José Marichal
@josemarichal.bsky.social
Pol Sci Prof at CalLutheran. Author of "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem" (Bristol Univ Press) and "Machine Liberalism" (Forthcoming from Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press) https://josemarichal.github.io/
Perfect description of early REM "In the beginning, there was mush. It was good mush—vocals mixed way, way down, a wooly bass line, drumming that cranked faster than disco" yalereview.org/article/tava...
Mina Tavakoli: “What Happened When R.E.M. Went Mainstream”
Peter Ames Carlin’s book The Name of This Band is R.E.M. charts the band’s path from kings of alternative rock to elevator muzak.
yalereview.org
I don't think the pundit class gets how popular a "message of ressentiment" is at this moment of deep distrust of institutions. A left-messaging that includes "the system is rigged against you" is going to be much more powerful that abstract calls to "defend democracy" or "Orange man bad"
We Make Better Possible
YouTube video by Francesca Hong
youtube.com
bumping this a month-ish ahead of the APSA annual meeting because there will be conversations about these topics #polisky, mostly on Thursday and Friday (rooms are still TBA) 1/x
Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD@elizabethbitmeehan.com · 4mo agochat i'm going to ask a somewhat prickly question: what do you (fellow political scientists) want out of your professional association right now (knowing that this is a sample of Very Online People and folks with wildly differing opinions)
'The "long, slow, lingering gaze" that allows for daydreaming and true distraction has been replaced by a hyper-focused engagement with constant streams of information.' I'm interested in how this inability to tell and receive stories undermines liberalism,human rights and social justice.
Online brain rot is undermining our ability to tell meaningful stories
I teach a course on the relationship between social media and society at Durham College. As part of their assessments, I ask my students to reflect on their social media use.
phys.org
what if we had as many political parties as Rate Your Music has music genres?
Pondering the fact that most Midwest emo bands weren't actually from the Midwest 🤔
@benburgis.bsky.social an I will be chatting about G.A Cohen and liberalism in a few hours. Join us! www.youtube.com/live/OokAJAb...
A Socialist's Dialogue with Liberalism (ft. Matt McManus)
YouTube video by Give Them An Argument w/Ben Burgis
youtube.com
Is is too late to get into Midwest emo in you 50s? Ot is it just sad? 😭 😂
I really don't get the hand wringing... If DSA principles are so awful, they won't hold up to empirical scrutiny when they are tired in different cities and those leaders will be voted out. If they do, they'll have more electoral success
Nathalie Maréchal, PhD@nathaliemarechal.net · 2w ago*Parasites* ??? Really, @theatlantic.com ? We get it, you love centrism, but dehumanizing language is never ok.
If political parties didn't have disagreements, there'd be no competition. If there was no competition, there be no choice. If there was no choice, elections would be a foregone conclusion. If elections were foregone conclusions, you'd have authoritarianism. Ot the parasite thing.... IDK
Alejandra Caraballo@esqueer.net · 2w agoThey're scared. Good.
How far away are we from this sentiment -- "When my father was dying, he said, “I want to thank you, because you’ve never put a villain in any of your stories.” The secret ingredient in my books is, there has never been a villain." www.chicagotribune.com/2016/04/22/v...
Vonnegut: The secret ingredient in my books is, there has never been a villain
After three years in the infantry during World War II, Kurt Vonnegut landed at the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology. It didn’t go particularly well. His thesis was rejected....
chicagotribune.com
"In 1866, Otto von Bismarck attended the dedication of Berlin’s New Synagogue. Its grand dome stood as a symbol of Jewish integration… For a time, similar moments of recognition could be found across Central Europe. "But those scenes did not endure." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-work-of-...
The Work of Pluralism
Genuine pluralism requires people to act in ways that affirm the dignity and presence of others, even when difference remains.
liberalcurrents.com
IF @demsocialists.bsky.social bring this focus on cutting regulations to California, they would be a formidable challenge to the Democratic establishment here. x.com/NYCMayor/sta...
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) on X
New York's small business owners have said it over and over: endless paperwork and the uncertainty of dealing with City government has made getting their stores up and running too difficult. That’s w...
x.com
Colorado Law is hiring! Looking at all levels, with particular needs in Tax, Labor and Employment, and Business, though we welcome applications from all specialties. Deets: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...
Open Rank — Tenure-Track Law Professor
jobs.colorado.edu
I wish I could time travel with this chart back 25 years to my graduate program and show this to my rational choice theory professors 😁
Catherine Rampell@crampell.bsky.social · 2w agoAlso lol only 17% of Republicans agree that Trump is "divisive"
If you want to skip you morning coffee and instead be fueled by rage, watch this congressional hearing on the Smithsonian going on RN.... youtu.be/Rzc81i0jdaM?...
WATCH: Rep. Burlison questions American History museum director in Smithsonian oversight hearing
YouTube video by PBS NewsHour
youtu.be
Working on a book about liberalism, and I wonder if anyone's ever critiqued Rawls' justice as fairness/moral equality from the perspective that morally equality is boring (not my view). It strikes me that the increasing (1/2)
A deep reflection, very appropriate for this age when everyone has an idea of how to control AI. Asimov's genius gave us an important parallel: a Martian showed humans its aesthetics, but the human was unwilling to fully grasp it. "A new version of Asimov’s laws of robotics might be as follows:
Los Angeles Review of Books@lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 2w ago"Humans are not without agency; as a species we decide, consciously or not, what we carry into the future." Nina Beguš on how Isaac Asimov’s work has influenced AI’s development: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/asimov-robotics-laws-claude-chatbots-consciousness-human-interaction/
FT Exclusive: Beijing is considering restrictions to prevent China’s advanced technologies and star start-ups from being acquired by the west, highlighting the country’s intensifying rivalry with the US in cutting-edge AI. ft.trib.al/McYM93P
Let's see what "f**k soft power" as a foreign policy objective accomplishes... Leverage only lasts for so long . www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
China Tops US in Global Favorability for First Time, Pew Finds
More people around the world view China more positively than the US for the first time in almost 20 years, according to Pew Research Center, with sentiment shifting even among some of Washington’s all...
bloomberg.com
people back unscrupulous politicians, not because they want to be ass****s, but because they want to maintain the image of themselves as good people while fighting what they percieve to be existential threats. (1/2)
Every time I see stuff like this, I wonder if this is just an extension of the "flood zone of s**t" strategy that Steve Bannon made famous in 2016... So that you don't have the bandwidth to deal with the real re-distributions of power and wealth.
Matthew Gault@mjgault.bsky.social · 3w agoHegseth announced they're gonna start screening for T and administering testosterone treatment for warriors found wanting
The lesson of this World Cup -- do not peak too early. Sleep walk through the group stages. Do just enough to win the early knockouts. Bring your A game to the final rounds
Andres Cantor is such an Argentina homer, it's almost charming
Embolo's going out .. for what!?! A foolish simulation! Argentina lives a charmed life
