People who don't write successful popular science have zero idea that what your readers need is a gentle introduction to stuff they've never heard of. For some reason, most academics take this as a declaration of war. EVEN WHEN THE POPULAR BOOK IS FULL OF CITATIONS

my new AI powered lamp is trained on millions of lamp interactions so it understands that 50% of chain pulls are to turn it on and the other 50% are to turn it off. and honestly, it's a little spooky how it knows exactly what i want almost half of the time

I've always hated this image, of course it's a pipe, look at it that's a pipe, you're telling me that's not a pipe, you can't fool me I've done my research and that is a pipe and I am blocking everyone who can't get that through their skulls. Anyway I vote, vote blue no matter who

That Vivek Chibber “end of wokeness” podcast that was the subject of justified derision last month begins with the NYU sociologist making a snide quip about how “the dark night of fascism has not yet descended,” which has not aged well.

This is quite the paragraph from Hannah Arendt’s acceptance speech for Denmark’s Sonning Prize in 1975.

The difference between being "interested in history" vs "studying history" is significant. If you're interested in history you might read a few books on Rome & WWII, which is fine! If you study history you're forced to learn how different historical narratives are constructed. 1/

You can read scholarly texts and in-depth research about fascism; its philosophy; its techniques; its rhetoric; its ethos; its historical formations; its traits; its tendencies; its constitutive parts; its psychology. But none of that matches a columnist who doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings.

Tapping the sign

James Baldwin: (Most patient, heartbreakingly eloquent description of the experience of Black suffering in America you've ever heard)
William Buckley (smirking): Well, heheh, y'see, what Mistah Baldwin seems not to realize is that, ah, as the poet said,
Politics nerds: Wow... they were both so smart

low-key one of the most insidious dumb guy beliefs of the last few decades to gain widespread purchase has been this notion that demonstrating pro-social behavior in the hope that others would notice and mirror it, one of the fucking building blocks of any kind of society, is somehow ‘fake’.

I have decided to step down from my panel at the Oxford Literary Festival. I hoped to celebrate and share queer stories + highlight the long history of LGBTQ+ lives. Gutted that voices will now be absent, but I stand in solidarity with my trans friends and writers. As the mollies say #AlwaysTogether

I’ve just withdrawn from my panel at the OLF. Joyce is an absolutely chilling character: on record as saying that ‘every one of those [trans] people is a huge problem to a sane world'

Not often has an ideology been so mendacious: called for equality while generating inequality;called for democracy while sowing anarchy;spoke against classes while creating a new aristocracy;called for rules while breaking them all;funded a system of mendacity that tried to erect half-lies as truths

Someone once told me the point of college/grad lectures/seminars is not actually to learn any set of facts but rather for someone else to model their unique relation to knowledge itself such that you might take the bits and pieces that are helpful for building your own. I’ve always liked that idea.