sometimes an Oxford comma can make all the difference

Elwood Watson of East Tennessee State takes the measure of various college rankings and finds @washingtonmonthly.com to be the best for most students. www.myjournalcourier.com/opinion/arti...

Hi folks. My round up of views here: schooledbymikepetrilli.substack.com/p/the-logic-... More next week on the policy implications. (Spoiler alert: I think Texas's Teacher Incentive Allotment is worth emulating.)

"You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we're going to get health care reform passed for the American people." -Nancy Pelosi, the 🐐

Cool. What would you call the other wing then? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/u...

T admin death count

🤔

I have to admit it’s fun to watch the Trump administration get beaten over the head with Biden v. Nebraska.

The great @attackerman.bsky.social on Dick Cheney www.thenation.com/article/poli...

In 2001, America had the great misfortune of being led by exactly the wrong man at exactly the wrong moment. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...

There's a common thing where people who are unusually beautiful and talented are kind of empty or blah in person, and then I listen to Rachel Zegler on the Blank Check Podcast and she's somehow also a more insightful film critic than people who do that for a living?

The problem with fooling people into thinking downtown DC is a crime-ridden hellhole is that those same people don't understand which part of the White House you're demolishing.

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

Another all timer from @rayratto.bsky.social defector.com/yoshinobu-ya...

This game is going to be decided by a barely discernible glance off the fair pole

Truly fate will decide now

A game of millimeters

MY GOD

Such a treat to watch two great teams trade punches all the way to end.

Vlad Guerrero is like a ballet dancer out there

No purer measure of pop culture success than the costumes 2,000 children choose to wear when arriving at your house for candy, and after 15 minutes I’m already calling it for Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters

On the left, the refurbished Lincoln bathroom. On the right, picture I took in Saddam Hussein's palace in Basra in 2005.

There's a very clear, persuasive, evidence-driven case that A.I. is rapidly disrupting college by ruining education. What's the positive counterargument? Is there one? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

New blood enemy just dropped.

I know it’s too much to expect them to know their history, but if the American Revolution had a motto, it definitely would not have been “immigrants go home.” It would have been “get your fucking soldiers out of our cities.”

It’s not just that they don’t have to turn off SNAP benefits — they’re not legally allowed to. They legally must use the contingency fund. The admin is pretending they can’t use it even though their own guidance from a month ago (that they’ve since deleted) contradicts that.

If you've ever had to deal with the maddening, expensive child care and preschool market, consider the strong possibility that Trump's education agenda will turn the entire K-12 school system into the same mess. My latest in @usatoday.com: www.msn.com/en-us/news/o...

Our president is working overtime to hurt one of our country's most successful export industries (one that I happen to work for).

I mean this in most respectful possible way: big-time college football is a joke sport, where very rich men waste their money hiring and firing coaches. www.espn.com/college-foot...

the numbers for “short AGI timelines” are suspiciously close to the maximum amount of time a VC is willing to wait for a liquidity event. just saying

Same. When I said I read something this week that gave me some hope, it was the results of this survey.

Looks like I picked the right week to be writing a whole entire book about the Mellon family

The most important thing to know about the decline in Black enrollment at elite universities is that this only the beginning, and the White House is implementing a specific, step-by-step plan to make things much worse. I wrote about it here: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

it’s almost as if all of the things folks argued would happen after race-conscious admissions were limited - precipitous declines in Black enrollment, among them - are happening. weird how looking at history can tell you a lot. who would have guessed it.

The Trump administration makes more sense when you understand it as trolling all the way down.

I bet some clever university president can strike a super productive deal with Trump, the guy who said ‘I wouldn’t knock over the White House’, then knocks over the White House and updates the media after they noticed the rubble - ‘actually I plan (future tense) to knock over the White House’

I wrote an essay for @nytimes.com about the drumbeat of small college closures and what Congress can do about it. Includes some sad and lovely photographs -- check it out. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

WUSTL (WashU, Washington University in St Louis) is OUT!! So uhhh, seriously, Vanderbilt is out alone on an island when it comes to private institutions. www.studlife.com/news/2025/10...

Re-upping my piece @washingtonmonthly.com as SNAP benefits are about to go dry: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/08/a...

Read @kevincarey1.bsky.social on the importance of preserving liberal arts colleges www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

I wrote an essay for @nytimes.com about the drumbeat of small college closures and what Congress can do about it. Includes some sad and lovely photographs -- check it out. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

Mississippi’s $500 million #HigherEd desegregation settlement was historic. But dollars alone can’t undo decades of unequal power. 🏛️ Here, our senior fellow @adamhsays.com explains how governance—not just funding—is needed to shape the future of #HBCUs.

I have a new brief out today about the Ayers settlement in Mississippi. Ayers was one of the longest running higher ed desegregation cases in history. When it was settled, MS Black colleges got $503 million over 17 years. But that's only half of the story. www.newamerica.org/education-po...

What evidence am I missing that AI is having broader impacts on young people's access to jobs - or even that *anything* unusual is impacting that?

Is there anything more than vibes to the idea that unemployment is up among the young, due to AI? Yes, I am aware that there evidence of impacts in specific occupations like software development. I'm interested in the claim that there's been a change in aggregates. #econsky

EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification. I glanced down at the message. “Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began. So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...