This is what happens when you teach middle age without learning to accept that you are going to die in a relatively short period of time, that you will be forgotten, and that your life can have meaning anyway (and may actually depend upon you disappearance for that to be the case).

Scribbled down yet another potentially brilliant contribution to scholarship, only to realize through scribbling that it came from one of my favorite books.

It’s almost as if your ability to get away with white collar crime immunizes you to charges of violent crime.

This whole Epstein thing may benefit the GOP. It will enable them, not only to move beyond Trump—who fascists always understood to be an “icebreaker”—but also to purge the right performatively through the sacrifice of its antichrist. Dems can’t keep up.

Removing Confederate statues led to a Nazi riot and the murder of an anti-fascist. They told us that we had no respect for history. Even normies got in on it… But sure, take down a memorial to men who had the strength to fight fascism while serving in a segregated army.

Can I be on the Sanhedrin. Seems like a good gig without a lot of work until the end of days.

In “The Fish Stinks from the Head” news… If the President can unilaterally pay himself $230M for having been investigated, who can begrudge a few Senators awarding themselves a measly half-mil or so for a similar hardship?

We knew it was going in this directions, but I am nearly choking on how dangerous this may become extremely dangerous and how quickly this can happen.

I cannot wait for these cop-bots do be assigned to white collar workers, with Elon's flawless fraud-detection AI installed.

I came here to say this about Hegseth's war on the so-called "beardos" in the military. He criticized soldiers claiming to belong to the Norse-Pagan religion for making up a religion just to be able to sport some facial hair... If only that were the general reason, they'd have my full support.

Y’all should follow and listen up. Scott and Tyler spoke at Ridgewood Public Library last year, as part of @chgs-ramapo.bsky.social programming. I met with the librarians yesterday. They continued to gush about the program and will be partnering with us on events moving forward.

“Nobody knows what magnets are.” — The President

"The soldiers who agreed to talk confirmed the IDF’s routine use of human shields, contradicting official denials, and gave details of Israeli troops opening fire unprovoked on civilians racing to reach food handouts..." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

And they make those THC seltzers illegal… Big dork energy.

Senate Dems taking ownership of the shutdown by caving is so on brand, it feels like parody. It sends a message that the point of it all was to send the message, “we are doing something,” rather than doing anything at all. This makes it all a stunt and they will deserve all the criticism they earn.

But after blocklisting bad feelings off the TL, many have stopped paying attention to what is unfolding in full, public view, on the right. And it's serious stuff; there's an epistemic danger that comes from reducing the right to a big amorphous blob of Evil. They face the same problems as the Dems:

The Trump administration is persecuting Christians.

The dumbest game: which party will cave in first, terrified by the looming prospect of disrupting Thanksgiving travel? There’s only a tiny window between the recent elections and the coming holiday.

Epic trolling, kosher Chinese restaurant; epic trolling.

Good News: we will be discontinuing our relationship with WebEx. Bad News: We look forward to seeing you on MS-Teams. There is a corporate anti-Zoom conspiracy theory which sets a serious obstacle when engaging with the public, especially boomers.

Enjoying “Nobody Wants This” but partly because I can already hear my colleagues getting all into what’s problematic… and o just have mild enjoyment.

Y’all are making fun, but this man is at his most relatable when unconscious. Who among us has not passed out that hard at a work thing, especially when an idiot is babbling?!

@lilacb.bsky.social has a thought piece that explore the possibility of Jewishly coded people who are no themselves Jewish and what that may mean in US culture. I must admit, he seems close to (some idea of) “us.” But it’s not simple “cousin” stuff and this convo should avoid displacing Islam.

Amen! It’s import to stand up to antisemitism. When we do so now, we must operate with full understanding of how the contemporary right both espouses antisemitism and uses anti-antisemitism to attack minorities communities and civil rights protections. It’s gotten trickier… because we can win.

Move fast and misunderstand things.

It may be tempting to attribute some of this to fear… and that would be nonsense. Totalitarianism, as others have shown, takes hold by placing its coercive powers in the hands of (a selected subset of) its subjects. The fear of the state that is everywhere is the fear of fellow subjects.

Tucker just attacked L. Graham on TikTok. Clip if LG saying, “We’re lowering taxes and we’re killing the right people.” Tucker calls this a libertarian-neocon fusion and evil. Notes the applauding crowd in disgust at LG. The evil setting? Republican Jewish Coalition. The fash are growing bolder.

BREAKING: The AI techno-fascist fantasy… and I’m here for it. Let it die on the vine, smothered by its own narcissistic, messianic ambition… Humans for humanity!

A better reason to buy better coffee… elsewhere.

This initiative functions to legitimize the endurance of Islamophobia and will only exacerbate the current red scare (which will inevitably also harm non-lefty Jews too). Stay vigilant.

Behold our glorious cover art! "Keeping Contact: Jewish Cultural Initiatives across Cold War Borders" Eds. @rkpejsova.bsky.social & @labendz.bsky.social (Purdue '26). Moshe Peter Shamah created this original artwork. The volume derived from two symposia, the last held at @chgs-ramapo.bsky.social.

The ADL responding preemptively to the election of a progressive Muslim as mayor of NYC, was to set up a publicly sourced (hotline) system for monitoring his conduct and associates is yet another stain on a deeply tarnished record. Serious question: who’s keeping JG at the head?

NEEDED: Socialists with strong backs to help Cuomo keep his remaining campaign promise… and move the heck out of NY. Florida is calling. Answer the phone Andy. Answer the phone.

Wait. Hold on. You can win without throwing trans-people and immigrants under the bus? … but my podcasts…

Does anyone remember a President tweeting at specific kollels? Bananas. Millions of people now have to google “kollel” to be good patriots.

The least Cuomo could do is learn to pronounce Mamdani’s name correctly…

What a workshop! Musicologist and recitalist Tamara Freeman played music composed in the ghettos and camps of Nazi Europe and shared paintings to an intimate audience of genocide students and children of Holocaust survivors. We processed emotions and memory through art in meaningful partnership.

Everyone stop showing up early. You’re not helping. Or, so what I do. Show up early and wait in my car.

It’s bad enough to retain a stereotypical image of an Indian head—from the wrong region—in our town seal. It’s quite another to make doormats featuring the seal, upon which the polite thing to do, apparently, is to wipe your muddy shoes. Get it together, Towaco.

Second post is basically: He is a Jew

It feels good, doesn’t it, to pretend that the GOP/MAGA is deeply strained by all the racism and antisemitism, by Tucker and Fuentes. Silliness. It is as it is. We acknowledge this or we do not. One decision serves survival. The other courts death.

Talked to a recent NYC transplant from Florida. Jewish kid said he’s worried about Mamdani. After I clarified that he did not call for disbanding NYPD, the kid called him a major antisemite… He could not marshal a single piece of evidence. Nothing… And he felt comfortable telling others.

Got “six-sevened” by a kid in the wild for the first time.

Jews are allowed to reinvent their Judaism and what it means to be Jewish, even if it violates what came before it. One can think of Reform or Zionism… It’s your right to redefine what it means to be you. It’s your tradition… but don’t pretend as if the rest of us have to join or die.

The horrific crisis of finally being able to tell the world who you are and have been all along, even if the fat years allowed some to congratulate themselves on living righteously alongside us degenerates and race enemies. The worst coming out party ever.

They knew there were racists, and believed the racists were wrong. They also believed conservatism was built on reason and logic, which was a tragic, if ironic mistake. The very rationalism they purport to embody is generally considered “Semitic,” a weapon of the weak to be torn out like a cancer.

Harris sticking to the “Biden was fine” line is delightful. Every time the Clinton-Obama crew doubles down on their nonsense, they make room for an movement with an actual vision and plan to emerge.

One year, as a compromise, mom allowed me to dress up for Halloween, but only to give out candy to trick-or-treaters… except, it wasn’t candy. We gave out raisins… and pennies.

Again, this is the degrees of separation: Fuentes is a Nazi. Carlson hosts Fuentes and takes him seriously. Roberts defends Carlson. J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, wrote the foreword to Roberts’s book. Nazism is officially a welcome option in the Republican Party.

On second though, if you’re gonnna go this far… How do you not go all the way and convince the rest of the countries that he’s visiting to give him a crown as well?