Oh yes, the novel that made me sob uncontrollably on a transatlantic flight
Midwestern prof: Victorian lit & financial crisis. Zeitgeist-seismometer. 75% normcore Anti-doomer but ☹️☹️ wtf
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Oh yes, the novel that made me sob uncontrollably on a transatlantic flight
Fancy Feast invites us to imagine a sumptuous banquet for a cat. Meow Mix invites us to imagine a happy cat meowing with joy. 9 Lives invites us to imagine that although a cat may die in the eating of the food, he has 8 more chances
I remember walking in Claremont, CA in late September 2001 and seeing a jeep whiz around with a giant American flag on the back. Yelling teens inside, absolutely no one else on the depressed streets At the time, it struck me as weird
In December the local paper asked me & others how Trump would impact higher ed. This was part of my reply: open censorship. But forbidding professors to talk about race and gender won’t make them go away
I caught this morning morning’s minion
Israel is my first thought, but the UK also had to govern in coalition with some tiny Orange party from Northern Ireland recently
This is definitely my gloomy suspicion. But parliamentary systems are also liable to capture by tiny right-wing parties. Probably less vulnerable to total cult of personality in the age of celebrity, as long as the monarchy remains inoffensive & weak
This is also Bagehot’s explanation of British constitutional monarchy
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care... #leadership
Senior Lecturer immediately fired, Department Head and Dean removed, full Wrongthink Audit of all courses ordered. I’m sure the NYT has dispatched Anemona Hartocollis, perhaps accompanied by the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, to have a genial dinner party at the home of the person fired.
Yes. TAMU tape can be paired w countless memoirs of Red Guards calling out teachers for deviation from Great Leader Thought during Cultural Revolution catastrophe. "According to Our President, this is illegal." Cancellations at West Point (Tom Hanks!) and USAFA Cultural Revolution is the parallel
oh no they yelled at him in a restaurant? that sort of vile attack has only happened to everyone who has ever worked in a restaurant
wanna feel old? they're senior mints now
Feeling doomy but here’s a cute pumpkin
Oh I'll definitely be using this
I remember being very happy studying in Berlin in 1995 and then picking up a discarded Newsweek in the U-Bahn & discovering that schools in Iowa had been wired for something called “the World Wide Web”
My essay on the need for Mutual Academic Defense Compacts (MADCs) in this moment is now up in @aaup.org's @academemagazine.bsky.social, and will appear in print in the Fall issue. Please give it a read and share! #MADC www.aaup.org/mutual-defen...
I know people are already teaching these episodes, as I can see the backlinks from LMS. To assist such efforts, as I did with the HBCU arc from earlier in the season, I've created a landing page for the "Technofeudal Trilogy" with accessible readings by @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social & many others.
Our power-reader reports back from the front
Cute pink fish
They call him Train Daddy
I taught this book to a college class in 2002
I can’t believe something good also happened today
A good day to retire to an isolated cell to read discussions of reason and virtue written by women only. Martha Nussbaum, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir and that is it
Another good day for Wilhoit’s Law
just look at level of contempt that generally pro-system elites (lawyers, retired judges, journalists and analysts) now routinely show scotus. that is not a sign of a system that has long to survive — even in a competitive authoritarianism context. 2/2
President Pritzker should appoint 400 25-year-olds to the Supreme Court
I’m sorry but this is WRONG
This movie was great but its moral was “rebellion is stupid, adulting is learning to conform and enjoy power”
super juiced about close reading ✅
👍👍👍!
Yes it’s intensely personal, for better & probably worse. The Hitchens introduction goes into some of it while itself also being (er) a product of its time (War on Terror)
😂
That’s why I have to read it before it falls apart!
Maybe this 1150 page history of Yugoslavia will fix me 😁
I’ve had luck recently opening them the minute I get home with them, when they’re slightly melted, after running the edge of the lid under running water 😜
The return of the old gods! theonion.com/mr-autumn-ma...
I’m going to fix the timeline by posting more pictures of fat pumpkins
😮💨 Oof: LA is recovering
I think I would take reactionary centrists more seriously if they could cite one (1) example of progressives pushing for social change the *right* way -- using just the right slogans, supporting just the right policies, protesting in just the right fashion.
I sometimes think “don’t mourn that our aged wealthy class have cranky clichéed opinions; rejoice they still choose to read a sentence sometimes”
Matt you are running a one-man humanities institute !
I remember even my dentist’s office crippled with unpaid bills. It sucked & that’s why Rauner left office with a 26% approval rating
Yes: you’re right, I remember the moment the Rauner budget scraped through in (I think) summer 2017. I was out of state in early 2019 & when I got back I felt shock that Pritzker had done it so fast! I remember gasping while watching some local politics show on PBS 😄
The previous IL governor refused to pass a budget for 3 years, hoping to break every union in the state. He failed When Pritzker came in he negotiated with both parties and got a budget signed incredibly fast. He made it look easy! He says the right things & then does them. It’s nuts
Senator Rand Paul directly and forthrightly takes on JD Vance: "What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial."
Best things to happen this week (Sept 6) are once again vibey but their actual staying power is unclear: 1) RFK Jr. absolutely raked over the coals at a Senate hearing; 2) Harvard winning a court judgment to defend its 1st Amendment rights Maybe IT will happen next week 😔
Horrific. They must be trying to discourage laptop hoboes 😠
Washington, D.C.
That is hostile
😱🥵
Tbh it works better if the actual goddess Athena shows up, stops the cycle of revenge killings & forces people to follow the law 🫤
Looking forward to the rise of a political style that’s “no bullshit, not much sarcasm, just saying what you mean to do & then trying to do it.” I can barely imagine a horizon of political discourse beyond “all shitposting all the time” 😓
At the risk of being unduly optimistic, I think JB is very good at this and is doing everything right
the consistent through line is that characters who are supposed to represent fascism (bad) are reinterpreted as representing fascism (good)
if i had the opportunity to ask a question of anyone in the administration, given this "war in chicago" messaging, i would ask them how many americans the president intends to kill in his war
I think about this book constantly!!
Yale Law School never beating the “they don’t teach law at Yale” allegations
Fantastic combination 👍
Latest news in Sport www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/...
I taught it once & it’s absolutely due for a revival: one of the best funniest and most ravaging time travel books
Checking in on the r-w British Reform Party
Sounds like a surfeit of human folly! Timely!!
"She got ChatGPT to tell me what a rat I was.”
Probably more fun than reunion itself 😁
He’d have been the most emo poster on Tumblr
At least that one has a general relevance to narrative. When people start with “ontology” I mutter “well hold up pardner is this a Heideggerian rift in Being or some kind of plant life, religion, or aliens bc I need to know *exactly* what 🤨”
Pwned!!
It’s the Earl of Wokingham vs. his Scottish enemy Bonnie Woke Charlie
Easy! Just choose something stylish, professional, disarmingly casual, trendy, timeless, flattering, and also non intimidating and also effortless
F-cking hell 😞
it’s like how much more gender can we pack into this and the answer is none none more gender
I just visited Naval Station Great Lakes that Trump is letting DHS use as they prepare to invade Chicago. The Navy cooperated and took the time to answer our questions. Trump’s DHS locked the doors and fled. That’s not how you act when you’re doing something legal.
No 😠
Pritzker has actually said “we don’t want Indiana” 😂 But he’s never said “we couldn’t take over Indiana”
Am I going down a rabbit hole with my deep hatred for RFK Jr? Yes ☺️
Another ✨Queen✨ moment from Elizabeth Warren 🩸🦷
Interface with Instagram is stupid but you can click “continue on web”
This video of Bernie yelling at RFK Jr was a ✨ healing moment ✨ for me www.instagram.com/reel/DOMWXd0...
It’s almost like global trade wars are not good for US manufacturing
I am in London and I am not leaving until I see Allison Goldfrapp at a Waitrose
hands off our neighbors, our schools, our streets, our best city
don’t forget to subtract the job of whoever compiled this report
I love Warren & Bernie so I enjoyed seeing them smile & laugh at the end of this clip
throwing a TDAP booster into the cart with my COVID and flu shots for this weekend like a free gift with purchase I literally pulled up my vaccine history going back to the 90s and googled "how often" for every fucking thing on the list just to make sure RFK Jr doesn't take me out without a fight
i'm losing it at that name
Nice to see a piece covering this and that gets the framing correct! #MADC
Full-court press against the toxic RFK Jr: Dem Senators attacking, demanding his resignation More please 😍
RFK testifies before the Senate Finance committee today at 10am. This will be a big moment. Amplify it for your family and friends. Make sure they know that RFK Jr is trying to kill people as part of his decades-long antivax grift. Some things to note: 1/
hell yeah another ganz banger
Fact check: they did
Best part of the Harvard ruling from today is when the judge repeatedly quotes Trump boasting over and over again that what he’s doing is exactly retaliation
youtu.be/ap-oyOh8u7g?...
JUST IN: Harvard won summary judgment against the Trump administration with the court finding that the admin violated Harvard's 1st amend. rights. The court has vacated the funding freeze orders and termination letters and issued a permanent injunction. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
![[cite_start]A screenshot of the first page of a court document from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts[cite: 3]. [cite_start]The document is titled](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:sefgphqp2xqwh2hawaixykwz/bafkreiaefziiwcjq4laze5iymzn45j4qfm3lc226u27qrdhlxqxjixzxae@jpeg "Click to view full size")
The average human brain confronted with aggregate risk assessment
Publishers: “want! need!”
Honestly, becoming out of touch is one of the nicer parts of aging. Sidney Sweeney? Sounds like a character in Oliver Twist or some shit, idk.
So much dystopia crammed into one headline www.404media.co/shein-luigi-...
Sorry to the Big Easy, but this is a good sign for Chicago