Courtesy of colleagues at Penn

FROG 🐸 SEMIOTICS 🐸 REDEMPTION 🐸 ARC

Reading request! If you could recommend one text that explored the history of an idea/concept in a riveting and surprising way what would it be? Please re-skeet if you can. I know this is a niche ask.

Also fuck you Texas for doing this, invading another state with armed troops; lone star Republic my ass

Frankfurt School / Birmingham School / Psychoanalytic-Lacanian

Universities must unite to reject President Trump’s partisan “Compact for Academic Excellence” which threatens academic freedom and diversity. Only bold, collective resistance can defend higher ed from ideological control and preserve critical thought on campus. wagingnonviolence.org/cnv/2025/10/...

Suddenly your cat has developed a nuanced and sophisticated sense of solidarity

I'm never ever gonna forget all the furrowed browed corporatist Charlie Kirk hagiography and sportsball halftime memoriams for a race baiting brigading zealot

all discourse aside, there is one machine with consciousness. it's printers. they are alive and conscious and they hate you and they'd take your arm clean off if you let them. never trust a printer.

Someone’s reading the president bedtime stories from the Illustrated Abridged Don Quixote again

Obviously signing Trump’s compact is the death knell for a university, but the fact that any of them are even *considering* it exposes something deeply rotten at the heart of their leadership. It should disqualify them forever.

Hiring Bari Weiss to bring down the temperature of the discourse is like hiring Animal from the Muppets to reduce workplace noise

You know what was weird last week? I didn’t see anyone fired for quoting words actually spoken by Jane Goodall.

This is a declaration they will use federal resources to deploy violence against judges, prosecutors, and attorneys general. There's no other coherent interpretation of the phrasing, including "only remedy," "legitimate state power," and connecting those people with "terror networks."

I read this as “emotional safeties” and the more I think about it the more convinced I am that my subconscious was onto something culturally significant

One first step people should do to respond to this is start using the “report a speed trap” function in Apple Maps to report where ICE is operating. Make Apple party to the attempt to protect people.

It seems pointless even to say this, but the Fourth Amendment does not permit federal agents to kick down every door in an apartment building just because *some* people in that building are allegedly undocumented. Even in the unlikely event they had a warrant, warrants have to be specific.

Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy

After a viral video stirred controversy at Texas A&M, Texas Tech ordered course adjustments while UNT and UT launched reviews. It’s unclear what the reviews will look for.

Ominous… www.statesman.com/news/educati...

gas station hot dog roller is the only medbed i’ll ever need

imagine your HOA seeing one of these magnificent beauties on your front lawn

The escalator, which may have been transgender, was radicalized during its single semester at university

You have been eaten by a gr…oops no that’s Brett Kavanaugh

The stinging ant infestation in my office at a Texas university is a little too fucking on the nose right now.

FIRE! In a Hotdog Costume

I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I love this so much.

“Consistent and principled” defense of free speech apparently requires you to get ALMOST as worked up about full-bore authoritarian repression as you were when some students were rude to a federal judge.

Donald Trump's assault on free speech presents the perfect opportunity for me to lecture my liberal friends about the dangers of trigger warnings.

President of Texas A&M resigns. This is the second Texas A&M President chased out of College Station in two years as a result of right wing politicians and activists attacks on academic freedom. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/u...

Far more dangerous than Trump, I think, is how quickly the last eight months have pulled back the curtain on America's elites and shown everyone how venal, how cowardly and how utterly mediocre the foundation of our society has been.

Nothing to see here, just another Texas college student apparently expelled for wrongthink after becoming the target of one of the governor’s Mean Girls cosplay episodes

Klein explicitly says his project is to dishonestly portray the true nature of the right for his readers in hopes that helps foster some common ground to heal our nation. This didn’t work for Obama and it’s not gonna work for him.

Trump: everyone in the US died from drugs last week Reporter: [nods] Trump: so we must murder on the high seas Reporter: [nods] Trump: I caught Trix rabbit once Reporter: [nods] Trump: the cock on that bunny Reporter: [nods] Trump: bigger than you think Headline: Trump Policy Seeks To Save Lives

If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to Bluesky

Castle Doctrine wins a new fan

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

In what conceivable way could my (intentionally hyperbolic) paraphrase of the pulled quote be construed as the "exact opposite" of its meaning? Bunch (ahistorically and without evidence) blames campus "illiberalism" for the current atmosphere of repression and reprisal. Doesn't seem complicated.

"Even as elected officials and prominent pundits on the right threaten repressive crackdowns, impinge fundamental freedoms, and glorify partisan violence, we must never forget that the true speech villains are the college sophomores who protested at a Milo Yiannopoulos talk in 2015."

Heroes walk among us

CHICAGO IS IN THE STREETS! #LaborDay #DefendHigherEd #WorkersOverBillionaires

.... .... ... "WE'RE DEFINTELY NOT PLOTTING A COUP"