When I read 'Vertical Drinking' I think of keg stands.

Jack Tindale@jacktindale.bsky.social · 1h ago

As ever, obsessed by the euphemism of “Vertical Drinking”. “How can we make standing up, having a pint with your friends, sound bad?” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

So, you know, I think this was a pretty easy test to pass. Being able to see the extremely obvious racism involved in the media circus while also not succumbing to an utterly condescending soft bigotry of low expectations by defending Arday. No worries if you messed up here; an opportunity to learn!

Not sure re 4 (surely it's a bit on Arday too!) but (1)-(3) are pretty clearly true. I personally think they were all immediately clear from the way this first broke on Cofnas' blog; he was explicitly just paying attention cos of the racial politics of the matter, and had compelling evidence of (1).

Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺@katherineschof8.bsky.social · 1h ago

1. His academic misconduct and fantastical claims are pretty clearcut; he should not have been appointed. 2. The press/public wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't black* 3. They noticed in particular because Cambridge made a huge song and dance about appointing a black person. 4. This is on Cambridge.

8/ And in the context of the post-Watergate reforms, Congress repeatedly opted to give itself a hard check on the presidency. The Supreme Court came in and wrecked all that, leaving reliance on presidential good faith as a fallback, not as the original design choice. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I'll just state for the record (to ward off bad readings) that I don't think anyone needs to shill or have positive reviews of Hollywood films. I only object to the idea that negative reviews will save the humanities by creating discourse about objects that are valued independent of such reviews.

Ben Wurgaft@benwurgaft.bsky.social · 14h ago

There will probably always be people telling humanists that they need to shill - to get behind a Hollywood production, or take a bold stand for Silicon Valley, or turn the humanities into an adjunct of public policy. You can safely ignore them at no intellectual cost.

Pathetic

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 16h ago

BLUMENTHAL: Judge Cronan, you're already on the district court. Who won the 2020 election? CRONAN: Joseph Biden received the majority of electoral votes B: You have nothing to lose. You have a lifetime appointment, and yet you're unwilling to state the simple fact that Biden won the 2020 election

FWIW I don't think 'the academy' as a whole is having this kind of reaction, but EW's 'I hope this will help save the humanities' in this specific context is a perfect illustration of why it absolutely will not.

Robert Borden Stan Account@bordenstan.bsky.social · yesterday

If the academy gets pulled into coming out swinging against the biggest adaptation of Homer in probably a couple generations off the back of one prominent scholar deciding to be Reviewer 2 to Nolan's work, it will say, IMO, pretty damning things about academia's ability to foster public engagement.

For my sins, I am president & treasurer of my condo association. One thing I've learned in this role is how many small businesses just bill you for stuff they didn't do and then cop to the mistake when you call it out. If I weren't paying attention we'd be billed for maybe $1k/yr in non-services.

Not good:

WIRED@wired.com · 16h ago

Over the last nine months, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements, according to details of the ads shared with WIRED.

In fact if you were to apply some of the keywords of critical theory of the last 50 years--essentialism; totalizing; __-centrism; hegemonic / subaltern--you could easily unravel the regimes of thought that disqualify machine intelligence.

AR Hanlon@arhanlon.bsky.social · 15h ago

Most such arguments are nothing more than essentialism.

Most such arguments are nothing more than essentialism.

Ethan Mollick@emollick.bsky.social · 16h ago

I find arguments that AI can't do judgement or creativity or taste to be especially obviously false in the time of agents. Any long task requires lots of taste, judgement & creativity. I am much more sympathetic to arguments about the quality or diversity of the AI's taste, judgement, or creativity

Stay in the fight, Max. Get knocked out.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 19h ago

Max Miller on why he's staying in the race: "When we go back to 2015 and 2016, & people in the media looked at President Trump, & everyone came out with allegations. Dozens of women, dozens of crazy allegations, dozens of nasty criminal misconduct. And you know what he did? He stayed in the fight."

That's great, she should be disbarred literally right this second, and if not then in successive seconds until she's disbarred.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 16h ago

Jeanine Pirro’s grand case against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s Reflecting Pool cover-up was a showdown worthy of reality TV. trib.al/htyokyD

Correct:

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · 18h ago

It simply does not follow that because the cost per unit good is cheaper if you buy in bulk, the cost of a cheap version of a good times how often you have to replace it is greater than the cost of the expensive version of the same. These are two different things.

Indeed. What's enjoyable and interesting about sport is not always or necessarily about the performance metrics we have. I've never made Olympics but have run faster in my event than any woman in history. You'd much rather watch 2 elite women race to the line than watch me race some podcaster.

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 2d ago

i think a lot of well-meaning people fall into a rhetorical trap where they take the bait and argue about male vs. female performance in sports rather than arguing for the value and dignity of women’s athletics generally. don’t let yourself be dragged into a bad faith framing.

Kulusevski is on the grass. I repeat, Kulusevski is on the grass.

Ah, I really liked what I saw and read of El-Sayed but couldn’t put a finger on what bothered me about him. Now I see: Rhodes. We overlapped in Oxford. But despite being a Rhodes Scholar he seems pretty good.

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · 18h ago

A gracious concession: “I want to congratulate Abdul El-Sayed on winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He is a doctor, a community health official, a Rhodes Scholar, and a dedicated Michigander. I am proud to offer my support as he takes on Mike Rogers in the general election…

Electability discourse is among my least favorite and in my view the most pointless and insipid. Descriptive takes are even all over the place (e.g. 'progressive' now means 'DSA' when in the last cycle it meant 'establishment Democrat' ), let alone predictive ones.

Don't posit a theory that is only interesting because it implies X causes variation in Y, test for a statistical relationship between X and Y, but then say you are not interpreting causally. Of course you are interpreting it causally. That was the whole point of what you just did.

I still appear twice on the department faculty page, with the fun twist that because I am now department co-chair, it looks like I'm co-chairing with myself.

You have to wonder how Kemi would feel if she were the only one in the neighborhood getting parking tickets and the municipality kept forgetting to empty her bins, for some reason.

Chris Terry-Enescu@cjterry.bsky.social · yesterday

It's OK for criminal ex-neo Nazis to run your bins is a hell of a line.

maga will accept as leaders rapists, pedophiles, white supremasicsts, wife beaters, con artists, conspiracy theorists, absolute morons, paid foreign agents, & people who are *all* of those things but you can't be even slightly pro-immigration, that's the line newrepublic.com/article/2138...

MAGA Erupts at Trump DHS Chief—and Accidentally Exposes Big MAGA Scam

Markwayne Mullin just said the unsayable: that immigration can sometimes help the economy and the country. Now MAGA wants his head.

newrepublic.com

Study: Students get more liberal during college, but it has no detectable relationship to the subject they study or the partisanship of their professors. micah-baum.github.io/files/baum-e...

Before you get to ‘what now?’ try understanding the basics of the claim you’re responding to.

The claim is not that nobody holds these views. An empirical-historical theory of genre does not require literally everyone to agree on genre.

Which of the court jesters made an AI video of this to show him?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3d ago

Trump: "We have photographs or tapes -- like moving cameras, right? -- where people are on the side cutting it with a box knife."

Historical-empirical theory of genre: If they were, we'd obviously consider them as such. Same with 'is hotdog a sandwich.'

post malone ergo propter malone@proptermalone.bsky.social · 2d ago

a question that is bitterly dividing my household: are feet part of the leg?

Gotta tap the sign again

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social · 3d ago

This guy has anti-Semitic brain worms (among many other species of brain worm) and he needs to be treated as radioactive by every Democrat.

On the other hand I watch a 30-second clip of Pete Hegseth and come away thinking he's a massive loser with no redeeming qualities or talents, and I would say worse but I am to an extent responsible for helping young men not become that kind of loser.

Foreign Policy@foreignpolicy.com · 3d ago

A 50-year old book reveals the tendencies that undermine military competence—a century ago and today. Read our analysis for free:

Also, in Maine, cyclists are one of the most active lobbies against passenger rail expansion. In wealthy coastal areas, cyclists groups have been fighting for years to rip up rail infrastructure permanently to build bike trails, rather than building trails alongside rail.

AR Hanlon@arhanlon.bsky.social · 3d ago

Cars are inherently bad as a transportation system, and far more dangerous than bikes. BUT every pedestrian knows that cyclists still have car driver energy and we proceed with caution. Thinking cars are bad and cyclists act like drivers & can be dangerous are not mutually exclusive views.