Recent posts
me on the NYT on ICE in Idaho
how a tongue-in-cheek mascot became a brain-dead ideologue
a legal strategy for limiting redactions
closing the book on (and throwing it at) ICE
we need to address the role guns played in Pretti’s life, death, and the fallout
me on Robin on Hall on etc
we’re “on the brink” means it hasn’t “really” happened yet — but it has
history, humor, science, law — this one’s got it all
not working out too well for Trump & Co
FL SC says FU to ABA over JD EDU
WTFJHT, DJT, PE, and RE
not obeying is not enough
a short Q&A on two men
analysis and metanalysis of TrumpRX etc
“ACAB” was never a good idea, but now it’s a bad one
a para on ethics
a litany of what left-leaning society needs to do to counter Trump & Co
some context for Title IX
gotta keep up with the times
a bleak, bleak post mortem of the 2024 election
scientists should respond to Trump’s destruction with construction
any argument or strategy that relies on the Dems is doomed to fail
one of the central tragedies of his presidency
the underlying genocidal logic of Trumpian policies was clear many years ago
condemning the assassination of two Israeli diplomats is a no-brainer — but very few people have brains, it seems
fake book reviews
two madmen — liberal and left
An NYT “videtorial” (or whatever) on Yale scholars fleeing fascism seem kinda problematic
rationalizing the orientation of a meme
a short, ‘found’ essay on wealth-induced madness
exactly what it says
a dumping ground for Fox’s greatest gender theory hits
They know what they’re doing is wrong, but we shouldn’t care whether they know.
…and if they did it, a lot of other schools would go ballistic, particularly those that aren’t wealthy
this kind of signaling and maneuvering is how bureaucracies work
a squib about the Signal / Atlantic brouhaha
Here we go again
a squib about the 1976 BBC series (tl;dr: watch it)
a plaster maquette for our times
a rant about the left’s descent into bombastic moralism
“You only get one chance to show your integrity — your entire life.” That was Jonathan.
I wrote this when the conventional wisdom held that NIH cuts’ impact would be limited to those fields. Yes, really — most academics really believed that.
Scientists need to stop reflexively calling what Trump is doing is “an attack on science.” It includes that, yes, but it isn’t limited to it — not even close.
My 🔮 about what Trump & Co. would do to CU were 🎯
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
What Germans should have done in the 1930s but for US citizens now
Exactly what it says on the label
When Trump & Co. attack elites, look down not up
If the fires that were set and continue to be stoked every day by ultraists like Hamas and Netanyahu consume US higher ed, the entire sector — all of it — will burn to the ground.
25-03-05 swasticar flyer A helpful PDF you can print out and leave on every Tesla you see!
Maybe a GOP bill raising endowment taxes by 1500% will wake academics up?
I wrote this on Facebook on 7 Nov 2024, barely a day after the election, and it seems a little too prescient.
Somewhere between amazing and terrifying
Rutherford Change, RIP
Good question! Bestial acts.
An exegesis of a detail in DeSantis’s proposed budget and a how it relates to “deconstructing the administrative state”
How to read an AI prompt
How Gregory Bateson can help us to figure out who’s to blame for Trump’s election, and what that means for activism
Whether “AI” is conscious really doesn’t matter
Some delicately contrarian thoughts on this stuff
The media hasn’t quite figured out how Trump is eviscerating the federal civil service, so let me help you out.
An embroidered dress from the late 1940s, then and now
Musk has a chat with an acolyte, and I have a few thoughts about habitual internet expressions manufacture alienation
A few pointers
A short, deep dive into the culture of English translations of modern lit
The Spanish writer Roy Galàn on Lynch’s work (and a meta-meme)
We’re looking for a few good links
found meme
A few thoughts about “AI”
You won’t find a more detailed or better-sourced chronology about this anywhere.
“There is always a moment when, the science of certain facts not being yet reduced into concepts, the facts not even being organically grouped together, these masses of facts receive that posting of ignorance: “Miscellaneous’.” — Marcel Mauss
On Peter Thiel’s Financial Times opinion piece
What’s Meta up to?
“If you let the rhythm of his rocking enter you, he’ll remind you what it feels like to be ecstatic, what it is to be hysterical, what it means to circle the meaningless void that is the wellspring of all meaning.”
Is Cinema really that much greater than iPad?
The “cultural discount” is alive and well.
A few thoughts on an 18th-C pair of dice
If you were wondering where all those used copies went, now you know
A squib about those… X& Y& Z& A …t-shirts
Yet another editorial board resigns, with a few thoughts about what that means
A multi-FOAF just named Marc Campbell posted some album covers designed for the Prestige label by the cartoonist Don Martin
Amanda Gorman, who shot to fame when she recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” for Biden’s inauguration in 2021, just dropped a new poem that riffs heavily on the movie Wicked, and I think it’s pretty amazing.
One underappreciated aspect of the news about Israel’s ex–MoD and IDF CoS Moshe Ya’alon is his use of ethnic cleansing rather than “genocide. ” As we’ve seen, the latter term is controversial, in large part because all the controversies mask a meta-debate about what authority to cite as definitive — basically, the Israeli experiential understanding of it as the singular event that laid the basis for the state vs internationalist understandings that refer to UN definitions.
If the rumors about DeSantis for Sec Def turns out to be serious, the media flap will focus on his “anti-woke” noise and jokes about his white boots etc, but ignore all that. He’s an extremely calculating authoritarian from a state where public corruption is a religion, and as governor he has systematically worked to empower armed forces and hobble civil rights.
Pere Borrell del Caso’s painting “Escaping Criticism” (1874)
My new year’s resolution for 2025 will be to consign George Santayana to the same dustbin as Godwin’s “Law” and “future historians. ” Ritually reciting “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” doesn’t change where things are headed, and nor does it teach anyone anything worth knowing.
A while ago I realized that my experience of thinking is like a paint mixer: sudden and violent.
Footnote 2, from Gregory Bateson, “The Growth of Paradigms for Psychiatry” (ca. 1976), orig.
Not sure I’ve seen anyone say it so bluntly, but it’s becoming clearer that criminality is the new governance. I can think of several reasons that’d happen, involving media (would you rather watch C-SPAN or The Sopranos?
FB has decided this is one of those images I need to see again and again and again, via various “unsolicited pix” groups that claim to be about this or that but really are just firehoses of rando-pandering surveillance probes. In this case, it always comes with a useless comment like “LOLZ” or some equivalent, the social media equivalent of explaining a joke by explaining there is a joke.
Apparently there’s a whole series of big moons coming up, and I saw my first claim that so-and-so Native American tribe called this a “[such-and-such] moon. ” The details don’t matter, but internet-era fantasies — of made-up “wolf moons,“ “strawberry moons,” etc — being legitimized as heep-um authentic, that’s a predictable devolution.