Narrow majority of Supreme Court justices rule that Constitution is constitutional. Let the delirious celebrations begin!

It's amazing that someone as stupid and dishonest as Alito got into Princeton in the first place. If I were an alum, I would definitely be Concerned.

I *so* wish that awesome World Humanities Report had gotten even one percent of the attention it deserved. Kudos to Sara Guyer and CHCI for putting it together-- over six years! worldhumanitiesreport.org

My response to that "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences" is up. tinyurl.com/y39crkzp As I say on Facebook, I back-loaded the good stuff, like showing that the authors' account of the 2017 Hypatia controversy reveals them to be unreliable reporters.

OK, I have been roused from my dogmatic slumber, and I'll have a response to that awful report on the humanities and humanistic social sciences tomorrow in the Pittsburgh Review of Books. Thanks once again to editor Ed Simon!

Between the spike in suicides in ICE concentration camps and the outbreak of Ebola enabled by the dismantling of USAID, I'd say the Musk-Miller agenda is proceeding precisely as planned

In the history of big media, has there ever been a bigger grifter than Bari Weiss?

BREAKING: Supreme Court issues shadow docket ruling holding that Trump's $1.776B slush fund for J6 insurrectionists is unconstitutional unless Alito and Thomas get a cut

Hey, remember ten years ago when Trump destroyed the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?

Maybe it's just me but I have the funny feeling that yesterday's Christian nationalist rally in DC was way more antisemitic than a bunch of college students concerned about human rights in Gaza www.washingtonpost.com/religion/202...

I wrote about academic freedom and democracy for the Pittsburgh Review of Books, but I didn't say the usual things you would expect a person to say about academic freedom and democracy. I said other things instead. Hence the title of the essay! tinyurl.com/2skc3aum Thanks to Ed Simon for the gig.

“Spewing arrant nonsense about the past century or so of work in the humanities has real-world consequences: who knew?” Michael Bérubé on why (Culture) War is a Racket. pghrev.com/culture-war-...

Pete Hegseth's next prayer will be from the Book of Armaments, chapter 2, verses 9-21. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ashg...

I would sit down with my granddaughter for six hours and teach her how to use the can opener

This is judiciously phrased

Rug-on-Face-Man trying to compete with Dinesh D'Souza's famous line, "The American slave *was* treated like property, which is to say, pretty well." It's a high bar to clear.

Watching "The Secret Agent" and remembering watching "I'm Still Here" and wondering whether we will have to wait 40 years for movies to be made about what ICE and DHS are doing right now

Good to know we cancelled all those wasteful NEH grants and USAID so that the money could go to 5% of a missile aimed at a girls' school

Pretty sure that Timothée Chamalet made that remark about opera and ballet simply to distract us from the fact that he did a Willy Wonka movie that can be watched for twenty minutes max

Many thanks to @publicbooks.bsky.social for publishing this piece, in which Urmila Seshagiri and I discuss (a) del Toro's idiosyncratic (to put it kindly) adaptation of "Frankenstein," (b) adaptations of "Frankenstein" in general, and even (c) adaptations in general. All in under 3000 words!

Finally a law that will protect girls from having to compete with trans women driving cars tiny.cc/9wiz001

Not the worst thing about this video but just gotta say that OF COURSE it's Matthew Tkachuk putting that medal on Patel

Hive mind question: does anyone have contact info for Kathryn Allan, the writer on disability and science fiction, who used to tweet as @BleedingChrome?

Just as Donald Trump tempts us to be nostalgic for the wisdom and eloquence of Dan Quayle, and Pam Bondi tempts us to be nostalgic for the sagacity of Alberto Gonzales or the rectitude of John Mitchell, the culture vacuum on the American right is almost enough to make us nostalgic for Allan Bloom.

It's almost as if Bari Weiss's "free speech" thing was a grift from start to finish

Seems odd that the dudes who want to smash the administrative state are also the dudes who want to build concentration camps throughout the US

Steven Miller is going to appear under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished"

Oh look the President of the United States did another racism

Everyone who fluffed this little monster-wannabe, beginning with that pathetic Rod Dreher, has committed a crime against humanity

I am so old I remember Arthur Schlesinger Jr. getting all het up and panicky about the term "gorgeous mosaic" because it wasn't "melting pot." Ah, the enduring legacy of reasonable centrism.

I'll take "completely predictable things" for $800, Ken

Trump now readying the bone saws for journalists who hurt his feelings

I am aware of all internet traditions and therefore know that you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them," but it's still pretty impressive that they managed to find a #2 who is as much of a bleeding pustule of a human being as his master

Apparently ICE isn't from the Gestapo region of Germany so it's just sparkling secret police

I sometimes wonder if people like Peter Brimelow and John Derbyshire are pissed that they were cancelled by their colleagues on the right for their virulent racism thirty years ago and now we're in the timeline where their virulent racism is a requirement for membership in conservative America

I'm sure there's a perfectly good, innocent reason for this

Katie Miller is OK with the president calling for the death of US senators but is outraged, outraged at an entirely accurate rendering of her husband illustrating @gregsargent.bsky.social's entirely accurate account of her husband's vision of an ethnically cleansed United States tiny.cc/wgiw001

I remember Matt from the early blogosphere and did not realize that he was actually pro-Love Canal

This is objectively true and requires no viewpoint diversity

A lot of people don't know that the Heritage Foundation isn't actually a politically-minded organization but rather an association of guys who get together to watch sports.

@ryanlcooper.com FTW

That's because those Republicans are still so angry that Obama spent $1.7 trillion of their tax dollars to build a blackety black black basketball court and to paint the entire White House black, just like George Clinton told him to do.

New MAGA WaPo coming down hard on those irresponsible Democrats and their costly Obamacare subsidies

This will be a thing! Next Wednesday, Oct 22. Title: "Is There a Higher Education Crisis?" Answer: oh hell yes

Following yesterday's spectacular success in his "grooming and violence" seminar, Secretary of Warcraft Hegseth plans a followup lecture to the brass. Part 1 will address communications security during military operations. Part 2 will be an extra manly demonstration of ax-throwing. tiny.cc/51bt001

Though to be serious for a moment it really was kind of genius of Hegseth to summon a thousand admirals and generals to come to Quantico so that he could lecture them in person on grooming standards and blame them for losing wars

A nice review from ALH! And what a surprise to hear good news about something these days.

Pete Hegseth orders all US military personnel to look exactly like Pete Hegseth Promises to transform the troops "from woke to bloke"

Remember, according to the Supreme Court it's not bribery unless the money comes in an envelope marked "bribe," and for Ilya Shapiro it's not government suppression of speech unless there are actual government fingerprints on the suppression-of-speech memorandum

I am so old that I remember @jesseltaylor.bsky.social and Ezra from the early blogosphere days of Pandagon and let's just say that one of these guys turned out all right