“Ouija v. Board” 😂😂💀

2 more thoughts on birthright: 1. The movement to overturn Roe and Humphrey's Executor was built over decades. It took an enormous amount of effort to manufacture that sense of scholarly viability (see: Teles, Hollis-Brusky). The right got 5-4 on birthright with a sloppy last-minute scramble

In Prague for the #HumeSociety conference… It’s nice to be someplace where nobody’s tempted to misspell or mispronounce my name (I’m not used to that 😆).

This is indeed the case and it's perhaps not gotten as much attention as it should. The lower courts are bordering on open mutiny to an unprecedented degree, and it's not just Democratic appointees. The Supreme Court's perceived legitimacy is in freefall *within the federal judciary.*

Because everyone needs to see pictures of 10th-century German tchotchkes that look like three-legged fish.

No, see, "overruled 90 years of precedent in order to expand presidential power" is the way *critics* describe it. *Your* side says: resisting intrusion into core executive functions, protecting the sanctity of the separation of powers, and acknowledging that the precedent has been whittled away.

It is such a shame seeing DSA discredit progressive politics by taking tankie-adjacent foreign policy. Democratic socialism shouldn't mean that you should do apologia for dictatorships that happen to claim to embrace socialism or throwing other nations under the invading tanks. 🧵🧵🧵

The issue is that nonpartisan, independent, and fact-based (good goals for journalism) have been replaced by centrist and equally critical of both parties, neither of which are journalistic principles. So confronted with a radical wing of the GOP, legacy media invents equally radical Dems.

It’s fun to be in Prague for the first time since 1991 (! —it’s changed a *lot*). Not so fun to have arrived on what I’m told is the hottest day in Czech history (38C/100F). 🥵

A lot of media coverage of the ‘AI’ reading of the Herculaneum scrolls really fails to understand what’s happened here. There’s no language processing happening, the AI/ML is not trained on a corpus of texts or language. It can detect ink to see shapes. HUMAN EXPERTS are then transcribing the text.

one of the use cases promoted on this website is a researcher who says that he used to have to talk to people in order to find out how problems are approached in other disciplines and genAI means now he doesn’t have to. 1- wouldn’t bet on the quality of answer he is turning up 2-how desperately SAD

I got Mark Carney… …but the quiz is idiotic—it has zero questions about economics or social policy and codes support for liberal democracy as “Davos” (!). britmonkey.com/2020s-politi...

That this made the Globe and Mail shows that Canada is…not a very dangerous country. (Good!)

Elite universities already provide tuition breaks for low income students. If you really want to a bold change, end legacy admissions, which entrench privileged families in the corridors of power. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/o...

Great thread on the kind of knowledge that the latest tech *doesn’t* capture.

Can we be candid and say this has been an insanely scary authoritarian week in America? Obscene SCOTUS rulings, activists sentenced to a century in jail, a blank check for the ICE regime. How’s it that so many in the US still haven’t grasped how to respond to these conditions? A few thoughts 🧵🧵🧵

i do think this is actually the perfect response insofar as it illustrates how these dorks actually just fantasize about getting to be the bullies in high school

Gregg gets it correct here. “New OMB grant rule” sounds nerdy. But this is a huge and insane plan. This is the Trump admin writing down their goal of fundamentally changing the relationship between government and society. Funding for everything will be taken over. 1/

Otters does not approve of your footwear!

Just read the whole thing and…wow. The former DNI was taking orders—literally; he told her what to say and she said it the same day—from a mentally ill cult leader whom former disciples describe as wanting to “rule the world” and who thinks the CIA controls people telepathically.

Yes, Bing Powell got it right years ago: PR requires *more* trust in compromise among party elites than first-past-the-post—not less—because voters don’t know before the election which majority coalition their preferred party will join and on what terms. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

I love this. Affordable, electric, no frills (but AC, which isn’t a luxury). But my favorite part?

I can’t believe we’re doing “Obama could have made Mitch McConnell confirm Scalia’s replacement but simply chose not to” again

Lander is (1) Jewish, (2) Also a liberal Zionist (though more fervently liberal than Goldman), and (3) not a member of the DSA. Other than that, great take.

New York Democrats spent decades creating a primary electoral system that worked to keep them in power as long as turnout was low and people not mobilized. This also makes it relatively easy for them to get turned out by a motivated minority.

Example #4736 of: “the median voter may be very different from what you imagine.”

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through 6/26, enjoy free standard shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

"They desperately want a movement of big, burly steelworkers and rugged coalminers. But there are more manicurists than miners in the UK by a 2:1 margin. Their image of the working class is an aesthetic, often an entirely imagined one, unconnected from the reality of life for most working people."

Final corrected version now published open-access Jacob T. Levy. 2026. Conceptualizing Academic Freedom. Annual Review Political Science. 29:57-72. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Precisely. A lot of MAGA is Poujadisme for oligarchs.

Glad Bluesky is so helpful. However: you should know that a book called “spirit possession in Judaism” is probably a list of jokes about where Josef hid the extra bottle of Slivovitz.

if I could convince people of one thing I sometimes think it would be that bigotry is a real thing and motivates people powerfully. it's not just a distraction or a way to manipulate people or a cover for economics. people actually hate and will do stuff based on that. 1

Not really the point but "I don't care about your fucking feelings" places you pretty high on both the sociopath and psychopath scales... caring about people's feelings is actually a pretty important part of being human.

I keep seeing "all authors use AI, the real issue is they're being forced to be sneaky about it" headlines. Full stop No. This is a lie peddled for normalization. It's schoolyard-level pressure tactics "C'mon, all the cool kids are already doing it. We won't tell. It's fine. We're on your side."

There's a very clear divide developing between Israel and the US. And only a fool wouldn't pound the wedge deeper. The Iranians aren't fools.

Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt, and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool

I’ve decided to get a haircut today. It’s been too long.

the problem with modern society is that everyone wants to run their country like a business and their business like a country but nobody wants to run their country like a country and their business like a business

question for those who work outside of academia: is your preeminent trade publication almost singlemindedly devoted to destroying your profession, or is that just a thing for us?

Funny..some of us don’t need *any* LLM to write our email. 🤔

NEW — I wanted to know if ICE’s newly uncovered plan to offload seven of the 11 concentration camp warehouses was actually a big deal, so I went straight to the expert: Michael Wriston of @projectsaltbox.com, which has been tracking these warehouses every step of the way. Our full convo here:

Your reminder that fairy tales are full of stepmothers because women once routinely died in childbirth, from postpartum sepsis, or from other infectious diseases and left behind housefuls of motherless children. Stable nuclear families are made possible by vaccines, antibiotics, and safe abortions.

I’ve charted American hegemony during the Iranian campaign

I was reared (by European immigrant parents, in L.A.) to hate “like.” But I realized in my teens that it really means something. “I was like, who are you?” means “I said *something to the effect of* ‘who are you?’“ When people intend an exact report, they avoid “like.” Pedants should listen more.

Like other countries, the US is urbanizing. NYC may be special in many ways, but a large majority (>80%) of the US population lives in urban areas, so it is far more representative than any rural area in everything but geography.

whoops

Nicely put.

Someone (not American) said on another platform: it might be “hard for Americans to hear,” but a US humiliation in Iran would be a good thing. Fellow non-MAGA Americans: is he right about the “hard” part? Do you feel a stake in this war? Would “humiliation” make you feel bad? (I’m guessing no.)