pope leo please do the funny and excommunicate the cheese

So, I'm supposed to just go about my business, like normal, when the leadership of my country is threatening to annihilate an entire civilization. All I have are questions: - Are nuclear weapons going to be used? Firebombs? ... /1

Life is best known by its contrasts.

Judas Iscariot was paid 30 pieces of silver for turning Jesus Christ in to the Roman authorities. But he made nearly 10 times that amount by placing a Polymarket bet accurately predicting the day of Christ’s death.

A favorite song from your teen years that still moves you. I'll go. Simple Minds, "Alive and Kicking" ----------------------- What you gonna do when things go wrong? What you gonna do when it all cracks up? What you gonna do when the Love burns down? What you gonna do when the flames go up? ... /1

The world is a mess, but the Cubs have started their first 4 games respectably.

Marx Prestige, Episode 1: The Civil War and American Capitalism w/ @andrewhartman.bsky.social No regular episode today, but we have premiered the first episode of our "Marx Prestige" series on the public feed (and the first two episodes on the paid subscriber feed)! Link in the replies!

Every thing---every single thing---has a history.

after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

A university morality tale: The theme is putting land over people. loyolaphoenix.com/2026/03/ntt-...

NEW: Last October, Border Patrol agents gassed Chicagoans after agents caused a major car crash on the southeast side. I analyzed body cam videos that show agents Benito Nunez, Oscar Guillen, and Carlos Chavira ignored orders to end the pursuit—moments before they blew a tire and crashed.

This is now the 42nd WSJ editorial on school vouchers since Jan 2022—ed board, in-house columnist, or outside lobby group byline. That’s 1 pro-voucher piece every 4-5 weeks for 4 straight years. And the 3rd in just the last 3 weeks. There is nothing grassroots about vouchers.

New, from me: The federal government is required to track job satisfaction among its employees. The Trump admin stopped collecting the data, so a nonprofit stepped in. The results show that a collapse in morale and zero trust in Trump agency leaders. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/federal-em...

The 2025 federal employee viewpoint survey was a pretty sobering read. Absolutely brutal year for public servants and everyone is feeling it. Thread below and full document here bestplacestowork.org

Local leaders report already-strapped police departments racked up overtime bills in the millions while others report a multi-million dollar hit to business during the worst ICE surges.

Pete Crow-Armstrong celebrates his 24th birthday Wednesday. The icing on his cake will be knowing he’s on the verge of signing a long-term contract extension that will make him a Cub into his 30s.

So if Russia phones in fake threats, as they did last time, our institutions will leap into action to do what Russia wants…. This is very transparent.

I just left a meeting & tour of ICE Baltimore to conduct oversight of the facility. We covered many of the critical issues that you brought to our team, including: access to an attorney, access to medication & menstrual products, safety concerns, detaining people with no criminal records & more.

Once upon a time, you'd go to give a talk at another university and a nice administrator would hand you a W-9 to sign and they'd send you a check in the mail for the honorarium. Now you have to spend a half hour entering data on a Special Contractor Website that was designed in a lab by sadists.

Students have no idea how much we root for them

There's a perception one could somehow systematically stuff ballots or some such thing, but actually one would need addresses, names, codes, & more -- so, that just doesn't and more or less can't happen given that there are tons of safeguards with Vote By Mail time.com/article/2026...

Loyola Chicago channel: Title: "Administrative Priorities Diverge from University Values." I have seen this first-hand in 6-8 of the 35ish overall negotiation meetings between union and management. loyolaphoenix.com/2026/03/gues...

“They seem unserious but they’re accumulating power” is definitely the phrase of the decade.

Hey there

I really, really need academic organizations to think more critically about travel (conferences, talks, and meetings) during the Trump administration. Sadly, most are not.

Once again, free passes for the minyan of Republicans who are the only people in DC who can stop the runaway Mad King. And yet, tomorrow, Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tills, John Thune, & Susan Collins will continue to be able to appear in public without facing any questions about enabling fascism.

“Chronic hunger” at American concentration camps reported by USA Today. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

I review Caroline Jack's "Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century" for @susih.bsky.social. s-usih.org/2026/03/andr...

“Beyond the issues with Congress, … the public itself has grown acclimated and accustomed to uncontested presidentialism and judicial supremacy.” Thus we must rebuild Congress, “enhance its esteem and transform the public’s expectations of the sources of political leadership”

Oooh, the Mount Rushmore of Assholes? If we're going with presidents, I'd say Donald Trump Richard Nixon Andrew Johnson Andrew Jackson

#OtD 22 Mar 1974 Scottish workers in the East Killbride Rolls Royce factory refused to work on plane parts from Pinochet's Chile. They kept the refusal up for 4 years, leaving the engines outside to rust, before they went missing one night stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9498...

This is utterly jaw-dropping. A school that bans Atwood, Zadie Smith, Terry effing Pratchett and *literal George Orwell* is actively harming its pupils. www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/scho...

Oh yes. Sigh. This was a strain of criticism of the old great bookies--that they endorsed certain books for subjective reasons that were disguised by their credentials. It makes sense that other newer authorities would assign their vision of books (great or otherwise) for disguised ethical reasons.

My most depressing conclusion on this topic is that many students take the phrase 'critical thinking' literally to mean that one must be negative and criticize everything. The students who believe they demonstrate critical thinking skills can only tear things down rather than ... /1

Deep in a small village, Hyun Sook and I found this 96 year old pavilion that was built as a secret spot for locals to illegally read all the Korean literature and poetry that was banned under Japanese occupation. It's literally a Banned Book Clubhouse!

"An URR museum in Albany, New York, is suing the Trump administration over a federal grant that it says was canceled on the basis of race, arguing that the president’s broad anti-diversity crusade violates constitutional protections against discrimination." www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

#tdih 1969, nine protesters smashed glass, hurled files out window, & poured blood on files at the Dow Chemical office in D.C. because: "Dow profits in the production of napalm, defoliants and nerve gas . . . programmed destruction of human life.” Read ⬇️ www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/dc...

Chicago police are questioning a person of interest in the Thursday fatal shooting of an 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago student.

stealing this as a chapter title

Doctors across the nation are alarmed that skepticism fueled by rising anti-science sentiment and medical mistrust is increasingly reaching beyond vaccines to other safe and routine care for babies.

Have any of you read, or tried to read, Rabelais' *Gargantua and Pantagruel*? I've made it about 12 chapters in, but am unenthused and unimpressed. Since it is canonical, I always assume the inability to continue is my problem. How do I continue? What will get me into this? #GreatBooks

69 MILLION married women can’t use their birth certificate alone under the SAVE Act because their name changed. This isn’t accidental. This is engineered. Call your senators! 202-224-3121. #SaveActIsPayToVote

DON’T LET THE BANNER THROW YOU OFF This press conference was wild. The kind that makes you sit up and realize what they are really trying to do. This is not the “Save America Act”. It’s a backdoor attempt to make voting harder for millions of people. #SaveActIsPayToVote 1/2

The "nobody's talking about" style post is really grating right now because like my brother in christ, we're all triaging horrors right now.

They made them take down the videos because they would cause "reputational damage" to people like this young man, Nathan Cavanuagh, so definitely don't post this all over the internet with the name Nathan Cavanaugh attached, or this guy might suffer reputational damage. This guy, Nathan Cavanaugh.

“…a mercurial, conspiracy-prone, vicious bastard…” 😂

U.S. Suffers Additional Casualties In War It Won Last Week

The human mind was not built to process this constant onslaught.