Jacob T. Levy

Brian’s brain went right where mine did bsky.app/profile/elia...

Sudanese journalist Yousra El Bagir has managed to get some footage out of Al Fashir in Darfur, Sudan. The RSF siege of the city has cut it off from food supply and medical assistance for months. One reason you hear very little about Sudan is that the RSF kills anyone who tries to document the war.

And they both VERY 1970s, in very different ways.

Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face

I’m watching a streaming *comedy* that etc etc!

Harvard also has much more federal money at stake. The Trump administration has warned that it could ultimately strip $9 billion in funding for Harvard; it threatened $510 million in funding for Brown.

ON WHAT LEGAL BASIS IS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MAKING THESE ‘THREATS’ AND ‘WARNINGS’?
Trump could just as easily demand the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard for the new White House ballroom.

Now everyone has to listen to my opinions about The Eternals.

The idea that President can negotiate/dictate bilateral “deals” by using the full force of the federal government to punish and humiliate his perceived enemies goes against the whole idea of the rule of law. That should be the story, rather than normalizing this authoritarian behavior.

Bluesky verification

Oh, thank goodness. I’ve really been struggling with questions of identity lately, not really sure of who I am. But, good news:

Why So Many Key Institutions Have Folded Rather Than Challenge Trump Yes, they’re under pressure. But maybe a lot of these leaders kinda like what Trump’s doing. Just remember: They were defeated once before.

newrepublic.com/article/1987...

The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere. The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon This is the first major agency effort by the interim NASA administrator, who is also the Transportation secretary and a former Fox News host.

Today in space policy: kill a satellite that measures greenhouse gases, make up a pretend plan to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.

www.npr.org/2025/08/04/n...

www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

About Liberal Currents offers discussion, elucidation, and defense of liberal principles and institutions. These principles—however qualified—are freedom, individualism, universalism, and pluralism, grounded in a respect for the dignity of ordinary people living ordinary lives. These principles are embedded and protected within liberal institutions: the rule of law, due process, democratic politics, private property, markets, and institutions of free inquiry and expression. While the authors may at times disagree about the various forms liberalism may take as these values are contextualized in lived experience, the unified editorial voice believes liberalism is alive and more critical than ever. As popular faith and confidence in liberal principles and institutions ebb, Liberal Currents commits to their rejuvenation and vigorous defense.

About Liberal Currents publishes writers of diverse perspectives who share an unflinching commitment to freedom, pluralism, and democracy, in opposition to authoritarianism at home and around the world. Our mission is to create a home for mere liberalism, where the many conflicting currents of the liberal tradition can enter into productive conversation. Liberalism around the world is facing its greatest crisis since the 1930s. If we rest on our laurels, we will be overtaken. We must be bold. We must exercise creativity and ingenuity. But we must never lose sight of the liberal values we seek to promote in doing so. To meet this moment, Liberal Currents promotes thinkers who advance ambitious agendas to foster a truly open society.

New About section just dropped. Slightly more in line with the current tone of our work.

I haven't read them, so I didn't pass judgment. I didn't even criticize! I commented on my own tastes and preferences.

I praise books, movies, and TV shows, too. By the "whether you like it or not is irrelevant" rule, is that not something worth doing on social media?

WHAAAAT

WHAAAAAAAT

prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/... by Paul Horwitz

"And the mechanism by which they [the Trump boys] provide value is not their keen ability to spot areas that are key to domestic manufacturing..."

Shhhhh. We try not to remind Montreal that they are, lest people decide that it's important to change that fact.

American literature that you consider that post a blocking offense.

I don't normally notice which things prompt a bunch of blocks, but I think the only thing I posted today that made people mad was that I don't want to read Updike's Rabbit novels, and I've gotten blocked a *lot*!

If that's it, honestly: respect to those of you with strong enough views on postwar

YouTube video by Institute for Humane Studies George Will & Jamelle Bouie on Civic Virtue and the Future of Democracy

The conference as a whole was under the Chatham House Rule, but I assume I'm allowed to disclose my own attendance and to say that this one public session, an exchange between @jamellebouie.net and George Will, was a real treat to be able to attend.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bhz...

[actual, albeit slight, LOL]

Greenhouse Gas Emissions At "All-Time High," Pushing Planet To Its Limits The world is blazing through the remaining carbon budget with little sign of an exit strategy.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions At "All-Time High," Pushing Planet To Its Limits

www.iflscience.com/greenhouse-g...

Troy Barnes: Your generation invented suburban alienation and middle-aged male ennui

Pierce Hawthorne: I don’t know about invented. Perfected, maybe.

In this category— filling in the literary gaps, which is maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of my fiction reading these days—  I think the last few have been

Swift, Last Orders
The Aeneid
Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat
Eco, Island of the Day Before
Murakami, IQ84
Rushdie, Victory City

Entirely different book. Updike’s “Rabbit” is a human man’s nickname, not an actual rabbit.

I am very well-versed in Le Guin

Nothing distracts from the Epstein files like talking about the hotness of an actress fifty years your junior.

Three Chiefs of Staff, four former Shin Bet Directors, three former Mossad Chiefs, five former Police Commissioners, and four former Heads of Military Intelligence in an unprecedented joint statement:

“End the war in Gaza. Bring the hostages home - all at once!”

ht: @ntarnopolsky.bsky.social

Right! I remember getting the overall sense over the course of GoT that the Targaryens had been gone for generations and being very puzzled by the occasional reminders that it had *just* happened.