Reading

Big Yellow Kleptocracy

https://digbysblog.net/2025/01/01/big-yellow-kleptocracy/
Created
Thu, 02/01/2025 - 01:02
You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone People with higher profiles have warned what could happen to this country under Donald Trump if he were reelected to the White House. I did so myself in 2024 here and here and here. Those three posts all referenced Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk,” his celebration of selfless dedication, essentially, in public service by geeks more interested in mission than in money. Blasphemy! In a few short weeks, America will embark on a journey into the unknown. Dave Neiwert published “Alt America” in 2017 about the rise of the eliminationist alt-right movement. Trumpism, an expression of that movement, seeks not only to eliminate non-white immigrants but those very civil servants who make the nation you know the nation you know. Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein consider what it means that Trump 2.0 will be staffed with incompetents and cronies chosen more for their loyalty to one man than to stewardship of the republic that will be 250 years old in 18 months. What Trump and those backing him intend for this country is not new, inventive, or an improvement on popular sovereignty.

Class Is Canceled Until Further Notice While I Do My Job

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/class-is-canceled-until-further-notice-whil…
Created
Thu, 02/01/2025 - 01:00


Our most-read article of 2024.

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Originally published March 27, 2024.

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Dear Students —

I am sorry to say that I will need to cancel all classes for an indeterminate length of time while I work on doing my job.

I realize you think that teaching is my job, but there are many other aspects to being a professor. In the unlikely event that you are curious about what else a professor might have to do, here are a few of the issues that need my attention.

The recent change to our course-management system has meant that I need to re-upload every document and assignment and reassign every homework. I will be attending three two-hour training sessions to help me do this. I was staying ahead of the class for the first few weeks, but I’ve finally lost that battle.

US judge awards pro-regime change journo Shane Bauer $113 million seized from Iran

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/01/01/journalist-shane-bauer-lawsuit-iran/
Created
Wed, 01/01/2025 - 19:25

UPDATE: U.S. District Senior Judge Richard J. Leon has awarded pro-regime change journalist Shane Bauer a whopping $113 million in money seized from Iran by the US sanctions regime. Together with his ex-wife, Sarah Shourd, and their friend, Joshua Fattal, Bauer sued the Iranian government for millions in damages they claim to have incurred during their two year-long imprisonment in Tehran. The three Americans were arrested by Iranian soldiers near the border of the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2009. […]

The post US judge awards pro-regime change journo Shane Bauer $113 million seized from Iran first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post US judge awards pro-regime change journo Shane Bauer $113 million seized from Iran appeared first on The Grayzone.

Uh Oh

https://digbysblog.net/2024/12/31/uh-oh-3/
Created
Wed, 01/01/2025 - 11:30
I think we may have found out why Trump is suddenly talking about territorial expansion. Somebody mentioned a little history over dinner and YMCA at MAL and he got all excited. He thinks it will be his Louisiana Purchase and he’ll go down in history as bigger than Alexander the Great. Apropos of nothing: You’ll be glad to know that his minions are hard at work normalizing this lunacy:

What Turnout Tells Us

https://digbysblog.net/2024/12/31/what-turnout-tells-us/
Created
Wed, 01/01/2025 - 10:00
The NY Times published a fun feature called “11 Data Points and Discoveries That Surprised Us in 2024.” I thought this one was particularly pertinent to Democratic navel gazing about the election: Special elections really were all about turnout, and thus meant little for November Why were Democrats doing so well in special elections, even though polls showed Joe Biden doing so poorly? I collected and analyzed data on who had been voting in special elections, and this chart was my “eureka” moment. On the y-axis: how well Democrats fared in a special election, compared with the 2020 election result. On the x-axis: our estimates for the 2020 vote choice of the same special electorates, based on exactly who voted and our previous estimates for the likelihood that registered voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. As you can see, there’s a decent one-to-one relationship, implying that these election results were mostly a function of turnout, not persuasion. The biggest surprise, for me, wasn’t simply that there was a decent correlation between turnout and results.

Underground Sociopaths

https://digbysblog.net/2024/12/31/underground-sociopaths/
Created
Wed, 01/01/2025 - 08:30
Good Lord. According to the NY Times the Feds have arrested a nut who had what they call the largest cache of finished explosive devices ever found in FBI history: The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled “lethal,” prosecutors said. They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said. No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram.