2/2 Green donkey, very green. Painted in 1911 by Marc Chagall.

Eduardo A. Escobar, Kiersten Neumann and C. Jay Crisostomo eds. Scribal Worlds: Scholarship and Classification in Cuneiform Cultures - @uclpress.bsky.social, June 2026 (print and open access) uclpress.co.uk/book/scribal...

If roughing up a girlfriend and locking her in a room was a virile, authentic a rejection of “smoothgroined” “HR lady” politics, but a rape is too far, then what’s at stake is not a principled rejection of violence against women but a cynical assessment of how much violence a man can get away with.

Many of Platner's supporters *wanted* a bad boy, a candidate with a smell of sulphur. That's what they got! Antisemitism and misogyny both operate within permission structures that he exploited: a little bit gets winked at, even valued as a sign of authenticity.

Paul Rabinow writes that Joseph Marie de Gérando (1772-1842) “did not have concept of society as prior to and constitutive of individuals. His method progressed from the physical environment, through the body, through sensations, and up to moral ideas” #histmed #histstm

This is fantastic material, including the margarine article by Paul Burnett.

This. By Naomi Shihab Nye

Edgar Ende, 'The Burning Flag', oil on canvas, 1934

Reminder!!!

Anyone else in Stratford? Metallica is playing London Stadium. Loud from .75km away. Maybe I can ask them to turn it down.

An interpretation that makes more sense than anything else I've seen. Vatican II etc. is what many non-Catholics think they know about the Church, but it's possible doctrinal issues are being used by the schismatics as cover for a more basic contest over power.

Foucault’s Visit to McGill University, and his meetings with Quebec separatists – Stuart Elden and Marcelo Hoffman on the @versobooks.bsky.social blog www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/f...

Yesterday I submitted the proofs, index and tables for my forthcoming book 'Human Rights and the Protection of Domestic Workers in Labour and Migration Law.' It's scheduled for publication on 10 September 2026 and available for pre-order :) global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Nous n'avons jamais été modernes

We walked to Victoria Park today.

Nicholas Brown, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Fabio Akcelrud Durão, and Robert T. Tally eds. The Future of Totality: Fredric Jameson and the Prospects of Critical Theory, @dukepress.bsky.social, July 2026 www.dukeupress.edu/the-future-o... Introduction available open access at this link

This is very well done.

Max Haiven, The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism - @mitpress.bsky.social, September 2026 mitpress.mit.edu/978026205604... @maxhaiven.bsky.social

One like = one dog treat.

Here's a half day of the Smithsonian Folklife Featival that I attended in 1991. It was outdoors, hot, free. Stunning musical performances that I would never have heard otherwise. This is the event that got ejected from the DC Mall in favor of an ersatz "state fair."

It has cooled enough that we can resume rambling walks of discovery. Max's fans will note he is leading. He has shorter legs than Marty, tires faster, and sometimes lags. So this is a good sign.

Great thread! Picking up on one of the examples, one of my more painful professional experiences was seeing U of Washington abandon an electronic catalogue that was a smart, streamlined guide to its holdings...

The temperature has gone down a bit and the dogs are coming out again. One neighbour told me that her dog spent the entire week in the cellar. There she is now, shaken, but alive. A city without dogs is truly godforsaken.

9PM and it's actually pleasant outside, plus light enough to read! We'll go walking soon. Just two more days of this.

I am so delighted and honored to be a part of this Past & Present Supplement, “Medicine, Race, and Slavery in the Transatlantic World, 1600–1850.” It was a pleasure and so enriching to work with @hsmurphy.bsky.social and the editors at @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/past...

Tall buildings are good! We can do our morning walk almost entirely in the shade. Here we pause for water and a rest in this lovely shelter outside the British Council.

Before heat detectors triggering an alarm when the room's temperature is too high became a thing, little demons had to do the job of detecting open fire and #heat. You see a demon with wings doing this safety job by trying to extinguish the lit candle St. Gudula is holding with bellows! #skystorians

Worth keeping this handy if you're in higher ed! People who are trying to sell you stuff will drop a reference like this into a powerpoint slide, and the administrators will nod along. People think meta-studies have privileged access to truth.

It's always great for primary source material to be published and widely available, so a rare kudos to Phil Magness for publishing Keynes's address to the Malthusian League. A minor detail, but it was given in 1927, not 1926. www.independent.org/tir/2026-sum...

Found a lounge in the apartment complex that is kind of cool, and has an enormous dog bed in one corner. I'm sitting in it and we'll all be here for a while.

As midnight approached in E. London the temperature dropped to a tolerable 78F. I went out with the fellows. The street was breezy. On the way back we circumvented the Large White Dog.

HOW TO CATCH A BALL: Always remember that balls are quite dangerous. Step aside and let it pass you at a safe distance. You may go retrieve it once you are sure it has come to a complete stop. Anyone recommending a more active engagement with a moving ball does not have your best interests in mind.

I have to say that this is offensive, and frankly borderline racist, even if attributed to "Brexit voters" from @mikegalsworthy.bsky.social and I hope he'll retract it. What exactly is the problem with non-EU migrants who - gasp - have families?

I found an old camera SD full of pictures. They were mostly this mom and her cubs hanging out in our back yard. She just wanted a nap. They just wanted to play.

www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... New book: "Comrades Estranged Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf"

Same. I am from an immigrant family, marrying an immigrant, teaching immigrant students. It is *incredibly* hard for me not to see Mahmood's policies as a central and vicious betrayal of core values. This combined with Starmer's own rhetoric on the matter thoroughly disillusioned me on them.

Britain about to get its seventh Prime Minister in ten years. I can’t say I’m surprised. As a people they’re often wonderful of course—very musical, for example, many charming customs, and always joking around in their quirky way—but they just don’t have the temperament for stable self-government.

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - new edition, @versobooks.bsky.social , September 2026 www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc... foreword by Angela Davis www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

Letting Max off leash changes his personality: he stops barking at other dogs and dashes to greet them. Whereas Marty, normally the more chill animal, climbs on top of me, appoints himself guardian, and growls at everyone.

Global.

Alex Colville, Road Work, n.d.

A stunning thread, compassionate and reflective on why people do this and why the result is so strange, so empty. When a situated mind tries to make sense of the world and communicate, it's evident in the moves in the text. It's evident in followup conversation.

A Second Sight is officially out today! Please consider buying and sharing with your friends, students, colleagues, neighbors. Publisher’s Weekly said it will help you understand America at 250!

Max and Marty, resting during the morning walk.

Great thread.

The idea that people don't prey on the socially proximate is reassuring but ludicrously implausible: they're usually the best targets! More opportunity, less scrutiny because people believe the above quoted guff. This was a key MO of both Madoff and Epstein, for instance...

Max just whacks me in the face.

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.