My brain couldn't come up with the phrase "wash the dishes" so I just told my wife I needed to "do the sink laundry"

I believe this album also featured the immortal track “Boogie In Your Butt”

I think Sirius 80s on 8 dramatically overestimates the amount of nostalgia out there for this one. Hearing it once every year or two might be good for a chuckle, but any more than that is mnt really good for anything. m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWa-...

“.. a mega, anti-Trump trade alliance ..” #TheWorldIsMovingOn @politico.com @scottlincicome.bsky.social www.politico.eu/article/eu-a...

New hypothesis/ polisci inside joke: JJM has supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to make Europe's medium powers finally do the thing he famously wrongly predicted they would, three decades and change ago.

This is why we need the Louvre of Bluesky back.

👀 Invoking Orwell, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore panels and historical acknowledgments of the history of slavery that the National Park Service removed in Philadelphia. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Now posted ahead of print: "Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science. (Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.) doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Yesterday I complained a bit about Obama's "concerned" posture toward Trump, but it's of course vastly better and more responsible than George W Bush's passive-aggressive subtweeting posture. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/a...

same, girl, same

::taps the sign::

new political spectrum just dropped

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding: Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere. samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

💯

Being shoved through the dimensional breach into the hellfire involved a lot less fetish gear than Chris Claremont led me to expect

Now posted ahead of print: "Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science. (Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.) doi.org/10.1146/annu...

This is my memory of the Core Curriculum, which I both took as an undergrad and taught in grad school, so I may not be entirely blameless.

mom they’re roasting the US economy on mastodon again

During her 11 months as the de facto leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Kari Lake has wasted millions of dollars and done profound damage to America’s foreign broadcasters, and to America’s ability to communicate with the world www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Biden was the most economically progressive president since LBJ at least, he pursued a full-employment economy at huge political risk, it worked spectacularly. And what happened is that the entire progressive universe decided that he must not have done any of it, or else he would have been popular

An old friend trying to use jargon from The Yoots makes me think: I hope a bunch of Olds are harassing their grandchildren by having 6-7th birthday parties.

hey, Marco and Elon...

People mentally cannot accept or grapple with a world where progressive economic policies do not magically make everyone love you

One of my black pill moments was that Biden actually focused on lifting the lowest quartiles up at the expense of the rich and the online left screamed at him about student loan forgiveness.

wut?

What a psycho thing to say

But we didn't have economic stagnation for the working class. We had a period of unusually *high* wage growth for low income workers.

I imagine Musk is trying to say “Scots-Irish” (i.e. Ulster Protestant planters, not Irish Catholics), but who knows what really goes on in his ketamine-soaked cream cheese brain except straight-up racist nonsense motivated by whatever desperate, howling need propels his stupid maunderings.

Not a new observation, of course, but one that keeps coming back to me. I thought we'd all agreed this was bad.

I always forget: is the doctrine on the right that "you can't call concentration camps 'concentration camps' because people think that means Nazis and calling someone a Nazi is the worst thing in the world, much worse than running concentration camps" on odd-numbered days, and 1/2

I’m bridged into Mastodon via @ap.brid.gy and I am honestly not sure why at this point.

The propensity of people talking about bullshit engines to themselves believe what looks like high probability bullshit is its own special problem. Anonymous stories that fit preconceptions exactly are their own kind of optimized slop.

I really admire Obama’s rhetorical gifts. I wish he would embrace their power rather than trying to sound like Susan Collins. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/u...

this is a really important point. the district courts are trying to contain this administration. the circuits, by and large, are still working, with the occasional exception of the 5th, 8th, and DC circuits. the Supreme Court is on an island. lawless and completely rogue.

“Adam Smith, whose book about the market and stuff I haven’t read, also cared about sentiments in the other book, which I also haven’t read” is a great classic of op-ed waffle.

Yale students are gonna wanna keep this one handy.

"Rental Family" >>> pretty much every Oscar-nominated movie I've seen this year except for "Sinners," and while Sinners is a better movie overall, if Fraser were nominated for Best Actor I'd give it to him over Jordan.

This is so spot on

New and fascinating from Bernard Harcourt.

Those notorious hippie institutions MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and LSE. All well-known for subversiveness, with no contributions to defense, military tech, or intelligence services. NB the inclusion of Columbia, Penn, & Brown despite their having struck deals with the administration on other fronts.

Utterly unacceptable in a democracy. In a sane world, House Republicans would be drafting impeachment articles today and Senate Republicans would be preparing for a trial to convict and remove him from office

“conservatism, which certain enlightened, heroic intellectuals bravely invented”

“Let’s base our society on the sentiments” the Scots theorists rationally said after the terrible wars of religion; “No, we must build on reason alone!” the French angrily cried, overcome by their characteristic Gallic passion.

Reminds me of Brooks' off-made comment that his career has been one long attempt "to be less shallow than maybe I naturally am." Must try harder.

My excellent PhD student @uncanonical.net is working in this area--mostly on C18th authors like Hume, Rousseau, Smith, and Grouchy, but also with attention to the recent explosion of scientitic literature on empathy, and the current right-wing attack on the whole idea.

But also best use of a Schitt’s Creek meme I’ve seen all year

The kind of utter confusion Brooks is going to inflict on Yale undergrads.

What's even better about this victory is that it means the federal government no longer contests that Judge Lin was right about their strategy of weaponizing Title VI. They had a playbook, Judge Lin identified it, it's ugly, and the government no longer appeals an injunction ordering them to stop.

That strategy is dangerous. But UCLA no longer has to worry about it, w/regard to any grant cancellations ostensibly based on a Title VI violation, or any of the wave cancellations from last July. UCLA can respond to any grant cancellations/refusals by suing the govt for violating the injunction.