Patrick Burrows

The Whistler! He’s been whistling loudly in the Arboretum since I was an undergrad. He gives 0 fucks.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates said last month:

“.. it’s either one of two things: either you’re cowards or you’re with him. And if you’re with him, you never believed in the things you were talking about to begin with.”

As a reminder, when Biden announced student loan forgiveness—based upon a statute passed by Congress which explicitly said the President could do exactly that—Douthat called it "semi-Caesarist" because it was done "without consulting Congress."

Tell me a scenario in which Trump accepts that his completed ballroom is being used by a Democrat or a Republican he hates. This is, literally, a monument to permanence. It’s not the action of someone planning to leave.

Did anything unprecedented & important happen in America yesterday? 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

The Supreme Court Case That Could Hand the House to Republicans

white reactionaries disenfranchising black voters to secure political power? that’s a jim crow. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

Leo XIV comes out swinging hard in his first Apostolic Letter, esp §§80-81, insisting on the centrality of social movements and structural change and not JP2’s restrictions of liberation theology to individual dimensions. Vatican 2 and Medellín are back.

www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

Another reporter fired JUST FOR ACCURATELY REPORTING WHAT CHARLIE KIRK SAID.

They want that guy elevated to sainthood not because of what he did but DESPITE it.

This shit is as fixed as wrestling.

This semester in my religion, gender, and sexuality class, I decided to mostly teach things published in the last 10yrs, including lots of stuff I haven’t gotten to really read.

First up is Muslims on the Margins by @katrinadalythompson.com. And goodness, what a lovely way to begin.

R.E.M. “pushed the boundaries” of alternative rock

Herbie Hancock “pushed the boundaries” of jazz

Trump & RFK Jr. are “destroying public health & will be responsible for killing people”

What is journalism, anyway? 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

"this product is good because it's like having a pocket full of PhDs" just suggests to me you've never actually been in a room with a bunch of experts on a topic.

You think you're going to come away with a quick, simple, easy-to-digest summary of their expertise? Think again.

This is why Charlottesville melted down its Lee statue. If the statue is removed and simply put in storage, it remains what @artcrimeprof.bsky.social calls “America’s strategic racism reserve.”

Nothing like the last week of summer before turning to semester prep to compel furious writing on that summer project that has slipped away for the last two months.

(Why am I like this? Why do I always do this?)

👇🎯 A lot of folks don't seem to understand that 90+% of our authoritarian problem is the total failure of Article I of the Constitution, not Article III.

the republican party hates public goods and wants to force feed you and your family slop produced by its billionaire allies

Note the size. This painting is 10ft tall and 7.5ft wide. Even when displayed a foot off the ground, the painting takes up the full wall, and she stares down at you, unflinchingly.

An oil painting, an adaptation of the artistic trope of Judith and Holofernes. On a vibrant patterned floral background, a Black woman (in the role of Judith) with an elaborate wrapped hair style, Navy blue dress, and leather belt ornamented with a metallic chain band, stands with her weight on her right foot, her left leg outstretched forward. One vine of the floral background crosses horizontally over the bottom center of her dress. She twists at the waist, but with her back straight, so that her left arm stretches across the foreground. In her left hand, the severed head of a white woman with wavy brown hair (Holofernes). The Black woman wears a purple and blue ombré eyeshadow, her gaze firm and directly at the viewer.

Still the most arresting piece of art I have ever seen.

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977)
“Judith and Holofernes” (2012)
Oil on linen, 120 x 90 in.
North Carolina Museum of Art

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring.

Read it for yourself here:

www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

Excuse my language but what fucking business is it of the united states government whether Brown undertakes this kind of medical care for parents and their kids who fully consent to it and desire it? Insanity! Pure discrimination in an agreement trollingly cloaked in preventing discrimination.

A giant double standard around free speech and academic freedom happening around Palestine right now.
"the publishers had demanded that the articles be submitted to a legal review late into the process."

Online grocery shopping. When you check out at mine, there's always been a screen "other things you've bought in the past," requiring another click to get to the payment, but the language has ramped up to "aren't you forgetting...?" with more and more difficult to locate "continue" buttons.

Here’s to a world where no one grows up hating themselves, thinking God hates them, knowing society does, and despairing of their lives and their futures. And here’s for courage to fight like hell for that world, against forces who want us all dead.

Today marks 20 years since I came out for the first time, in quick succession, to myself, to God, and to the world. I have come to feel ambivalent about the required coming out plot line in queer lives, but this is still a significant day.

To wit, I have written almost 1000 words since the walk-inspired breakthrough.

Opinion | Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much.

“It’s not that traditional liberal learning is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities, values and desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, and an administrative class that won’t fight for the liberal arts.”

The delight of discovering that @zotero.org has finally added @chicagomanual.bsky.social 18th ed. Place of publication: begone! (Though I feel very mixed about not using 3 em-dashes for repeated authors in the bibliography. Looks wrong to see the repetition.)

Never underestimate the power of going on a walk and talking to yourself out loud (and avoiding the stares of neighbors) to work out a writing problem.

I am confident they would see similar actions as acceptable where abortion has been criminalized. Just giving women an option when the government refused to.

This is from an actual Republican Congressman, from the party that is also locking kids in cages in a concentration camp in Florida, hoping they try to escape and get eaten by alligators.

This is today's Republican Party.