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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1h

The Dahl On Democracy text or sections of it are also pretty approachable for students, with some guidance. I use it regularly with my v advanced high schoolers, who are mostly pretty comparable to above-average undergrads.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1h

The reverse engineering is that Kavanaugh is trying to import half-understood ideas from the affirmative action context into a totally different legislative context, and one in which those time-limit ideas have never been floated in the first place. Really hard to follow.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1h

I honestly still use Dahls On Democracy and its somewhat high level and abstract definitions as a way to think about what constitutes a democracy (and which can be eroded to destroy one), but it doesn’t have the systematic or concrete effectiveness of like, V-Dem or the ziblatt-levitsky approach.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 2h

A program like this is going to run smack dab into epidemic breakdown as it tries to define who qualifies under this schizophrenic set of categories and qualifiers if it actually tries to use them systematically so it won’t, it’ll just be regime favor-granting all the way down.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 4h

Taking students to Philadelphia in early November and am starting to get worried that the shutdown is going to keep us from visiting Independence Hall etc. sigh.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 12h

Thanks! I had enjoyed the piece but never did a deep dive on it like this, great info!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 20h

Not surprising in topic or content but surprising in aesthetic form - at least when I was very young decades ago, a song so relatively recent blended in with surprising stealth alongside songs from the 1600s and 1700s.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 20h

Honor Harrington was a damn fine sci-fi mirror for Horatio Hornblower, I'd give my right arm to get an equally interesting sci-fi mirror for Sharpe's Rifle's books and/or television adaptation.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 20h

That is so delightful! I found Boiled In Lead in Nice Price Books & Records in Raleigh somewhere around the age of 16. I am so glad that they're all still out there making interesting music with good people. Thanks for the genuinely heartwarming music history anecdote, all too rare these days.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

Wait as a very much non-local who stumbled into them decades ago due to public radio and being a curious young person growing up in the American sout, now I want to now what you mean by this…

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

Ah! It took me a minute but I think I finally found the ultimate song which nails this particular aesthetic pocket universe. The Foggy Dew has been around in one form or another since the 1810s, but the Easter Rising song is barely 100 years ago and its most famous Sinead O'Connor version barely 30.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

if someone gave the clearance to do it we could teach a cracking fantastic basic poli sci / advanced civics course for 24-26 weeks and then bootcamp students into the AP exam for like, 4-6 weeks and do fine, but no one is bold enough to give clearance so we live in cowardice on the railroaded track.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

Final note in same vein: almost everything Boiled In Lead's ever done makes me go look up origins of what I've been listening to, because their style confounds genre convention and boundary that unless you're paying attention it's often hard to tell whether their inspiration is centuries or decades.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

Same vein continued: Roll Northumbria (The Dreadnoughts) sounds like a long-standing shanty but is totally original! While Byker Hill is as old as trees but every damn version of it I've heard sounds strikingly modernized and emotive.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

Examples of the same vein-ish: The Wind That Shakes the Barley comes from the mid-19th century but feels older, and the exceptionally recent Dominion of the Sword (by Melrose Quartet) sounds like a throwback but basically never explicitly refers to anything after 1970.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 22h

Isn't this part of the problem with an app whose success state is "you no longer need the app because you're in a happy, stable relationship"? It NEEDS ruinously high fees to operate because the more effectively the app operates, the less time its users stick around.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 22h

Is there any music video that is as directly, piercingly introspective about America and its national identity/ideology as Rammstein dared to be in "Deustchland"? Not that I like or agree with everything that band's done/stands for, even in that song, but it seems a daring and unusual artistic act.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 23h

Seriously trying to find a way to show Garland's CIVIL WAR in semester 2 of my political philosophy & theory class, where we turn from mostly reading fundamental works to exploring modern theory and application, from Dahl to Levitsky. Not sure what the right theoretical frame to make it work, tho.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1d

So those State is highlighting here are under US jurisdiction because of physically being present here, as opposed to people currently residing outside the US, for whom denial of visa based on political views wouldn't present 1st Amendment problems? I think that's a good analysis, just being clear.

Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1d

One point I've always had a hard time responding to is that people residing abroad applying for visas don't have a speech right against the US government, so viewpoint discrimination on visa applications may be bad policy but it's not unconstitutional. Any insights on how to address that point?

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1d

“The people who operate the social media” are a pretty tiny subset of people, though. Which is what makes it hard to judge the degree of assent they’re enjoying from their peers/readers/fellow partisans.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1d

This is a policy for which the very old term “blowback” was practically invented. Presidentially discretionary strikes were dangerous enough under the Obama framework, this new system would let any nation claim any offshore ship may pose a security threat, claim law-of-war, sink it. Lusitania shit.

U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says

www.nytimes.com

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1d

I’ve really never gotten a gauge on how far this problem goes though, whether it’s a smallish vanguard bunch who are like this or whether it’s a really substantial (40-60%) portion of, say, primary voters and party volunteers (esp those who are under 40).

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 1d

Andrew Johnson asked to buried with a copy of the constitution wrapped in a flag under his head! For all his many, many, many awful problems he had a kind of vision for a civic constitutional system, albeit an exclusionary one I reject. Trump is just a screaming void of egotism and will to power.

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Jake Berman @lostsubways.com · 1d

the basic problem of suburban municipal finance, in a nutshell:

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