Isaac Cates

Imagine being mad that your daughter is a genius

I think the secretary of defense should not be a psychopath

I wish you luck!

I feel like there’s a special disease in the humanities that comes from us wanting to be hip and cool in ways that we learned were anti-conservative and then having the task of carrying a torch for something fundamentally uncool (but still anti-conservative)

“Choose Your Own Literature”

😂

Nothing at the level of curriculum should chase fads, I say. By the time it gets through committee and into place, the fads will shift …

Maybe just “Lit: Special Topic”?

Like, highlight the fact that every section will interest different people?

However much you hate this person it isn’t enough.

some of my earliest mothbuds

"you need to learn how to use gAI or you'll get left behind!"

counterpoint!

the absolute fastest way to render yourself unemployable is to build your skillset around a tool that does your thinking for you, that everyone has access to, and that one company can change or take away at any time

Quick question does anyone know how to restore virtue to a decaying society

In case you’d like to see this:

bsky.app/profile/dris...

And, let us remember, took a Fascist bullet in the neck before he wrote his masterpiece novels

I wish I had an alternative to “Remix” for you. I don’t know how to answer the people who think the thing that stymies student interest is an old-fashioned title. Like, I think students would sign up for “Old and Boring 101” if the prof had good buzz and the class met early-afternoon

A man asked me last night what publishing needs to do for literary fiction to begin appealing to men again. I said, as nicely as I could, that, with over 2,000 books published every Tuesday, of which many would appeal to men, it’s not a publishing problem, it’s a men problem.

If you took $1 billion and gave it to the endowment of a different small college each day, they could each provide a free college education to several hundred students per year in perpetuity. Instead we are using that money to bomb schools and kill students in Iran, for no clearly stated purpose.

Every time Hegseth speaks I just think we need more direwolves. Something scary and ominous to leap out of the dark and remind us we're tiny and mortal. Maybe not literal wolves but maybe also wolves.

Pundles; blucksters

Correction. Orwell never said this. He did however, warn that: "political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” (That's Politics and the English Language, one of my favorite essays)

Democrats may not be able to prevent Mullin's confirmation, but they can certainly turn his track record of offense and stupidity into two days of televised humiliation so spectacular that he is wounded in Trump's eyes from day 1. That is the job.

Reading opens up the possibility of learning things (and thoughts, and ways of being) that aren’t immediately in front of you. Crucially, it allows the dead to speak.

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet."

-- George Orwell.

You pick your colleagues, and you can pick your nose …

Do the students themselves really notice the “Topics in” title? At my school it’s the section title that appears in their course selection menu. Maybe that’s the right path, if your registrar can do it?

The Steady Hand

It’s not the most flattering portrait, but it genuinely is a painting of me. I don’t know the band at all.

[Exit Murderer.]

This framing is kind of like reporting that a guy stabbing you is failing at keeping you healthy.

He very much completely succeeded in his actual goal of destroying US healthcare, making life more precarious for everyone, and helping kill sick people.

While benefiting wellness grifters.

Giant snake on an info panel about to eat a screaming child

The Museum of Scotland using small children in size comparison info panels is absolutely sending me.

Opinion | This Summer, Students From Hundreds of Colleges Will Heed One Urgent Call

Gift link.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/o...

I’ve spent years, decades, obsessing over the Bush Administration’s Iraq WMD lies, writing about them, debunking them.

I can think of no lie about Iraq WMDs told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al that comes even close to the enormity and absurdity of this lie from Donald Trump.

Sure seems like it would buy a whole lot of everything without killing a whole bunch of everyone if we defunded the military.