all this is both foolish and unnecessary

New book chapter by Bob Lerman and me on policy transfer and apprenticeship: books.google.com/books?id=l5q...

I wish I was a tree guy. I know some basics but you know the guys that can identify a million trees on sight and are knowledgeable about why they grow the way they do and various maladies. That would be great.

Just realized I’ve gotta drop Larry Summers from my Spring syllabus.

this is basically ricks' argument in THE GENERALS: that the structure of the american military (and political leadership) has generated an enormously competent professional force... that consistently generates useless results because of a void of strategic thinking at the top

The Monroe Doctrine has been stretched beyond any recognition for centuries, but even the Cold War invocations at least had a veneer of concern about combating malign intervention from outside the hemisphere. There’s not even a hint of that with Trump, it’s spheres of influence all the way down.

Welp, today was awful geopolitically, constitutionally, and because I had to wait and pay for car maintenance but on the plus side there was a great deal on lamb legs…

It’s sobering to look back on the run-up to the Iraq war—a period of unceasing chattering-class debate, elaborate official lies, media complicity, unavailing global protest, in the end a giant stitch-up—and have it seem like some sort of paradise of public deliberation compared to these gangsters.

Protesters in Fairfax City against the strike… that was quick.

Kidnapping Maduro and taking over Venezuela would be illegal even if Congress had authorized it.

Threats against Mexico and Cuba now. Insanity.

you think this is a one-off? don’t be deluded. we are firmly in the zone of lawlessness & impunity. repression at home and aggression abroad. and a sleeping congress.

Understandably the news coming in is fixated on Trump, but do we know anything about what’s happening on the ground?

I’M SORRY, WHAT?!

Liberty has triumphed over tyranny in so many forms in America’s history. Retrenchment and reaction has been deep and awful, but every time we’ve beat it things have ended up even better than the last triumph. I think it’s important to commit to that long run dynamic.

the digital quality isn't good but you can watch the Nunn/McKellen/Dench Macbeth from the late 1970s here, which is excellent - www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgEs...

I’ve owned land in the mountains for a year and a half now but for some reason this week I’m being flooded on my social media accounts with targeted ads about leasing land to hunting. It’s like some law changed January 1st or something, but I can’t figure out what.

This is what they took from you

In 2026, the oligarchs will seek to use the celebration of America’s anniversary to strengthen their grip on the economy and government. Taking inspiration from Thomas Paine, @nicholsuprising.bsky.social writes that we must reject these new monarchical elites. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Usually I’m quite productive (in terms of my job) over these holiday weeks because it’s a time without meetings, but I’ve found it basically impossible to be productive this year. I didn’t realize how much I had to decompress from the disaster that was 2025. Hoping it sets me up well for 2026.

Yep. It’s amazing how culture develops on these platforms. Even before Twitter went so bad, people still acted like this. Here I see people actively step back and acknowledge when they do things like this (and I try to as well). It makes the experience so much better.

All kinds of amazing books for this trend but you’d want to be sworn in on a masterpiece, right?

Incredible thread. My favorite is “My man looks like he’s telling the judge he sincerely misunderstood what “bottomless mimosas” meant” The shame is Schneider is a perfectly fine, funny actor that always made you laugh. I don’t know why they feel the need to beclown themselves with these rants.

Really looking forward to this next. Ever since starting my paper on W.H. Hutt and Nazism I’ve been fascinated with the fall of France, why it happened, and how people reacted (Hutt felt that France’s fall totally vindicated his analysis of the Nazis… my paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....)

I finished Veblen’s Theory of Business Enterprise today on audiobook and it was really impressive. I’ve never spent a lot of time with Veblen but you realize why he was such a big deal as well as the intellectual ambition of American Institutionalism.

I was wondering what Mamdani's first executive order would be, and I'm not disappointed by this. He has wiped off the books EVERY Eric Adams executive order issued on or after September 26, 2024, the day Adams was indicted on federal bribery charges.

If you start a post with “for those who care about liberty, 2025 was a mixed bag,” you don’t care about liberty. If Trump stuck to tearing up the constitutional order and subverting racial equity he’d get the enthusiastic support of a huge swath of libertarians. www.independent.org/multimedia/2...

2025 has been a terrible year for society, at work, and with family health issues. Some of this has resolved itself, much of it hasn't. There have been some bright spots, though, and it's good to hold on to them. One bright spot for me was having my two favorite papers to write published this year.

Nothing has been stranger about the last decade than the complete subversion of traditional understanding of Russia. You feel out of place being the one insisting that these are the bad guys. Like some stupid Cold War caricature. But in important ways it remains true and everything is upside down.

Part of me is glad that open-ended, qualitative data is getting more recognition in economics. Part of me is embarrassed that this gets you a JEL. I’m sure there’s something novel about the LLM bit - I’m not suggesting this is an uninteresting paper - but that’s not what the abstract is emphasizing.

New interview! Quinn Slobodian discusses the fusion between radical libertarians and the far right, and the unique form of capitalism they have come to espouse. Check it out! @ieres-gwu.bsky.social

Nicholas Decker, a GMU PhD student, asks if refs should only see intro and methods but not results. I think it’s sensible. It’s sort of how things work at Urban and I’m sure other research orgs. A project goes forward based on proposed RQs and methods. nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/should-pap...

I don’t usually discuss history of economics on Facebook but this provided a good opportunity to remind people that being a brilliant economist does not make your recollections of Marx good intellectual history! Marx called this “proof” a “chimera” and the manuscript explained why it was *wrong.*

A new paper on the history of presidents bashing the people who work for them and the possible relationship with trust in government: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Pretty sweet when it works out like that.

The irony is they’re the ones that bring politics into it. I’ve enjoyed many Rob Schneider movies, and yet I have no idea what Adam Sandler’s politics are. I don’t think I even know Schneider outside of Sandler movies. It’s not a death sentence. I’d see a new Jon Voight movie tomorrow. Stop whining.

As it turns out, white supremacy is not the unique domain of the American South. (I could have told anyone that if they asked).

I think the hands are obviously indicative of regular infusions of something, but honestly these just look like his lower neck. We are so used to his makeup that normal old man skin color looks odd. There was that odd patch once for sure but these seem more normal.

A day of extremes: Many compost bays built. Many glasses of wine drunk. Many pages of Taussig read. Many Duolingo lessons completed.

Taussig pairs well with Petit Verdot.

The guy who put a 19 year old named Big Balls in charge of gutting key government services: “experience matters when lives are at stake”

Blue Ridge living up to its name.

What is the correct ranking of Indiana Jones movies?

Last Crusade, Raiders, Dial of Destiny, Crystal Skull, Temple of Doom

In like ten months I’m going to have lots of fresh turmeric and ginger and you LOSERS are going to be buying it from a store like I did before I put what I bought in a store in dirt to grow a plant and wait a year.

I’ve had lots of surprising archival finds but the best is still the letter from Buchanan to Coase talking about how Nutter was running a basement school In Charlottesville to grapple with Massive Resistance. Wow!!! The paper was never published but Levy and Peart picked it up which is solid gold.

lmao

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

It has been a bracing moment for American federalism, with both unprecedented efforts to extend executive control over state and local govts, novel forms of subnational resistance. Where is federalism going? Paul Nolette and I have edited a new issue of Publius on that question. Short thread: