James Lindley Wilson

The "Tell Cersei" meme, but with the face of a German wirehair pointer photoshopped over Oleanna Tyrell's face, with the caption reading, "Tell Kristi. I want her to know it was me."

RIP Cricket

I don't speak for Barney, but that has been discussed on the pod many times.

Welcome to Wyoming, the Frontier of America’s New Gilded Age

Excellent new piece in the @nytimes.com on how inequality happened in a small Wyoming town with obvious lessons more broadly for the republic.

JOB

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

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

A still from the Simpsons, with Mr. Burns at his desk, telling Homer, "I'm sure the manual will indicate which lever is the velocitator and which the deceleratrix."

Mr. Burns is in luck!

"He [Trump] is losing control of the decision to escalate... He can cut his losses now, pay a political price, try to stop the war, even though it would be a failure. Or he play for the long run and become Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War and face a more disastrous political outcome." - Robert Pape

"No stupid rules of engagement"

We just bombed a school and killed dozens of children.

That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

Opinion | Trump’s Strikes on Iran Were Unlawful. Here’s Why That Matters.

The strikes on Iran are blatantly illegal. I explained in June why the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were unlawful under US and international law. Everything I wrote then is true today, but this is a far larger assault with far graver consequences.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/o...

I taught mid-career military at the Kennedy School. They were great to have in class, not least because the other students learned so much from them. For Hegseth to suggest these impressive men and women are at risk of being "indoctrinated" is demeaning and insulting to them.

Indeed. New grants are not getting funded, already funded grants are not getting paid, and non-competitive renewals are being held up.

Focusing on the top line budget, instead of looking at what is really happening on “the ground” is deeply misguided.

oooo excited to read this

In my talk for The Royal Institute of Philosophy this evening - Social Equality: Then and Now - I compared the views of RH Tawney, GDH Cole, Harold Laski and Arthur Lewis with positions in debates about equality in recent decades. Available online March 9th.

Very sorry to hear that. My condolences.

The Kansas driver's license law is purely about bigotry, stigmatization, and criminalization of difference. It serves no rational or legitimate purpose. A 🧵1/

Hillary Clinton is a complicated figure, to say the least, but one thing's for sure: she can run rhetorical, political, and intellectual circles around James Comer without breaking a sweat.

The first set of postdocs for our ERC project on popular government have just been advertised. These 3 postdocs will be based at UC Louvain with my co-PI Pierre-Etienne Vandamme and focus on contemporary democratic theory. Apply! jobs.uclouvain.be/Personnelsci...

Liberal socialist
Property-owning democracy enthusiast
Public reason enjoyer
Law of Peoples weirdo

This is good; it would be better if it prompted reflection about who had the correct judgment about Summers' presidency 20+ years ago, and whom we should listen to now.

A still from an SNL sketch with Bowen Yang, Kim Kardashian, and Aidy Bryant dressed in hot pink as the band "Glitter Revolution," making a pitch to Costco for some jingles. The caption reads, "Hello, warehouse savings legend."

Meet the neuroscientist running for Congress Sam Wang, a neuroscientist running for the U.S. House of Representatives, has been interested in “fixing bugs in democracy” for decades.

I spoke with Laura Schenkman at The Transmitter about my candidacy for the House!

Going from the lab to public life is a huge transition. From a lifetime of research to biotech to democracy to running for office, here’s the story of one scientist: www.thetransmitter.org/policy/is-th...

YouTube video by Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies Abolition on the Eve of Revolution: Cugoano and Condorcet

I stumbled across this talk by Jennifer Pitts on the French translation of Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery. She argues that Condorcet, likely with the help of Sophie de Grouchy, did the translation. Interesting bc Cugoano was a far more radical abolitionist than Condorcet.

It drove me crazy that in the debates nobody (neither Harris nor moderator) pointed out that he clearly thought that tariffs were fees on foreign countries.

SCOTUS Blocks Trump’s IEEPA Tariffs in 6-3 Decision The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy...

In theory, we know this is true. But "struck down" doesn't quite capture it. These tariffs were obviously and transparently illegal. They were knowingly illegal. It is a stain on the Court that something so obviously illegal was allowed to stand for a year. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scotus-...

The Roberts Court era

Aargh, really should be Roberts--I confused the majority and the concurrence. But deleting is for cowards.

Still from the Simpsons, showing Principal Skinner at his desk, telling Lisa, off-screen, "Leave the money out of this. It's not the money's fault you cheated."

Shorter Gorsuch:

Violent and non-violent death tolls for the Gaza conflict: new primary evidence from a population-representative field survey This first independent population survey of mortality in the Gaza Strip shows that violent deaths have substantially exceeded official figures whereas the demographic composition of casualties aligns ...

News agencies often only cite Gaza’s health ministry when stating the number of deaths, and these numbers are then refuted by those who don’t trust the ministry because it’s run by Hamas. Now news agencies can cite the Lancet - I hope they do. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

He obviously can’t handle a Yorker.

New job at GW! Ad coming to ejobs soon: Open subfield (theory friendly), full time, non-TT, 3 year renewable contract to direct our Politics & Values program + equivalent of a 3-3 teaching load. I'm on the committee, so feel free to ask me your questions! Details: www.gwu.jobs/postings/124...