here at the Paper of Record, when an open white supremacist leaks someone's college application in an attempt to imply he got unfair race-based special treatment, even though he was rejected, we know what to do: publish it immediately prospect.org/2025/07/09/2...

Amazing reporting from @chalkbeat.org: Christian Nationalist law firm Alliance Defending Freedom was involved in setting up Colorado's first "Christian public school" specifically so it could get another case to the Supreme Court over whether public money can fund religious schools

caliper-wielding eugenicist freaks are gonna keep saying this, keep circling the toilet bowl talking about predicting someone's sexuality or personality or ethnicity or whatever else w/AI and it being bullshit won't matter; it being a pretext for state/admin/other violence will be all that matters

At this point, anyone—a university, a law firm, a corporation, a Democrat—bending the knee to Trump is doing it because they want to, not because of any political reality.

Election day and keeping fingers crossed for NYC! Resharing my June article on Zohran Mamdani and the Islamophobia of the mayoral race, which has only gotten more egregious in the last weeks: arcmag.org/zohran-mamda...

Anyone religion scholars (and/or Boston residents) going to be at AAR a day early and want to see a Stay Inside show with me on Thurs, 11/20?

On top of this, there's been a proliferation of conceptually flawed popular and academic writing on polarization and tribalism built upon psychology and behavioral science that's made academics inordinately pessimistic about the public.

i really hope i live to see a time where it again feels like education for its own sake is seen as a social good

Good time to revisit this clear - and, it turns out, prescient - book from Finbarr Curtis. If you would like to think about profanation, civility, Trump, etc. (e.g., AI videos of the president dropping shit on people), read this. cup.columbia.edu/book/going-l...

people online are constantly saying shit like "the average person is now post-literate and returning to medieval peasant mindset" while neglecting the corollary, namely that our elite aristos are once again scrying for angels, summoning demons, distilling elixirs of eternal life, etc.

the dork in question is Jed Rubenfeld, husband of Amy Chua of Tiger Mom fame, who also mentored Vance. The fix was in, and it was most likely a very gentle 'debate'

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

“You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line” lmao

I would really like to read an article analyzing the Peloton hashtag #irideforcharliekirk. I am sure there is some useful theoretical framework here, but it’s a bit beyond my reach.

NEW CRITICAL AI SERIES CLUSTER, "Gen AI and/as Religion" - edited by @johnmodern.bsky.social criticalai.org/2025/10/01/c... Please share widely!

If you're wondering why they don't go to court with their high paid lawyers for an easy win, it's because this allows Google to bribe Trump. All the big players are way over their skis on AI investment and are sure they will need a bailout at some point. It's 2009 but for tech instead of housing

Why are the negative consequences of so-called AI so consistently directed at disabled and racialized people? Disabling Intelligences details the ongoing effects of the eugenicist mindset on our corporate ventures and our interpersonal relationships. link.springer.com/book/9783032...

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

"Whatever nuance is needed for its interception, resisting AI’s further creep into intellectual labor will also require blunt-force militancy. The steps are simple. Don’t publish AI bullshit. Don’t even publish mealymouthed essays about the temptation to produce AI bullshit."

This week has really crushed my last dregs of hope that legacy news organizations can become capable of meeting the moment.

From an Atlantic editor. I cannot get over how the entire centrist hivemind is attempting to wish into existence a person, and a movement, that does not exist. You are journalists, you are supposed to describe things as they are, not how you want them to be!

Tapping the sign

rip to everyone whos become delusional after talking to chatgpt but im built different. like actually different. according to chatgpt im some kind of god. the one who decides

We’re excited to introduce the 2025-2026 PRRI Public Fellows cohort! 🎉 Meet 12 public scholars conducting innovative research that explores religion’s intersection with immigration, racial justice, reproductive health and rights, and LGBTQ rights. Learn more here: prri.org/press-releas...

1) A Special Announcement from American Religion

Consumer tech 🤝 carceral tech 🤝 military tech

The AHA can't comment on a genocide in progress because that's political and not history yet but it can encourage uptake of a plagiarism and learning preemption machine because that's apolitical and the future

My bereaved family: Can't believe he's gone. But now, with the power of technology, we can ask him what he thinks about current events My distorted face glitching on a screen: ToyYotathon Is hERE

Here's the final footnote of my book's final chapter, in which I suggest that a case like Davis's would be brought to overturn Obergefell, and at least Thomas and Alito would be into it. I thought it'd be a case *like* hers, not just hers again, but...

Here's a pretty cool look at how the designer of one small print magazine — @thedrift-mag.bsky.social — puts together its covers. I especially like the gif showing the evolution from inspiration to final design. newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/the-making...

@lawrightsreligion.bsky.social just released a new report on how faith communities are challenging brutal immigration policies as a violation of their religious freedom. Read it & share. lawrightsreligion.org/our-work/rel...

Critical secularism studies - are we still doing this? Any juice left in that lime? I say yes!

With all due respect to Billboard Chris, this is a very funny sign. Also a useful case study for teaching a kind of scientism, weaponized "objectivity," ideology pretending to be non-ideological. Especially silly and stark here, but there are many such cases.

Just attended AFT’s AI Symposium. Trying to get handle on how it’s being addressed in bargaining. Unsurprisingly, none of the speakers evidenced awareness of the critical scholarship on AI. Or any scholarship. Weingarten multiple times said “AI can now generate knowledge.” Consent: manufactured.

Critical secularism studies - are we still doing this? Any juice left in that lime? I say yes!

New from me in JAAR - “Review Essay: Critical Secularism Studies in These Times” academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

I'm normally quite nice (in print), and I have accomplished this, in part, by simply ignoring bad work. Not in this essay! I'm digging in, letting nothing slide, and I've got cutting little remarks for everyone (including myself).

Every school that explicitly markets itself as the opposite of this will be 1) right and 2) probably successful. Most parents and students aren’t total rubes, or at least not as commonly as administrators and politicians are.

Glad my graduate alma mater cut 60 degree programs in subjects that require people to think so that they could offer this. Looking forward to living in a world full of Prompt Engineers.

imo, if someone believes some races or ethnicities are genetically inferior to others, that person has revealed a weakness of mind and character that casts extreme if not irrefutable doubt on their other ideas. why would i expect them to use more rigor on, eg, housing than they do on human nature?

I explore why liberals fell for the heterodox movement’s “free speech” ploy in my latest for @bostonreview.bsky.social: www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...

In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.

The new issue of American Religion is out (open access!). The reviews are especially great, in my biased opinion. Check out this great review essay by Matt Berkman on the history of Jewish critics of Zionism. muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...

The Democratic Party’s capitulation to the Crypto lobby is one of the most nakedly corrupt things I’ve seen in my life. Crypto is a blatant scam with zero value that is designed to end popular control of our currency. Dems just co-signed the next global financial crisis. It’s unforgivable.

I actually read that Toxic Empathy book and it is more vapid and cruel than you can even imagine www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

The new issue of American Religion is out (open access!). The reviews are especially great, in my biased opinion. Check out this great review essay by Matt Berkman on the history of Jewish critics of Zionism. muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...

Ruining my day with the Douthat interview of Allie Beth Stuckey, an unserious person whose main point is that you might be tempted to see others as humans but you must resist this. Far-right ideology, deeply violent, packaged for evangelical moms.

And a point on that: I have had some weird replies in previous months where people seem to think eugenics needs to actually “work” to be eugenics. But it’s an *idea* and a *project*. Of course all the initiatives and “science” for increasing intelligence etc. are phony.