“Where are the Sliwa strongholds?” I hear you ask. No I swear I hear you asking

Wondering how hard it’d be to convince Ackman or Musk that this is the first evidence of the immediate communist islamification of New York

Less going on here than I was hoping, tbh, but there are a few bright spots that I have theories about.

The detail on these is gonna get destroyed by the image compression on this app but it was fun to make them, especially putting the subway lines in.

The most compelling reason for Staten Island to leave New York City and join Jersey (where it belongs) is that having a fifth borough messes up all your maps and all your by-borough small-multiples.

With gazelle-like speed and grace, Ross Douthat leads the leap from “This, the greatest of American cities, will be destroyed should Mamdani be elected” to “New York is entirely irrelevant to anything in national politics”. (Idaho pastors who want to relitigate slavery remain central, however.)

I assume Twitter is experiencing previously unseen levels of Delusional Bill Ackman Cope.

When Willie O’Dwyer (NYC Mayor 1946-50, born Bohola, County Mayo) died in 1964, the NYT generously acknowledged that despite appearing to be a bog-trotting Paddy he was also able to read and enjoyed the sort of books you, dear subscriber, might have around the house.

Just incredible that New York could elect an immigrant as mayor, especially one from a national background and adhering to a religion viewed with suspicion by many of the country’s politicians, just totally out of character for a city that hist—I’m sorry I’m just getting a message in my earpiece

<gesturing helplessly> Well, you see, there’s this thing called an idiom and—actually, let me back up, there’s this place called New York and— sorry, let me start over, there’s this phenomenon called a lighthearted—OK I think I need to frame things by saying there’s this idea of human social interac

for the love of god, don’t make me explain the joke

REMEMBER, if you are in line to vote in the New York City elections NO YOU ARE NOT you are On Line

“I could smell the onions and mustard”

PTSBLT

They’ll be digging up these sandwiches for decades, like they did in London after the Blitz. Combustible Comestibles.

“I could smell the onions and mustard” Is the Dumbest Timeline’s “whiff of cordite”.

Poor old Josh is being tackled more on the concourse than he was yesterday at Soldier Field. He is being very game about it, in fairness.

“For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the Law.”

Prediction is hard, especially about the future.

I mean it’s not as if anyone lives in or is from [checks notes] Nigeria

Hegseth’s use of the phrase “lethal kinetic strike”—in particular that “kinetic”—is one of the frontiers in BTL (Bullshit Tactical Language), where quasi-technical bureaucratic phrasing meant to euphemistically efface what you did contends with the childish desire to excitably specify what you did.

As a backdrop this works very well if you start at the top and then escalate to reading the final two words as a sort of incredulous expostulation.

Oh well.

CMOT Dibbler moment: Electric Rickshaw guys doing a roaring trade transporting Irish fans four at a time from Millennium Park to Soldier Field, luring them in by loudly playing rocked-out versions of Irish trad songs on the rickshaw speakers.

Kiwi on the walk to Soldier Field, surveying the ratio of fans: “I hope someone in Ireland remembered to turn the lights off.”

American Woman on the El: Yeah I’m here for the New Zealand - Ireland rugby match. [Interested queries from seat mate about nature of the sport] AW: Actually in most other countries it’s traditionally a men’s game

Downtown Chicago showing a strong excess of rugby-jerseyed jet-lagged Irish people in search of sausages.

It’s the Garden of Forking Bats.

Watts & Strogatz (1998) except you’re living in the bad timeline that’s also the dumbest possible timeline. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/u...

The last piece in our @kjhealy.co and @marionf.bsky.social Ordinal Society review symposium is now out ➡️ The order of things beyond Foucault and our categories to make sense of it - Juan M. del Nido. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Oh fuck off.

Poor chap, his lip always wrinkling And now he's dead It must have been two legs or the heart fed that way They said. Oh, no no no, head half sunk all sideways (Look on my Works, despairing!) I had far too much clout all my life And not waving but frowning.

This is a bad idea. Recruiting talented people from other countries is a good thing. American universities have been very good at it in particular. Recruiting talented people tends to benefit everyone. We should keep doing it. I am speaking in short sentences for the benefit of the Governor.

Really bringing the Hallyday Stans out of the woodwork here.

When you’re desperate to get a real heavyweight French intellectual to come out swinging against Mamdani and the best you can do is BHL, the Johnny Hallyday of Philosophy.

<elon musk voice> We must RETVRN to the classic literature of the Western Canon which, from Tolkien on back through Shakespeare and Beowulf to the Ancient Greeks, is unfailingly about how if you just side with the toughest-looking guys in your area then you can’t go wrong </falls and wets pants>

He’s just so stupid, is the thing. So, so stupid. Like, we can comment on the poisonous heart of it in a minute, and how terrible it is that he can spew this stuff in a media environment he can pay to control. But first we have to get past just how clankingly stupid he is. How stupid all of this is.

Sixty five years after humanity figured out powered air flight, US airlines alone carried 130m passengers a year on 13,000 flights a day. Sixty five years after figuring out powered space flight, about 650 people have ever been. In 2021, a record 19 people were in space at once, for about 3 minutes.

Try explaining this one away, Claude Lévi-Strauss

New GSS release means new gssr and gssrdoc, and a bonus graph about opinion on immigration. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

I continue to sincerely want the term “Kavanaugh Stop” to be a badge of shame for the rest of Brett Kavanaugh’s days; the only bit of writing he’s known or remembered for; his sole contribution to the Law; for him to perceive, in little stabs of self-awareness, that this will be his rancid legacy.

Looking forward to the unstable MAGA coalition further rupturing on the unexpected fault-line of trans fats

Someone get me Sam Altman on the phone; I need to tell him I found his Halloween costume for this year

I can’t say I have any interest in watching “After the Hunt” but seeing a still from the film makes me think that someone involved doing research for it came across Shelly Kagan’s very popular series of lectures, and this seems like it’s just about the only plausibly accurate thing in the movie.

I just discovered the existence of Cyclox, which seems to be a very nice organization and not, as you might reasonably imagine, a demon of the nether world, a potent mutagen that has escaped the laboratory, or the terrifying Reeducation and Rectification division of a dystopian administrative state.

There’s something very specifically English about the phrase “Indefinite leave to remain,” where by “English” I also mean “Awful”.

Confused Frodo: “What’s the groyper word for ‘Friend’?”

Manhattan plot.

These shrines and altars are getting increasingly inaccessible and poorly-maintained; poor showing from the local authorities, who talk a big game about harmony with nature and the importance of due care and attention to detail etc

WTF