Good night, Chicago. May we find beauty in the soon-to-be new year.

Years and years ago at an AHA, a reporter at the Chronicle asked me what I'd like to see from them in the coming year and I said "Try to go a week without quoting a professor from an Ivy league school." I am re-upping that request but I'd like to broaden the publications it applies to.

yeah i think the issue here is now not so much a successful consolidation under Trump/Vance (short of a Yoon moment, I don't think they have the juice): it's the fact that the underlying energy behind Trumpism is likely going to turn the future GOP into even more of a nightmare

Basic income must be the most studied policy of all and yet we keep getting more trials because politicians cannot accept how well it works

"Norman Rockwell was antifa" bsky.app/profile/adam...

I sat by Liam Neeson at his son's basketball game. And Fernando Viña signed my cast.

Ahem

I see lots of people telling me that AI and LLMs can be useful for skills building. But I have yet to see them list any actual skills; or they're listing skills that students should already have; or skills that you suddenly find yourself having to pay for when you previously had them for free.

Maybe, if you're not actually in university classrooms, teaching students in the age of gAI, perhaps you might want to stop and listen when people actually in those classrooms raise concerns about what they are seeing; and not just dismiss us as luddites, or boomers, or cruel profs playing cops

i don’t see how any of the benefits of chatgpt and other consumer-facing LLMs can possibly outweigh their incredible ability to induce suicides

Mom: "Turn on a movie for us to watch!" Mom spends the next fifteen minutes floating in and out, working on a project. Mom: "Who is that? What's their relationship to that person? Why are they doing that?"

The US has had the most combative, organized and social movement oriented working class in the West over the last fifteen years, there are whole national street mvmts people have completely forgotten about (OccupyICE, anybody?) and anyone who fails to name this assessing the political situation 🚮

Insane but true fact: making US roads as safe as Canadian, Australian, or European roads would save more lives than eliminating murder from the US.

Make a Bond movie academic: Dr. Insufficient Data

Make a Bond movie academic: Dr. Spectre No, PhD, Asst. Provost for Atomic Studies From the Dean With Love and the Directive to Turn in Projected Course Loads Today

Make a Bond movie academic: The Word Count Is Not Enough Cry Another Day No Time to Cry You Only Publish Twice The Man with the Golden Parachute

Big tech is spending millions to push back against rising opposition to data centers. Meta has spent over $5 million in the past month on ads promoting data centers. An industry trade groups is also ramping up lobbying, and sending talking points to members of Congress.

Y'all know we can tax them and do this by law, yes?

But Gollum did not know about potatoes, meaning they had reached Middle-earth in the 500 years since he took refuge beneath the mountains. In this essay I will

Hey it's almost like that's most of the intention...

Walmart has long been a facilitator of fraud on a mass scale, a ProPublica investigation found. More than $1 billion in fraud losses were routed through the company’s financial services between 2013 and 2022. (Published Jan. 2024)

Thinking about the time one April when my high school students were doing small group work, so I put some jazz on in the background. A student asked why I had turned on Christmas music. He had never heard jazz outside of the context of Christmas. Merry Christmas.

MAGA: America is a Christian nation! Me: Cool the Bible says in Leviticus "When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born." MAGA: Not like that.

There's a story in today's Chicago Trib on return of 🦬 Bison to Kane County IL prairie, but here's earlier Kane* County Forest Preserve pr for free There is a bison herd in Mo's Prairie State Park, Barton* County mostateparks.com/park/prairie... *Both named for pro-slavery politicians

Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon on Thursday, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus. For @reuters.com:

Interesting comparing several news sites covering “Christmas celebrations return to Bethlehem”. Most foreground the happiness of B’s Palestinian Christians and how, post Gaza “ceasefire,” things are now looking up. If at all, they bury deep in the story the stark realities of how bad things remain…

“Like prime, but with human beings”

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @reuters.com

Cars can be useful, like pencils, and fun, like Sour Patch Kids, and yet at the same time it was a mistake to fundamentally reorganize society around them.

May the coming of the kingdom of God lead to the end of the anti-Christ behaviors, actions, and beliefs of empire. May Christmas remind us that our commitment to love and justice for our neighbor stands as the ultimate test of our love for God. Merry Christmas!

One of the late Obama scandals was his AG meeting with Bill Clinton briefly on a tarmac

This is a model for what actual masculinity should be. Men don’t need to spend more time in caves beating their chests with other men; they need to take their daughters to a meaningful thing and talk to them about it. Relatedly I think the biggest cure for toxic masculinity is platonic women friends

it gets worse, highway expansion proponents. *scott walker* just dunked on you.

NYT shows how Bari Weiss really screwed this up. She didn't attend any of the 5 screenings of the story, which began on Dec. 12. She only first weighed in on Thursday, and the show incorporated her suggestions. She then waited until weekend to ask for more edits. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/b...

The AP knows what it is doing with lines like this:

Football stadium money is a quiet way for governments to increase the wealth of oligarchs

At the close of Advent & coming celebration of Christmas, as we welcome Christ into the world, our homes, & hearts, we are at a difficult political moment. Christians must ask themselves: Are we searching for ways to be more expansive in our love for neighbors or trying to set limits on God's love?

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

The Abundance movement often points to environmental groups as the obstacles to building. But who actually files the lawsuits blocking projects? It’s not environmental groups. It’s been lawyered-up HOAs protecting property values all along. Regulation by litigation is the problem.

The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina has finally received full federal recognition, which it has sought since 1888. Tribal leaders were moved to tears after President Trump signed the measure. n.pr/3L95mJU

If you are using AI slop for your history-themed podcast/blog/social media, you are doing us a disservice. Just looking at these photos, there's so much misinformation, it's disheartening. If you are committed to telling history, stick to authentic and original content, don't cut corners with AI!

I think precisely because I am the province socialist is the reason I will never be the province socius.

From Chicago to LA, masked armed men are dragging people off the street, out of cars, from places of employment, and disappearing them into detention centers for deportation Join our webinar on Wednesday, Dec. 17, to hear from union members fighting back labornotes.org/events/2025/...

Mozilla has a new CEO and he just announced that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser. This is a good example of how management doesn’t understand its own user base and why they go out of their way to install Firefox on Windows, Android, iOS and other devices blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/l...

Spotted at a church in River Forest, a wealthy suburb in Chicagoland.

Read Seth's whole thread, but this kicker is the key.

Well, this is an utter disaster for science. This gutting of peer review is very likely driven by Project 2025/OMB/Vought, very likely is about funding junk science, and very likely is coming for #NIH and biomedical research next. 🧪

Applying wood finish always takes significantly longer than I'd expect. But I got first coats on everything tonight. Tomorrow I'll have to wax the cutting boards for a little extra longevity. Everything here is from reclaimed or refinished materials. #woodworking

I've heard anecdotal evidence from Texas colleagues across the state that even innocuous classes that touch on race (for example, journalism by and about minoritized communities) are being banned and removed under this new censorship regime.

Another college teacher & I keep running into a situation where we tell students to cite (we teach them how). Instead of citing, they simply have a bibliography at the end. Are high school teachers telling students that bibliographies are all that's needed? Just trying to understand the trend.