New article: Saba Bazargan-Forward, "Compensation and Necessity in War", Philosophers' Imprint 26: 3. doi: doi.org/10.3998/phim... Abstract in alt text. #philsky

Very important Mexican Philosophy news: Miguel León-Portilla’s AZTEC THOUGHT AND CULTURE is name-dropped in the first ep of Marvel TV show WONDERMAN!!

I‘ve gotta do something about the referees.

AI seems to turn every job into quality assurance for the AI.

And this: psyche.co/ideas/why-we...

Wrote this: aeon.co/essays/the-l...

I will allow that curling is indeed weirdly engrossing even if you have no idea what the rules are.

First signs of creeping old-timer-ness: discovering articles by tenured faculty that say "I first read [Vargas] as an undergrad and . . . ." Can I start yelling at people to get off my philosophical lawn?

Apparently UCSD Philosophy has been doing a good job with the grad program. dailynous.com/2026/02/11/p...

Antibiotics and non-alcoholic beer. Living the dream.

Fine. I'm now a Bad Bunny fan.

Vaporub ads give me ptsd. Someone needs to ban those.

From the prominent Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump. www.facebook.com/eleonore.stu...

I may not be ready to teach class this week, but the fact that I am 90% caught up with email I've received this year feels like a huge bit of progress for the weekend.

Philosophy Talk – the nationally syndicated radio program and podcast – has made all of its 600+ episodes freely accessible. You can stream directly from philosophytalk.org and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I used to think "reply all" was going to be the end of all things.

I‘m not saying I *need* weeks of snow, but I would be totally okay if we weren’t having back-to-back weeks of mid 70s weather in January. Like, highs in the 50 and 60s would be fun to experience for a bit, too.

SEND SOME COLITA DE RANA, STAT! Been laid low by an evil virus. Can we re-set the quarter for a week from now?

UCSD added 10k students since I took a job there way back when, and apparently the entirety of that added foot traffic is between my office and where I‘m teaching this quarter.

Already abandoned my New Year’s resolution.

Insert reprehensible joke about "saving space." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...

Happy New Year’s Eve to those who celebrate.

Not sure what happened, but Georgetown’s philosophy department isn’t admitting students this year and are now refunding folks who applied. (The deadline for apps was Dec 15th.)

The key insight is that the strength of the training, experience, research outputs, etc., is NEVER measurable on an absolute scale. It is ALWAYS assessed in the context of a particular hiring department’s needs.

Eduardo Mendieta has passed away. He was a friend and mentor to me, and he was responsible for so much of the activity in Latin American philosophy in the US in 90s and 00s. He is sorely missed.

One over-the-top positive teaching evaluation can make a whole quarter sing. Shout-out to the students who take the time to put some juice in the evals.

'Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey.' Photograph by Daniel Ibanez

One awesome thing about being a committee member on dissertations in other fields is that you can learn wild awesome things, like the bloody fights about which style of reed should be preferred by oboists. Turns out this is a real thing, with interesting consequences for music and national styles.

I'm immediately skeptical of anyone who fails to hyphenate "double-consciousness."

Currently replying to all end-of-term emails with 6-7.

You'll take my highly processed foods when you remove them from my cold, dead hands.

I finally impressed my teenager. She saw me parallel park and was like “Wow. How did you do that?”

Traditional turkey enchiladas for the win. Also: what the hell is happening in America? Eight adults, six teetotalers.

Was going to be sad if no one had taken the name “Nola Granola” for a business name. Relieved that capitalism still delivers.

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Heros for heroes.

Just wanted to report that the Declaration of Independence is a banger, actually. Like, it totally slaps, or whatever the kids say these days. 6-7. 10/10. Highly recommend.

I will grant that 18 innings followed by another game the next day *might* qualify as an athletic endeavor.

There will be fewer PhD students admitted to Harvard over the next couple of years...

Me as Grad: It is insider exclusionary bs when senior people don't cite Me as Full Prof: I can't be bothered to cite as everyone already knows who I'm talking about.

Rest now, bitch face. We have much work yet to do

Going to open up logic and linguistics-themed coffee shop called Ampersand & Conjunction.

Humanities majors in free fall in the US: Since 2008, English has declined from 3.8% to 1.7% of Bachelor's degrees awarded, history from 2.5% to 1.2%, foreign lang/lit from 1.9% to 0.9%, and philosophy from 0.6% to 0.4%. 22% of philosophy BAs are awarded by just 20 universities.

First cold weather in a while, complete with rain. Suddenly, dark beer seems like an overwhelmingly good idea on a Tuesday.

Dog next door sounds like he has a smoker's bark.

Very cool event here at UCSD Philosophy: inaugural chair lectures from Brink, Shields, and Callender, celebrating their ascension to endowed chairs. Format is shorter, accessible talks that have an overview-y vibe of a body of work or a current project.

First day of fall quarter at UCSD is always a spectacle: the requisite skateboarder eating pavement in the middle of pedestrian traffic; the fall fits designed for colder climes than humid 70s weather; and faculty complaining about needing 2-3 more weeks of summer.

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

Getting to the stage in my career where when I see a well-argued paper in a good journal on free will, my inevitable reaction is some version of “Nice enough, but wild that no referee noted that this is just the view of X in 1963, Y in 1988, Z in 2002.” #philsky