On behalf of all under-5'6"-men, he is NOT one of us.

Pls don’t repost that racist meme. Suffocate the exposure. It doesn’t bring anyone any value.

It's authoritative if it's reliable, trustworthy, and accurate. Think experts. It's authoritarian if it's coerced and enforces strict obedience to those in power. Think strongmen. Please decide if you mean experts or strongmen before you make your selection. That is all.

I had the privilege of reviewing @dianakudaibergen.bsky.social Diana Kudaibergen's The Kazakh Spring. Anyone interested in authoritarianism and/or Central Asia must read this book.

Being a top officer in the Russian military is incredibly dangerous. Going forward, they should just leave these positions vacant. www.cnn.com/2026/02/06/e...

👇👇👇👇

“Plaintiffs have provided no metric by which to determine when lawful law enforcement becomes unlawful commandeering…” Oh come on. Not easily measured but plain as day.

Orwell cannot be repeated often enough:

To the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle: Blood on badges, lies on screens, Cages, tariffs, grift machines. Power sold and law undone, Cruelty played for laughs and fun. Strongmen kissed and wars adored, Truth despised, violence roared. Women mocked and racists fed Democracy quietly bled.

The fish rots from the head. Turf Miller, Noem, Trump, and the entire gang of fascist thugs.

Bovino is just the patsy - a noxious and odious fall guy. Stephen Miller is the architect and prime mover of the whole thing. Everything they do is at his direction - often after his threats. As long as he runs policy in the WH, nothing will change no matter how many Bovinos come and go.

Theater. Remove Homan, Noem, Miller, and Trump.

"[T]he cornerstone of this 'new law' consisted of the command 'Thou shalt kill,' not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian considerations." --Hannah Arendt, 1968

today=(shovel+stretch+ibuprofen)x4

@seva.bsky.social brilliantly captures our moment. hegemon.substack.com/p/the-age-of...

"I had somehow taken it for granted that we all still believe with Socrates that it is better to suffer than to do wrong. This belief turned out to be a mistake." --Hannah Arendt, 1968

Russian efforts in the global south.

Mark Carney is right: it's time to take down the signs.

In Russia, they call this adminresurs. In plain English, abuse of public office.

Happy new year is it over yet?

Yesterday at Davos, Canadian PM Mark Carney gave a speech. Today at Davos, the US-ian nihilist kleptocrat-in-chief gave a speech. One was principled, thoughtful, grounded, serious, forward-looking, realistic, and inspired. The other was a verbal vomit of threats, insults & fabrications.

Relax, people. SCOTUS will eventually rule on tariffs. Either before Trump blows up the transatlantic alliance, destroys NATO, invades a sovereign territory, and hands Putin everything he wants on a silver platter. Or after.

I am no expert, but states have rights. Right, SCOTUS?

This prez, in a nutshell.

A quickly changing world. U. Toronto and Harvard are apparently the Zhejiang U. of North America.

Good news I suppose, but a grotesque violation of international law is still a grotesque violation of international law--no matter how many or how few Americans want it. And maybe poll Greenlanders? www.cnn.com/2026/01/15/p...

OTD in 1994 trilateral agreement between Russia, Ukraine & USA was signed. "Ukraine commits to full disarmament, including strategic offensive weapons, in exchange for economic support & (this is the best part) security assurances from the USA & Russia". So you can trust us now

"Land acquisition?" Is that what we're calling this now? Why are you buying DJT's framing of the issue, @nytimes.com ? It would be a conquest, the destruction of an alliance, another instance of gunboat diplomacy, another blow to the rules-based order. Not a real estate deal.

So when authorities say “she tried to run over an officer,” that is not a neutral description. It is a claim of intent that can be used to justify lethal force after the fact. When the state kills first and invents the threat afterward, it is not policing, it is death squad behavior. /end

A woman was shot dead on camera and Trump’s ICE is launching a full scale coverup. Nobody is above the law. Federal agents who break the law in Minnesota, Oregon or anywhere else, must be prosecuted.

Excited to teach a new course on Authoritarianism through Film, in which we explore what narrative films say about how authoritarianism is lived/experienced. Up first: Brazil (1985), which reminds us that an innocent-seeming typo can prove deadly in authoritarian bureaucracies.

I've been busy teaching today and may have missed it. Has the USA invaded an allied country yet?

The Donroe Doctrine is tailor-made for this administration: it is faintly reminiscent of something Trump once heard, it is empty of fixed meaning, and it's heavy with narcissitic self-regard.

Ilya Yashin continues to call out the Putin regime and its war against Ukraine, providing a ray of hope for democracy in Russia. I had the privilege of hosting him at U of T. www.youtube.com/watch?v=afjY...

For centuries, America was called out as hypocritical when it failed to live up to principles. No longer. Apparently there are no longer any principles to be evaluated against. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/u...

Donnie got his very own special military operation. He must be so proud of himself.

Academics of my generation: I can retire book-free if I donate one book daily for the next 73.5 years.

The hard part about running a dictatorship is that the past changes so quickly you have no idea what will happen yesterday.

Enough short-termism on Venezuela. Whether Maduro was a bad guy (he was); whether his regime trafficked drugs (it did); whether what comes next is better / more legitimate (unclear), this catapults us back to 1900's spheres-of-influence logics, greenlighting conquest by Russia, China & others.

Maduro’s main crime is that he wasn’t “our bastard.”

Dear vendors, Unsubscribe and merry Christmas in that order.

It's lunacy that this Normalization of Authoritarianism continues full-tilt. Think forward three years. I very much hope we're saying, "In retrospect, maybe we overreacted," rather than "In retrospect, we should have seen that coming." www.nbcnews.com/video/shorts...

Instalment 3972 in the President Ruins the Presidency www.cbc.ca/news/world/w...

May your lights shine extra bright.

Dear Social Science, The only puzzle is why you repeat "puzzle" and "puzzling" over and over. Sincerely, Common Sense

So very well put.

Because if you cannot amuse yourself who can you amuse?

They don't need "better training." They need better judgment. www.cnn.com/2025/12/03/p...

Please apply! munkschool.utoronto.ca/petro-jacyk/...