My friend Patti Lenard and I are researching LGBTQ+ private refugee sponsorship in Canada, & are looking to interview LGBTQ+ newcomers who arrived in Canada through private sponsorship and people who have served as sponsors. If you or someone you know is interested, please have them reach out!

Your periodic reminder that I’m fundraising for two families in Gaza - Fadi, who supports his parents, sisters, and wife, and Mohammad, whose daughter Sally has a heart defect and needs medical treatment outside Gaza. If you can spare a few dollars to support them, we’d all be very grateful.

Here’s me talking about @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s election win on @globalnews.ca this morning. I think there’s a clear route for the Democratic Party to learn from Mamdani’s success - if they’re open to it. globalnews.ca/video/115179...

Hey Ottawa folks - cool event coming up focused on queer SWANA storytelling. Nov 23, Club SAW. Tickets on sale now! www.tixtree.com/e/queer-swan...

the language of "civilization" here is obviously fraught but also uh sick burn, Europe

My brilliant friend @hebagowayed.bsky.social: "What is troubling to me as we look into the possibilities of the Zohran mayorship, is not just these old white men’s sense of entitlement to power; but that their open racism, like that of the president’s, is not disqualifying."

The dialectic of American politics: - Black guy gets elected, they call him a Muslim socialist (which he’s not) - Backlash to Black guy, women, immigrants creates MAGA - Backlash to MAGA brings to power an actual Muslim socialist

Honestly, I’m getting a little verklempt.

why is this mayoral election different than all other mayoral elections? in all other mayoral elections, we get to see andrew cuomo lose but once. but in this mayoral elections, we get to see him lose *twice*.

This is an incredible and very specific hater energy substack.com/home/post/p-...

Your periodic reminder that I’m fundraising for two families in Gaza - Fadi, who supports his parents, sisters, and wife, and Mohammad, whose daughter Sally has a heart defect and needs medical treatment outside Gaza. If you can spare a few dollars to support them, we’d all be very grateful.

I had a colleague come into my office the other day and say “so…does the US just…not have a government any more?” And I, the designated US understander in my department, could not tell her no. 🫠

Unmentioned: the secular Hillquit's skepticism of Zionism. He argued the Balfour Decl. threatened Palestinian self-determination & he hoped universal socialism would secure Jewish liberation. By 1930, he supported unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine but not creation of an exclusive state.

I am already a subscriber and don’t have bog upgrade money at the moment, but @theflytrapmedia.com is excellent and you should subscribe!

It’s basically Deep Space Nine.

Today in unschooling, my daughter and I just calculated the approximate number of nanoseconds since the creation of the earth: two septillion, three hundred sixty-six sextillion, eight hundred twenty quintillion. So that was fun.

Let him interim-lead the NDP if there’s an election

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. shows up to Game 7 in a Marie-Phillip Poulin jersey, the captain of the Canada women’s national ice hockey team

Kul Shei Tammam with the cat I love this guy

you know what we're doing now that NaNo's fucking dead

I feel like I owe a box of chocolates to the travel agent who handles bookings for the university, because I have asked her to check about a billion possible itineraries for the trip I'm making in December and she hasn't once said "DUDE WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS."

No neede for expensyve consultinge firmes. Heere ys a planne for excellent higher education: 1) Hire manye facultye 2) Small class syzes 3) Emphasyze engagemente & delighte 4) Sustayne & cultivate a varietye of fieldes and disciplines, even currentlye unfashionable ones -- thys ys ed, not retail

The Sudan Solidarity Collective is doing a big fundraising push to support our partners in El Fashir to support food distribution, evacuation and medications. Please help us boost our support. Please share and donate 👇🏾 . sudansolidarity.com

Seems like it is not really a ceasefire if you just declare it on and off at will.

15 years ago, as a Pennsylvanian who has been living in NYC for 6 yrs, I wanted to make sure that Andrew Cuomo didn’t need my vote so I could vote for a candidate I didn’t hate. Very different scenario but let me pass the reassurance on: current NYCers, you don’t have to vote for Cuomo. #votemamdani

The earliest known example of ‘brain rot’ comes from Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 book “Walden.” “While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

I must have been first in line at my library, because the audiobook is sitting in my Libby, reminding me to hurry through my current listen. 🪐 l👭🪐(why is there no Jupiter emoji, grr)

🗣️ PLEASE SHARE 🗣️ I'm writing an intro & sourcebook on late ancient Gazan literature for Dar al-Kalima University Press. The press and I plan to produce an Arabic translation to make Gazan literature more accessible to Palestinians. Help me compensate the Gazan translator! spot.fund/dn8t744sc

Mark Carney:

It’s getting cold in Gaza. I’ve just transferred money from their fundraisers to Mohammed and Fadi, to buy blankets and repair their tents. But Mohammed’s daughter Sally still needs medical treatment, and Fadi still is supporting his family. You can support Mohammed here: chuffed.org/project/1518...

Teaching Foucault to first year students today - they got very caught up on "But what does he actually think would be good?" He refuses to tell you. "But what does he think we should do?" Resist something probably, idk, he's not your mom. (These are good questions and my students are good.)

I’ve been a Canadian for over a decade and this still confuses the shit out of me so obviously I need to read this book asap.

Feels fitting to be riding the Nathan Cirillo train today, the 11th anniversary of his death while on sentry duty at the War Memorial. May our future hold less violence than our past. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_sh...

Like this is really it Declaring that someone is unfit to run for a public office is not the same thing as declaring that they should be banished from human society forever or publicly executed. No one is owed a Senate nomination

“Can you imagine a kinder, sweeter, healthier, happier future for yourself that does not rely on the eternal punishment and harm done to another?…Can you imagine good things happening to all, not just those you’ve chosen as acceptable? Can you imagine kindness?” Great stuff again from Ela

me rn fr fr

In social movement studies, we talk about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE. This is extremely important for the bourgeois white folks holding signs and building social rapport.

As most of you know, I’ve been fundraising for Fadi for a while, but I’ve started a fundraiser for his brother, Mohammed. Mohammed’s daughter Sally has a heart defect and needs medical treatment outside of Gaza. If you can support them, it would make a big difference! chuffed.org/project/1518...

This is going in my lecture about “how not to anonymize data,” replacing “this study was conducted in a city in Texas, which has the fourth-largest population of people of Arab descent in the US,” better known as Houston.

Sociologists, political scientists, other scholars & practitioners of US politics - submit a proposal to our People-Ing Politics conference as part of the Eastern Sociological Society's conference in DC this March 5 - 8th. Apply by 10/15 (unless they extend) & please share - ess2026.exordo.com/login

I just finished this book over the weekend, and it absolutely deserves the win. Alf mabrouk to @soniasulaiman.bsky.social as well as all the authors!

I love the idea of the sort of "C+ physics project" universe, in which an unknowable entity outside of time and space span up a rocks-go-in-circles project as part of a research project, and now there's life in it- life all over it, actually- and it would be an ethics nightmare to turn it off

happy 20th birthday to the internets

the best answer i got for this:

Small collection of Gaza related graffiti in Rome. There’s also been a demonstration and/or general strike every day, which as a tourist is annoying (so hard to get a darn cab) but as someone who studies social movements is impressive as hell.

I just got a “would you like to join eduroam?” while stopped in traffic on a random street in Rome.

Guess who forgot the Alps existed until she was in them?

I’ve been in France six-ish hours and so far I’ve worked in a hipster cafe, bought grapes and cheese at an outdoor market, gotten a manicure, and eaten the weirdest vegan poke bowl of my life. Currently on my third-or-fourth coffee of the day. This trip is starting off pretty well.

I just sent a campaign update for Fadi, my friend in Gaza. Thanks to your donations, he was able to get a new tent for his family after their old one was destroyed and they were displaced. If you are able to donate, that would be wonderful! chuffed.org/project/1322...