Eh - I don't think I agree At the very least, from an ethnographic standpoint, there's always something to be learned from what other people think Jim Jones was a depraved madman but studying his movement is worthwhile. I don't know why trump would be any different.

What I love about this is that even though this is only New York it lets landlords everywhere know that people are sick and tired of their bullshit and they better watch their ass

Whoops, I'm getting way too invested in this debate (and possibly realizing that Catholic embrace of immortal soul ultimately follows both Neo-Platonism of Ficino and the spirituality of Judaism via Ficino's student Pico della Mirandola, who tried to appropriate Kabbalah into Ficino's system?)

Sort of Pope does say AI lacks spiritual growth. It is true though, that AI research itself seems to be premised on dualism, since it is trying to abstract intelligence from a real, physical body Still, I don't know why we all need to dogmatically reject dualism, even if, as I do, we reject AI

So much of AI related goings on is just this album

I'm still working my way through this exciting, subtle, and complex article, but this point, that simulating a poorly understand phenomenon like intelligence is already a wrong turn, seems the most important point to keep in mind

As always, very practical and helpful information from one of the only organizations fighting for borrowers

Cyclists honored fellow riders killed by drivers with the Ride of Silence. blockclubchi.co/42OJdWI

As we celebrate Shavuot and the giving of the Torah, remember: The Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael tells us that the Torah was deliberately given in the wilderness, not the Holy Land. Ultimately, the people are a people of the book and the text, before the land and the soil.

I hate to say it, but as academia collapses in on itself, I can't help but wonder how things might have been different if academics had managed to reduce the level of condescending arrogance. It is actually possible to maintain rigor without making everyone who isn't an expert feel like an idiot.

Truly the best analogy for the US right now

There are soviet era lines at all of the grocery stories in Hyde Park, reduced library hours, etc., but UChicago still hasn't cancelled any classes.

Just spoke to The Hill about how the dismantling of the NIH is impacting science in America. We still face a cliff of unfathomable heights, w easily 1000+ labs poised to close in the next year due to funding ending. A generation of young scientists lost because there is nowhere for them to train.

" if The Wire used TV’s boundless canvas to push screen storytelling beyond pre-existing boundaries, then no show since has really sought to do the same." I would argue that these shows do exist but were mostly canceled (e.g. Lodge 49, the OA, the peripheral, Westworld)

Im still plumbing the depths of 16th century philology

an interesting way to assess someone's actual political beliefs is to inquire about the US invasion of Afghanistan. "Mark Peters is Danish. He lost his lower legs fighting in defense of the United States. Denmark answered the call after the 9/11 attacks . . ."

This article focuses too much on rankings, quantifiable research output, and discusses stem to the exclusion of the humanities, but still points to the real effects of anti intellectual cultural shifts in the US. . www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...

NEW: An original student debt report at the CFPB exposed loan servicers declining to answer consumer complaints + two private equity firms doing college tuition price-fixing + a giant default crisis. Trump-CFPB didn't like the report. So they tried to erase it. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

I forgot that when Clay Davis goes to trial in the Wire he's reading Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. Rest in peace to Isiah Whitlock

I love this as bad as people like Chavez and Maduro were, and they were bad, the alternative is often much, much worse. The binary thinking of good versus evil doesn't work in the American context, so why would it work in South America, or Burma, or Gaza? www.reuters.com/world/americ...

Off the top of my head I can't think of another country that spends this much time worrying about how accurately it's mimicking the beliefs of racists from the 18th century

The coach makes almost $12 million but the admin still won't recognize the grad union or pay instructors a living wage

Flying out to SF tomorrow morning for SCS I haven't been to the bay since I left CA in August 2024 I'll be presenting a paper on sartorial creation in Pherekydes and Ps 104 on Thursday I'm filled with a lotta nerves and excitement to be back in the bay and to be giving my first SCS talk

The weak European response is shameful, but it seems to be the other side of the Monroe Doctrine, in which other great powers accept US sovereignty over the Western Hemisphere

23 years of listening to centrist liberals blather on about incremental progress and the art of the possible and we are arguably worse off now on many of the most important problems: US Imperialism Global Warming Wealth Inequality Healthcare Abortion access LGBTQ rights Israel/Palestine

I'm copying and pasting this from 2003: No Blood For Oil

We should all be asking ourselves why it is that university leaders and even some members of the professoriate have been happy to jettison entire fields of humanistic scholarship on the grounds that "no one cares about the Middle Ages", when it is very clear that many members of the public DO care.

KMFDMF DOOM

Some of the responses to this are horrible. Targeting civilians is terrorism, and a war crime. It has always been a central reason why I have criticized Israeli govt war crimes. .

A critic slammed the move to “seize borrowers’ wages instead of defending borrowers’ right to affordable payments.”

I finally saw Bugonia. I enjoyed much of it, although parts were just gratuitous and gross. It also strikes me as another example of moderns trying to demonstrate cutting edge philosophical stances while essentially regurgitating unacknowledged biblical frameworks of collective divine punishment.

These fools are parodies of Reagan parodies From Scrooged

I love working with Greek fragments but Brill's New Jacoby Online is infuriating.

Congress’s three favorite lines: 1. Sorry we can’t do anything, we’re in the minority 2. Sorry we can’t do anything, we need a supermajority 3. Sorry we can’t do anything, our party’s in the White House and we have to support the president

I must return to the Ohio valley where I was born and raised and fulfill my destiny: Finding a home for this glut of bourbon I've been training my whole life for this

What is the point of having a sprawling national security state if they can’t find out who did a mass shooting in broad daylight five days ago?

"Mr. Martin will instead keep the findings under seal. He believes that looking back so publicly and painfully at the past would prove counterproductive for the party"! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

The abcs of AI: Always Be Challucinating

329 days into this second Trump administration and you still have all the student and medical debt you did before he was elected. He doesn’t care about you or your finances because you aren’t a billionaire—it’s that simple.

An old photo of me has surfaced from my friend Spencer's old hard drive. This is around 2010, when me and my friends used to gather in Spencer's basement and make music. The picture is blurry, but I appear to be catching wreck on the wheels of steel.

If anyone ever wonders why I have no sense of respect, duty, or general connection to American society, this is a good place to start www.npr.org/2025/12/09/n...

A grim but accurate description of my hometown

A long, badly written & jargon laced text posted online that argues reading and writing skills are less important than "media skills" (the study of media for the purpose of understanding media). Math teachers need to be experts in math, history teachers history, and English teachers . . . Bullshit?

You can find him in the pub with the grub stain Chuggin' on a small tub of pain to his bug brain Sane - some say he plum crazy Amazed at how he still get paid but dumb lazy That's for him to know and for you to guess Won't be caught in a suit vest at no computer desk

"Orgy was by no means a theoretical issue in Eliade's life, especially in that period." - Moshe Idel on Mircea Eliade, whom he quotes in a letter from WWII as saying: "I believe that I am one of the few moderns that understand the value and necessity of orgy."

It takes serious propaganda and They Live level deception not to conclude that this is extreme oligarchy. It's not even that the three *combined* own more than bottom 50%, but each one *individually* owns more.

E-40 asks us to "imagine all the Hebrews goin' dumb dancin' on top of chariots and turnin' tight ones"

I feel like if a president pardons another president convicted of taking bribes to facilitate drug trafficking, he might just be guilty himself of taking bribes to facilitate drug trafficking www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/u...

It's fascinating to me that these centrist Dems have been throwing leftists under the bus for so long, they continue to refer to us as young even though, at least in my case, I am now over forty. I also have held the same views on Israel/Palestine for 20 yrs and never use Tiktok.