Daniel Fried

MMA is a form of healthy debate

This piece, documenting the role of Canadian and other country firms in ICE's supply network was written by a @splawinski.bsky.social, a University of Toronto PhD student. Give her a follow! 🧵

What Mamdani Doesn’t Know About Tenants Fixing New York’s affordable housing isn’t as simple as going after bad landlords.

Interesting take by a tenant organizer on the complexities of NYC rent policy.

Effective progressivism would start by embracing complexity. There can both be bad landlords and also systemic barriers.

Opinion | U.S. universities have lost sight of their core task It’s time for higher education to get back to educating the workforce of the future.

Don’t use emulation of China to advocate turning universities into vocational centers. China does *not* treat its universities this way. It treats its universities as incubators of national power—a very different goal from job-training, one that includes blue-sky research and humanities education.

Yep, I can totally do that

Posted about this yesterday.

bsky.app/profile/prof...

That doesn’t feel satisfying: it looks like nothing is happening, out of cowardice. But it’s better to maximize chances of winning over the long term than to strike a heroic pose and get crushed early.

In order to work most effectively as oppositional forces, US universities should decrease their salience by being as bland as possible in public, and making the most of their alumni networks, lobbyists, and industry connections to build quiet defenses. That is what most are doing.

In such an environment, open resistance does not meaningfully pressure the regime; it only increases the salience of crushing that sector first.

The techniques of public protest and open opposition work best in a well-functioning democracy. Currently, the U.S. is an early-stage fascist state that may or may not still be able to mount viable elections.

Resistance movements need a political face. They also need an underground space of action. Putting all one’s opposition out in the open just enables better targeting.

Strong opposition is happening in the US university sector—both from faculty and from most senior leaders. That does not mean it is always highly visible. Nor should it be.

Opinion | Universities are sending Trump a dangerous message Higher education is under attack. Drop the appeasement.

This is an interesting, strong, and wrong take. Thread.

Will China also forbid us from curling? 🥌

Opinion | The Evolutionary Brilliance of the Baby Giggle

Best-chosen research subject ever: spend your career making babies laugh

Chinese rear palace dramas are as close as we are going to get to Real Housewives of Beijing

We have no Bongino today 🎶

Fixed it

Economic justice looks like $100 per person?

GOTV planning around rigged elections is centrally important in a way that eclipses even the heroic Minneapolis activism. We can’t shame Trump, but it’s possible that voting is still decentralized enough to remake Congress.

Hell’s bells. No. This an insane proposal.

Ask your city aquarium to keep a jaguar on staff

It is possible for resistance to look like compliance. Sometimes it is necessary to hide what you are doing. Strategy ≠ cowardice.

Action hero cosplay governance

Tween nerd: psyched at rolling natural 20 with the +3 Vorpal longsword

Middle-aged nerd: psyched at finding a sweet emendation for a corrupted 6th-century text

“Mutually beneficial” is not something Trump understands. There are only fraudsters and chumps.

The value to Amazon is not in the ticket sales. A $67m loss is an acceptable price for staying in Trump’s good graces.

Hopefully this crowd is large enough to deter ICE action

Reading Chinese prose poetry and watching trashy murder mysteries

slow clap 👏