Blueskyism (complimentary)

American Academy of Pediatrics statement on the 9/22 WH autism press conference: “Today’s White House event on autism was filled with dangerous claims and misleading information that sends a confusing message to parents and expecting parents and does a disservice to autistic individuals."

Look for my forthcoming work on the deflationary theory of tooth.

The point of most of the Disney movies I can remember is: stand up for what matters And then they didn't

Under pressure from Texas government officials, Angelo State University in Texas is banning all discussion or mention of the existence of trans people along with banning the LGBTQ pride flag from campus and forced misgendering of trans people. conchoobserver.com/2025/09/19/a...

“Syracuse University paused admission to 20 majors in the College of Arts and Sciences without faculty input” dailyorange.com/2025/09/coll...

New Cocoon web address: philosopherscocoon.com

Just got an email from a scam academic journal asking if I wanted to "explore new advances in White Psychodrama" and it's just got me like: buddy, I can watch the news myself.

did a read-aloud of my latest column, set to the backdrop of a drive through central virginia youtu.be/pq8TUlk4BxQ

I for one am not at all worried that the most powerful people on earth have optimized my society and my brain to be ultra-reliant on the misery machine we keep in our pockets.

The older I get the harder it is to escape the conclusion that the typical American reads approximately 0 books or even articles a year.

Again Bouie from the top rope

The administration is threatening to take away money and power—and maybe even freedom—from some Trump opponents because of the Kirk murder. It doesn’t matter that elected Democrats have roundly condemned his murder. Exploiting the murder is the agenda item du jour. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzeK...

On the one hand, Trump's Chicago crackdown didn't quite materialize. On the other hand, even the threat of it was enough to plunge the city's immigrant communities into fear. www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-chic...

This is extrajudicial execution, without any clear threat to the US, no authorization from Congress, and far beyond even Article II. The military is not the president's personal hit squad. Or wasn't, until now.

Becoming a parent has radicalized me in a lot of ways, but maybe nothing more than how much happily telling people “We’re having another girl!” has been taken as an open invitation for misogyny. Apparently one girl is a blessing, but two girls is a catastrophe. It’s gross.

In “debate”, admitting “I don’t know” is tantamount to admitting defeat. In real life, it’s the heart of wisdom and the first step towards knowledge. A total inversion of good thinking!

Another problem with debate culture is that it prioritizes quick responses over slower, more careful thinking. It punishes saying “I don’t know. I need to look into that.” And it rewards unwarranted confidence.

This is very good and helpful, and you should read it. Learn to question the questions!

Reporters on the ground in Chicago are screaming to be heard over the false narrative that Pritzker defeated Trump there. PLEASE listen to them.

as a practicing cradle catholic: pain.gif

Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s deadliest infectious disease, yet it often goes unnoticed. Every year, 10 million people fall sick and 1.5 million die. We can change this. Awareness, testing, and treatment save lives. Watch @wearetb.bsky.social Kate O’Brien explain why TB needs to matter 👇

Some people have wished I wrote more about the bad old days of silencing and gender violence since I put up that Guardian piece about how normalized it all was in the 1970s-1990s, and, well, I did: Recollections of My Nonexistence. Here are some excerpts.

The estimated number of deaths so far due to USAID cuts are truly mind-boggling. Musk will be complicit in the unnecessary deaths of millions of people. (estimation below done by www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?vi... )

this is, hands down, the best video I've seen on men's influencer content and it's not close either

This is a mistake. WPSU is great for disseminating research we do here at Penn State. I'm supposed to be on a podcast released on Monday! Direct community translation. Plus programming for the kids (like the multicultural event). I have been so proud to say that our little town has an NPR station.

Nothing at Fox is fireable

People are often surprised that I actively discourage debate in this sense in my classes. “You’re a philosophy professor!” But the whole problem is that students (all of us?) are so desperate for one viewpoint, one “ism” to be right. We make impatient mistakes. Debate rationalizes that desperation.

Social media held out the promise of a new cosmopolitanism; we are connected to everyone! In practice it seems to have generated millions of small town networks with their associated rumors, gossip, and provincialism. There are lessons about network structure and cognitive load there.

i think Noah completely misses the mark here: if you think a third-rate hangout for lefties is somehow why civil society has given up on civil society resistance, your theory of the world is wrong

The right sets the terms of our political discourse in so many ways, one of which is the idea that there isn't enough "debate" and "free speech" on campus. We need to push back on this. The truth is (speaking for myself as a history prof), I don't really emphasize debate much in my classes/

In all seriousness, I'd love to see a reporter try to get comments from all of these people about their initial impulse to declare a literal war on half of their fellow citizens and to see if any of them regret it, apologized for it or learned anything at all from it.

Just thinking about how the right made up an entirely fictional left wing character that resulted in so many bomb threats and the like and nobody will face consequences. But people on the left who accurately clocked the victim’s life work lost jobs.

I can't believe how much positive news there is about solar right now. I have questions about bird habitat but ensuring less of Californias precious precious life giving deliciousness doesn't evaporate while fucking the fossil fuel industry? Sign me up!

One of the great challenges of our day is to combat the hatred, fear, and lies that generate profits for those seeking to divide us and keep us from uniting around a common good.

As a guy who got a cancer that was probably caused by a virus, I think we should have /more/ vaccines.

Officials deport a student from China who had a full scholarship to study philosophy at the University of Houston, 36 hours after he lands in Texas.

I will never not laugh at the part of fellowship where they are at the council and Elrond is like “we have to destroy the ring” so gimli is like “okay cool I’ll do it” and just whacks it with his axe like a dipshit, breaking his axe. Especially since four minutes later he pledges “and my axe”

One of the less discussed but more important reasons to be against fascism is that it’s fucking stupid and informed self-interest rules it out

Stories of people developing psychosis because of AI are going to get more and more frequent and then they'll stop because it will be so common it won't even be worth reporting

A remarkable interview with a remarkable person And by one too. Nathan Ballantyne spends months on these things, getting the questions right and teasing things out of his subjects that no one else has ever managed to do. Read this one, and then read them all. www.the-workbench.ca/interviews/p...

“Shitty cyberpunk” remains the most useful framing

The only way we can deal with the emotional pain of being wrong about something is by accepting that we are wrong *by our own lights*. Telling people that they’re wrong doesn’t help with this acceptance. It makes psychological evasion of the wrongness possible with blame- “you’re an elitist!”, etc.

I hate that the Joker kinda ruined pointing out that we live in a society for the rest of us, since we do in fact do that and sometimes it is worth drawing attention to some consequences of that fact.

I wrote an op-ed on the world-class STEM research ecosystem in the United States, and how this ecosystem is now under attack on multiple fronts by the current administration: newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar...

All we (parents) want is an enclosed (i.e. fenced, not necessarily indoor), car-free, mostly child-proofed space where we can hang with other adults and buy coffee/beer while keeping an eye on the kids. The American legal/cultural framework has made this demand apparently impossible to satisfy.

Du Bois on what these assholes were really like

Most incredible about this is that IU-Bloomington has long been the no. 1 university in the world for teaching Asian languages and cultures, with many programs found nowhere else. They're slashing many of IU-B's most distinctive programs with zero thought or debate. They probably don't even know.

We’re living through the golden age of analytic philosophy, but we’ve become too Reviewer 2’d to see it.