Timothy Burke

@timothyburke.bsky.social

6.5K followers 920 following 1.4K posts

Professor of History at Swarthmore College. Writes at timothyburke.substack.com, continuing from his old blog Easily Distracted. Remembers when there was no Internet, and stays up late because someone is wrong on it.

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Political science 50%

Sociology 17%

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Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d

As a companion exercise, I'd love to see political leaders and pundits ambushed with the questions from the revised citizenship test.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d

Little-known fact, the Latin motto of the Speaker of the House is "Non multas nuntios secutus sum". It's long been a treasured part of the post, to not follow any of the news and to have no opinions on the laws of the United States.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

RAJU: If defenseless survivors were killed, would that constitute a violation of the laws of war?

MIKE JOHNSON: I'm not going to prejudge any of that. I was pretty busy yesterday. I didn't follow a lot of the news.

Reposted by John McLaren, Joseph Schafer, Timothy Burke

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d

Sen. Eric Schmitt: "This is the language of people calling on people of conscience to overthrow autocrats and restore democracy..." That's what the 'color revolutions' were. This is Project 2025/Russell Vought rhetoric. It tells you a lot about where their heads are at and who they identify with.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

Sen. Eric Schmitt: "This is the language of a color revolution where you're calling on military men and women to disobey orders."

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d

Given MAGA-aligned AI-slop image makers penchant for substituting Trump into iconography normally reserved for Jesus, I almost wonder why Trump doesn't himself start demanding that his image be more prominently displayed in Christian churches and worship.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Timothy Burke, Michael Jones‐Correa , and 3 more Rosemary A. Joyce, Timothy Burke, Michael Jones‐Correa, Henry Jones, Greg Linden, Aviel Roshwald

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

Sen. Eric Schmitt: "This is the language of a color revolution where you're calling on military men and women to disobey orders."

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 4d

NYT "accurate" take on the news these days:

Trump initiatives causing real, factual problems in the world? "Critics" and "experts" say so. Often named and quoted.

Who says otherwise? "Others". Unnamed, never clear if it's anybody besides a NYT editor or a Trump staffer.

Perfectly equal.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 8d

The BBC is funded by a royal charter. If it can't stand against a spurious lawsuit for allowing a writer to say something undebatably true--that Donald Trump is the most openly corrupt President in U.S. history--then that's not because of money. It's because of the cowards running the UK government.

Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell , and 73 more Jonathan Portes, Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell, Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, David M. Farrell, Will Jennings, Stefan Rahmstorf, David N. Thomas, Gavin A. Schmidt, Patrick A. Jansen, John Horgan, Steve Peers, Andrew Scott, Colin Murray, Mark D. White, Huw Price, Rosemary A. Joyce, Elizabeth Stokoe, Dirk Pilat, Charles West, Martijn W. Hesselink, Chris Hanretty, Simon Wren‐Lewis, Alison Phipps, Greg Woolf, Mary Corcoran, Anand Menon, Michelle Everson, Jo Barraket, Rebecca Tushnet, Ben Worthy, David R. Miller, Robert Wolfe, Gary D. Rawnsley, Aileen McHarg, Jacob T. Levy, Simon Glendinning, Scott A. Imberman, Julie Cupples, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Stephen Ryan, Samantha Brennan, Jonathan Birch, Anne Norton, Hubert Zimmermann, Leo McCann, Timothy Burke, Manuel Puppis, Graeme Warren, David Bartram, Lisa Diedrich, Brian Doucet, Ann Bartow, Stuart White, Pauline Stafford, Clayton Littlejohn, Rense Corten, Greg Linden, Jack Stilgoe, Lukas Graf, Jon Dean, Klaus Oschema, Christina Pagel, Daxton R. Stewart, Rune Møller Stahl, Olivier Mannoni, Camille Lefebvre, Aviel Roshwald, Colin Talbot, Tarik Abou‐Chadi, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Jeroen Van Bouwel, David Spurrett, François Guesnet, Speranţa Dumitru

Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 9d

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 12d

The single feature of capitalism that most sets it against human flourishing is how misguided egomaniacs can take hold of a business that works well and produces steady value, blow it up in the name of some transparently dumb idea and walk away clean. www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/i...

HBO Max’s Big Plan: Be HBO Again

Casey Bloys is embracing a brand position for TV's crown jewel as a complement, not a replacement, for Netflix — kind of like how it was back when it was a premium cable add-on.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 12d

The puzzle to me with any multiplayer game that has a lot of children playing is why the solution that Toontown used a long time ago didn't become an industry standard. No chat, no open communications, identify nothing about players, other than standard speech bubbles for coordinating play action.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 12d

Well, when a tech CEO can't handle an interview with Kevin Roose, one of the most tech-friendly journalists in the history of IT, that says something about the company.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 13d

There was an amendment that failed, etc. but honestly, if they couldn't stop a dumb resolution like this, they should at least have the party discipline to be registered as Present and not cast a vote. But the Democratic leadership has never seen a rake it didn't want to step on.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 13d

Yup.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 13d

In finishing Tony Benn's diaries, I read about a group called the Elders that had been convened by Nelson Mandela at the urging of Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel in 2007. I had no memory of it. I was more surprised to find it still exists. All very nice people, but it's rather absurd.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 13d

I think I know who the noisy weakling is. Hint: he is an opinion columnist for the New York Times.

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 13d

Ross Douthat: Don’t Worry. Trump Doesn’t REALLY Want Democratic Officials to be Executed.

OPINION
There Will Be No Trump Coup
A final pre-election case for understanding the president as a noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat.
Oct. 10, 2020
Oliver Contreras for The New York Times
By Ross Douthat
Opinion Columnist

Reposted by Laia Balcells, Timothy Burke

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 13d

Ross Douthat: Don’t Worry. Trump Doesn’t REALLY Want Democratic Officials to be Executed.

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Shannon Vallor, Nina Jankowicz , and 26 more Cas Mudde, Shannon Vallor, Nina Jankowicz, Timothy G. Ash, Mark A. Lemley, Patrick A. Jansen, Mary Feeney, Guy Grossman, Edgar Morgenroth, Laurent Pech, Catherine Lutz, Michael Zimmer, Pamela K. Gilbert, Samantha Brennan, Timothy Burke, Eric D. Knowles, David Bartram, Josh Pasek, Nils Zurawski, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Sam Kamin, Seth Masket, Paul Nesbitt‐Larking, Tom Louwerse, Cullen S. Hendrix, Olivier Mannoni, Magda Teter, Nathan P. Kalmoe, James M. Thomas

Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 14d

The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted.

If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 14d

The billionaires can buy a lot of press fluffing--though I kind of suspect the NYT at this point doesn't even need to get paid off, because they're fully in courtier mode. But all the fawning in the world does not a real thing make.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 14d

Good. But as always in these situations, the lingering question is "why did it take this circumstance to produce this outcome?" Why do the investigations always focus just on the particulars of a given accusation and not on the inability of an institution to live into what it claims as values?

The Harvard Crimson @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social · 14d

#BREAKING: Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.

Summers Will Not Finish Semester of Teaching as Harvard Investigates Epstein Ties | News | The Harvard Crimson

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein.

www.thecrimson.com

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 14d

Here's a top lesson of the last year. Everybody who every said "don't leave a bad law sitting around on the books and don't ignore the potential misuse of a legal precedent that hasn't been misused yet" is 100% on the money, especially for people who think law and norms are important.

Reposted by Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Saunders, David Brady , and 22 more Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Saunders, David Brady, Jesse H. Kroll, Steve Peers, Alistair Munro, Rosemary A. Joyce, Caroline Krafft, Jonathan M. Gilligan, David S. Cohen, Michael Kevane, Smith, Robert C. Richards, Melanie C. Green, Silvia Secchi, Aaron Sojourner, Michael D. McDonald, Timothy Burke, Ann Bartow, Seth Masket, Simon Lester, Aviel Roshwald, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Timothy D. McBride, Steven H. Seggie

The Harvard Crimson @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social · 14d

Summers Will Not Finish Semester of Teaching as Harvard Investigates Epstein Ties | News | The Harvard Crimson

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein.

www.thecrimson.com

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 15d

I dislike the observation that Trump has accelerating cognitive problems. It lets him off the hook for the raw malevolence behind his increasingly incoherent expression. 40 years ago, he would have had the same depraved moral indifference to a journalist being violently murdered, just more clearly.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 16d

The NYT is not subtle when they're trying to do someone a favor or when they're out to destroy someone. The story on Summers today goes out of its way not to mention the unsavory specifics of "seeking romantic advice" from Epstein and only quotes one email exchange, at the very end of the story.

Chris Morran @themorrancave.bsky.social · 16d

NEW: When Andrew Tate landed in the US, Customs & Border Protection seized his electronic devices. But @propublica.org found that a White House official told DHS to return the devices, emphasizing that the request came from the White House.

By @robert-faturechi.bsky.social & Avi Asher-Schapiro

The White House Intervened on Behalf of Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation

Federal authorities were chided for seizing electronic devices from Tate and his brother, and told to return them, records and interviews show. Experts said the intervention was highly inappropriate.

www.propublica.org

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 16d

Like, wow, bad. The other stuff is kind of Whole Foods-expensive-not-great, but the instant ramen is WTF happened here.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 16d

I think we're probably a year away from Trumpworld people just hiring militia leaders and donors to be Justice Department officials and arguing that they don't need to be lawyers or know anything about the law, just to be loyal to the Supreme Leader.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 16d

When you think about any of these movies, it is absolutely impossible to imagine people loving them if they didn't have animated precursors--if this was the first time you'd ever seen these and had no knowledge of the animated, I honestly think you'd go "meh".

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 16d

I can say one NOT to buy, and that's the Momofuku chili crisp. I dunno what happened with Momofuku's brand products, but imho none of them are very good.

Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 16d

"The bullet theoretical launched the bullet possible."

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