Sam Ulmschneider

My local small, high-quality private liberal arts uni, which uses its private resources to fund enormous broad financial aid, is being sued by the admin for having two scholarships with minority-priority and one with women-priority. That's how we're spending our natn'l civil rights law resources.

I haven't been an optimist abt SCOTUS for a long time, but I was at least an institutionalist of a cautious 'imperfect mutually workable institutions are better than shredded ones' variety. The most recent spate of concurrences, especially for this one, is rapid-firing nails into the coffin of that.

I’ve been thinking about this and it’s like four degrees of difference from us just pulling a Lusitania. 1) Germany never claimed US was a terrorist regime 2) scale/numbers 3) drugs aren’t arms to an opponent in a declared war 4) no published warnings of changes in use of force policy in Venezuela.

Americans aren't paying enough attention to the five-alarm dumpster fire of British politics right now, it's a massive cautionary tale of what happens when you leave a sclerotic two party system running atop polarization and fragmentation. We need representational reform lest we face similar issues.

I feel a very weird sense of connection with several places I only visited a few times, or where I've never lived but visit regularly: Philadelphia, Boise, Sacramento, Ashland (OH), and Durham NC are the most prominent and clear of these.

in my experimental can-I-teach-political-philosophy-to-high-schoolers course, for final papers, the thinkers they chose for final topical application papers: Marx/Marxists (6), Hobbes (3), Locke (3), Rousseau (1), Machiavelli (1), Rousseau (1), Other (5). Oddly, no classical - Plato, Aristotle, etc.

absolutely depressing as shit to be locked into a series of escalating constitutional hardball and maximal partisan advantage scenarios that successively delegitimatize the principle of loyal opposition and pluralistic democratic competition. Not a great time to be a civics and government teacher.

probably my cringiest and most embarrassing musical taste/habit is how much I genuinely enjoy most of Jethro Tull's albums from 1970s or so. Heavy Horses, Aqualung, Songs From The Wood, Passion Play. All genuinely good listens, despite being completed and old hat before I was even born.

this is right on...and furthermore, in most places in the United States, taking the train may also involve renting a car at the other end, since the majority of locales have mass transit that ranges from dysfunctional to non-existent!

I’m quite nervous that the only declared nuclear power which seems to have coherent internal politics right now and isn’t headed by a dangerously aging maybe-madman is, of all places, France. Seems bad that species Armageddon lies in the reach of such a coterie of weirdos, opportunists, and maniacs.

I don't think JD Vance reminds me of anyone quite so much as he does Richard Nixon. There are plenty of discontinuities and places where the analogy doesn't hold, of course. But there's a great deal about their respective political psychologies that seems to line up in interesting ways.

what is your 'endless waves of grading' music preferences? I've been going between DJ mixes by Katayoun, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard albums, the 'Blue Turtle' Youtube channel, Los Bitchos, Mahal, Glass Beams, BALTVS, Slomosa, and various stoner metal/stoner rock shuffle mixes.

you know, it can be possible for the Virginia Supreme Court here to be wrong without it being 'brazenly illegal and unconstitutional' or whatever. I think their decision is wrong! But it's also not the kind of indefensible mumbo-jumbo that Calais was. It is ok to make that distinction, I hope!