Catherine Tan

My family is visiting. First thing this morning, my father asks “is there a Home Depot around here? I going to fix your doors.”

Ground the pieces today for panel 1/4 of the “Piscola hunting squirrels at sunset” table lamp. #stainedglass

I honestly believe that La Fermiere’s primary product is pottery. The yogurt is just bait.

Opinion | Mourn, or Else

“We have to reject the idea that our only, best power is our pocketbooks. (…) Our power isn’t in making one of the choices that are presented to us. Our power is in shaping the choices available to us.” Excellent piece by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

Many of those who were fired were not fired for “controversial views”, whatever that means.

Many were fired for simply expressing that they were having a hard time feeling sorrow for someone who held so many others in open contempt.

Opinion | What 20 Years of Listening to Vaccine-Hesitant Parents Has Taught Me

An incredibly insightful and important piece by @jenniferreich.bsky.social

“The real solution is better public investments and clearer information that can make parents feel confident in their choices. Instead, parents are left to figure out on their own…”

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

The dry cleaner has been out sick for months, so her daughter moved from Boston to help. I interacted with her once before. Today I went in and she said, “several other Asian customers live around here. I think there are enough of us to have a potluck.” Absolutely. You have my name and number.

War ravaged Portland

Sometimes I will ignore a bunch of serious text messages and then suddenly show up again with a video of a French dog screaming at a Starbucks drive through. And that resets the tone.

Absolutely outrageous to say that a uni’s academic press doesn’t serve its undergraduates. Non-profit university presses support and sustain a scholarly and intellectual system THAT MAKES TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES POSSIBLE. No presses? no fields of study, no professors, no college.

Finally, our local Vietnamese restaurant got a kid who does homework in the back and answers the phone.

Resharing what I wrote about year go...
time.com/7203351/trum...

Kennedy’s Advisory Panel Votes to Limit M.M.R.V. Vaccine for Children Under 4

"It was unclear whether the members all understood what they were voting for."

This really is worth consistently reminding yourself. With the media, civil institutions, and Dems cowering to the Trump admin, it’s easy to get the perception he’s a popular and unstoppable force. In reality, he’s the least popular president in U.S. history.

In past rounds of moral panics on campus, when “cancel culture” and “trigger warnings” were still the threats du jour, pundits and social media outrage peddlers converged to frame campus protests at large as threats to “free speech.” Responding to the steady churn of outrage-bait framing protesting students as “snowflakes” and “crybullies,” state legislatures across the country passed a flurry of “campus free speech” bills drafted by right-wing think tanks, which expanded the range of anti-protest measures available to college administrators. To be sure, boycotts and deplatforming protests were useful props in these efforts. Still, what made it possible to inflate deplatforming incidents into threats that required expansion of repressive state power was the failure to question a securitized vision of liberty that, since Bush’s “they hate our freedoms” speech, has become increasingly dominant.

How did "free speech" become a cudgel to silence dissent? My latest in @bostonreview.bsky.social

www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...

In sci-fi, dystopian futures are usually not this… idiotic.

White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups

The shooter was a right wing extremist, so let’s blame the left…? The dumbest people are trying to gaslight an entire country in broad daylight.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

Recent coverage in msm on the use of coded memes and humor by the far-right looks at this phenomenon as a new problem or development, a product of genZ or social media. But the far right has been weaponizing violent humor over the last 5 decades. And it has gone from the fringes to the White House

These media outlets are more than ready to carry water for the far-right dream of trans genocide.

None of the young male mass shooters and now political assassins I've written about in recent years had stayed in higher education and pursued a bachelor's degree. Crazy enough, it's almost like college is a positive socializing force, not a radicalizing one

Exclusive: Fed Governor Cook declared her Atlanta property as “vacation home,” documents show A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration, shows that Cook had declared the property as a “vacation home,” according to a document reviewed by Reuters.

The mortgage fraud claim against Lisa Cook is false, per documents obtained by Reuters.

Bill Pulte's accusation, the sole pretext Trump used to fire her from the Fed, was that she claimed two homes as primary residence.

These docs show she did not.
www.reuters.com/world/us/fed...

The New York Times is such trash. Now that we know it’s a white guy, they’re pushing this familiar narrative—lone wolf, great promise, unknown motive—and avoiding the relevant details: access to arms, involvement in white nationalism, and MAGA family.

I opened up my Notes app. Why do I have a note from 2024 titled “ideas” and the only thing in it is: “A sandwich with turkey, spam, lettuce, tomato—call it ‘in da clurb we all spam’”?

Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way The mainstream media seems entirely uninterested in explaining Charlie Kirk's work.

Mainstream pundits have instantly sanitized and ignored Charlie Kirk's core political project and its impacts. He has been remembered by the mainstream press as someone they merely disagreed with, a debate me-guy whose words and actions had zero consequences:

www.404media.co/charlie-kirk...

The problem with allowing guns everywhere is that no one is safe anywhere.

The Tunis/to Nice situation clearly shows (1) that we need to invest more money in public education and (2) that school choice is a bad idea. We can't have our Brittney's and Hannah's running around the world like this... it's too embarrassing.

Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪

From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...

The Facilitated Dissertation-to-Book Workshop: 6 Weeks to Book Clarity. Sept 22-Oct 31, 2025. Katelyn E. Knox and Allison Van Deventer. List of points: Get your vision for your book down on the page. Hammer out your book argument. Map your chapter arguments and narrative arc. Test your choices and explore alternatives. Make a revision plan. Gain confidence and clarity with supportive peers. Zoom sessions: Mon and Wed, 1-2pm ET

Reminder: Sign up for the 6-Week Dissertation-to-Book Workshop by September 12 to get the Early Bird discount!

You may be wondering whether it makes sense to commit to a synchronous workshop this fall. What if you get sick, get busy, are overwhelmed by outside events, fall behind?

This is not public health. It’s pandering to people like him: the ignorant and delusional who *think* they can effectively insulate themselves from disease and manage risk with their own resources. (2/2)

From the quackery to the food related stuff that sounds less quacky, RFK Jr.’s vision of public health is not health for the public. Everything comes back to increasing consumer choice where he sees fit and constricting access to life saving drugs. (1/2)