It’s like in Star Wars! They dissolved the Senate! Which is a thing the good guys do!

It took a minute, but I think we’ve finally reached the stage where the most common definition for neoliberal is “a thing I do not like.”

Another critique which reveals that the critic either can't or won't think historically. The standard move is to say that _I_ emphasize this or that. But history is not normative exegesis. In fact, _they_ (my subjects) emphasize this or that and I recount it. quillette.com/2026/06/05/a...

Thanks @politicsoxford.bsky.social for featuring my new book The Technocratic International (@academic.oup.com @ox.ac.uk) 👇 Order here: global.oup.com/academic/pro... Digital version: academic.oup.com/book/62632?l...

Sign of the times

“We have to fight back against rising socialism!” Gurl, how about you fight back by raising wages, lowering premiums, quitting union-busting, regulating the algorithm, treating workers with respect???? Try it!

Everything Everywhere All at Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Immigrant detainees across at least 33 states allege in court documents that the government is failing to provide them with adequate medical care.

Hard at this point not to see the gutting of the CSU as tied to the tech industry's growing stranglehold over state policy. By choking off research at the CSUs while making them beachheads of AI dependence, we're locking CA's political economy to that industry.

“The terms of the deal stipulate that OpenAI may not train its model on data from the C.S.U.” Oh, lovely! [sarcasm] So you don’t like non-consensual extraction? IP theft? How the f-k do you think I feel, Prez T-M, at how AI companies have stolen my work? Reminder of story to which I'm reacting: 3/

Trump admin strategy about the environment: ignorance is best. They are discarding key sources of crucial knowledge.

The National Park Service is using at least $67 million worth of park entrance fees to help fund President Trump’s beautification projects in D.C., according to a @nytimes.com analysis. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/c...

this is incredible

Eva, it seems, is variously portrayed as an astronaut, an Army sergeant, a Navy commander, an astrophysicist, an airline pilot, a mercenary, a Cambridge prof, and a spy. She--along with some recurring colleagues--appears in dozens of unrelated stories, all ostensibly by completely different authors.

MIT closing three of its four libraries is shocking and appalling and underscores that the source of so much of the crisis in higher education comes not from attacks from the far right or the collapse of public trust, but rather from the university administrative class itself.

Remember sitting in history, thinking “If I was alive then, I would’ve…” You’re alive now. Whatever you’re doing is what you would’ve done.

UN backs world court climate opinion; U.S. among few to oppose reut.rs/4dVxQCr

Tax policy is the ONLY issue facing the country

Though this story is deeply disturbing, I am getting very tired with the reductivist idea that em dashes indicate AI. I used em dashes a lot, long before AI came on the scene, and I resent the unconscious pressure to change my style in response.

I genuinely struggle to understand what these people think is going on

In case useful: www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-162-p... bsky.app/profile/oliv...

I can confirm from inside the space that this is the prevailing line of thought and I struggle to come to grips with it.

Well, would ya look at that! NSF is going to send >10% of its current budget to industry (read: tech start ups) instead of universities…it’s as if the admin is trying to dismantle our basic science mechanism and use it as a start up fund for private companies 💁🏻‍♀️ www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/...

....theyre just gonna give it to elon, huh.

"The judge scrutinized how government officials classified grant projects as DEI and used ChatGPT... Officials, using the AI platform, labeled as DEI an anthology titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union.”" www.cnn.com/2026/05/08/p...

Thoughts?

There is no clearer case for the necessity of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than how quickly southern states moved to eliminate Black-majority districts and dilute Black power after SCOTUS eroded Section 2. SCOTUS’s reasoning was immediately disproven by reality.

Wrote an article for Truthout about how the recent SCOTUS decision and how it and this administration has sought to impose Jim Crow through "colorblind" means smh

I dream of a day when the legal academy spends as much attention to congressional and other legislative reform, than they spend debating whom among us is properly critical of the Supreme Court. Reforming Congress is equally (or more) important than rethinking Supreme Court practice and authority.

This is a really important thread. Defending criminal charges is insanely expensive and that’s one reason why Trump keeps charging people he hates, even if the charges are eventually dismissed. In some of the pro bono cases I handled, costs— COSTS— like OCR for documents to make them searchable,

"The humanities are not a luxury. They are how a democracy understands itself." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/a...

Are you a doctor treating transgender patients in a state with restrictions on gender-affirming care? I am an investigative reporter and I want to talk to you. If you’re not, mind sharing this post?

wild stuff e360.yale.edu/digest/china...

A federal judge granted the motion for a summary judgment on all counts in favor of the AHA, @acls1919.bsky.social, and @modernlanguage.bsky.social in our lawsuit to restore the NEH, ruling that the mass termination of grants was “unlawful, unconstitutional, ultra vires, and without legal effect." 🗃️

No.

£1.7 billion sounds like a lot. Is it a lot?

by the way, we know not only how the democrats lost white non-college-educated men, but exactly when. It was support for civil rights, from 1964 onwards. Democrats have not won a majority of while male voters since before the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Racism is over says the Supreme Court, which you can tell because it took literally a matter of minutes after they gutted the Voting Rights Act for Republicans in the South to start moving to make sure Black people in their states get no representation in Congress

Wollstonecraft & Nietzsche on professions and how messed up it often is to have one. Also how modern.

My book will be available in print 1 May 2026! It's the culmination of like 10+ years' work and I honestly still can't believe it's about to be real. 🥳

my god what are we doing

How we deal with #GenAI reminds me of 20th cent millenial "Cargo Cults" in Papua/Melanesia: islanders built wooden planes, flagposts, etc to watch out for & attract (US)Gods in planes to bring them what they desired. Later, islanders reasoned that the cargo was stolen from their ancestors 1/2

Also worth noting that wind had the largest effect in cutting power prices here - a very good reminder of the importance of a diverse mix of non-fossil energy sources :)

Nevada's largest utility says it will need three times the electricity required to power Las Vegas just to handle proposed data centers — and it probably can't do that without fossil fuels. https://to.pbs.org/4c0Eh6n

Everyone please welcome CBS News Immigration Analyst Viktor Orban.

A single line in this piece just made my day: “The electricity system operator is understood to be preparing to run the grid without any gas for short periods as soon as this summer, in a first for the UK energy system.” Renewables *work*. And progress matters🎉 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Wow. Pam Bondi is 60?

I just don’t think you need to love war crimes to be a real man.