Ok, apropos of nothing in my professional life, I'd just like to say that as a partially-unwilling follower of Star Wars lore, which spams my FB constantly, I am annoyed by the banal stupidity of the dominant "post-Jedi" ideology of this franchise. 1/x

Cato has published my comprehensive review of the ~240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned 2 months ago to Salvador’s notorious prison. We identified FIFTY who came legally, never violated any immigration law, but are imprisoned at the US government’s request and at US taxpayer expense.

Apropos Harvard. Putin's personalist rule is executed by Admin of the Pres., a.k.a. "Apeshechka." Apeshechka's classic move is sending a tax inspector to places Pu & co. dislike. Then a fire inspector to condemn the building (e.g. EUSPb). Or a health insp. to check the gym. This is called "kreativ."

For aficionados, we are now at this point in the constitutional crisis.

Cuz it was written by ChatGPT. Classic bullshit, familiar to any teacher right now.

Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements

Maybe at the end of such a week, what we all really need is some perestroika-era healing vibes from Allan Chumak. The excerpt here is my personal favorite. postsoviet90s.com/artifacts/ch...

I made a book!

It’s about the wild Russian book industry as the Soviet Union fell; it’s got interviews with authors, publishers, and critics, close readings and bestseller stats—all while showing how capitalism emptied out Russian culture and how it might be coming for us next.

Does everyone know about that time when it was discovered that Lenin was a mushroom? To those who haven't heard, here's a great writeup by Fabrizio Fenghi, along with a brief subtitled clip from Kurekhin's May 1991 TV 'documentary'. Full version is on YouTube. postsoviet90s.com/artifacts/le...

Suddenly a thought- remembering “unhandshakewithable” (нерукопожатный) from @michaelidov.bsky.social ’s “Dressed Up for a Riot,” taking place during the 2011-2012 protests, and “cancelled” is basically the right translation for that word that we didn’t know we had when Michael was writing.

Hot off the presses, another review of my book at Ab Imperio (muse.jhu.edu/pub/178/arti...), huge thanks to Irina Shevelenko, for a thorough reading, as well as a spot-on perfect guess as to what my next book will be about!

Also, if you, understandably, don't have it in you to go through a dozen close readings of mostly Russian middle-class pop culture artifacts, here's the gist of my argument in podcast format, with the excellent Sean Guillory and Rusana Novikova.

Hi all, good news on the shameless self-promotion front! Thanks to ASEEES in Boston (which was fun!) you can get my book at UWP for $30+shipping with the code ASEEES24WISC. Good thru 1/24. Run, don't walk! uwpress.wisc.edu/books/6080.htm

Here are some of the best voices -- mostly in political science but also in history, economics, law, and journalism -- on the increasingly fraught relationship between democracy and capitalism in the United States: go.bsky.app/M6p7Ahw

Hi all, as good a time as any to keep this space warm! Thankful to Peter Rutland @nationalitiesp.bsky.social / @asn-org.bsky.social for a generous review of my book! Open-access text available here: www.cambridge.org/core/service...