These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

Wisconsin, where we have a constant stream of do-or-die elections and the voters don't know the candidates

y’all don’t need me to tell you this but this is plainly unconstitutional under any remotely rational reading of the constitution

“Low enrollment“ is always a bad argument (tho one that many humanists buy into in worries about “declining” majors) but it’s a particular sham at a research university. These are vital, active research fields that produce important knowledge, which is why research universities must support them.

Really isn’t discussed enough the extent to which the Trump administration is at war with Blue States, particularly Minnesota. If Clinton, Obama, or Biden had treated Florida this way it would have been a presidency-ending scandal but for Trump the press is just like “oh that scad and his hijinks.”

With the arrival of today's print issue of @theonion.com, I give you my favorite article from earlier this year

The pileup of blatantly unlawful conduct by the government in this case is astonishing, as is the fact that the Supreme Court allowed the govt to go forward with this program in a shadow docket ruling

This is very good reporting that sheds light on just how small the extremely pro-Trump online right really is. The online right is totally astroturfed. The White House's own staffers are running meme accounts to make them look more popular than they are. www.wired.com/story/a-whit...

The one thing I have learned about SharePoint is that to get to it, you have to click on OneDrive. If you click directly on SharePoint (you fool!) it will take you to a place from which even the back button cannot rescue you; you just have to kill the tab.

Due process violations don't get worse than this. Appalling stuff from Virginia State, every administrator involved should lose their job

Love the glimpse into the beautiful mind that notated this used copy of Moby Dick I got

President Trump imposing tariffs deemed illegal by the Supreme Court that cost American families an estimated $1,000 to $1,450 per year and then not issuing blanket refund checks to American households would be a Presidency-ending scandal under any other Administration or any Congress with a spine.

Aaron Rodgers

I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across. If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers. If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

Less than three, more than four, who can say?

And there were so many bad actors / targets for investigation afterward. Beyond the team directly around Trump, there were fake electors in multiple states, members of Congress who tried to facilitate, etc. It's a national outrage and embarrassment that Ron Johnson still walks free.

Painful to read this and think about the 2021 coup attempt, which was as blatant as it gets. An utter failure of US elites to seize the moment when everybody saw the threat right in front of their eyes. If we have history books in the future, they will be unkind.

Can't believe no one wants to bankroll Weekend At Gurney's

Probably no president ever less capable of capitalizing on a prime time speech to gain support

20% with indies is fucking apocalyptic and I think it can get lower because Donald Trump is fundamentally incapable of being anything other than who he is, and people do not like him.

Killing demand for cardboard boxes would also be maybe the single biggest blow against conservative dark money in our lifetimes

Too many to count, but as a linguist who studies focus and anaphora I am particularly fond of "See all that stuff in there, Homer? That's why *your* robot never worked."

Nope.

Gavin Newsom will inherit RFK Jr's role as the prominent politician with the most fucked-up voice, and precious little else

lol how many instances of "free reign" are in Anthropic's training set?

Consume U.S.A. sparingly/in limited quantities

Patel and his handlers seem fixated on reminding everyone that he has zero qualifications for his very rarefied and important job

You couldn't make up a better encapsulation of Robin Vos, petty tyrant. Accolades for letting an overwhelmingly popular bill onto the floor in his final floor session. Meanwhile he's spent 14 years as a one-man veto for stuff like this. www.jsonline.com/story/news/p...

My god even Chuck Schumer’s team figured out how to ratio this one.

Cartel hitmen aren't civil servants paid with our tax dollars but I am not a constitutional scholar like Mike Lee

I know it’s naïve to even suggest comparisons anymore, but can you imagine the FBI director in any other administration taking a luxury jet overseas to party at the Olympics while presumed assassins are being shot at the president’s house.

Syntax final exam: name a topicalized pseudocleft in the pop canon other than What A Fool Believes

Relatedly, if you want to feel old, the Super Bowl / Bad Bunny halftime show was only two weeks ago

In 50-100 years people are going to look back on the corruption of this era with absolute disbelief

I am afraid “never learn a hockey player’s politics” is as ironclad a law as “never learn a baseball player’s politics”

My major hope for the 2030 games is a pairs short program set to Everything You Did

The National Review fancy themselves intellectuals

Scott Bessent is like if you asked Will Ferrell to play the entire Bush dynasty plus Gore Vidal

Yes. I'd like to believe that if Steve Jobs were still around he would see the consumer-facing side of AI for the janky bullshit it mostly is

Apple could make a new retro ipod nano and shit gold for a decade. Instead they’re doing AI capex plays nobody wants

Suggested slogan for expanding SCOTUS: "Major Questions Demand Major Answers"

[Seeing that Milan-Cortina is the XXV Winter Olympics, recalling that Calgary was XV, doing the math]: Oh no

Ski mountaineering is the new most baffling Olympic sport

There should be norms in favor of high-profile college coaches expressing concern and outrage over cuts to the academic side of the house

I, more than most, get that sports is actually a way to get some non-college grads to care about the institution. But I think we have to start thinking deeply about what a university is, given that accreditation is months away from fully breaking

[Ben Folds Five's "Song for the Dumped" intensifies]

personally I think the New York Times’ chief legal correspondent should know that the court was not a 6-3 conservative majority during Trump’s first term

Official cleat of Garbage Pail Kid "Babe Rude"