The biggest risk from violence—especially state violence—is if we formalize it into a more stable form of power. The state is asking for our consent to legitimize what is happening in Minneapolis as an ordinary function of government. It is a request. And we can and should say no.

the democrats are right we should focus on kitchen table issues. for example there is a guy at my kitchen table who wants to shoot me in the face with a gun

It's a big day for those fluent in the good grammar of civility looking to deploy decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

And for the religious studies/Biblical studies crowd, I stood next to and said hello to Marcus Borg at a row of urinals in a church restroom.

I got stuck making small talk with Parker Posey for about five minutes at a bar in Brooklyn when my friend and her friend (who were mutual acquaintances) stepped out to smoke.

Does not require additional context:

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

Conversely, you can make anything religious. (The quoted post comes from a fascinating, sometimes slightly heated thread debating the religious origins of the Christmas holiday versus its malleability as a secular holiday.)

But she didn’t cite the Bible. She referenced her ideas about the Bible.

Uuuum, srry 2 b dismissive, but are we witnessing the birth of a left-aligned Q-Anon type movement in real time right here on Bluesky? Please take a breath. Go for a walk. Jeebus.

A great portmanteau even without the context. (The thread it comes from is kind of amusing if you’re in an eat-the-rich kind of mood.)

The Chicago Manual of Style

Out: Woke In: Awake

Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”

Let me clarify that this is a textbook example of how “cult” (and “religion” in general) is a tool for defining in-group/out-group identities and social boundary patrolling. (Not an idea I can claim as my own. @mpgphd.bsky.social in particular is a vocal critic of popular usage of “cult.”)

Greg Bovino says new cult just dropped: ICE protesters. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Here’s my favorite so far.

Oops, because of the way Bluesky displays photos, you can’t really see what’s so remarkable about these images unless you click on them. Oh well. I tried to share something beautiful, but some technological limitations got in the way.

This person knows where it’s at: ebay.us/m/ncrbo5 “And that's the bottom line, cause Stone Cold said so!”

This alt-right religious trad something-or-other social media influencer with over 125,000 followers explains that she “know[s] the difference between culture and religion,” all the while hawking “patriotic and religious merch that isn’t gaey.” Uuuuuum…

And so it begins…

Reading for tomorrow’s flight to the Midwest. Found this in a free library this evening! Spotted it in the dark. (Disclosure: Shamus is a longtime casual friend who I know from my Madison, Wisc. friends group. Have read a few of his shorter pieces, but never gotten around to reading his books.)

Just discovered a fun Central Asia/Appalachia overlap: www.instagram.com/reel/DQxGhBi...

Birthplace of the free speech movement: “[4] individuals were arrested while attempting to hang an approximately five-foot-tall cardboard bug off Sather Gate in protest of Turning Point USA’s, or TPUSA, upcoming event on campus” www.dailycal.org/news/campus/...

Taco Bell’s new Seventhmeal promotion is looking pretty good

Perhaps they’re inspired by Hungary’s universal healthcare system.

Huston Smith and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. And in the popular scholar category, Karen Armstrong. (Although, I wouldn’t say that any of them are influential on my thinking about religion.)

I think we need to stop calling it empathy and go back to calling it decency. It isn't a favour you're doing someone else, it's you proving that you aren't a fucking ghoul

These guys really are accelerationists hell-bent on burning the whole thing down.

You (a fool): The LLM is an all-knowing oracle, on its way to godlike intelligence Me (dumber): The LLM is Indra’s Net, each fundamentally empty token a multifaceted jewel in whose surfaces the reflections of every other jewel arise in mutual interdependence The LLM: You can eat that rock

This is brilliant.

Coffee shop entitlement on display: Barista calls, “Orange cappuccino for Lisa!” Woman steps up and says somewhat curtly, “It’s supposed to be a flat white.” Meanwhile, Lisa picks up her orange cappuccino. Five minutes and two drink orders later, barista calls, “Flat white for Kay!”

Where's the piece about how buying super yachts and supreme court justices can lead to both overspending and fascist regimes???

Now this is a metaphor that even I can understand.

My favorite marcher so far at the SF No Kings is wearing a high-vis vest and raising a trash grabber in lieu of a sign.

this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.

Take a picture of yourself at the No Kings rally. Print it. Put it in a frame. Your grandchildren will speak about you for generations to come. You took a stand against fascism. You stood up for democracy. 

WE ARE PRACTICING AN ICE LOCKDOWN at Berkeley Adult School, ffs!!!!!!! (I take Arabic classes here, but the vast majority of the students are ESL learners.)

Actually, a daily battle for me- don’t let them eat the delight.

is it not weird that every day there’s a new video of anonymous masked men having the time of their lives beating/shooting/disappearing people and the dem response from the top down is “republicans want to double your health insurance premiums”

To me the thing that is so infuriating about this is that I teach high school students who have vastly greater critical thinking skills and are far more politically astute than any of the three speakers from this clip 😡

I think that this is sage advice in quite a broad range of contexts really.

Absolutely no disrespect to Dorroll here, who is far more a scholar than I will ever be, but isn’t the very point of critical RS to problematize and redescribe? If we want to “simply better understand the experience of faith on its own terms,” can’t we simply consult an insider?

Reality Winner is truly a national treasure.

you're looking at a foreign country. the government rounds up people on the basis of skin color or other characteristic, puts them in 'detention' facilities, separates families, deports them without process, confiscates their property, denies them access to counsel. what would you call it?

From August 2024: Vaught suggests that mass deportations are “part of a plan to "end multiculturalism" in America” and “should protests break out in response [Trump] use the military to ‘maintain law and order.’” www.mediamatters.org/russ-vought/...

We are being ruled by every loser you ever met in high school

As history teaches us, we will one day be subsumed into a void of cold, dark meaninglessness. That’s why self-aggrandized bloviating is so naive and dangerous.

As a non historian might I suggest that history does not teach us about anyone “deserving” anything in particular.