This week was dire. Very tough for scholars from MENA who are studying/working abroad. I am continually impressed by those who join our Zoom sessions despite so many challenges. This week a frequent participant defended her PhD dissertation! Next week we begin Week 150. Email me if interested

In the past few months, I read something (an essay? An article?) about two definitions of community squared off in the Twin Cities: ICE's vision of white xenophobia, and a grassroots vision of multiracial solidarity. Anyone have a link to this piece? I want my students to read it.

Inadvertently the Trump administration has demonstrated the benefits of investing in solar and wind energy

It is a book that I recommend to every educator and to every parent.

Pogroms in the West Bank continue, each day a little more.

The girls’ school in Iran, where 165 people were killed by an apparent US-Israeli attack, was hit with two strikes, with the second missile killing sheltering survivors, two first responders and the parent of a slain child have told Middle East Eye.

There is an extraordinarily rich experimental music scene in Iran, and this is one of the best compilations featuring many of the key artists (who I hope are safe) unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/anthol...

This week in Talking Climate: why a warming world can mean worse winter weather, and how one of the world's biggest cities just cleaned up its air 184 years ahead of forecast. Read on!

Hawks like Cheney and Rumsfeld who had spent their entire careers preparing for regime change in the Middle East failed miserably at it. Terrifying to think what a group of people who brag about not caring about anything outside the US will accomplish

IRGC has closed the Strait of Hormuz.

I fell for this and got into my high horse rant of how this was AI slop summary of friends. Now I get the joke ...I am slow at times

Here's a utopia most proponents of capitalism have dangled in front of us for decades: take a stand and use AI and technology in general to cut down the work week in half, don't lay off people! It is infuriating how these dbags cannot think outside of what the market tells them to do.

I used to be a one cat type of person just out of a sense of loyalty to one cat, until I ended up with Destry and Marlowe and realized how peaceful it is to watch what I like to call "synchronized sleeping"

This may be a stretch but the repetitive refrain of tearing the ticket and themes of dying also seem to be a throwback to Gainsbourg's "poinçonneur de lilas" (or the guy who punched Metro tickets till he decides to commit suicide). the Paranoid Style might be my band for the month if it's the case

Album of the week. "Known Associates" by the DC based grunge, punk-pop band the Paranoid Style. The witty lyrics are a hoot, but the throwback Roy Bittan style keyboards and Clarence Clemmons style sax especially help create a super catchy nostalgic sound. Like I feel I've known this song forever

I would assume that,quite fittingly, pooches are happiest with the news that St Francis of Assisi's bones are now on display bbc.com/news/article...

😱 What have I been doing all these years buying booze left and right as a non-US citizen? And to think that every single bar tender and liquor store cashier I've come across has been abetting me. Must get to the bottom of this!

My favorite more benign hot mic moment on another CUNY campus was when a colleague during a very long meeting about assessment was heard imploring to "Oh PLEASE god make this stop"

RE: gov shutdown and TSA precheck..Air travel has become so horrendous that even the current incompetent administration understands that some Americans have come to care deeply about the little illusory privileges and status markers they buy to make travel psychologically more bearable 🙄

Thanks for sharing, @Turkeyrecap! Trump’s whims are unique but his foreign policy approach isn't. We identify 7 pillars of Populist FP: Personalization, hyper-mediatization, "grand" history, anti-elitism, revisionism, extortion, domestic dividends And we show their self-reinforcing cycle.

When capitalists stop to try and find meaning in what they're doing, like Max Weber's entrepreneurs and their spirit of capitalism, and start to act like caricatures of Friedrich Engels's capitalist who only care about the reproduction of labor

Tell me you're a sociopath without saying you're a sociopath

This is the same guy who said he couldn’t believe it was humanly possible to raise a child without using ChatGPT

Hommage QuentinD. Avec saluts nazis, présence de néo-nazis condamnés, symboles racistes et organisation par des groupes fascistes, cette manif était clairement néo-fasciste/néo-nazi. Manif autorisée quand on interdit des conférences universitaires. Quelle folie ! www.leprogres.fr/faits-divers...

I'm dying 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The dissenting SCOTUS judges just fed the administration a talking point by claiming that the decision to eliminate tariffs will create "chaos". The particularistic as opposed to universalistic approach to tariffs and the economy HAS been creating chaos, now the admin will just blame the decision

Weird little coincidence: I just realized that in about a week I am going to a Cat Power concert and getting a CAT scan on that very same day

Postdoc opportunity at Vanderbilt Sociology focusing on singlehood, social networks, and health in later life. Great fit for researchers working on social relationships and aging. Deadline: March 31, 2026. #AcademicJobs #sociology careercenter... careercenter.asanet.org/job/1311435/postdoctora...

Love Hansen-Love's Bergman Island. As the title indicates it's self-referencial. In such a good way that even the movie within the movie is so good...here two of my favorite actors Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie doing fleeting love, regret and a wedding party with possibilities so well 🎥

Le problème, c'est que personne n'est surpris quand des militants d'extrême-droite font usage de la violence : au fond, tout le monde trouve ça normal, attendu, typique, adéquat à la catégorie "individu d'extrême-droite". Dès lors, ça ne suscite aucune indignation car ça ne surprend pas.

When using @anticorruption.bsky.social's #Corruption Perceptions Index, #CPI, compare countries in the same year. Long-term trends (vs. year-to-year changes) also matter. Well, Turkey looks alarming. In 2013, it ranked better than seven #EU members. Today, it is below all EU members & candidates.

I love Army of Shadows

Gomorrah (2008), a good one. Also the deliberate choice in the placement of the camera. Unlike other Mafia movies, it did not have a clear focus on the action, it was askew leaving the impression that you were witnessing extortion in its element, skimming the work of others w/o building anything

Our colleague Karin Kristensson has recently published an interesting article examining whether the Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero) class schema and its focus on employment relations remain relevant in today’s post-industrial labour market. doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.1177/0950...

TOMORROW!

He opened up space in public life -- didn't win elections, but made it possible for other people to win them later. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Hilarious delivery by Jesse Jackson who remarkably is able to keep a straight face throughout youtu.be/A1mqg4C0awA?...

It's ethical problems and harmful impact on creativity notwithstanding, an argument for regulating AI is historical: previous gains in productivity due to technological change seem to have translated into higher wages and more leisure time only when states stepped in to correct capitalism's problems

So grim. Middle class Americans selling their plasma to the rest of the world twice a week and NBC News covering the ethics of it as-a matter-of-factly. For context, during my dad's surgery in Turkey, I found a volunteer in a hospital cause it was illegal to buy and donating was limited to 1/month

Yessir

I love Scandinavian directors' study of fragile masculinity like Joachim Trier, Ruben Ostlund and Thomas Vinterberg in such movies as Worst Person in the World, Force Majeure and the Celebration...but lately I've started to feel that they're just reporting what they see around them

I'm feeling a surge of patriotism right now.

And this from an athlete that performs the winter Olympic sport most akin to cornhole or bowling

If you're teaching classical sociology and assigning Weber's original writing consider including this passage from Marianne Weber's biography of her husband (quoted in Bendix) then ask your students 'why do you think he really wrote that?' It 100% is not about protestantism leading to capitalism

Last week, I published a report - the "Political Disconnect" -based on interviews with 144 low-income & working-class people, across racial groups, who don't usually vote. They are the experts on why, and today I want to share their words. www.swarthmore.edu/u...

In the mood for some French hip hop and IAM from Marseille youtu.be/x4uHgwHdXOA?...

To emphasize the role of public colleges: as a member of faculty at the City University of New York located in the same state as Bard College I am not allowed to accept gifts totalling more than 50$ a year by an individual my college conducts business with let alone a trip to the Caribbean

Also, we should revisit this analogy only when libertarians prove to be as effective as cats at keeping pests away

I don't know how reliable this is, but it seems like Bad Bunny might break Kendrick Lamar's viewership record with +135M viewers. I'd like to know how many people tuned in just for his show or how many more will have seen it by the week's end. www.thebiglead.com/most-watched...