Look this is a dumb thing to say but honestly I don’t know why Kevin ever dribbles or passes. Him shooting a catch and shoot three over someone is one of the most efficient shots the rockets ever take.

I have the flu and it sucks. I can’t really look at screens for too long so I’ve decided to relisten to all 100+ episodes of Mike Duncan talking about the Russian Revolution until the Revolution ends or I feel better. Somehow I must believe that Pavel Axelrod will fix me.

There has never and will never be a permanent political victory for any party or ideology. Neither authoritarianism nor egalitarianism will prevail in the end, because the end stubbornly does not come.

Tenting my fingers halfway through listening to “Cruisin” by Coolio for the first time: “Hmmmm, yes. Interesting adaptation choices so far.”

The Campaign Trail will pay for its crimes.

Carefully considering how I’m going to broach the subject of Kevin Durant’s dms in my AP world history classes tomorrow after the long weekend.

Happy Valentine's Day

The specific phenomenon of one team having a defensive line the other team categorically cannot handle happens weirdly frequently in the Super Bowl.

You won’t believe this because it basically never happens but we created a warrior caste that enjoys special privileges in exchange for total loyalty to the monarch and willingness to do violence on his behalf. Anyway they’re dissatisfied because they aren’t getting the privileges they imagined.

Returning, as I do from time to time, to the passage in Black Jacobins about the Le Jeune case. It’s been a couple years since I have had the opportunity to teach this passage but hopefully I can correct that soon. A direct and damning account on the nature of elite impunity.

The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, it must divide.

Steve Kerr is in the Counting Crows documentary a lot more than you’d think.

The “inability to distinguish cause and effect” as Ganz describes here is necessary for one of the essences of conservatism: the establishment of an unimpeachable innocence for themselves. As someone whose job it is to teach kids causality I think about this often!

I don’t love how prominent gambling on future events with unpredictable outcomes (like sports) has become. But that shit is an absolute bed of roses compared to permitting gambling on future events where dozens or hundreds of people already know the outcome. It cannot exist in a fair society.

Is Steven Adams the mvp of the league?

Some of my most meaningful moments as a teacher have been when I’ve been able to remind a young man that feeling something or enjoying something doesn’t make him less of a man.

Who will be the famous progressive activists of this era that AP US History students have to learn about in the year 2160? Will one of them be Will Stancil? That would be weird, right? Probably better for everyone if we just don’t worry about it too much.

Is Amen Thompson real? Does he bleed human blood? Has he come from the future to save us?

This is just absurdly poorly evidenced. The basis of his claim that education is worse now is an anecdotal complaint made by one historian in the 1940s about incoming college students which he compares to studies of all students 40 and 80 years later. Only 5% of students went to college in 1945!

Me: Oh sure Isaac, it’s great. Frame by frame stuff, anything you could possibly need from an episode. Reminds you of the quality of animation in the early seasons. IC: And it’s called Frinkiac? Me: Yes, obviously. IC: So to you, this is appropriate for professional communication?

Last week, from @josephinelee.bsky.social: Each year, 1000s of students apply for a seat at one of the top performing magnet high schools in Houston. But that opportunity could end under a proposal to turn 7 top high schools into private partnerships.

Hey #NBAsky ! How well does a group of Texas high school students and teachers know the NBA? I have the cumulative choices made by an intrepid group of 70+ predictors from my campus on the end of year standings, let's take a look at what they collectively think will happen.

West 1. OKC 2. HOU 3. DEN 4. LAC 5. MIN 6. LAL 7. GSW 8. SAS 9. MEM 10. POR 11. DAL 12. SAC 13. PHO 14. NOP 15. UTA

East 1. CLE 2. ORL (I believe the hype) 3. NYK 4. DET 5. MIL 6. ATL (I believe this hype less) 7. MIA 8. TOR 9. PHI 10. CHI 11. IND 12. BOS (no bigs, stealth tank) 13. CHA 14. WAS 15. BKN

You should be watching Fever - Aces probably.

Is the fact that assassins are so often weirdos with incoherent politics a function of being an assassin or is it just that most Americans are weirdos with incoherent politics but killing someone prominent is the only reason we pay attention to a typical American’s politics?

I agree with this take. Periodization is a tool we use because it has explanatory power for comprehending the past. Attempting to preemptively periodize the times through which you are currently living explains nothing, and mostly seems designed to produce anxiety.

I don’t get how people believe the Kawhi thing can just blow over. Even the “innocent, I was just scammed” explanation represents an enormous problem for the league that is at least the manslaughter version of cap circumvention.

Students telling professors what they think they want to hear in essays is inherent to the whole traditional structure of education and grading. It frequently happens even when instructors explicitly and repeatedly tell kids they shouldn’t. It has nothing to do with ideological lean of teachers.

Holy shit the new Pablo Torre episode is something else. I don’t really think Kawhi can get in trouble here, at least with the league, but Ballmer and the Clippers definitely can.

I alienate people by using academic sounding language that makes them feel uncomfortable when I talk about the “enslaved people” who were victimized by the Transatlantic Slave Trade in class. I’ve gotten emails and had conferences on this with both parents and students.

For what it’s worth, and it might be something for the various 38 year olds on this website, the horror of slavery’s sexual violence and the severing of families is much more likely to be taught in an AP US history class today than it was ten or twenty years ago.

I do not think influential pundits should use their platforms as therapy.

Where is the Democratic Lu Bu?

Peter’s right and I think one way people make mistakes here is by assuming that teenagers are wildly more technologically savvy than they actually are. A lot of the technological skills they have that impress and intimidate adults are deeply shallow and non-transferable.

You believe in voting? That pales in effectiveness to my strategy, receiving a sacred magic book from the god Huang-Lao and creating a rebel cult with my brothers.

Remember that joke on Parks and Rec where Kathryn Hahn, playing a political consultant, believes she has the perfect candidate because he is totally emotionless, boring and does literally nothing but what he’s told? I think those are the instincts that dem political consultants have for real.

Wow some of you people really hate Austin, huh. It’s be cool if when the Joe Rogan assholes start trashing us our ostensible political allies defended us a little bit instead of trashing us more. Ok if not though, you do you!

You just have to hope that Burns is cynically attempting to promote his film to audiences for whom statements like this are appealing. Because if this an accurate accounting of how he thinks of history as a discipline, it’s a mindset that would not pass muster in a reasonably rigorous HS course.

What’s one fact or concept from history that you wish you had learned in high school? (I’m looking for spots to spruce up some curriculum and in my experience asking this question of random adults can lead to interesting things for classroom.)

I do think there is a part of the conservative mind that believes this- that the world is so deeply cruel that to even imagine the impossibility of things being better is to do true evil. It is reminiscent of how Clarence Thomas conceives of race relations.

Happy 4th of July!

checking in on the United States on July 4th:

This way of thinking about schools and schooling turns lower performing students into obstacles to be removed and higher performing ones into tools to be allocated and distributed as fits the needs of the powerful. It sucks.

For my fellow high school educators - I think this is essential for us too. Students are fascinated by the Haitian revolution, but too often it’s taught abstractly and with either no characters or only a thinly sketched Toussaint. Take it more seriously and put it in context - the kids will respond.