Ryan LaRochelle

There was a guy that worked with me at the Yankees, he had NO ARMS. He got more work done than I did! Made more money. Had a wife, a family. Drove a better car than I did!

Example number of infinity of the sheer lack of seriousness of any of these folks.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/o...

One of the annoying pro-AI claims is that we in higher ed need to teach students to use AI tools or they will be left behind. Students in the 21st century need a lot of skills to succeed, it's not my responsibility to teach all of them. They can learn AI somewhere else, I'll teach them how to think.

Without discounting the serious threat Trump as an individual presents for American democracy, I think that Congressional Republicans' abdication of their constitutional obligations is the most serious problem in American politics.

It’s weird to think about how devices and technology have shrunk the world for the youngest adult generation. Part of this is a lack of reading, studying, and interacting beyond devices.

So much online conservatism these days is just "I miss being a kid"

We have one gas and one electric. I’ll be driving the electric a lot more often!

I cross paths with a philosophy colleague several times a week. He stopped and told me about how the residents of Konigsberg would keep time by tracking Immanuel Kant’s rigid daily schedule, which he compared to our frequent meetings walking to and from class. I guess that makes me Immanuel Kant.

Treating real war like a Call of Duty Twitch stream isn't helping anyone.

ngl this is probably the most useful thing I've made thus far, a comprehensive feed equivalent of paper-picnic.com

This is terrific! Thank you!

Talking about "warfighters" and "violence" over and over just shows that you don't know anything beyond your pre-selected talking points.

One of the things that bothers me so much about contemporary politics is how degraded political discourse has become and how unserious so many leaders are. These decisions are incredibly consequential, yet so many of the folks running the show are just not serious people. Politics is not a game.

I absolutely hate this new development. I just want to read the news. I don't want to see someone reading it to me.

Working on a biography about former SecDef Bill Cohen, and then logging on and seeing this guy really shows how far this nation has fallen in the last three decades.

Can't wait to finally meet in person!

Very excited to hear that @vermontgmg.bsky.social will be the luncheon speaker at this year’s New England Political Science Association conference in Burlington!

I really wish GOP senators would stop waiting until they announce their retirement to start showing some backbone.

I must be right at the tail end of the age group who remembers those commercials. But they are burned into my brain.

Pretty sure every social scientist learns not to ask a question like this is an undergrad research design and methods class.

The liberal arts & humanities cultivate these better than STEM, in my opinion. And unfortunately, these are also the traits I see many students farming out to AI and chatbots the most these days.

In the latest @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social episode with Jack Clark of Anthropic, Clark made the point that some of the characteristics that will make future workers irreplaceable are taste (still not sure what he meant by that), curiosity, and intuition.

Thank goodness for music and books, that’s all I can say.

I say this with absolutely no snark or sarcasm. Kudos to faculty at one of the institutions most responsible for creating the economic foundations of our present times--which are fueling our social and political discontents--for coming around and speaking up.

A group of students sitting at desks looking through archival materials.

A group of students listening to an archivist describe the contents of the collection.

My honors class on “Moral Courage in Uncertain Times,” is studying Bill Cohen’s leadership during Watergate. He was the first Republican on the Judiciary Committee to break with the GOP on impeachment. We have all of his papers here at UMaine, and students spent the class reviewing the materials.

The fact that the battle for marriage equality (and many other progressive social reforms) was long, protracted, and incremental seems to be lost on many. It's hard for some to look back from our vantage point and realize just how controversial a lot of these initiatives were in the 2000s.

That's funny. I draft on screen then print out a draft and edit by hand!

I have finally moved beyond drafting entire documents by hand, but I usually sketch out a pretty detailed outline by hand!

And then you have us weird academics who scan 1,000s of photos of archival documents, save them as PDF, and print out the really prized documents because they're easier to look through and write on. Or is that just me?

Don't these folks have enough money? I feel like at some point you have to be content enough with your life and reputation to not be a shill for mediocre consumer products.