We’ve been heading here for a while but this tech is providing a fig leaf for the idea that one doesn’t even have to pretend to literacy.

This is a newspaper headline from Back to the Future 2 when Marty McFly travels to the Biff world.

Look me in the eye (on Christmas morning) and tell me that I’m satisfied (if I don’t get this).

Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”

there is a metaphysical significance to the american pope visiting türkiye on thanksgiving that we will not understand until the beatific vision

Since there was some confusion, rational choice theory was popularized by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark and posits that the American “free market” in denominations/religions resists secularization in a way Europe has not.

American Pope going to Turkey on Thanksgiving is pretty funny if you think about it.

The former are often privately (even semi-publicly) horrified by the latter but have shown *no* indication of being willing to openly support the libs as a result.

What makes Taylor so good is he gets at all the profound meaning questions without providing open-and-shut conclusions. Dealing with these questions first of all requires depth.

Smith’s book has some flaws which some of the essays in Commonweal’a big symposium on it pointed out, but what it gets right is that perspectives like Douthat’s are drawing on basically anecdotal information and not accounting for huge cohort replacement issues.

Would only listen to an audiobook of this if it had the Geoffrey Burgon soundtrack from ‘80s miniseries.

This has gotten much much worse in the last decade or so much less compared to 80s-90s when I was growing up.

Has that guy written this Substack yet? Has to at least be in drafts.

Godard totally conceded commercialism to Truffaut to just do his weird thing which alienated a lot of audience members. Almost a Lennon/McCartney thing going on there except Godard more ideologically committed.

I think the geography of LI where you’re trapped and have to go through congested NYC roads or airports to get anywhere contributes to the reactionary politics, along with the migration eastward of Archie Bunker Queens white ethnic working-class backlash/resentment.

Should’ve done it as a remote from a Gristedes on the UES.

She was a prophetess.

Fergus Kerr (RIP) did this much better.

I’m from there; it was getting bluer per other inner suburban patterns but I think post-2020 NYC backlash moveouts reversed that progress by glomming onto existing reactionary streak.

Things I hate about modern Online: - link in bio - comment RECIPE and I'll DM it to you - link in comments - text that pops up over a video or picture making it impossible to read the text or properly view the image - no timestamps

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Kerr’s “After Aquinas” was the introduction to me as an undergrad of a lot of ideas I would later take up as a scholar.

His boss is old-fashioned on this type of thing.

One critique of Francis that lands is that his personal style of managing close subordinates did not match the synodality he proposed for the larger institution. But I think he knew this about himself, and moreover Leo is very much a corrective to this specific issue.

Synodality forces hierarchy to be functional and accountable rather than authoritarian (what critics of Francis got exactly backward).

Re-upping my Friday piece on the problem of influencer culture in U.S. Catholicism: open.substack.com/pub/gorebuil...

Amsterdam/Paris/London figure a lot more prominently for those countries' average citizen than big cities do here, and those for whom city transit is important in U.S. have their vote watered down by EC/Senate/filibuster.

Either that or "For Good"

U.S. transit is so bad for the same reason U.S. politics are so bad: lightly-populated areas with bad use case for transit are politically overrepresented and thus diminish the federal government's motivation/capacity to improve transit in the large metro areas.

Kathy Hochul is living proof that, when shit starts to get real, even the most mid politician can learn to throw elbows if they care to

in many ways trump and zohran are the glinda and elphaba of our timeline

Tie-ins for this movie getting out of control.

My latest looks at the problem of influencer culture in American Catholicism: open.substack.com/pub/gorebuil...

trump cheerfully and unwittingly driving a stake through every attack line about zohran is the funniest thing I have seen all year

man, this is such a good point -- Mamdani might be the first happy, well-adjusted person Trump has seen in weeks

ah yes, the thing that makes me a “cultured elite” is i am not a big enough rube to believe that trump is some bottom-up populist phenomenon bsky.app/profile/zacs...

What a goddamn legend. Every big tough conservative masculinity guy has been crying about how terrifying cities are to live in for the past two years and now Trump wants to move back to NYC

“I wish American visitors would stop giving me jerseys,” I said. “How about a little change of pace,” I said.

my sources are telling me that mamdani has committed to investing the entire NYPD pension fund in Ballroom

they're saying there's a spectre haunting europe and it's very nice, we're looking into it strongly, it's beautiful, we love it and we think it means well

Trump to Mamdani as they part ways: “You could have been my son.” (glances at an angry Vance, then back at Zohran) “But you’re not. Remember that. We’ll do business, but we’re not family.”

Hochul - a much less charismatic and skilled politican than Mamdani - has frankly accomplished this thus far. For all Duffy's posturing, the congestion pricing cameras are still on collecting tolls.

the other piece here is the New York piece, he is a New Yorker and he loves New York and he thinks being the mayor is very cool and he likes hanging out with the cool mayor he hates and wants to punish other cities but this is his town

Vance: Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They’re all just out of frame, laughing too.

in total seriousness, this is the context to both understand that comment and trump’s jokey “just say yes” about zohran’s fascist comment. trump 100% believes that there are things you say when cutting a promo that are meant to be taken seriously but not literally

god trump so clearly thinks mamdani is an alpha and is ingratiating himself

Average Threads post.

There’s a word we used to say. They don’t let you say it anymore, but I think it’s a beautiful word. We call it: dialectic. You have the thesis, and then the antithesis, and if you put them together it’s a synthesis. Very powerful. We’ll be looking into that. Very materialist, the theory of history