18 months of bad press and Trump helps to rehabilitate us in the span of a week. Mr. Art of the Deal!

I’m locked out of my FB account because of a two -step authentication process that went amiss. I could spend a lot of energy trying to recover it, or…take it as a sign and just walk away. Leave it as is for posterity. Whatevs. But be free of it. I’m leaning towards freedom.

‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ ‘Do it again, Neil.’ ‘But I’ve already said it 83 times.’ ‘Do it again, Neil.’ - Kubrick filming the moon landing

Mood

Sorry not sorry.

Trump is buying a Tesla, which means owning one will soon become right-coded rather than left coded. Who knew that all it would take to get the right to become more environmentally conscious in their purchases was to have a clown president throw his weight behind a Nazi sympathizer?

On Trumpian patrimonialism: Jonathan Rauch: @jonrauch.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv... Stephen Hanson and Jeff Kopstein @jeffkopstein.bsky.social : www.persuasion.community/p/sins-of-th...

Mood.

Mood.

MEUSER: You've got Trudeau saying how the president is making a dumb move. That's bad diplomacy. SANCHEZ: I'm not sure how it's good diplomacy to say that a neighboring country should be the 51st state and that you're gonna impose economic hardship to achieve that goal.

Don’t tell me democracy is at risk and a constitutional crisis is unfolding and the best you got is a modified ping pong paddle.

Mood.

Lots of folks are asking what they can do to be helpful in this moment. I like the short list of action items that @choosedemocracy.bsky.social lists on their site. Democratic civil society is about being stronger together. Any effective strategy flows from that. choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/

Hegseth is no longer recruiting for an American military. He's recruiting for Trump's military. The former swears allegiance to the Constitution. The latter to Trump. It's that military that will be unleashed on us civilians, when the time is deemed right.

Hi Bluesky! Glad to be here.

“All I know is that it was, apparently, possible to maintain a sense of facts and values — not only not to obey in advance but not to obey at all. If that was possible in the Soviet Union half a century ago, then it is certainly possible in the United States today.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/o...

Always grateful for the fact that I get to be on the planet at the same time as @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social. Take a look at her new newsletter, with today’s column featuring an interview with yours truly.

Coalitional psychology and game theory are rarely discussed together. In this post, I combine an introduction to both topics for anyone interested in understanding how we navigate the complex web of social interactions. www.optimallyirrational.com/p/coalitions...

Perhaps we should not be so surprised by the recent electoral results in many Western democracies. A key insight from game theory is that political coalitions may be less stable in the long term than we often assume. 👇

With Trump taking over the Kennedy Center, I hear his first effort will be a remake of Triumph of the Will, directed by Elon Musk.

Victoria is really excited to jump into this Daredevil run. I am too.

YES! Chuck, where do you live? Can you call your Senator?

Musk and his allies are ransacking the federal treasury, gaining access to closely guarded payment systems that disburse trillions of dollars and hold massive amounts of incredibly sensitive information—including Social Security numbers. Just a terrifying development. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02...

The Democrats are by their nature institutionalists. At least these days. They’ve long forgotten how to be rascals and rogues, how to gum up the system, how to start with an emphatic NO and stay there for a good long while. They need to relearn this. Fast.

After teaching ethics to master's students in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School for the better part of twenty years, this is the first year that my core ethics course will have students reading a comic book--the first twelve issues of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther run.

DEI killed the dinosaurs, invented cancer, and is the reason for each and every problem in your life, past, present and future.

Trump blames DEI for the plane crash, which is fucking insane. Might as well tell us to go inject bleach. A fraud and a fool.

Dems can: -oppose all Trump nominees until this EO is withdrawn -deny unanimous consent to slow senate proceedings -vote no on all cloture -force quorum calls at every chance It’s a constitutional crisis. There is absolutely no reason the Senate should be connecting business as usual.

And I have a new menu item I would like to recommend to McDonald’s.

My new novella is out today, everywhere books are sold. If you’re interested, you can get it here: a.co/d/asSNGjQ

Me and my mimic, ready to start the spring semester.

Sunday.

Losing my mind…

I'm not teaching my grad course 'Civil Resistance: How It Works' this semester. But here is an abridged version of the course schedule, readings, and films I used the last time I taught it (in 2022). Just in case it's useful. drive.google.com/file/d/14RRJ...

Don’t do drugs, kids

A great read www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Although I stick by my criticisms of the Substance, I'm delighted it's secured so many Oscar nominations. "Elevated" horror films have been the norm for years now, so I'm delighted the Academy is starting to take the genre seriously as a place for award-worthy filmmaking.

Trump’s new patrimonialism—hollow-out state institutions, staff the government through nepotism and loyalism, and govern based on patronage and arbitrary rule—was telegraphed in Heritage’s Project 2025. @aselrod.bsky.social

It turns out it's really easy to navigate the world in way where your words and gestures don't leave people sincerely wondering whether you're a Nazi. It's, like, super easy to do, if you want.

!!!!!

The marginal details of the David Lynch memorial at the Burbank Bob’s Big Boy are what make it.

The Dodgers rotation was already something else and now it's really something else. Welcome Sasaki!!

‘I always say, the film is the thing. The film is the thing. It’s the film, the language of cinema. You work so hard & the second it’s finished, people want you to change it back into words.’ - David Lynch

David Lynch gave us the language we needed to better articulate the indescribable strangeness of our shared reality. “Lynchian” is so overused because it’s a viscerally understandable word without any known synonyms. I can’t imagine a more beautiful artistic legacy than that.

I had the pleasure this J-term to co-teach a new course, Being Human, at the Harvard Kennedy School with my friend and colleague, one of the legends of organizing, Marshall Ganz. A student snapped this polaroid (!!!) of us as we wrapped things up and it's my new favorite photo.

I had this edition as a child and still own the copy. The art in it really is something else.

Pleased to announce that Cheryl Misak and I will be giving the Chris Hookway Memorial Lecture at Sheffield on June 2nd. Our talk is titled "Pragmatism, Truth and Politics"; it draws from the book Cheryl and I are currently writing together. www.sheffield.ac.uk/hpdh/events/...

My jaw isn’t just on the ground with the Neil Gaiman piece, it separated itself from the rest of my face and ran out of the house.