Ben Menghini

The smash cut from defending my dissertation at the height of my academic achievement to pricing mark ups at Old Navy is quite jarring, and a little too on-the-nose as a contemporary allegory.

I feel the same way. And so often in a crowded space with the mask below the nose, or wearing one alone in a car. Like, was the information environment that bad for 5 years that people who really need masks didn't learn how to use them effectively?

I'm so grateful to my committee: Tom Reynolds, Simon Coleman, Willie Jennings, and Valentina Napolitano, and especially my supervisor Natalie Wigg-Stevenson.

And the biggest thank you to Blakeley for all her support, and making it possible for me to finish this process.

I'm so happy to be Ph.Done!

Yesterday I defended my dissertation and I am excited to share that I passed without revisions! This was truly a high point in my academic career and such a fun experience engaging deeply with brilliant scholars over my work.

For a second there Natalie and I thought we might be able to ask you to serve as an examiner!

A selfie in grey slacks, a white shirt, and a blue overshirt jacket

what could have been

It's the night before my dissertation defense. I'm in Toronto. I forgot my dress shirt and jacket at home. ADHD gets in its final jab.

How is Toronto this bad at snow removal?

Overhead (softly): fuck. gosh dammit.

Think About Me is one of my summer jams!

Angsty teenage Ben really connected with the Lindsey songs, especially I Know I'm Not Wrong. Adult Ben made Brown Eyes one of his all time most played songs.

I once had a minor viral tweet that said "what is your favorite FM album, and why is it Tusk?"

Will aggressively pushing content you don't follow finally do Facebook in? Because I'm finding it absolutely unusable these days.

Every day I do dishes.

"nothing but parables in every bristling inch
of the out-of-sight unspoken never-to-be-known pure
sense-startling untranslatable there of the world as we find it"

—Eamon Grennan, World Word

Five classes in college:
- EDU 101
- US International Relations
- Ethics
- World Religions
- Theological Method

The Syndicate symposium for @hannareichel.bsky.social After Method is out!

"To know the limits of acknowledgment is to know even this fact in a limited way; as a result, it is to experience the very limits of knowing. This can, by the way, constitute a disposition of humility and generosity alike: I will need to be forgiven for what I cannot have fully known, and I will be under a similar obligation to offer forgiveness to others, who are also constituted in partial opacity to themselves." Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself

Six years of doctoral work and Judith Butler just tweets it out (publishes it 20 years ago).

"Oh mommy!"

For what it's worth, all of the organizing work I know of in Wisconsin and Missouri is either led by, or structurally supported by clergy and faith organizations.

There's something beautiful about pastors praying in the cold, their prayers rising as steam, intercessions collecting on their mustaches as frost.

Overall I love Baldur's Gate 3, but my primary complaint has to be the number of encounters that culminate in "pass a very specific skill check or slaughter a group of otherwise innocent bystanders."

Wow, blast from the past

the president wont see your posts making fun of how he's looking these days but your friends whose skin seems to be sloughing off in wet discolored chunks as the psychic weight of their craven wretchedness becomes manifest will

I just don't think AI images and statistics can have a place in liberative work...

The Virgin Democratic Party Establishment Candidate: "ICE isn't coordinating with local police. This is no way to bring down prices!"

The Chad Episcopalian Bishop: "I have instructed my priests to prepare for martyrdom."

Snuck in an anniversary lunch.

I got tricked into explaining my dissertation to a stranger in the sauna and got light headed from the talking and almost passed out. I consider this practice for my defense.