Influencing the super elite in this way is whole another issue of course but not taking talk radio seriously in the 90s was a massive turning point unfortunately

Gotta be honest and say there are a lot of bad things right now. A lot.

Controversial but - students *perceive* they have been failed when what has happened is they have failed to understand information retrieval is a skill requiring effort. I don't believe a zero friction experience is realistic or desirable in learning, actually.

A hole in the sky 📷 #CloudScape #Photography #LightAndShadows

New, from me.

Grim.

This is the strategy Russia has employed against Ukraine (in violation of the laws of the war). It hasn’t worked there. I doubt it will work in Iran. But if carried out, it will inflict a lot of suffering on the people Trump was promising to protect.

I'm about to finish "The Goddess" (1934) to prep for my Resonant Soundscapes performance at @aadl.org on Tuesday (link below) and this wonderfully-acted silent film centers a hardworking mom who wants to give her son a better life and the men around her keep getting in the way aadl.org/node/664389

I think it's worth confronting this position clearly. It's masked as a causal argument, but that falls apart like straw in every direction. It's really a *normative* argument - no changes to the Palestinian situation are justified until this condition is met - so let's look at it in that respect.

Frankly, I don't give a shit about terminology, we can call it whatever you want, but the issue is that Israel and its defenders have spent years trying to emphasize the transitory, ephemeral nature of the Occupation while in practice building up an permanent set of oppressive institutions.

Remember when people were fired for *reposting* accurate quotes from Charlie Kirk after he was killed.

It's a small thing amid so much death, but a thing I hate about modern war is it pushes everybody watching it to their emotional limit while underlining their powerlessness to stop it so social media seems to get mean with folks lashing out at each other over small stuff to feel control

And this, law students, is why the *process* of outlining is important. It's not having an outline that matters. It's making it.

#NotATarget: Israel deliberately targeting medical facilities in south Lebanon, say health workers Medics and officials say there is systematic use of double-tap strikes in campaign to make the south uninhabitable www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Billionairism is incompatible with life on Earth, pt. 1,535

Congress by design and function lags behind public opinion but even as we're fully in Year 10 of the Trump Era, people who want careers beyond it can read the writing on the wall. The challenge is if enough can act to overcome the barely checked power of presidents when it comes to foreign policy.

It's tricky, I think, for those who remember the loneliness of being opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to parse what is different about Trump's 2026 Iran War. It can feel like a retread, but unlike in 2003 the US public is opposed *from the start," a shift that didn't happen with Iraq until 2006.

Yes there are ideologically motivated statutory requirements at play but it's a nonstarter to suggest that these particular legal reqmts somehow mean USPS is a market participant like any other - when it has a legal obligation to serve every address, at great loss in many cases.

By the way, one example of this is the wide use of WhatsApp abroad - including by virtually every business! It's incredibly striking to have commercial/quasi-public communications occurring over Mark Zuckerberg's private network

I hope the war's impact on "fertiliser" is waking some people up to the (non) sustainability of industrial farming.

Religious persecution by my mother upon filling out the India visa application (which requires you to put a religion and doesn't have "none" as an option - and if you choose "other" you have to further specify something)

This piece on china was fairly eye opening on that score www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This is a side point but anyone who thinks tech-based enshittification is a uniquely American phenomena truly has another thing coming. We probably started it but in certain respects it has gone further with less resistance in some other quarters (very much true of surveillance eg)

Excited to present on Sherman Act origins in 19c america at New Zealand Commerce Commission shortly. (Bit of a weird time to be blathering at people about Americana but here we are)

Kind of an unsolvable problem but a real problem with jobs, positions and institutions that have considerable influence over the world is that they tend to attract people who want to wield that kind of influence

The Iran-Contra committee's minority report, which the rest of the GOP signed, laid out a vision of presidential power that has taken firm hold within the party in the decades since. The minority report was one of the earliest foundations of the "unitary executive theory,"...

Tired: humans have immortal souls Wired: humans don't have immortal souls anymore than a machine does Inspired: humans don't have immortal souls but computers do, now we just need to make their soul intelligent/transfer our own minds into it

I genuinely don't comprehend the spiritual horseshoe these freaks occupy: start by completely denying the existence of the human soul (while trying everything to destroy it); then circle back down to fringe temu esoterica (not even the good esoterica!)

Every speech by you is a speech about the Antichrist when you are, in fact, the Antichrist.

EVERY person who has died at the hands of ICE/CBP should still be with us, healthy, whole, and free. It’s an additional level of betrayal for this man to have suffered and died after all he sacrificed for the U.S. Reprehensible. Monstrous.

Oscar-nominated, “The Voice of Hind Rajab" is up for best international feature film. Trump barred Wesam Hamada, Hind’s mom and Motaz Malhees, an actor starring in the film, from entering the country due to their Palestinian citizenship.

The International Date Line is the weirdest of worldwide social/legal constructs.

Beautiful statement from Ayman Odeh, Palestinian MK and head of Hadash-Taal. For those who do not read Hebrew, I will translate:

This is a very strange moment, in how obvious it is that a major crisis is approaching, and how calmly and clearly people are observing it come. www.ft.com/content/3647...

😫💔

Bombed Iranian girls school had vivid website and yearslong online presence www.reuters.com/investigatio...

“please overthrow your government at great personal risk so we can bomb whatever new government you form if it ever does anything we don’t like” great pitch, no notes

I think this observation sits atop some profound truths about sociality, especially elite and professional/upper middle class sociality, some of which are very weird (and also not obviously downstream from individual interest maximization or whatever)

State court clerkships are cool. At the supreme court level and every level.

Among other places, Alaska has a fantastic clerkship program. The state supreme court has non-partisan merit appointment and all the stakeholders view the program as a great way to bring talented people to stay and practice in the state. Can’t recommend highly enough.

If anyone I know on this website wants to join my (temporary) Around the World newsletter, let me know your email and I'll add you

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.

We should all be doing more to encourage this.

Looking forward to hearing this. For what it's worth, my own view is that the "neoliberalism is dead" takes were massively premature - though it's of course also true that we are living through various ruptures

Oh noooo - I am just hearing of this horrific event while in the air. Sending love back to Michigan.

Ms Rachel talking to Deiver Henao, a 9yo in an immigration detention center www.instagram.com/reel/DVzUzoz... What a world

Mystified by this. Ok.

Read widely, think deeply, write carefully, and shitpost freely. It can give you wisdom beyond your years, and when that starts to wear thin, keeps you young and curious.