Thleen

This is great! The grade at the end made me laugh—but then I thought, you know, as far as nebulous social movements go, “solved some real problems, caused some bad policies, did no lasting good, wasn’t a disaster” is probably one of the better track records, so maybe the grading curve will boost it

Screenshot of the CBS article, which itself shows a close-up image from the prison security footage at issue. CBS has captioned the image “A cursor can be seen on the image of the garbage can in this closeup.” Indeed it can! The image is credited to the US Bureau of Prisons.

It is also very funny that CBS leads off with a bunch of “here’s a 3D model showing the security camera blind spots” stuff that I guess they think sounds more serious or interesting or persuasive when to me this is the single wildest part of the article

I have not really followed the recent Epstein stuff but this is making me lose my mind. How did it take a CBS SPECIAL INVESTIGATION to notice that the “raw footage” had A CURSOR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN

As you say, that’s not to say that the UK is overall worse off than the US—it’s just to complicate what might otherwise look like the obvious conclusion that it’s better. (Also it’s shorter than any answer to “why don’t you work over there?” that involves explaining the academic job market)

Family members sometimes ask me and my partner (both American) if we wouldn’t rather work in the UK, given the ways the US is falling apart, and my partner replied to a recent instance by cautiously and politely saying “I think things over there are falling apart more slowly but, also, more surely”

I will admit I read this and thought “how can there POSSIBLY such thing as a posh squeaky toy” but I clicked through to the photo and what do you know

Ah I love that !! 🏜️🏜️🏜️

You are better at puns than I am but I was trying to think of something that could reference the mesa and the tiny size of the painting and came up with “Mesa Baja,” which is literally “low table” but according to Google Translate (and the Spanish IKEA website) is also one term for a coffee table

My immediate reaction was “Rural Juror isn’t even the funniest SONG 30 Rock ever produced” but then I realized it IS probably the song that’s funniest for a full minute, and now I’m also wondering if that actually makes it funnier than the songs that are very funny for 15 seconds. So thanks for this

This is incredible. Do you—or did any vendors—have theories about the psychology of a person who buys a Trump “Miss Me Yet?” t-shirt in 2025? I assumed they were leftover pre-election stock until learning from the piece that with this printing method there IS no leftover stock

Early in grad school I thought it was just weird humblebragging when more senior people were like “I hope to god someone else in the literature has scooped me on this idea so I don’t have to write it and can just cite them” and when I first experienced it firsthand I realized I owed them an apology

My partner has a really good rant about how informal fallacies only make sense in the context of a system like Aristotelian logic and teaching them alongside modern-day formal logic is confused and nonsensical and I’ve been completely convinced

A black t shirt with the slogan “NO ONE WATCHES MEN’S SPORTS.” posted on instagram by an account whose handle is the same slogan

Brett can I introduce your future children to my sister’s favorite shirt to wear to Lynx games www.instagram.com/p/C__NlffSig...

Sending increasingly angry emails to the New York Times insisting that I should be able to count 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as a “movie of the 21st century”

Oh man I’m so glad I asked—on looking it up, “surrealist anti-war fantasy from the director of HOUSE (1977)” is the kind of thing I can’t believe I’ve never heard of! Thanks!

So curious about the mysterious “movie added by reader”!

Printing these three screenshots and keeping them in a folder to slide across the table when I’m asked to explain the gap in my CV

“Comparing Our Solutions: Sensational. We are as one.” From my Wordlebot results today in NYT Games

“Your Fourth Guess: Connections perfection! You achieved a Reverse Rainbow — solving categories from trickiest to most straightforward — without any mistakes.” From my Connections Bot results today in NYT Games

“You're Queen Bee! I have nothing further to teach you. Bravo! You can scroll down to see how other players are doing on this puzzle.” From my Spelling Bee Buddy results today in NYT Games

Got the holy trinity of evaluations from the NYT Games robots today

Music and Lyrics is a great romcom because it knows how annoying both its protagonists are and it only asks you to believe that they are exactly annoying enough for each other. This is enough to outweigh its hideous misunderstanding of literary academia. Also the Adam Schlesinger original soundtrack

Oh neat! I’m left-handed and put “reading” windows (PDFs, web browser) on the right of the screen and “writing” ones (emails, word processor) on the left—I assumed a leftover instinct from how I’d arrange a book and notebook to work on a physical desk. I hadn’t considered the eye preference factor!

Finally watching Andor Season 2. I love how Tony Gilroy was obviously like "This series has classic characters named Luke and Ben, so here are my new characters: Cyril, Edie, Deirdre and Lonnie" and Disney was like "nice try, bucko" and ran them through the Registered Trademarkable Namifier

Top half of this picture: brick
Bottom half of this picture: BRICK (2005)

The US hardback editions of the Harry Potter books all had this! Of course cannot morally recommend buying one now to check, but I remember being so charmed by it at eight years old—an early spark of interest in all the work required to create a book even after someone’s written all the words

I have only second-hand knowledge of the process but unfortunately the only reliable “the SEP should have pages about these things” proposal method I know of is the “I personally am volunteering to write an SEP page about each of these things” proposal method

(I hope none of this sounds combative or, worse, like clueless Yanksplaining—I've followed your account for ages and have really valued your insights, so I truly did just want to mention some of the articles that changed my mind on this cluster of issues in case you find them useful to think with!)

The Guardian view on fare-free public transport: good for people as well as the planet | Editorial Editorial: The southern French city of Montpellier is the latest to recognise the benefits of incentivising residents to get on buses, trams and trains

Not mentioned in that Current Affairs piece is a possibly even more important observation about fare evasion in particular: one way to reduce it is to do away with fares entirely and fund transit in other ways. Not a trivial change, obviously, but it's been done! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why the Fraudulent 'Broken Windows' Theory of Policing Refuses to Die 'Broken windows' policing was based on the theory that neighborhood disorder led to more serious crimes. But that theory has been entirely debunked, as law professor Bernard Harcourt explains.

I sincerely understand the feeling and have had it myself before—but the claim that ignoring "petty crime" gives rise to bigger crimes is an empirical one, and I've become convinced it's false. I found this informative when NYC fare dodging made news last year www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-the...

Important work in philosophy of medicine is being done on bluesky

I’m sadly not in Vienna today, but I’m just next door in Munich, so I was curious about the rest of the program—but I notice this link says you’re presenting on May 15?

Not sure if we’re restricting the field to comic book adaptations but for my money it’s The Incredibles in a landslide