Scholar

Clayton Littlejohn

H-index: 25
Philosophy 48%
Psychology 20%
As a philosopher, I'm trying to learn not to pretend like I'm the one who really knows what all the words mean. Listening to Serious Trouble and the like has been v helpful on this journey.
Cheers--that explains quite a lot, actually. I was relying on this (pp3)
mpdc.dc.gov/sites/defaul...
mpdc.dc.gov
I gave up on dreams of med school because I struggled with Calculus at 17.
Dr Oz: "You'll notice, President Trump, these are discounted from $242 to $10. I don't know what the math is on that. We can't even calculate it. It's too high to calculate."
Was this person wearing the protective gear the police were wearing? Hard to see how chips or a sandwich thrown at someone in protective gear could be an attempt to do injury. (Thought the gear might be relevant from Serious Trouble.) Or does it matter it could have hit unprotected part?
Dr Oz: "You'll notice, President Trump, these are discounted from $242 to $10. I don't know what the math is on that. We can't even calculate it. It's too high to calculate."

Reposted by Clayton Littlejohn

I buy the lottery ticket in order to lose. So while I may lack theoretical knowledge that I lost, I have secure practical knowledge that I’m a loser.
The best bit of philosophy swag I've ever seen is the "Go Grue!" shirt they used to give to visiting speakers.
An interesting paradox. On the one hand, this is patently false:
"There’s also plenty of productive cross-fertilization. Zizek is interested in Saul Kripke"

But it follows from two seemingly true claims:
"There’s also plenty of productive cross-fertilization"
"Žižek is interested in Saul Kripke"
Haha-yes, fair. Flu brain. Couldn't count.
Wow, wow, wow. This has always been legally possible but the law has virtually never been enforced — and now this is the SECOND case I've heard of in the last month (first involving a person with a green card) of a noncitizen being charged for failure to carry their papers.
NEWS: ICE gave a Rogers Park man a $130 ticket for not having his papers on him. They rounded him up last week and eventually let him go, but not without a fine that some critics say is un-American. Trump admin enforcing little-used law
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/i...
ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair…I’m a resident’
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fined Rueben Antonio Cruz $130 for not having his papers with him.
www.chicagotribune.com
I love Ben, but I couldn't let this sentence slide:

"There’s also plenty of productive cross-fertilization. Slavoj Žižek is interested in Saul Kripke"
One day, you'll wake up really sick and you know you won't leave the bed for days. And a few days later, you'll wonder why you didn't come up with a list of things to watch when you are suffering through a flu, cold, etc. Just a reminder that it's best to have that list before, not after.
ICE GOONS, laughing and pepper spraying Pastor after shooting him in the face with pepper balls, proceeded to gas the crowd who were trying to protect him.
About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages
Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.

Reposted by Clayton Littlejohn

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). 

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. 
Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. 
A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
Guessing that Trump has lost all interest in Venezuela now
I didn't even know about the Homeless Industrial Complex
They had nothing to do with MAGA, they were definitely antifa, and I had to pardon them because they were patriots.
Q: There's compelling proof that antifa did infiltrate on January 6 dressed up like Trump supporters and incited violence. Is that something you'd like the new J6 committee to look at?

TRUMP: Well I've heard that. Yeah. We will be acting on some of that.

Reposted by Clayton Littlejohn

Tidal is cheaper than Apple Music & they pay artists more. And the sound quality is SO MUCH BETTER. I actually laughed out loud when I played a track on Tidal and then on Spotify: the difference is that noticeable.

Also v easy to import playlists from Spotify.
Q: There's compelling proof that antifa did infiltrate on January 6 dressed up like Trump supporters and incited violence. Is that something you'd like the new J6 committee to look at?

TRUMP: Well I've heard that. Yeah. We will be acting on some of that.
We probably haven't figured out what Heidegger said yet.
We've definitely figured out what Locke said by now.
My hypothesis is that all the people who say that the 2nd amendment is there to protect freedom and guard against tyranny are in an epistemic bubble and just don't know about Portland and Chicago.
Trey Reed, a student at Delta State University in Mississippi, was found hanging from a noose. Mississippi police ruled the death a suicide. Now an autopsy reportedly concludes that he suffered extensive blunt force trauma across his body before he died, meaning he was beaten before he was lynched.
Kaepernick-Funded Autopsy Reportedly Finds Trey Reed Didn’t Die by Suicide — Family Attorney Ben Crump Hasn’t Confirmed
According to a source who isn't authorized to comment publicly, the autopsy of Trey Reed reveals that his death was not caused by a suicide.
www.blackenterprise.com

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Fields & subjects

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