Jonathan Gilligan
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jgilligan.org
Jonathan Gilligan
@jgilligan.org
8.3K followers 2.1K following 3.8K posts
Integrating social & natural sciences & modeling to study impacts & responses to climate change | Behavioral approaches to climate policy | Nashville TN | They/them 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ genderqueer | Jew | Impervious to onions and mustard | https://jonathangilligan.org
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jgilligan.org
You know maybe it's me, it's a little fucked up maybe, but I'm mad how? I mean mad like I'm Ludwig of Bavaria? I'm delusional, or I'm furious, or I'm Alfred E. Newman, or I'm a character in a madcap comedy? What do you mean mad, mad how? How am I mad?
Poster for the movie, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" A globe with the northern hemisphere covered by a scramble of cartoon people scrabbling about, with one hanging down over the equator holding a satchel that's spilling money.
November 10, 2025 at 10:42 PM
jgilligan.org
The headline is "The GOP Went Big on Anti-Trans Ads This Year. And Guess What Happened?"

That's not what you were objecting to.

You objected to Tannehill's words about trans issues:
Screenshot from the article: "The simple truth is one that has been told time and time again in the polls: The public doesn’t care about trans issues. A national Gallup poll showed that transgender issues ranked dead last among the 22 the survey asked about, with only 18 percent saying the issue was very important. A 2025 poll of Virginians had similar results, finding that only 3 percent of respondents had it as a top concern. It is difficult to make a coherent case that Americans are basing their votes on an issue which most of them could not care less about."
November 8, 2025 at 6:22 PM
jgilligan.org
Excellent summary by @gbbranstetter.bsky.social in @thenation.com of anti-trans political rhetoric and how to rebut it.

www.thenation.com/article/poli...
The central goal of much anti-transgender rhetoric is to make cisgender people believe that their interests and trans people’s interests cannot be met at the same time. It’s not just the accusation that trans people are different or weird or creepy; it’s that our rights, our healthcare, and our well-being must come at the expense of your well-being. As the infamous ad from Trump’s reelection campaign put it, transphobes want cis people to think that someone who cares about “they/them” could never be for “us.” It fits neatly into the central thesis of Trumpism—that someone else’s suffering will be your gain. It also feeds into the portrayal of the Democratic Party as feckless, effete, and obsessed with the abstractions of identity. For any politician facing them, there are two ways of handling these attacks: by promising to care less about trans people or by promising to care more about everyone.
November 8, 2025 at 4:05 PM
jgilligan.org
The XKCD quotation is, "If history has taught us anything, we can use that information to destroy it."

www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.p...
XKCD cartoon. A person with a bare head is telling another person wearing a black pork-pie hat, "Well, you know what they say. The past is a foreign country —" and the person in the hat replies, "with an outdated military and huge oil reserves! Hmm..." The title text (not included in this image) is, "If history has taught us anything, we can use that information to destroy it."
November 7, 2025 at 9:06 PM
jgilligan.org
This is not knee-jerk contrarianism. It is deeply sincere misogyny.
Screenshot showing the original headline of Douthat's column, "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?" before the Times changed it to try to hide the clear misogyny of the column.
November 6, 2025 at 5:37 PM
jgilligan.org
I mean, this is a guy who will go on about the quality of a piece of paper.

www.instagram.com/reel/DPOuRbM...
Screen cap from an Instagram reel from The Bulwark, showing President Trump in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie, at a microphone, with the caption, "Trump rants to the military about the quality of the paper at the White House."
November 5, 2025 at 10:35 PM
jgilligan.org
Politicians have not been paying enough attention to how dangerous it is to allow cis men to use any bathrooms.

nypost.com/2025/11/05/u...
Screenshot from the linked article: Massive brawl breaks out at Texas Bass Pro Shop grand opening over bathroom dispute It was a bass-erk brawl! Shocking video captured the moment a massive fight broke out between customers at a Texas Bass Pro Shop that was allegedly sparked over a restroom argument. The fists began flying at the outdoor superstore’s grand opening weekend in Odessa around 3 p.m. Saturday, when two men waiting in line for the restroom got into a verbal altercation that quickly turned physical and spread to multiple rowdy customers joining in on the violence, Fox 4 News reported.
November 5, 2025 at 9:41 PM
jgilligan.org
The @nashvillescene.com's Eli Motycka has a good story about the protest. www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithint...
“ We are here to fight the compact, but we are here as part of a bigger struggle,” said Jonathan Gilligan, a professor of earth and environmental sciences who arrived at the university in 1994. “The administration tries to divide us — they try to divide the students from the faculty, from the staff. But we are together in solidarity.” Gilligan unfavorably compared Diermeier, who joined Vanderbilt as chancellor in 2019 (and whose contract was recently extended through 2035), to past chancellors Gordon Gee and Nicholas Zeppos. Diermeier’s reputation on campus has suffered from his perceived unilateral decision-making around the compact, with detractors casting him as an ivory-tower CEO rather than a consensus builder.
November 5, 2025 at 9:19 PM
jgilligan.org
Photo of a crowd of demonstrators on Vanderbilt campus, with the Kirkland Hall tower looming in the background.
November 5, 2025 at 6:54 PM
jgilligan.org
Just got back from speaking at a demonstration against Trump's compact and other attacks on academic freedom & civil rights at universities, organized by Vanderbilt Indivisible, grad & undergrad students, and Vanderbilt's chapter of AAUP @vanderbiltaaup.bsky.social

Great energy from everyone there.
Poster for the demonstration today at Vanderbilt against the Compact.
November 5, 2025 at 6:36 PM
jgilligan.org
Poster for the musical, "Fiorello!"
November 5, 2025 at 1:02 PM
jgilligan.org
In Nebraska, Democrat John Ewing beat incumbent Republican Jean Stothert earlier this year by running exactly this kind of ad.

www.erininthemorning.com/p/omaha-repu...
Ad from Omaha NE mayoral candidate John Ewing, accusing incumbent Republican mayor Jean Stothert of being obsessed with trans issues instead of things that really matter to voters. The ad reads "Jean is focused on potties. John is focused on fixing potholes."
November 2, 2025 at 6:52 PM
jgilligan.org
"Don't do the crime if you can't forgo the Style, Titles, and Honours!"
Robert Blake as Baretta, with his cockatoo, Fred, perched on his head.
October 31, 2025 at 12:53 AM
jgilligan.org
Kennerly has it correct. en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_St...
## Disputed "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." As quoted in Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (2004): "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." This has since been cited as a direct quote by some, but the remark is very likely a paraphrase from Steinbeck's article "A Primer on the '30s." Esquire (June 1960), p. 85-93: "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. "I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
October 30, 2025 at 1:01 AM
jgilligan.org
Meme of Willem Dafoe from Spider Man, saying, "You know, I'm something of a soybean farmer myself."
October 26, 2025 at 4:06 PM
jgilligan.org
Great King Princess show at Marathon Music Works last night. She was on fire.
King Princess on stage with band. KP is at the mic with a green Telecaster. Close-up of King Princess on stage, kneeling and singing into a mic. She's wearing a white sleeveless top with "Girl Violence" written along the hem, a white studded belt, and blue jeans. The keyboard player is in the background. King Princess on stage, kneeling and singing into a mic. She's wearing a white sleeveless top with "Girl Violence" written along the hem, a white studded belt, and blue jeans. The keyboard player is in the background. King Princess on stage, standing and holding a mic at her side with her right hand, while she gestures toward the audience with her left. She's wearing a white sleeveless top with "Girl Violence" written along the hem, a white studded belt, and blue jeans. The keyboard player is in the background.
October 26, 2025 at 2:05 PM
jgilligan.org
Here is the guy's own former campaign director: "Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He's not an idiot, he's a military history buff ... he knows damn well what it means."
Screencap of a social media post by Genevieve McDonald, Platner's former campaign director, saying: I've run out of self-restraint, worse than when the guys on the train to Boston were fan boying over Reds Eats. The DC consultant class has fucked up our US Senate race again and you all need to stop snipping at each other. This is seriously the dumbest timeline. Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He's not an idiot, he's a military history buff. Maybe he didn't know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means. His campaign released it themselves to some podcast bros, along with a video of him shirtless and drunk at a wedding to try to get ahead of it. The vault is open for the GOP to fucking crush any dreams we had in the general and literally everyone I know is fighting with each other on social media. We cannot be this painfully stupid.
October 22, 2025 at 4:25 AM
jgilligan.org
Screenshot from Beshear's op-ed: "Earning trust and showing people you care about them also require that we talk to people like normal human beings. And that we are not afraid to share our “why.” For me, my why is my faith, and I share it proudly. I vetoed anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation last year because I believe all children are children of God. And whether people agree with my decision, they know why I’m making it. They know where I am coming from."
October 21, 2025 at 1:43 PM
jgilligan.org
WTAF, NYT? I am pretty sure Lester Bangs did not have any children.

Did y'all fact-check this?

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/s...
"Critics weren’t impressed. Lester Bangs, who regularly praised raw rock music in the pages of Creem and Rolling Stone, was aghast to find that his children preferred Kiss to Aerosmith."
October 20, 2025 at 12:40 AM
jgilligan.org
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October 19, 2025 at 11:13 PM
jgilligan.org
Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.
Cary Grant from To Catch a Thief. He is wearing a red scarf or kerchief with white polka dots around his neck, a jumper with thin horizontal navy-blue and white stripes, gray slacks, and boat shoes without socks, standing in an office, next to a desk with a green-glass shaded lamp. His right foot rests on the arm of a chair, his left hand on his hip and his right elbow resting on his thigh.
October 19, 2025 at 7:21 PM
jgilligan.org
Strong Damien Trump vibe.
Still from The Omen: Damien in a car, with his parents Robert and Katherine sitting behind him.
October 12, 2025 at 7:52 PM
jgilligan.org
Sure, Jan.
Photo of Kid Rock with Trump in the Oval Office. Kid Rock is wearing an outfit that is remarkably cringe, even for him. It's bright red, with white stars and blue trim, a US flag on his abdomen, just above the crotch area, and eagle wings, placed vaguely like lapels on his upper torso, ignoring the anatomical detail that eagles have wings on their dorsal, not their ventral aspect. He finishes the outfit with dark glasses, white cowboy boots, and a white pork pie hat. As though this were not sufficiently ugly, the suit is horrendously tailored and does not fit his body. It's too tight to hang well, and the trousers bunch along his legs.
October 11, 2025 at 2:56 AM
jgilligan.org
Student governments of Vanderbilt, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, UVA, and Arizona issued a joint statement condemning the Compact and stating that "Academic Freedom is not negotiable." www.instagram.com/p/DPm507ljBJ...
On October 1st, 2025, the White House sent the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education to our seven universities, outlining expectations universities must meet to continue receiving federal benefits. Although the compact's full implications remain unclear, the document outlines unprecedented expectations universities must meet to receive federal benefits. This could systemically alter the mission of higher education and erode the independence that has long defined our universities. We must not allow these attempts to control what can be taught, studied, or spoken on our campuses. Our universities represent the full spectrum of American higher education, from liberal arts colleges to leading research institutions. As students, this directly impacts us, and thus, our voices must be heard. We know firsthand that institutional autonomy is instrumental to the perpetuation of innovation and progress. As the Compact itself acknowledges, “American higher education is the envy of the world and represents a key strategic benefit for our Nation," yet the document undermines the very principles that make this statement true. Our administrations have been presented with a false choice between their commitments to knowledge and education and our access to the resources that sustain them. To preserve our status as world leaders in education, we must remain true to the foundation of academic freedom that has propelled us forward. As student representatives, we stand in united opposition to the outlined conditions. We call on our community of students, faculty, alumni, and leadership to reaffirm our commitment to reject political interference and federal overreach. Academic freedom is not negotiable.
October 10, 2025 at 10:10 PM
jgilligan.org
Cover of the book, "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison
October 7, 2025 at 2:39 AM