Fellow academics/writers, I come bearing bad news: #AcademicSky #WritingSky #AcWri #AmWriting #GetYourManuscriptOut

Will the concern on the political right about declining American fertility result in more pro-family economic policy to make childbearing more affordable? Nope. In my new study at @socprobsjournal.bsky.social, I document what I call the "natalism-neoliberalism" paradox. 1/4 doi.org/10.1093/socp...

The difficulty they have is that under their biblical hermeneutic, it is quite difficult to say that God abhors slavery because it is so common in the Bible, even in the New Testament. More common, in fact, than are condemnations of homosexual acts.

Shameless pandering to the next generation of voters

Data visualization: Every human language, from modern day back through protolanguage to a hypothetical common origin. Accurate, sourced, possibly complete. Includes sign language! Tap or mouse over to highlight individual branches; many also have more info. 🛌 this project has been a beast

Are enough births occurring to replace expected deaths? We introduce the “births observed / births needed” ratio as a simple indicator of demographic sustainability — showing why similar fertility rates can imply very different population futures. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...

I've seen some folks chatting about Morris Day and the Time — who dropped out of the Freedom 250 concert, thank god — like they are a joke, like Milli Vanilli. Shut your mouth! The opening scene in "Purple Rain" is one of the greatest moments in music history. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxZ...

For anybody interested in a tentative dating of the sanskrit literature included at Dharmamitra.org, based on linguistic features and human estimated priors, grouped by categories!

They're flying in, riding on the backs of the Murder Hornets

Meowie Antoinette

A pre-AI take on academic cheating (C.S. Lewis).

Done more to damage Israel than Yasir Arafat

Milli Vanilli has far too much integrity to play for Donald Trump www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/05/mill...

This seems on to something important: "The fight, in other words, is not really against the algorithms. It is against the oligarchs."

It’s really important that Democrats have people like Talarico (and Warnock and others) providing this kind of theologically and spiritually rigorous counter to Christian nationalism. Consigning evangelicals to the far right is a terrible mistake. Every person Talarico reaches is a badly needed win

Ken Paxton just gave an Epstein-style deal to a pedophile. Paxton released Adam Hoffman — an admitted child rapist — back on our streets after Paxton’s rich lawyer friend got involved. The Epstein Class has no place in Texas. Ken Paxton has no place in the US Senate.

This, along with the recent "can liberalism have an aesthetics?" discussioin in The Point, give me hope that people are widening the aperture on political thinking (no, really)

yeah you gotta willie horton ken paxton. have the party committees and super pacs run ads explicitly accusing paxton of covering up for a child abuser. “you love your children and would do anything to protect them. so why would you vote for a man who lets child abusers run free”

Some poor quality but still interesting and rare early mushroom cloud photographs of the Trinity test, from ~30 seconds to 2 minutes, taken by Stan Frankel. Photo #1 shows the glow of ionization very brightly.

"[Men like] Field Marshal Günther von Kluge...see the danger posed by a political movement, privately acknowledge it, occasionally even criticize it, but ultimately convince themselves that remaining inside the system is more important than confronting it directly." open.substack.com/pub/dbarkhuf...

Compare and contrast the global response to Donald's threats on Iran vs our recent threats to Ukraine.

☠️Biggest find by OPCW since fall of the Assad regime: "dozens of undeclared chemical munitions such as aerial bombs and rockets as well as separately found chemicals and related equipment" at undeclared locations in northern coastal and central regions. www.opcw.org/sites/defaul...

In addition, literal stacks of M4000 chemical bombs, used by the Assad regime to drop sarin on civilians in 3 recorded incidents, were found and photographed. Yet more evidence everything we published at Bellingcat based on our open source investigations of chemical attacks was accurate.

There is no word yet on whether the ranks of assistant deans will be thinned. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Nice brief summary. That said, I urge people who are interested to dive in--I'm nowhere near the end but this is pretty straightforward. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/u...

The military spends years hardening bodies and sharpening minds for combat. It spends almost nothing preparing warfighters for the moment their values collide with the reality of war. warontherocks.com/2026/05/the-...

We’re basically standing in the puddle of text as a communicative medium.

In order to protect the human person in the age of #ArtificialIntelligence, we must once again reflect on the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice. #MagnificaHumanitas

The final sentences of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address & Second Inaugural Address, delivered about eighteen months apart, are both relatively long and syntactically complex, and they are imho a very good summary of the bedrock foundations on which a decent policy for the United States should be built.

Just for the record, the Pope quoting Gandalf is pretty cool, but if I remember rightly it was "Deus Caritas Est" where Benedict actually had a footnote to Nietzsche, which was pretty peak German-scholar tbh, hat tip to them all

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) revealed Friday that House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee voted to make themselves eligible to collect from President Donald Trump's $1.8 billion January 6th slush fund, triggering immediate outrage online.

well done william

U.S. officials privately told Iran that Trump’s social media posts are mainly intended for domestic media and political messaging, and should not be taken too seriously during negotiations.

Good

Everybody thinks when he's rich he'll be a different kind of rich person from the rich people he sees around him; later on he finds out there's only one kind of rich person, and he's it. —Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker

For #RomanRoadsFriday a section of the 'Via delle Gallie' in Donnas, Val d’Aosta, Italy. The wheel ruts are still visible. The arch was carved into the rock. The road that was built under Augustus. It began at Mediolanum, present-day Milan, and passed through...🧵1/2 📷 🏺#archaeology

Some notes now that I’ve seen the transcript of the hearing, thanks to @lizdye.bsky.social . First: the government dismissed the felony count in an effort to convince the judge not to make them produce full transcripts, knowing they showed serious misconduct.

DC is ~33 degrees cooler this afternoon vs Wednesday’s record 96. 📉🌡️ It's the ninth drop of 30-plus degrees in 24 hours or less this year (1 in Jan, 4 in March, 2 each in April and May). Biggest? A wild 53-degree plunge Mar 11–12 (record 86 → snow/33). 2026 = temperature whiplash.

Apologies to the older folks we used to judge for eating dinner at 5 and being in bed by 9. You guys were really on to something.

Gruesome

it is your god given right as a 22 year old to seethe about having to cook for yourself and do your laundry and fight with your roommate about cleaning duties, just as it is mine as a 40-something year old to cackle hysterically at your complaints

Real question: the fuck do you guys think the word meant before

Every GOP primary story is like “syphilis loses to pancreatic cancer”

Journalists need to avoid making this category error

Trump says his life was better before he became president. Dude, everybody's life was better before you became president.

Feels like a big shift

This is such a blatant abuse of economics/data I will assign it in my Data Analysis course next term..

Travolta really taking a Method Acting approach to "Face/Off II"

I’m pro-freedom, pro-law and order, pro-limited government, and pro-the Declaration and the Constitution. And so today I’m a Democrat.