Laptop materialism-the values of materialistic people who consume and displays their material values entirely over the internet.
A compulsive shopper of Amazon, showing and reviewing their products on Instagram, Youtube, for the purpose of status in virtual spaces only is a laptop materialist.
10.03.2026 22:00
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Its been over 15 years but I think I get the grift. Manufacture radical skepticism about all institutional knowledge, making atomized individuals with no knowledge seek expertise from a sea of random individuals most of whom falsely exhibit knowledge. Then monetize all the random individuals.
10.03.2026 13:44
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According to traditional just war theory, if whatever originally motivated you to engage in war is unjust, any bonus good things that result from the war donβt thereby make it just.
08.03.2026 21:17
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Me, teaching ethics of war this quarter:
Imagine, a group of five Nazis decide to terrorize a Jewish family of ten in their home. Five men in the home decide to take up arms to defend it.
Students: Okay, so which side is the just side, and which the unjust side?
Me: π‘
07.03.2026 01:22
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Anyone approaching 50 and turning into their mother? Iβm living in her house, listening to the Carpenters, and even ordering the Filet-o-Fish.
06.03.2026 18:29
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This week I put piles of Lao Ga Ma spicy chili crisp on a chicken parm, a shwarma with tabbouleh wrap, and on guacamole. This is a culinary travesty and I need help.
26.02.2026 19:23
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Mucilaginous vegetables are very difficult to get right (even the name is wretch inducing), and also the smell is famously like a bodily fluid that also induces a similar reaction ...but in defense of okra all of the objectionable features can be excised with the right technique.
24.02.2026 20:52
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If I had to cut out all the passages in my manuscript that made me cringe, I'd be left with very little.
24.02.2026 15:44
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βIf there is no one there to smelt it, there can be no one who dealt it.β -Bishop George Berkeley.
21.02.2026 23:18
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Most people think the future of academia consists of robots doing all the teaching, when we all know it is going to be administrators adopting ten new pieces of management software yearly, then making everyone watch endless streams of training videos about how to work it.
21.02.2026 00:20
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The The is fantastic.
20.02.2026 23:20
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Best piece I've read in awhile.
20.02.2026 04:30
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The Epstein files will be the Mueller report of Trump II.
19.02.2026 23:11
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That's a generational highlight right there.
19.02.2026 21:13
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If you tally up the direct costs of the wars and military adventures of the US from Vietnam through Iraq and Afghanistan, along with all of the downstream costs including veterans health care and interests on the debts incurred, you get about 35% of total US debt.
19.02.2026 16:46
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The promise of paying for stuff, newspapers, magazines, apps, games, streaming, was so they wouldnβt have to sell our data and sell us ads. Now everything I pay for also bombards me with ads and sells my data. Is there any point at which companies will stop trying to squeeze this lemon?
18.02.2026 14:56
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No need to regret, this wasn't a call out, it was a statement of solidarity.
18.02.2026 01:07
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Plenty of men are ashamed to wear a bathing suit also. I'm a t-shirt guy.
18.02.2026 00:47
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The people selling a virtual world where the machine thinks, lives, talks, and fucks for you keep telling all the people who arenβt buying theyβre wasting their time thinking, living, and fucking with other people.
17.02.2026 16:14
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The US auto industry is already uncompetitive without the prohibitions against BYD from the US market. I think itβs a matter of 15yrs where this countryβs cars are going to look to the rest of the world like wood burning stoves look to us. Weβll be a backward country of horse and buggy drivers.
16.02.2026 16:39
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Learning to hate polyester. My gym clothes eternally stink, requiring vinegar soakings. It accounts for 35% of microplastic pollution because you launder it and the fibers just wash into the ocean and never break down.
16.02.2026 07:20
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The framing is the problem with Mellon grantmaking is social justice orientation. I disagree. All grantmaking with top-down constraints skews research unhealthily. A big foundation for Christian humanities will have the same problem. We need a lot of foundations funding different kinds of research.
13.02.2026 00:17
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Government grant-making in the US also has a long history of strings-attached, depending on the political leanings of the administration. In Republican administrations, lots of civil war stuff. So even there, top-down initiatives will have constraining effects. Maybe funding shouldn't be grant-based
12.02.2026 23:49
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The Multibillion-Dollar Foundation That Controls the Humanities
Is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation the last best hope for American arts and lettersβor is it killing them?
The framing of this by Tyler Austin Harper is that the problem with Mellon is social justice orientation. I disagree. All grantmaking with top-down constraints skews research in unhealthy directions. We need lots of foundations funding research of all kinds. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
12.02.2026 23:35
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Just want to express two completely unrelated opinions, because itβs what I think about on commutes.
1. If only one 60s American rocker gets the Nobel in poetry, it should have been Paul Simon.
2. The older I get, the more I think When Harry Met Sally isnβt just good, but a masterpiece.
12.02.2026 04:08
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I feel like "most outstanding peer reviewer" is an award that you want to get, but not one you want to announce.
11.02.2026 06:19
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Sizzler 1991 Promo video with Twin Peaks soundtrack
YouTube video by Hi-Phi Nation
I did a remix, in the spirit of 1991. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW6J...
11.02.2026 00:24
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Its the world you experience in the black lodge.
10.02.2026 19:44
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Sizzler 1991 Promo video with Twin Peaks soundtrack
YouTube video by Hi-Phi Nation
I was born to make this video. 1991 is when America peaked. (sound on.) youtu.be/dW6JlPnP33o?...
10.02.2026 18:56
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