this is actually a really common way of understanding the world among pundits where events can only be classified if they fit a strict definition and if they don’t fit that definition then they cannot be classified in that way. it is as if they see definitions as structuring reality.

Why does the Cook County Sheriffs Dept hate Baptists so much?

WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.

my "Indigenous person who has been asked to help write them a truly irritating number of times" opinion is I find them mostly pretty useless and perfunctory but also despite that perfunctory nature, sometimes they make total assholes incandescently angry, and I find that extremely funny

more to the point: "this doesn't do anything" / "this is performative (derogatory)" is a criticism of land acknowledgements I find compelling from people actively engaged in reparations projects and pretty much no else

Houses like diamonds are fixed in supply and must be mined in the dark deep of Khazad-dûm

I wrote a piece for @frenchhistory.bsky.social about the 40th anniversary of the French bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior." Huge thanks to @eldrclaire.bsky.social @donalh.bsky.social @meghankroberts.bsky.social & the journal's extremely patient staff. doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1093/fh/c...

This is what male solidarity & collective action to oppress women looks like: Artist Andres Serrano--successful, but nowhere near the same class as Thiel & other billionaires in the files--stating that he'll vote for Trump, despite his politics, out of *sympathy* with T's sexual assaults on women.

Azari: “impeachment is much more rooted in race and racialized institutions than most accounts would suggest.”

Do you like listening to books as well as reading them? My work on the political theory of cookbooks is celebrating being one of the top philosophy audiobooks of the past decade with a 70% off sale!

imo you're supposed to read asimov in middle school, clarke in high school, le guin in college, and lem in grad school. I fucked up and read lem in college and le guin in grad school and it's set me back a bit.

Do you like listening to books as well as reading them? My work on the political theory of cookbooks is celebrating being one of the top philosophy audiobooks of the past decade with a 70% off sale!

Greene is perhaps the first person to convince me of the legitimacy of the “horseshoe theory of politics.”

My old pal Pete Coviello — one of the best writers and thinkers I've ever known — wrote the piece of the moment lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

I skipped this article for a while because I figured I'd read enough about the NYT's Mamdani coverage. I don't want to say the headline does the article a disservice - it is also very much about that - but goes well beyond as well

There is something really wrong with people who need workers to be not just competent, but slavishly fake-happy. "Slavishly" used on purpose, bc that's where this grotesquerie comes from.

Who is the best contemporary theorist of lustration?

UT Austin is discussing eliminating or consolidating our departments of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican/American and Latino/Latina Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Here is what AAADS alumni have to say. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

hoping that someone with fp chops such as @abuaardvark.bsky.social will write an essay on real estate diplomacy

Important thread about your settings on here, and how they restrict, well, everything

is a sandwich a speech act

The #1 lesson from yesterday’s blowout: Humanities majors killed on the job market 1) Mamdani- Africana Studies 2) Spanberger -French 3) Sherill - Global History

INTERVIEWER: Any comment on Zohran Mamdani's victory and what it says about immigrants and trans rights? LABOUR POLITICIAN: (panicking) I've never heard of New York

Is the motivating factor here: A) Speed B) Potential for corruption C) Top-down control D) Leverage over contractors

All those times you want to follow along as someone skeets a trial, but you lack the legal knowhow to tell what is happening: this one is for you:

It is worth saying that putting “Africana studies” in scare quotes as if it’s a ridiculous concept is not a political argument. It’s just racism. “Africa is not worthy of a major” is the implication. Yeah dude you’re just racist. (From Gerard Baker at the WSJ today) www.wsj.com/opinion/mamd...

The old world is dying and the new world (whisper whisper) oh, so it’s just the dying then?

The essence of “running the government like a business” is treating all citizens as workers, viz. subject to every demand of the boss and forced to express gratitude for their subservience

Vermeule being explicit that he thinks anti-Semites like Nick Fuentes are on his team shows terrible judgment. Worse even than the time he called John Rawls "a master of rhetoric and evocative phrasemaking"

Tiny interesting thing I am seeing at work: Tech vendors selling to government agencies are moving away from calling everything "AI" and hedging it with reintroducing the term "machine learning." Govies still flock to info about "AI" but vendors preparing for backlash?

RIP Peter Watkins, whose film about the 1871 Paris Commune treats it as if it were a current news event, with participants talking to reporters. It runs to nearly six hours & was shot in less than a fortnight in an abandoned factory www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDTT...

This dismissal opinion on a failed ICE arrest that @seamushughes.bsky.social found is worth reading in its entirety. Come for the debunking of DHS "fiction," stay for the snark about wiener dog, but definitely take time to read the 18 USC 111 analysis. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The most completely mundane replies being hid in my mentions without my consent or control is absolutely ridiculous and outrageous. @pfrazee.com y’all gotta give us back control of our own accounts this is out of hand. Literally hid a cat picture someone sent me.

Students at the University of Ibadan leading the world.

Not now, widening gyre

i'm sure the "faculty forum" on "reducing burnout" and "enhancing resilience" will include helpful things like "join your faculty union" and "here's a bucket of money" and "we hired a bunch of new full time faculty to reduce the teaching load across the university"

People keep talking about this guy as the savvy political choice but imagine an entire 18 month campaign cycle of story after story like this coming out. He can't even pretend to be a decent guy for five fucking minutes for a high-profile magazine feature! Get him as far from power as possible.

Your occasional reminder that the assassination of emperor Commodus was immediately followed by AD 193 (the Year of the Five Emperors, all also killed), leading to overall civil war.

My respect and admiration for Doug is impossible to quantify. He was steadfast in his belief in me as an editor and I wouldn’t be where I am now (even as a therapist!) without his support and mentorship. Doug, I hope you have more time for hiking in the desert and reading in the woods in retirement.

The significance of a D66 win in 🇳🇱 (if it transpires) will need some explaining outside the country. The Netherlands, like Denmark, has two liberal parties: one rooted in the classical liberal tradition, the other in the radical liberal one. D66 is the latter, ie the left-of-centre liberal party.

All the cool kids will be reading:

Just want to thank folks contributing to the #psjminfo job status update section of the site. It's a small thing, but I know people appreciate knowing the status of jobs. www.politicalsciencejobs.org/status-updates

If anyone is interested, two of my books - Dreamworlds of Race (2020) and Reordering the World (2016) - are 70% off in the excellent Princeton University Press sale. It's on until the end of the month press.princeton.edu

Political theorists have lots of explanations for this

greece and rome aren't even in the west. they're mediterranean. shut up with that bullshit man

Eric Posner reviews that aged poorly:

*Shocking* that health-tech companies would immediately turn to eugenics.

"In AI, différance becomes deterministic. Meaning is calculated probability distribution rather than openness. The trace isn’t a hint of something beyond; it’s the only thing there is." cybelecanterel.substack.com/p/living-wit...