In an age of global migration the metropolis is the heartland.

This obit of Watson is *amazing*.

A good opportunity for an occasional reminder that Russia has an economy smaller than Italy and, contrary to Italy, makes nothing anyone in their right minds would buy.

@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social message breaking through at the pro-Democracy vigil on Dartmouth Green this sfrernoon

HAPPY FOUR SEASONS TOTAL LANDSCAPING DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE

Reviving Cesare Lombroso‘s 19th Century theories of criminal physiognomy, but now for HR to narrow down the applicant pool.

My favorite comment on the FT story

Wer einmal ein Drittmittelprojekt verwaltet hat, weiß, wie eng da Hilfskraftstundensätze und Reisekostenvergütungsrichtlinien ausgelegt werden. Aber hey, “besondere politische Bedeutung”! Da muss man halt mal ein Auge zudrücken.

Es wird bald nicht mehr meine Hauptsorge sein, aber: Dass eine deutsche Professur mittlerweile in erster Linie in der Lizenz besteht die Gelder aufzutreiben, die man braucht um die Arbeit zu tun, für die man eingestellt wurde, ist problematisch, aber man kann auch als Geisteswissenschaftler:in /

Zur Brandmauerfrage ein betrüblich blauäugiger Essay von @claudiusseidl.bsky.social in der SZ: Es sei „Zeit, dass die Konservativen in diesem Land die Rechtsextremen in die Verantwortung nehmen“, durch Mitregierenlassen. 1/12 www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/union...

Exklusiv | In der Fördergeldaffäre um Ahmad Mansour springt ihm nun die Ethnologin Susanne Schröter publizistisch zur Seite. Sie gibt die neutrale Beobachterin. Interne Dokumente zeigen jedoch: Auch sie sollte von den rund 9 Millionen Euro für Mansours Projekt profitieren. 1/x

this looks like a trick daffy duck would put up to get bugs bunny into "the oval office"

Mamdani got a humanities degree. His win helps to illustrate that one of the central forces driving higher ed’s dissolution of the humanities is the fear that teaching people how power works can also lead to their interest in seizing it on behalf of the less powerful.

The obsessive wokeness panic is about elite labor market competition and prestige. People use a lot of fancy words to obscure this, and offer some substantive criticisms as well, but that’s ultimately its driving force.

I've had an extended look at rural America and I can tell you the place is effing empty.

In an age of global urban migration, the metorpolis is the heartland.

Congrats to Mira Nair’s son, this is nowhere near the level of achievement as directing Mississippi Masala but a good start

this is the most successful a CIA officer has been at toppling a government in years.

Wow it turns out the entire country is not permanently reactionary because Trump won an election by 1.5%

Looking forward to learning all about how the right should move left to win elections tomorrow. They should maybe dye their hair pink, learn to love pronouns.

"Cinematic gateways to ancient Greece" Pantelis Michelakis (University of Oxford) talks about silent cinema's depictions of Ancient Greece in this free online lecture. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/housman-le...

i'm a very biased party here but pretty much everything about the Mamdani campaign and the discourse around it thus far is a pretty thorough vindication of Africana Studies

Indian Summer Moonlight

Damit habe ich nun auch kein Kriterium mehr, anhand dessen ich meine chinesischen Studenten in Dartmouth den Unterschied zwischen dem Wissenschaftssystem in Deutschland und dem in der Volksrepublik China erklären könnte.

Two Godard film titles on one page of Proust (a passage in which the youthful, reclusive protagonist scans the beach of Balbec for girls to fall in love with and dwells on the futility of his desire) – coincidence?

The only thing that can save Nigeria now is Americans' complete and utter inability to find the place on a map.

Mind you WaPo wouldn’t release its actual diversity numbers

n a lot of European countries running elections with proportional representation Trump would have set up his own party, got 7% in his first election, 16% in the second one and then crashed to 4% after flouncing out of a coalition where he was junior partner

Switzerland has four official languages, and so does Singapore. Both countries significantly exceed the economic performance of the US.

That impact analysis has been done, by leading independent experts. Here it is, open-access in the @thelancet.com —> doi.org/10.1016/S014... "The complete defunding of USAID would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually." Two. And a half. Million. Deaths. Each year.

When taking down bronze statues always make sure to melt or shred them. That way they can never be put back up.

Dartmouth moon

i live by John Waters' definition of wealth: It's when you can buy any book you want to read.

Colleges' AI policies appear to be part of a broader effort to snatch away decision-making power over teaching, learning, and research from subject matter and pedagogy experts and give it to donors and administrators. defector.com/higher-eds-r...

l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness

Wer in einer Diskussion Leute beleidigen muss, um sich Gehör zu verschaffen, hat kein Vertrauen in die Kraft seiner Argumente (hier: Thomas Matter, rechtsnationalistischer Privatbanker, dessen Geschäftsmodell offenbar durch eine stärkere Integration in EU-Steuerregime in Frage gestellt würde).

Josh Marshall, the moralist (in the French, La Rochefoucauld sense) this moment needs: Fear, Greed, Civic Virtue and the Fall of the Elites talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/fear-...

Both sides of the Connecticut

The East Wing has learned its lesson. by Susan Collins

Each one of those 98/99% of failed applications represents dozens or hundreds of hours of work for the actual applicant; a vast stack of emails about budgeting, cost-centres, reviews, approvals, HR, Finance Office, Research Support... Pissed. Up. A. Wall. For the sake of only picking "winners".

That's all fine and dandy but they should go back to building cars, too.

cc @peterpomerantsev.bsky.social

Tomorrow 7pm at Loew Auditoriium in the Black Center for the Visual Arts @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social : A free screening of Fredi Murer's "Alpine Fire" (1985), a visually stunning, pitch-prefect story of love, isolation and violence and one of the great films of world cinema of the last 40 years.

Governments should own their own infrastructure. They have the scale to make it efficient. It's absolutely ridiculous that we've allowed this privatisation to develop.

Kein Problem – leitet die Züge einfach um über die Autobahn!

so I gather this is a lot of people's first middle east cease fire.

"The appeal of these leaders for many rests on their having the power to get away with things that ordinary men cannot, whether in the bedroom or in politics." -- @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social , "Strongmen: Mussolini to the present"

I'm not sure it's common knowledge but there are literally thousands and thousands of people employed in India working 9-5 to train LLMs to be "smart" and "safe". Tech bros laud it as a technological achievement but it's the same old story - just another way of hiding the real labor of people.

Timed to coincide with the No Kings protest, Dartmouth's response to the "give up your academic freedom and institutional autonomy for federal funding, maybe" compound proposal is also a "no".