I feel so much contempt for the president and trustees of the University of Chicago. What they are doing to it is unforgivable. The traditional Core, however imperfect, was peerless. It was a whole world unto itself. Without it, the College is just another college.

There are self-serving political reasons for this too, but ideologically, this flows directly from getting housing issues wrong. Left-NIMBYism is a serious conceptual error that will lead them into a political dead end, or cause them to abandon left politics entirely

I and the Viennese have been saying …

specifically, urban socialism is the ideology of a Democratic party that is willing to fight as hard for the (good, positive) wishes of their voters as the Republican party is for theirs (bad, regressive)

A passing thought: urbanism is a theory of politeia, way of life, in the classical sense. Or, as the Straussians call it, "regime."

It's worth noting that while James Redfield was one of a kind, he was also probably the final living avatar of the Hutchins vision of the University of Chicago. With him, a whole world passes.

CDOT Commissioner Cheaks should announce on Monday morning that the city will be phasing out "door zone" bike lanes starting immediately, as they are inherently deadly.

With Sonny Rollins an era passes.

It's the same as the time I tried to get my toddler to try ice cream and he screamed and cried and insisted he hated it. He was wrong, obviously. So are the transportation haters. A better world is possible and even they would love it

Expropriate all of these various media properties -- Twitter, Paramount, CBS, etc -- and hand them over to political allies (or better yet, break them up first) on day one of the next trifecta. By midterms you'll have a whole new culture that everyone just accepts.

The full realization of liberal values, which in the history of liberalism has never yet been achieved, always has been a revolutionary doctrine. It is a bright spot in our dark times that we are all being forced to remember it!

The political press very clearly understands “truth” as a social agreement, a compromise position between everyone important enough to have an opinion. It did not reflect on how this would allow dedicated liars to go all-in on lies again and again and dramatically shift the position.

It's for that reason that I really think it should just be outright banned, whatever constitutional issues there are with it be damned. The party is beyond redemption and every member is a criminal by their mere membership.

We all know the internet and esp social media have transformed society, but the mechanism and nature of these changes aren’t well theorized. Anthropologists should illuminate this by tracing the history of the disconnection of the social location of interaction from its physical location

I would reply if I could to ask, is there any viable path to annexation of at least many of these? It seems like the most just path forward for the city and region, and yet politically all but impossible

Urbanism isn't just a pet issue, it's a broad vision of what our way of life should be in urbanized society. It is essential, not incidental, to a viable social-democratic or socialist politics. Both philosophically and practically, it's a prerequisite for plural, egalitarian democratic society

Semiotics + dialectics = correct political analysis

PSA to any Dems who plan on running for president in 2028: now is the perfect time to call for Schumer to step down and for the 8 Vichy Dems to be primaried

With tonight's shameful surrender, this assessment sadly still looks right.

One of the most important discoveries of social science is that our lived experience—no matter how sincerely felt and accurately reported—can nevertheless be false. So lived experience, though never to be lightly dismissed, cannot be the foundation of a political epistemology.

Yelp and all the other online review platforms have obliterated this distinction for many people, to my endless frustration

I think Hubert Dreyfus's intuitions about the intrinsic limitations of AI are still right, do still (with appropriate adjustments) apply to LLMs, and will apply to any future attempt at AI that is not embodied in more or less the same way we are.

Sociological question that housing policy discussions almost never address: what are the actual boundaries of the market area within which a supply-demand relationship operates, or the effects of some intervention are to be measured, etc?

Put these everywhere in Chicago. Infrared heaters under the awning, they’ll do fabulous business all year round

Is there any way to defeat all this other than replacing the sclerotic Democratic leadership with more adequate people, then winning a trifecta that is strong enough (not hamstrung by Manchins & Sinemas) to turn it all back, eliminate the filibuster and pack the court? Is even that feasible?

Chicago really needs a permanent indoor public market (i.e., year round farmers' market, but with butcher, fishmonger, bakery, prepared food stalls, et al.). Operated as a co-op I think. Anybody got a few million dollars and a suitable building?