This resonated a lot

Oui

Looking for an audiobook? Luke Thompson’s performance as the audio reader for The Brothers Karamazov is an absolute tour de force. Plus the novel is pretty good too

Since gerrymandering is in the news again (down south but also Alberta (!)), it’s a good time to re-up this: the only sane way is for electoral rules, including maps, to be decided by randomly selected citizen assemblies. Not government, not legislature, not commission populated with partisans

Erasure impending

Very pleased that this special issue festschrift for Joe Carens is now out in CRISPP. Featuring @simonechambers.bsky.social @abizadeh.bsky.social, @melissa1008.bsky.social, Sarah Song, Jim Johnson, Rainer Baubock, Courtney Jung, Tom Malleson, Kiran Banerjee, me, and Joe Carens. Quite proud of this!

This is really shameful. After being offered the Human Rights Watch report, “he responded by saying he doesn't believe in reports.”

On visiting or living in the USA: “Basically, people are being kidnapped and thrown into detention in abusive, inhumane, unsafe conditions.”

Very informative analysis of how we got here and where we are

Possibly apocryphal Habermas story from NewHaven: as they passed a group of African-Ams singing&chanting on the Green, JH suddenly turned to his colleagues, exclaiming, “What an incredible people! Even after all these years of injustice & oppression, they still chant: Praise the Law!Praise the Law!”

Habermas has died.

"Publisher demands $500 from impersonated author to retract paper." https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03/05/publisher-demands-500-from-impersonated-author-to-retract-paper/ PS: Here's hoping that publicity about this shakedown costs the publisher -- Walsh Medical Media -- more than $500. #scholcomm

Thanks to @projectmuse.bsky.social ’s Subscribe to Open (S2O) model, all 2026 research articles in the RIA’s journals will be free to read and free to publish. Read more about RIA’s transition to S2O here: www.ria.ie/2026/02/18/r... @jisc.bsky.social @irelibrary.bsky.social

WATCH: This is STILL one of the toughest truths for some to accept, but one of the most IMPORTANT — car-dependent suburbia is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by downtowns and urban areas! Watch this excellent video by #NotJustBikes with #Urban3 & @strongtowns.bsky.social. PLEASE SHARE it as much as possible.

Pierre Poilievre crosses floor to Liberals

A British grandmother with a valid visa detained by ICE for 6 weeks. "So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. 'Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,' Karen says."

Invention extracts moisture from air to harvest water (even in desert conditions), is powered by ambient thermal energy, and generates 1K litres of clean water per day (even if centralised electricity or water sources interrupted by drought or storm damage).

Now posted ahead of print: "Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science. (Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.) doi.org/10.1146/annu...

The murderers trying to break and kill one the world’s greatest, most ferocious of heroes. These bloody cowards cower before her.

Those who do not cower

Academic CV pet peeve: Serious people listing edited volumes and monographs under the same category? I mean, yeah, they’re both “books,” but you only wrote one of them. Maybe I’ll start listing all the articles I referee under my list of “journal articles.”

R u still using gmail?

"A modern-day concentration camp ... People have been killed by the staff here." Irish citizen Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention since September, despite having a valid work permit and his own business in the US.

ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

“In 2020, 3% of all TB in the U.S. occurred among incarcerated people—about four times the rate you would expect based on population demographics—and 327 people were diagnosed with TB in ICE custody.” Public health scholar Katharine S. Walter on the role prisons play in fueling the spread of TB:

“Two ICE agents said that in Buffalo Culleton had signed documents agreeing to be deported. Culleton said he did not agree and that the signatures were not his. The judge noted irregularities in ICE’s court documents but sided with the agency.”

“If you are integrating yourself into the American sphere of influence, or whatever Mr. Trump’s national security apparatus calls it, you are integrating yourself into antiquity — or worse.”

The Washington Post downsized its motto. It’s now just “Darkness”

Immigrants in USA: Paid more in taxes than received in benefits every year 1994-2023. Generated ~$10.6 trillion more federal/state/local taxes than the gov spending they induced. Saved $14.5 trillion in debt over 30y period (accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt).

There are no bounds to the Islamic Republic’s evil. After massacring thousands, they beat and now plot to murder doctors for having treated the wounded

Ever wondered why separatists in both AB & QC echo MAGA these days? Straight line to far right US influence on Brexit (Cambridge Analytica/Robert Mercer/Breitbart). “The [AB] separatist party has adopted similar themes to the UK’s Brexit movement.” Bc Brexit has worked out so well for the Brits.

!! Près de 6300 travailleuses de la santé, dont beaucoup ont été recrutées à l’étranger dont en France et incitées à venir s’établir ici… , menacées désormais d’un départ forcé du Québec à cause de l’abolition du PEQ par le gouvernement Legault.

Survey of Quebec students: 1/3 of students using AI get it to write part or all of their work; same proportion use it to summarize texts they don’t read.

Some background. And that is all I will say about MG.

🤡

After dismantling many of the climate policies put in place by the previous government, Mark Carney has quietly directed his government to craft a national electricity strategy. Expect PCO clerk Michael Sabia, the former Hydro-Quebec exec, to be heavily involved.

Prime Minister Carney’s “Middle Powers” speech is about as substantial as they can get.

The most interesting thing about this article? Average sentence length: 4-5 words. Written by “language strategist” and “persuasion” teacher. The key to persuasion, apparently, is to write for 4 year olds. The fat cat sat on a mat.

“People are emboldened in part by the weakness of the regime, but also because society has been brimming with energy from both previous national protests & daily claim-making by nurses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, pensioners, oil workers & many others. These protests don’t exist in a vacuum.”

Feels like something cracked today in the transatlantic alliance. Europeans have been swallowing their pride, bitting their tongues, and bending the knee. That strategy may have bought them time but it has now clearly failed. It also had a major cost - it has made the WH think Europe will cave. 1/

I have a bunch of reservations but they’re not nearly as important as the bottom-line things this gets right. Didn’t expect David French to put The Dual State in the pages of the NYT.

😂😂 Brazilian law allows you to reduce your sentence by reading books! Problem: Bolsonaro isn’t a bibliophile and approved reading list includes works on Indigenous rights, racism, environment, and violence of the 1964-85 dictatorship.

Texas A&M continues assault on free academic inquiry: after banning Plato passages, now cancelling ethics course (bc race and gender were to be discussed systematically)

The Islamic Republic apparently exporting its ideology and tactics further abroad

Montreal smart news

The president of a university actually defends forcing a professor to remove Plato from his course by saying, "We didn't ban ALL Plato." Um, first, no one said you did. Second... dailynous.com/2026/01/13/a...

The Islamic Republic has killed an estimated 12000-20000 of its people in just a few days.

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Texas A&M no longer a university.