Nathaniel Swigger

I’m just a political scientist living in an idyllic Midwestern town…watching the apocalypse happen

Last Notes

2026-10-27 00:02:24 UTC

Why? Why? Why would you do this? Why would you ever think this was a good idea? Why?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/26/california-sunlight-space-mirrors-satellites

2026-06-05 11:30:26 UTC

Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”
The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”

2026-02-02 00:27:02 UTC

When everyone hates you: https://apnews.com/article/trump-kennedy-center-closing-renovations-c6dba4a46e71b0d0e48d46501195366c

2025-05-06 21:19:10 UTC

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And, holy shit, how bad does a government have to be if FIFA, no seriously fucking FIFA, is like, “yeah we’re out.”

2025-05-06 21:18:09 UTC

So…it sounds crazy…or would have sounded crazy 6 months ago…
But does FIFA decide to just do the World Cup in Canada and Mexico? Like, is the US now more hostile to tourism than Qatar?

2025-05-05 16:28:35 UTC

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I wonder how many people out there are like that. I wonder how many of them are, right now, refusing to admit they made a mistake or did something WRONG
…because it’s all just politics, right?

2025-05-05 16:27:28 UTC

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And I suspect it will never occur to this guy that he might’ve done something, you know, WRONG.

2025-05-05 16:26:18 UTC

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And dad probably is convinced that nothing truly bad can happen to his daughter. That’s not how it works, right?

2025-05-05 16:25:50 UTC

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Of course, this is a young white woman from the suburbs. I would guess her family is comfortable but not wealthy. For a family like that, they will have a lot of resources.

2025-05-05 16:24:58 UTC

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And she was frustrated because she kept trying to explain why she was scared and he would insist that nothing bad or serious was going to happen and that she was being overdramatic.

2025-05-05 16:24:13 UTC

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See, her dad was a Trump voter. I got the impression he was not a flag-waving, rally going type. But he was a Trump voter. The normie Republican, probably a Republican because he’s just kind of been that way his whole life and never thinks about politics type.

2025-05-05 16:22:41 UTC

Story time: This semester I had a student who asked to meet with me to talk about the state of the world. She was anxious about things, to put it mildly.
But she was also really pissed off at her dad.

2025-01-17 13:27:47 UTC

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They’re mad that they will never get to be Batman, never get a Die Hard moment, never get to kill zombies, etc.
They’re mad that no one, absolutely fucking no one, is impressed with their steely man gaze.

2025-01-17 13:26:29 UTC

The “masculinity crisis” is just a bunch of dudes who can’t get over the fact that life isnt an action movie.