On Thursday, Interintellect goes ABUNDANCE! A deep dive into how to do the economy better 🍇 Hosted by @ericara.bsky.social | In partnership with Otterpine Books helping indie authors worldwide! interintellect.com/salons/gener...

We are now accepting submissions for the 5th annual American Religion Dissertation Prize. More details here, and spread the word! www.american-religion.org/announcements

Fantastic.

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging." Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. I wrote about my decision in TIME. time.com/7285045/resi...

Ages 0-4 are the most important, emotionally & intellectually, in human development. Yet, in the US, we have a very high rate of childhood poverty and a broken child care system. Congratulations to New Mexico for leading the way forward for high quality, free child care. Other states must follow.

I love how the kids say “search it up” — feel right.

If dictatorship was really based on charisma, these would be the United States of Natasha Lyonne.

My book has a pub date and website!

Happy Mother’s Day! (sound on)

Today is publication date for our Fragilities volume! "At a time when it may be easy to fall into a defeatist melancholia, if not outright pessimism, the book is an invitation to think from fragility to build life-affirming politics and ethics" It's got an amazing line-up & it is open-access! 🤓

Come! @reecepeck.bsky.social and @rushkoff.com have written some of the very best stuff for understanding the styles and coalitions that bind and sustain the current right.

April evening, NYC 2025 It’s good to have the light back.

Come! @reecepeck.bsky.social and @rushkoff.com have written some of the very best stuff for understanding the styles and coalitions they bind and sustain the current right.

Incoherence isn’t so much a sign of hypocrisy as coalitional speech. The voice of the politician speaks many ways at once. It’s all umbrella and dog whistle, or strategic ambiguities — necessarily so.

I love the phrase “keep your powder dry.”

Waking up to a downstairs piano-violin father-son duet. Perfect Sunday.

Friday DOGE fired almost everyone at NEH. UVA, VaTech, etc should be staffing up with this expertise ASAP. Also NIH, NSF, NEA.

Sometimes a writing project takes so long because first you have to build a language world. If you want to eat an apple, solve for Creation etc.

World circuit breaker.

Working on a piece that defends funding for NPR and PBS. Whatever their problems, we cannot let Fox News become our default "public sphere." There needs to be alternatives, including imperfect yet aspirational ones.

Reading Thucydides now and man is it hitting a bit too close to home

See also, the opening credits of Star Wars

The Peloponnesian War starts as Athens is taxing the shit out of allies for access to its markets (ahem, tariffs) to pay for building its walls.

Rallies tracked by Hands Off. Cool interface for collective representations of collective action.

It’s the very little things.

What if we begin with a different model?

Yes, university STEM research has produced many wonderful innovations and products, but we need to move beyond pure transactional thinking about value. Research in the social sciences and humanities is just as valuable, as is education in writing and thinking. That should be part of the narrative.

“Too many people and institutions with ample power and resources to defend themselves nevertheless have refused to stand up to MAGA intimidation. Instead, they have betrayed fundamental values that are the cornerstone of our democracy.” —@jenrubin.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/contrari...

academics of all kinds! our university presidents won't organize and align to vociferously defend the public goods of teaching, research, knowledge, well-being, economic development, and public health, but we can! sign! docs.google.com/document/u/0...

sign, share, tell your colleagues and pals, build bridges with your campus and your town

"What has made our universities the greatest in the world, however, is not just the quality of our undergraduate education, but our ability to fulfill one of the central quests of modern life: the production of new knowledge thru discoveries that change the world." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/o...

It's all well n'good reading what great thinkers understood of the world, but unless you figure out what you understand of the world, you'll be left with a simplified & paraphrased version of someone else's ideas. Dwelling, reconsidering, & reverie is how you think anew.

It is not so much the systems as the conditions of systems.

I wonder if people will develop a tacking back and forth between here and there for vibes. There will become “places I’m ok fighting w/people” and here will be like “liberal night time news” vibe.

The situation w/universities and the government is so frustrating. The lines of attack were years in the making and not hidden at all. To be caught flat footed now, as if nothing can be done save react or comply, is poor planning.

“It’s an escalation of a kind that is unheard of,” said Joan Scott, a historian & member of the academic freedom committee of the AAUP. “Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.” apnews.com/article/colu...

“Half of this stuff you can’t just do and the other half is insane, [...] If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.” This is beyond the pale. Our universities must resist.

Students were told for years that, actually, hate speech was protected speech and what was needed at universities. They were told that heckling such speech was itself a sign of intolerance.

The incoherence of MAGA really bothers brains. For the disbeliever it seems implausibly absurd. They keep pointing at evidence to the contrary — corruption, hypocrisy, stupidity, cruelty, mendacity —and grow frustrated that it will not move the needle clean. …

Achilles moping on the beach. This, too, is part of the process

Late Bloomer Red Amaryllis March 2025

You can read about Rutherford and many more of these "constant gardeners of white supremacy" in this excellent book. "Moms for Segregation" we might call them today. www.google.com/books/editio...

Woke up thinking about civic architecture.

We are all angels and djinn these days, circulating where we are not.

“The best hair cuts are where the struggle is,” he explains.

Less Cathedral and bazaar, more planetary carnival.

I woke up thinking about the internet. In my lifetime, billions of people began communicating with one another across the planet, daily. It is hard to overstate the significance of this shift for our species.