when the interview goes well: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

honestly I'm just gonna have to repost this once a month at this rate

Kinder Institute assistant prof, constitutional and legal history, 1750-1860!

a 1970s strike that defined Charles Koch (of the Koch Brothers) 's career ended in large part because the Teamsters broke the picket line. anyway

imagining a happy alternate reality where consultants are a nice team of folks who come help you solve problems rather than the thing that they actually are

can I buy "dumb glasses" that ruin the video of anyone trying to record me because no

20% of US adults know someone who is nonbinary, and that 20% includes all of you

back on my bullshit

I would like to see the 'liberal center' as it were be a bit more aware that there is a distinction between 'doing debate' and defending the concept of debating. Liberalism isn't a call to intellectual neutrality, but an active commitment to specific principles of liberty, pluralism and rights.

the way forward is treating voters as constituents, members, and citizens to be engaged, not consumers to be appealed to

difficult speakers? good news, I am available for a very low fee to speak on subjects like esoteric dockyard artisan traditions from the 18th century, the reception of British libertarianism in Japanese political discourse between the 1870s and 90s, and Congregationalist epistemology

The amazing thing about Trump is that he says right into the camera on the White House lawn while stone cold sober the sort of stuff Nixon would only scream in solitude at the White House fireplace after a bottle and a half of whiskey.

One of the main things I hope my book will demonstrate is how the US consumer economy expanded and became something resembling democratic after WWII as mass consumption was crafted out of a prior economy that was simply too expensive for most to afford. A post-mass consumer US awaits us.

many people are saying buttondown.com/anotherway/a...

Biblical Author: "In my book I discussed the Antichrist as a cautionary tale." Peter Thiel: "At long last, we have created the Antichrist from classic religious text Don't Create The Antichrist!"

The Regime is violating the humans rights of cherished manufacturing partners, calling for an end to quarterly reporting, and generally cutting every wire in the economy they can hoping the next one they find will kill liberalism. Why don't markets care? buttondown.com/anotherway/a...

The Regime is violating the humans rights of cherished manufacturing partners, calling for an end to quarterly reporting, and generally cutting every wire in the economy they can hoping the next one they find will kill liberalism. Why don't markets care? buttondown.com/anotherway/a...

incoming executive order bringing back the flying wedge

korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in

another year, another department, another set of colleagues to win over with my secret lemon bars recipe

refining this sub-sub-argument in the book as clearly as I can: the moral reform / behavioral control stuff was not the heart of the Panopticon but a half-hearted gesture to win over social conservatives

foucault: the Panopticon was a precise system of moral discipline. the soul becomes the prison of the body... wilberforce: my good friend Jeremy is a Reformer of the Vitious! jeremy bentham: i am going to keep criminals in solitary confinement and make them work really hard

ulysses is perhaps one of the most ludicrous possible use cases for this. father conmee-coded product here

the whole constitution on display, you say? for the first time?

markets reacting to bad BLS news with "yay rate cut incoming!" is a good example of how misconstrued our economy is: unemployment is bad in real resource terms and should be considered as such by everyone. an economy that rewards the wealthy more when it is doing worse is failing even on own terms

it's been almost an hour and thankfully no one has come marching to my office to find out why an ostensible early Americanist (I think that's what I'm considered here) was playing Creed's post-9/11 halftime show for students in class

think this is also the first public reveal of the cover btw. they really nailed it

the "tax the billionaires" political refrain is Good Actually in part because it is a call for the people at the top to actually be constrained by rules informed by the public interest, a virtue that fingerwagging correctives about how much revenue such taxes would *really* generate doesn't address

about to be entering that phase where one plans book promotion for CONTROL SCIENCE, my four-century history of workplace discipline as political and economic thought (and hope against despair) if you know my work or want to know it better and have media connections or suggestions I welcome them!

10/10. Chef's kiss. No notes. 💯

as I have said this won't damage AI companies because private one-time sales to individuals is exactly how enclosure works; if you want to protect academic knowledge creation you need new ways of supporting it www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/t...

Sandwich was also despicable in another sense I'm probably going to have to write a separate article on: he was a big proponent of efficiency in government dockyards, and for literal decades he dreamed of labor and supply reforms that he finally got to implement in 1775. He wasn't the only one...

in my happy place (writing about a vicious summer 1775 print debate in the Gentleman's Magazine over dockyard strikes in which everyone involved was wrong and I increasingly suspect the Earl of Sandwich personally intervened pseudonymously because of his enormous ego)

"The Department of History invites applications for an assistant professor who will make enough leftist remarks to annoy conservative talk radio hosts but whose politics will ultimately support the neoliberal mission of the university." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hon...

fascinating how this particular flavor of AI boosterism is a complete rejection of empiricism. we're back at pure rationalism: no need for experiments, think hard enough and your big brain (artificial in this case) can figure out anything

notably Leonidas did not win and Greece had to be bailed out by, among other things, the woke Athenians and their boats. I see someone didn't watch the 300 sequel

Why do RFK Jr. and so many of his ivermectin-swallowing adherents seem to support disease itself? In a vain attempt to deny their own mortality, they've turned to the same 19th-century libertarian crank ideas that gave us eugenics buttondown.com/anotherway/a...

Question to Zach Polanski at the leadership announcement: "Q: How can you take on Nigel Farage when your policy on immigration is so different?" Everything wrong with British politics and media summed up so succinctly in a single absolutely unhinged question.

Today is publication day for this beautiful thing. I hope that it will tell a broad audience what historians of science have now long recognized: that alchemy was not a superstitious aberration but rather, an important phase in the history of ideas and of manufacturing.

It's happened! My newsletter has finally Gone Woke! Trump appointed landlord app AirBnB's co-founder as the Chief Design Officer of the USA, right after DOGE blew up 18F (which did real work). And the UX commentariat cheers, because the vibes of a "seat at the table" play better than the reality.

he really does have friends everywhere

For those interested in this historical example, I have a piece on it in this volume, coming out in a month or so. Writing it made me think a little differently about what’s happening now sunypress.edu/Books/P/Plan...

real historians know that the only correct historical periodization is the very long eighteenth century, which goes from the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 to the closure of the gold window in 1971

BREAKING: Over 450 game developers behind hit video-game series Diablo have joined CWA, joining the historic fight for a better video game industry. Hail to you, union champions 💪