Dangerously unstable levels of Upstate in this photo of the Wegmans founders with the Cornell hockey team

Really enjoyed this from @henrymjtonks.bsky.social www.illiberalism.org/why-liberali...

Setting aside the idea that a senior prof and an adjunct form a “class,” the point of profs sticking around is the cumulative number of extra years is its own form of job loss A faculty of 10 who all work until 75 have worked 100 extra person-years—that’s 3 entire ”careers“ of people never hired.

Proud to have convinced Bill Fischel of something (he's a very nice guy btw) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

does your part of the political spectrum appreciate the humanities: far left: no* left: yes center: maybe right: no far right: yes* *unless explicitly discussing material conditions

this is what the humanities are up against

I think it helped that Orban’s opponent was named the Hungarian equivalent of “Johnny America”

This is the funniest thing I have read in years

Have come to the realization that my most deeply held political opinion by a considerable margin is banning pharmaceutical ads

I appreciate the spirit of this piece, but a federal program to subsidize down payments would effectively just end up raising housing prices, no? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

History departments need to be pressing the case that history is *the* best prep for a JD which is the best way to make a lot of money if you are not into the sciences

Our LG dryer has a problem, out of curiosity went to see what Consumer Reports likes these days, only to find that *every* electric dryer now recommended by CR is an LG

I think we need an inverse thread where we talk about things that normal intelligent people universally agree upon that are for some reason hot takes within your profession

I shrug my shoulders at a lot of AI stuff but in this case, jeez louise man, it's only the country's most important book review asking you, a novelist, your opinion of another novel. Have some self-respect.

The president with the biggest gap between public opinion surveys and professional historian surveys has to be JFK. Not that historians think that poorly of him but he is the public’s favorite president by a country mile.

thesis: kings antithesis: no kings synthesis: occasional kings, as a treat

I blame the now-standard 6:5 blackjack. Like, you were already taking my money, you couldn’t at least do it nicely?

The moral of the average US kids show is “police are heroes” while the moral of the average UK kids show is “if you are cheeky you shall be punished”

In my experience this is actually among the less head-scratching things that make someone choose one school over another

Neal Brennan’s bit about Tiger aging very well

Pretty funny the US kept “Kings County” and ”Queens County” if we were like Ireland they’d long ago have been renamed “Bald Eagle County” and “Amber Waves of Grain County”

NY DMV customer service agent on the phone with me sounds like she's driving, which I guess is nothing if not on-brand

You got to pity the marketing people at companies that sell expensive products intended for long term use. Every day I get another email from the company that makes my mattress that says “are you sure you don’t need another mattress?”

do we think that he pronounces his name "Beria"?

Gen Z appears to be the first to completely ignore the US News rankings because I have seen some Reddit threads with some wild comparisons being made

To what extent are these insane lines at LGA now being caused by everyone just deciding to show up in the morning when security opens

This is because Syracuse is a place of unlimited pastabilities

Which airport do we think has the highest proportion of PreCheck passengers? DCA? HPN? SNA?

Boomers are always going to the bank. Gotta run to the bank. Drop by the bank. What are they doing at the bank

I do it over the phone with four beers and my Conversation Hat

broke: the UK is London plus Mississippi woke: the UK is London plus Idaho

why is the NYT's stuff on plane crashes always so bad. this headline isn't consistent with anything in the article, or really anything we know.

A fact that doesn't sound true is San Francisco lost a greater proportion of its population from peak to trough than New York City

Historians have maybe cultivated a bit of a reputation for being doom and gloom, but it’s hard to study the ‘70s and conclude that 2026 must be a one way street toward the worst of all possible worlds

This is like the final boss of the Syracuse economy

I’m always struck by the number of things in Ithaca that are totally closed on Sunday, which if you are cynical makes it feel like a hinterland but if you are optimistic makes it feel like a sophisticated European city

"In its day, The Population Bomb was omnipresent....Ehrlich appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson at least 18 times, at a time when it was not unusual for a third of the country’s entire television audience to be watching." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

ICYMI I was in The Atlantic today on the legacy of "The Population Bomb" and its author Paul Ehrlich, who died last week www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

ICYMI

I am in The Atlantic today on Paul Ehrlich, who died last week, and how "The Population Bomb" still looms over our politics www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

I wrote an article for @theatlantic.com on the legacy of Paul Ehrlich, who died last week, and his legacy of scarcity politics www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Considering procrastinating on my book and writing a new book called Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Ithaca

It is striking that the Kennedy family has contributed some of the best oratory in American political history as well as some of the most remarkable incompetence in articulating why they are running for office at all. Sometimes in the same person!

I enjoyed this piece on how awards season in the age of social media is increasingly characterized by parasocial relationships that viewing audiences develop with actors and films in which everything that isn't a win becomes a snub

If I were New Yorker editor in chief first order of business would be immediate perma-ban of “lolsob the news” cartoons

My opinion of craft beer is Allagash White was invented 31 years ago and it’s not clear that anything since then has been necessary

One way in which parenting definitely prepares kids for adulthood is how the standard reaction in public when someone else’s kid does something obviously inconsiderate is to instruct your child to tolerate it

Joke’s on them, there was no demand for the work history PhDs do even before AI

I'd add that the extent to which his ancestry could be called "Anglo-Saxon" is also modest

Hell, simply enforcing the existing parking laws in NYC would be a huge boost