Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

Thomas Merton, translating Chuang Tzu

I find it funny that Bari Weiss's new initiative is all about bringing SERIOUS DEBATE about IDEAS THAT MATTER back to television news, but the combatants are all podcasters or dudes like Stephen Pinker, who is being asked to weigh in on a subject very far outside his actual lane.

Gorgeous new handmade book from Ange Mlinko and Foolscap Poetry www.foolscap-poetry.com

Chicago is having none of this administration's BS.

Pantone just updated their Color Of The Year

Year(ish) in review: published a monograph, concluded a reading tour, read Hegel, took a good office selfie.

one of the great, pernicious myths perpetrated about higher ed—which media, higher ed administrators, politicians, and a number of faculty are complicit in spreading—is that humanities departments close due to some combination of cratering student demand and unjustifiable cost. It’s not true

"Die Hard is a Christmas movie" Die Hard is a nostalgic allegory in which the mythical values of the American frontier triumph over technofuturist global capitalism. Grow up

George Oppen, doing his thing:

✒️ 📔 Today's the day of our C.D. Wright cluster! Ed. @aliciawright.bsky.social ft. 11 contributors—the list is too long to fit into a single post! But you're in luck, bc the thread below tells the tale of this exceptional homage for an exceptionally talented poet! post45.org/contemporaries

Am I the first law professor wanting to assign parts of this book to law students, esp. the Introduction by @johannawinant.bsky.social and @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social

No one will ever sum up Bari Weiss's career more succinctly than "what's the point of standards"

Passerby snapped a good one of the Ghia

It’s a beautiful evening to be a democratic socialist

what terrifies these people most is that Mamdani started off in single digits and now he's got Staten Island magas liking his policy proposals. there's no role for the consultant class in an ecosystem where people run on principles

Sunday

Shoutout to whoever was like the news sucks, let’s spice it up by doing a jewel heist at the Louvre

No university that signs the compact will be a university, in the accepted sense, anymore. They will be mere Trump Institutes, teaching only what subjects Trump doesn't bar them from teaching -- and only until he does. Signing is an abdication of responsibility and an act of great moral cowardice.

Again, Kavanaugh justified racial profiling by claiming that this doesn't happen--a justification that becomes more preposterous with each passing day as Trump's goons terrorize more people based on the color of their skin ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/brett...

Just posting this. Everyone knows why.

It’s here!

Basically this was all a game to the right and when Kirk got taken out they’re mad and in panic mode because this wasn’t supposed to be real for -them-

I knew Lear had ended up in a poem of mine and here it is.

when the interview goes well: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

RIP Jonathan Lear, whose course on Freud changed my life

Let’s mock them still

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

They did it. They fucking did it. They made me like Jimmy Kimmel.

what ezra doesn't seem willing to accept is that charlie kirk was part of a political movement that does not think that "we are going to have to live here with each other" and is fact very interested in the elimination and/or subjugation of many, many people

I am losing my mind

staring straight into the camera and lying. just a despicable person and a poor excuse for a national leader.

I know there are tenured professors out there who breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the A&M firing happened to a non-tenure-track faculty member. It’s going to come for you too, so maybe this is a good moment to do unto others etc.

Went for a drive

Love and companionship would be nice but more importantly: half off rent

When you leave for the weekend and 14 lets you know what’s going on

I caught a recent performance of John Cage’s “4′33″” and thought it was perfect: no notes.

headed into the rest of the week with Trump still alive

Beach read

This isn’t an impoverished regional school – this is the University of Chicago. Devastating.

I believe these are the first four academic books to cite an episode of American Vandal, which, like, there will be prizes.

DMV folks: 804 lit salon on August 16th at 7p. Always lmk if you need an invite or want to be added! We will have readings from @vjoshuaadams.bsky.social @Amanda Newell Allie Barkmeier, Molly McGinnis, Bailey Blumenstock, and @ktonbsky.bsky.social www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=...

It’s… almost as if the attack on higher ed wasn’t about “make it practical vocational training” but instead “we hate nerds and scolds and poets”

the corollary to the absolutely true “one day, everyone will always have been against this” is that they’ll also never truly forgive you for being loud and right long before they were, unless you play along and pretend for them

Great podcast. Great guest. And, let’s face it, great poem.

A Nazi owns Twitter, right wing billionaires own the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times, and CBS is run by a right wing nepo baby who just fired one of the network’s biggest stars for criticizing Donald Trump. Here’s why America has a left-wing media bias problem.

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

Philosophy and literature friends: I am pleased to announce that this book has finally entered the world! Intro and purchase information below!

They're building concentration camps with money they stole from medicare.

New arrival