If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.

Holophrasism!

In Pop Song Math II: Fundamental Concepts we move on to higher-level topics, such as Mims inferences (shout to @lenorajoon.bsky.social for running this down): bsky.app/profile/mcsw...

Typo earlier: D Wilson, not D Jones, is the name of the ChrChr leader. You know, my bad. Vote update: Holmes 3511, McCetich 3498, Sumner 3392. Taruscio at 2097. ChrChr candidates: Slagboom 1977, Schoolland 1919.

City Council results from Moscow, ID, with a preface: Moscow has been in the news a lot b/c of Doug Jones/ChristChurch & their relation w/ Hesgeth. Search it, many stories. The two ChrChr candidates (Schoolland/Slagboom) are behind right now to the three progressive candidates (1/x)

The original big short: Parmenides on change

If you see this, quote with a vampire that is not Dracula.

There were Deadheads in Ancient Rome

In Canto 18 of the Inferno, Dante meets the panderers and the seducers. They manipulated the passions of others for their own benefit

In Canto 17 of the Inferno, Dante rides on the back of Geryon to see the userers

Summary and context of the Indiana Daily Student story: www.thenation.com/article/soci...

@ninaecon.bsky.social puts the Beauty Contest Hypothesis to work in this installment of the Accidental Beauty Contest: ninaeichacker.substack.com/p/consumer-s...

"A permanent state budget cut will force the University of Idaho to cut 28 'essential' positions. The reductions — in staff and faculty jobs — will lead to larger class sizes, less individualized learning time and fewer research opportunities for undergrads."

A Private Language Argument, for prices

Purdue to the rescue of IU student newspaper, whose institution was attempting censorship. Details in alt!

Indiana University fires adviser of student media, stops printing Indiana Daily Student. While the digital (albeit news-less) version will remain, the newspaper that was founded in 1867 will no longer publish as a newspaper. (NOTE: This is a correction to an earlier article which I’ve since deleted)

UPDATE: Following the firing of the director of the student newspaper, Indiana University has now cut the print edition of the newspaper entirely. www.idsnews.com/article/2025...

I'm no mycologist, but I can still appreciate chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/list/disp...

They're trying to prevent the student newspaper from printing news, period. Not just a particular story. "The Media School directed us to print no news in the paper... nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage."

Damn. RIP www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Wz...

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it. The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait. At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

New paper by Matthew Chrisman and I on what suspension of belief can teach us about knowledge rdcu.be/eKAsK

Counterargument, from the great philosopher Viv Savage

"Meanwhile, universities themselves began to operate more like private firms: diversifying revenue streams, raising tuition, and increasing administrative costs while economizing on faculty." rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

It's like the Trojan Horse, except the Trojans build the horse around the Greeks and then get inside it

Money and Value - this Friday - live and in Zoom:

Wait we JUST did the bribe in a food bag thing

Miran is now on the Fed Board, so it’s time for @ninaecon.bsky.social‘s primer on Miranomics. Cut fed spending? Yup. Tariffs? Yup. Lower interest rates? Yup. Fed independence? Nope. And finally, the dollar: devalue it, and end its role as the global reserve currency? Yes. bsky.app/profile/nina...

👇🎯 Quite literally, the published course descriptions at most universities are <decades> old & incredibly generic because the course has been taught by dozens of different professors over many years & stop it, this is not serious behavior from Texas A&M leaders & we don't need to pretend that it is.

“triadic dimensional vortical paradigm”; “benzimidazobenzophenanthroline”; “I suggested modifying conductance by adding three millimolars of glutamine to the electrolyte solution – and that’s exactly what they are doing!” Kool Keith wrote this

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

As someone who grew up in the Claremont cinematic universe, every time I see a story about what’s happening over there I just think of this quote from Harry Jaffa’s son

i love this categorization of Straussians

Retired Physicists Explain the Humanities to Me by Rebecca Solnit

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

This is how they do it in southwestern PA (it was in Phoenixville, not Harrisburg (but I bet they'd have used a hoagie there too))

Must read Accidental Beauty Contest by @ninaecon.bsky.social on inflation. She’s setting the table here for several more posts on the topic. Remember the focus: aggregate price level! ninaeichacker.substack.com/p/inflation-...

Margaret Bourke-White. At the time of the Louisville Flood, 1937

Margaret Bourke-White, Great Ohio River Flood, Louisville, Kentucky, 1937

+Hunter & Owsley

While hip hop’s origins began earlier, it's often said to have officially been born on #tdih 1973, at a dance party where DJ Kool Herc used two turntables to create a “break beat.” Image ⬇️of book by Laban Carrick Hill & @tedikuma.bsky.social. 🧵 www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hi...

Civilization, visualized Positively mesmerizing: www.chronotrains.com/en/explore/2...

GREAT post by @ninaecon.bsky.social on Odd Lots. Along the way she articulates the diff b/w the careful narratives of institutionalism & the formal models of orthodox econ. To which I'll add: the former are genuinely explanatory. A valid formal model, however elegant, needn't explain anything

@rlspang.bsky.social provides lots of details here on the politics of recent goldsilverbuggery. Also helpful: this article from a few years ago by @stefeich.bsky.social on crypto and the politics of depoliticization: academic.oup.com/book/36505/c...

WaPo published a puff piece about "new state legal tender laws." As @grahamhubbs.bsky.social noted, it took them 500 words before they introduced a skeptical view. I've written about it, but wasn't sure how to get it published--so it's on my website for now. Please read! www.rebeccalspang.org/blog

Savoring that moment in a meeting when an administrator pulls up income/career data on graduates of a "practical" business degree & pulls up, on an impulse, Philosophy as an impractical degree for comparison. Friends, the data quite emphatically did not show what he thought they would show.

I wonder if the Columbia leadership realizes (or cares) how much blowback there might be from *within* the academy. This post, from a Cornell Law professor, is worth reading: 3d.laboratorium.net/2025-07-25-c...

Stablecoins are neither harbingers of stability nor will they be "coins" that replace dollars. But they just might cause the next systemic banking crisis.