Simon Arthur

Views + reviews: our June issue gets the measure of six new books.

Steven Brown @academicdiary.bsky.social Stuti Roy @simonarthur.bsky.social Rachele Reschiglian @caryshill.bsky.social ‬on PhDs, @thewhitepube.bsky.social, class, neoliberal universities + more.‬

thesociologicalreview.org/reviews/

Modern

xkcd.com/3089/

Modern

@xkcd.com

“The purpose of education is so you can get a good job”

No it’s not…. Nooooooo it’s not

The purpose of education is so you won’t be a dumb ass

The English higher education market is broken New regulator powers should include the ability to claw back pay from vice-chancellors in the event of financial catastrophe

Augar is right that new regulations should include claw back pay from vice-chancellors in the event of financial catastrophe (defined as?). But is wrong to tie employment outcomes to tuition. At no point is there any mention of how basic and non-goal oriented research is an essential public good.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP - EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE (WATCH THE MIDDLE EAST!), AND RECORD SETTING INFLATION HAS ALREADY TAKEN ITS TOLL. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! 4.94k ReTruths 19.5k Likes Jan 29, 2024, :07 PM

Donald J. Trump @realDonald Trump This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's. I didn't take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden "Overhang." This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad be numbers, but when the boom begins, it will like no other. BE PATIENT!!! 1.19k ReTruths 4.28k Likes Apr 30, 2025, 9:13 AM

This is literally how toddlers act

Ronan the head-bobbing sea lion proves animals can keep a beat: ‘No human was better’ Sea lion grooving along to hits such as Boogie Wonderland helps show scientists rhythm is not exclusive to humans Ronan the sea lion can still keep a beat after all these years. She can groove to rock and electronica. But the 15-year-old California sea lion’s talent shines most in bobbing to disco hits such as Boogie Wonderland. Continue reading...

Ronan the head-bobbing sea lion proves animals can keep a beat: ‘No human was better’

This is the graph I've wanted to see all day... governments get kickings but this shouldn't be happening to an *opposition party*

Hans Poelzig’s Sulphuric Acid Factory in Luboń, Poland (1911-1912) #germanexpressionism

You can’t argue with the peer review method. The conclusions are unanimous that Giorgia Meloni is a racist piece of sh

A credit theory of anti-credit money: How the cryptocurrency sphere turned into a shadow banking system Cryptocurrencies were designed to function as money without banks. How, then, could they run into a banking crisis in 2022? We argue that the evolution of the crypto sphere into a credit based syst...

#Crypto began as an anti-state, anti-credit project. Now it's an integral part of the state-backed credit system - just think of Trump’s 'Bitcoin Reserve'. How and why did this happen?

Find answers in our new open-access article in @ripejournal.bsky.social:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Trump on why he announced a tariffs pause: "I thought people were jumping a bit out of line. They were getting a little bit yipee."

Just embarrassing

Every day:

Chartbook 370: Is a "Treasury market unwind" in progress? Wednesday morning and the overnight fin-fi panic. (Part 2) A specter is stalking global financial markets.

"...as of 7 am on Wednesday, the signs are not good. There is good reason to think that we may be entering fullblown bond market meltdown. The headlines of Bloomberg and the FT and the WSJ all concur. The bond market is the story." -
@adamtooze.bsky.social

adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

It's a good book!

Economic crisis, a recession looming. We all know what comes next...

Articles in the financial press asking if Marx was right

The universal republic – a utopian ideal or a feasible mode of global governance? - LSE Review of Books The Universal Republic: A Realistic Utopia? by Mathias Koenig-Archibugi explores the value and feasibility of a global government, an Enlightenment idea often dismissed as utopian and impracticable.…

NEW✨ The universal republic – a utopian ideal or a feasible mode of global governance?

The Universal Republic: A Realistic Utopia? by Mathias Koenig-Archibugi @lsegovernment.bsky.social revisits an often-dismissed Enlightenment idea of a world democratic state.

Review by @simonarthur.bsky.social

There Is Only One Way to Make Sense of the Tariffs The policy is absurd. It’s also an extension of Trump’s chaotic personality.

@dkthomp.bsky.social: “The notion that taxing Lesotho gemstones is necessary for the U.S. to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing this sentence.”

I have just signed the contract to publish the book based on my PhD thesis, with R outledge books!! Titled "A Sociology of Institutional Banking Power: Elite Power at the Heart of British Banking" which I need to submit in October 2026. I am both excited and terrified!!

Concerning New Study Finds Nation’s Poverty Growing Faster Than Officials Can Build Prisons

Concerning New Study Finds Nation’s Poverty Growing Faster Than Officials Can Build Prisons
theonion.com/concern...

It's only runaway inflation with a Democratic president; otherwise, it's sparkling positional gain.

A cartoon is headed “How tariffs work”. It proceeds to show a cartoon of Trump in his suit and red tie taking a piss towards a fan with a Canadian maple leaf on it. The fan blows Trump’s piss back into his face. It was drawn and is signed by Bruce MacKinnon and is dated November 26, 2024

Bruce MacKinnon, the editorial cartoonist at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, drew this last November.

No newspaper would print it.

It now deserves an outing.

one thing that I think is actually good about elon is that he is too unsophisticated to do this sort of thing in private like a normal billionaire so everyone gets to see the rank corruption of our system all out in the open. in this way his social ineptitude is actually very helpful

These guys think they're spewing cutting-edge posthumanist theory and it's all just the corniest, shittiest science fiction that actual writers wouldn't waste a minute on.

It is time to abandon student evaluations of teaching

Comment by Gordon Hodson (@gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social)

Web: go.nature.com/4jfAzXo
PDF: rdcu.be/ef9y5

Yay!!!! We control the future of Western Civilization now!!!

Yay 🙌🏼

Here it is, my syllabus for "Futures of Nostalgia." I heavily revised this because we live in a very different world than the last times I taught this even as recently as 2022. I think this is one of the best undergrad syllabi I've ever put together.

On Trans Day of Visibility, we're highlighting a few of our new and forthcoming books. They are a beautiful sight to see.