Scott D. Moringiello

There is truly nothing you could do to make fun of the NYT covering the Obama Cheesecake Factory quip instead of Trump being accused of rape. It’s completely beyond parody.

Pontifex maximus: “we live in a performance-driven culture that constantly compares and ranks people, sometimes ruthlessly” and a “misguided understanding of meritocracy ultimately fails to respect people,” meaning many members of the younger generation give up before even trying. “Quite a few young

“A society which can produce great novelists and which can appreciate great novelists is a society in which tolerance and respect for the existence of other persons is likely to flourish, with all that that implies of independence of mind.” —Iris Murdoch

Stand with Zelensky and against Putin. Stand with Pope Leo XIV and against ICE. Stand with No Kings and against Meta. Stand with the people and against the oligarchs. Stand with liberal democracy and against Trump.

I think the defining element of the Trump era is precisely this (the collapse of any shared ability to reason or discern the truth) and the funny thing is this is what everyone said would happen in 2016.

Today marks five years that I have lived in Chicago. What that means, thanks to the vagaries of American immigration law, is that it is almost time to go home to London, where I will be covering Europe. It's been a time. I have learned a lot. I figured I'd write a bunch of it down:

I reviewed JD Vance's spiritual memoir for @jacobinmag.bsky.social . I wasn't particularly impressed. jacobin.com/2026/10/vanc...

I think one reason it’s good to have a liberal arts education in the classic sense is that you don’t then spend time trying to invent the concept of “intellectual pursuits” from first principles

The SPEAKER implies. The LISTENER infers. The DUDE abides.

Irenaeus would have been a great poster. Erasmus would have been a great poster as well. Kierkegaard would have been a better poster than Joyce Carol Oates.

I need to hang out with Prof Muehlberger more at our next conference. This is super intriguing.

Can't say we weren't warned. Frank Herbert was writing about the civilizational threat these guys posed in the 1960s.

On the one hand, it's just dumb. Universities are, in fact, real, and they exist in the world. American universities employ about 3x as many people as there are active duty servicemembers, so if soldiers are "real," then so are academics.

joyce carol oates and menswear guy should tape a special together

Really nothing to say about this except “shame“ and “scandal“ www.ncregister.com/news/pecknol...

Burns.

Well said

Many of the most annoying takes in the world would go away if people could accept that: • Math is liberal arts • Computer science is math Neither of these should be controversial and yet!

Film of the feckin' year.

Obvious point: The Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are far better Americans than Donald Trump and JD Vance and Stephen Miller.

Love, love, love this. ht: @scottlincicome.bsky.social

Child: It’s the mayor. Mamdani: *laughs* Child: What? You are the mayor. You could become the king. Mamdani: I’m happy as the mayor. Jalen Brunson is the king.

What Dolly taught us is that it is in fact possible to be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams of avarice but still be a fundamentally good person with a strong moral compass, and the only reason more rich people aren't like that is because they don't want to be.

The median American voter, voted for it be 2019 again and for Trump to make them rich, under the very mistaken belief that Worse Things Aren't Possible, and quite literally everyone is paying for it

Normally I just appreciatively read @jamellebouie.net 's columns-sharable video content just isn't my bag. But this is a very, very, very trenchant piece of commentary that captures a lot of how I increasingly understand the disjunction between the commentary environment and on-the-ground politics.

Can you get the job* you want without a PhD? If no, then do a PhD. If yes, read a lot and spend time with friends. *PhDs are professional degrees. As such, they are related to employment.

El-Sayed recently said this which is one of the smartest things I’ve read in a long time. It’s straight up Obama economics that’s proven to work in both places.

Mini fridge?! The luxury!

Putting burrito taxis on the blockchain if and only if a stochastic parrot can perfectly reproduce the tenets of Modern Monetary Theory - this is my Glonzo.

I just think it’s hilarious that people went to college with the Pope. “What’s Ken up to these days? Partner at a law firm outside Pittsburgh, that’s nice. And Bob? Oh, he’s the Pope.”

Irenaeus, Origen, Clement

Imagine keeping a banger like this in your diary and failing to share it with the world. A different age, really.

Letting the university serve a primarily intellectual function is, perhaps-counterintuitively, the most practical thing you can do with the university as an institution. Everything else is using the handle of your screwdriver as a hammer.

give these men complimentary tickets immediately

dall’Ulster Museum qui a Belfast, la famosa lavagna di “Derry Girls” sulle differenze tra cattolici e protestanti

To which Dante replies, "Hold my beer."

This is a good list, but "Unfair" is misspelled as "Folk Jam." Similarly, "Two States" is misspelled as "Fin."

I will never understand why the entire Democratic Party isn't running on this. There's an abundance of evidence that for the last 50 years at least Dems are MUCH better for the economy. They need a unified message, simple and full of facts, and all of them need to repeat it over and over again.

Surely this person exists in Maine. And surely he or she should be the next Senator from that state.

S tier Bluesky content right here.

The foundational lie of Trumpism (and I’m using that word precisely to refer to the ideology of intellectual types who defend him), from day one, has been the claim that good character is a “luxury belief” and nothing more than cover for the wealthy to punish the poor. This belief is evil.

This is the most hilarious little league home run I've ever seen, the Royals have outdone themselves