Scott Edgar

Two plates, one of which has a mostly-eaten pizza pretzel on it, and crumpled paper napkins from Ankerbrot.

A charming afternoon at the historic Café Central!

Administrators pay $$$ for AI built into every part of students' online learning platforms, and then turn to faculty and say, "Uh, you guys figure out how to make academic integrity work. Byeee!"

In a way, the epitome of contemporary university governance.

The difficulty of finding jeans made of actual cotton is going to make me a RETVRN guy.

Yes, that's exactly what the pitch was: that ride-hailing apps would reduce car ownership. Even from the beginning, though, the counter-argument was that the drivers are still driving their cars around.

Lol I get that too! And I am dead certain that, at least in my case, it is a backhanded compliment!

There's almost certainly more to it! But those are the pieces I'm aware of.

I think it's combo of two things?

1. Philosophy as a profession is obsessed with rankings (maybe 2nd only to econ).

2. For big egos, there's the weight of wondering how you stack up against 2500 yrs of "greats". Of knowing almost all philosophers are forgotten & not wanting to be forgotten.

My list of greatest philosophers in history:

1. Erich Adickes
2. Ernst Cassirer
3. Me
4 Kant.

Putting Aristotle *below* three aristotelians is certainly revealing of something.

I had a prof in grad school who thought the top 4 philosophers in history were, in this order:

1. Duns Scotus
2. Aquinas
3. [My prof whose list this was]
4. Aristotle.

100% this. Do we need smart ideas and clever innovation in the policy space? Nope. We know exactly what policies are needed, we've known for decades, and they're really simple. We just keep looking straight at the right ideas and then choosing the wrong ones anyway.

it took making fun of that little paul dano boy on a podcast to snap the populace out of hypnotic curse miramax warlocks placed on them decades ago

I feel like the ship has sailed for me to use any kind of citation manager. At this point in my career, what, am I going to spend two weeks of my life entering every source I've used into a citation manager? Who's got that kind of time?

Exactly this kind of increasing productivity is what Powers Our Economy.

Báhn you

Bánh mì

Bon nuit

My RATM journey:

1. [1990s] This is cool, but the politics seem a bit much.

2. [2000-2003] This is still so cool, and maybe they were on to something polically?

3. [2003-present] This is unbelievably cool, and Zack de la Rocha was 100% right about everything all along.

I struggle with exactly these thoughts. I know that enforcement is less of a solution than design. And I'm on board with that!

But... I just don't see how it could be possible to design our way out of a culture of total lawlessness and impunity for drivers.

when i was a young and in college and first read ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM i was a little surprised by just how much contempt and disdain arendt had for the intellectuals of her generation, especially when compared to the actual perpetrators of the atrocities, but now substack exists so i get it

Maybe it’s fitting that Star Wars is there at both the start and end of theatrical blockbusters

The call is coming from inside the legal profession's house.

Here's the thing. For every legal argument that people want to deride as calvinball, there's some law prof with a named chair at an R1 willing to say you need to take the argument seriously.

Bono is the real offender here. "Bono Vox"? That's like Ringo deciding to go by "Great Drummer."

“Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.”

— Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?

Quite a possible worlds counterpart.

No Alan Richardsons more deserving!

Ugh. The bread and pastries at the wildly overpriced organic bakery *are* actually unbelievably, almost life-changingly delicious.

It's always been there. But a heavier shift in that direction started with the last council, and (I *think*) has only gotten worse with this council.

Maybe unsurprisingly, the council that was around for most of the centre plan work, and that passed the IMP, was more policy-minded than this one.

FWIW I worth I certainly have theories about the parts of winter in the Canadian maritime provinces: (i) brisk and charming; (ii) the weather is trying to kill you; (iii) endless mud.

Me? I think critical thinking is memorizing truth functions and mechanically grinding out truth tables!