The originalist case for deposing foreign heads of state without Congressional declarations of war. (I’m guessing @scottjshapiro.bsky.social already said this, but if not someone needed to.)

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.

Fighting about Times New Roman vs. Calibri is like fighting about steam vs. gas combustion engines. We’re already in Aptos’ electrified world. Alarming that the State Department is unaware of this. Our enemies will soon gain the upper hand in the next generation of typeface conflicts.

'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've been reading some of the responses to Kevin's post & I'm quite disappointed by the ambient theological illiteracy of our cultural moment. In ecumenical Christianity, the Incarnation occurs at the moment of Jesus' conception by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb.

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.

While the news is promising that airports will be dire places for the foreseeable future, Southwest Airlines would like to know if, by any chance, I’d like to take a trip somewhere, pretty please?

Heros for heroes.

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.

The great thing about air travel these days is that you never know what to expect

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls Sunday's naked bike ride in protest of the Portland ICE facility and and Trump troop deployment "the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet" www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

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

Third message this week from my employer expressing a strong preference that we not espouse political views when we can be recognized as employees of this institution. Not sure if that means that I can still say that I'm for democracy, broadly construed.

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

Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart

Bad sign that I’m ready to go to bed at 2pm. Letters of rec take a lot out of me, apparently.

Someday I won't be surprised about this fact: when I'm offline for two days because of a conference, I inevitably have to spend most of day three just replying to emails I neglected while conferencing.

We must imagine Sisyphus... baking apple crumble

Collegiate kid just observed that one of the lead actors of Life with the Walter Boys "looks old enough to be a grad student who's running out of funding."

This is a good heuristic for when you should and shouldn’t take academics seriously when they try to intervene in debates outside their specialty. Do they have respect for the problem?

If I ever become a dean (and let's hope this never comes to pass), I'm going to insist on issuing Decanal Bulls, just to annoy everyone. Also, thusly will I speed my retirement from any and all future administrative positions.

Papal bulls sound way more impressive than papal memos.

Shout-out to fellow academics with unhealthy work-life balance. May your labor day be super productive with no one else at the office.

Scholarship is spending all day working through material to find exactly what you were looking for, making a note of it, and the deciding that you probably won't use that thought anyway.

Doing some research on the 19th C, and sheesh, that century was pretty much peak facial hair stylings.