The lack of leadership in Aotearoa-NZ is staggering. Our foreign minister has MAGA brain rot. No one is preparing the country for what the next 6 months of a full crisis will look like. Not politicians or journalists. The coverage of Amerisraeli aggression has been extremely muted.
You can sing it! World-leading complacency! Punching above our weight blah blah blah
Action station petition to respect Cuba sovereignty and end US oil blockade #nzpol
our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/ca...
(...but please cite me nonetheless of course...I beg you!)
Cue another nod to Michael Billig's wonderfully depressing book Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...
it's hardly news. But the difference between what we write as academics and what the same writing gets cited for can be ridiculous. And things are only going to get more farcical as more and more people outsource their "reading" to AI tools #academicsky
awful horrific stuff Tara
This is a sad story. And a symptom of a society where the gap between the official national mythology and actuality is profound
www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...
The bastard is looking more like Dorian Gray every day
Since I have recently vowed to make my already "brilliantly lucid" book (I believe self praise is actually the highest praise of all) even more "readable", maybe I might try this...
...as he tucks into his Sunday morning brunch, absolutely assured of his capacity to "turn things around" before the next PERFORMANCE REVIEW on Nov 7
I think this is right. Even publishing op-eds, which invite readers to think beyond the terms of "the given" in publications with a decent visibility, is getting harder to do in today's media ecology
yeah, and "good comms" for this government on foreign policy is basically Peters blustering about how we are living through the most dangerous period in decades, that he has talked to lots of important people in the Middle East and that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot #NZpol
the Economist has no "symbiotic relationships" of course - everything is simply parasitic
maybe your next book should be titled Populism as Television
Hartmut Rosa's critique of the family, as a potential "harbour of resonance", is remarkably insightful
I'm so old that I can remember when this guy had a mystique that excited the pundit class - not yet even in Parliament, but already spoken of as a potential future PM, who is now destined to be remembered as little more than the David Brent of #nzpol
From LibsOfTikTok to Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson, reactionary watchdogs play a big role in digital politics. A great concept from @sean-phelan.bsky.social
cheers Rob!
I wrote something recently where the reviewer wondered why I was giving the final word to Connolly! I now feel even more determined to do so
In memoriam William E. Connolly 1938-2026 A career-spanning reading list, including “Symposium: William Connolly at 80” from Theory & Event in 2019 All articles free @ Project MUSE thru 31 March press.jhu.edu/newsroom/memoriam-william-e-connolly Illustrated with a photo of William E. Connolly from his JHU faculty page and cover art from Theory & Event and Social Research
Political theorist William E. Connolly passed last week, leaving behind an influential body of work studying democracy, capitalism & culture
To celebrate his legacy, we're unlocking his contributions to our journals thru 31 March on Project MUSE
press.jhu.edu/newsro...
1/3
Sad to read about the passing of the great William Connolly. A wonderfully creative political theorist who has left us with such a rich body of work. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at Essex in 2008 & chat with him afterwards. The family death notice is lovely www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...
I think William E. Connolly is so important he deserves an obit in the New York Times. He passed away overnight at 87 and I am thinking of Jane, his family, friends, students and colleagues who have such wonderful memories of his teaching and friendship.
Rigour and bravery in his words.
@islates.bsky.social great messaging, eh
..and never one to be outdone on the bullshit front, Netanyahu is issuing statements cheering on Trump's "leadership of the free world"
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.."
What extraordinary dangerous bullshit. Reenact the hubris of 2003. And don't even bother giving the American people a heads up this time
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...
aha! we both know the truth - our cultural programming is entangled in fantasies of "bungalow bliss"😂
we have never been modern! Up the Republic! 😀
This is as bad a symptom of political despair and nihilism as I've read. A tech company trying to give vague expression to some concept of the public good and the ethical, in opposition to a state regime that couldn't care less
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/t...
"I don’t think I’ve ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words & phrases, each genetically engineered, in whole or in part, to make any sentient being stop paying attention"
coreyrobin.com/2026/02/26/o...
