The Curious Engineer

Crooked Timber

2020–2026

1,326 posts

← 2016–2019

2026 143

October 2026

  1. Occasional (Halloween) paper: A mother gives her all
  2. I’d rather drop the balls myself
  3. NAZA – on being a cog in a machine
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Cherry trees near Céret
  5. Turns out the Melbourne Mint was about Gold for India
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Ashton Avenue Bridge, Bristol
  7. PPE for Embodied Creatures on a Finite Planet
  8. On the demise of Contemporary Professional Mathematics
  9. Adrian Grey-Turner, 1955-1986
  10. The economic irrelevance of naval power
  11. Alan Thornett is dead
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Céret
  13. How Money Matters
  14. Experiments on Exploitation
  15. Sunday photoblogging: Céret, archway
  16. If a chatbot prompt like ‘find Australian medicine statistics’ results in a website breach, the responsibility does not lie with a piece of code

September 2026

  1. The Office: A sort of conjecture about why some US sitcoms are the way they are.
  2. Is philosophy of migration biased by methodological nationalism?
  3. Aggravated by “algorithms”
  4. How to run the ivory tower?
  5. NY Times should look across the East River, not across the Atlantic
  6. Into the darkness?
  7. Sunday photoblogging: La Pointe courte
  8. Existential Risks in an Age of Science
  9. The one where I figure out in real time whether I enjoy climbing
  10. The US is not a serious country
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Hôtel d’Alfonce, Pézenas
  12. Youth CND
  13. When Money Mattered
  14. The US Navy loses another war
  15. Don’t use a gmail.com address
  16. Taylor Swift: The Good Billionaire?

August 2026

  1. Teaching pluralizing political philosophy
  2. Gold and Myth in the Australian Blue Mountains
  3. Why Ceuta is European, and what came of it
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Jenisch-Haus, Hamburg
  5. AI and the reshuffling of labor
  6. The economics of Swifties
  7. Ceuta Summit: What Vitoria would tell Sánchez about migration
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Parys mountain copper mine
  9. My comprehensive plan for US strategy in the Middle East… *
  10. The Odyssey and the Bronze Age Collapse
  11. “Fight,” Progressivism, and Performative Politics — Michigan Edition
  12. John Crowley has died
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Castletown harbour, Isle of Man
  14. Summer lightness: errors that puzzled and/or irritated you.
  15. Occasional paper: The edge of the galaxy and the end of everything
  16. Perfectly Plausible
  17. If you can’t be bothered writing it, I can’t be bothered reading it.

July 2026

  1. Malware problem (fixed)
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Beaumaris
  3. Nate Silver discovers the educated poor
  4. Advice for England’s latest Secretary of State for Education.
  5. Fandom and Social Connection
  6. A big thank you …
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Hamburg, Hauptkirche Sankt Michaelis (Michel)
  8. On refugees being cast as “invaders” and “fighting-age males”
  9. The dispensable nation – updated
  10. Academic publishing as a public good
  11. Encounters with a future Tory MP, a popstar, and 25,000 placards
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Mèze, boat
  13. Brief thoughts on aircon
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Palais des Papes, Avignon
  15. Reflections on America’s 250th

June 2026

  1. The state of nuclear power in 2026
  2. On Humphreys opacity, Reverse Engineering, and Social Externalities of LLMs.
  3. Sunday photoblogging: wall, Collioure
  4. Feels like 40 degrees – Let’s get a Ministry for the Future
  5. AI Electricity use: a lot or a little
  6. In the 19th century small business folk traded gold and money. And then the banks took over.
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Sète
  8. Reminiscences of a young CND activist
  9. In honor of National Indigenous Peoples Day (Canada)
  10. On The Governance of LLMs, and The University (of Chicago)
  11. One big grift
  12. Sunday photoblogging: a drink in the shade
  13. Final Five And U.S. Competitiveness
  14. Everyday friction
  15. Sunday photoblogging: objet trouvé
  16. That time global capitalism converged on a town that now has pop.111

May 2026

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas at night
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas
  3. Pet Haidt
  4. Occasional paper: St. Anthony’s Turnip
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Canigou with cherries (2)
  6. The text is not the product
  7. From The People’s Bank to the Banker’s Bank
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, maison consulaire
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Canigou and cherry trees

April 2026

  1. Occasional paper: Blue Angels, Devil Hands
  2. Sunday photoblogging: l’Abbaye de Valmagne
  3. On Reinforcing Cynicism in the Academy
  4. Occasional paper: Inconstant moon
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas street
  6. Bobby, I hardly Knew Ye
  7. Global science equity – towards solutions
  8. Music break: Baba Yetu
  9. History Nerd Bucket List: The Jenny Geddes Stool
  10. How many babies do we want? How many will we have?
  11. Good news from Hungary
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, old town
  13. Cosmic Alchemy
  14. Extreme wealth concentration — as strong as ever
  15. Older but not sicker

March 2026

  1. Ravens and robots
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, Porte Faugères
  3. Habermas, democratic discourse, and class
  4. Sunday photoblogging: shed
  5. Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 3 (and last)
  6. Fifteen years after Fukushima
  7. Women have been crazy successful at building spaces for themselves in the economy. Thing is, that is often exploited too.
  8. Sunday photoblogging: VW reflection
  9. Every child should be wanted
  10. Golden (missed) opportunities
  11. In the Next Great Transformation AI will not eliminate genuine expertise; rather it will make it more valuable
  12. Sunday photoblogging: car reflection

February 2026

  1. Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 2
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Life in the UK
  3. The US state has proved itself dispensable
  4. Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 1
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Hebron Road
  6. Runciman’s Rawls
  7. The Stone Pillars of the Sons of Seth
  8. A modest proposal for the use of AI
  9. Occasional reason to be cheerful: Babies
  10. A big thank you …
  11. 20th anniversary of the Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican.
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Cumberland Basin

January 2026

  1. A New Hope
  2. WHO: An anecdote
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Tattoo Time
  4. A short post about heroin voice
  5. The social media ban that wasn’t
  6. Sunday photoblogging: East Street
  7. Utilitarianism: it all went wrong with Sidgwick
  8. On West Coast Straussianism and the Imperial Presidency
  9. The Tories are dead, long live the Tories (Reform version)!
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Derrynane Strand, Co. Kerry
  11. How to make sure the writing gets done
  12. Changing beliefs, moving house – suggestion for a change of metaphor
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Windmill Hill
  14. A note on the threat to art from AI
  15. For 2026, let’s hope…

2025 180

December 2025

  1. Some thoughts on charitable donations
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Hebron Road
  3. L’Établi (2): the book
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Southville houses
  5. Bankers (not money) make the world go around? Towards a labour/tech history of finance
  6. Housework for singles
  7. Adventures with Deep Research: success then failure
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Braunton Road
  9. l’Établi
  10. The Pub at the End of the University

November 2025

  1. Will Fewer Kids mean Fewer Scientists*
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Altona pavement and leaves
  3. Occasional artwork: Because It’s The Dream
  4. Your Thanksgiving Gen AI use case
  5. Musk’s last grift
  6. “Core Protection”
  7. Online discussion on Lisa Herzog’s The Democratic Marketplace
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Clevedon pier shadow (2007)
  9. Armistice Day
  10. Fiction and non-fiction to move citizens on climate change
  11. What should academics wear? Musings on regalia
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Hamburg cobblestones
  13. Death and Capitalism (Part 4 of 4)
  14. Tuesday photoblogging: Hamburg crows

October 2025

  1. Death and Capitalism (Part 3 of 4)
  2. No (Despotic) Kings, but maybe Constitutional Monarchy?
  3. Occasional paper: A planet from 2007
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas bunting
  5. Death and Capitalism (Part 2 of 4)
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas
  7. Death and Capitalism (Part 1 of 4)
  8. Does “forward” still make sense? A hypothesis on protest
  9. Delighted to be proved wrong
  10. Chat control in Europe, an open letter to the Irish Minister who wants to scan all our messages
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Marseillan
  12. Paper reactors and paper tigers
  13. Against Campus ‘Debate’

September 2025

  1. Rambouillet, part 1: The State of Play
  2. The care economy, or radical economic growth?
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas 1653 (some more)
  4. On the philosophical – moral implications of a 1989 Honda Civic
  5. The Peter Principle, and the unintended consequences of financial work motivation
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas 1653
  7. Is Deep Research deep? Is it research?
  8. My down the back of the sofa theory of the emerging stage of capitalism. Plus, Australian magpies.
  9. Five technological achievements! (That we won’t see any time soon.)
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Trieste (2009)
  11. Occasional paper: It gets on your nerves

August 2025

  1. The crash of 2026: a fiction
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Clevedon pier
  3. When will the sun set on the USA?
  4. It’s Not Socialism–It’s National Socialism
  5. Dogs bite men (and a little girl).
  6. Sunday photoblogging: sunflower
  7. The Cheltenham to Manchester Piccadilly Adventure
  8. States of Resistance
  9. Pop culture history: From Kennedy to Lois
  10. AI, proofing, and the meaning of what we do
  11. If something can’t go on forever, it will stop
  12. Sunday photoblogging: backlit sunflower
  13. I guess that makes me…Horace Slughorn?
  14. BBC Radio Abroad
  15. Sunday photoblogging: jackdaws
  16. Political Disclosure in the College Classroom
  17. Sunday photoblogging: juvenile woodpecker

July 2025

  1. Moral Deskilling – or, why you spend more time on admin than doing your job.
  2. “Reciprocal” Digital Sovereignity
  3. Sunday photoblogging: near the Puces St Ouen
  4. A billion people would be plenty to sustain civilisation …
  5. The Arguments for More (or Fewer) People
  6. On the Epstein Files; and Corruption
  7. He’s the Boss: Unitary Executive Theory and Workplace Authoritarianism
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Paris
  9. Attention is All You Need
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Street art at the Puces St Ouen
  11. Cultural theory was right about the death of the author. It was just a few decades early
  12. Global science equity*
  13. The mug
  14. Whatever happened to Romney Republicans?

June 2025

  1. The end of US democracy
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Sète
  3. The Protestant Work Ethic, Libertarianism, and the Welfare State
  4. Peaceful Terrorism?
  5. The symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil.
  6. Sunday photoblogging: heads
  7. Helen de Cruz (1978-2025), RIP
  8. Open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the skewed selection process for head of European Data Protection Supervisor
  9. Are pro-natalists living on the same planet ?
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Strasbourg cathedral
  11. Review of Patriarchy Inc by Cordelia Fine
  12. Empathy as a Sin
  13. Platform work, redux
  14. Chibber’s Confronting Capitalism, Trump, and the Anxiety of Disordered Societies
  15. Happy World Ocean Day!
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Bath doorways
  17. Occasional paper: The impossible predicament of the death newts
  18. On The Political Roots of Academic Freedom
  19. Open Science and Its Enemies
  20. Altona: from the street to a courtyard

May 2025

  1. Newt
  2. Sunday photoblogging: ship turning on the Elbe
  3. Have people really had enough of experts?
  4. Amiens Cathedral
  5. Perry Anderson’s lazy endorsement of US self-mythologising
  6. On the Retreat of the Enshittification of University Bureaucracy
  7. Online book launch ‘Pluralizing Political Philosophy’
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Amiens Cathedral
  9. David Attenborough’s Ocean
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Mèze

April 2025

  1. Not so Deep Thoughts about Deep AI
  2. The War on Water Pressure
  3. Policy-oriented political philosophy
  4. Which Europe is worth defending?
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Béziers
  6. Popes vs Philosophers: Whose Ethics of Immigration?
  7. Kid Stuff: Movies
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Irises at the Fort de Bellegarde
  9. The point of no return: Only days left to stop a totalitarian state in the US
  10. Occasional paper: The Light of an Older Heaven
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Little Egret
  12. Some good news on the climate transition
  13. Trump’s Tariffs, McKinley, and the Bonapartist Executive
  14. Sunday photoblogging: flamingos at Maguelone

March 2025

  1. Property, recognition, and the temporalities of life. Reading Kopenawa and Albert’s The Falling Sky. Words of a Yanomami Shaman from the perspective of economic philosophy
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Braunton Road
  3. Trump’s war on immigrants is the cancellation of free society
  4. Occasional paper: The Suplex Bird
  5. Indiana Jones’ Last Day of Work
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Versailles
  7. On the Predicament of the Richly Endowed University and Liberal Society
  8. Dispensing with US universities, whether we want to or not
  9. A curious tendency among Western philosophers?
  10. Sunday photoblogging: the iron bridge at Ironbridge
  11. Occasional paper: The interesting home life of the Blue-Ringed Octopus
  12. Unbundling and Abundance
  13. The ethics of collaborations between academia and commercial parties
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Accidental Pollock
  15. USAID: My next-to-last project
  16. International Women’s Day
  17. Sunday photoblogging: another cormorant

February 2025

  1. No Other Land (filmreview)
  2. Dispensing with the tech bros
  3. Strangers in an Uber
  4. The German elections – a view from below
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Cormorant in a tree
  6. Dispensing with the US-centric financial system
  7. A slightly belated celebration of President’s Day
  8. The UK government’s bar to citizenship for refugees
  9. Two stories from a USAID career
  10. On Elite Education and the Rise of Maga
  11. Sandy Jencks has died.
  12. Sunday photoblogging: bikes at Tate Modern
  13. Small is beautiful – and other thoughts about university governance
  14. How to dispense with Trump’s US
  15. The business end of the university
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Buchanan’s Wharf
  17. On Undermining the Administrative State
  18. Michael Burawoy has died
  19. Corruption, Tariffs, and US Renewal
  20. Adam’s Heart Surgery Team: Expertise and Dickheadery
  21. The M in the PMC
  22. Sunday photo(meta)blogging
  23. There is an exit
  24. The dispensable nation

January 2025

  1. Will big data lift the veil of ignorance?
  2. On the End of Nato: a European perspective
  3. Welcoming Hannah and Lisa
  4. The death of the hope of progress and the fear of being left behind
  5. Australia bans U16s from social media. Or does it?
  6. Sunday photoblogging: car reflection
  7. On Institutional Voice and witnessing Truth; On the Yale Report
  8. Open thread on Trump
  9. Ravenna’s submerged crypt
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Los Angeles – Union Station
  11. Should economists know their own history
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Sion Road (house reflections)
  13. Reasons for pessimism in Europe
  14. Trump and Greenland: What’s Going On?
  15. Sunday photoblogging: Ravenna in Droitwich
  16. In 2025, let’s make resistance more effective

2024 207

December 2024

  1. Angry white men
  2. Sunday (delayed) photoblogging: West Kirby
  3. The Moral Development Index
  4. Plutocrats and Authoritarian Leaders: Like Flies to Flypaper
  5. Sunday photoblogging: squirrel
  6. On “Privilege”
  7. Questions on the Future of Feminism from my Book Tour
  8. Plutocracy, Masculinity, and the Psychology of Fascism
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Robin
  10. Cis Privilege is Real
  11. The limits of number-crunching: Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Colston Hall (now renamed as the Bristol Beacon)
  13. In defense of a minimum referee ratio
  14. Sunday photoblogging: the beach at Porth Selau

November 2024

  1. The AI boom in electricity demand: a multiply recycled myth
  2. TikTok in Romania
  3. Can businesses flourish in a world with a cap on personal wealth?
  4. Taiwan and Romania join a very special club
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Handy Mini-Market
  6. Trump’s dictatorship is a fait accompli
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
  8. Moving to Canada (not)
  9. Occasional Paper: Four Hidden Species of Portuguese man-o’-war
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Gruissan
  11. The submissive university
  12. For-Profit Academic Publishers Love LLM Garbage
  13. The problem is the nation-state
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Nîmes, the Maison Carrée
  15. First-Year Cohort Classes for PhD Students

October 2024

  1. What happens if Americans claim asylum from a Trump regime?
  2. “Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!”, some random thoughts on our responsibility as intellectuals / poets / writers / researchers / teachers
  3. Washington Post cancellations
  4. There’s Gold in Them Thar Reels
  5. The end of US democracy: a flowchart
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Nîmes
  7. On the The Teach-In and its role in Academic Freedom. From Arnold Kaufman to Meena Krishnamurthy
  8. The Whirlpool of the Artificial
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Spiral staircase
  10. The death of the book, again
  11. On Agnes Callard, on the Art of Governing Teaching & Learning and student protests
  12. The US just lost a war and nobody noticed
  13. Sunday photoblogging: punch card loom
  14. Philosophy & Public Affairs is not dead yet
  15. Sunday photoblogging: Salt at Gruissan
  16. On Robert Owen and the History of Experiments in Living
  17. Shambles, But Make It Digital

September 2024

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Salisbury Cathedral
  2. Citizens’ Assemblies in Michigan and Beyond
  3. In their plaintive call for a return to the office, CEOs reveal how little they are needed
  4. Final Choruses and Outros Apparently
  5. Sunday photoblogging: fountains in Altona
  6. Occasional Paper: United Nations World Population Prospects, 2024
  7. A Modest Interpretation of Straussianism in Action
  8. ‘Eating dogs’ in a world that has not lost its humanity
  9. We or They ?
  10. Leo Strauss and Mother Night
  11. Patrick O’Brian is a great conservative writer
  12. Sunday photoblogging: swans at Crosby
  13. Action list to protect universities from budget cuts
  14. Am I The Immoral Person
  15. Dark clouds over Dutch Universities
  16. Academic nepo babies ?
  17. A thought about conservative psychology re: the abortion issue
  18. Sunday photoblogging: Looking towards Great Howard Street (Liverpool) at night

August 2024

  1. How Best to Do Bad Things That Hurt Your Spirit
  2. On Heath and the demise of western Marxism
  3. On Joseph Heath’s account of the trajectory of analytical Marxism
  4. Should I Become a Vaishnavite?
  5. G.A. Cohen on the output bias
  6. The (Electoral) Politics of Age Gaps
  7. Algorithmic Macroprudential Risk, and a legal case related to possible rent inflation
  8. Sunday Photoblogging: Tempio del Valdier, Frasassi Caves, Italy.
  9. 6 (or more) things you might want to know how to do as a new TA.
  10. What went wrong with the Silicon Valley right
  11. Against the Sleep=Boring Analogy
  12. Henry James Opposes Wildly Unlikeable Guys
  13. New Work on Gender and Development: Soledad Artiz Prillaman’s The Patriarchal Political Order
  14. Sunday photoblogging: gull
  15. Young men aren’t shifting right …
  16. Side discussion
  17. Green Border
  18. P-Sets in Philosophy
  19. Sunday photoblogging: Cranes
  20. Fascist violence and the imaginative failure of the Labour government
  21. The not-so-strange shortage of conservative professors
  22. Actually listening to 10cc.
  23. Sunday photoblogging: Dean Lane
  24. Ethics and Education: Touchy Subject

July 2024

  1. Troubled by Google Maps Reviews
  2. Europop
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Liverpool
  4. Flow
  5. The era of privatisation is nearly over. But cleaning up the mess left behind will take years
  6. Getting old and being old
  7. Sunday photoblogging: pigeon
  8. Sunday photoblogging: house martins
  9. Sex, lies and Videotape
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Swift
  11. Bye bye, Tories, hello what?
  12. Does Social Media Cause Anything?
  13. Supreme Court Rules Hitler Immune from Prosecution for Burning Down Reichstag, Seizing Absolute Power
  14. Advice on faculty job application letters

June 2024

  1. Sunday photoblogging: good morning!
  2. Occasional paper: On the curious diet of the Speckled Mousebird
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Narbonne Cathedral (2015)
  4. Occasional paper: Fungal banking
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Iceland (2011)
  6. Waiting for the nova
  7. The edge of extinction
  8. Macron’s gamble and the myth of the Republican Barrier
  9. On Student protests and academic freedom
  10. Sunday photoblogging: wisteria at Iford
  11. Engaging Erik Olin Wright: Between Class Analysis and Real Utopias
  12. The Left and THE LEFT: Responding to the crisis of soft neoliberalism
  13. Sunday photoblogging: lunchtime

May 2024

  1. Avoiding people because of what you suspect they might think
  2. Reports of a death exaggerated
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Kilmainham Gaol
  4. A genuine selfmade billionaire
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas
  6. I found a paper that denies one of my two obvious thoughts about originalism, so stating the obvious turns out to be useful!
  7. Originalism For Realists: Two Obvious Thoughts
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Abandoned restaurant complex near Mèze, France
  9. Exploiting other people’s madness –On sanism and Baby Reindeer (This entry contains spoilers)
  10. Why has global biodiversity governance failed so badly?
  11. Run, Bezos, Run
  12. Sunday photoblogging: pink salt lake at Gruissan
  13. Machines and tools

April 2024

  1. The destruction of Argentina’s higher education and science system
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas
  3. Going Meta on Culture Wars
  4. Sunday photoblogging: crossroads
  5. Online talks
  6. Expertise and naval power
  7. Wenar on why you shouldn’t try to help poor people
  8. Academic Freedom, State Legislatures and Public Universities (Wisconsin edition).
  9. Crooked Timberish books and other writings
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Canal Saint-Martin, Paris (3)
  11. Limitarianism update
  12. The making of Icehenge
  13. East German history
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Canal Saint-Martin, Paris (2)
  15. On Shallow Ponds and Effective Altruism
  16. Kid Stuff: Cartoons
  17. Navies are obsolete, but no one will admit it
  18. Indiana’s DEI Law

March 2024

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Canal Saint-Martin, Paris
  2. Daniel Kahneman has died
  3. Uber, but for Human Communication
  4. Capitalism Is Dead – Long Live Capital
  5. Sunday photoblogging: the Musée Albert Kahn
  6. On Academic Freedom and Institutional Neutrality
  7. Global Justice and the Biodiversity Crisis
  8. Sunday photoblogging: starling
  9. Occasional paper: When Armor Met Lips
  10. Sunday photoblogging: blue tit
  11. Occasional Paper: The Iron Snow Beneath Your Feet
  12. The Bezzle
  13. Old
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Salisbury cathedral

February 2024

  1. Images are Biased
  2. Dr. Pangloss’s Panopticon
  3. Back to the office: a solution in search of a problem
  4. Sunday photoblogging: magpies
  5. Platforms, Polarization and Democracy
  6. Death, Lonely Death
  7. The Crack-Up of the Michigan GOP
  8. Sunday photoblogging: long-tailed tits
  9. Nobody likes the present situation very much
  10. A little bit of good news from Australia
  11. Moving to Rwanda
  12. The Implosion of the Retirement Contract
  13. How the Battle of the Sexes sheds light on the battle of the sexes
  14. Sunday photoblogging: let sleeping dogs lie
  15. What’s wrong with free public college?
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Rust
  17. Ethics Lab Yaoundé Fundraiser
  18. Occasional Article: Cats Are Perfect

January 2024

  1. Synthetic Philosophy within the division of Labor
  2. “The Algorithm” is the only critique of “The Algorithm” that “The Algorithm” can produce
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Avon Gorge (2007)
  4. Why you should watch American Football
  5. The Kosovo War, 25 Years Later: And So To War
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Goldfinches
  7. Occasional Paper: Purple Sun Yeast
  8. Won’t somebody think of the old people?
  9. The JPP saga — and the way forward
  10. The Hayakawa Question
  11. Ready for American readers!
  12. The Kosovo War, 25 Years Later: Things Fall Apart
  13. Sunday photoblogging: blast from the past, Severn Beach
  14. Mute inglorious Miltons
  15. Australia’s cost-of-living crisis isn’t about the price of groceries. It’s about wealth distribution*
  16. Remembering Tim Brighouse
  17. The Kosovo War, 25 Years Later: The Serbian Ascendancy
  18. What if there were far fewer people?
  19. Sunday photoblogging: murky night
  20. The Kosovo War, 25 years later
  21. The gallon loaf
  22. American Gerontocracy, Explained
  23. Creepy Parasite Stories; or, Bedtime for Daniel
  24. Why is Political Philosophy not Euro-centric?
  25. Hello World
  26. Welcome to Doug Muir
  27. New Year Gifts
  28. New year’s resolutions that are not about me
  29. My experience with geopolitics of knowledge in political philosophy so far

2023 204

December 2023

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Launderette
  2. My best novels of the year
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Bristol harbourside
  4. Tim Brighouse is dead.
  5. Krtek
  6. Teeth
  7. I can’t write about Gaza
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Bristol, Gaol Ferry Bridge
  9. Notice about Harry’s father, Sir Tim Brighouse
  10. 2023 Book recommendations Part II – Novels
  11. 2023 book recommendations – Part I
  12. Adventures in Marmalade Making
  13. Coasean, Schmoasean
  14. Sunday photoblogging: disused rail bridge, Pézenas
  15. Sunday photoblogging: Banana bridge, Bristol
  16. The anti-wokist is a dog

November 2023

  1. The Last Days of Literary Friction
  2. CT Seminar: The Political Ideologies of Silicon Valley
  3. Presentism and veganism: If I’m wrong, I’m wrong now and forever (crosspost from Substack)
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Boat at Bouzigues
  5. Philosophy and Christmas Cards, Soup to Nuts
  6. In defence of effective altruism
  7. What OpenAI shares with Scientology
  8. Sunday photoblogging: albino pigeon
  9. From Algorithmic Monoculture to Epistemic Monoculture? Understanding the Rise of AI Safety
  10. Silicon Valley’s worldview is not just an ideology; it’s a personality disorder.
  11. “If it’s a Ponzi, get in early”: The Ideology of Scam Futures
  12. The Religion of the Engineers; and Hayek Its True Prophet
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Grey day in Girona
  14. Armistice Day
  15. The Agar Plate of Cryptocurrency
  16. Observers Observed: The Ethnographer in Silicon Valley
  17. Silicon Valley is the Detroit of the Future
  18. Silicon Valley Liberal-tarians
  19. Silicon Valley Fairy Dust
  20. Sunday photoblogging: Little Egret
  21. Silicon Valley is the Church of Moore’s Law

October 2023

  1. The big one (updated)
  2. Sunday photoblogging: blue tits
  3. Israel and Palestine: simple choices
  4. Retrofuturism
  5. Sunday photoblogging: at LUMA, Arles
  6. Some thoughts on ‘team philosophy’
  7. Accelerationism is Terrorism
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Bouzigues
  9. On not knowing what to say about Gaza
  10. My comprehensive plan for US policy in the Middle East, yet again
  11. Sunday photoblogging: don’t bother me!
  12. Lucy and the football
  13. Academic bystanders and Sold a Story
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas

September 2023

  1. French Laïcité, Free Speech, and Unreasonable Views
  2. The Tragedy of Stafford Beer
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Chateau Laurens, another shot of the interior
  4. Balance or both-sidesism
  5. French Lesson: we don’t need nuclear power, we need a new Pierre Messmer
  6. Monday photoblogging: Projection
  7. Europe’s Bradbury moment
  8. Chile, 50 years on
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Château Laurens, Agde
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Girona
  11. The Right Person at the Wrong Time – Michela Murgia (1971-2023)

August 2023

  1. Are You Feeling Like It’s 1961?
  2. Summer 2023 Fun Reads
  3. Limitarianism: academic essays
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Siena, Mangia Tower
  5. Some thoughts on activism
  6. Sunday photoblogging: reflection
  7. The fragmentation of new media
  8. Michael Parkinson is dead
  9. Ecotopia, Maria Farrell, and Emotional repression
  10. Mary Harrington on sex and the Pill, part II.
  11. Sunday photoblogging: woodpeckers
  12. Coercion versus Care
  13. Analysing Argentina
  14. Yucking Yums
  15. Mary Harrington on the Family
  16. Who really runs the university (illustrated with muppets)
  17. How To Argue With Hanania – Now With More Nietzsche
  18. Sunday photoblogging: East Street seagull
  19. What’s the best year to be born?
  20. Campus novels
  21. Trump indictment open thread

July 2023

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Natural History Museum
  2. Against the Repugnant Conclusion
  3. The limitarian implications of utilitarianism
  4. Freedom House and the impact of immigration restrictions on freedom
  5. Yet again, my comprehensive Middle East strategy for the US
  6. Fully automated data driven authoritarianism ain’t what it’s cracked up to be
  7. How dangerous is the European far-right ?
  8. Disaster and denial
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Bristol cranes
  10. Kafka, Chesterton, Cold War Anti-Totalitarianism, Hippy Noir,
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas
  12. Nietzsche and Isohighertype
  13. Trolley Problems and AI
  14. This nuclear renaissance will fail, just like the last one
  15. Do As Do Does, Part Deux: Deus Ex Machina or Don’t It?
  16. Half-Baked Thoughts On Whether We Should Fear AI: Do Is As Do Does?
  17. Looking Back – Fallacies Aplenty! (Happy Birthday, CT!)
  18. Sunday photoblogging: Berlin Alexanderplatz (3)
  19. Twenty years a-growing on CT
  20. Debt: 4,102 days later
  21. Some personal reflections on blogging here
  22. It’s Me–Cha Boi, or, The Russian Soul Is a Dark Place
  23. The wheel turns
  24. Happy 20th birthday Crooked Timber!
  25. Sincerely inauthentic: zombie Republicanism and violence in France
  26. Could this be damnation? Could this be salvation?
  27. Monday photoblogging: Berlin Alexanderplatz (2)
  28. Shoggoths amongst us

June 2023

  1. The Correct Way to Argue with Richard Hanania
  2. 45 minutes overview of the capability approach
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Berlin Alexanderplatz
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Gdansk
  5. Daniel Ellsberg has died
  6. Why Didn’t *He* Scream?
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Museum of the Second World War, Gdansk
  8. Counterfeit digital persons: On Dennett’s Intentional Stance, The Road to Serfdom
  9. Disinformation and the Intercept
  10. Happy World Ocean Day
  11. Pew quits the generation game
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Malbork Castle, Poland
  13. In the Zone: Quinn Slobodian’s Crack-Up Capitalism

May 2023

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Girona
  2. Misogyny and Violence in Michigan Politics
  3. Ban LLMs Using First-Person Pronouns
  4. Sunday photoblogging: cloister
  5. Utilitarianism comes to benefit-cost analysis
  6. Huntington, the woke, and Radicalization
  7. Reviving “Post-post-Fordism”
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Vegetables in Bologna
  9. When crypto meant cryptography
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Siena, Duomo
  11. The Cult of the Founders
  12. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Mastodon
  13. Does AI threaten the future of human creativity?
  14. May Day
  15. Happy International Workers Day!

April 2023

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Bologna
  2. The 13th-Amendment Case for a Right to Abortion
  3. Welcoming Elizabeth Anderson to Crooked Timber
  4. “Red Team Blues” and the As-You-Know-Bob problem
  5. Living in the US is like having a super-dangerous job
  6. On Public Reason & Inflated Concepts
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Girona, El Call
  8. Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail, yet again
  9. Industrial policy and the new knowledge problem
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Palazzo d’Accursio, Bologna
  11. My son’s autistic language
  12. Kicking against the Ticks
  13. No-Bullshit Democracy
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Bologna

March 2023

  1. Should academics fly at all?
  2. The meta-view from meta-nowhere
  3. On Large Language Models’ Delirium (with Hume and Foucault)
  4. The United States Should Ban TikTok
  5. The hierarchy of excuses
  6. Parenting Boys, Parenting Girls
  7. How to restore work-life balance in academia
  8. Academics in the Netherlands discover they don’t have effective academic freedom
  9. Sunday photoblogging: bridge
  10. Can College Level The Playing Field
  11. The UK’s debased asylum “debate”
  12. ChaitGPT
  13. Burning Men
  14. Conservatives on campus
  15. The UK abandons refugees
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Bedminster Parade
  17. On What We Owe the Future, part 6
  18. The Moral Economy of High-Tech Modernism
  19. Little and big things that restore our faith in humanity’s future

February 2023

  1. Sunday photoblogging: chairs
  2. How much should we read?
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Nunney Castle
  4. The Great Endarkenment and the Cognitive Division of Labor, Part I
  5. The politics of the second-best
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Ashton Avenue bridge, Bristol
  7. Anti-presentism = anti-wokeism ?
  8. 7 minutes from the end of class.
  9. The Little Things That Restore Your Faith in Humanity – 2
  10. Phoenix crumbling into ashes
  11. Can college level the playing field? No, it really can’t.
  12. Monday photoblogging: cranes

January 2023

  1. Digital hoarding
  2. Maids
  3. Mitigated disaster
  4. Twigs and Branches
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Redcliffe flats
  6. On Constitutional Monetary Moments
  7. Committing to Net Zero Means…Committing to What, Exactly?
  8. Why I am (Still) a Conservative (For Now)
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Bathurst Basin, Bristol
  10. Good Breeding, Population Ethics and all that. On MacAskill’s *What We Owe the Future*, Part 4
  11. Central Banking is too Important to be De-Politicized; on Lev Menand’s The Fed Unbound
  12. Structured Academic Controversy: A Variant
  13. Film Review: The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales
  14. Open thread on Brazil
  15. Twigs and Branches
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Bedminster
  17. Dasein and Der Fuhrer (update over fold)
  18. Office Hours
  19. What CHATGPT Reveals about the Collapse of Political/Corporate Support for Humanities/Higher Education
  20. Skepticism and human reason

2022 193

December 2022

  1. On the alleged responsibility of the entire Russian people for the war in Ukraine
  2. Book note – The Persuaders, by Anand Giridharadas
  3. My year in fiction
  4. Updates from Russia
  5. Why the (US) right is always wrong … and how both-sidesists help to ensure this
  6. Russell Jacoby Against the Buzzwords
  7. No laptops, no phones.
  8. “The Discourse” is the Cybernetic Event Horizon of Human Freedom
  9. Sunday photoblogging: North Street, Bedminster
  10. My novel of the year: Pod, by Laline Paull
  11. Audio-books
  12. Welcome Macarena Marey!
  13. Is “woke” a new ideology?
  14. Sunday photoblogging: sunshine and frost
  15. Ideal and Non-Ideal Political Philosophy of Liberalism and the Twitter Files
  16. Your platform is not an ecosystem
  17. Jefferson rejected even voluntary emancipation
  18. On What we Owe the Future, Part 3
  19. Sunday photoblogging: Crosby Beach (Another Place – Antony Gormley)
  20. Cold Calling. Or Warm Calling.

November 2022

  1. Cartoon Philosophers
  2. Sunday photoblogging: birds at Crosby
  3. On What We Owe the Future, Part 2 (some polemic)
  4. Another nuclear renaissance? And did environmentalists kill the last one?
  5. Christmas and Time-Travel and Possible Worlds: Into the Scroogiverse
  6. On MacAskill’s *What We Owe the Future*, Part 1
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Crosby beach
  8. Inequality and poverty; history and counterfactuals
  9. A journey from London to Aden in 1865
  10. For Working-Class Academics
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Sète
  12. A rant on FTX, William MacAskill, and Utilitarianism
  13. A Good Week for Liberty
  14. Podcast about Philosophy Illustrated (ed. by Helen de Cruz)
  15. Book launch! Connected in Isolation
  16. #TakeTheMaskOff
  17. Reading Céline
  18. Sunday photoblogging: Marseillan
  19. Vote for democracy (please!)
  20. Twitter consequences; not just for little people

October 2022

  1. What to do about climate change (4): Greta Thunberg’s call for action
  2. Missing In Action: The (Democratic) Politics of the Ocean
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Marseillan
  4. The Death of God and the Decline of the Humanities
  5. Labor’s love lost:the tide is turning on private ownership of electricity grids
  6. Crooked, but crooked upwards: A reply to sceptics
  7. Sunday photoblogging: steps, Neffiès
  8. Welcome, New Growth Crooked Timber!
  9. A ‘no first use’ U.S. nuclear policy could save the world
  10. Crooked, but crooked upwards
  11. Caring, growth and choice
  12. Renewing Crooked Timber: new grafts
  13. Capitalism without capital doesn’t work: The future of the information (non) economy
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Le Grau d’Agde
  15. The Little Things That Restore Your Faith in Humanity – 1
  16. For Women Life Freedom
  17. Iran uprising open thread
  18. Sunday photoblogging: Florence
  19. AI is coming for bullsh*t jobs
  20. What to do about climate change (3): Andreas Malm on blowing up pipelines and other forms of property destruction
  21. Sunday photoblogging: Braunton Road, Bristol

September 2022

  1. The endowment exercise
  2. Status quo ante bellum: what does it mean for the war in Ukraine
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Molière celebrations in Pézenas
  4. Why the upcoming Italian elections should worry us, yet Italy might have more democratic anti-bodies than one might think
  5. Conceptions of Equity in Education
  6. Is there anything wrong with D’s running those ads aiming to get Trumpist lunatic R’s nominated?
  7. Jury Duty
  8. Why Australia needs an elected President
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Bouzigues
  10. All Hail King Charles
  11. Who thinks who is a threat to a democracy, Part 2
  12. The democratic theory of “A Half-Built Garden”
  13. “Republican” as an identity
  14. Who thinks who is a threat to democracy? (Part 1)
  15. Advice for new college students (again)
  16. Becoming a Better College Teacher

August 2022

  1. Mother Country Radicals
  2. The end of the Bitcoin monster?
  3. On gender identity, again
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Liverpool, St George’s Hall
  5. Italy’s citizens’ income: on its way out already?
  6. All history is presentism
  7. A typology of research questions about society
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Clifton suspension bridge, Bristol
  9. Breadtube
  10. Is there a democratic path to civilizational survival?
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Genoa washing
  12. Book note: Sally Hayden, My Fourth Time We Drowned
  13. All or nothing
  14. On mental fitness vs mental health
  15. What to do about climate change (2): a citizens’ action plan
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Laugharne
  17. The Upcoming Elections in Italy
  18. Mental health and mental fitness
  19. Paying lipservice, ticking boxes, and doing what it takes

July 2022

  1. Sunday photoblogging: morning shadows in Pézenas
  2. Conferences, Covid, Climate
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Bouzigues
  4. The Kosovo precedent
  5. Britain: the new El Salvador? [now with comments open]
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Lac du Salagou
  7. What to do about climate change (1): Not too late
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Bristol underpass
  9. Would we be better off without corporations? (edited)
  10. Settling in for the long haul
  11. Would Democratic Socialism be Better?
  12. How to write a good public philosophy book
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Montpellier pigeon
  14. Ousmane Sembène, Les Bouts de bois de Dieu

June 2022

  1. Roe vs Wade Open Thread
  2. Sunday photoblogging: swift
  3. Some thoughts about the UK byelections, and beyond
  4. Book Note: Erin Pineda, Seeing Like an Activist
  5. Some thoughts on the French elections
  6. Sunday photoblogging: steps, Bristol
  7. Why We’re Polarized Part 4: The Last one, about Party Differences
  8. Monday photoblogging: Llandudno
  9. Ethics and Education: The Ethics of College Admissions
  10. Bruce Kent is dead
  11. Why We’re Polarized, Part 3: Moving on to Institutions
  12. The three-party system in France and Australia
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Clevedon

May 2022

  1. Why We’re Polarized Part 2
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Llandudno
  3. Why We’re Polarized, Part 1
  4. Monday photoblogging: Ortygia
  5. Russia and the end of nuclear power
  6. Guest Post: Survey on Exploitation
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Rose
  8. The Thirty-Nine Steps
  9. American history as imagined in liberal political philosophy
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Horse in a flooded field
  11. Joseph Raz
  12. The Four-Day Week
  13. Sunday photoblogging: rehearsals for the Boby Lapointe centenary in Pézenas
  14. Elena Ferrante, “La Vita Bugiarda Degli Adulti,” Mini Review
  15. Alternative social media open thread

April 2022

  1. EV charging challenges
  2. What have you done for Ukraine/Ukrainians lately? Offering a postcard as thanks.
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Positano
  4. Return of the Easter Bilby
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Bristol reflections
  6. UK abandons refugees
  7. French election update
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas archway
  9. Redistributing attention and authority in political philosophy
  10. The coming French elections
  11. Thinking about the positive value of free movement (a bleg)
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Clifton, Richmond Dale

March 2022

  1. Why is competition omni-present in children’s sports?
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Chicago
  3. Twigs and branches
  4. The future of Crooked Timber and its comments
  5. Art for Ukraine
  6. My favourite pun.
  7. War – what can we do?
  8. Nuclear power and the Ukraine war
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Clifton suspension bridge
  10. Adventures in Teaching First Year Students.
  11. Sunday photoblogging: man smoking in Florence
  12. Solidarity and compassion should come first for the left
  13. Russian University leaders support Putin’s war
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Royal Liver Building, Liverpool
  15. Crimea

February 2022

  1. Sanctuary for Ukrainians, sanctuary for all
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Liverpool fountain
  3. Russian invasion of Ukraine
  4. The Trojan Horse Affair
  5. Sex-segregated Spaces as Minority Rights?
  6. Limitarianism: a philosophical dispute
  7. Sunday photoblogging: pheasant
  8. Time for the four-day week ?
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Royal Liver Building, Liverpool. Reflected.
  10. Summers stumbles
  11. The end of hope

January 2022

  1. Nobel Prize or not
  2. The end of American democracy is unimaginable
  3. Barry Cryer is dead.
  4. Churched
  5. CBS on the superrich and limitarianism
  6. Janus
  7. Sunday photoblogging: fox on the tracks
  8. Boris Johnson open thread
  9. Why energy storage is a solvable problem
  10. Northeast Workshop to Learn About Multicultural Philosophy (NEWLAMP) – Call for Applications
  11. Social and political philosophers with admirable writing styles
  12. Sunday photoblogging: shop front, Narbonne
  13. In defense of presentism
  14. Debutante Balls
  15. Myths that stir trouble in the South China Sea
  16. Africa Cup of Nations open thread
  17. Twigs and branches

2021 187

December 2021

  1. Strangelove redux
  2. Two Iron Laws of College Reading
  3. Getting it wrong on the future of democracy?
  4. Sunday photoblogging: bonded warehouse
  5. The Dawn of Everything, Part 2
  6. Pregnant Judges
  7. How to make conferences more climate-friendly
  8. The Dawn of Everything – Part 1
  9. Sunday photoblogging: houses on the Portway, Bristol
  10. Getting it wrong on self-driving vehicles
  11. Getting to know cities through science
  12. Let’s write a poem
  13. The American right and Franco (blast from the past)
  14. Twigs and branches

November 2021

  1. Replacing Western civ: how bad would it be?
  2. Sunday photoblogging: St Mary Redcliffe churchyard
  3. The case for being born
  4. The Great Resignation
  5. People drown in the Channel. Fake tears, and fingers in ears.
  6. Sunday photoblogging: march of the cranes
  7. The Ones Who Take the Train to Omelas
  8. The Future Finds Its Own Uses for Things
  9. Sunday photoblogging: from Bedminster Bridge
  10. Old photographs, and the “what might have been” of the nativist imagination
  11. Contingency, or some other thing
  12. Sunday photoblogging: crane
  13. Fairness in five minutes
  14. Coffee in Zürich

October 2021

  1. Happy Halloween! – A Seasonal Holbonic-Seussic Mash-Up
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Béziers
  3. It seems like we should have a Meta thread…
  4. Social media repertoires
  5. Thinking the unthinkable
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Symonds Yat
  7. E-mailing for work during the weekend
  8. Twigs and branches
  9. Covid Concept Home
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Saint Guilhem-le-Désert
  11. Can Feminists Have it All?
  12. The financial sector after the pandemic
  13. Hierarchy of the Grift
  14. Monday photoblogging: Béziers cathedral
  15. How big a bubble ?
  16. Group size and tolerating those with whom we disagree
  17. If you’re a socialist you need the Real Utopias Project

September 2021

  1. Monday photoblogging: Cirque de Navacelles
  2. The Scrooge McDuck theory of the rich
  3. The Afghanistan Cricket Boycott
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Marseillan
  5. Do taxes fund spending?
  6. Space
  7. Parents, children, and evolving terms of moral condemnation
  8. Speeding up the academic refereeing process?
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Liverpool panorama
  10. Anniversaries
  11. Kukathas on Immigration and Freedom
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Venice arch

August 2021

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Sunset on the Wirral (looking from Liverpool)
  2. Twigs and branches
  3. Climate and Covid
  4. The Malayan Emergency
  5. Sunday photoblogging: ruined outbuilding
  6. A Great Day For Down! Done!
  7. Easy birds – in this slow Summer
  8. Forever wars and frozen conflicts
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas in time of COVID
  10. Twigs and branches
  11. Sunday photoblogging: Valmagne Abbey
  12. Zywicki vs Wade
  13. Sitting in limbo

July 2021

  1. Repubs retreat from antivaxerism
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Edward Weston tribute capsicum
  3. Book Chat: Mariana Mazzucato – Mission Economy
  4. Billionaires in space
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Valmagne
  6. Twigs and branches
  7. Tuesday photoblogging: Cirque de Mourèze
  8. There is such a thing as being too rich
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Swift
  10. Chatting about books
  11. Opposites
  12. Twigs and branches

June 2021

  1. Not CRT, but critical thinking about race
  2. What makes a policy progressive or regressive?
  3. Diana Ross and Kevin Coyne
  4. Swamp 81
  5. Janet Malcolm and Joshua Cohen
  6. Brideshead re-revisited
  7. Mars, Ares, Tiw/Tyr, God, Allah
  8. Why I am not exactly a Christian
  9. Labor and its imaginary friends
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Albert Dock/Tate, Liverpool
  11. The end of the population pyramid (scheme)

May 2021

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Brazil, shop at night
  2. The tribute vice pays to virtue
  3. Wow
  4. Social democracy is bound to struggle in a world of nation-states
  5. Twigs and branches
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Restaurant, Pirenopolis, Brazil
  7. The “simple logic” of immigration control
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Capri – church roof
  9. Response
  10. This Is How It Gets Better
  11. Repost: My comprehensive plan for US policy on the Middle East …
  12. Double Trouble: The Identity Politics of Philip Roth and Hannah Arendt
  13. Technocracy and Empire
  14. Half the Earth ?
  15. The Sudden Tempest of Ultimate Summer
  16. Sunday photoblogging: cones
  17. Ministry for Your Future Soul
  18. Can the World’s Bankers Really Save the Climate?
  19. On Solar Geoengineering and Kim Stanley Robinson
  20. What is Ours is Only Ours to Give
  21. What’s In Our Way?
  22. The Ministry for the Future seminar
  23. Twigs and branches
  24. Sunday photoblogging: Ashton Avenue Bridge

April 2021

  1. Economic policy after the pandemic
  2. Global capital, crony capital and the centre-left
  3. How much is a trillion dollars?
  4. Republicans and the end of hard neoliberalism
  5. Sunday photoblogging: crane reflection
  6. “Ye have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm.”
  7. Danielle Allen – a personal endorsement
  8. Sunday photoblogging: car reflections
  9. Generational replacement and the leftward shift of the Democrats
  10. Testing the Tebbit Test
  11. Zarathustra – Columnar Emersonian or Divine Hanswurst?
  12. Twigs and branches
  13. Sunday photoblogging: sparrow
  14. Sunday photoblogging: flag
  15. Book note: Emily Kenway, The Truth About Modern Slavery
  16. Public debt: don’t target the quantity, target the price
  17. Last word (for now) on the Golden Age

March 2021

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Paris café
  2. There really was a Golden Age*
  3. Twigs and branches
  4. The Golden Age
  5. The Economic Consequences of Mr Biden
  6. Bye Golly, Noddy!
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Hebron Road panorama
  8. Hollow Nuts
  9. Free Access Work by Waheed Hussain
  10. On Beyond Zarathustra! (Seuss in the Nous)
  11. Sunday photoblogging: magpies
  12. What was the “Is Trump a Fascist?” Debate Ultimately About?
  13. Corporal Punishment
  14. ADHD not being a disorder
  15. The Economic Consequences of the Great War
  16. The Boys Aren’t Back in Town
  17. Introduction:Economic Consequences of the Pandemic
  18. Too many choices

February 2021

  1. Twigs and branches
  2. Sunday photoblogging: crocus with ant
  3. Why the Texas electricity market failed
  4. Twigs and branches
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Ashton Avenue bridge (2)
  6. The last time I
  7. Economic lessons of the 20-year armistice
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Ashton Avenue Bridge
  9. The 20 year armistice
  10. Hands off the rich ?
  11. How can we reduce inequality in Australia?
  12. Twigs and branches
  13. Sunday photoblogging: a new kid on the block
  14. Climate conspiracy, classical liberalism and Q-Anon
  15. Waheed Hussain (1972-2021), in Memoriam: A Tribute from the Members of the Economic Ethics Network
  16. WallStreetBets and financialised capitalism
  17. All politics is global

January 2021

  1. Twigs and branches
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Reims cathedral
  3. Freedom from the Market
  4. Branching points
  5. Another Covid book, this one about the digital context
  6. Benjamin Constant looks at Brexit
  7. Globalism and the incoherence of Tory Brexit
  8. Twigs and branches
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Novi Vinodolski, 2009
  10. Luck and fate in politics
  11. The four horsemen of the pandemic
  12. On gender equality, the pandemic, and liberal feminism
  13. Twigs and branches
  14. Sunday photoblogging: robin
  15. January 6
  16. The Stock OBE
  17. After the pandemic, let’s not keep families separated by borders
  18. Positive note #10: book reading (non-fiction edition)

2020 212

December 2020

  1. Room for debate
  2. End-of-year positives: fiction
  3. Public debt after the pandemic
  4. Positive note #8: it’s recipe exchange time!
  5. Positive note #7: tech tools
  6. Hobbies that have brought you joy
  7. Sunday photoblogging: tree
  8. Working-from-home comforts?
  9. What music did you enjoy this year?
  10. The Day After Brexit
  11. End-of-year positive note #3: movies, series, video
  12. Positive note #2: fresh herbs
  13. Scarcity and plenty
  14. Let’s finish 2020 on a positive note (or ten)
  15. The 21st century economy
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Mount Pleasant Terrace
  17. Ethos/ Bir Başkadır
  18. Sunday photoblogging: starlings
  19. Trumpism and crony capitalism
  20. Labour migration: temporary workers’ rights and the openness-rights tradeoff
  21. Synopsis
  22. Teaching in person
  23. Is nuclear power the answer
  24. Sunday photoblogging: concert hall at Louisiana, near Copenhagen
  25. The full-court press

November 2020

  1. The path to decarbonization
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Bristol magpies
  3. Climate, health and the pandemic
  4. UK hostile environment immigration policy condemned
  5. The case for alarmism
  6. Covid and the climate emergency
  7. Sunday photoblogging: hello!
  8. Controversy
  9. Climate change after the pandemic
  10. It’s time for the Green Human Development Index
  11. Sunday photoblogging: chairs
  12. Why zero interest rates are here to stay
  13. Worst Colleague Ever
  14. Max Weber, man of our time?
  15. Remembrance – Excerpt from The Law of Kindness
  16. Armistice Day
  17. Sunday photoblogging: Houses in Bedminster, Bristol
  18. A good day, and a good month, for the global climate
  19. Election Day in the US
  20. US Elections open thread
  21. Sunday photoblogging: ladder shadow (from 2007)

October 2020

  1. The good effects of the Pandemic
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Liverpool, multi-storey
  3. Why publish books open access?
  4. Gonzo constitutionalism on the right, norm erosion on the left
  5. Too cheap to meter
  6. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas doorway
  7. Sunday photoblogging: leaf
  8. Some facts, and claims, about the 21st Century Economy (updated)
  9. We’re starting a new journal!
  10. Sister Ben / Margaret MacCurtain / Peig
  11. The risk of creeping apartheid
  12. Inequality and the Pandemic, Part IV: Possibilities
  13. Sunday photoblogging: caterpillars
  14. Inequality and the Pandemic, Part 3: Risk and reward
  15. The first day of the rest of my life
  16. Inequality and the Pandemic Part 2: Merit

September 2020

  1. Inequality and the Pandemic, Part 1: Luck
  2. Why don’t single-issue anti-abortion voters oppose this Trump Supreme Court nomination?
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Arles – jeux de mots
  4. Story ate the world. I’m biting back.
  5. Sunday photoblogging: Fog at Bouzigues
  6. The Supreme Court and Normcore
  7. Sitting next to Nelly*
  8. Firm-specific skills and working from home
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Lac de Vailhan, dragonfly
  10. The weirdness of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
  11. Budapest (or should that be Beijing?)-on-Thames
  12. Teaching in-person
  13. Sunday photoblogging: Poilhes
  14. Choose your own 538 adventure
  15. Dutch university protests, start of another year…
  16. The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic
  17. Unmarked categories

August 2020

  1. White privilege and class. A reply to Chris Bertram by Kenan Malik
  2. Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas door
  3. On a piece of bad reasoning about race and class
  4. Where do you get your ideas?
  5. On an objection to the idea of “white privilege”
  6. Every day, coal is killing us
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Lac de Vailhan
  8. Notes from a Physically Distanced Classroom
  9. What’s with the stock market?
  10. Intangibles = Monopoly
  11. Open thread
  12. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson – Let Them Eat Tweets
  13. Why a Job Guarantee will require higher taxation

July 2020

  1. What’s wrong with “cancel culture”?
  2. New PPE book series
  3. The end of interest
  4. In praise of negativity
  5. Economists versus epidemiologists
  6. The Republican phase transition
  7. What will (American) Football do?
  8. A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money (creation)
  9. Thoughts about school openings
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Hebron Road Burial Ground
  11. Teachers and Parents
  12. The General Theory and the Special Theories
  13. Book note: Johny Pitts, Afropean
  14. Sunday photoblogging: Fox
  15. The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic
  16. Teaching in person under physical distancing constraints.

June 2020

  1. Reappraisals (repost from 2011)
  2. “Traditional British values” in political science
  3. Trumpism after Trump
  4. The simple but difficult physics of losing weight
  5. Danielle Allen wins the Kluge prize
  6. Healthy living
  7. Measuring emotional work in college teaching
  8. Mr Dooley, right again
  9. The discretion to escalate
  10. GUEST POST: An open letter to JK Rowling’s blog post on Sex and Gender, by Sophie Grace Chappell
  11. Erasure
  12. Broken Hearts
  13. The Politics of Disorder
  14. Self-respect, justice and black resistance
  15. Modern Monetary Theory: Neither modern, nor monetary, nor (mainly) theoretical ?

May 2020

  1. Sunday photoblogging: fox news
  2. Backlash Politics
  3. The coronavirus public
  4. Moralizing
  5. Fatherland
  6. Our Ontologies, Our Selves
  7. Sunday photoblogging: San Francisco
  8. Imagine
  9. Goldbergs
  10. Indefinitely Ill – Post-Covid Fatigue
  11. Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
  12. Work. Democratize, Decommodify, Remediate
  13. Whataboutery and the pandemic
  14. Reflections on moving to teaching online
  15. “Public” choice
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Stairs in Rome
  17. Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment didn’t work out so well
  18. CUNY, Corona, and Communism
  19. Freedom, lockdown, and COVID-19
  20. Who is the “public” in “public choice”?
  21. Choctaw-Ireland solidarity
  22. Five Books
  23. May Day
  24. Sunday photoblogging: Herefordshire field
  25. Researching the pandemic

April 2020

  1. When to bury an academic paper?
  2. Another open thread on the pandemic
  3. Sunday photoblogging: trees
  4. Vermeule
  5. Noises off
  6. Show me your books …
  7. What are we watching?
  8. His Dark Materials Trans-Atlantic Book Club
  9. Labour insiders and their pet journalists worked to undermine the party
  10. Sunday photoblogging: Valentine’s bridge, Bristol
  11. Guitar advice sought
  12. Uplifting music, please!
  13. A bold rethink of the international protection regime for forced migrants
  14. Agency 2
  15. Admissions, acceptances, and the possibly on-line fall.
  16. Sunday photoblogging: Bantry House, Cork (2008)
  17. Open thread on the adventures of homeschooling+work
  18. ‘Normative audit’ as a method for political philosophy

March 2020

  1. Sunday photoblogging: Cardiff arcade, 2008
  2. The role of (semi-) academic blogs during physical isolation
  3. Borders
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Alderman Moore’s allotments
  5. Free readings!
  6. Crises and the case for socialism
  7. How to get to a UBI
  8. Waiting for the wave to break
  9. Zoom
  10. Josh DiPaolo Answers Questions about Online Teaching
  11. Some tips for running online discussions
  12. COVID-19 and migration: we need a firewall
  13. Sunday photoblogging: St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol
  14. The Prodigal Tech Bro
  15. World Book Day – January round-up
  16. Europe fails refugees again
  17. Rightwing postmodernism
  18. Sunday photoblogging: Mount Pleasant, Bristol

February 2020

  1. Planning for Pandemics (repost from 2005)
  2. Some thoughts about transparency in college admissions
  3. Milkman
  4. Sunday photoblogging: Coal loader at Avonmouth
  5. Vaporfly
  6. Who will pick the turnips?
  7. An important new book about refugeehood
  8. Sunday photoblogging: Green post-box
  9. The truth about the Badger State
  10. My country (hard) right or wrong
  11. Deliberate cruelty and injustice
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Courtyard in Ortygia, Sicily
  13. The worst case is happening
  14. Driving across the uncanny valley
  15. Sunday photoblogging: Sognsvann lake, Oslo, Norway (another look)

January 2020

  1. More news from the apocalypse
  2. Libertarians Can’t Save the Planet
  3. Sunday photoblogging: Sognsvann lake, Oslo
  4. Rifleman Jamie Davis – a tribute from Richard Streatfeild
  5. The consequences of overtime in Dutch academia
  6. A way of Reforming the House of Lords
  7. Sunday photoblogging: Park Street, morning
  8. Climate change and the strange death of libertarianism
  9. Sunday photoblogging: Bocadasse
  10. Consumed by fire
  11. Teaching a 10 year-old to read.
  12. Sunday photoblogging: Liverpool, docks and reflections
  13. Neil Innes is dead.

← 2016–2019