David Shumway

It’s time for wine lovers to get over ‘Zinfandel cringe’ You’d be hard-pushed to find better-value old vine wine

Janis Robinson makes the case for old vine Zinfandel, as if the case needed to be made. www.ft.com/content/4dab...

Primary

Why I’m not watching the State of the Union – and you shouldn’t either | Robert Reich Trump doesn’t deserve our attention. And we already know the state of the union – it sucks

Why I’m not watching the State of the Union – and you shouldn’t either | Robert Reich

Seems accurate.

DH is dead. Long live AI?

Is gravity next?

The point of the AI project is to provoke despair in creative people. They haven’t produced profits or anything anyone wants, just a steady stream of articles about how us artistic types can’t do the thing we’re already doing, making art. Jokes on them, we’re even better at despair than they are.

Modern factories: are those from 1700s, the 1800s, or the 1900s?

Let’s see this all over Maine.

My top ten Westerns (in no particular order)

Rio Bravo
McCabe and Mrs Miller
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Shane
Little Big Man
Red River
The Searchers
Lone Star
High Noon

Here’s looking at you, Pittsburgh.

CNN is Fox News light.

Anyway congrats to our Free Speech Champions(tm) who helped usher in the most censorious American government since the Palmer Raids

The World of Leonard Cohen at the CUP Bookstore in Cambridge.

Hand holding a book titled "Still No Miracles Needed" by Mark Z. Jacobson in front of a blurred bookshelf in a bookshop

Hand holding a book titled "The World of Leonard Cohen" edited by David R. Shumway in front of a blurred bookshelf in a bookshop

Hand holding a book titled "The Communist Party of China" edited by Ben Hillman and Fengyuan Ji in front of a blurred bookshelf in a bookshop

From climate change, to Chinese politics, to Leonard Cohen, we've got a very wide range of new titles this week! 🙌

📖 'Still No Miracles Needed' by @mzjacobson.bsky.social
📖 'The Communist Party of China' by Ben Hillman and Fengyuan Ji
📖 'The World of Leonard Cohen' by @nearleft.bsky.social

Who could have guessed?

Yes.

CBS

Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.

THE BOARD OF DICTATORS Trump’s Fake “Peace” Scheme Is a Global Protection Racket—With Terror at Home and Grift Abroad

Trump’s “Board of Peace” is a Board of Dictators — ICE terror at home, cash for autocrats abroad, and Trump deciding who’s protected. That’s not peace. It’s a protection racket.

READ & SHARE NEW SUBSTACK🙏⬇️

Vote them all out.

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

The cover of Cambridge University Press's The World of Leonard Cohen edited by David R. Shumway features a young Cohen in a black turtleneck writing with a ballpoint pen in a small notebook in his lap.

Hey beautiful losers, this week the books series has ed David Shumway @nearleft.bsky.social talking new collection THE WORLD OF LEONARD COHEN w/ contribs @touchofallright.bsky.social, @eweisbard.bsky.social & Sarah Hill. Wed 5:30 pm ET, achieve satori here: iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/Popular-Musi...

In the past year especially. Garbage in, garbage out.

Blue Bonds: A Fiscal Strategy for Overcoming Trump 2.0 By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective The Trump Administration has plunged the United States into a constitutional crisis. The President’s destructive executive orders and Elon Musk’s…

Bond drive for ICE Watch

moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/09/b...

It is hard for me not to regard the failure to recognize that the AI boom is inextricable from totalitarian creep as willful ignorance, as either the delusions of those who believe they are immune or an endorsement that doesn’t require a vulgar red cap.

But AI boosterism is Trumpism now. Full stop.

If you are a wealthy landlord.

The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing. All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.

This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.

Don’t miss it.

Primary!

Apparently taking lessons from the NY Times.