Well, at least the war with Iran hasn't started yet.

The trouble with "affordability, affordability, affordability" is that it's not a long-term strategy. Until somebody figures out how to turn prices, but not wages, back to 2019 it's a recipe for power changing hands every election.

Looking at this AI stuff and wondering if anything else really matters.

American throws its weight around all over the world but foreigners need to shut up about American politics is impossible to justify except by acknowledging that Americans are very, very thin-skinned.

I despise TPUSA and everything it stands for, but there is more than a hint of misogyny in the "Erica Kirk isn't mourning right" discourse.

Arnold Benedict here!

Would be interesting to know how many people in the Administration are using the words "Iranian solution."

Today the snow is falling and everybody's mad at Ross Douthat.

TIL Morrissey's autobiography is a Penguin Classic.

At least when Canadian issues are at the forefront, America can turn to its large body of academic experts in Canadian history and politics. Right?

A message to my fellow American Blueskiers: Yes, even the Brits get to criticize us.

Does anyone doubt that Joe Biden did the right thing by pardoning Hunter?

Interesting that Indiana is peaking in football at the same time it is collapsing as a serious academic institution. One wonders how many of its alumni are happy with that trade.

One down, three to go.

Doesn't take much to get a reputation as a blazing wit around here.

Abigail Spanberger has been governor of Virginia for about twenty minutes. Time for governor of Virginia syndrome to kick in. Let the Spanberger 2028 speculation begin!

Good chance an independent Greenland ends up like Dubai--a native class living high off mineral wealth while a permanent noncitizen immigrant class does the work.

I'm sure seeing a lot of "I'm surprised by how much Star Trek Academy doesn't suck" posts. Haven't seen the show yet, but it looks like the "lower expectations" strategy worked.

#RIPScottAdams His early work had a certain charm and fantasy that he later lost. He was a pioneer in the workplace based humor that later became ubiquitous (eg. The Office). He was always susceptible to woo, and later on he lost his mind completely, but I enjoyed his work for years.

I don't know how this happened, but I suspect some people need to fucking apologize to Sarah McBride.

Slightly diminish a band They Might be Somewhat Taller than Average

I hear this a lot, but one of the biggest impediments to the Trump agenda has been the rather elite class of Federal judges. (Excepting the Supreme Court.)

Arguments about whether the Trump regime is fascist are arguments about the definition of fascism rather than the nature of the Trump regime, and not really that important outside political science.

Needs to be a study of when exactly "x is temu y" replaced "x is dime store y."

Does anyone read John Barth anymore?

Says it all, really.

This year I resolve to read longer books.

Happy New Year to Bluesky's elite, my followers!

What if the solution to the mystery of Trump's hands is that he is actually receiving the Stigmata?

A discipline only discovers itself to be a teacher of important skills when it loses faith in the importance of its content.

Plastic squeeze bottles for mustard do not work. All you end up doing is wasting mustard.

The wonderful @williameburns.bsky.social has done another Guest story for the Sanguinary Utnapishtim, as a little Christmas treat. It's an outsider's perspective on the Khornite empire, how they would seem from a Word Bearer's point of view. sherdenpact.neocities.org/GuestPostRep...

People on Bluesky and libs generally love this take on history, but it's seriously flawed. Sparta won the Peloponnesian war, the Prussians beat the Austrians in the Seven Weeks War and the French in the Franco-Prussian War. Warrior Mongols beat nerdy Song China.

Has anyone done a comparative study of Jacobitism and Ming loyalism?

11 down, 37 to go.

Kind of missing the days when Will Stancil was the main character of Bluesky, because Matt Yglesias is decidedly not an improvement.

Karen Carpenter sings Rodgers and Hart.

You'd figure, if the kids were doing all their papers with AI, I wouldn't be getting so many late ones.

The end of the mass market paperback. It was the reader's format--people bought mmpbs to read, not to look nice on the shelf. Farewell mass market paperback, you will be missed. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Interesting contrast between the Dem/Left obsession with "getting back young men" and the complete Republican/Right disinterest in how terribly they're doing among young women.

Saw a "Baby, It's Cold Outside" skeet in the wild today, so I guess the Christmas season is here.

Been reading a lot of Philip Roth lately and it occurs to me that there was a mid-twentieth century belief in the transcendent power of sex that's about as dead as Manicheeism now.

Help! The Artificial Man I Created doesn't Like Me!

Ten down, thirty-eight to go.

Happy Birthday to Alan Moore, who will never know of this message.

Is this whole "Trump blew Clinton" thing based on the premise that Bill Clinton is the only Southern white man nicknamed "Bubba"? Because that seems remarkably dumb even for the internet.

People are really underestimating the amount of truly terrible legislation the Republicans would pass without a filibuster.

Trad Catholics are, in fact, traditionally Catholic. Who knew?

I sympathize with most of this, and clearly Jewish Studies at Indiana is a victim of administrative overreach. But if Jewish Studies is going to be an academic discipline taught at secular universities, the Jewish/non-Jewish status of the people teaching it is irrelevant.

This was literally a no bad news election. Weird but good.