Lawrence Torcello

Yes, I am a climate alarmist. Global warming is a crime against humanity | Lawrence Torcello theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@RobertTalisse You peaked my curiosity and now I'm in an existential funk. 😱😂

Sent in by a friend. Go figure.

@evandawson I know you do! I just couldn't resist a little friendly philosophy PR after the on-air humor. Jokes aside, your guest majored in philosophy and followed one of its most traditional career paths: law. More philosophy grads are tracking billable hours than teaching Plato. 📚⚖️👍

@LTorcello I love philosophy! I wish it weren’t so hard for philosophy Majors to feel like they had future employment.

@evandawson Listening to your show on my drive in. It's great. I had to pull over quickly because I would be remiss if I didn't point out that philosophy is an excellent major for those who want to go to law school -- it is known. 🙂

Indeed, @csandis: two influential (but very different) pragmatists lost in one week.

The hard fact: the world already has more fossil fuels than can safely be burned given climate change—yet the U.S. Energy Secretary goes on Meet the Press today claiming this war will make global energy more secure. What we need is a world made secure for reality checks.

@JoyceCarolOates Good grief. What was his contribution to education supposed to have been — the “Professor Watchlist”?

MAGA revenge on those "elites" who have actually contributed to society by dedicating their lives to ideals like public education; like T***p appropriating the Kennedy Center (a memorial for Kennedy) & slapping his name on it. so too a community college drop-out who'd advocated against college is, in T***pDarkAge, elevated as a great educator with a banner of his own on the Dept. of Education in the nation's capitol.

Popped onto this app for the first time in a while, white nationalist posts randomly showing up on my timeline…

Imagine a bridge is out in a storm. Now imagine someone intentionally removes the sign alerting drivers of the danger ahead. Is that person now negligent for the harms caused by their action? theguardian.com/us-news/2026/f…

GOP AGs have outrageously succeeded in getting a judges’ guide to basic climate science scrapped as “biased.” In truth, they’ve confessed: if courts consider legitimate science, fossil fuel interests cannot win. nytimes.com/2026/02/10/cli…

Everything happening in Minnesota is a nightmare--but combined with Pam Bondi’s attempt to obtain voter rolls in Minneapolis, this story demands laser focus. 👇theguardian.com/us-news/2026/j…

"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" [...] it was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. [...] Had I lived in Germany at that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers." —Letter from a Birmingham Jail

@TheRealThelmaJ1 @JoyceCarolOates The steady devaluation of humanities education in the United States, including history, has left many ill-prepared to recognize familiar dangers. Would-be fascists, by contrast, appear to have been paying close attention to certain historical lessons.

Ernst Röhm, leader of Hitler's Brownshirts, showed how to build an authoritarian paramilitary: recruit men selected for their propensity for violence and absolute loyalty to a leader, then grant them legal immunity, a free hand to terrorize opponents, and pay far better than they could earn elsewhere. This formula helped propel the Nazis to power. This is ICE.

Anyone else feel like an expatriate in their own country right now?

At this point, the American public is entitled to adverse inference regarding the Epstein files. In other words, you should assume that they are as bad for Trump as they could conceivably be.

From a moral/political philosophy view, this President is utterly boring—pure ego, pure corruption. All you can do is condemn. Not philosophically interesting. The only interesting question: how did Americans put this immoral narcissist in office again?

It's as if the people robbbing your house and lighting it on fire were also in charge of the alarm service. usatoday.com/story/news/pol…

"A 2023 study found climate change to be a significant contributor to California’s record-breaking wildfires over the past two decades." motherjones.com/politics/2025/…

Yes, I am a climate alarmist. Global warming is a crime against humanity | Lawrence Torcello theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Here is a sad truth: Our contempt for political opponents incentivizes bad politics. Another good piece on our polarization problem by Robert Talisse: theconversation.com/blame-the-shut…

I'm reminded of when Jane Goodall observed parallels between Trump’s behavior and chimpanzee "dominance rituals." If we continue that reasoning, now that Trump is resorting to the AI equivalent of flinging feces, we can infer that the protests made him feel caged and vulnerable.

Big, friendly, and peaceful No Kings anti-fascist turnout from all ages, with lots of veterans present, in the Rochester area once again today.