Today is Trans Day of Visibility 🏳️‍⚧️ a nice day to announce that I have recently come out as genderfluid. That means new pronouns (they/them) and a new look. People who see me daily already know, but for the rest of you online, this will be new.

Cool new book on the way. Just when I brought my copy of The Ends of the World by Danowski and Viveiros de Castro to the office.

Something I have been wondering about shifting between academic and activist circles: what can academics and “theory” actually contribute to activism? Where would our skills/knowledge be put to best use?

Wrote a personal eulogy for Jürgen Habermas, a philosopher with whom I have always had an ambiguous relationship. I admire his faith in reason, democracy and social cooperation. However, I've always been suspicious of how well-liked he is in the halls of power and how meek his actual politics. 1/2

Last Friday was all about Habermas, but today is a Federici day.

Genius 🔥 substack.com/@meaghanwils...

Habermas’ last contribution to the public sphere was a demand that israel must not be accused of genocide. But as Meaney writes in @newleftreview.bsky.social, ‘one would have to look far back for the original traces of Habermas’s locked-in Zionism.’ newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Last Friday was all about Habermas, but today is a Federici day.

Nancy Fraser on the death of Habermas and German critical theory. “Habermas first lit my path as a critical theorist. I remain deeply grateful for that. But over the years the light he cast flickered and waned – until, with his stance on Gaza, it seemed to go out.” www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Wrote a personal eulogy for Jürgen Habermas, a philosopher with whom I have always had an ambiguous relationship. I admire his faith in reason, democracy and social cooperation. However, I've always been suspicious of how well-liked he is in the halls of power and how meek his actual politics. 1/2

IN MEMORIAM Habermas is gestorven, de internationale vrede dood en begraven, en de mensenrechten voelen zich niet lekker. www.sampol.be/2026/03/mijn...

Georgy Layus recently reviewed An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought. Glad to see how the philosophies of Roberto Esposito, Silvia Federici, and Giorgio Agamben resonate with people today. marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/2258...

Some E.E. Cummings for an early spring Sunday.

Weekend reading: a classic in Marxist feminism, Leopoldina Fortunati’s L’arcano della riproduzione. English translation from Verso coming soon, I have heard.

Having a Habermas day.

Big news. Harriet Taylor Mill officially credited as co-author of On Liberty! 👇

New review out of the book "An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought" by Tim Christiaens, Joost de Bloois, and Stijn De Cauwer. "The collage made by the authors reproduces the essential feature of Italian thought that they want to underline, namely its porosity and openness to the future."

Just when I am making slides on Rawls’ theory of justice, someone posts the picture that says it all!

New article out:

One more sign that we’re living in neofeudal times is that papal schisms and antipopes are back.

After encouraging prospective students to come study philosophy at @tilburgphilosophy.bsky.social, treating myself to a coffee and an Andrei Platonov novel.

Been thinking about this piece quite a bit. You want to make your teaching matter, but there’s so much bureaucracy and surveillance to go through and sometimes you just hit a wall of student-consumers who only want to pass an exam. criticallegalthinking.com/2026/03/11/t...

Some AI company thought it was a good idea to build AI toys to teach toddlers how to speak. As anyone who had ever seen a furby should know, that’s just asking for disaster.

one of my favorite Sohn-Rethel texts is all about how in Napoli technical objects can be repurposed in weird and liberating ways when they break down hardcrackers.com/ideal-broken...

Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

“What we are witnessing, then, is the renewal of a nakedly imperial project: a politics of permanent siege, existential paranoia, and millenarian last stands.”

In Lebanon, Israel seems to be following the same logic it deployed in Gaza: emptying out entire areas through what amounts to ethnic cleansing. @joelleabirached.bsky.social writes from Beirut as bombs rain down once again:

More Clara Zetkin, please!

What it's like to "be a man" doing platform food deliveries when you're caught between entrepreneurial discourses and precarious work? My latest (open access) publication, for the Journal of Sociology. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/HDW2T...

Teaching about the globalization of platform capitalism and Trotsky’s notion of uneven and combined development today. Or how to fit in one lecture Trotsky on international capitalism, the “varieties of capitalism” literature, postcolonial theory, and the issues of introducing Uber in Ghana.

Sleeping in on Sunday morning like ...

New research from Tilburg University's Philosophy Department: Paolo Santori in the Journal of Business Ethics "Against Spiritual Leadership in (For-Profit) Organizations". link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Yet more evidence of the moral bankruptcy of football. www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/...

"The online environment offers new ground for harassment both in scale and impact. Unless legislators (and society) start to treat these offenses more seriously, tech will be weaponized against women.” My interview with @newsweek.com & Marni Rose McFall www.newsweek.com/women-online...

Let’s just all agree to call these “smart” glasses by their true name: creep glasses. www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/met...

Some people wait for Taylor Swift’s tour announcements, others hope for blockbuster movie teasers … but I eagerly anticipate the CFP for the Danish Marxist Society.

Reading for the weekend: Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams on worker cooperatives and workplace democracy.

Tocqueville is genuinely one of the midt underestimated commentators of the US in political philosophy. People always look to Rawls and Nozick as the two sides of American political imaginary, but Tocqueville is far more spot on.

EU in Iraq: “After Saddam Hussein, things will get better.” EU in Syria: “After Assad, things will get better.” EU in Iran: “After Khamenei, things will get better.”

The US and Israel are bombing Iran. Anyone reporting it as “preventive” is engaging in propaganda, by definition. There is no interpretation of what’s happening as anything else than a crime. You don’t have to like the Iranian regime to understand why this is bad.

Reading for the weekend: Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams on worker cooperatives and workplace democracy.

Tous les écrits de W. E. B. Du Bois ont été publiés, à l'exception d'un imposant manuscrit d'environ 320 pages, terminé en 1950 et intitulé "Russia and America : an Interpretation". Le jugeant trop stalinien, l'éditeur l'a refusé et il n'a ensuite jamais été publié.

From now on, I will be acting as the Janus face of the Tilburg philosophy department, speaking both for myself and the department as a whole.

21st-century Nietzsche: “Haven't you heard of the madman who in the bright morning ran around YouTube crying incessantly, 'I'm looking for an influencer! I'm looking for an influencer!’ Since many of those who did not believe in influencers were standing around together, he caused great laughter.”

Teaching an all-time classic today: the young Marx on alienation. With in the background the new Dutch translation of Michael Heinrich’s intro to Marx’s Capital. Got it at Linksboven’s Ecosocialism day yesterday and very excited!

#OtD 21 Feb 1848 the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was published. Widely read by workers across the world, it remains one of the most influential texts ever written. A modern edition of the text is available in our online store: shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/...

For those living close to Utrecht, tomorrow (Sunday) I will be speaking at the Day of Ecosocialism for Linksboven. How to establish and organize an economy that is sustainable, democratic, and fair for everyone? linksboven.org/event/ecosoc...

My co-author received his author copies 🥳

When you're making lecture slides and discover memes so good they make you want to change course topic.