Nothing clarifies one’s resolve—personal, academic, moral, political—like reading a biographical sketch of Rawls on New Year’s Day.

No cheating, reskeet with the most recent photo of your pet.

A young, vibrant, progressive mayor sworn in and a story published about the current president's declining health and inability to grapple with it — quite the first day of 2026.

100% had to check if this quote was a parody (it is not)

“Kennedy frequently points out that as a child he only got a couple of vaccines…”

A remarkable passage from 'Zbig' by @edwardluce.bsky.social, on Brzezinski's criticism of the Kissinger foreign policy in 1974. I wonder whether these lines were written before or after Trump's second term began... and whether it's "first tragedy then farce", or the other way around?

Getting to watch Derrick White play basketball every other night for 7+ months of the year is a gd privilege.

For better or worse, “Kelleher 2025” is how I’ll be known for the indefinite future.

Me, to 8 year old: Did you know that the actor that plays that doofus crook [in Home Alone] was also the narrator for the very best thing I've ever seen? My wife: Oh, yeah! Wonder Years! Me: Um, yeah, OK, I guess he did that too. But I was referring to Larry Bird: A Basketball Legend.

This is awesome but good lord it's gonna rile the fascists

Enjoyed listening to this on my dog walk this morning. It comes at a useful time as I contemplate getting back into the political philosophy game after many innings on the bench. It’s really hard to be good and original, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be the latter. Glad to know that’s ok.

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe Maybe this year will be better than the last Good riddance, 2025

Imagine thinking Trump “doesn’t participate in moral frameworks”.

Final ascent of my first year of climbing. Here’s hoping for continued injury-free bouldering in 2026.

Power Moves continues. A must read. As ever, though, the framing is of China doing this or that rather than a mess of Chinese firms competing and pursuing their own interests. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/c...

A while ago, I posted a set of notes about the Bayesian approach to inquiry and how it can help us think about questions raised in the recent literature on zetetic epistemology. I’ve now corralled that material into something like a first draft of a book. I hope it might be of interest to others.

I asked the 8 year old what year he thought the original Miracle on 34th Street premiered and he guessed the year I was born.

Now that I'm a monthly Wikipedia donor, one of my new year's resolution is to become an active contributor.

Curious to see Rawls in the pic but not on the list.

Happy 7th anniversary (yesterday) to this gem

Hail, Seizer

A pretty startling example of what 21st Century agricultural extractivism looks like in the United States.

post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, soundgarden, or Alice In Chains

But there are plenty of important climate risks, and the article (not Tim’s quote) seems to advocate mining climatic deep uncertainties in the hope that one will somehow radically reshape the political economy of climate action. This seems both implausible and ill advised.

Horrible parents: we gave our kid a sled for Xmas even tho it barely snows anymore (and when it does it’s gone in 2 weeks). #wisconsin #climatechange

I bought a Fraser Fir hoping for a crane. No dice.

Leaving out some bitcoin for Santa this year.

Christmas Eve, that day each year when I serve dinner guests lobster, and only the other native New Englanders at the table need me to open theirs because they never learned and studiously refuse to do so.

Had never heard of this brand before last summer when my wife ordered several pairs of trail runners for me to try ahead of a trip to Acadia and these were by far my favorite. (I have large feet and stores often don’t have my size; hence the order-to-try method.)

How I [almost, accidentally] submitted a paper with a fake, AI-generated citation. 🧵 (1/8)

What’s your nomination of a great book that too few people even know exists?

If you haven't checked out the new edited volume that @whatisitliketobeaphilosopher.com has put together, you should! Too Weird to Believe, Too Plausible to Deny

It's worth watching for yourself.

Thread.

I just watched it and now it's gone. It was about 13 minutes. Very few of the Venezuelans had any violent criminal past according to ICE. Conditions were terrible at the prison. Noem's visit was to different part of prison and Salvadoran prisoners were prop for her visit.

Quote with your favorite picture of you from 2025

It was 1972, and another future for cost-benefit analysis was possible.

I'm not quite on board with James's proposal, but I certainly think Democrats and technocrats should stop pretending that CBA is a value-free science. Not only is that just not true, but the hopium of those who said it'll be a bulwark against politicization has been revealed for what it is.

xmas baths

Interesting and important 9th Circuit decision about the free speech rights of professors at public schools, just won by FIRE, likely to be subject of culture war disputes. /1 cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/op...

Just finished the wonderful audiobook of this. Thanks to whomever in my feed recommended it. Wish I could recall who it was.

“Politics is the expedient fracturing of hard shale” — Max Weber

This is spot on. When I was researching my book on the 2003 heat wave in France, it was 100% detective work with no space for AI. A brief 🧵:

If I wanted to present to a big funder the ten most interesting, outstanding problems in philosophy, across a variety of subfields, that we in the field want to see progress toward solving in the next ten years, what would your problem be, or who in the field would come up with a good list?

My bsky wrapped

GROSS

Everyone knows god intended for babies to chew on giraffes

Obamacare hugely lowered healthcare cost growth, even if Democrats are scared to say it deanbaker22.substack.com/p/obamacare-...

Last weekend #USDA announced that Wisconsin had detected #H5N1 #birdflu in a dairy cow herd. Today the agency revealed that genetic analysis of virus from the herd shows this event was the result of a new spillover from "wildlife." www.aphis.usda.gov/news/agency-...