Stefan Szymanski

Today I had a meeting about funding I received for a November 2025 (!) presentation. Part of the agreement requires me to present the talk at a university-wide event in March 2026. I was told today I could either censor/change my talk’s title and receive the funding, or withdraw.

I withdrew.

I can't think of any social media post in history that has made me this happy

The GrandStand Podcast🎙️🇱🇰 on X: "Murali has the streets (and New York)! https://t.co/RRdYFgn3uZ" / X Murali has the streets (and New York)! https://t.co/RRdYFgn3uZ

x.com/i/status/202...

In a similar way, gentlemen vs players became community based cricket in Mumbai or the white captain rule in the West Indies

currently reading nightingale’s book Segregation, the thesis is that modern racial segregation emerged out of urban policies in London and Kolkata in the 18th century. Restrictive covenants to keep out the poor in London’s west end became regulations to exclude rich Indian merchants in Kolkata

Well I think the restoration story is bunk, but cricket in the 18th century became very popular, and seems to have emerged from rural aristocratic settings- plenty of documentation

There’s a theory that British aristos interacted with ordinary folks more than the French and so were more sensitive to potential uprisings- from the get go they played cricket with their farmhands who served as bowlers and were paid

I sure would

if the French aristocracy had played cricket they might have avoided the revolution

Doesn’t everybody?

Yes, I’m trying to persuade her

Seriously, she learned more about cricket than she ever wanted to know

bsky.app/profile/jcbr...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference - United States Department of State SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you very much.  We gather here today as members of a historic alliance, an alliance that saved and changed the world.  When this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation – ...

Rubio erased Jews from European culture and history, and nobody noticed.

Possibly people weren’t as concerned about antisemitism as we were led to believe?

www.state.gov/releases/off...

Following a trip to the Second Circuit on an appeal by Defendants of the Court’s March 1, 2023, Order at Dkt. 76 (“March 1 Order”), which resulted in an appellate decision favorable to Plaintiffs, Plaintiffs filed a motion asking the Court to reconsider aspects of the Court’s March 1 Order that were adverse to Plaintiffs (and thus were not appealed by Defendants). Dkt. 153. Plaintiffs’ Motion is GRANTED. Defendants’ Motion to Compel Arbitration at Dkt. 47 is now DENIED in full. All of the claims of Plaintiffs Brian Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton against the NFL and various member teams may now proceed in this Court.

FOOTBALL & RACE 🧵
1/ Four years ago, Brian Flores sued the NFL alleging that the "Rooney Rule" requiring teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching vacancies is a sham.

Today, the judge ruled that ALL claims must be litigated, not arbitrated.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

What We Know With Max Foster - Stefan Powered by SnapStream Cloud Sharing

wtf's up with Jim Ratcliffe and the IOC?

video.snapstream.net/Play/8JnuLnM...

and btw, the way UEFA restructured the Champions League to pre-empt further breakaways was to internalize the message of Hoehn and Szymanski (1999) :-)

I defer to you on the law. On the incentives I'm not sure. I don't think UEFA is any less popular than the NFL, and they face no challenge. I think the lesson of the ESL was that a coalition of the most powerful clubs was resoundingly defeated. The ECJ judgment seems like a Pyrrhic victory for RM

I take your point - the ECJ ruling reframes the legal status of UEFA. But your original post said that a further challenge was inevitable - maybe, but all challenges to date have failed and I expect any future challenge will fail for the same reasons that previous ones have.

The only challenge to the monopoly of the NFL would be if, say, the AFC chose to break away - which is hard to imagine. Likewise, I think the only threat to UEFA is a breakaway by enough of the big clubs, which ESL has shown to be unlikely. UEFA can adapt and it also has serious political backing

Isn't that like saying that someone will start a rival league to the NFL because there's simply too much money to cede them a monopoly? In fact there have been many attempts and all fail because the incumbent can always adapt.

God bless the bard of Barking… #BillyBragg

Support frontline organizers demanding justice and shutting down ICE in Minnesota ICE killed a mother and legal observer during a raid in Minneapolis. Community organizers are rising up to demand justice and shut ICE down. Join us in our fight!

Support frontline organizers demanding justice and shutting down ICE in Minnesota chuffed.org/project/supp...

Great piece. Economists since the 1980s have railed against the major league monopolies and courts have acknowledged as much. That monopoly leads to welfare losses is economics 101. Sad to see economists resisting this.

YouTube video by Lost Vinyl Revival - Topic Fuck Right Off (1949) [Don't Knock At My Door] (feat. Claudia Von Blatt)

For when the ICE agents knock on the door www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q5Q...

Humans look out! they're onto us

no, but the point is that someone who would come to be recognized as one of the most prominent figures in the Nazi movement was praising Ford back then - in 1924 Henry Ford was very popular with anti-semites.

and in case youre wondering what happened to Ford...

Not to mention that in 1924, Henry Ford was still busy posting anti-semitic screeds in the Dearborn independent, receiving plaudits from Heinrich Himmler, and being rumoured as a presidential candidate...