Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks)

Thing about war is that the losing side actually decides when it's over, not the winning one

In 80 years folks will talk about 2026 like we talk about 1939…and not in a good way…

When I write a paper there is a lot of “so this mostly panned out but it’s not super robust, I wonder what is behind that” followed by about 500 models and rabbit holes and then a paper written like this was a deductive project from the start (which it was…but was it?)

I’m probably the only one.

Everytime I get annoyed how addicted my kids are to shorts/reels etc. I recall America’s Funniest Home Videos—featuring 20 minutes of TikTok style crack so addictive the country collectively decided that Bob Saget was funny.

I believe American democracy will survive.

I base this on American political culture—we do not kneel. I like this.

I also base this on Trump being a uniquely indecisive and lazy strongman. I don’t like this.

it's one thing to have an ai to get you an output in a minuscule amount of time (as compared to how much you'd be spending on the task). but it's a whole 'nother thing to experience the cogs turning in your brain and things clicking. one is about your livelihood. the other is about feeling alive.

At first I didn’t see the through line…and then I got it…and oh man that is a great insight into the discipline

If you are wondering what words the all-male Congress found so "blasphemous" that they felt compelled to literally scrape them off the monument, they were: ''Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless, now arisen, declared herself an entity to be reckoned.''

Or something wicked this way comes…that turning an adult into a child, cut off from all context and social support is a terrorizing act!

Wasn’t there a rally for billionaires going on or something? Seems like I missed the reporting on the massive surge of people that I’m sure came into the streets to heckle.

Writing gyroscopic poetry was consitantly the best 5 minutes a day I experienced in grad school!

I think the impact is exaggerated. Like yes, his bargain boon, or pact with whatever entity sleeps beyond the understanding of the feeble minds of men in starless dark is *real*, but events aren’t monocausal, I think it’s likely that education polarization explains more.

New gift idea for your stressed but immortal friends!

In grad school I took a random side quest where I signed a fellow student up for “the gyroscopic poetry list serve” (which I created in response to him being kind of a jerk tangentially related to gyroscopes). I then sent him a poem about gyroscopes every day for like 2 weeks.

Good times.

It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (Norton Paperback) It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (Norton Paperback) [Lipset Ph.D., Seymour Martin, Marks Ph.D., Gary Wolfe] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (Norton Paperback)

This sent me hunting for a book I know I read in grad school but couldn't quite recall.

Probably due for an update and reprinting for the social media age.

www.amazon.com/Didnt-Happen...

New paper title: "Salami slicing with a meat cleaver: Clever coercive diplomacy or a dumb way to lose a finger?"

It is always the ones you suspect.

I'm officially "I think I prefer compression socks" years old today.

In August I had two big career developments. 1. I went 100% into admin as an Associate Dean. 2. a publisher finally expressed interest in a scholarly book project. I "had" 38k written but only 20k that was usable. I need to write a ton by Sept!

Tonight I crossed the 70k mark. 50k in 5 months!

Bush/Rove talked openly about establishing a permanent republican majority. They had no intention of ever losing elections again and they said as much—loudly and repeatedly. A tenant of faith in the Bush administration was that Democrats could not be trusted to govern.

Yep. GOP leaders didn’t think it was possible that a democrat could ever win again. After all Reagan had established a permanent republican majority, and it was just dumb luck (Perot) that allowed a democrat to become president in 1992. After 1996 elections (and voters) were a threat to their power

Trump is completely in line with what the Wisconsin and N. Carolina GOP legislators have been doing for years. Hell, Noem’s corruption/nepotism was on full display. Meanwhile the SD legislature fought voters on ballot measure after ballot measure. Total contempt for the rule of law and elections.

This is important. 2025 is a speed run to authoritarian rule but it is also a dash to the finish line after 2 decades of inching closer and closer—never accepting electoral defeat as legitimate, changing the rules mid game, and rejecting any oversight of the GOP but perpetual investigations for Dems

So one reason is no doubt project 2025 and the 4 years of planning for what to do to destroy the constrains on the executive.

But the graph will look very different if you start the clock in 2025 rather than 2017 or Nov. 1996 (my personal date for when the GOP abandoned its commitment to democracy)

If they could be rude to Anne Coulter, they could be rude to any of us!

Americans need to know the threat I'm personally facing!

It's clearly "a kitchen table issue" because if I can't give speeches on campuses I won't be able to vacation in St. Barts for a month this year.

Thinking about how "local college kids being rude to speaker at event with 200 people" became a national story for years.

Partly, the media just swallows rightwing propaganda whole.

But maybe it just really resonated with elite journalists/pundits who make money giving speeches at colleges.

Andor WAS even better than you recall.

Also, it pays musical homage to battle of Algiers which is also super relevant for this moment.

I’m in downtown Grand Forks on a Friday night. It is -17 real feel and the number of people dressed for clubbing who just casually stroll between bars without coats is kind of wild.

North Dakotans are built different…in that they apparently don’t have nerve endings!

The entire 'we can't win' nonsense is such bullshit. The people who led the anti-apartheid movement, Solidarity in Poland, the People Power Movement in the Philippines, and Diretas Já in Brazil all faced far longer odds and worse oppression than us and they never gave up. Fuck doomers.

Alternatively, participation in sex crimes is a loyalty mechanism used by the financial elite to both screen and then bind the social and financial elite to each other. The more heinous the crime the more credible the commitment.