William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
@marxinhell.bsky.social
Political theorist in Montreal, via Custer, Lubbock, New Underwood, Rapid City, Northfield, State College, and WashPa. Free Palestine.
I had a good writing day yesterday -- over 3000 words.
...but it was all on a letter to the advisory committee on the re-appointment of McGill's president, so it didn't really help me get closer to finishing this book!
...but it was all on a letter to the advisory committee on the re-appointment of McGill's president, so it didn't really help me get closer to finishing this book!
February 5, 2026 at 11:50 AM
I had a good writing day yesterday -- over 3000 words.
...but it was all on a letter to the advisory committee on the re-appointment of McGill's president, so it didn't really help me get closer to finishing this book!
...but it was all on a letter to the advisory committee on the re-appointment of McGill's president, so it didn't really help me get closer to finishing this book!
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
I mean, all of these analyses present correlation as causation. The entire year of this has made me feel like I was taking crazy pills. Their response has been “ah you’re obsessed with complex academic minutiae like this ivory tower idea that ‘correlation is not causation’”
basically yglesias, jain, jentleson, WelcomePAC donors etc all base their prescriptions for Dems on a statistical model that nobody can replicate, and refuse to acknowledge (a) that uncertainty dwarfs the detectable effect of moderation & (b) that the last year has proved their views wrong!!
February 4, 2026 at 1:34 AM
I mean, all of these analyses present correlation as causation. The entire year of this has made me feel like I was taking crazy pills. Their response has been “ah you’re obsessed with complex academic minutiae like this ivory tower idea that ‘correlation is not causation’”
Everyone should go read the list of members on Wikipedia.
February 3, 2026 at 12:00 PM
Everyone should go read the list of members on Wikipedia.
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
This is an outstanding data post - a model of using data to answer a tricky and controversial question in a thoughtful and convincing way.
DoorDash Discourse is entirely wrong.
Since the pandemic, percent spending on groceries are up, food away from home is down, and this is especially true for young people. Trends point to food affordability being a real problem.
Dig into the CEX with me!
newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/stop-blami...
Since the pandemic, percent spending on groceries are up, food away from home is down, and this is especially true for young people. Trends point to food affordability being a real problem.
Dig into the CEX with me!
newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/stop-blami...
Stop Blaming DoorDash for the Affordability Crisis
One DoorDash Discourse to rule them all: Food away from home is down. Groceries are up. This is especially true for young people. Affordability is a real problem.
newsletter.mikekonczal.com
February 2, 2026 at 8:02 PM
This is an outstanding data post - a model of using data to answer a tricky and controversial question in a thoughtful and convincing way.
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
And joined trumps board of peace
This is the U Penn donor who helped push the President out, pushed to eliminate arts & science offerings, and drafted Trumps "compact" with universities.
People like Rowan repeatedly claimed the moral high ground to impose their agenda on students and faculty.
People like Rowan repeatedly claimed the moral high ground to impose their agenda on students and faculty.
Top Apollo Global Management executives including chief Marc Rowan held wide-ranging discussions over the firm’s tax arrangements with Jeffrey Epstein throughout the 2010s www.ft.com/content/092d...
February 1, 2026 at 9:44 PM
And joined trumps board of peace
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
ONE DAY LATER Larry Summers fleshed out his complaints in a Washington Post column
February 1, 2026 at 7:42 PM
ONE DAY LATER Larry Summers fleshed out his complaints in a Washington Post column
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
The emerging narrative from the people who worked for Biden seems to be "we debased ourselves repeatedly and violated our own laws for Israel and Israel won't even say thank you".
Interesting admission by Biden administration official and Kamala Harris NSC advisor earlier today
January 31, 2026 at 8:00 PM
The emerging narrative from the people who worked for Biden seems to be "we debased ourselves repeatedly and violated our own laws for Israel and Israel won't even say thank you".
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
8. Weiss's project is creating an Operation Paperclip for Epstein's cronies. Taking a group of discredited men and rehabilitating them as necessary pillars of system. Dershowitz and Peter Attia are the Wernher von Brauns of reactionary centrism.
January 31, 2026 at 9:30 PM
8. Weiss's project is creating an Operation Paperclip for Epstein's cronies. Taking a group of discredited men and rehabilitating them as necessary pillars of system. Dershowitz and Peter Attia are the Wernher von Brauns of reactionary centrism.
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
I would say that is the most pathetic thing I have seen, but I am afraid that would be kink shaming
February 1, 2026 at 2:00 AM
I would say that is the most pathetic thing I have seen, but I am afraid that would be kink shaming
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
jeffrey epstein is the kevin bacon of Horrible People Who Somehow Control The World
January 31, 2026 at 4:32 PM
jeffrey epstein is the kevin bacon of Horrible People Who Somehow Control The World
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
As a side note, it’s funny to see so many of these emails with thirsty academics repeatedly enact Marx’s bit in the 1844 Manuscripts about the power of money. “Oh Mr Epstein, your house in New York is enormous and, unrelatedly, your questions at dinner were so intelligent, so insightful, so deep.”
![That which is for me through the medium of money - that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) - that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money's properties are my - the possessor's - properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women.
Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness - its deterrent power - is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet.
Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: is. - Ed.] power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:myqic77tkmdhmaufgkvj43hr/bafkreidpuxbx764xh7vobavcnvs3v2lo5fnfi6dukfrmk3ygxmseznkyxi@jpeg)
January 31, 2026 at 4:05 PM
As a side note, it’s funny to see so many of these emails with thirsty academics repeatedly enact Marx’s bit in the 1844 Manuscripts about the power of money. “Oh Mr Epstein, your house in New York is enormous and, unrelatedly, your questions at dinner were so intelligent, so insightful, so deep.”
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
Despite a nominal ceasefire, Israel has carried out some of its deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months, killing at least 30 Palestinians, some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza kill at least 30, with death toll expected to rise
Attacks, which killed women and children, come day before border crossing is due to open in Gaza’s southern most city
www.theguardian.com
January 31, 2026 at 12:48 PM
Despite a nominal ceasefire, Israel has carried out some of its deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months, killing at least 30 Palestinians, some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Scandinavian transplant cultures FTW
Chris Rufo is so upset about the Minneapolis protests that he is resorting to anti-Nordic racism christopherrufo.com/p/the-curse-...
January 31, 2026 at 1:27 PM
Scandinavian transplant cultures FTW
I just reviewed an otherwise very good book by a respected academic that included a single sentence about there being good evidence that Hamas deliberately exaggerates the death toll from Israeli attacks, and then cited a Jerusalem Post story where the IDF was the only source and all evidence...
According to a Reuters report about how senior officials in the Biden admin ignored or even blocked evidence of forced starvation in Gaza from being published, McGurk would ask USAID why their reports weren't identified to Israel's.
"The question was always like 'where are all the skinny kids?''
"The question was always like 'where are all the skinny kids?''
January 31, 2026 at 1:07 PM
I just reviewed an otherwise very good book by a respected academic that included a single sentence about there being good evidence that Hamas deliberately exaggerates the death toll from Israeli attacks, and then cited a Jerusalem Post story where the IDF was the only source and all evidence...
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
Drop Site claims that an Arab government was informed that attacks on Iran could commence as soon as Sunday, local time, and "would not be limited to nuclear or missile sites but also target regime change"
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Military Tells Key Middle East Ally to Prepare for Attack on Iran
In addition to military targets, Trump is considering strikes on senior Iranian leaders with the aim of spurring the overthrow of the Iranian government.
www.dropsitenews.com
January 30, 2026 at 7:22 PM
Drop Site claims that an Arab government was informed that attacks on Iran could commence as soon as Sunday, local time, and "would not be limited to nuclear or missile sites but also target regime change"
Making public the mysteries of government is good praxis.
Wild that there was an open lane called "what if we just explain things clearly to people?" and he's the first one to ever fill it
The City’s Budget is our future. And you deserve to know how it works.
January 31, 2026 at 12:59 PM
Making public the mysteries of government is good praxis.
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
"After using his knowledge of decision-making and behavioral economics to convince his girlfriend to marry him" would have been a serious contender for top 20 worst sentences in the Epstein files but somehow it's on a university website instead
January 31, 2026 at 2:59 AM
"After using his knowledge of decision-making and behavioral economics to convince his girlfriend to marry him" would have been a serious contender for top 20 worst sentences in the Epstein files but somehow it's on a university website instead
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
Popularism
70% of all Harris voters in 2024 and 65% of all self identified Democrats believe Israel has committed genocide
60% of Democrats believe Israel kills children intentionally and whopping 77% overall have a negative view of Israel.
60% of Democrats believe Israel kills children intentionally and whopping 77% overall have a negative view of Israel.
January 31, 2026 at 6:53 AM
Popularism
He's right, it's not a zero-sum world. Abolishing billionaires would also make Yglesias sad, so it is very much a win-win scenario.
January 31, 2026 at 12:20 PM
He's right, it's not a zero-sum world. Abolishing billionaires would also make Yglesias sad, so it is very much a win-win scenario.
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
Put another way one of the main reasons Israel gets so much attention relative to other countries, even other MENA autocracies the US backs, is because both the political elite that defends it and its dissidents in the US treat it like it is an exceptional case, or even appendage of the US.
100%, I think it's indisputable that the American political class has had a Europeanness-centered affinity for Israel to the point that it exempts it from rules otherwise applied and that in reverse much of the nascent rebuke against it has been sourced merely from inversion: Europeanness is bad.
January 29, 2026 at 11:34 PM
Put another way one of the main reasons Israel gets so much attention relative to other countries, even other MENA autocracies the US backs, is because both the political elite that defends it and its dissidents in the US treat it like it is an exceptional case, or even appendage of the US.
Someone to look up to.
CNN reporting that a week before Alex Pretti was killed, 5 agents tackled him and he suffered a broken rib. CNN says he stopped his car after he saw ICE agents interacting with a family on foot and began to blow his whistle. Source tells CNN Pretti believed “That day he thought he was going to die”
January 28, 2026 at 11:42 AM
Someone to look up to.
Reposted by William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸
New: DHS now says that two weeks of missing surveillance footage from ICE's Broadview Detention center isn't "missing," it was never recorded in the first place and thus can't be produced in an abuse lawsuit. An utter shitshow:
www.404media.co/dhs-says-cri...
www.404media.co/dhs-says-cri...
DHS Says Critical ICE Surveillance Footage From Abuse Case Was Actually Never Recorded, Doesn't Matter
Court records reveal the incredibly sad state of ICE's evidence retention systems.
www.404media.co
January 27, 2026 at 4:42 PM
New: DHS now says that two weeks of missing surveillance footage from ICE's Broadview Detention center isn't "missing," it was never recorded in the first place and thus can't be produced in an abuse lawsuit. An utter shitshow:
www.404media.co/dhs-says-cri...
www.404media.co/dhs-says-cri...
Going to be wearing my Give Ilhan Omar a Gundam T-shirt today.
January 28, 2026 at 11:18 AM
Going to be wearing my Give Ilhan Omar a Gundam T-shirt today.
These ICE and CBP agents are subject to their own wishful thinking. The agent who executed Pretti was a 10 year veteran, iirc. So was the guy who executed Good. These "experienced ICE agents" are in deep denial, saying "it couldn't be me" when it could absolutely be them.
January 27, 2026 at 11:43 AM
These ICE and CBP agents are subject to their own wishful thinking. The agent who executed Pretti was a 10 year veteran, iirc. So was the guy who executed Good. These "experienced ICE agents" are in deep denial, saying "it couldn't be me" when it could absolutely be them.