We had unusually beautiful weather this weekend, so naturally I spent all day yesterday and half of today playing my first chess tournament in the basement of a Quality Inn: In my second game, my opponent played Bg4 on move 6, which was a big blunder (+6.5 for white). Unfortunately I couldn't find the right move over the board (despite spending a lot of time on it) and ended up losing. I'll post the right move later in case anyone wants to guess.

I thought I was being clever here by playing Re4 to deflect the queen and set up checkmate, but it's actually +7.7 for white I could see Rf8+, but I thought by playing Ka7 I could escape any trouble there. I missed the possibility of a *rook sacrifice*

Republican politicians started strategically calling all accurate historical information about racial inequality "critical race theory" and a lot of media outlets are just uncritically running with the phrase now Even the Guardian is doing it:

I've finally completed my APD scholarly transition from "I can't believe I have to read this much about the post office" to "I'm going to make my students read about the post office" There's a certain set of classic APD books that I honestly found borderline incomprehensible as a new grad student that I now think are much more interesting and it's hard to know exactly how that mental transition happened (or how to make it happen for current grad students).

ahhh I thought people were just joking, but the APSA statement really does speak of an "agreement by both sides to do better and work together"

https://twitter.com/tklemm1994/status/1347980958021144576

I have no idea who wrote the APSA statement, but thousands of political scientists signed an open letter calling for the president to be removed. It doesn't speak for everyone, to be sure, but I think it speaks for more people than the APSA statement does. docs.google.com/document/d/1iL…

The Up series is possibly the greatest thing I have ever seen and I can't recommend it enough.

https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1347640726335614976

I still haven't seen 63 Up because part of me doesn't want to not be able to look forward to watching it.

I finally watched the video and it's astonishing how close they came to breaking into a room where members of Congress had just been.

https://twitter.com/radleybalko/status/1347625680092213249

If you don't want to a see a person get shot, don't watch the video, FYI.

Happy to see a review of my book, World War II and American Racial Politics, in @PoPpublicsphere: cambridge.org/core/journals/… Here's a very succinct description of the book's findings on the extent to which white racial attitudes did—and didn't—change during World War II:

Interesting post (slowboring.com/p/new-deal) and thread about the popularized/simplified version of Katznelson's argument (the thread also brings in Mettler's disagree re: GI Bill) on racism and the New Deal.

https://twitter.com/rortybomb/status/1337413265958297601

Another thing the "Vulgar Katznelsonism" perspective misses is that Katznelson isn't really a critic of the New Deal. He credits it with rescuing liberal democracy, but thinks we should still "brood" about the exclusionary tradeoffs even if they were politically necessary:

The Republican Party is, at its core, the party of business. Business, though, isn't a sufficient electoral base to win elections, so the party has made increasingly illiberal appeals along racial and religious lines to get more votes. And now... GOP politicians seem convinced they'll benefit electorally from supporting overturning the election results, which in some ways is just the culmination of decades of increasingly illiberal appeals. How do you solve a problem like this when the electoral incentives exacerbate it?

Many (most?) practicing Evangelicals believe anyone who doesn't subscribe to their *exact* theological tenets is destined for external damnation. I feel like this presents a lot of interesting, if awkward, questions for normative questions of tolerance, pluralism, and democracy. Look, it's impossible to tweet without weird typos or awkwardly repeating the same word twice, what can I say

I understand why academics are critical of Justice Dems for using that scatterplot to make their argument for more left-wing candidates, but a *lot* of people are arguing Democrats should only nominate centrist candidates with literally no evidence at all. To clarify, yes there is poli sci research finding that extremist legislative candidates did much worse on average between 1980-2010. I just meant there are lots of pundits who make this claim without evidence

https://twitter.com/jonmummolo/status/1325219105629233152

In NC, police are pepper-spraying voters. In TX, Republicans want to throw out ballots in Democratic cities. In PA, the president is saying the courts might disenfranchise enough voters for him to win. I'm not sure what kind of regime this is, but it's not a healthy democracy. This might just motivate anti-Trump voters to turn out at even higher levels. But I think it's important to note that even if Trump loses, it doesn't mean this stuff didn't matter. It's immensely harmful for the country even if it doesn't "work" as planned.

I honestly cannot believe the president of Notre Dame attended a crowded political event without wearing a mask. And now it's being reported that he's positive for COVID-19.

https://twitter.com/NDSMCObserver/status/1312068039475634176

It's shameful, selfish, and frankly embarrassing behavior.

The fact that Trump now has COVID-19—and has probably been spreading it because he doesn't take it seriously or care about other people—is the perfect fucked up metaphor for the modern Republican Party's approach to governance. This is what the politics of pure resentment gets you. The world is a serious place and people need serious politicians. It's just absurd that this is where we are as a country.

I feel like I'm seeing a number of largely unrelated conversations about that "rugged individualism" paper. A lot of them are actually more compatible than some of the authors seem to think! It can simultaneously be true that "the frontier" was created by the mass murder of Indigenous people by the government & also that white people who moved there developed a more individualistic (narrowly defined) culture than those in other regions, which (might have) persisted.

I've been using Twitter a bit less and reflecting on its relative pros and cons. The Pepinsky thing is an extreme example, but... It's striking how often I'll log on after being away for a while and see everyone, even academics, mad about a pretty banal thing a random person they'd never even heard of previously did.

It's Saturday night, so decided to get crazy and look through this:

https://twitter.com/notstevenwhite/status/1295850494515175435

Somehow this New York Times clipping from October 31, 1948, survived

I'm not sure either way, but I am curious why so many people seem confident Kanye being on the ballot is bad for Biden.

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1294680779654664196

Some are assuming a disproportionate number of Black voters would support Kanye, but that seems...questionable.

The president's reelection campaign seems premised on the idea that it is fifty years ago. If Biden keeps doing well in the Georgia polls, the odds are 50/50 that Trump cuts ads accusing him of being soft on segregation.

The Republican turn against higher education correlates with the rise of Trump and is probably elite-driven. I don't see how hiring a few right-wing professors changes this. Because I see some people advocating for this, I also want to note that I doubt it's possible to simultaneously hire more right-wing professors and meaningfully diversify the faculty along racial/gender/etc. lines, especially in an era of budget constraints.