if blue state governors and mayors aren't already thinking about the reliability of various police forces nominally under their control, they should start immediately

In a fight between Pritzker and and police, who is going to win? This is what happens when both parties allowed law enforcement to become one of the most powerful political actors in the country -- a taxpayer-funded political movement that wants to kill people.

On the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1751, a swathe of students and fellows of @ox.ac.uk composed verses of condolence, many in Latin and in English and a smattering in other languages. John Swinton MA of Christ Church showed off by offering two: one in Phoenician and the other in Etruscan.

What do you get when you cross a peepshow with a petite book? A peti-pshow! A peepshow, or tunnel book, is a book format that spaces multiple illustrated leaves apart from one another to create an illusion of depth when viewed through a front opening.

For more, read the entire special issue we did about this last year. prospect.org/coldcivilwar

Sign. Join. Go to the meeting. The first instinct is to keep your head down, get the work done, hope someone louder or smarter or whatever helps. But that's the coordination problem of fascism: if you, yes you, ordinary person who's never done this before, do nothing then we all lose.

Republican lying has a long history but the acceptance of police & prosecutorial lying about crime has been just as destructive

i’d day this nails the South as well

It’s interesting ie depressing how isolated MTG is from Republicans who will all be facing the same electoral math

“Their strategy is to play divide and conquer, rewarding friends and brutally punishing opponents. They win when society cracks, creating a self-enforcing set of expectations, in which everyone shuts up and complies because everyone expects everyone else to shut up and comply, too.” - excellent

Spotted my future in the wild! #spookyseason

No university that signs the compact will be a university, in the accepted sense, anymore. They will be mere Trump Institutes, teaching only what subjects Trump doesn't bar them from teaching -- and only until he does. Signing is an abdication of responsibility and an act of great moral cowardice.

Guy filming himself poorly on his own phone: I think the first thing we’re showing is how we’ve mastered all technology

Joseph Cornell, American artist and film maker, and one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Untitled (Tamara Toumanova), ca. 1940 (collage with tempera on paperboard) #JosephCornell #Surrealism #Collage

Confirmed

What they don’t know is that it’s Clint Eastwood in the frog suit

ah another day at the piece of shit factory

Needed this

Can’t wait to celebrate Kim Hall’s new book!!

Oregon National Guard Adjutant General, General Gronewold says if they are federalized, that he will advise the Title 10 commander to utilize National Guard Troops to PROTECT protesters at ICE facilities. This is the right answer.

What we’re seeing now is not people “[beginning] to view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army”—the federal agents are becoming an occupying army, and the violence is theirs. The violence is already here.

KBJ’s blunt question today about the Supreme Court’s culture war hypocrisy kind of floored me, because it’s the kind of meta-criticism that we aren’t used to hearing from the justices. It’s the second day of the term, and things are that dire already. slate.com/news-and-pol...

If you are a Texan being investigated for your connections to "radical leftist" groups, I am interested in representing you against harassment by Ken Paxton's office.

If it goes past 35 days can we assume he’s trying a Mitch McConnell open SCOTUS seat maneuver?

Jan Konůpek (1883-1950)

I agree a lot with this and it gets to an older understanding of liberalism I've mentioned before. It is more primal and "no kings" is actually a great slogan for it. The problem is "a king can do whatever he wants to you."

everything else people associate with liberalism -- enlightenment, progress, problem-solving -- is only possible once the primal demands of security (in this frame) have been satisfied.

Angela Wright on editing Radcliffe’s Udolpho open.spotify.com/episode/0ORt...

The “who’s going to stop me” theory of executive power

a criminal AG has decided to hunt down imaginary crimes

Every tech product is getting shittier, and it’s making tech barons richer. Bezos and his peers have made themselves into post-risk tollbooth operators, skimming profits off the economic activity of others. Maureen Tkacik reviews “Enshittification.” trib.al/nyvLlbL

The most important theorist of Republican politics remains Carl Schmitt, nazi jurist

watch this; what happens in TX politics has a way of moving into national politics

the “crime surge” kayfabe encouraged by the media and ignored by democrats is being used to justify an illegal takeover of local governments by the feds, could be a lesson in there for any parties interested in a little self reflection

Any Project 2029-style rebuilding project that tables confrontation with the Supreme Court will doom itself. www.offmessage.net/p/the-suprem...

One of the most interesting pieces on genre & Sterne etc I’ve seen in some time

A lot of speculation about how things got so Stupid and Evil and I think one reason is we've collectively been too tolerant of Stupid and Evil for too long

The ideal writing practice is a combination of duration, frequency, and intensity, with a recognition that you can vary one of these levers easily, as long as you are taking the others into account! What's your ideal combination?

Texans will vote on 17 constitutional amendments on Nov. 4. Here’s the ballot in plain English: If you’re wealthy, the state promises to protect your fortune. For everyone else, there’s small perks, patriotic gestures, and pothole-filling promises. thebarbedwire.com/2025/10/07/t...

Leisure time & work protections v important for building a reading audience

University presidents are flying to DC and lobbying to be the first to lick boots until they shit eyelets but some of y'all are still acting like a DOGE employee with ChatGPT open in the background isn't going to be the one awarding NSF grants to the same 20 institutions that play ball.

OPINION: "Signing on to the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education offered by the Trump administration would end the school's ability to determine its own future." — The Inquirer Editorial Board

“Any university leader who signs on to this compact wld betray everything good and solid about the university & would do deep and permanent harm to the United States & the world.” Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down newrepublic.com/article/2013... via @newrepublic.com

#litcrit pals, a really interesting question about the history of discipline from a graduate student here, a question that has me totally stumped: "which journal in literary criticism was the first to implement modern peer review?" (I think he might mean blind review) Thank you for your suggestions!

public research universities, holding on: veronica gago wowed uic tonight with her forthcoming book, adapted here ctjournal.org/2025/06/03/n...

This is fascinating! Sima Qian is surely making a comeback! People wrote Shiji-style biographies of Li Wenliang during Wuhan lockdown - my piece on this is just out, open-access journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

NEW: A top Texas Republican revealed in federal court Monday he didn’t tell legislators about a phone call with the national GOP operative who drew the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Re-Upping this announcement for a Faux Faculty Senate Happy Hour this Thursday at Mimo's. Details attached.