thats an attack ad

I don't even vaguely understand people who spend their time handicapping electoral races which require a futurity that is profoundly threatened as if that's a non-issue. Sure, the false equivalence is also telling, but let's focus on making sure there IS a 2028 race, please.

In the race for "which unspeakable dystopia or postapocalyptic fiction is actually winning in its predictive power", it's a neck-and-neck right now between Brazil and The Handmaid's Tale.

The incoherence behind Carl's response is telling. This kind of white nationalism is moving beyond mirror-mimicry of identity politics, and Murphy adroitly calls Carl on his defensive shift from "white" to "ethnic"--and the ways in which for Carl "white" is not "one more identity" but the only one.

On 2nd March at 17:00 (GMT)/12:00 (EST) we will discuss a pre-circulated paper titled “La Negrita”: A History of African Girlhood in the Spanish Caribbean Slave Trade” by Dr. Elise Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell will introduce the paper for discussion. kingsearlymodern.co.uk/race-and-the...

The Science of Racial Slavery in the British Empire An academic panel featuring Dr. Brittany Merritt Nash, Dr. Elise A. Mitchell, and Dr. Kyle Prochnow Thursday, February 26, 2026 5:30-6:30pm The Bear’s Den Ursinus College

Unnecessary bending of the knee news marches on: Gallup suddenly decides that "Presidential approval" isn't worth measuring any longer despite having an 88 year database to compare it to. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/u...

Really moved by the point that people need to be loved in order to be happy. But let me index against that all the urgent demands to not eat this, don't drink that, do this exercise, behave this way, in public culture. None of them work to love the people they're calling out to.

Life has no extra speed bumps right now if you already thought very little of Chomsky.

I might be more interested in the Winter Olympics if there was an iceskating event that also had guns like the biathlon, with nonlethal ammunition. Like, a combination of fencing and gun-fu and skating.

It's the little failures that really hurt, the accumulating paper cuts that rip open what was a democracy and expose it to the septic shock that is Trumpism. Like a TV network going out of its way to censor the rest of the world booing the American Vice-President at the Olympics.

It is kind of difficult after reading that there's a kind of cheating in ski jumping that involves getting liquid injected into your penis so you get a bigger suit so the bigger suit helps your aerodynamics so that you win to not think "maybe competition has kind of lost the script, yeah?"

Miller and Vought plainly actually have several "comprehensive plans"--they're publicly available. But I also think it's not wrong to see plans emerging from circumstance. If we can see the fearful possibilities and hopeful counter-moves, they can too. 1/

Hey, so, I don’t do civil litigation, is it generally considered good when the judge does this? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

There's nothing left in DHS that is legitimate, so if Dems not playing ball shuts it down, mission accomplished. I think by the way that should happen to any federal agency where the White House is no longer provisioning service and benefits to all states and territories equally and without bias.

Star Trek's entire history at this point says that synthetic beings and logic-driven aliens famously struggle to understand language's ambiguities, but now we're seeing that mimicry of language is the easiest thing for synthetics and that rigorous logic is quite good with language.

I have been writing letters of recommendation for just shy of thirty years— 17 students this year alone— in ratios that more or less track the majority-women population of liberal arts students. Obviously I have never commented on a student's looks... and no recipient has ever called me to ask.

This is the Yale professor's explanation for why he described the physical attractiveness of a student in an email to Epstein. He explicitly says he regrets nothing about their association. Again, I'm so happy Yale hired David Brooks to restore trust. yaledailynews.com/articles/gel...

As far as I can tell, there are people than Epstein and Maxwell who could have been charged or at least investigated for trafficking but no police or judicial system seems to have tried--there's a "Daniel Siad" who appears to have been involved in identifying and transporting women, for example.

I really hate statements like "humans conquered the world with language"--these sweeping, reductive, one-variable-to-explain-everything statements that infest universal histories like weevils. Like bad openings of bad undergraduate writing from the days before AI did bad writing for undergraduates.

I hope I'm allowed to think this? The way that online Namibians are dunking on online Nigerians and vice-versa right now is very brilliant if also depressing in various ways. Unfortunately a lot of it is on X.

So spending some hours looking at the Epstein files, I see the following: a) really gross people that associated with him closely; b) greedy or status-seeking people eager to build a relationship with him; c) folks who met him once or twice but don't show up a lot. 1/

This is the U Penn donor who helped push the President out, pushed to eliminate arts & science offerings, and drafted Trumps "compact" with universities. People like Rowan repeatedly claimed the moral high ground to impose their agenda on students and faculty.

😳😳😳

Chotiner shot that man right in the face with his own gun and he never heard the *click*.

On reading Moltbook

Exactly this. People keep saying "well, scientists need to raise money". But almost all the academics who connected with Epstein were "entrepreneurs", creating carve-out institutes and projects and chasing big speaking engagements, who wanted to float above universities as institutions.

There's a fair number of exchanges in the Epstein files about dinners and social meetings with Daniel Kahneman as at least one of the guests, which is kind of depressing. Yet another one of the connections that Brockman facilitated initially, apparently.

Looking through the Epstein files to date, it sure looks like John Brockman was a very central enabler of Epstein's access to scientists, artists, public intellectuals, which explains why Epstein funded a lot of Brockman's expensive get-togethers.

straight up Gestapo shit

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

Does anybody else remember a weird blip in social media where Elon Musk's most ardent defenders (mostly bots, I think) were arguing that Musk was just sort of neurodivergent and in particular that he wasn't capable of lying so everybody should stop being so hostile and discriminatory towards him?

Not a single academic name connected to Epstein has surprised me, except by (so far) absence.

It's a small thing, considering that these guys don't care about the truth anyway and they're morally bankrupt in multiple ways, but as a historian I also just get pissed because this is untrue along so many lines of comparison and analysis.

Always a bit puzzled when there is lots of publicity for a history revealing something that historians have known and written about for a long time. It's good there is more about those subjects--we can always use more--it's just that I'd rather less of the "a totally new thing I have found out".

I would love to see a serious research project on the amount of money that has been spent on malfunctioning, underfunctioning, never-actually-functioned BigTech projects adopted too early, too late, etc. by governments and non-profits, and following where that money went.

Breaking news: Chuck Schumer politely asks executive departments to follow laws and regulations that already exist, hopes they will say yes, but promises to look into it if they don't.

Bari Weiss, more or less: "CBS News is toast if it can't evolve beyond broadcast news to being full-on state propaganda for a far-right authoritarian regime, so I'm beginning that transition now."

People who were alarmed by Trump's authoritarian potential back in 2015 have been vindicated. I think an even more important vindication is on warnings that unrestrained white nationalism would indiscriminately target all its racial and political enemies with no carve outs for non-white supporters.

Coates is always worth reading. apple.news/AEP72W5oLQW6...

So far in my interaction with customer service AI bots that are plainly powered by generative AI, I've had one that actually understood the specifics and provided a specific and valid answer. I've had eight that didn't have the faintest idea what I was asking about, worse than an offshore human.

Here's the thing that everybody needs to process fully. The current federal government no longer cares that we know it's lying, they no longer cares that the mainstream media says they're lying, they no longer care if the evidence proves they're lying. We are not talking to them any longer.

Every day that goes by in Trump 2.0 confirms that among the things I got right is that Trump is a nihilistic suicide bomber sent by his supporters to blow everything to smithereens. They have no ideas about what they want instead, just the end of what was. timothyburke.substack.com/p/trump-esse...

I'm still waiting for most of the Democratic Party's elected officials and the professional apparatus that infests the party to understand that the only way they will ever return to "normal" democracy in this country is a huge redesign of voting, constitutional systems and government structures. 1/

Soon to be rebooted as "Dishonesty", so don't worry, Bari Weiss fans.

I'm up for good arguments about AI's potential and its problems. I want the people who are excited by its potential to acknowledge organized attempts by very powerful corporate and governmental interests to aggressively suppress discussions of its problems.

The major thing I want the press to start doing is this: when you talk about what Americans think, when you talk about what Americans do, when you talk about how Americans feel, regard the majority of Americans as your first stop. The majority of Americans disapprove of Trump very strongly.

Look, if you want to know what Americans could do that Germans at the end of Weimar didn't do, opposing ICE everywhere they're operating and emphasizing how much the majority doesn't want them to do what they're doing is a great example of doing better.

The most mordantly hilarious thing in all of the Trumpist diarrhea is their faint-hearted citation of "meritocracy". Like, are you fucking kidding me? The Cabinet is a rogues gallery of incompetents, CBS is being run by an inexperienced dimwit, and so on. Give me a break.

Minnesota's citizens are showing that this country is too big, too decent, too democratic and too free in some deep sense for Trumpism to control it all. Trumpists are throwing massive amounts of money and resources into ICE. It's not enough. Thank you, Minnesota. Thank you America. Keep fighting.