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5 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I googled 'Kierkegaard pseudonyms' because I wanted a complete list of his literary alter-egos. It turns out Google has a 'nicknames' feature? It's true he was nicknamed 'fork' by his family. (There's a good story about that.) Was Marx 'Charley' to friends? 'Bento'? Image
Huh. Image
Huh. Image
YOU try it.

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More from @jholbo1

John Holbo Profile picture
7 Jan
It's impossible to focus on philosophy today but here's an ask. I'm doing a rapid fly-over of Augustine and Aquinas on my way to starting to teach history of modern. I can't spend more than a few minutes trying to give a 'flavor'. It's rather ridiculous, yes.
But does anyone has an idea what would be good readings from Augustine and/or Aquinas - I mean: 1-2 pages tops - that are extractable 'fun reads', also representative. I don't mean funny-amusing. I mean: students might get something out, small though these bits must be.
I'm going to touch on Augustine and that darned pear tree. But that's Augustine as autobiographer, on sin. Can someone suggest a short stretch where he is arguing, philosophically, strikingly. Maybe something about free will? The nature of mind? I really am not an Augustinian.
Read 4 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
7 Jan
So now we know what @scottjshapiro was REALLY up to, all those times he was light tweeting. Shame! Shame! 1/ reason.com/volokh/2021/01… Image
More seriously, this is not good enough. It's true Trump's Fed Society judges did not turn out mafiosi (as Trump hoped.) But the Fed Society has been happy to make Trump their vehicle - knowing who he is and what he is likely to do. Namely, something like we saw today. 2/
If the programmers running our little simulation were devising an experiment to test whether the Federalist Society is primarily committed to the Constitution - that is, to strengthening the impartial rule of law, rather than of men ... 3/
Read 16 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
5 Jan
I'm thinking of including this in my segment on p-values next sem. Lab-perfect example of p-values not telling us the likelihood that something happened 'by chance'. They tell, at most, relative to a model - in this case a suspiciously vague 'normal'. votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/anomalies-in… Image
It is hard to think straight about such problems, partly due to absolute cosmic unlikelihood of anything, in particular, happening - rather than some other thing. When every event is unlikely - but aren't they all? - you get a sort of one-size fits all cosmic paranoid style .
What do people think of it? I mean: set aside that anyone beavering away at proving fraud is probably severely confabulating at this point, it seems like a nice example of garden variety crude analysis, showing how genuinely hard good analysis of this sort is. Baseline agonistes.
Read 5 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
5 Jan
Trump has taught the Republicans that a level of bald-faced nonsense-on-stilts can be sold, beyond anything our politicians have heretofore contemplated. It isn't just Greene. It's every elected R who is even dipping a toe, which is most R congresscritters by now. 1/
The 'fraud' claims at this point are a tight, normative contradiction, roped to an empirical double-absurdity - not merely an empirical long-shot. Normatively, the fraud-claimers are keeping their options open as to which of two contradictory principles they wish to espouse. 2/
1) the principle that 'all (legal!) votes should count', and any mere formal technicality that stands in the way - like, yes, we went through the counts, and through the courts, many times - is not enough. We need ALL LEGAL VOTES TO COUNT. 3/
Read 14 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
12 Nov 20
theamericanconservative.com/dreher/live-no… The 'live not by lies' crew collides with: people who won't stand for lies. Something's got to give.

What is actually going on in this little playlet? 'Concern about voter fraud among Democrats', as a response to Biden's acceptance, is ... a lie. 1/
And a disrespectful one. In the abstract, sure, somebody's job has to be worrying about voter fraud. But since everyone who has studied it certifies it cannot be - hence isn't - perpetrated at scale, all allegations to the contrary are, ahem, incredible lies. 2/
Now: suppose people on the other side - the leftists - are not willing to live by lies? As seems not unlikely. It's not clear what the punishment should be for living by lies, out loud, in the workplace, like this guy. Maybe everyone else should just roll their eyes. 3/
Read 14 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
12 Nov 20
The dynamic is this: Trump, for reasons financial, legal and personally pathological, is doing his best to trash the room - our constitutional order - before checking out 1 minute before noon on the day, while stealing all the bathrobes and small soaps. 1/
It is notable that the R establishment is, largely, letting him do it. Why? 1) they are afraid of him, since they are afraid of his base. 2) they want the joint trashed but would prefer not to do it so obviously themselves. Reason: they want the country to be ungovernable. 2/
Why? Because they have no plan to govern the country. The R's are a cartel for securing R power, which leaves no time out for distractions like governing. So they don't want to look bad compared to a party - the D's - that aspires to govern. The R's want it totally wrecked. 3/
Read 6 tweets

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