincial and strange about it where you literally do not know anything about what's happening beyond this one issue you care about."

While West and other leftists blame "NATO expansion" for provoking Russia, Junisbai compares NATO membership – which, after all, the former Warsaw Pact and Baltic countries all sought voluntarily – to a restraining order against an abusive partner.

"People don't recognize that there was an abusive relationship, that there was colonialism," he said, speculating that blindness to Russian colonialism could be due to a failure of Western education systems as well as Soviet propaganda and leftist valorization of the Soviet Union as a foe of Western imperialism. Another potential culprit is knee-jerk distrust toward American foreign policy popular among some leftists and alternative media that leads to a simplistic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" worldview.

"People, I think, just get so wedded to their vision of themselves as fighting 'The Man,' fighting the power that they are blinded and taken for a ride by Russia, in this case serving as useful idiots," Junisbai said.

Both Yuliia and Artem Shaipov pointed the finger at academic studies of Russia in the West that view it through Moscow's imperial lens. The two have published articles advocating for a "decolonization" of Russia studies and greater attention to how veneration of the "great Russian culture" – such as the genocide- and conquest-glorifying literature of Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin – has provided a conduit for Russian imperialist ideology to sneak into the Western mind.

"Part of the reason is that it's Western academia that kind of perpetuates this imperial understanding of our region that benefits Russia's imperial policies," Shaipov said, pointing to how Western academic institutions place Ukraine and other post-Soviet nations under Russia's geopolitical umbrella of "Eurasia." "It speaks volumes about the reasons why still many people in the West see Ukraine and other independent states as the sphere of influence of Russia."

The resulting sympathy for Russia's imperial worldview finds expression among Western academics, media personalities and activists who deny Ukrainians' agency in repeating the Kremlin conspiracy theory that Ukraine's 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a "U.S.-backed coup" – as if Ukrainians couldn't have removed outrageously corrupt Kremlin stooge Viktor Yanukovych from office after his security forces murdered over 100 peaceful protesters without foreigners pulling the strings – or characterize former communist nations' NATO membership as provoking Russia rather than protecting them from it.

And it's a mindset rooted in over 400 years of imperialism and colonialism that caused atrocities as horrific as those of Spain or Britain.

Russia's conquest of Siberia starting in the 1580s, for instance, included the enslavement of indigenous peoples whom it forced to pay tribute in the form of furs known as yasak on pain of death, resulting in starvation as people struggled to meet yasak quotas instead of feeding themselves in a system some historians have compared to Belgian King Leopold II's enslavement of the Congo. Russian Cossack gangs raped and murdered while Orthodox missionaries stamped out native religions and alcoholism and smallpox decimated local populations. Today, indigenous people in Siberia and the Russian Far East frequently live in poverty while Moscow strips their lands' rich natural resources to line the pockets of oligarchs and fuel the glitz of cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, while their men disproportionately make up the cannon fodder that Russia sends to the Ukrainian front.

"If we take the Russia that is situated behind the Urals – the Central Asian part of Russia, the far East Asian parts of Russia, the [northernmost parts of Russia] – the cities are just being used for extractive purposes, so [the Russians] don't care even about their own people and minorities that are in Russia itself," Shaipova said, noting how nearly all of their enormous wealth goes to the Russian metropole. "So basically, take Norilsk or Irkutsk – those cities look like an atomic bomb has exploded there."

In the Caucasus, where Russia vied with the Ottoman and Persian empires for power, the Muslim Circassians, who had inhabited the area for millennia, resisted Russian domination. So in 1857, Tsar Alexander II ordered their expulsion to the Ottoman Empire under a proposal by Count Dmitri Milyutin, who said it would "cleanse the land of hostile elements" and open their farmland for Christian settlers. The result was the Circassian genocide in which nearly the entire Circassian population was killed or expelled to the Middle East, where most Circassians live today.

Junisbai's own life is a testament to Russia's thorough colonization of his country, which began in earnest in the 18th century after Russia conquered it. His mother tongue is Russian rather than Kazakh thanks to generations of Russification that made learning Russian essential to get ahead while casting indigenous languages by the wayside. That led to him being conditioned to look down on Kazakhs who could not speak Russian properly while growing up in Almaty, whose population during the Soviet era was about four-fifths Russian and had only two Kazakh-language schools in the early 1980s, while Kazakhs largely lived in rural areas. Meanwhile, his great-grandfather was a member of the Kazakh intelligentsia, for which the Soviets executed him at Omsk in 1935 during Stalin's purges. Consistent with Russia's pattern of extractive relationships with its colonies, Moscow picked Kazakhstan as the place to test nuclear weapons, Junisbai's mother growing up only a couple hundred miles from a testing site.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought to the forefront the issues of language and Russian colonialism that Junisbai had been thinking about for a while. Today, he spells Kazakhstan's name as "Qazaqstan," reflecting the native pronunciation, rather than the more common Russian-based spelling.

"This invasion – just the scale of it and how blatantly imperialist it was – was a point of no return," he said, regarding how it got him thinking more about those issues. "Like how strange and horrible it is that I am stuck with Russian, and it's like having something stuck in my body, and I cannot remove it."

In contrast with its terrestrial empire building, Russia didn't have as much luck overseas, as its North American and Hawaiian colonies proved unsuccessful, along with its lesser-known attempt to partake in that most infamous example of European colonialism, the 19th-century Scramble for Africa.

Russia's covetousness toward Ukraine differs somewhat from its other colonization activities, but comes from the same underlying desire to subjugate. It stems from the popular myth that Russia is the legitimate heir to the medieval state of Kyivan Rus, centered on modern-day Kyiv, which Putin cited in a July 2021 pseudohistorical essay denying Ukraine's right to sovereignty, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." But as Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy points out in his new book, "The Russo-Ukrainian War," although the Grand Principality of Moscow – later called Muscovy – derived much of its culture from Kyivan Rus, 15th-century ruler Ivan the Great invented the myth of Muscovy's inextricable link to it by declaring himself the sole legitimate heir to the Kyivan princes in order to justify his conquest of the Republic of Novgorod.

"The independent Russian state, born of the struggle between Moscow and Novgorod, resulted from the victory of authoritarianism over democracy," Plokhy writes.

Shaipov said Muscovy inherited its political culture not from Europe, but from the Mongol Empire of which it had long been a vassal.

"This is their political tradition of authoritarianism, oppression and continuous imperial conquest," he said.

Ukrainians learned that the hard way in the mid-1600s when Ukrainian Cossacks rebelled against their Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth rulers and established an independent state, seeking protection from their Orthodox co-religionists in Muscovy. But after helping them achieve victory, their Muscovite allies sought to dominate them, leading to another Ukrainian Cossack rebellion in 1708 that soon allied with Sweden. Muscovy defeated them at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and in 1721, under Tsar Peter I, Muscovy became the Russian Empire.

In other words, Russian claims of lordship over Ukraine are about as credible as if British leaders called decolonization a "geopolitical catastrophe" and then dredged up medieval manuscripts to make the case against Irish independence.

The Russian Empire collapsed with the 1917 October Revolution, but that tradition of authoritarianism, oppression and imperial conquest persisted as the empire got a new coat of paint, trading tsars for commissars and rebranding as the U.S.S.R.

Numerous nations under Russian rule for centuries declared independence – including Ukraine as well as Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, the Tatar-led Idel-Ural State and others. But the Bolsheviks quickly invaded nearly all of them, forcing them into the newly established Soviet Union, which reoccupied the Baltic nations after World War II, leaving only Finland independent. In Ukraine, Stalin caused the Holodomor, a genocidal famine that depopulated most of the country's east, allowing its resettlement by Russians. In 1944, he accused indigenous Crimeans – for whom even the term "Crimean Tatars," Shaipov noted, is a misnomer with colonialist undertones – of collaborating with the Nazis and deported them all, allowing Russians to become a majority in Crimea too.

Those malign political traditions continued after 1991 as Russia crushed the fledgling Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Tatarstan and sponsored pro-Russia breakaway states in Moldova's Transnistria region and the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where Russia used false accusations of genocide as a pretext for its 2008 invasion, a tactic it would rehash in Ukraine six years later.

And they live on today in Russia's nationalist, imperialist, bloodthirsty and downright genocidal "Z" propaganda for domestic audiences.

Even Russian liberals remain far from untainted. While Westerners lionize Alexei Navalny as a freedom fighter, Junisbai highlighted his history of racism toward Central Asians.

"Navalny is not really well-liked in Central Asia because he's the person who contributed to hate crimes against Central Asians in Russia," Junisbai explained, lamenting how many Westerners continue to see that part of Navalny's past as marginal.

Navalny also drew scorn for a series of tweets on July 25 in which he called Russian war criminal Igor Girkin a "political prisoner" following his arrest for criticizing Putin.

Shaipov and Shaipova pointed to how Jan Rachinsky, the head of Memorial, rejected the idea of Russian repentance for waging war against Ukraine in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture last year.

"This understanding of themselves as an empire is part of their national identity, and this is also what concerns the so-called Russian liberals," Shaipova said.

At the same time, Junisbai said people inside Russia consistently fail to acknowledge their nation's colonial history.

"The surest way to offend a Russian person is to talk about colonialism or Russians as colonizers," he said

Instead, Russians overwhelmingly view themselves – in true colonialist form – as having civilized Central Asians, believing they were illiterate before Russia introduced Cyrillic, despite Junisbai's grandfather having written in Arabic script, and that if not for Russia they would still be riding horses and living in yurts.

"It's just like, 'we built your schools, we built your hospitals – how dare you be disrespectful, how dare you not appreciate us,'" he said.

This lack of self-awareness stands in stark contrast with European nations that decolonized and, although in fits and starts, today seek to atone for past injustices. In 2021, Germany formally apologized for genocide in Namibia in the early 1900s, while Queen Camilla declined to wear a crown at King Charles' coronation bearing the Kohinoor diamond, which Britain plundered when it ruled India.

Shaipov and Shaipova said Russia must also undergo decolonization, a process the world should not fear.

"In order for them to heal, they need to go through this healing process and repentance so that they can reconcile with neighboring countries and with the peoples that populate the Russian Federation," Shaipov said.

But Russia must first remove the Harry Potter-like invisibility cloak that has long allowed its colonial legacy to go unnoticed.

"Once you tear it off, then people can see the horribleness – like, how could people side with an abuser and against someone who's trying to take out a restraining order against this abuse," Junisbai said.

[fairyrcts]

THINKIN BOUT YOU, C.S.

by fairyrcts contents - angst, cursing, intended lowercase, use of y/n, 3rd person, mentions of depression

an - i love chris angst

taglist - @pvssychicken , @gothiccvnt6996 , @emely9274 (header by @issysh3ll )

it was 2 am in new york and y/n was just getting home. her day was exhausting to say the least. the struggle of being a full time college student with a job and rent to pay in new york is something that was unimaginable.

she fiddled with her keys, eventually finding her apartment key. she unlocked her door to her roomate, aleah, sat on the couch watching some cheesy rom-com on her laptop. y/n dropped her bag and kicked off her shoes at the door.

"hey hey." aleah waved.

"hey, girl. watcha watchin?" y/n's voice rang as she walked to the open kitchen, grabbing a cup and poaring ice water.

"27 dresses. literally never seen this dumb shit before but evangeline wants me to see it."

aleah was the definition of a stud. she was gorgeous, too. dark complexion, curly hair that hung in front of her face and piercings on her plump lips and nose.

evangeline was her girlfriend, who y/n's only met a few times. usually in the mornings after getting very little sleep from their noises filling the small apartment.

"man, that movie's so mid. did we get any mail?" y/n chuckled as she walked back in the living room, sitting in the opposing sofa.

"any mail?"

"uh, one from some credit card company and someone left a note in the crack of the door. said to y/n from chris sturnolo." she spoke, her eyes not leaving the computer.

y/n stopped in her tracks. "christopher sturniolo?" her voice was slightly shooken.

christopher was her childhood bestfriend. they were in almost every class together since kindergarten. they were inseparable. they did sports together, went to prom together, went to get their drivers license together (guess who didn't pass). they were family, at this point.

after college, she never heard from him again. happy birthdays and merry christmases every year or likes on every post, but not a single text, call, email, anything. she talked to nick and matt regularly, but not chris.

she'd ask how he was and they'd give short, vague, one-word answers. it was unfair, really. because there wasn't another soul on earth that knew her better than chris did, and all that time was wasted.

it's been 3 years without a word. and just now he's contacting her. her mind rambled as to what might have gone wrong, otherwise, there wasn't a reason to speak to her. now, especially. she'd been such a mess after leaving for cornell, and she debated not going to stay with chris. but he convinced her, saying he'll stay in touch and talk to her every day.

so much for that promise.

"uh, yeah, chris sturniolo, sturnolo, stromboli, all the same to me." her roomate shook her out of her thoughts.

"aleah, where's the damn letter?" y/n's voice sounded scared almost, not understanding what's going on.

"over on the bookshelf." aleah pointed to the letter wrapped with a little bow and a stamp in the corner of the boston streets.

her hands hurried and undid the bow, ripping the envelope open and unfolding the letter.

Dear Y/n

There seriously isn't an explanation for my distance. After you left for college I fell into such a state of depression and I don't know why but I was scared to contact you. I mean, you're out doing great big things, NYU and detective criminal type stuff. Meanwhile, I'm still here in Massachusetts, I just moved out of my parents house a year and a half ago and my career is making videos on the internet. I guess it was the jealousy that stopped me from speaking to you or some kind of fear. But all I know is that I miss you, dearly. And I guess this is kind of me asking do you think about me still? Because I haven't stopped thinkin about you.

(p.s. i know i couldve sent this over text but i didnt know if you blocked me or not)

just his handwriting caused tears to stream down y/n's face. the note itself, the words and his explanation made her sob.

she made her way to her room, shutting the door behind her. she reached for her phone in her back pocket and called chris's contact.

it rang three times before he answered. there was silence on his end, soft sobs on hers.

"chris, where the hell are you and why did you answer so late?" she said through sniffles and cries.

"i'm uh, in syracuse right now. we're here with nate for his birthday. i asked matt for your address and uhm, i was waiting for you to call." chris's voice sounded nervous almost.

"so you're.. able to come see me?" she asked to which chris affirmed.

"give me the name of your hotel. i'm coming over." she spoke. her tone wasn't demanding, but chris knew it was a demand.

chris told her the name and room number, y/n writing down each letter. after he had explained the whole thing she hung up without warning. she walked out of her room, her movements were fast as she wiped tears off her cheeks.

"woah, what's up?" aleah asked, concerned.

"i'll tell you when i'm back." y/n brushed her off, grabbing her keys, leaving and shutting the door quite harshly.

she jogged down the stairs, her hand grazing the railings and the other jingling the keys with each step.

she pushed the door that so clearly said pull. the frustration just added to her unexplainable feelings.

"why the fuck won't this shit open!?" she shouted. the small, teenage boy at the front desk squeaked out a few words.

"it's uhm. it's pull. y-you're pushing it." y/n looked down at the sign.

"shut the fuck up, curtis!" she yelled once more, yanking the door and storming out of it.

"dumb ass name." y/n mumbled to herself. she walked hurriedly to her car, clicking the unlock button on her keeys and jumping in the drivers seat.

she turned it on, putting the ignition in reverse. she internally conflicted wether or not to put on music. of course, there was no need for it. buttt to make the whole event more dramatic, she turned on her playlist, thinkin bout you by frank ocean coming in through the speakers.

the music made tears swell up in her eyes. the whole situation was just fucked.

her car sped, running through red lights here and there, honking at any car that was slow or in front of her.

when she arrived at the hotel, she shut off her music and her car, locking it as she slammed the door of it behind her. she pulled the door to the entrance to the entrence of the large hotel, the door refusing to open.

"it's a push door!" the lady at the front desk yelled loud enough to be heard.

"oh, fuck me." y/n groaned, finally opening the door. she stormed inro the elevator, the front desk lady attempting to stop her by shouting 'miss'.

as if that was gonna stop her. y/n pressed the 4 button aggressively, multiple times.

"hurry the fuck up!" she was so out of it, she was yelling at an inanimate button.

when the door started opening, she squeezed herself through the space, looking at the numbers on each door until she found the 103 in a big font.

she knocked hard and loud continuously until the door opening interrupted her.

and now, she was faced with the man who made her, and broke her.

the two stared into one anothers eyes momentarily before y/n brought a hand up and smacked the side of his face.

a 'youch' came out of chris's mouth. he rubbed the side of his face that was now red while y/n began rambling.

"now, what the fuck is wrong with you! i mean, you know better! christopher, holy fuck, where do i even begin with you!?" her voice rang through the halls as she pushed herself into the room.

"i- i don't know." chris's tone was sorrowful, but that wasn't necessarily something she cared about right now.

"you are such a douchebag! i fucking can't believe you. ignoring my calls, texts, letters, everything! the only information i ever got about you was through 10 picture slideshows on instagram and your brothers, who werent much of a help! you can say whatever all you want, but chris, i was so mentally fucked up! i was so behind in my classes, that you know i put a humongous amount of effort into getting into, i was rude and emotional all the time and pushed away people i love and adore because i was so hung up on the thought that you stopped caring and you stopped loving me! you know how terrible of a feeling that is? to believe that the one person you love most in the world doesn't give two damn shits about what you're doing now? do you?!"

she yelled and yelled and yelled as her eyes didn't just shed tears, but boy, they poured.

"n-no, no i don't know how that feels." christopher mumbled as water welled up in his own eyes.

"yeah, and that's because you know i'm incapable of unloving you! you're aware of my love for you, because i reminded you every day. you know i wear my heart on my sleeve and you still pulled this dumb shit! i don't even know how you managed to do such thing! i was at such a terrible place, chris."

her words were less aggressive now as she cried tears of sadness rather than anger. she sat herself on one of the two hotel beds while chris sat beside her. he awkwardly pulled her into a hug, y/n leaning into it immediately.

her head laid in his lap as he rubbed her back, whispering small shushes every now and then while she kept bawling.

"y'know. i've been thinkin' bout you. i never stopped, really. i just- i don't even have an excuse. and you can keep yelling at me, and i'll keep listening, but i can't explain as to why i didn't. i just don't know, y/n." his voice was calm and gentle and his hands glided up and down her side.

once she finally stopped crying, she sat up and wiped her tears. "I'm sorry." chris stated, his eyes meaningful along with his voice.

that's all she wanted to hear.

he pulled her into an embrace once more, engulfing himself in the girl he missed so deeply.

"i was thinkin' bout you, too, y'know." she mumbled into his neck.

and that's all he wanted to hear.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

During the 2024 election, Donald Trump made no secret of his plan to close the Department of Education (DOE). That hasn’t happened yet, though an executive order that would functionally dismantle the agency is in the works. In the meantime, Trump is already exploiting it to dehumanize and harass marginalized groups.

The administration is busy using the department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to attack trans kids while shuttering nearly every other type of civil rights investigation. It’s a complete abdication of the federal government’s role in protecting students from discrimination and a grim example of how Trump is weaponizing the federal government. Conservatives have wanted to shutter the DOE for decades, saying that education policy is best set at the state and local levels. The problem with that argument is that education policy is already set by states and localities. There is no such thing as a federal education curriculum, and the federal government can’t tell schools what to teach. But what the DOE can do is investigate schools for failing to follow federal civil rights laws. While conservatives might assume that the DOE’s civil rights investigations are all about imposing woke ideologies on red state parents, most complaints to OCR are about schools discriminating based on disability. Given that Trump is mounting a full-scale attack on accessibility, it isn’t surprising that the DOE has simply stopped investigating the thousands of disability-related complaints that were already in process.

Most of these types of complaints are filed by students, their families, or legal advocacy groups. ProPublica found that when Trump took office, there were roughly 12,000 investigations in the pipeline, around 6,000 of which were disability-related. About 3,200 complaints were regarding racial discrimination, and around 1,000 related to sexual harassment. Now, all of those complaints are on ice, with ProPublica reporting that investigators have been barred from communicating with the complainants. Instead, the DOE has opened about 20 investigations based on rightwing culture war grievances. It’s a clear statement about the administration’s priorities and a clear threat to any school or organization that won’t fall in line. One week into Trump’s second term, OCR opened an investigation into Ithaca City Schools in New York over their yearly summits for students of color. The complaint came from the Equal Protection Project, which was founded by Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson and exists solely to attack affirmative action programs. The OCR investigation sends a message that it takes nonsensical allegations of anti-white racism seriously and that affinity groups and events that simply allow students of color to gather will be considered discriminatory.

[...] But the administration doesn’t believe in local control. It believes in imposing, by any means, the conservative viewpoint on blue states. That’s why, last week, it opened investigations into the governing bodies for high school sports in California and Minnesota. Both states allow trans students to participate in high school sports in conformance with their gender identity. According to the administration, this conflicts with Trump’s executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s sports. But an executive order isn’t a law, as much as Trump would like to think it is, and both California and Minnesota have actual laws on their books requiring protection of trans athletes. California’s education code says that students are allowed to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity and Minnesota’s anti-discrimination law forbids discrimination based on gender identity. In other words, neither state could bar trans students from playing high school sports without running afoul of their own laws. It will ultimately be up to the courts to figure out if Trump’s executive order can functionally overrule state laws, a depressing thought given the conservative stranglehold on the federal courts. In an incredibly cynical move, the DOE also opened investigations into five universities for antisemitism. The five schools — Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern, and Portland State — are all under fire for pro-Palestinian protests that occurred on campus. Conservatives were furious that the Biden administration didn’t shut them down and are now praising Trump for “taking action to protect Jewish students.”

Of course, this administration has no intention of protecting Jewish students. Not only is Trump dismantling civil rights protections across the board, but both he and JD Vance have consistently been openly, wildly anti-semitic. Trump has accused Jewish people of insufficient loyalty to America and trafficked in the antisemitic trope that Jews control all the money. JD Vance has invoked the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which says that Jewish people are behind a scheme to replace white Americans with immigrants who will always vote for Democrats. Vance has also cozied up to AfD, the far-right antisemitic German party. These are not people who are genuinely interested in ensuring that Jewish students are not discriminated against on college campuses. Instead, these are people who are willing to weaponize allegations of antisemitism. It’s also a way to signal that dissent on college campuses will not be tolerated. While the administration is busy using OCR as an attack dog, actual complaints about real discrimination are not being investigated.

[...]

Upside down world

The future of the Department of Education isn’t clear at all. Trump has waffled about whether he thinks he can get away with (illegally) eradicating a cabinet-level agency with the stroke of a pen, but in any event he has a compliant Congress that may be willing to get rid of it for him. GOP Sen. Mike Rounds, from South Dakota, introduced a bill to eliminate the department before Trump even took office. Over in the House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie has done the same.

The US Department of Education, and especially its Office of Civil Rights division, has become a MAGA enforcement agency. The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights is being used to subvert trans rights and actual claims of discrimination, especially disabilities-related.