Narrow majority of Supreme Court justices rule that Constitution is constitutional. Let the delirious celebrations begin!

It's amazing that someone as stupid and dishonest as Alito got into Princeton in the first place. If I were an alum, I would definitely be Concerned.

James Downie@jamescdownie.bsky.social · last mo.

Alito's argument – that counting ballots after Election Day means "the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated" – is some of the dumbest reasoning I have ever seen. The "choice" doesn't occur at the time of counting!

I *so* wish that awesome World Humanities Report had gotten even one percent of the attention it deserved. Kudos to Sara Guyer and CHCI for putting it together-- over six years! worldhumanitiesreport.org

Matthew Cheney@melikhovo.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Good piece here — and I especially appreciate that Michael Bérubé concludes by noting that the more thorough World Humanities Report didn't get anything like the attention of this report from an "eight-man, two-woman hit squad" who are scared of trans people & think the left killed everything good.

My response to that "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences" is up. tinyurl.com/y39crkzp As I say on Facebook, I back-loaded the good stuff, like showing that the authors' account of the 2017 Hypatia controversy reveals them to be unreliable reporters.

Report on the State of a Report (on the Humanities) - Pittsburgh Review of Books

On June 5, 2026, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article in a genre that has unfortunately become all too familiar in that venue titled “Has

pghrev.com

OK, I have been roused from my dogmatic slumber, and I'll have a response to that awful report on the humanities and humanistic social sciences tomorrow in the Pittsburgh Review of Books. Thanks once again to editor Ed Simon!

Between the spike in suicides in ICE concentration camps and the outbreak of Ebola enabled by the dismantling of USAID, I'd say the Musk-Miller agenda is proceeding precisely as planned

In the history of big media, has there ever been a bigger grifter than Bari Weiss?

BREAKING: Supreme Court issues shadow docket ruling holding that Trump's $1.776B slush fund for J6 insurrectionists is unconstitutional unless Alito and Thomas get a cut

Hey, remember ten years ago when Trump destroyed the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?

Maybe it's just me but I have the funny feeling that yesterday's Christian nationalist rally in DC was way more antisemitic than a bunch of college students concerned about human rights in Gaza www.washingtonpost.com/religion/202...

Trump-backed prayer festival on National Mall draws thousands: ‘We welcome Jesus!’

Critics of Sunday's

washingtonpost.com

I wrote about academic freedom and democracy for the Pittsburgh Review of Books, but I didn't say the usual things you would expect a person to say about academic freedom and democracy. I said other things instead. Hence the title of the essay! tinyurl.com/2skc3aum Thanks to Ed Simon for the gig.

Some Counterintuitive Things about Academic Freedom and Democracy - Pittsburgh Review of Books

Everyone knows, or else should know, that there is an intimate relationship between the state of academic freedom and the health of a democracy. Judith Butler

pghrev.com

“Spewing arrant nonsense about the past century or so of work in the humanities has real-world consequences: who knew?” Michael Bérubé on why (Culture) War is a Racket. pghrev.com/culture-war-...

(Culture) War is a Racket - Pittsburgh Review of Books

Salon recently published a very strange essay by Mike Lofgren entitled “How the death of middlebrow culture led to Trump’s barbarism.” Now, it’s not strange

pghrev.com

Pete Hegseth's next prayer will be from the Book of Armaments, chapter 2, verses 9-21. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ashg...

Monty Python - Holy Handgrenade

YouTube video by Weidmoo

youtube.com

I would sit down with my granddaughter for six hours and teach her how to use the can opener

Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com · 5mo ago

how would YOU open the Strait of Hormuz? Wrong answers only

This is judiciously phrased

Andrew Lawrence@ndrew.bsky.social · 5mo ago

im just really fucking sick of spending my entire adult life lurching from one worldwide economic disaster to another all because people pretend republicans arent dumb as dog shit morons completely detached from reality

Rug-on-Face-Man trying to compete with Dinesh D'Souza's famous line, "The American slave *was* treated like property, which is to say, pretty well." It's a high bar to clear.

Jason Campbell @jasonscampbell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Matt Walsh: "America treated the Indians, for the most part, in a very decent and merciful way"

Watching "The Secret Agent" and remembering watching "I'm Still Here" and wondering whether we will have to wait 40 years for movies to be made about what ICE and DHS are doing right now

Good to know we cancelled all those wasteful NEH grants and USAID so that the money could go to 5% of a missile aimed at a girls' school

Pretty sure that Timothée Chamalet made that remark about opera and ballet simply to distract us from the fact that he did a Willy Wonka movie that can be watched for twenty minutes max

Many thanks to @publicbooks.bsky.social for publishing this piece, in which Urmila Seshagiri and I discuss (a) del Toro's idiosyncratic (to put it kindly) adaptation of "Frankenstein," (b) adaptations of "Frankenstein" in general, and even (c) adaptations in general. All in under 3000 words!

Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 5mo ago

New at PB: In advance of the Oscars, @michael-berube.bsky.social & Urmila Seshagiri revisit Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation of Mary Shelley‘s “Frankenstein,” asking, What does it mean to abandon a sentient human that you have brought into the world?

Finally a law that will protect girls from having to compete with trans women driving cars tiny.cc/9wiz001

Kansas Makes Trans People’s Driver’s Licenses Invalid Overnight

Kansas is informing trans people that their driver’s licenses will soon be invalid.

tiny.cc

Not the worst thing about this video but just gotta say that OF COURSE it's Matthew Tkachuk putting that medal on Patel

Michael Feinberg@michael-feinberg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

One of the first things we were taught at Quantico was that there is never a moment in which you are not representing the Bureau; but, then again, we earned our place there, and weren’t granted its directorship as a sinecure for partisan malfeasance and a willingness to disregard the constitution.

Hive mind question: does anyone have contact info for Kathryn Allan, the writer on disability and science fiction, who used to tweet as @BleedingChrome?

Just as Donald Trump tempts us to be nostalgic for the wisdom and eloquence of Dan Quayle, and Pam Bondi tempts us to be nostalgic for the sagacity of Alberto Gonzales or the rectitude of John Mitchell, the culture vacuum on the American right is almost enough to make us nostalgic for Allan Bloom.

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 6mo ago

The decline of right wing cultural production is just due to the fact that they don’t like culture, they like the signifiers of culture, ie “classic sculpture means white people are better.” They don’t like art at all except for this purpose. They don’t even like the nerd stuff they whine about

It's almost as if Bari Weiss's "free speech" thing was a grift from start to finish

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 6mo ago

The regime is now dictating what political views are acceptable to air on television and paramount/cbs are collaborating in that censorship bsky.app/profile/ditz...

Seems odd that the dudes who want to smash the administrative state are also the dudes who want to build concentration camps throughout the US

Steven Miller is going to appear under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished"

Dheepa Sundaram, PhD (she/her)@themodsisyphus.bsky.social · 6mo ago

CBP didn’t give her or anyone any water; she asked 3 times accg to other reports. CBP killed a 7yr old. “8 hours after the girl & her father were taken into custody, she began having seizures & her body temperature was measured at 105.7 degrees by emergency medical technicians. shorturl.at/d2OTJ

Oh look the President of the United States did another racism

a close up of the face of jabba the hutt

ALT: a close up of the face of jabba the hutt

media.tenor.com

Everyone who fluffed this little monster-wannabe, beginning with that pathetic Rod Dreher, has committed a crime against humanity

jamelle@jamellebouie.net · 6mo ago

this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway

I am so old I remember Arthur Schlesinger Jr. getting all het up and panicky about the term "gorgeous mosaic" because it wasn't "melting pot." Ah, the enduring legacy of reasonable centrism.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 6mo ago

As Black History Month begins, we honor the generations of Black New Yorkers who built this city into the “gorgeous mosaic” we call home. Today, we reflect on the words of Mayor David Dinkins: our city’s first Black mayor (and a democratic socialist!).