Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory and Chair, Political Science, McGill. Senior Fellow, Niskanen Ctr. Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Humane Studies. Author, Rationalism, Pluralism, & Freedom. Opinions are only my own; I do not speak for any of these institutions.
One of the many things that bothers me about white supremacists is their revisionist history of the Civil War. "Ol' Bobby Lee" was a gentleman and wasn't "that bad" on slavery. Well, 160 years ago TODAY the retreating Confederate Army kidnapped over 1000 Black people in PA and MD and took them to Virginia for enslavement. Few know about this, but it was a war crime on top of the tragedy of Gettysburg.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/How-Confederates-Kidnapped-and-Enslaved-Blacks-at-Gettysburg
David A.Bell in the Chronicle, against the practice of academic departments adopting political positions and statements (and against the pressure on them to do so). Paywalled.
Lauren Hall Lilly remembers Steve Horwitz.
https://radicalmoderatesguide.substack.com/p/two-years-in-memoriam-steve-horwitz
"The contention that #liberalism can, but invariably will, be combined with other convictions is ironically both uncontroversial and sure to generate a great deal of controversy." https://www.liberalcurrents.com/understanding-liberalism-in-moral-terms-michael-walzers-the-struggle-for-decent-politics/
I'm in Glasgow celebrating Adam Smith's 300th birthday. Inhonor of the occasion, one from the archives.
Honoring the Dishonorable Part 1: The Dishonorable Dead
https://www.niskanencenter.org/honoring-the-dishonorable-part-1-the-dishonorable-dead/
@kjhealy Come on, an X-Men spec script is the likeliest thing for you to be writing; you can't blame the device for that assumption.
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Right, 1819-1820, trans. Alan Brudner, University of Toronto Press, April 2023
https://utorontopress.com/9781487533540/lectures-on-the-philosophy-of-right-1819-and-x20131820/
When I saw the trailer for Asteroid City, I half-believed that it was one of those over-the-top internet jokes: "What if Wes Anderson made Armageddon"?
I like Anderson, but this movie looks like a lot of a lot of his schtick.
In a single episode, Mrs. Maisel has in-vitro fertilization in 1961, and college study abroad behind the Iron Curtain in 1951. Sigh.
@jacobtlevy I've always been curious, in what sense is a pod cast, really? Like a shadow, a vote or a bronze?
Maybe like a spell?
[starts hearing Screamin' Jay Hawkins singing "I put a pod on you"]
... or maybe not
One of the dumbest rules. Everyone needs to do this. My students are shocked at the ways journals discourage appropriate citation.
Mastodon poster: The default UI here emits a painful electric shock when I click on the like button. That’s kind of bad.
Replies: you can turn off electric shocks in the advanced settings
Poster: ok, but they really should be off by default. Electric shocks are unnecessary and dangerous.
Replies: go back to Twitter if you don’t like it here.
The dwarven city cross section map is finally finished. A geological survey focused on rock types feels a likely product of an underground society. As a result I’ve made the strata and faults of the rocks the most vibrant and detailed part of the map, leaving the tunnels and buildings as mostly negative space. I’m super pleased with how it turned out. Map will be on sale as an art print soon. #ttrpg #gamemap #gamemaps #mapmaker #mapmakers #cartography #cartographer #cavecity
Well, let's see whether BlueSky is as exciting a party as people are saying.
@jacobtlevy that’s well put. I’ve usually just said that it was jarring to return to a Larry David style after two years of him being gone, but this is right.
On another note, the reason I’m less of a fan of Curb is because seeing Larry David without being filtered through Jerry Seinfeld is a bit much, and not very amusing.
If taken seriously it retconned the whole show. And in being spiteful to the characters it was at least a little spiteful to the audience .
/fin
Even before the trial, the callousness of the initial carjacking scene was show-breaking to me. That was Larry David's nihilism creeping in. And it turns the characters into *people we were wrong to care about or sympathize with for nine years.* It makes them, not people who are a little bit worse than they should be but haplessly trying to be better than they are, but genuinely awful people.
This doesn't get at why I dislike the Seinfeld finale so much:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/05/12/seinfeld-episodes-finale-soup-nazi/
I think Seinfeld was a comedy of manners about people who didn't have manners. To put it differently, it was a show about people who were a little bit worse than other people, or who at least suspected they were (Kramer excepted), and knew they should be a little better, but didn't really wanna and more importantly didn't have the modern rulebook for how to be.
But they did care, and did try.
