Newt Gingrich claiming the election was stolen without evidence is major Newt Gingrich writing a dissertation about the Congo without ever going there energy.
"There is no evidence in the text that he traveled either to Belgium or to the Congo, and he seems not to have interviewed any of the principal actors, Belgian or Congolese, even though the dissertation was written only a handful of years after the departure of the Belgians […]"
The piece by Paul Wolff linked above is very much worth reading.

It also contains this fascinating piece of information:

"The only word in the entire dissertation not in English or French is misspelled -- Weltanschauung with only one "u" -- page 205, line 2"
It's ironic because Gingrich's Weltanschauung itself became so prominent: it helped give rise to Trumpism, and it won't disappear once Trump is no longer president.

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More from @torstenkathke

8 Nov
This.

Normalize reading articles, not just headlines. From the NYT piece:

"I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet."
The main point AOC is making in the New York Times is about *how* to run a campaign, not *what* the message should be.

She's not shy about pushing her progressive brand of politics, but if that's your main takeaway from the criticism, you're misreading the interview.
"If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone could be making ideological claims when they didn’t run a full-fledged campaign."
Read 9 tweets
7 Nov
People keep finding new angles in these concession speeches.

Here's one: when George H. Bush concedes, his supporters clap. When John McCain concedes, his supporters boo.

I'm not going to pretend that once there was a great era of civility and we have sadly left it. Evoking the need for civility is always also a strategy of power.

But I did find this contrast striking.

I became interested in this small data point. How did other crowds react to concessions?
Read 12 tweets
6 Nov
This is a dumb question, no doubt triggered by Fox's petty and partisan decision not to use that term.

Let's humor it for a minute. Why is it dumb?

Dictionary.com calls 'president-elect' "[a]n Americanism dating back to 1815–25".
Google's Ngram Viewer bears this out. Ngram viewer showing usage ...
Losers in presidential elections started formally conceding around the turn of the 20th century. William Jennings Bryan's telegram to McKinley in 1896 started that trend.

npr.org/2020/11/02/929…
Read 9 tweets
1 Nov
This kind of bad faith, lukewarm endorsement, shifting the actual debate in the most sophist manner, is exactly what gives "decent" people cover to vote for Trump and effectively destroy American democracy while clinging to plausible deniability.

Let's dive in:
Upfront, the Post-Gazette editorial board acknowledges (because it must since it is so obvious) that Trump has been called "unpresidential," "crude and unkind" and "just not a good man."

What they do not acknowledge is Trump's overt racism and flirtations with the extreme right.
This is just the overture to a symphony of amateurish rhetorical moves and arguments that fall apart if you just glance at them.

The PG acknowledges that “[n]one of this can be justified“ only to then—guess— justify reelecting Trump by “separat[ing] the man from the record“.
Read 32 tweets
23 Jul
Counterpoint: it *is* Donald Trump's America.

It's a very scary place.
Imagine seeing what's actually happening *right now* and making that into a scary hypothetical for what would happen if the other guy won.
Stop to think what these people are protesting.

That's the scary place.

That scary place is made scarier by sending in unidentifiable paramilitary agents with obviously no interest in deescalating the situation.
Read 18 tweets
16 Jul
Since my online teaching thread has gotten some traction, as promised here's one on the technical aspects of creating teaching content.

Note that this is from the point of view of someone with some technical knowledge regarding computers/cameras/audio/video, but not an expert.
Apologies: this may get long…

I'll start with some general information regarding what I had to do and how I ended up doing it.

If this doesn't interest you and you're only looking for some tech tips, keep scrolling, they're towards the end.
My first question was: what kind of online experience must/should/can this class be? Your institution may have certain demands: how much of a class has to be taught synchronously (video calls, chats) or asynchronously (downloadable videos and other materials, forums, wikis…)
Read 40 tweets

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