This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

A cross-national analysis finds that as governments become more populist, academic freedom declines doi.org/10.1017/S153...

attention @pch9857.bsky.social

In 2026, I hope that everyone will take opportunities to be with others however you can (in person or virtual). It offers energy and strength for what will be a rough year ahead.

New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

Alien. I was six!!

NYT when a trans man wants to take testosterone: 😡😡😡😡😡 NYT when a cis woman wants to take testosterone: 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

For yr Xmas Day reading! I blurbed about 25 awesome experimental records for 2025 for @treblezine.bsky.social ! Tons to dig in to like Orcutt/Miller/Shelley,Laura Cocks,Zeena Parkins/Cecilia Lopez,Yowie,Blank Hellscape,Royal Arctic Institute,Zachary Cale and more! www.treblezine.com/the-25-best-...

The horns and whistles work

bari weiss saw this and decided that she had to hide it from the american public

this is how everyone marks up their sessions before editing right

Weird how The Free Press was able to publish all of these without comment from the Washigton University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

The epistemology of reactionism is feelings-based. All actions and beliefs are based on what feels good. Then justifications are found afterwards. Trump does not have coherent thoughts, and neither do his most fanatical lieutenants.

This is NYT headline morning after JD’s grotesque hot blast of white supremacist nativism at Turning Point’s hate-fest?!

three phosphorescent pitches above (2025) composition in 17 limit #justintonation produced at Endorphin Music Studios, November 2025 davidbeardsley.bandcamp.com/album/three-... #microtones #xenharmonic #ambientmusic

How is it possible that I moved from the Newport Rhode Island area, where they film “The Gilded Age”; to the Troy NY area, where they film “The Gilded Age”.

New fuzzy module just dropped.

Heartfelt thanks to Lee Rice Epstein for including my quartet album on his year-end wrap up. leericeepstein.substack.com/p/this-year-...

I need a clonazepam refill; should I start my message to my doctor with “ho ho ho, two family Christmas gatherings to go!” or might that raise additional questions.

NB: When I, a professor of law, profess that an act is unlawful, I am not doing it to inform the lawbreaker, but rather to inform you, the reader. So the question “what, like you think he cares?” is inapposite. The question is whether *you* care. I think you should, which is why I bother.

ICYMI, I wrote about Yglesias making common cause with the right-wing moral panic over critical race theory. His supposed defense of liberalism is deeply illiberal. @liberalcurrents.com

looking for listening suggestions for recent works for organ, solo or with other instruments. Thinking along the lines of Ellen Arkbro, Klaus Lang, Eva-Maria Houben, work of that nature. What comes to mind?

CBS News staffers might want to check into how things are going at their boss’s anti-woke “university” in Austin. Via @ngluckman.bsky.social www.chronicle.com/article/at-t...

Here is the Department of Homeland Security touting this new ban by describing the (among others) spouses and children of U.S. citizens coming on visas as "foreign invaders." It has never been about legal versus illegal. They hate legal immigration. They want to stop it. That's the story.

Jacobin 🤜🤛 Rod Dreher “What if the Combahee River Collective is to blame for Nick Fuentes?”

.@PVDMayor tells reporters a person of interest in yesterday’s shooting at @BrownUniversity has been detained

Oh no www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

a fav 2025 record you may have missed iykyk avaluna.bandcamp.com/album/ava-luna

Good news from #Maine

I saw “green room” at a theater in Manhattan with an otherwise very quiet crowd but during the scene with the red shoe laces every single person in the room visibly recoiled if not screamed. It was awesome.

In terms of US politics, Bush v. Gore is the defining event of the century. It set the template: a ruthless right that instinctively seeks power & doesn't give a shit about rule of law...and a bunch of hapless, feckless octogenarian Dems worried about the good opinion of centrist opinion columnists.

Good to know that David Frum is always on the wrong side

MINNEAPOLIS: “All I did was step outside as a Somali American citizen, and I got chased by a masked person, assaulted, kidnapped. It was inhumane. If this is what’s happening to a 🇺🇸 citizen on camera, imagine what could happen to your loved ones.”

ICE detain U.S. citizen for looking Somali—use illegal chokehold to tackle him to ground. Man repeatedly begs agents to look at his digital passport ID—they refuse. Drove him 7 miles away before releasing him alone into Minnesota snow storm—told him to "walk home" in freezing weather advisory.

WOW. So this is obviously a huge violation of this man's rights, and it illustrates a few things we're seeing broadly: - DHS officers are ignoring peoples' IDs and instead requiring screening through their own systems - Confirms @404media.co's reports of use of DHS's facial recognition app.

a belief that liberals are not in spiritual communion with the white working class, which is held as the virtuous repository of american identity.

Effectively closes our borders. Feature, not a bug I guess.

Dorico: "We are going to fix all the worst parts of other engraving software." "So you're not going to bury the audio playback settings in six russian nesting doll sub-menus, right?" "Oh no we are absolutely keeping that."

I mean, in what sense will you be able to say the college “survived”?

There are a lot of big questions at play here, but the most fundamental might be: what is the point of college?

This is actually a good example of why the customer model is wrong. I wouldn't have chosen poetry writing, but UNC made me take a class. And it absolutely made me become a much better writer, with an eye to concision and an ear now trained to the rhythm of words. I'm a better historian as a result.

it’s been pretty funny to see Polis’ addiction to posting completely end any discussion of him as a potential 2028 candidate

From 400-year-old globes to cosmic funeral shrouds, how the Osher Map Library in Maine shows people that maps aren't just for navigation — but windows into history, culture, and how we see the world. n.pr/44Ognqv

The entire debate over birthright citizenship is anti-constitutional because the purpose, intent, and text of the 14th Amendment were designed to foreclose any argument about who counts as an American citizen.

A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires.

@willmasonmusic.com et al - newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/hemloc... I guess I tend to think of (western) microtonal music as programmed or else intricately, painstakingly laid out and performed in the manner of automatons. the boldly evident physicality of the (v impressive, understated)--

Incredible optics here, really underscores it all.

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts www.nber.org/papers/w34524 via @florianederer.bsky.social

This is an ethnic cleansing campaign