@bw-historiadora.bsky.social

I teach history and study Brazil And I want to see fewer cat photos!

I don't know what movie critics are seeing, but I thought Nolan's "Odyssey" was a waste of 3 hours. It lost me the moment Telemachus referred to Odysseus as his "Dad." For a much better version of Odysseus' homecoming, see Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche in The Return.

The red card for Balogun was a terrible call--the replay made it clear that he couldn't see exactly where his feet were going vis a vis the player he fouled, so it couldn't be flagrant. But now that our schmuck-in-chief has pressured his FIFA f*ck buddies, I feel like rooting for Belgium

Dan Goldman's primary defeat was the smallest surprise imaginable. The only reason he won in the first place, in a very left-leaning district, was the failure of the Democrats to coalesce around a single progressive candidate. Mayor Mamdani isn't making that kind of mistake.

I have long regarded Bret Stephens' NYT opinion pieces to be a sad waste of precious space in the public sphere. But his current effort to draw an equivalence between Democrats' support for Graham Platner and the roiling cesspool that is today's Republican Party is just pathetic.

The musical Ragtime won 9 Tony awards. The winners all thanked the usual gamut of colleagues, relatives and beloved teachers, but unless I missed it, not a single person thanked EL Doctorow, the novelist who created the story and every single character.

On Oct 6, 1976, anti-Castro Cuban extremists trained by the CIA planted bombs that blew up Cubana flight 455, killing all 73 people on board. Documents reveal that the CIA had prior knowledge of the bombers' plans.

Does tRump think Jimmy Kimmel's joke was tasteless? More tasteless than responding to Robert Mueller's death with "Good. I'm glad he's dead"? I guess we should have higher standards for comedians than for the president of the United States.

There are some reasonable proposals in Samuel Moyn's opinion piece in today's NYT about wealth and power hoarding by the elderly, but also some that border on the inane. Continually increasing property taxes on seniors to force them out of their homes? Really?

I think Ive been correcting students' papers for too long. The first thing I thought when tRump made that truly vile comment about "the stone ages" was "It's singular, you asshole!"

This may be a minor outrage compared to everything else that's going on, but the National Endowment for the Humanities, a major funder of historical research, will now only consider applications on US history and Western Civ. And I'm pretty sure they won't regard the African Diaspora as US history

tRump & Bibi think they can make quick work of the Iranian regime, and in the short run maybe, but those familiar with the eventual repercussions of the CIA-engineered overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 would say things may get much worse in the long run. Not to mention the aftermath of Saddam's ouster.

Did tRump really send a Navy hospital ship to the suffering people of Greenland--who have completely free access to the top-notch Danish health care system? What's next? Emergency food aid airdropped to the starving children of Luxembourg???

It's hard to count the ways in which the invasion of Venezuela sets a horrible precedent. By many countries' standards, Trump is a criminal--not just a perpetrator of election fraud but a thief, a murderer, a rapist. A threat to their national security. Should they send commandos to whisk him away?

Judge rules that Black church in DC, which won a $2.8 million default judgment against the Proud Boys, now gains control over the trademark “Proud Boys.” The far-right group is barred from selling any related merchandise or symbols without the consent of the church. Gift link:

Proud Boys Lose Control of Their Name to a Black Church They Vandalized (Gift Article)

A judge awarded the trademarked name and symbols to a Washington church to help satisfy a $2.8 million judgment against the far-right group.

nytimes.com