Charles Mathewes
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ctmathewes.bsky.social
Charles Mathewes
@ctmathewes.bsky.social

I teach religion & ethics @ UVa
I'm mostly here to find books & articles I don't yet know about
Sometimes also interested in opinions, but not as often as many of you seem to believe

Philosophy 35%
Political science 31%
'The Pete Davidson Show,' a weekly video podcast, premieres later this month on Netflix—get details.
The Pete Davidson Show Weekly ‘Podcast’ Sets Netflix Premiere
'The Pete Davidson Show,' a weekly video podcast, premieres later this month on Netflix—get details.
dlvr.it
NPR @npr.org · 1d
The death toll from nationwide protests in Iran has surpassed 2,500, activists said, as Iranians made phone calls abroad for the first time in days Tuesday. n.pr/4aSM6uK
The death toll from a crackdown on protests in Iran jumps to over 2,500, activists say
The number of dead climbed to at least 2,571 early Wednesday, as reported by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, as Iranians made phone calls abroad for the first time in days.
n.pr

Psychologists good here, but Plato also analyzed the tyrannical soul (esp as depicted in a character like Thrasymachus) v incisively.
Or Augustine's "libido dominandi", the lust to dominate that's also the lust THAT dominates.
Tyranny & abuse of power are among the oldest stories in the world, alas
🙃

Back when Cage was known for "The Rock" and "Raising Arizona," I wouldn't have expected him to be so amazing. Things changed for me with "The Pig". I'll look forward to this!

Is this a bad AI?
ICE kidnap 17-year-old U.S. citizen working at Target then dump him bleeding and crying miles away in a Walmart parking lot… 🤬

I wonder if Walt & others will learn from this or just spring back to earlier views after Trump departs
Mostly see people slowly realising that structural conditions or rational behaviour can't explain everything

Very true
Mostly see people slowly realising that structural conditions or rational behaviour can't explain everything
Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show.

She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms.

(Published June 2025)
Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations
A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirem...
www.propublica.org
The Norwegian Nobel Prize committee has been forced to make a statement, declaring that the prize cannot be transferred.
It's hard even to comprehend how stupid this has become
Continue to think that saying “abolish ICE” without explaining how you’ll enforce the law is a trap, but boosting this
"YouGov has ICE at 39% favorable, 52% unfavorable...But this top line really understates the intensity of public backlash to ICE and its tactics. In February 2025, just 19% of Americans held a strongly unfavorable view of ICE. Today, 40% do."

open.substack.com/pub/gelliott...
Support for abolishing ICE hits a a new high
Americans have turned sharply against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and say it too often resorts to violence
open.substack.com
"YouGov has ICE at 39% favorable, 52% unfavorable...But this top line really understates the intensity of public backlash to ICE and its tactics. In February 2025, just 19% of Americans held a strongly unfavorable view of ICE. Today, 40% do."

open.substack.com/pub/gelliott...
Support for abolishing ICE hits a a new high
Americans have turned sharply against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and say it too often resorts to violence
open.substack.com
There’s a non-zero possibility that this sort of epistemic closure is a big piece of the male crisis in America.

This is a good thing to acknowledge
Yoel Roth, @yoyoel.com, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, points out that In Covid’s Wake misleadingly quotes an essay of his (ch. 4, fn 65). He is right. My error (not my co-author's). I have apologized to him, and do so now, again.
Yoel Roth, @yoyoel.com, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, points out that In Covid’s Wake misleadingly quotes an essay of his (ch. 4, fn 65). He is right. My error (not my co-author's). I have apologized to him, and do so now, again.
The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.
An ICE agent shot and killed a person in Minneapolis on Wednesday, federal authorities said. The shooting in a residential neighborhood comes days after the Trump administration ramped up the agency’s presence in the city. Follow live updates. nyti.ms/4qgGgYU
In the video in the post, you can see that the officer can clearly get out of the way of the vehicle, at first doesn't, pulls his firearm and continues to shoot as the driver has already driven past him. bsky.app/profile/bnon...
NEW: Second video shows ICE shooting in Minneapolis. A woman, a U.S. citizen, was killed
NEW: Second video shows ICE shooting in Minneapolis. A woman, a U.S. citizen, was killed
"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato."

surreal times

dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...
Texas A&M Bans Plato - Daily Nous
Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide. That's a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy a...
dailynous.com

Early Roman Kings is great
"Hmm, I wonder what Dylan's single most-played song of the last 12 years is…"

FFS
"Hmm, I wonder what Dylan's single most-played song of the last 12 years is…"

FFS
My favorite evidence that congestion pricing in New York has reshaped peoples’ behavior: we can see a surge of people trying to enter the zone before the price kicks up at 5 a.m., and after it decreases at 9 p.m.

Boom
Dan Bongino has departed FBI, per statement
Dan Bongino has departed FBI, per statement

First tragedy, then farce, then fan fiction by a schizophrenic with ADHD
Time to reup the real National Security Strategy:
a man and woman are sitting next to each other in a church .
ALT: a man and woman are sitting next to each other in a church .
media.tenor.com