Blake Hartung

Homeowners denounce SB 79 vote - Beverly Press & Park Labrea News Legislation awaits governor’s signature

A bunch of toxic LA NIMBYs are whining about SB 79, the amazing housing bill the CA legislature passed recently.

It's on the governor's desk, and reportedly he's getting cold feet. Hey @gavinnewsom.bsky.social, please have some spine on the most important issue in your state. Just sign it.

FFS, “the Marvel Universe of faith”? That quote says it all…

I encourage you to learn the difference between the academic study of religion and theology

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

If the University of Chicago Won’t Defend the Humanities, Who Will? Why it matters that the University of Chicago is pausing admissions to doctoral programs in literature, philosophy, the arts, and languages

“Chicago has long helped to keep alive tiny fields & esoteric areas of humanistic study... Without the univ’s support, & the continued training of grad students who can keep these bodies of kn going, entire spheres of human learning might eventually blink out.” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

Rough crowd

A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts Recent studies suggest that tools such as ChatGPT make our brains less active and our writing less original.

Older technologies have aided and perhaps enfeebled writers. “But with A.I. we’re so thoroughly able to outsource our thinking that it makes us more average, too,” @chaykak.bsky.social ‬writes.

Indiana public colleges cut almost 20% of degrees Public Indiana colleges and universities have eliminated 19 percent of their degree programs to meet requirements added to the state’s budget, according to the Commission for Higher Education.

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

I HAVE NOW RESTORED THE ROMAN EMPIRE. THERE IS A BEAUTIFUL CEASEFIRE IN ITALY THERE IS NO WAR WITH THE GOTHS AND THERE IS UNIVERSAL PROSPERITY, ANYBODY SPREADING RUMOURS ABOUT A plague IS WRONG, THER IS ALSO NO HERESY ANYMORE ALL IS ORTHODOX

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER, YOUR EMPEROR

The cost of the 4 F-18 planes lost in the Red Sea ($240 million) is now greater than the 2025 NEH Budget ($200 million)

Rinse and repeat for the foreseeable future.

Are you going to assess them on this in some way? If you’re cutting down on writing assignments, what are you replacing those with? I’m just thinking through the same issues in my early Christianity survey class and I’m curious what other folks are doing.

Thanks for sharing! So do you create a set of questions for each reading that respond to on paper?

Musk apparently refers to his kids as a “legion”. Dude, leave the Romans out of this weird shit.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Nero competing at the Olympics vibes

Some wisdom from my four year old son: “I’m glad we don’t have a king in Arizona. He would tell everyone what to do, and I just wanna do my own thing.”

“When the victory was won, he made the announcement himself”

Suetonius on Emperor Nero’s absurd participation in the Olympic Games.

Usefully sober fact sheet on Ukraine. Please share with those who need it.
understandingwar.org/backgrounder...

Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.” • The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives. • The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000. Each point represents a federal agency: • Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs. • Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs. Key Observations: • Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates. • Notable targeted agencies include: • HHS (Health & Human Services) • EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) • NIH (National Institutes of Health) • CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) • Dept. of Education • USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) • The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies. • A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size. Takeaway: The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology. Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

Photo of a fragment of a clay tablet shaped a bit like a diamond. Although it is only a fragment, the cuneiform text on it is well-preserved. There is a vertical line down the centre which indicates it once had at least two columns. The colour is reddish brown

“Do not bend your neck for that which cuts necks.”

A Sumerian proverb, as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.

Ridgeline chart showing the distribution of global daily air temperature differences from the pre-industrial reference period (1850-1900), for every year between 1940 and 2024. Each individual year resembles a hill, shaded in a darker shade of red and further to the right for warmer years. The trend is clearly towards warmer years, with 2024 standing out as first year above 1.5C.

NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold.

We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940.

2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.

I saw Elon speak at TED in 2017, before his brain had melted entirely from Ketamine and hate. I was curious. His talk was kind of rambling but interesting... until he started claiming the ancient Egyptians had failed because they stopped building pyramids. He went on at LENGTH. My jaw was open 1/2

I'm excited to ring in the new year by sharing the first review of my book (by Yulia Minets), published in the Journal of Early Christian Studies.
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Hanukkah is typically commemorated as a "clash of cultures".

It represents the battle between a clearly defined and largely monolithic "Judaism" against a clearly defined and largely monolithic "Hellenism".

This narrative is increasingly problematized in scholarship.

🧵 1/20

The Pearlsong — Harvard University Press The Pearlsong is an ancient poem that recounts the story of a Parthian prince sent by his parents on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent. Along the way, the pri...

inaugurating a new series, out next summer in hard copy + open-access PDF:

on the so-called hymn of the pearl, with Syriac & Greek texts + English translations, Syriac & Greek glossaries, and commentary (incl. a lot of Manichaean texts) 🐍
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...