looking for a good book or two on the Great Awakening(s), if anyone’s got recommendations

Like I've said before, if you have any doubts about climate change, just go to a super-boring insurance conference and listen to the super-boring panels where they dryly talk about the growing threat of disasters so catastrophic and unpredictable in scope they simply cannot be insured at any price.

In the midst of all the discussion about what a loathsome human being Larry Summers is, wanted to make sure this dimension of his loathsomeness didn't get lost. From James Ferguson, Global Shadows, 70.

I honestly don't think the NY Times has been this bad in my lifetime, it's deeply shameful.

the democratic party’s basic problem is it has almost no control over how its message reaches the ears of voters, especially outside of presidential election years. but rather than devote serious time, attention and cash to that problem its consultants and pundits want to fight factional battles

The huge No Kings protests, an estimated 7 million people addressing America's worst crisis since the Civil War, get a tiny headline on the New York Times homepage, with no photo. Why does NYT think change happens only when politicians hold news conferences and not when everyday people take action?

Yesterday's No Kings protests were apparently the largest since the first Earth Day in 1970 The NYT covered that story with a six column headline across the top of the paper and two full pages inside Today, two small pics below the fold and a story on page A23 They constantly let America down

If I had explain American history in one sentence, I could do worse than "John Brown was hung for treason, but Robert E. Lee was not."

The Democrats struggles to elect culturally conservative white working class voters has been an issue for at least 50 years. And yet so much of the current commentary treats it as a recent phenomenon, a matter of a few election cycles.

Absolutely brutal.

another odd piece to all this is that many people are remembering a wave of "cancel culture" firings over insufficient wokeness that never happened.

Good summary of how the "Big Beautiful Bill" undoes (and then some!) the huge strides the Biden Administration made on climate.

NEW CHART: Trump's "big beautiful bill" & other efforts to dismantle climate policy means the US will add an extra 7bn tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere from now until 2030, compared to meeting its former climate pledge under the Paris Agreement 🫠 www.carbonbrief.org/...

The Biden Administration's failure (inability?) to convey what a massive leap forward the IRA was for combating climate change means that a lot of people: 1. Don't realize what was achieved. 2. Don't realize what's about to be taken away.

Just use footnotes. No one likes checking references at a later page.

Every time I think I've got a good sense of what Billy Graham was all about, I read something new that makes me feel like I don't get him at all.

Excellent reflection on the state of critique in academia. About literary theory, but could easily apply to anthropology or much of the humanities, I imagine. One quote, "And beneath [the] impasse [in the debates about critique] lies a still deeper dilemma: what the fuck is all this even about?"

In old enough to remember the campaign to “find the liberal Rush Limbaugh.” This will work as well. The GOP didn’t build Rogan, and Democrats sure won’t be able to build a liberal one. They should focus on funding existing liberal outlets and local newspapers and Spanish language radio and TV.

"What is it about the way we frame manhood that, even today, it still depends so on "feminine" dependence for its survival?" (Faludi, Backlash 79)

Over the past 4 or 5 years, I must have read 150 or so books on US history. Here is one thing I can confidently report: nothing we're seeing today is new. From Susan Faludi's Backlash...

I can remember as clear as day taking a course on the Holocaust in college and the professor said that when the government starts asking you to identify yourself as Jewish, it’s time to start thinking about getting out.

If you've never read it before, today would be a perfect time to take a look at Pope Francis's moving encyclical on the perils of climate change, Laudato Si'. (Definitely don't need to be Catholic or even religious to appreciate it)

reagan/bush judges: "this administration's shocking arguments would reduce the rule of law to lawlenssness" neocons: abolish ICE david brooks: communist manifesto Dem leadership, top liberal consultants/pundits: the latest NYT/Ipsos has Trump up +4 on immigration, +9 with noncollege men

Out of a seeming endless parade of bizarro experiences over the past decade, few of them have been more disorientating for me then coming to the end of this article and having the thought, "David Brooks is right!"

For years they’ve been screaming about the victimization of “conservatives” by “woke” “cancel culture” on university campuses, even though that’s mostly fantasy; and they’ve been fantasizing about revenge — meaning instituting their own blanket cancel culture on all their perceived enemies.

Donna Haraway leading #StandUpForScience at #UCSC. Situating science in helping us live together in better ways. She's giving deets on cuts to science, incl #Indigenous science, ag, USAID, medicine, dangers to farm workers, dangers of data loss. Donna's a master at connecting all the relations. ❤️

Important.

We are so sorry to learn of the death of James Ferguson, author of "Give a Man a Fish" and "Global Shadows." Our thoughts are with his family, colleagues, students, and friends.

Are you an anthropologist working in Latin American or the Caribbean? Or maybe you just want to know more about the region? Here's a starter pack of some of the members of SLACA (The Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology): go.bsky.app/LGV4jHn

Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.

James Ferguson, a guiding light in the anthropology of southern Africa, has died. His prose and analysis offered a model of clarity and insight. He was only 65. Very very sad.

Just gonna leave this here...

is it good or bad that a billionaire oligarch with close ties to foreign dictators is currently downloading the most sensitive information the us federal government has about its citizens to his own private servers?

"Big oil spent a stunning $445m throughout the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and Congress, a new analysis has found."

Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, Trump is moving quickly to dismantle Joe Biden’s fragile legacy. But as @davidklion.bsky.social writes, the one thing that can’t be erased is Biden’s record on Gaza.

Corruption, cynicism, capitulation, and, ultimately, collaboration. www.unpopularfront.news/p/welcome-to...

The New York Times says you must doubt the evidence of your eyes and ears. But the neo-Nazis don't doubt what they saw. It was a Nazi salute.

The rules, if you are keeping track: If a single left activist anywhere in the world says "defund the police," it becomes the official position of the Democratic Party, now and forever. If the president's top surrogate repeatedly sieg-heils on stage, it's ambiguous, impossible to interpret.

simple point i tried to convey in the post I just shared. if someone does a nazi salute at a political rally, i don't need to do a critical biography or do some deep dive on why they did it. if you want a research project, sure, whatever. but that doesn't matter. They did it. Thats all that matters.

"I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers." 🤭 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sleep well, king 👑

The turn to ontology has made its way to the mainstream media.

What the hell happened around 2000?

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes announces she's quit the paper because her editors wouldn't print a cartoon going after Big Tech and media oligarchs paying tribute to to Trump A new low in mainstream media's post-Trump meltdown anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

Thermal energy networks are "the next big thing." @volts.wtf takes listeners on a most excellent deep dive into networked geothermal with @zeynebmagavi.bsky.social of HEET and @eversource.bsky.social 's Eric Bosworth. www.volts.wtf/p/thermal-en...

Good article about my favorite podcast: Know Your Enemy.