“Was ist Aura?” (What is Aura?), Walter Benjamin’s notes for The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction on San Pellegrino stationary, San Remo, c. 1935. (Walter Benjamin Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin)

"Infantino isn’t fit to lead FIFA. 
And FIFA isn’t fit to govern football. But to change it, we first have to expose and prove how unaccountable FIFA really is. Add your name to our complaint to FIFA’s Ethics Committee, demand that Infantino be investigated immediately" (@fairsq.bsky.social)

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Recent uploads to our free, high quality, high-res image sets on Flickr include Louis I Kahn's 1972 Kimbell Art Museum architecture. Modernists, we got you. www.flickr.com/photos/profz...

Paris 2006

I don't know, maybe if you're this terrified of dealing with students you shouldn't be a university president: www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...

If only there were a court, perhaps we would think of it as a supreme one, that could "say what the law is" — particularly when the executive chooses to ignore it.

The party of free markets and limited government.

good morning discoursers! middlebrow furrowed chaos yesterday whew but CULTURE IS FOR EVERYBODY hyperallergic.com/how-to-prote... @isanchezprado.bsky.social

Not sure everyone understands that this is a trillion-dollar wealth transfer from everyone to the world's richest people, who hold an overwhelming majority of oil and gas company ownership and stock. Staggering upward redistribution of wealth.

Truly a "pro-life" administration. U.S. Government Will Stop Paying for Test Strips to Detect Deadly Drugs www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/h...

Everything that is worth preserving, we, Fifa, will destroy.

In honor of Tim Cook's stepping down, here is the story of how I emailed him, not once but twice, with open email tracking enabled, only to discover that, not once but twice, my emails to the CEO of Apple were opened on a computer running Windows.

A proper game of football, this one, berween a team that should have wrapped up the title already and another which should have been demoted to League One a long time ago.

"A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess." A. Philip Randolph, born on this day in 1889

At lunch today, an otherwise apparently sane man at the table next to mine told his companion that he was using AI for "Christ-centered life instruction." Said apparently sane man was in commercial real estate, which doesn't skew lefty in CMH.

Péter Magyar on Polish politicians Zbigniew Ziobro and Marcin Romanowski, facing misuse of public funds & abuse of power charges, who Orbán granted asylum to: "They shouldn't buy any furniture in Hungary because they are not staying long. Hungary will not be an asylum for international criminals."

The last time my team put out a big, data-intensive project, we included this in the acknowledgments, and it's something I want to continue to do going forward. Time to sing these heroes.

Witty writing in a piece about the pope vs Trump and allies as.ft.com/r/2044e472-6...

What DJT wants is a MAGA version of Roland Freisler, who was deliciously crushed to death when the tribunal where he'd sent thousands to their deaths collapsed on him, as beautiful an act of divine retribution as history has kept track of.

once again kind of remarkable WIRED's business model has successfully become "reviewing every shitty windows laptop on earth so we can afford to publish BORTAC agents' names"

Good on WIRED for this report about appalling CBP conduct

Update: Markets "recoil" after suggestions earlier claims about the existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were false.

Oh so now copyright matters.

Markets rally after suggestions that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus do, in fact, exist. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

TRUMP DEMANDS NATO WARSHIPS UNBLOCK BALLROOM

Ahem at this point we have about one European leader that is actively trying to stop the disaster that's around the corner.

BU President Gilliam: “If you have the privilege of having a window that faces campus, you don’t get the privilege of speaking for the university.” At BU you can have either a window or freedom of speech, but not both. Gilliam was provost at OSU a few years ago. www.chronicle.com/article/can-...

Update from a street light bollard in Columbus:

This is a very expensive way to identify which senior administrators should be relieved of their duties.

appalling mismanagement of public resources "chop from the top" means no gazillionaire salaries for upper admin, who should be educators, and it means no $15M fees to grifter consultants and oafing marketers

Ladies and gentlemen, the meritocracy.

Brought to you by the same military that sent troops to protect the Iraqi Oil Ministry building, but no one to protect the National Museum of Iraq. 15,000 historical & art objects were looted in one of the greatest acts of cultural vandalism in modern world history. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

"We're gonna bring oil to market through other avenues"

Energy Secretary Chris Wright: "We're less than two weeks into this 47 year long conflict"

We don’t have to worry about Iranian sleeper cells when we have this guy on the job.

Ossoff: "The president appears increasingly to have lost touch with reality. That is deeply concerning when you have a a cabinet much more concerned with winning his favor than giving good advice & the nation now plunged into war. It speaks to the necessity of winning these midterms in a landslide."

Print it out, fold it, and send it in a letter.

Gender-affirming care for Rubio and Vance. "The president, he kind of leans back in his chair and says, ‘You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size’.” www.thetimes.com/us/american-...

I don’t think the incompetence actually is going to be what Kristi Noem is remembered for. It will be the killings, the lawlessness, and the grift, if I had to guess.

"Because he's a coward." Saved you 1258 words. Why a G.O.P. War Powers Hawk Was a No on Reining Trump In on Iran www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/u...

Do the sex planes stay with DHS or convey with Noem?

My head will not be this large at the talk.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."--Thomas Jefferson

Hey people, Minnesota still needs your help. Not only is ICE still here, but donations for food and housing are WAY down. A lot of hungry folks still in hiding in danger of losing their shelter. Please share this message and give what you can. www.standwithminnesota.com

A+ State of the Union counterprogramming by TCM.

Curiously, there was a memorial service held at the Capitol for ... Charlie Kirk.

Ladies and gentlemen, the meritocracy.