Took a while to get to this level of plainspeak, but glad to see it more and more.

Charles II: Did you finish that statue of the Archangel Michael defeating the devil? Luisa Roldán: Si y yo hice la Diablo real fucking sexy, just like you asked

He has no real concept of the amount of "liquid" that goes in and out of a human baby in a day, does he? I used to drink 3-4 liters of water daily just to keep up with the 1 liter or more of liquid I was producing for a baby each day without getting dehydrated.

imagine if a family of beavers randomly showed up right now and finished whatever thing you've been putting off

Easy enough to fact-check. Cuba’s rate of autism is 690 cases in every 100k.

This is one of those articles where you start off thinking of Noem as an amoral ambitious politician, wander through her petty corruption and incompetence, and wind up back at sociopath. I care less about her dating habits & more about her vicious cruelty & malicious destruction of our nation.

Idk it feels like something is shifting. This tweet was also the language of the AP push alert, and just now the Times chimed in:

My grey hair of the day was caused by hearing Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" in Trader Joe's and thinking, "No, no, that's not _grocery store music_! That's a pretty recent banger! I danced with my kids to "Take Me Out" & heard it at younger cousins' weddings!" As it turns out, it came out in 2004.

Well, we sure as heck can't have any confused women!

I cannot emphasize this enough: The regime has overextended itself. It is vulnerable to protest and dissent. They have not consolidated power and we are entirely capable of keeping them from doing so. Doomers are not realists.

THEY WROTE NUMBERS ON THEIR WRISTS I can’t see straight. Obviously there is so much wrong happening here, but this detail is fucking chilling. These are human beings.

Not exactly new for anyone who has read "Jesus and John Wayne" (2020) but it is striking how the project here uses Christian language and imagery in service of a religion of father-lordship rather than chastity, charity, prudent, temperance, kindness, diligence, etc.

breaking from me: the trump administration just suffered its first major loss in court over its onslaught on offshore wind the revolution wind project can now resume construction after a federal judge found its developer orsted was likely to win against the trump order to stop work @heatmap.news

Some news! My book, _Strike:Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire_ (currently $3.62 on Amazon, lol) is one of the best books of the year from @newyorker.com. Thx to all the friends, family, colleagues, and reviewers who helped make this book a collective effort about collective action.

Shanah Tovah, New York City. Here's to a sweet and hopeful New Year.

VT just closed its religious studies department.

“The coach wasn’t targeted”

Holy shit

To be clear: this entire “we’ve got to run more pro-lifers” insanity is because literally a week ago polling showed that Democrats would prefer politicians like AOC and Mamdani over Jefferies and Schumer by, let me emphasize this, a 20 point fucking margin. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

I've been trying to understand why this isn't generating as much fury as it should, and i think it's because there is a fundamental belief among many americans that the military can pretty much do whatever (which isn't entirely inaccurate.) that said, what the actual fuck.

The @washingtonpost.com story on Tylenol & autism leaves out a MAJOR 2.5M sibling-controlled study of children in Denmark, which "found no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

this is a very sharp piece on why it makes no sense to run universities as if they are businesses. They're not businesses. www.afr.com/work-and-car...

Most appropriate timeline cleanse I can think of: www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jo...

While thankfully not a problem for my particular family (though we are starting to wonder if youngest is a supertaster), this is a great resource!

The University Democrats at UT-Austin, a longstanding student group, has been told that no guests, candidates, or speakers can speak at their meetings unless the administration approves them. Submitted speakers' lists have been ignored or summarily denied. Please HMU if you know a good 1A attorney

I would read an annotated version of today's proceedings with annotations done by all of the scholars of religion who couldn't get jobs in the past few decades because it wasn't relevant.

The other key is realizing just how deep-rooted gender-based bigotry is - and not just because I will go to my grave believing that Harry Clinton and Kameron Harris would have won their elections easily.

New: Sarah MacLachlan, Jewel, and more musicians scheduled to perform at tonight's premiere for Hulu's ABC News doc LILITH FAIR have all pulled out after Disney scrapped the red carpet. First notable talent consequence of the Jimmy Kimmel situation.

I'm preparing a quantitative history lab for my students out of my own recent research at the UK National Archives on late 19th/early 20th cent women-initiated divorces. I keep being struck by the introduction around 1903 of this stamp forgiving the court fee, & wondering its effect on judges:

In Naperville, IL on Wednesday, ICE surrounded a group of documented workers replacing a residential roof. ICE agents reportedly kicked over the ladders and forced the workers to jump. The episode involved a chase with guns drawn.

A bit underplayed that the Homan sting didn't reportedly come out of a public corruption investigation, it was a counter-intelligence one. Which means they somehow made the not-very-far leap to him from initially targeting a foreign and almost certainly state actor.

Bearing your cross is a lot easier with wheels.

As CNN offers daylong saturation coverage of the podcaster’s funeral, I went back and checked to see how CNN covered Melissa Hortman’s memorial on 6/28, where Walz spoke and Biden/Harris attended. It got about four minutes during the hours it was happening—less than Jeff Bezos’s wedding that day.

One stark marker of how much our society has devolved in just a few years is Bob Iger personally got on a call to convince us to let Disney/HULU make the 1619 Project. That America no longer exists.

But also you could just believe the woman who is the expert in her area? Just like I’d expect people to believe me about how academic departments work

“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy” V-Dem data

the real people they joke about murdering apnews.com/photo-galler...

My U.S.A. is a society where it's entirely reasonable to be a fan of both @timothysnyder.bsky.social & @elisabethhobbes.co.uk. It's unsurprising @staceyabrams.com is both a successful politician & romance novelist, just as you should read @courtneymilan.com for law _&_ love. These Are Not Opposites.

the funny thing about the constant misappropriation of MLK is that the guy left a massive body of writing specifically aimed at explaining his views of those of the movement he represented to the broad public. it is extremely easy to know what the guy thought on a variety of subjects and yet

Here's what chronic under-funding/neglect has done: my dept is down 8 TT faculty as peeps quit & lines are not replaced. Fin aid, academic advising, fiscal and business + other units all under-staffed, making it harder for students, remaining taff to operate. Infrastructure crumbling. ⬇️ morale.

As we head into Rosh Hashanah, a very important point of order from Canadian Senate Hansard (1984) :p

Beyond all the other issues, there are so many, many better things to be spending educational $ on right now. Put your money where your mouth is and endow some Chairs of Public Speaking or Rhetoric.

Not that Crenshaw's thesis needed any more evidence, but the biggest economic effect of 2025 has been the loss of 300,000 Black women workers, at a point when the economy is still adding jobs, and yet this story has been underreported both in the aggregate & specific well-known cases like Attiah's.

This is obviously much needed and welcome clarification on a personal level. HOWEVER my base level anxiety has once again risen to a new level. It doesn’t need to be this way.

Dana Carvey parodied George HW Bush on SNL — “Nah, wouldn’t be prudent” — the President called him up and they became friends. . Daryl Hammond imitated Clinton through his Presidency, including savage stuff during his sex scandal. Clinton invited him to do a “dueling Presidents” gag.

More deets from @nytimes on what we must now call the Tom Homan/Emil Bove scandal www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/u...

Younger people won't believe this, but during the Second World War, Disney put out cartoons about how it was your patriotic duty to stand up to fascists, even noting that we'd each have to take a financial hit if we wanted to win that struggle. No, really!