Nathan Tankus
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nathantankus.bsky.social
Nathan Tankus
@nathantankus.bsky.social
34K followers 750 following 4.3K posts
President of @crisesnotes.bsky.social (crisesnotes.com)

Book: [About Undetermined], under contract with Viking Books

email: crisesnotes@gmail(dot)com

Signal: NathanTankus.01 (only for reporting... Okay on weekends you can confess crushes)
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nathantankus.bsky.social
Olivia Nuzzi when a mediocre white guy in his 60s starts running for president:
November 18, 2025 at 2:55 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
The new @crisesnotes.bsky.social office sign is adorable
Description: red cardboard with the writing "Appreciate the Notes on the Crises Office? Leave a Tip! Venmo: @crisesnotes Zelle: crisesnotes@gmail.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:51 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
November 16, 2025 at 9:58 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Its especially telling that the 73 oil crisis didn't raise airline fare CPI much above overall CPI but the 1979 Iran crisis did.

there are complicated quality adjustments in these numbers though that would need to be disaggregated and unpacked.
November 16, 2025 at 9:56 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Jeffrey Epstein's review of 2011's "Inside Job"

"it is very unfair, and misrepresents tons of inf"

journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/doc...
November 14, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeee
November 5, 2025 at 1:24 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Appreciate the shout out from @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social in his new paper

scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcont...
November 4, 2025 at 3:35 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Fact check, Cuomo is lying. Only one member of the rent guidelines board has an unexpired term and that is the end of 2026.

rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/about/board-...
October 22, 2025 at 11:31 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Fixed the annoying venn diagram typo a couple people pointed out.
October 15, 2025 at 7:12 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
October 15, 2025 at 6:59 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
October 15, 2025 at 6:59 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
I am very happy with this Venn Diagram. I think it captures a lot of complicated legal issues quite well. I definitely will be reusing it regularly.
October 15, 2025 at 4:30 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
This piece comes with this nifty Venn diagram I am quite happy with. The interesting question remains- when does the White House go for spending without appropriations.
October 15, 2025 at 2:13 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
I'm finally back from being sick and putting the finishing touches on a piece about government shutdowns. Out in 6 hours. You won't want to miss it.

www.crisesnotes.com#/portal/signup
What the Hell is a Government Shutdown Anyway? The Accounting Gimmicks at the Heart of the Federal Budget
October 15, 2025 at 4:44 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
a) Historian, not anthropologist

b) you missed one of the books
October 14, 2025 at 8:35 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Note that the people who typically participate in Black blocs know this. Contrary to the impression of tons of liberals,people generally do Black blocs strategically. David Graeber discusses this quite a lot in "Direct Action An Ethnography". There is a direct line to inflatable frogs from Ya Basta!
THIRD EXAMPLE: STREET PARTY Direct action aims to confront what it sees as an unjust or illegitimate form of authority in a way that, in its very internal structure, suggests a viable alternative to it. Actually, the same is probably true, in some sense, of protest in generaL The result, as we've seen, is that it's often difficult to determine how much any given action should be seen as primarily a performance meant to make an impression on an outside audience, and how much it is better seen as a collective ritual meant to educate, inspire, entertain, and transform the sense of possibilities of the participants themselves. Certainly, there is always a little of both. But some types of action lean much more heavily towards one than towards the other. If picket lines lean very much in the first direction-they are primarily about communicating a message of defiance to specific opponents, and convincing a broader audience to act in solidarity-street parties might be said to represent the opposite extreme. While they are certainly intended to make a political statement or achieve a political end, they are also designed to afford participants every possible opportunity to enjoy themselves. lhat element of pleasure-above all, of collective, social pleasure-is really the main point. Even insofar as those taking part in a street party are trying to impress an audience, they are doing so in such a way as to blur the boundaries, not to draw lines in the sand. Onlookers are offered a show, with music and jugglers and clowns. The ideal is for the pleasure of the experience to become infectious, so that the audience spontaneously finds itself drawn in, to either mentally or, better, physically enter the festivaL This element of pleasure is considered a crucial to what makes new forms of protest new-almost as much as principles of self-organization and autonomy. In activist circles that year, Ya Basta! had something of the quality ofa Next Big Thing. Probably, this was most of all for their spectacularly innovative tactics: members of the group were famous for covering themselves in all sorts of elaborate padding, made from everything from foam rubber sheeting to rubber ducky flotation devices, combining it with helmets and plastic shields, so one looked like some kind of futuristic Greek hoplite, then topping the whole thing with gas masks and white chemical protective suits. The idea is that, so suited up, there's relatively little the cops can do that will actually hurt you. Of course, you are rendered so clumsy there's probably not that much you could do to hurt anyone else; but that's kind of the point. Its exponents claim the tactic is rooted in a new philosophy of civil disobedience. Where the old-fashioned, masochistic, Gandhian approach encourages activists to hold out their willingness to let the police beat them up as a sign of moral superiority, the "white overalls" proposed an ethos of protection: as long as you refuse to harm others, it is completely legitimate to take whatever measures necessary to avoid harm to yourself The costume also makes one look rather ridiculous, but that's kind of the point too. Ya Basta! columns would often play on it by, for instance, attacking police lines with balloons or water pistols. What really impressed a lot of activists in America, though, was that such groups had a real social base.
October 14, 2025 at 2:45 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
This is not true and the latest scholarship has overturned such ideas. Actually, as it happens, @stephaniekelton.bsky.social's husband Paul Kelton is a prominent and important scholar in this area. Highly recommend his work.
Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715 Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation's Fight against Smallpox, 1518–182
October 14, 2025 at 12:45 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Its pretty amazing to see a monograph I got through FOIA nearly two years ago become an important citation in a monumental case before the Supreme Court.

www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...
Howard H. Hackley, The Status of the Federal Reserve System in the Federal Government (1972)...................................................................................... 3
September 30, 2025 at 11:12 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Finished my slides for my talk at John Jay today.
The Federal Reserve Under Trump: A Unitary Executive Crisis A talk from Nathan Tankus
September 29, 2025 at 11:35 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
No description of this interview can prepare you for its relentless insipidness.
Sunstein: But part of my fondness for Hayek was fuelled by a book he wrote about John Stuart Mill. It’s really a collection of letters between Mill and Harriet Taylor, his wife. Some of these letters are from before they were married. It’s kind of scandalous. And Hayek was really into it. There’s a lot of passion there. That makes me love Hayek. Also, it’s a book about freedom. Why would he do the book? It’s a book about freedom between two people who loved each other. Chotiner: Hayek talked about disliking “Near Eastern” students because they were “fundamentally dishonest.” He said that he had a “profound dislike for the typical Indian students at the London School of Economics, which I admit are all one type—Bengali moneylender sons.” Sunstein: I didn’t know about that. Wow. Hayek was a very complicated figure.
September 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
FINALLY finished this piece I've been having trouble writing.

Catch it tomorrow.
www.crisesnotes.com#/portal/signup
Lisa Cook V. Donald Trump is At the Supreme Court. What Now?
September 23, 2025 at 7:22 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
also, frankly, people who say "i tried to cancel and you kept charging me" in public social media replies have 100% of the time not actually followed the directions to cancel subscriptions. At the bottom of every email is a "manage subscriptions" button.
September 23, 2025 at 1:27 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
I'm in the Paul Weiss Wikipedia!! For this!! (also I live in NYC and the article was written in August, not April)

The Chairman's Wikipedia too! This is so funny

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul,_W...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_S....
September 20, 2025 at 6:52 AM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Extremely interesting piece from a former fact checker at the New Yorker which includes the information that David Remnick prevented the use of the word genocide in their coverage because he personally didn't believe it was a genocide.

bidoun.org/articles/hou...
Around four months into the war on Gaza, scholars of genocide were reaching a consensus that what was happening in Palestine was a genocide, the crime of crimes, and I waited for the magazine to say so, too. I tried to talk to the editor-in-chief about using the word in our coverage, but he said he didn’t think it was a genocide. The word’s conspicuous absence led me to suspect that he had prohibited its usage among the editors. This was a notable exception to the accepted epistemology; a few months into the job, I overheard another checker cold call an addiction scholar to confirm that gambling was, in fact, addictive. But I did not have it in me to keep fighting. I justified this to myself by saying that the war machine would not be halted by any linguistic alteration I might make in a magazine mostly skimmed over by American suburbanites while they pooped.
September 16, 2025 at 6:18 PM
nathantankus.bsky.social
Man this NY Post cover rocks. Welcome to the resistance Comrade Kathy
COMRADE KATHY Cowardly gov backs defund police and antisemitic socialist Mamdani for Mayor
September 16, 2025 at 5:38 AM