Nate Ela
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nateela.bsky.social
Nate Ela
@nateela.bsky.social
2.2K followers 640 following 830 posts
Law prof + sociologist thinking and writing about property, land, cities, democracy, sometimes Philly. Posts ≠ speaking for the institution where I work (obvs).
nateela.net | SSRN: bit.ly/ElaSSRN

(Views are mine, not those of any institution.)
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nateela.bsky.social
Someone’s ordering a bunch of pizza near the pentagon…
November 24, 2025 at 4:33 AM
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November 24, 2025 at 4:32 AM
nateela.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 4:31 AM
nateela.bsky.social
Also on the light/zesty tip, fresh cranberry and ginger relish:
November 22, 2025 at 6:28 PM
nateela.bsky.social
November 13, 2025 at 3:15 PM
nateela.bsky.social
Hale, “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State” (1923)
An excerpt from Robert Hale’s 1923 article Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State. The highlighted portion reads: “He must eat. While there is no law against eating in the abstract, there is a law which forbids him to eat any of the food which actually exists in the community-and that law is the law of property. It can be lifted as to any specific food at the discretion of its owner, but if the owners unanimously refuse to lift the prohibition, the non-owner will starve unless he can himself produce food. And there is every likelihood that the owners will be unanimous in refusing, if he has no money. There is no law to compel them to part with their food for nothing. Unless, then, the non-owner can produce his own food, the law compels him to starve if he has no wages, and compels him to go without wages unless he obeys the behests of some employer. It is the law that coerces him into wage-work under penalty of starvation-unless he can produce food.”
October 30, 2025 at 12:09 AM
nateela.bsky.social
#nokings #philly
October 18, 2025 at 6:09 PM
nateela.bsky.social
A NYTimes Article from 2001, with photos of Jed Ela holding an "Ironphone" to his head, and of the phone, which was a clothes iron with a Motorola startac flip phone embedded into the iron's heating surface. The beginning of the article: Weary of Gadgetmania? Just Dial M for Mockery By David F. Gallagher Sept. 13, 2001 IT looks like the result of a miscommunication at an industrial design lab: a household steam iron with a cell-phone keypad and display punched into its metal plate. It's not much use as an iron, but it's a perfectly good cell phone, if a little heavy. Just dial a number and grab the handle as if you are about to iron your face. The Ironphone is the creation of Jed Ela, a 26-year-old artist who recently moved from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Boston for graduate studies. Mr. Ela said he came up with the idea for the phone three years ago, when cell phones were less ubiquitous. ''It just seemed to me that the phone was an appliance that goes in the house,'' he said. ''I knew I wanted to put it in something that didn't normally come out of your house.'' Mr. Ela's project is also a celebration of the surreal, with a historical reference point. He calls it the Cadeau2000 Ironphone in homage to the artist Man Ray, whose 1921 work ''Cadeau'' (French for ''gift'') consists of an old-fashioned flatiron studded with a row of tacks. Like many other Surrealist artists of his era, Man Ray took impersonal mass-produced objects and reconfigured them with a playful twist. The Ironphone has a convincingly mass-produced appearance, but it is the result of painstaking attention to detail. It combines a Proctor-Silex iron and a Motorola StarTac phone, complete with Sprint PCS service. (Mr. Ela said that when he called Sprint to activate the phones, his project elicited some puzzlement. Perhaps, joked Dan Wilinsky, a Sprint spokesman, the company should start alerting customers that ironing with a Sprint phone ''voids the warranty and may scratch your buttons.'')
October 17, 2025 at 3:49 PM
nateela.bsky.social
"A republic, if you can keep it." --Benjamin Franklin's response to Elizabeth Willing Powel's question: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
October 16, 2025 at 12:12 AM
nateela.bsky.social
Kavanaugh Stops everywhere you look these days
From a concurrence by Justice KAVANAUGH, in which he explains in calm and can’t-be-bothered tone that stopping people who look like they’re not from the U.S. is really no big deal constitutionally speaking, since skin color along with other things adds up to reasonable suspicion, and “If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”
October 16, 2025 at 12:06 AM
nateela.bsky.social
One funny thing about Philly is that sometimes they’ll do a ton of fireworks for no apparent reason
Back of a kid’s head, who’s watching fireworks blow up in a night sky
October 15, 2025 at 11:18 PM
nateela.bsky.social
A *lot* could happen between now and Thursday morning, when the court has set its hearing.

We may learn what Pritzker means by Illinois using every lever at its disposal to fight back…
Updates from NYTimes reporters: 10 minutes ago Julie Bosman: Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said the state would use every lever at its disposal to fight back against the Trump administration's deployment of the Texas National Guard to Illinois, which the governor at a news conference called an "unconstitutional invasion of Illinois by the federal government." 16 minutes ago Mitch Smith: In an emergency hearing, a federal judge declined to immediately block President Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago, as state and local officials had requested in a lawsuit filed this morning. She set a hearing for the issue on Thursday. Troops from Texas are on their way, according to a military official.
October 6, 2025 at 7:58 PM
nateela.bsky.social
38 minutes ago Eric Schmitt Reporting on the U.S. military The first group of about 200 Texas National Guard solders is en route to Chicago, a U.S. military official said on Monday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday federalized 400 members of the the state's National Guard, with the support of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, to support federal law enforcement officials in Chicago and Portland.
October 6, 2025 at 4:13 PM
nateela.bsky.social
Crazy to think someone in Pritzker's office has run tabletop exercises, some perhaps leading not just to standoffs in court but also on the I-55 bridge from MO to East St. Louis, w/ IL guard blocking TX guard.

Less likely, but perhaps more fitting, if that were to happen at Fort Defiance.
A civil war map of the city of Cairo, IL and Camp Defiance, with accompanying text that reads "Camp Defiance was commissioned in 1861 to provide defense against a potential attack from the Confederacy. A line of sentries was posted along the Mississippi River levee upstream 20 miles form Cairo. Boats were stopped and searched for goods being shipped south the to rebels. Forty pieces of artillery were in position and 5,000 men were being trained at the site. The Illinois Central Railroad stopped in Cairo and reportedly could provide 50,000 men in 24 hours' notice if provoked by the South."
October 6, 2025 at 4:03 AM
nateela.bsky.social
Classic pena ajena…
An explanation of what a Spanish phrase means in English: Pena ajena Das pena ajena = I feel embarrassed for you. I experience your embarrassment vicariously. You make me cringe.
October 3, 2025 at 2:11 PM
nateela.bsky.social
Fun and inspirational (and a bit of whiplash given news of the day) to see Jeff Rosen’s new song cycle at the @amphilsociety.bsky.social, based on Franklin’s twelve virtues to live by in the pursuit of happiness. With a bonus song cycle on the Greek gods, in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan!
September 9, 2025 at 1:14 AM
nateela.bsky.social
POTUS and the VP come out in favor of war on a US city, and extrajudicial killing by the military of alleged criminals.
September 6, 2025 at 4:01 PM
nateela.bsky.social
Weird that Blue Cross just sent out this email about how the updated Covid vaccine is one I and all adults should really get, as CDC has recommended, when… it’s apparently no longer recommended by CDC and won’t be available wo an rx in my state

🤷‍♂️
From an email from Independence Blue Cross: “2. Updated COVID vaccine The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all adults receive an updated COVID vaccine. Then you'll be less likely to get sick. And if you do get COVID, you're likely to have a milder case. That means you'll experience less severe or fewer side effects, including fever, chills, sore throat, cough, fatigue, muscle and body aches, and new loss of taste or smell. You may need an additional dose if your immune system is compromised. Or you may need two doses if you haven't gotten vaccinated against COVID yet. Who needs it: All adults, especially those with underlying conditions or who are immunocompromised. If you've never been vaccinated or haven't had an updated dose, it's especially important. When to get it: Ideally, you should get your shot as soon as the updated vaccine is available, especially heading into cold and flu season. Ask your doctor for the best timing based on your health and previous doses.”
September 2, 2025 at 7:11 PM
nateela.bsky.social
YMMV but just looked for covid vaccine at a PA Walgreens and got this. I guess they’re waiting on… CDC? 🙄
August 29, 2025 at 8:05 PM
nateela.bsky.social
Having grown up in the Midwest, it almost feels like being back home to spend a few hours trying to sleep on the floor at O’hare after a cancelled flight.
August 12, 2025 at 6:25 AM
nateela.bsky.social
Ok so now I’m wondering what it means that SSRN is liking a GIF like this…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SSRN account hit like on a GIF that says “I hate it here!” which was a reply to my satirical comment about AI generated manuscripts getting submitted to law reviews
August 7, 2025 at 2:03 PM
nateela.bsky.social
The singularity is (still) near…

just have to turn the rest of the country into data centers and by 2045 we’ll be able to upload ourselves and become the borg
Image of the cover of The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
August 5, 2025 at 1:48 PM
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King’s College.

Call it like it is (again).

Ashamed if not surprised to see my dear Alma Mater lead the way toward autocracy, rather than fighting the good fight.
July 24, 2025 at 12:54 AM
nateela.bsky.social
FWIW the guy putting up the umbrella reminds me of the classic Iwo Jima photo
July 24, 2025 at 12:32 AM
nateela.bsky.social
Can report that the northern border is as secure as ever. Not even a stray orange can slip through on the always-already delayed Amtrak train.
July 11, 2025 at 7:14 PM