The If Books Could Kill ( @ifbookspod.bsky.social ) gang have another banger of an episode. I knew I should be suspicious of Sapiens but I did not see the “western colonialism was actually OK because they mostly cared about knowledge” argument coming.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Usually I leave the NY Times criticism to folks more experienced in the genre, but wow I did not see this coming. Waxing nostalgic for a “clubby” world that’s “all but gone”. You know what folks did in that club, right??

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/s...

Everyone is saying how “unprecedented” it is that King Charles is stripping in his brother of his royal titles and paying for him to live in a slightly less nice house. Well Edward IV locked his brother up in the Tower of London, personally prosecuted him, and had him executed.

I am so relieved to learn that AI is not going to put folks out of work but rather give them super powers. And anyone it does put out of work was not a “real” worker anyway.

Found this in a letter from my dad to his dad, written Thanksgiving 1974. He had made full professor a few years earlier, and it's interesting to see the younger professors starting to freak out about the end of the post-war academic boom. Austerity never ends well.

Oh look, the housing crisis is going to solve itself as the baby boomers sell their houses. Now we just need to get those annoying YIMBYs to stop insisting that houses be in walkable areas with good public transit.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Think of the hours wasted stopping at red lights:

Here is a clip of Paul Mahoney, UVA's new acting president, at a Federalist Society panel. It's clear why no-one from the College was appointed to the presidential search committee -- Mahoney says outright that humanities professors are all a bunch of commies.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpUq...

Maybe it could start by just causing fewer problems.

Two days of driving from mid Missouri and now back in Charlottesville. So nice to be greeted by the amazing entrance corridor on Ivy Road.

Hello, world.