Gerardo Martí

Politics and the English Language | The Orwell Foundation "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

George Orwell, April 1946

CNN now President Trump says Hamas faces 'complete obliteration' if the group refuses to cede power

“Blessed are the peacemakers”

Academic Writing as if Readers Matter Leonard <Princeton 2025>

Tonight’s reading

Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight “Pollingism” Has Failed Democrats and Voters. Here’s Why, and What to Do Instead.

“While Democrats are brandishing thermometers, Republicans power up flamethrowers.”

Purchased Sep 2025 Church Must Grow or Perish Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity FOREWORD BY RICHARD J. MoUW MARK T. MULDER AND GERARDO MARTÍ Biography (LRB) (36 books) Options: 2 formats 5.0 ***** (1) Paperback $473 List: $32.99 You Earn: 5 pts vprime Two-Day FREE delivery Sat, Oct 4

5.0 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When Charles Schulz's distributor pressured him to eliminate Franklin from "Peanuts" because he might offend pro-segregation Southerners he told him: "Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How's that?" INCLUSIVENESS IS WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT Peanuts cartoon is of Franklin (on the left) and Pigpen (on the right) shaking hands.

Fun facts:
Charles Shultz was my ice skating coach when I was a kid 🥰 He was truly one of the kindest souls. And yes, I had a Dorothy Hamill haircut.

SEARCH BOOK: SHEED AND WARD $2.45 The Black Messiah The religious roots of Black Power-a strong and uncompromising presentation by America's most influential and controversial black religious leader. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.

Part of my reading today

Published 1900
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Translations by
Edward FitzGerald, E. H. Whinfield, Justin Huntly McCarthy
Edited, with Introduction, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
EDINBURGH
New York
Thomas Nelson and Sons London, Edinburgh, Paris and Toronto

The memo demands that schools ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition for five years, cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%, require that applicants take the SAT or a similar test, and quell grade inflation. The compact asks universities to ensure a "vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus" and to bar employees from expressing political views on behalf of their employer, unless the matter affects the school.

Letters on Wednesday were going out to solicit agreement and feedback from Vanderbilt Univer-sity, Dartmouth College, the University of Penn-sylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia, according to an administration official. The White House chose the schools because it believed they are, or could be, "good actors," Mailman said.

An expansive 10-point memo, the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, a wide-ranging set of terms the administration says are intended to elevate university standards & performance. Universities that sign on will get “multiple positive benefits.”

WSJ 👉 apple.news/AJw8ckda3Q5-...

Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during phe Civil War WINNER of the Pulitzer Prize EDDA L. FIELDS-BLACK <Oxford University Press 2025>

Started today — very rich in detail

SIMON SCHAMA THE EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age

Part of my reading today

Charlie Kirk and the ‘Third Great Awakening’ MAGA is embracing the language of a rising Christian movement.

“Spiritual Warfare”👇

“The proliferation of this kind of language is a sign of the growing momentum of a movement often known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which has become the vanguard of the broader Christian right, and whose ideas Kirk had begun to embrace before his death.”

Neoliberalism and Race | Stanford University Press Lars Cornelissen argues that the category of race constitutes an organizing principle of neoliberal ideology. Using the methods of intellectual history and drawing on insights from critical race studi...

“Neoliberalism and Race shows that racial themes have always pervaded neoliberal thinking… neoliberal thought is constitutively racialized—its racial motifs cannot be extracted from neoliberalism without rendering it theoretically and politically incoherent.”

This is true, & backed by the best peer-reviewed research.

@kevinshih.bsky.social of @ucrchass.bsky.social uses large shocks to international student supply in the past to test the hypothesis that they crowd out natives. They crowd *in* natives, via tuition revenue—>

doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...

Do LLMs hold implicit assumptions with regard to religious identities?

Evangelical Protestant pastors had easier to read artificial intelligence–generated sermons, whereas Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams had more difficult to read synthetic texts.

👉 SOCIUS journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration Expanded Edition Tracy B. Strong

Part of my reading today

Done — overall good read of what human beings can do when feeling desperation

What the Public Memory of Charlie Kirk Revealed

Nikole Hannah-Jones 👇

"MASTERFUL" -TONY BLAIR “EPIC” -MUSTAFA SULEYMAN HOW PROGRESS ENDS TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, AND THE FATE OF NATIONS CARL BENEDIKT FREY AUTHOR OF THE TECHNOLOGY TRAP

Part of my reading today, published by Princeton University Press

Amazing statistic👇

<Movie Poster> One Battle After Another

Enjoyed this!

Amazon - $5.70 Paperback The Church Must Grow or Perish: Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity FOREWORD BY RICHARD. MOUW MARK T. MULDER AND GERARDO MARTÍ Part of: Library of Religious Biography (LRB) (36 books) Options : 2 formats Paperback $570 List: $3299 FREE delivery Sun, Sep 28 Add to cart

If you have waited, THIS is the moment

SOCIAL FORCES Journal Article Secularism, sorting, and Americans’ political knowledge Open Access Samuel L Perry Social Forces, soaf150, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf150 Published: 24 September 2025 Article history

Very engaging new article on religion & political knowledge

On knowledge of both basic civics & current politics, atheists/agnostics’ advantage is strongest among liberals & Democrats and disappears among conservatives & Republicans

From @profsamperry.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/sf/article/d...

JUST PUBLISHED

A new buzz surrounding AI is moving beyond technical speculation into the theological—specifically, Christian eschatology.

Even the so-called 'tech bros' are cultivating a narrative of doom and renewal, merging visions of a digital future with religious prophecy. 👇

AI and the End of the World Peter Thiel's Exegesis, Techno-Eschatology, and the Recasting of the Apocalypse

Posting today @ 10:30am Eastern

Let’s talk about that Peter Thiel article in the WSJ…

America’s Zombie Democracy Its trappings remain, but authoritarianism and AI are hollowing out our humanity.

In some ways, we’ve read this before. In other ways, we’re still finding language to capture our moment.

Book Review: The Church Must Grow or Perish Book Review: The Church Must Grow or Perish by Mark Mulder and Gerardo Martí

“While maintaining the humanity and dignity of Schuller, the authors expertly retell the story of how Schuller’s church both grew and perished.”

“I highly recommend this book.” 👇

Commonweal Leveraging Belief Joseph Smith, religious innovator Gerardo Martí September 23, 2025 RELIGION CULTURE BOOKS

My review of John Turner’s excellent new bio (published by Yale) on Mormon founder Joseph Smith www.commonwealmagazine.org/leveraging-b...

La muerte de Charlie Kirk, el nacimiento de una nación Podcast Episode · Un tema Al Día · 09/25/2025 · 17m

Brief audio commentary from Spain 👇

Leveraging Belief In the canon of American innovation, Joseph Smith stands alongside Edison, Bell, and the Wright brothers—not for technology, but for theology.

My review of John G. Turner’s Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet

Published in Commonweal 👇