Rakesh Bhandari

I work in an interdisciplinary studies program, and last night was trying to explain how I understand interdisciplinarity. Here are a few quick thoughts for those who may be interested. I would love to hear more ideas!

The fans get a glimpse sometimes of what Kerr is protecting like when the Kings rookie wins the game down the stretch taunting Green who is a Hall of Famer as a backpack. Kerr seems to have let the Warriors get to a pretty low non-intimidating point. But maybe he and the vets have been saving themselves for tonight.

Steve Kerr explained on @957thegame why he and the Warriors still haven’t finalized his future despite public support from the team's core 😳 nbcsportsbayarea.com/nba/golden-sta…

Direct Air Capture doesn't just not mitigate climate change, it helps in the recovery of more oil and gas! The carbon-combustion complex (Oreskes and Conway) is every bit as formidable as the military-industrial complex. upstreamonline.com/carbon-capture…

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn't invoke Weimar Germany as a rhetorical flourish. She cited a specific scholar by name in a footnote: Ernst Fraenkel, a Jewish labor lawyer who observed the Nazi legal system from the inside, smuggled his manuscript out of Berlin in 1938, and published "The Dual State" at the University of Chicago in 1941. Fraenkel's framework is precise. The Nazis didn't immediately collapse Germany's legal system. They left courts functioning - particularly in contracts and economic matters - while placing Jews and political enemies in a separate lawless zone where no legal protection applied. Most Germans lived in the law-bound "normative state." The targeted lived in the "prerogative state." The facade of normalcy was the mechanism of control. Jackson invoked Fraenkel to name what the court's Republican majority is doing in real time. In 21 consecutive shadow docket cases, the six conservative justices have let Trump opt out of the law - often with no explanation given at all. They blessed ICE racial profiling without citing a single legal justification. They allowed Trump to ignore $4 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid. They stripped lower courts of the ability to issue universal relief, meaning only those with resources to file individual lawsuits get protection from illegal presidential action. Constitutional law professor Evan Bernick put it plainly: "The court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power." Jackson's dissent is not hyperbole. A footnote citing a 1941 manuscript about Nazi legal architecture is a Supreme Court justice blowing the cover on what her colleagues are building.

@MorePerfectUS Natasha Schüll recounts how temperance activists destroyed the first slot machines. We don't have a specific Luddite term for gambling machine destruction that could be applied to apps. But, my god, the combo of phone and gambling addiction in one. It was a good run, humanity.

More than half of men ages 18-49 (52%) now say they have an active sports betting account with an online sportsbook like DraftKings, Caesars, FanDuel, or BetMGM.

Natasha Schüll recounts how temperance activists destroyed the first slot machines. We don't have a specific Luddite term for gambling machine destruction that could be applied to apps. But, my god, the combo of phone and gambling addiction in one. It was a good run, humanity.

@pschofie79 Obama did or didn't?

Set aide the accuracy of this. I think a lot of elite Dems have a hard time imagining that electoral politics could be about things other than having an impressive resume.

If there hadn't been this shift from sincerity and authenticity to what D'Ambrosio & Moeller call profilicity--2nd-order observation of the self (think of viewing oneself in terms of maximizing engagement)-- people may not have been so willing to let LLMs write for them.

Trump doesn't understand that he won simply to contain inflation, not to control the border or to unleash the fossil fuel economy or to bring regime change to Venezuela and Iran or to abandon Ukraine or to push through regressive tax cuts. Buttigieg exposes his failures best.

JD Vance has met the highest responsibility of his position: assassination insurance. Trump's voice has become intolerable (the lowest popularity of any President since WW 2? yup, 2024 was just a global referendum against COVID inflation), yet Vance => mass self-defenestrating

@HarmlessRadio @CHSommers You are not a worthy critic. Blocked.

@postdiscipline @CHSommers You’re a liar.

The radicalization of college faculty in the US is a threat to national security.

Hopkins seems to accept much more on unweighted GPA than test scores or weighted GPA, much less extracurriculars. It seems so obsessed with unweighted GPA that I’d guess it’s going to be missing a kind of spark in its classes. Must have figured unweighted GPA is the best way to climb rankings and appease Trump auditors.

Not long ago, Johns Hopkins boasted high Black and Hispanic numbers. Then came SCOTUS ruling and a huge reversal: Today, 45% of freshmen are Asian-American, up from 26% just 2 yrs ago. And that doesn't include int'l students, mostly from Asia. @elliew0lfe: thebanner.com/education/high…

@fredleept So no philosophy, theory or science of thinking, then? 🙃

Terms I have little investment in, especially when they're basically used in a snobby, exclusionary, or prestige whoring way: philosophy theory science Thinking is a good enough word for a good enough activity

@fredleept I have just had great conversations with Wendy, never took a course with her. Too close in age.

For instance, I heard some of the greatest lectures of my life at large state schools. People like Paul Thomas and Wendy Brown could lecture. Not everything has to be done via small discussion sessions.

I've taught in both environments (Pitzer, Pomona, Denison, UConn) and studied at big state schools (UC Berkeley, UCLA). Strong disagree.

When I took one of the late Paul Thomas’s classes there were so few people in it, it felt like a seminar. I read Schorske’s book on the SPD and much of Kolakowski’s 3 volumes of Marx critique. He didn’t assign it, but I read his book on KM and the Anararchists. There are opportunities for seminar like discussions at big state schools. Sometimes you take the seminar class even if you are not particularly interested in the material. You will end up interested.

@fredleept I took some great lecture coursee when I was at Oberlin. Both are possible. I think one thing missing at large state schools is small undergrad seminars though

@policytensor And Israel is placated with free rein in Lebanon?

Read: we’ve offered full sanctions relief in exchange for Iranian concessions on the nuclear file.

I think of how people want AI to write. People don’t use AI to express their thoughts or feelings. They use it to meet their readers’ conception of an intelligent writer or of a writer who’s effortless with the norms & style for the assignment. Everydayness will creep in.

@PhilipProudfoot Orban loses, and we drop Putin and his allies from the axis?

Global politics is now a Catholic, Shia, Leftist coalition for humanity vs a US-Israeli axis of paedophile, tech corporations, and war criminals.

@Tyler_A_Harper @BlackSophist_ Ok, we are not going get anywhere in discussion, the two of us; so I shall just delete my previous reply.

The question I'd still love to see Mellon defenders grapple with: does it not give you pause that the "radical" ideas many academic humanists champion are so compatible with a billion-dollar philanthropy managed by hedge funders? Does that not say something about the ideas...?

I suspect this is only the beginning of the renewal of suspensions of sanctions on Russian oil and gas sales. The suspensions, I suspect, will be longer than a month this time. globalbankingandfinance.com/us-extends-wai…