John Pfaff
@johnpfaff.bsky.social
Professor at Fordham Law. Prisons and criminal justice quant. I'm not contrarian, the data are. Author of Locked In. New stuff at johnfpfaff.com.
A good trick for keep an Aperol spritz (or anything similar) cold but undiluted in the summer? Make ice cubes out of prosecco as well. (Especially when you have a bottle you don't want to finish--freeze what's left, and the ice cubes are on hand indefinitely.)
This headline isn’t great: the market isn’t about whether Bob Jones will beat cancer, but on whether a Pfizer trial will succeed. Which … we‘ve already done, pre-Kalshi, right? What is Pfizer’s stock price but bets on the long-run return on its trials?
Kalshi Defends Plan to Bet on Lives of Cancer Patients
Users on Kalshi will even allow users to bet on whether drug trials for potentially lifesaving drug trials will succeed.
futurism.com
Forty years ago, in 1986, NYC suffered over 1,600 homicides. Homicides would peak at over 2,200 a few years later. There were 305 in 2025.
Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 24h agoFood, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.
Again, a bracing reminder that "tough on crime" conservatives are never actually concerned about being tough on CRIME. They want to be tough on PEOPLE who they want to CONTROL: non-white people, say, or in this case women. It has always been about social control, not public safety.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d agoNN: The abuse allegations against Rep. Max Miller -- Moreno says he should resign, but President Trump disagrees. Do you think Miller should step down? REP. JIMMY PATRONIS: No. I agree with the president. This is a family fight. Unfortunately, divorces are messy. There are two sides to every story.
We need a national moratorium on Brand New Sentences.
Peter Dinklage: Shut It Down Stewart
Alt: Peter Dinklage: Shut It Down Stewart
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Chris Hayes@chrislhayes.bsky.social · 2d agoEarlier tonight, @michellegoldberg.bsky.social read *another* quote from this weirdo that reflected the same general sentiment. www.sacurrent.com/news/san-ant...
OMFG, this. For any liberal or progressive cause, over and over. Boudin’s recall was a National Defeat, while Krasner’s victory was a quirky local interest story and Foxx’s reelection in 2020 got zero national coverage at all.
Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 2d agoJust so everyone knows, this is a tried-and-true mainstream media tactic. For progressives/leftist candidates, every election is a “crucial test” and any loss would serve as proof to the media that the latest left-side moment is at its end. Any win, though, just means it’s time to find a new test.
We need to create a buddy system. Every DC pol, every staffer, every pollster, and every Terminally On-Line Political Poaster (professional and amateur alike) needs to get paired w a Political Normie who does not live in DC, NYC, or LA. The political equivalent of touching grass.
Alan Elrod@aselrod.bsky.social · 2d agoI just don’t think Liz Cheney doing a couple campaign events cost Harris the election. People who are too on here already knew if they were or weren’t going to vote for her. Normies who aren’t either too online or political junkies did not decide based on this. This is vibes and cope.
Hold up. Do the taxes of those who are wealthier go to subsidize consumption by those who are poorer?! This is the first I am hearing about this, and I. Am. Outraged.
USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 3d agoOpinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.
This is a "deal" that has zero binding weight, though, right? And unlike, say, the Cosby deal fiasco, Trump isn't giving anything up in exchange for this, or exposing himself to risk. So a Dem POTUS can just say "ha ha ha ha ha no. Audit him into oblivion."
Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2d agoFLAG: Trump gets to keep tax immunity for himself, his sons, and the Trump Organization under the new 'deal' struck by Todd Blanche. The new order also reaffirms that Trump won't have to pay any taxes he might have owed the IRS.
This must be wild disinformation, bc my sense from too many posts on here is that the Dems have a two-chamber supermajority trifecta. (Don’t get me wrong, I think it‘s time for an angrier, more aggressive younger gen to lead the Dems. But also, ppl need to stop Green Lanterning the minority party.)
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE@golikehellmachine.com · 3d agoi am begging you — including some of you who follow me that i'm seeing in the OP QTs — to actually read what senate democrats are getting out of this and to stop and think for, like, at least 90 seconds, about what *else* you think a minority party *in both chambers* can squeeze out of the majority
The best way to defeat Steven Miller is mass immigration, you say?
Ronald Reagan: Tear Down This Wall Speech
Alt: Ronald Reagan: Tear Down This Wall Speech
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John Pfaff@johnpfaff.bsky.social · 4d agoSo what’s he saying is that the US needs waves of immigrants to ensure that our worst, most inhumane instincts are kept in check? Sounds good!
So what’s he saying is that the US needs waves of immigrants to ensure that our worst, most inhumane instincts are kept in check? Sounds good!
Alexander Clarkson@aphclarkson.bsky.social · 5d agoAnother datapoint for the fascist radicalisation of institutional pillars of much of the American Right
Real investigative journalism would be digging up a CORRECT prediction by Kevin “The Dow will hit 36,000 in 2002” Hassett. Could be impossible. But yes, if they’re starting to lose Baritromo, their Reality Distortion Field is cracking.
Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 5d agoYes this is all ridiculous but if even Fox is asking Hassett about his previous wrong predictions... that's a significant change.
I just got home from a two-hour drive with three teen-age boys (who I had to pick up after they botched a train schedule) following a 12-mile hike involving over 2000 feet of elevation gain, some of it in the rain. The smell. OMFG. The smell. In the car.
The Horror, The Horror - Apocalypse Now Quote
Alt: The Horror, The Horror - Apocalypse Now Quote
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Please PLEASE tell me someone is going to use this as a shock to test the need for the bar as a screening mech. I know Covid is generally a bad discontinuity, bc everything changed at once, but it could work to see long-term outcomes for lawyers starting in 2019 vs 2020 (vs even 2021).
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie@audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 6d agoI wrote about the hotass mess that hundreds of recent law grads in Washington are going through for no good reason! ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...
Sadly, I think this is a win-win in the eyes of the Trump admin and MAGA. “We must ask whether the Trump administration is so determined to win a culture war against American higher education that it is willing to risk the decline of American influence.”
Jeremy Stahl@jeremystahl.bsky.social · 6d agoThe Trump administration sued Yale for its admissions policies (alleging too much diversity). Yale is negotiating with DOJ, whereas Harvard fought Trump. The former dean of Yale Law School thinks he knows the real reason why. slate.com/news-and-pol...
I would again like to re-up my complaint from the other day that I’d like to get back to a timeline where the political press is not constantly setting new records for the worst r/brandnewsentence entry-of-the-year each week.
dan solomon@dansolomon.com · 6d agowriting these words in this order made me feel like i was having a stroke, i am pleased to share it with all of you
Also, just guessing here, but bet in many of these cases the ppl who need aid are in GOP parts of blue states. So he’s killing his OWN CONSTITUENTS (albeit ones who may not “matter,” electorally, bc of the execrable Electoral College). That 2000 Election map broke a lot of brains.
Seth Masket@smotus.bsky.social · 6d agoI've been seeing a lot of people responding to this with "there ought to be a law," but importantly, we haven't needed a law for this sort of thing because no prior president wanted to be known as a leader who would literally kill people in their hour of need for not voting for him
This was the book that liberated me. Until I read it, I had this strange view that if I started a book, I had to finish it. Like it was a sort of moral obligation. At p. 25, I gave myself to p. 100 to find it even remotely readable. At p. 100 I threw it to the curb. And the world didn't end.
Dara Lind@daralind.bsky.social · last wk.Okay. If I’m 15 percent of the way through A Confederacy of Dunces, and more than 15 percent of the way to permanently damaging my eyes from rolling them so frequently, should I give up? Or does it get more pleasant or insightful?
It’s like … well … it’s like owning a casino in Atlantic City, and then opening a second one in Atlantic City, and thinking both will be profitable, not that one will just cannibalize the fixed number of gamblers coming to Atlantic City.
Justin Baragona@justinbaragona.bsky.social · last wk.NEW: Under Bari Weiss, CBS News has shifted to the right to try to grab some of Fox News' audience. Not only have they failed to do that, but they've driven off so much of their core audience that CBS Mornings is now perilously close to getting beaten by Fox & Friends. zeteo.com/p/mamdani-de...
Always nice to get confirmation that my efforts to minimize excessive drama on my timeline are working effectively.
Honestly, I assumed he had retained David E. Kelley—creator/producer of, among other shows, The Practice, Boston Legal, and Allie McBeal—since that David Kelley in fact also has a JD, and his Hollywood status prob carries more weight with the Trump admin than crap like “investigating terrorism.”
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social · last wk.Among the shocking things in these Comey filings is that fed agents and prosecutors didn't seem to know who Comey attorney David Kelley was & often misspelled his name. He was the top terrorism prosecutor in SDNY and oversaw DOJ's investigation into 9/11 www.politico.com/news/2026/07...
Lowest approval in modern polling history is Truman at 22%. Trump is a man who generally fails so hard he can bankrupt a casino, but I'm rooting for him to wrests this title from HST's bony fingers.
Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · last wk.Trump down to 32% approval in new Q poll. poll.qu.edu/poll-release...
I feel like every test style privileges some forms of learning or thinking or accommodation or something over others. So it's impossible to ask what is "most fair" without some sort of concrete definition of "fairness" to start with. And that definition will be inescapably value-laden.
Orin Kerr@orinkerr.bsky.social · last wk.I’d be very interested to hear from current or recent law students on whether they agree with this argument that fairness concerns justify switching to closed-book exams.
My crying/deranged laughing exam story. Not law school, but first quarter of my first year of grad school. Econometrics class w a relatively new prof. We had her previous two years of exams, tough but fair, felt prepped sitting down for the test. Test gets handed out upside down.
T. Greg Doucette@gregdoucette.bsky.social · last wk.Slightly off-topic: this whole discussion reminds me of my "Fundamentals of Taxation" class in law school The only law school class that made me cry (literally) 1/
With impeachment and removal structurally impossible, I again feel that the immediate follow-up to SCOTUS expansion is a redefining of the lower courts, with the worst of the worst (like Bove and O’Connor) assigned to the new District and Circuit Court for the … Moon, maybe?
emptywheel@emptywheel.bsky.social · last wk.The chances are quite good that the "number three" at DOJ who ordered Jim Comey to be illegally surveilled was Third Circuit judge Emil Bove. (He was nominated days later.) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
![6. The following morning, the Secret Service submitted an emergency request to
Verizon in which an agent represented that such surveillance “relate[d] to an emergency involving
danger of death or serious physical injury to a person, necessitating disclosure without delay of
information relating to that emergency.” Ex. E. [013475-77] The Secret Service agent who
completed the form signed an attestation stating: “I certify that the foregoing is true and correct
and understand that Verizon may rely upon this form to make an emergency disclosure to my law
enforcement agency … pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2702(b)(8) or 2702(c)(4).” Id. The declarant
advised the ATSAIC that he “was asked by the SAIC to ping the cellphone of James Comey via
exigency.” Ex. D. [013417] He further added that he did so “with hesitation.” Id. The same
document indicates that an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (“ASAIC”) reported that “the # 3
guy at DOJ ‘wanted to ping the cellphone via an exigency request.’”3
Id.
7. Secret Service case records provided in discovery show that Mr. Comey’s cell
phone was electronically tracked that day as he and his wife drove north on Interstate 95 (“I-95”)
from North Carolina toward his Virginia home. The Comeys were also physically surveilled
during the trip, but trailing agents lost contact when the Comeys exited I-95 at one point to drive
toward the cemetery where the Comeys’ son is buried. The electronic surveillance captured the
trip to the cemetery. (The Government later seized—pursuant to the challenged March 2026](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bbp2b224lro3bfnzcqwwnkfo/bafkreieobn5egqgq6vjid4fyzhfkbfdq7wbtqkelblvctdqwqaywzgeova)
“Lanes? We don’t need no stinkin’ lanes.” I love how no one associated with this admin feels any need to actually be an expert on what they talk abt … and repeatedly get away with it! The logical conclusion of our pundit-driven Discourse. Everyone’s take on everything is legit!
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.Peter Navarro is on TV talking about hydroxychloroquine, which is enough to cause a PTSD flareup. I'm not sure it's smart for Trump's cronies to publicly relitigate their handling of covid.
Shock level: 0.00. Honestly, less. But I wanted to comment on the pic. One big cultural fight we need to have over the next decade is making this sort of Seal Team Six Cosplay policing shameful.* It wasn't always like this. I recall seeing the FBI's HRT at Waco and thinking "those are ... cops?!"
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · last wk.Immigration agents used racial slurs referring to Latinos in text messages, video obtained by ACLU
If they actually build anything, rather than just burn cash through an inefficient no-bid procurement process, a Dem POTUS should make razing them an early-term project, both as a symbolic gesture but also to ensure there is no excess capacity for any future nativist GOPer to use.
Austin Kocher, PhD@austinkocher.com · last wk.ICE is seeking builders for up to 14 new or expanded detention sites, from the Virgin Islands to Guantanamo Bay, under a plan capped at $10 billion. It is shifting from renting detention to building it. Full edition: austinkocher.substack.com/p/this-week-...
