James Brandt
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jamesbrandt.bsky.social
James Brandt
@jamesbrandt.bsky.social
1.4K followers 270 following 350 posts
Managing editor @lpeblog.bsky.social. Freelance academic editor. Posting from the land of enchantment.
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jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Am I reading this correctly: the firms that opposed Trump's intimidation tactics have suffered no consequences, whereas the firms that struck deals gave away $900 million while jeopardizing any work with clients who have interests at odds with the government?

There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Text from the article, reading: "Four targeted law firms filed lawsuits, and a series of federal judges in those cases have blocked Mr. Trump’s orders against specific firms as unconstitutional. But at least nine struck deals with him, agreeing to provide millions of dollars in free legal services to causes he favors."
October 29, 2025 at 12:43 AM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
I refuse to read either of these articles, but I really, really hope they are related to one another:
Top article headline: "Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say" Second article headline: "A Harvard Professor Is Placed on Leave After Firing a Pellet Gun"
October 7, 2025 at 12:40 AM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Good reflections here on the different assumptions that characterize Marxism and (at least much of) the modern Antitrust movement.
Text reading: "While Marxists need not go all the way in for the strong determinism that the tradition’s own rhetorical flights of fancy often have encouraged, it’s difficult to accept the idea that we coordinate economically in one way, and might just choose to do so in another, as anything but voluntarism. Yes, we might choose to do so, viewing our society with an anthropological or philosophical distance, of the kind Marxists enjoy at our highest level of abstraction. In principle, the coordination of labor could enjoy the legal protection that the coordination of capital currently enjoys. But there is a reason we do not see it in this society: the fact that law and state are not neutral, but are rather caught up in, and finally subordinate to, the system-logic of capital."
September 15, 2025 at 4:22 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Nico, my favorite pup at the Santa Fe shelter, is currently being featured on their Facebook page — if you’ve got a sec, give their post a like to boost it in the algorithm and help him find his forever home 🖤🤍🖤

Here's the link to the post: www.facebook.com/share/p/1CUV...
Black and white dog smiling in the forest black and white dog sitting on my lap and looking at me with a big smile. black and white dog in the forest, wearing an "adopt me" vest. black and white dog standing on the middle console of a car.
September 5, 2025 at 11:44 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Nearly every large organization - Columbia, Starbucks, REI, Trader Joes, Amazon, etc - has embraced an illegal anti-union playbook. While we should increase the legal penalties for such behavior, Eamon's right that we also need a shift in social norms to safeguard organizing rights.
Any consensus was short-lived. As Paul Weiler noted, employer unfair labor practices began to increase in the late-1950s. At the start of the 1980s, the Board was reinstating over 10,000 discriminatees and receiving over 31,000 charges of employer unfairness per year, the latter representing a 750% increase from 1957. Weiler, reviewing these facts contemporaneously, found that “[n]either the law nor NLRB practice has changed materially since the mid-1950s. What has changed is the willingness of employers to break the law when they feel they can get away with it,” reflecting in part “a growing social acceptance of such tactics.” In other words, social norms about labor-law compliance had changed. Violating the law to break a union had become okay.
September 4, 2025 at 3:37 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Tough to say farewell to a colleague so supportive, wise, kind, creative, and devoted. Yet much like Chuckie, I've been looking forward to the day when my brilliant friend @corinneblalock.bsky.social decides to take off.

Thanks for everything, and good luck with what's ahead! 🎉🥂
"Chuckie" (Ben Affleck) looking into the window of Will's (Matt Damon's) house in Good Will Hunting and realizing that he's finally left.
August 8, 2025 at 2:56 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
This verdict, in the NYT review of Thomas Chatterton Williams's latest book, captures how I've felt about every "heterodox" / "free speech" thinker of the past decade.

That TCW is still pushing this common 2015 narrative in 2025 just shows how impervious his thought is to evidence.
Text that reads "In short, Williams’s analysis lacks proportion. He does not seem to grasp that the left’s illiberalism occupies a marginal position in mainstream Democratic politics and the right’s illiberalism possesses a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Today, many Americans justifiably fear rising authoritarianism and worry that the nation might not withstand sustained attacks on our core democratic institutions. But Williams manages to contort himself into asserting that the American left somehow poses significant threats along both these dimensions."
August 4, 2025 at 4:57 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
There's always the $4,000 dior Ulysses book tote...

www.instagram.com/hommegirls/p...
Pic of blue dior tote bag with "ULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE" printed on it.
July 1, 2025 at 4:18 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Gig nursing platforms are 100% killing patients:
Text that reads: On another day, Kristin tested positive for Covid-19 and couldn’t figure out how to cancel her shift without losing attendance points (which would affect her ability to access work later in the month). She tried to no avail to get a hold of Clipboard Health as well as the facility to ask them to cancel the shift so she would not be penalized. In the end, despite being sick, Kristin showed up for the nursing job.
June 30, 2025 at 6:16 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
May you have the confidence of my 2015 Subaru selecting artist photos.
A picture of Subaru audio dashboard, which is playing an episode of Digging a Hole with Richard Primis, but the accompanying picture is of Richard Prior.
June 26, 2025 at 2:22 AM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Important reflections on the differences between the political economy of rural electrification and that of today’s push for 100% clean electricity.
To sum these differences up: Takeovers are harder than gap filling, stranding assets on the scale required for decarbonization is a new political challenge, and the clean energy transition does not have the same promise of supercharging economic growth that rural electrification did. All of these factors produce resistance from investor-owned utilities and incumbent firms that is far more entrenched than what public power advocates encountered during their earlier successes.
June 9, 2025 at 3:57 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
lol:
"This has been a general pattern in debates with Tyler. I will criticize some very specific point he made, and he’ll challenge whether I am important enough to have standing to debate him. “Oh, have you been to 570 different countries? Have you eaten a burrito prepared by an Ethiopian camel farmer with under-recognized talent? Have you read 800 million books, then made a post about each one consisting of a randomly selected paragraph followed by the words ‘this really makes you think, for those of you paying attention’?”
May 30, 2025 at 7:48 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

"But overall, the steady drop in new titles published by HUP has led revenue to drop, too — from roughly $20 million in past years to $15 million in fiscal year 2024. Revenue from new books declined by half since 2018."
A chart showing output of New Titles by Press between 2012 - 2024; while Uchicago and Princeton have stayed relatively steady at around 125 titles person, Harvard has declined from 100 titles, to 25 titles.
May 2, 2025 at 1:56 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Headline from 2020 reading, "Susan Collins will vote to acquit Trump, saying he's "learned" from impeachment"
February 3, 2025 at 2:16 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
That was my understanding as well, but given the level of vitriol in his tweets, I feel like there must be some deeper conspiracy theory of which I'm unaware.
Tweet from Elon Musk reading "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die."
February 3, 2025 at 2:33 AM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
In the only news of the day that matters, we have a new foster dog staying with us. If you know anyone in New Mexico who is looking for the sweetest pup (*some separation anxiety included), please direct them my way.
A beautiful white and brown dog lounging on a couch.
January 20, 2025 at 11:01 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Great stuff, as always:
Text reading: There’s a broader lesson here too. In this era of authoritarian threat, leaders of many of our institutions are going to see every reason to keep their heads down – even if that means abandoning smaller and weaker people and institutions to the wolves. The rest of us need to make our own collectives, cultivating the strength and conviction that comes from solidarity, allowing us to be brave in the face of risk. We’re going to need them.
January 13, 2025 at 4:04 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Don Draper "I don't think about you at all" meme, in which the top panel reads "Does abundance obtain only by adherence to a paradigm that sets the conditions for human flourishing through following basic tenets of free markets" and the bottom panel reads "I don't think about you at all."
December 17, 2024 at 10:41 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
The movie writes itself: "His indifference curves could save democracy... but could they save his marriage?"
Russell Crowe from "A beautiful mind," with chalk equations on a glass window pane.
November 25, 2024 at 8:10 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Under-appreciated aspects of the RealPage "algorithmic" price-fixing scandal: (1) the landlords engaged in a lot of blatant, old-school coordination; (2) the DOJ didn’t sue the landlords. 🙃
Text that reads: "Through weekly phone calls, emails, and in-person meetings, the landlords shared a variety of sensitive information with their direct competitors, including “nonpublic information about inquiries by prospective renters, occupancy, and rents.” Some competing landlords even set up shared Google Docs so they could more easily share such information with each other. In other words, they weren’t meeting in smoke-filled back rooms, whispering their plans in the dead of night. They did it openly in the light of day."
November 18, 2024 at 5:39 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Hi all. I made a starter pack of black and white dogs that currently live with me.
Two black and white dogs snuggling on the bathroom floor.
November 12, 2024 at 10:24 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
Why whatever do you mean...
November 21, 2023 at 7:11 PM
jamesbrandt.bsky.social
But our point is that if what we care about are such protections, then there is no reason to subject these protections to bargaining rather than just universalizing them. Why bargain over renewal leases or rely on anti-retaliation provisions when renewal leases can be obligatory? Why bargain over conditions when there are poorly enforced housing codes for which tenants could instead seek private rights of action, fee shifting, and the ability to aggregate claims? Why bargain against face recognition surveillance in hallways when a legislature can make it illegal?
September 6, 2023 at 3:38 PM