Man, everything in geopolitics is simple if you assume zero costs, frictionless negotiations, and no firm interests on the part of your counterparty! This is somehow worse than paradox brain.

Tia mia to mix things up a bit

Essentiel.

Got to try a pawpaw fruit today. It 100% lived up to the hype

Me promoting this skeet like I didn't also write this skeet. But much more importantly, it's a great article that deserves to be read!

Just donated to support the campaign of someone who puts their body where their beliefs are. We need as many people like her getting elected to Congress right now as possible.

Not "holding the line," not "repairing democracy." Liberation forever, for all. That's the only path forward

I am so damn tired of Vichy fucks.

A bunch of historians have been telling me to do this, but dont seem able to explain to me why I should be getting my students to train OpenAI's technology for free

Quelques affiches de la manifestation rennaise du 18 septembre

Israel has pretty unequivocally committed the crime of aggression in Syria. “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore . . . is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." IMT, Nuremburg (1948)

It’s not for me to say what DGA should do but just as a matter of power analysis I think Dell and Boots are right on this.

So we as a society are, like, COOKED cooked

Merrick Garland focusing on rebuilding the DOJ’s culture instead of vigorously prosecuting the leaders of the coup against our democracy and our constitution is really paying off big time

Fuck. This wasn't a vote to make it optional. It was a vote to *disallow* it altogether

Entirely accurate, but Contributor 1's comments made me think of something bothering me lately, and that's: God help you finding other work if you _are_ one of those people whose been sinking to the bottom of the academic demi-monde for ten years after your PhD: frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6691/

By God, she's gone full skymall

Yesterday I gave a book talk and student workshop at my undergrad alma mater, the Department of History at University of Kansas. It was awesome except for the moment when a student pointed out that she was not yet born in 2007, the year that I graduated. Lol.

This. I told a student group that I declined their debate invitation but that I would love to read something together and have a conversation. The response: crickets. Let's stop debating and try to talk with each other instead.

Hey historians 🗃: have you published in the AHR? How was your experience? Is it worth the extra rigamarole? I have an article I'm working on that might be a good fit, and I'm no longer under the gun for tenure. What should I know about the process?

Best thing South Korea could do is shut down the factory. Send a message and protect their citizens. The whole thread is worth a read. Yet another disgrace for our country courtesy of Shitler's fourth reich.

Actor Sterling Hayden reflecting on naming names to HUAC: "I was a rat, a stoolie, and the names I named of those close friends were blacklisted and deprived of their livelihood." "I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing."

Really enjoyed this essay by the editors of @nplusonemag.com www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

People don’t like it when I say it, but the main place you’ll be pressured to participate in fascism is work. Especially if you work in a battleground space like government or academia. None of your weekend organizing can ever make up for active participation in the fascist project at your day job.

“Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.“

Today is La fête de la vertu the 1st of Sansculottides in the year 233. Sansculottides is the month of complementary days. Today we celebrate virtue.#JacobinDay More information on virtue

I wrote a book once on the history of debates over free speech, protest and academic freedom at universities, looking at how fascists used the language of free speech to promote themselves on campus and those who argued that fascists should be denied this platform. www.routledge.com/No-Platform-...

You love to see it! Solidarity from one academic union to another, UAKU

Today!

So the recession is definitely happening, then?

We're witnessing the most aggressive, fanatical crackdown on free speech in my lifetime. The speed and breadth of government censorship and private sector and nonprofit capitulation has been astonishing. As has the lack of urgency/silence from people who've long claimed to care about this stuff.

Judith Butler:"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are..invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal & rising authoritarianism. It is time to resist the injustice that now threatens to be normalized" www.chronicle.com/article/when...

I read this whole thread before realizing this this was a sitting U.S. Senator.

A new McCarthyism: WAPO fires their last black columnist because she: A. posted frustration about the gun violence problem post -Kirk without due respect (apparently) and B. Posted direct quotes from Kirk disparaging black women’s intelligence.

It shouldn't escape notice that Trump explicitly threatened to use *the state* to target anyone he and MAGA scapegoat for Charlie Kirk's murder. We really could see Stephen Miller and Kash Patel use the FBI for 60s-style domestic persecution. Some thoughts on that: newrepublic.com/article/2004...

I went to a banzai class at a brewery today and I am sorry but this is my personality now

Yesterday's piece from @jamellebouie.net is the only high-profile piece I've seen that specifically discusses the watchlist, its effect on academics, and its effect on public attitudes toward academia as a whole. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/o...

Well this is concerning theintercept.com/2025/09/13/m...

"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”

Since Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, people on the left have been censored, punished, and targeted with more violence for telling the truth about Kirk's legacy. The cycle continues: mainstream whitewashing of violence begets more violence and the victims are blamed. spitfirenews.com/p/the-nation...

it really is astonishing how quickly it goes from “civil war” and “blood in the streets” to “wow guys it’s just a sad tragedy” when it becomes inconvenient

Kirk didn't serve in the military or hold office. The war hero treatment -- half-mast flags, military guard, Air Force Two escort, calls for a statue at the Capitol or to lie in the Rotunda -- shows that for MAGA, service to Trump has become the highest, most honorable form of service.

Real learning is hard. It’s a slow, confusing process where you sometimes have to read long books with dreadful covers, and look at footnotes and shit. It requires us to recognize and then overcome our biases as best we can. theoutline.com/post/6709/de...

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy relies on as Justice Marshall noted in Marbury v. Madison: Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule. You have to “expound” and “interpret” the rule, not issue a two page opinion that no-one can figure out.

dan bongino and kash patel lying unconscious on the ground after bonking their heads together as they both bent down to examine what is later determined to be their own footprints

Extremely important that we aren’t cowed in this moment and continue to point out the ongoing descent into authoritarianism. Nick is right. This is Putin and Xi stuff.

NEW: No, Charlie Kirk was not practicing politics the right way. That's what Ezra Klein said. We can condemn this heinous assassination but also recognize that with his 2020 election denialism and extremist rhetoric, Kirk built his movement with falsehoods and in a wrong and divisive manner.