The return to NYC.

Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations are devoted to ending two ‘particular usages’: slavery and the exposure of children (death of children from poverty) He ended every edition of TMS up to 1790 b/c with these things as outstanding moral problems. WN is the sequel.

Neat parenting thing: kid sent home from school, vaguely sick. Lesson: mom and I will always care for you when you’re sick. Aha! But that includes keeping you from going to your friend’s at night if the school said you were sick in the day. That’s how seriously we take your health.

Appalling. montrealgazette.com/news/provinc...

Dental health is, to a greater degree than is commonly known, a matter of genetics not behaviour. When dental problems arise dentists yell that this is not genetics, but is due to this patient’s shameful divergence from the daily dental cream routine etc. (I’m a mad dad telling jokes)

I reviewed Thomas Holden’s excellent new book, _Hobbes’s Philosophy of Religion_, in NDPR. TLDR;: theological expressivism yes, justified theism no, rational piety yes.

I was humiliated today when my five year old had the gall to suppose she had the right to cry at the needles. My daughter showed the opposite of awe at the dentist’s, nay, saint-cum-artist’s, dremmel multi-tool handiwork. Few have devised a greater, more seamless, racket than they.

Send me your best anti-dentist paper, maybe by an economist, touching on variation in treatment/beliefs by country. Natural experiments where flowers bloomed brighter and fuller after the dentists left.

McGill students with interests in the history of political thought/ intellectual history/ international law/ political philosophy. Don't miss this event on Thursday! A student who registers here and attends will win a copy of Lee's book The Right of Sovereignty www.facebook.com/events/25000...

Tip: dried fruit? Freeze it for smoothies.

Excellent, can’t wait to watch/listen. Obviously I recommend it to you all.

ICYMI

Consent meant ‘the end of haggling’ to Plato. It meant ‘binding agreement between strangers’ in Cicero and his commercial world. Then it meant ‘bond b/w this lord and that vassal.’ Then it meant ‘what you would agree to were you rational.’ Grotius lives in that space just before this last move.

It's not just people's imaginative need to have the world be stranger than it is. It's that people can't imagine themselves in particular (ordinary people driving cars) as the threat and want to imagine scary monster people.

“Corn refers to all grains” and “Americans frequently forget that” are the two Corn Laws

One grain of grain is a grain. One grain of corn is a curn.

What would Trump’s retaliation ad (to Ontario) look like? Quote a PM (the Canadian Reagan?) loving tarriffs on US goods? Just be mean to Canada on Canadian Tv/hockey?

The energy we need is this suburban dad standing out in the street -- barefoot with Blackhawks pajama pants on -- screaming at the masked goons to get the fuck out of their neighborhood.

Together with this one on 'philosophical moves' philpapers.org/archive/KELP...

This is cool. A catalogue of 'philosophical moves.' academic.oup.com/book/6463/ch...

Wow. It’s all set. The two year old and the five year old agreed. They’ll take care of a dog if we get one. Perfect.

If votes are determined by negative polarization someone should just start a party that only dumps on one of the two big parties and then just get all the votes from the party they don’t dump on.

Distrust of democracy. Afaik, voting participation hasn’t changed much. If you use something, you trust it. Yes, but they want to elect enders of democracy. Maybe, but they aren’t voting for ‘I’ll end democracy, plus tax cut.’ I think it’s ’down w/ liberalism,’ procedural (checks) and substance.

A school with vision. As a parent, I’m taking note.

Paper ideas 4 U Complicity: what dirties hands? Should we wash dirty hands? Your hands are dirty

Do you have impostor syndrome, all these doctors working under you? No, no, I am a Kennedy, no doubt.

I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.

To explain Trump, do you need ‘the Dems b/w 1960s and 2016’ so that Trump is backlash to that, or can you imagine the Dems being somehow different b/w those periods and still explain Trump?

The first episode of Collateral Damage, my reported podcast with The Intercept, went up today. Hope you’ll check it out and, if you enjoy it, give it a favorable rating or review. Eternal thanks to my producers @lauraflynn.bsky.social and Andrew Stelzer for making it happen.

Which figure in the history of political thought tests reading comprehension skills the most? You can say Hegel (or similar) but a relatively plain-spoken author, like Hume, can often be trickier for a variety of reasons. So like, when you teach, which author is like, ‘they’re going to miss this’

The Maxi near me (giant grocery store) is opening 6 months behind schedule. Oh so giant bloated corporations aren’t so efficient after all. Maybe government is not so…oh, wait.

People who look at a hooded sweatshirt and say ‘hoodie’ rather than ‘bunnyhug.’ Also, ‘Regina.’

Therefore, I propose, indolent labour means it is, or one executes in a that is, pain free. Snow Whites dwarves are indolent, but industrious labourers. The donut-store cop does indolent labour b/c he doesn’t do the part of the job that pains him.

Indolent (from Latin indolentia)means pain-free. Today, in medicine, indolent ulcers are not lazy, they come with no pain. Back up in time and indolent didn’t imply globally lazy, but not doing anything that pains you. You can hear that now, it’s a fancy word for fancy laziness.

People wonder why Smith worked in a customs house when he’s the guy who hatched a plan to ‘bribe the indolence’ of the clergy. (In fact, it doesn’t seem he performed indolently, but that’s just because industriousness in economics was his vocation, thus, technically he worked hard indolently)

For one diehard Blue Jays fan, last night was something special. It was the first time he’d listened to or watched, and he listened, even a second Jays hardball in 33 years.

I can’t tell who these commentators prefer, the Yanks, the Bronx Bombers, the Pinstripes or the Tore-on-Toe team.

An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, which also happens to be war, so everyone should have tariffs and all that so that there’s peace.

Just b/c you have a higher IQ doesn’t mean you come to better conclusions. Just b/c you come to more conclusions than others doesn’t mean you come to better ones. ChatGPT has high IQ and often reasons from the noise of the multitude. Great!

You: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” ChatGPT: So true. That expression, which goes back to Bob Newhart, tells us that Darrell was dumber than his other brother Darrell. The expression often gets confused with another by the David Hume in his Emile

I’d hate if we talked about irony all the time, but isn’t a lot of stuff now super ironic, or sorting out the meaning of sthg depends massively on determining whether or not or how far ironic it is?

Adam Smith held that the coercive state covets the persuasive power of the church. Establishing a religion, with the aim of getting persuasive power, is self defeating b/c moral hazard. The best the state could do is not establish one and garner respect from sects for keeping the peace among them.

The reason you need your priors reset is b/c you’re very used to the (weberian) state and how certain principles virtually entail certain public law conclusions. In the 18th century, they were either way worse than you are at grasping the public law they should like, or way better than you.

Exaggeration to reset your priors: In 18th century Britain if you were a disestablishmentarian, then you were deeply religious, if you were in favour of keeping the establishment, then you were indifferent to religion, if you were for establishing a religion, then you were an atheist.

Is this a) yes you’re anti-facist, but that’s bad, lol. Or is it, b) yes you’re anti-fascist, that’s why I believe you’re bad. Second question, is a groyperism?

Pure Backlash. If I’m an employee, an activist for my own cause, and I ask for a raise and my employer fires me only b/c I asked for a raise that’s pure backlash. If my employer employer says, ‘no, but thanks for reminding me. I meant to fire you. You’re fired.’ That isn’t backlash.

The Senate and the House were designed like Spruytian states (caring about territory, not identity of those within it), but they house Spruytian empires (membership in which is not defined by territory), namely parties. My words, not my ideas, and I forget what my point was going to be.

We should call academic freedom (or freedom of association), like, academic autonomy, or like, separation of powerses, or checks, balances, and roundabouts. The state, ultimately, would never wish to eliminate its powers (of basic instruction and productive inquiry) because it covets these.

If the Jays make the World Series I’ll listen to a game or two on the radio.

What’s it called when one’s presentation of one’s writing screams ‘bigots will persecute me for what I mean.’ Like where the point of veiling the views is not to hide them but shame anyone for persecuting them? Like, Hume.