America reveres work. ICE raids desecrate it.

From Puritans to the New Deal to César Chávez — across politics and class, we’ve always shared one belief: work is sacred. ICE raids betray that.

This week, we’re talking:

• If work is sacred, these ICE raids are sacrilege. 🛠️🚫

• America’s most sensitive data, left vulnerable by a guy called Big Balls — simulation theory writes itself. 💾 🤡

• Grief tech is mutating into ad tech — the Black Mirror episodes are writing themselves. 👻💸

• Collapse has gone retail: $10K backyard pods for the suburban doomsday set. 🏚️☢️

• A D.C. jury refused to indict a protester for tossing a sandwich at a fed. Message sent. 🥪✊

My Take:

It’s August. In the business world, that’s short for: your European operations have ground to a halt.

I learned this the hard way years ago, trying to push deals in Europe during August. No matter how urgent something felt to me, I was swimming against the tide. Laptops were closed, out-of-office replies stacked up, and everyone was gone for the month.

I was struck by the way work reverberates - why we do it, why it matters, how it defines our culture and our institutions.

In America, work has always carried a weight that goes beyond wages. The Puritans saw labor as a calling, something that infused life with meaning and moral structure. During the Industrial Revolution, the “dignity of labor” was celebrated even as workers fought bitterly for basic protections. The New Deal enshrined rights and protections that recognized work as the backbone of democracy. And labor organizers like César Chávez and Dolores Huerta framed their movement not just as an economic undertaking, but as a moral imperative: work itself was sacred.

That’s the through-line. We Americans have an almost spiritual connection to work. It’s how we earn our keep, support our families, and find community. It’s an inviolable pillar of our national identity. Across politics and class, what binds us all together is our shared commitment to the recognition that all work is sacred, whether it's firing rivets on a bridge or discovering a new life-saving molecule.

And that, I believe, is why ICE raids are such a violation. They don’t target criminals. They target workers. They storm kitchens, parking lots, and construction sites to detain people doing the very thing Americans instinctively revere: showing up for an honest day’s job.

A particularly chilling example: masked Border Patrol agents arrived in a Penske rental truck near a Home Depot in L.A., posing as employers offering work — only to ambush and arrest 16 laborers from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Two renowned restaurants in Austin saw employees detained in raids. At a meat-packing plant in Omaha, more than 100 employees were taken away; the owner told the New York Times they were “salt-of-the-earth, incredible people who helped build this company.” Just yesterday, two firefighters were detained by border patrol in Washington State while on the frontlines of an active blaze.

These raids don’t solve immigration. They punish the people that keep our businesses and communities running.

They exist to feed the violent urges of a fringe, fascist minority. But the majority of Americans — and the majority of Trump supporters — don’t want them. No humane person wants them.

The reason is simple: if work is sacred, then ICE raids are sacrilege. They’re chaotic, cruel, and profoundly un-American.

My Stack:

Big Balls, Small Security 💾 🤡

The biggest Social Security data leak in U.S. history wasn’t orchestrated by a Bond villain or a Russian hacker. It was triggered by a DOGE operative — Edward “Big Balls” Coristine — who copied the SSA’s entire NUMIDENT database to a cloud server without basic safeguards. If this whole episode doesn’t give some credence to simulation theory, I’m not sure what does. Millions of Americans now risk identity theft because the government’s master file of Social Security numbers was sitting on a server with less protection than your Gmail account. Cybersecurity professor Susan Landau called it “downright crazy” and a “cowboy act.” Personally, I think that’s unfair… to cowboys.

Source: Washington Post

The Sandwich Rebellion

A New York judge once quipped that a prosecutor could “indict a ham sandwich.” That’s how low the bar usually is for securing an indictment. Perhaps he spoke too soon. In D.C., after the administration deployed federal agents and the National Guard, prosecutors tried to make an example out of a man who threw a sub-style sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent. The jury refused to indict. And it’s not a one-off. D.C. grand juries have repeatedly declined to indict protesters in recent months, a pattern that’s hard not to read as a collective message: cut it out.

Source: AP

Deadbots for Sale

Earlier this month, I wrote about a man who trained AI on all of his wife’s information, a kind of digital salvaging. NPR reported this week the “digital afterlife” industry is projected to be worth $80 billion over the next decade. What started as grief tech, a desperate attempt to hold onto someone you’ve lost, is already mutating into ad tech. Less “Grandma, remind me how to make your favorite cookies” and more Grandma reminding you to buy the KitchenAid stand mixer she always swore by — now 20% off. It’s hard to overstate how bad this could get, and how fast.

Source: NPR

Billionaire Bunkers for All

I wrote earlier this year about billionaires building end-times bunkers. Turns out, they’re not the only ones. Luxury shelters are trickling down into $10,000 backyard pods, promising military-grade protection at a more accessible price point. Their rapid adoption is telling. Journalist Ryan Hansen asked the right question: what does it reveal about a society where individual escape pods feel more achievable than fixing the systems that make escape necessary?

Source: Yahoo!