This meeting could have been a NO FATS NO FEMS Grindr profile

I understand THAT people have decided it's not worth masking any more. But I'll never properly understand why, because I didn't like covid the one time I got it, and I never liked the flu or colds or norovirus when I would get them, and it's good never getting them any more.

"Why would it bow to antidemocratic pressures by placing a professor on leave without their request, consent, or involvement? That any university would do this is beyond comprehension and is cause for alarm about the future of academic freedom in Canada."

Przeworski says it cleanly, clearly, and convincingly. What then must we do? www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...

The thing regular people don’t often grasp about ‘academic freedom’ is that if you don’t allow experts to research & teach in their fields of expertise, guided by their professional judgment & decades of training, you have effectively given up on the concept of knowledge & shut down your university

Today, it was my pleasure to present the Computer History Museum book prize (on behalf of the committee) to Dr. Avery Dame-Griff, for his new book The Two Revolutions: nyupress.org/978147981831...

Cyril E. Power, "The Escalator," c. 1929 collections.mfa.org/objects/479542

Hi, Rhodes Scholar and Oxford grad here. This is trash.

You guys, so many Romance girlies are reading "On Tyranny" that they've broken the Goodreads recommendations algorithm. 10/10; no notes. #romancelandia

On the one hand it feels so, so stupid to be publishing a book right now, but on the other hand, I think: well, books survived the Nazis. It’s something I can put out to remind the world I existed and thought and cared, even if I don’t make it through.

Canada's in a real bind. Our current moment requires a massive increase in state capacity *across the board*. But the Carney government (ie, Mark Carney) seems to be ideologically opposed to a greater role for government outside defence. Ideologies die hard, even when reality is banging at the door.

I wish Antifa existed.

www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty... The free speech crusade will continue until complete conformity and submission are achieved.

I am so tired of the scapegoating of higher ed. No group that have had their speech rights more obviously curtailed, by the government, in the couple of years than college students. The govt is engaged in an obvious viewpoint discrimination lawfare campaign against campuses. But it’s not enough!

Each alleged mass shooter is even more On the Computer All the Time than the previous one. Probably nothing to worry about there

Incredible post 9-11 vibes for anyone who remembers Ari Fleischer's "all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.”

This is exactly the set of circumstances when we should be putting money into science and innovation. A country right next door to us that has been a leader in science and innovation is throwing it all away - we should be picking up at least some pieces. What are we doing here? Unfathomable.

A tenure track position in sound in cinema and media at U of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute: jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

My department is hiring! I'd be happy to answer any questions (esp. re: "experiential learning"). (I'm not on the search committee.) It's a swell place to work, with excellent colleagues, in a great (if blisteringly expensive) city. North of a particular border. jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Joseph Weizenbaum said “The myth of technological and political and social inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it. But in fact there are actors”

It is, in fact, my very favourite.

A Trump voter imprisons your neighbor it’s law and order. Kicks their gay kid out its religious conviction. Shoots you dead it’s self defense. Kidnaps you, it’s border security. Invades your town, it’s fighting crime. Tell them you don’t like them anymore, it was all just “political views.”

I did this today! You should do it if your work likely appears on libgen!

I mentioned yesterday for all the troubles in America right now, Americans would never tolerate the run of the mill secrecy every level of Canadian gov't exhibits. Fear & contempt for the public that pays for it.

Longtime listener, first time caller. Mél is a wonderful interlocutor, which made this an absolute privilege.

if we made immigration work how people think it works that would be the biggest liberalization of immigration in American history

I, too, am using in-class writing, but also making it pass/fail, students get feedback, and are then required to revise it at home, using revision techniques I teach. It’s not perfect, but it’s actually better pedagogy than the status quo ante.

What #ZcavengerHunt proved: people don’t just want to hang out—they want to build a fun public sphere and they want their political leaders to help organize it. When are we going to stop treating community as a volunteer project and take it seriously as public works?

CCT has its banner back! (After a very long and very bureaucratic process.) The banner is featured prominently in our logo. A banner on a Coach House on a banner on a Coach House. Coach House-banner-ception. #cultureandtechnology #mcluhan

This is a good piece (and no doubt speaks to a real institutional need for contemporary liberals) but I think it runs into a core presupposition problem, which is that liberalism as it now exists may genuinely actually be the defence of an unpopular status quo.

‘Too hungry to think, too weak to sit upright. Concentration slips away’: the struggle to stay focused as an academic in Gaza www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

The people dominating our political landscape, culture, and economy are just so stupid and full of shit it's almost impossible to describe

Air Canada's CEO admitting to the media that their entire plan for the flight attendants' strike was "have the government say they're not allowed" and that they have no other ideas about how to deal with the strike is really a "yeah this is how Canada REALLY works" moment if ever there was one

A massive attack on several humanities units (Arabic Studies, Judaic Studies, Holocaust Studies, Classics, Religion, German & Scandinavian, Russian/East European/Eurasian Studies) *and* tenure now unfolding at the University of Oregon (a blue state!). Closure of units and faculty layoffs threatened.

Once again, there is <no plan> for how to backfill 15-25% of the budget of every R1 university in the country, & 👇 is coming for every institution & voters/parents/students have no idea what this will mean in terms of courses/degrees/opportunities that will no longer exist. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

“It is acceptable [for an LLM chatbot] to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.” Meta’s depravity continues to shock.

this is disgusting and i suggest we should all be comfortable saying so

Discourse 46.3 is live! It features an absolutely essential piece reflecting on fascist times by Georges Didi-Huberman: "Why Obey?," skillfully translated by Heath Valentine from the short book Pour Quoi Obéir. Every piece in this issue is fantastic.

The other compromise liberals make is essentially to adopt what amounts to the old GOP position that education is for the ultimate interests of employers. No, education is for freedom. It makes us *less* subject to the whims of employers. You’re talking about *training.*

bro just one more GPT bro. just one more you dont have to read or write emails anymore bro. one more GPT will fix everything bro

With the launch of GPT-5 today, let me be the first person to say: oh all those problems with it? That's because GPT-5 is garbage. The technology has advanced so far since it was launched and GPT-6 will fix every single one of those flaws, for real this time.

"And yet there can be no debate that Brown just shunned liberty and chose spiritual death, in a future stripped of not just academic freedom but moral integrity, all in service to a wannabe king." - @willbunch.bsky.social

if your municipal council needs to wait until there's a change of provincial government to make decisions for your region, you don't have a municipal council.

The British media outlet ITV also went on a Jordanian airdrop and simply ignored the Israeli government’s illiberal demands: www.itv.com/news/2025-08...

Obviously yes you should read Andrea Long Chu’s latest for all the usual reasons (thrillingly blistering assessment of worthy target) — but these two somewhat standalone paragraphs exploring the true nature of American free speech left me absolutely gobsmacked www.vulture.com/article/post...

a lot of these guys really envision a future where technology relieves us of the burden of human experience

Joseph Weizenbaum in 1975: "The very asking of the question, 'What does a judge (or psychiatrist) know that we cannot tell a computer?' is a monstrous obscenity. That it has to be put into print at all, even for the purpose of exposing its morbidity, is a sign of the madness of our times." #ai

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring. Read it for yourself here: www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...