Kye

POST-DOC!

3-year job in history of political thought / visual culture / art history
Department of Politics & International Studies
University of Cambridge
@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social

www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/54724/

Even if AI is successful beyond its boosters’ wildest dreams, there is still the inherent contradiction of a machine that kills off the people it needs to steal from

Star Trek Voyager scene. We see a small, lone shuttlecraft fllying through a cloudy sky. Closed caption reads, "(screaming)"

It takes real galaxy brains to mass cancel solar and wind projects and then start a pointless unpopular war that sends oil prices soaring.

I suppose the Left really will have a second chance at the social crises of the 1970s

The Gang Creates a 1970s-level Oil Crisis

Pete Hegseth is a dishonorable man.

The Most Chilling Detail in the U.S. Attack on an Iranian Naval Ship The Iranian warship was taking part in an international exercise with many other countries—including the United States.

This is a chilling crime. A shame on our country. The Iranian ship was unarmed. The US knew this. The sailors were murdered by our navy, and the survivors were left to die at sea.
newrepublic.com/post/207429/...

That’s a hell yeah

Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base

Official statements placing U.S. forces in the area – along w/ analysis of social posts, videos, sat. images – suggest U.S. forces bombed a school in Minab, Iran during strikes targeting an IRGC base. Over 150 were killed, Iranian officials say. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...

[Exit Murderer.]

Madness

JOB

Assistant Professor of Political Theory
University of Cambridge
@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...

Seeing Thomas Friedman in the NYTimes defending this as a righteous war to bring democracy to Iran broke me, a person who remembers 2003.

"When the state is growing weak, the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity." -- Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.5

Gangsterism as international policy

This is one of the videos the NYT has verified and links to in their reporting.

NYT: "Video verified by [NYT] showed ... rescuers digging through the rubble with building cranes and shovels, and piles of bloodied, dusty backpacks."

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/w...

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

“Let them eat offal”

Capitalism and Christianity, American Style

Just finding that Bill Connolly has passed. I only read one of his books, published in 2008, and it is the single most prescient text I've read on how/why we arrived at our current reality. Even from that one text it was clear he was a giant.

William E. Connolly Obituary February 25, 2026 - Eclipse Funeral Care View William E. Connolly's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

Bill Connolly died yesterday and he was one of the good ones. It kills me that he was taken while our politics are like this. He deserved to outlive the bastards. I guess we’ll have to take it from here. But let me say: for depth of understanding, empathy & moral clarity, this man had few rivals /1

Trans Kansan's being stripped of their licenses due to having previously - legally - changed their gender marker is absolutely shocking.

A person who misses the letter - let's they moved and forgot to have their mail forwarded - could drive to work and be arrested for driving without a license.

I found that this is wrong. Democracy actually is a powerful motivating force for a critical slice of the population *if they perceive a real threat*.

I call this the "legibility" theory of democratic backsliding: the more legible the threat, the more likely it is to prompt effective pushback.

butlerian jihad when

I think I'll have the first assignment for my Political Visions of Nature class, which is a 17th-19th century course, to be reading the Charter of the Forest and figuring out what all those weird little rights in it are. It'll set up the stakes for the next week when we read Locke and Winstanley.

The last week has reaffirmed my belief that Trumpism is a reaction against all of history since the freaking constitutional settlement of 1689. Just compare the impunity of elites and the lawlessness of the US to the freaking UK. Deeply embarrassing stuff.

Usurping to yourself the power to declare what is the horizon of the political is in itself *gasp* entirely political.

I wish that the Court paid as much deference to, say, section 3 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution as it did to the 100% fugazi, so-called major questions doctrine, which is the most elegant instrument for laundering policy preferences ever conceived.