The reason humanities departments leaned more explicitly into political topics is because of an austerity landscape where departments compete for scant resources and majors, and must market themselves in terms of utility and ROI: the humanities’ bid was to be politically useful.

A lot of academic work being produced is just naked CV fodder destined for journals that solely exist to house CV fodder, and I think it is just straightforwardly true that not all academic research is worth doing. But we should ruthlessly defend knowledge that has no use value.

AI is about to push back the frontiers of mental illness and reveal vistas of insanity that are as yet unimaginable.

Increasingly convinced the incessant claim that a humanities education is about "critical thinking"—rather than content mastery—is a scam designed to justify the humanities in "skill-building" terms that are legible within the university's new role as a credentialing bureaucracy.

🎯

Amazing: we’ve reached the point where experts need to tell us that listening and honesty are important when talking to others to try to change their views.

The oaf and the ninja

My latest for Symbolic Capital(ism) explores the highly censorious culture that prevails in many symbolic industries. It argues that universities play an important role in shaping institutional culture in all of these other fields --but not for the reasons most think. 🧵

“One of the Socratic fallacies that still permeates our culture is the idea that those who defend unjust ideas must be stupid or ignorant.“ - Matt McManus commonwealmagazine.org/sam-francis-ma…

So well put! A gold nugget: “One of the biggest errors committed during the Covid-19 pandemic was treating the plague as if it were a straightforward problem for scientific rationality. This led to the continual attempt to do the impossible—namely, to depoliticize the pandemic.”

I’m glad to know I’m not the only husband like this.

When people make statements like this it demonstrates they don't understand medicine, ableism, or MAiD bc the so-called "complicated" occurs in defining/deciding "dying." "When you open up the option of assisted dying to people who are not dying, things get complicated"

Gamified casino-empiricism… Now that’s a keeper!

On the ongoing train wreck that is AI in universities: a new one by Anastasia Berg in the NY Times. Gift link: nytimes.com/2025/10/29/opi…. 1/