Started this “hidden gem” last night, pretty good!

Most mornings I have an apple juice with creatine and in my head I'm like "wow this is so healthy"

Rawls pile getting thick af

Wow Donald Davidson rocks

Richard Rorty was a 21st century philosopher stuck in the 20th century responding to the philosophy of the 19th century.

Spending the past month or so in Southern California has helped me realize that Stephen Miller must truly be a psychopath (he grew up here) because the best thing about this place BY FAR is the Mexican food.

Rorty has to be the funniest American philosopher of all time, right?

‘Your priors too Bayesian’ has the juice

I am a proud owner of the issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs with Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” paper in it.

Two awesome used bookstore finds:

Wondering why conservatives keep blaming John Rawls for not understanding how birth works? Looking for an intuitive explanation of the original position? Check out my most recent substack post! open.substack.com/pub/grapheme...

Guess we’ve learned the answer!

The thing about taxes is that they need to be way higher

They have a versions of Reese’s peanut butter cups which is a chocolate bar and good golly miss molly it is good

This took me out

I’m finally reading a theory of justice, and frankly I don’t understand at this point why we’re not all rawlsian. Seems he cracked the nut no

Kant argues that if we’re not to loathe the human race, we must believe it’s our natural end to morally progress; and further, that like progress towards “aerostatic balloons,” repeated failure to reach our end doesn’t justify abandoning hope—only demonstrated impossibility does.

Rawls argues that your place in the natural distribution of talents is *morally arbitrary,* so justice should be assessed from the *point of view* of the original position, where you imagine not to know who you’ll be. It’s not about the literal possibility of being someone else!

I’ve been reading Kant…

Kant asks: “What is enlightenment?” But he never asks, “how is enlightenment?” :(

Alexander Hamilton was the first “read theory” bro

From feminist economist Nancy Folbre: “Individuals who devote relatively little time, energy, or labor to child rearing are essentially free riding on parental labor. In the fiscal sense, at least, children are public goods.”

Whenever I read Kant I find myself muttering “hm!” and “hm?” and occasionally “hrrrm…” a lot. Much more than any other philosopher. What accounts for that?

Used bookstore haul!

There is nothing more satisfying to a fascist than to use the mechanisms of efficient, impersonal bureaucratic state machinery (which they, of course, will claim to loathe—until the rule over it) inward on society, to enact swift, efficient, impersonal violence on their targets.

I’m so happy man

I prefer the reformist, coalitional, and outcome-oriented thinking of political pragmatists like Noam Chomsky (third image) to the radical, anti-compromise, and purity-politics point of view represented in the New Liberals’ approach to the NYC mayoral election. :)

Driving people out of business is good when it’s a capitalist enterprise (hooray growth!) Driving people out of business is RACIST when it’s a state-owned enterprise (don’t look into what I was saying about identity-based appeals a few months ago!)

Obama was proof of this before him!

I think if we passed a right to roam law, the sale of federal lands would be much less problematic from a conservation perspective. Just saying!

The ladies love an analytic Marxist

Also, this great book cover. They’re not making them like this anymore

Awesome author’s photo I found in the used bookstore yesterday

In my John roemer era

Oh to have been a left-liberal academic egalitarian in the mid 1990s discussing the future of socialism at academic conferences… why couldn’t it have been me?!?!

The action-consequence relationship has always eluded Cuomo and his advisors…

We’re sacrificing our long term future. We’re probably sacrificing our short term future. And we’re doing it so that parents feel better about their kids and so problems borne of inequality show up in the data less?

Ate a plum, now my hand is sticky. The things we do for love…

A gofundme fund for Helen de Cruz's children, set up with Helen's blessing by @marcusarvan.bsky.social:

I am so grateful for the things Helen de Cruz left behind for us. I aspire to be as kind to near-strangers as they were kind to me. I am so heartbroken to learn of their passing. Take the time today to read Helen’s moving final essay, it’s worth it. (Link below)

Helen was the best of us.

“When Lincoln interprets the Civil War as God’s punishment for the sin of slavery, deserved equally by North and South, God is interpreted as acting justly. But the Holocaust can’t be interpreted in that way, and all attempts to do so that I have read of are hideous and evil.” —John Rawls

There’s very little in Mike Lee’s plan that couldn’t be achieved by offering e.g., 99-year leases on the land—except that in the Republican plan it will be a permanent transfer of wealth from public to private hands in an already increasingly inegalitarian society.

Isn’t there an inherent tension in making crime, disorder, & rule of law the crux of your criticism of Mamdani, and then to suggest that Adams—a criminal the Trump DOJ upended the law to protect (as part of their disorderly immigration enforcement)—is the best available choice?

I could write a great Rawls movie

I’m at In-n-Out. Why do they force you to go through the ritual humiliation of asking for something “animal style” just to eat the off menu version of their hamburger that tastes good?

“Pro-life”

Direct funds to families to help them access care southernequality.app.neoncrm.com/forms/37

This seems obviously true to me? Small Obama comments routinely make for breaking news in ways that Trump comments from 2021-2024 never did, and he was publicly planning to run again!

How many of the justices’ votes on this case do people believe were swayed by writing in the New York Times? Would the legal content of the decision or concurrences have changed if the NYT had refused to publish on the subject?