I have an academic book project planned after I finish my trade book (CULTURE AS CONVERSATION), but it is also very tempting to me to spend the coming summer writing and publishing, entirely free online, a high quality translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for use by teachers and students.

Because it's a good day, a thread of images from fantastic show I saw last week: African-American artist Allan Rohan Crite at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. First up, Crite's luminous "Streetcar Madonna," which resonates with incoming NYC mayor's pledge to make transit more affordable

I am beginning to think that I was wrong to treat Vermeule's Common Good Constitutionalism as kindly as I did in my review for Commonweal.‡ ‡ www.commonwealmagazine.org/vermeule-ori...

make a Bond movie academic Quantum of Solace: Towards a Psychotherapeutic Account of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

the fact that there is free parking at all in manhattan is wild to me

#9LC (Radio 4 re-broadcast)

Most of America has learned about Hakeem Jeffries’ terminal case of wet noodle syndrome but please let’s remember that he called the governor to ask her to weaken and delay this remarkably successful policy — and succeeded for months — to help out some of his suburban colleagues in the House.

🚨JOB ALERT🚨 Enjoy writing clever headlines and assigning one-of-a-kind stories? Have an eye for detail and a knack for turning rough copy into sparkling prose? We're looking for another editor to join our small but elite team covering New York City news and culture: hellgatenyc.com/hell-gate-is...

Great example of why mainstream news journalism’s practice of both-sidesism is so corrosive. There is an abdication of analysis here in the proposed framing. One sees the same thing in the New York Times and other papers, but in the hamfisted hands of Weiss it is more manifestly unserious.

After dinner tonight I sat down to read @philipchristman.bsky.social’s Why Christians Should be Leftists. It’s been a while since I read a book in one go, but Phil’s writing is so lovely that it was not a particularly impressive achievement. I expect to have more to say about the book soon.

Sad news: someone stole baby Jesus from our anti-ICE nativity. But vandalism cannot stop us. We just adapt and keep on critiquing this administration’s cruelty on immigration. Where’s baby Jesus? We don’t know. He is being detained in a labyrinthian hellscape where his loved ones cannot find him.

It's incredible that you could read the OP and not see that the point is to say that it's horrible that our housing crisis is so acute that so many asylum-seekers have ended up in shelters. It was a major crisis in New York City over the past couple of years, though it has since eased somewhat.

This is a delightful thread. Nothing quite prepared me for the Holy Dipstick.

Ollie Pope’s batting at number three for England in this Ashes series is enough to make anyone a Protestant.

As a reminder, rendering people stateless is a serious violation of international law because the Nazis used it as a weapon against Jews (the Nuremberg Laws). While there is a fraud exception, we already know this administration will expand its efforts and target people for political dissent.

I’m a naturalized citizen and yes indeed to all of this.

The Onion was one of the few things that kept me sane in that period of mass delusion, when the merits of bombing the hell out of a random country for no good reason became part of public opinion among both mass and élite in the US.

This is how you fight lawlessness.

The first snow of the season in New York has come at what is genuinely the most perfect possible moment for it: Gaudete Sunday, when we contemplate the joy of faith in the prophetic voice of one crying “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord!”

The Christmas paradox: everyone is dressed up and merrily partying in the time of preparation leading up to the observance of the Nativity — and then promptly moves on to other things in the twelve days during which they should be observing the season.

Stealworkers

This cannot be real….

American Gestapo rounding up citizens

In Lake Wobbegong, all the fish are above average.

If the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted to say it applied only to former slaves, they could easily have done so. To wit, the Fifteenth: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged [...] on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Can't remember if it was this bad before COVID but I'm seeing an alarming spreading of what I'll call Airport Behavior to other public places. Obliviousness to other people's existence, ineptitude at navigating the environment. "Is this your first time at the grocery store" type stuff

Yes. And to understand the present “discourse” on the right you have to realize that they largely accept that Black descendants of slaves are Americans, albeit second-class citizens, whereas the rest of us are simply not whatever our legal status. This is what the talk of being “old stock” is about.

JD Vance is right here in Douthat’s op-ed, albeit not by name: “The administration has offered a lot of general rhetoric about the value of Christianity to American civilization”.

Be disgusted. Then remember the Republicans like Tom Cotton who said they saw nothing of concern in the video. They were telling the truth. Murder doesn’t bother them. War crimes don’t bother them.

I’m delighted to have an essay in this month’s issue of @commonweal.bsky.social on faith and sacred music, a description in my part of my long journey from Oxbridge amateur chapel singer to practicing Christian as well as a meditation on the place of sacred music in our public culture.

People are not ready for my “murder is bad, whether it’s Pete Hegseth or Luigi Mangione who did it” take.

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com. We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans. washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

The fact that a second strike like that in an armed conflict is definitely a war crime should not completely negate the fact that *there is no war* and ALL the strikes are cold-blooded murder. The whole chain of command are murderers.

Given all this praeteritio, he's clearly been reading Cicero.

It’s pretty simple even in a war zone, which this most certainly is not: deliberately killing people who aren’t fighting is murder.

I will not coöperate with the New Yorker style guide. Sörry, not sörry.

From Frederick Douglass's 1867 "Composite Nation" speech, a defense of Chinese migration to the United States at a time when anti-Chinese sentiment was intensifying. teachingamericanhistory.org/document/our...

When people ask me why I wear white tie, I will simply point them to this video.

somebody who is good at the economy please help them budget this, their bullshit factory is dying

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

Vaccination against childhood diseases should not be framed as a "choice". It should be the precondition for participation in society, on a par with, say, not being inclined to murder.

Advent officially began for me tonight when I sang the Alma Redemptoris Mater for the first time after Compline.

The correct opinion about Star Wars (through the first six films) is that they were written childishly for the childish, and there's nothing wrong with that. But now our entire culture is like that, so there's nothing setting those films, or their successors, apart any more.

Three months of teaching Plato have clearly had their effect. I tried to write an essay about mediocrity and ended up writing an essay about love, beauty, and our desire to be more than we presently are. open.substack.com/pub/cultured...

If not exactly predictable, we can at least say this was predicted.

I think this clip is the key to understanding why Trump acted the way he did with Mamdani. His world revolves around TV ratings. "I tell you, the press has eaten this thing up."

I just watched someone make a left turn at high speed through a crowded intersection with pedestrians crossing with no turn signal in Manhattan. It was so egregious that I shouted "use your turn signal" and of course as he passed I saw he had his phone in one hand, steering wheel in the other.

Finally, a task for RFK Jr.

I don't know what an Olivia Nuzzi is, and I don't intend to find out.