From our FirstView: "What Would It Mean to Democratize Finance? An Evaluation of Divergent Conceptions of Democracy and Finance" by Leah Downey and Stefan Eich, @stefeich.bsky.social. buff.ly/pPVH3mv

TONIGHT: Making AI Work for the People Join @gabriela-ramos.bsky.social, @chinasa.bsky.social, @kdaniels8.bsky.social, and Michele Jawando at 5 pm today on Georgetown University's Capitol Campus for a critical conversation on AI and democracy! RSVP: events.georgetown.edu/aidc/event/m...

Making AI Work for the People

Co-hosted by AIDC, the Georgetown Democracy Initiative and Georgetown’s Institute for Politics and Public Service, this two-part panel discussion...

events.georgetown.edu

Join us for this conversation with @durbin.senate.gov, @gabriela-ramos.bsky.social, @chinasa.bsky.social, and @kdaniels8.bsky.social on AI policy in the US and beyond.

AIDC@gu-aidc.bsky.social · 8mo ago

MARCH 25: AIDC, the Georgetown Democracy Initiative and @gupolitics.bsky.social are hosting “Making AI Work for the People” as part of Tech & Society Week — a two-panel discussion on AI in America and the world! ⏰ 5pm | 📍 Georgetown Capitol Campus, 125 E St NW RSVP below!

📢 AIDC’s Community Fellowship is now open! We invite DC-area researchers working in the humanities to apply for the 2026-2027 fellowship on the theme “Truth, Trust and Democratic Judgement.”

Postdoc! Come to Georgetown and work at the intersection of democratic theory, AI, and the humanities.

AIDC@gu-aidc.bsky.social · 9mo ago

📢 Hiring Now: AIDC Postdoctoral Fellow We invite humanist scholars to apply for a yearlong fellowship involving research and public engagement. The fellow will join AIDC's inaugural cohort for our '26-'27 theme "Truth, Trust and Democratic Judgment." Apply: apply.interfolio.com/181150

Happy pub day for "The Autocratic Interpretation of Athens: Rethinking Regime Theory in Thucydides' 'Archaeology'," which appears in Polis 42,3 @dgb-ancientstudies.bsky.social You can find a preprint on my academia page or access the article here: doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340479

New issue of Polis Vol. 42, No. 3 (2025) brill.com/view/journal... @dgb-philosophy.bsky.social @markfisher.bsky.social @dgb-ancientstudies.bsky.social

Congrats to Stefan Eich @stefeich.bsky.social‬ on winning the 2024 David and Elaine Spitz Prize from the International Conference for the Study of Political Thought (CSPT)! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The Currency of Politics

Money in the history of political thought, from ancient Greece to the Great Inflation of the 1970s

press.princeton.edu

What would we need to know to conclude that AGI was inevitable? We argue that the answer has more to do with the philosophy of social science than the tech itself. Grateful to have this piece included in the inaugural batch of Oxford Intersections: AI in Society. academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

Annual reminder that the quote is, in fact, "Kai su, teknon?"

This is very good

What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?

From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on.

newyorker.com

Word of the day is ‘catch-fart’ (17th century: an obsequious individual who will always follow the political wind.

We’re two weeks in, and I’m ready to cast my vote for genuflection as the word of the year

Cleon Peterson is an extraordinary artist who updates classical forms to comment on contemporary political violence. His house and studio were destroyed in the fires, and he's selling a special set of prints to help his family of five (plus dog!) stay afloat. Please consider buying if you can.

CLEON PETERSON | STORE

Cleon Peterson is an LA based artist whose chaotic and violent paintings show clashing figures symbolizing a struggle between power and ...

store.cleonpeterson.com

Cleon Peterson is an extraordinary artist who updates classical forms to comment on contemporary political violence. His house and studio were destroyed in the fires, and he's selling a special set of prints to help his family of five (plus dog!) stay afloat. Please consider buying if you can.

CLEON PETERSON | STORE

Cleon Peterson is an LA based artist whose chaotic and violent paintings show clashing figures symbolizing a struggle between power and ...

store.cleonpeterson.com

TIL that a UT undergrad started a nationwide campaign and got the 27th Amendment passed *out of sheer spite* when his prof refused to raise his poli sci paper grade. I'm going to start linking to this story whenever a student asks for a grade change. This is the new standard.

More like this, please

Eagles receiver A.J. Brown was reading a book on the sidelines of team's playoff win

Brown checked out an inspirational title and flipped through the pages of “Inner Excellence” by Jim Murphy.

nbcnews.com

This feels a bit on the nose as far as portents go, but here’s to 2025.

1 Dead After a Cybertruck Explodes Outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas

At least seven people were injured, the authorities said. Videos posted to social media appeared to show a vehicle engulfed in flames outside the lobby’s entrance.

nytimes.com

If your resolution/planned coping mechanism for 2025 is to read more good books, here are some recs I received from friends and colleagues this year that deserve to be paid forward No summary can do this first one justice. Just read it and you’ll understand.

And I will achieve enlightenment when I finally pay off my student loans

Techmeme@techmeme.com · 2y ago

An undisclosed 2023 agreement between Microsoft and OpenAI defines achieving AGI as the point when OpenAI develops AI systems that generate $100B+ in profits (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Enjoying an alliterative Boxing Day

Merry Christmas from a dog that definitely made it onto the nice list

Reminded once again that Love, Actually casually made up an Xmas tradition about telling the truth and we all just played along with it

Reposting my favorite pub from 2024 before winding down for the holidays; a short piece on the temptations and dangers of reading history opportunistically. If you are in the mood for an alternative take on what made Thucydides such a brilliant political thinker, enjoy!

What Thucydides really thought about historical analogies | Aeon Essays

In constantly reaching for past parallels to explain our peculiar times we miss the real lessons of the master historian

aeon.co

JOB‼️ 4 years postdoc in Politics at our amazing @homertoncollege.bsky.social www.homerton.cam.ac.uk/junior-resea...

The optics of this coinciding with the Amazon strike are appalling www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

Jeff Bezos to marry fiancée Lauren Sanchez in lavish $600M Aspen wedding next weekend: report

Bezos, 60, and his fiancé, 54, have remained mum on their wedding plans and have not yet publicly confirmed their wedding date.

yahoo.com

The Kennedy Center cleans up well for Christmas

Oakeshott on the diffusion of authority between past, present, and future From "The Political Economy of Freedom"

Just published! My latest article on John Pocock and how history 'inhabits' us aeon.co/essays/histo...

History is always political, and contest over it is a good thing | Aeon Essays

In his work on republicanism as a living idea, J G A Pocock showed that contesting history is part of a robust civic life

aeon.co

Deep in the Foreign Service Journal archives and spending all my time reading the ads. Here's one from a midtown hotel in 1940 offering translations in Esperanto, rooms for $3.50, and ten-minute rides from Penn Station to Flushing.