pjw

Philosophy lecturer and political activist

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Specialize in metaethics, ethics, and philosophy of perception. Dabble a bit in political philosophy.

In my spare time I fight (mostly offline) against Israeli apartheid, and, unfortunately, in recent days, against genocide. Also a member of the Footnotes Collective (https://sites.google.com/view/pjwerner/home)

90% post in English, 10% Hebrew

Pronouns: He/him, אתה, הוא
Languages: English, קצת עברית
Politics: Leftist without Adjectives
Professional Website: https://sites.google.com/view/pjwerner/home

Public Key

npub1fz5vg6c4d8wqn9tmjvrcysare8unxwucr8ask0m2kae4xtvp40mq3r2qjw

NIP-05 Address

pjw_at_social.coop@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsy32xydv2knhqfj4aexpuzgw3un7fn8wvpn7ct8a4twu6n9kq6hasprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntrzdxw8

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1fz5vg6c4d8wqn9tmjvrcysare8unxwucr8ask0m2kae4xtvp40mq3r2qjw

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Last Notes

2026-10-27 20:20:36 UTC

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What this means:
Without breaking any promises, no coalition can be formed without Arab support - and in fact, probably support from *both Arab parties*.
If the Eisenkot bloc ditches Lieberman, they could form a coalition with the Arabs. That would be my preference; its unlikely, but possible.
Or
We go to new elections
Or
Eisenkot or someone else breaks their promise and forms a government with Netanyahu. This would be political suicide *unless*, as is likely, a return to war with Iran seems to necessitate a 'unity' government (precisely why this result makes a return to war with Netanyahu still temporarily in charge *much more likely*)

2026-10-27 20:16:27 UTC

Averaging the exit polls, here are the initial results (You need 61 to form a government):
Netanyahu Bloc:
Likud/Netanyahu - 25
Shas - 7
UTJ - 6
Jewish Power/Otzma - 6
Religious Zionists - 6
TOTAL = 50
Anti-Netanyahu Bloc:
Yashar/Eistenkot - 22
Together/Beyahad - 13
The Democrats - 9
Lieberman/Israel Beteinu - 8
TOTAL = 52
WILD CARDS:
Ra'am/United Arab List - 7
Joint Arab List - 10
The new parties - Reservists, Haredi Public, and Ofer Winter's Amcha right wing party - none passed the threshold.
#IsraelElections

2026-10-27 13:33:12 UTC

What is the most consistent misconception among the Western liberal public, including political leaders (at least in their public facing statements) about this election?
The narrative in the mainstream international media is that the problems of the previous years in Israel have been unique to Netanyahu's coalition. The mainstream international media wants a relatively simple story to explain to their audience. And they want their audience to have a clear horse to want to win. So they try to make artificial parallels between Israel and other places. Often this gets sold as 'the populist extremist' vs. 'the sane centrist choice'.
In Israel, this is a very misleading description of what is at stake in this election.
1/4
#IsraelElections

2026-10-25 19:02:59 UTC

Two dogmas that pervade the way analytic philosophers do philosophy that are increasingly bothering me*:
1. Treating and assessing arguments as existing in a complete cultural, social, and historical vacuum.
2. The dogma that if something cannot be precisely measured or precisely analyzed/defined, it doesn't exist.
* I am certainly in most important senses an analytic philosopher, or at least a philosopher working in and trained in the analytic tradition, but I think we could do better with respect to both of these things without giving up the essence of what is good about analytic philosophy.
#academicchatter #philosophy #academicphilosophy #analyticphilosophy

2026-10-10 08:44:48 UTC

Tired of "But how is this *philosophy*" questions in my courses, I decided to add a new appendix onto my advanced level and M.A. course syllabi. I think it captures my thinking well in general about philosophical methodology:
A Note On Philosophical Methodology
If you’ve looked at the syllabus, you will have noticed that some of the articles we will be reading and discussing in this course are not “proper philosophy”. I want to preempt questions about this by briefly saying a bit about how I approach and think of philosophy. Reasonable people - and some of your other professors - disagree about this. So you should think for yourself what you think about this. But I want to at least explain where I’m coming from.
Philosophy is a relatively unique discipline in that there is no consensus on the proper methodology for addressing philosophical questions. Indeed, some have even argued that this is what makes a question philosophical.
1/3

2026-10-05 21:18:49 UTC

So much of the people with so much power nowadays from the LLM boom are people whose ideology (Effective Altruism, Rationalism, hell even the Zizians) traces back to these like weird distortions and twists on stuff originally from analytic philosophy. I wish I could somehow use my background in analytic value theory to sort through and explain some of this stuff in a public facing way. But there are so many people who are more informed about the tech and the social networks of those folks, which are probably more dangerous and interesting regardless of those ideas' origins, that it doesn't seem worth the effort.
Oh well. If anyone needs any tutoring of background on this stuff for any writing or other "content" you're working on, I offer my services free of charge.
Sincerely, Your analytic ethicist friend

2026-10-05 10:54:50 UTC

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I have tried excel before, I didn't find it as useful because of the unwiedlyness.
I will consider Emacs, but as the last remaining very non-tech savvy person on Mastodon, it would go against my instincts!

2026-10-05 08:36:14 UTC

I have a question for the academics out there.
I'm working on a project that will either become several papers or a book manuscript. (I have the big picture of the view sketched out.)
At the moment, I am in a very reading-heavy phase of my research. I keep running into things - small sections or even sentences that I'll want to quote or return to for very specific things that I won't be writing about for months or perhaps even over a year. In the context of writing a single paper, I'd generally just have a document where I would have a working list that was like
"On X, see [Author 2014, p.8], [Author 2012, sect. 4]
On Y, see... "
This was never really ideal since I'd have to go through the document manually when I needed to find out where I'd read something. But it was manageable because it was for a single paper.
But its going to become unwieldy to use the same method for a book-length project.
How do people do this?
#academicchatter #academia #research #philosophy

2026-09-24 13:35:21 UTC

I'd like to think Sextus Empiricus was trolling when he made the first 13 chapters of Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1-3 pages and then suddenly chapter 14 is like 25 pages. It's like a meta-argument against induction.
#philosophy #academicchatter

2026-09-23 11:48:50 UTC

The official process to attempt to strip Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of their Israeli citizenship has begun. I don't know how much of this will really go somewhere vs. how much of this is just an election year stunt.
What I do know is that the mainstream so-called "Opposition" politicians in Israel have not said a word about this. Not while the family homes of Abraham and Szor have been vandalized, nor when their lives threatened on Channel 14 (Israel's equivalent to Fox News) The only public support Abraham and Szor have received has come from fellow filmmakers and some journalists.
Not a great feeling to see born-and-raised Israelis' citizenship being potentially stripped as someone who has a less secure visa status but thinks that NAZA will go down as an incredibly important documentation of war crimes and genocide in Gaza from the perspective of the perpetrators.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/09/21/netanyahu-backs-legislation-that-would-strip-naza-makers-of-citizenship/

2026-09-06 15:28:14 UTC

Archipelago? More like archipelaGO to the polls, right?

2026-08-29 18:07:31 UTC

The settler movement in the West Bank has escalated once again: This afternoon they kidnapped a UK citizen who was documenting them vandalizing Palestinian property. He was dragged away to a settler outpost from Umm al-Kheir, a Palestinian village under siege for years (and where a Palestinian was shot to death point blank last year).
The best case scenario is that he has been taken by the police for deportation proceedings. But we don't know.
We have documentation of the kidnapping. If there are any journalists or people who know journalists who would like more information to report on this, feel free to reach out to me, I will respond as I can.

2026-08-25 13:32:47 UTC

RE: https://social.coop/@ideogram/117155905147237723
This is the way that the current government is acting, and the way that Foreign Minister (Israel Katz) of Israel is speaking, in an election year.
That means that not only is this shameful behavior going on, it means that the government in charge has concluded that this is *popular* and supported among the Israeli public.
Further support for that: None of the opposition parties have spoken out against this, or Katz's comments.
#note1nhk…9qu4

2026-08-21 19:27:18 UTC

If Woke 1 is so great, how come there isn't...oh

2026-08-17 08:46:18 UTC

Hey all,
This is a question I know the Fedi can shine at:
I'm running a workshop on consensus based decision making, and I want to make a card game of sorts to help people practice the important skills for building consensus.
As a first pass, there will be a bunch of cards with various dietary and ability-based restrictions - both allergy based and ethically based. Each participant will draw one (or more) cards. Then they'll draw a city. Then they will each (with a facilitator) role play finding a restaurant to all meet for a dinner together in that city in a way acceptable to all.
I think the eating case is easy enough to ensure the possibility of success, but also will require a *bit* of work at finding consensus.
But now I want to think of other kinds of group decisions that will be more challenging and political but are also articulable using the card-based system.
Any ideas?
#consensus #games #sociocracy #pedagogy

2026-08-13 21:46:05 UTC

As someone working between moral psychology and ethics, the empirical issue I keep running away from is what we (as humans) can do about our seemingly innate tendency to sort people into in-groups and out-groups, and the moral implications that has for power, oppression, dehumanization, and even just opportunity hoarding.
It seems clear that humans as a species are quite flexible with respect to which features we use to in-group/out-group, but the features we see across space and time, while quite varied, all look pretty morally arbitrary.
And unlike in most cases where I'm default optimistic about social and moral norms changing, in this case I see no evidence that it's possible at least across something as large as a community or society.
#philosophy #ethics #academicchatter

2026-08-10 18:46:29 UTC

If an academic has tenure and makes a living wage, is it (generally) ethically permissible for them to paywall their public academic writing (e.g. Substack)?
(Boosts for reach appreciated!)
#academicchatter #academia

2026-08-09 07:04:09 UTC

Hi academics and general dorks,
I'm in the market for a new e-reader. I want something minimal - black-and-white, e-ink - I only use my e-reader for reading, not as a tablet. But it needs to be nice for PDFs alongside epubs.
Any feedback appreciated!
#academia #academicchatter #reading #eink

2026-08-01 01:00:20 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@army_talk_fascism/117017306854840085
I swear, this account is too consistently on point with respect to the American administration that I really need to find the original document and just read it straight through.
#note124d…cq73

2026-07-27 12:12:54 UTC

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I don't fool myself into thinking that this is the worst experience at an airport that people commonly have.
Israel is a country that has apartheid laws and has plausibly committed a genocide. People in the US are being kidnapped off the streets for speaking Spanish or just being brown. A bit of harassment at the airport is nothing.
I guess the reasons I want to share this story are twofold
(a) Selfishly, I wanted to vent because I am angry.
(b) I know on a place like the Fediverse I'm largely preaching to the choir, but...I'm a straight white guy from the United States. I have felt and continue to be one of the most privileged people in the world. And this small taste of what it is like to be treated, time after time, as an inherently suspicious person, is (ironically and self-defeatingly from the hegemony's standpoint) radicalizing in a way that is hard to articulate.
6/6

2026-07-27 12:04:46 UTC

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Then I was asked to pull my shirt up. Then he said that I have to take my pants off - not all the way off (so its fine!?), just to drop them below my knees. He rubbed my legs. He waved something around my genitals. He - more gently, in fairness - patted around my genitals.
At no point did anyone tell me why I was selected for this treatment. Perhaps there was some indication that I had a weapon. I wish I could believe that I thought that was the most likely explanation. But the truth is that, while I don't think this is explicitly recognized in the individual minds of the security workers, this - the vast majority of these procedures - is about sending a message: You are a guest here. You are here because we *let* you be here. Don't get comfortable. Don't start fooling yourself into thinking you are one of *us*. You are suspicious because of your identity alone, and short of marrying an Israeli or becoming Jewish, you can't change that.
5/n

2026-07-27 11:59:48 UTC

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Today, things seemed to be going well. The initial interrogation was light. I spoke enough Hebrew to, I guess, show that I'm an adopted member of the 'in-group'.
The secondary screening started well also. The security agent was treating me like a human, was not asking me weird and personal questions, and it seemed like I was going to get through unscathed.
The metal detector didn't go off. The body scan thing didn't seem to react any differently from any other time. The "shoe scan" machine clearly said "OK" in bright green letters.
Suddenly I was told to follow someone. First we went to another room, where I had to take my shoes off (the shoes that had just been given the 'Ok'). Alright, whatever - you have to do that in the US as standard practice anyway.
Then I was told to follow two men behind a curtain. The man began to firmly rub down my chest and stomach, piece by piece. Then my back. Then I was told to spread my legs so that he could do the same to my legs.
4/n

2026-07-27 11:50:48 UTC

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Twice I have needed to speak with the security agent's boss because of stickers that I have on my laptop. Once it was a sticker that said "From Gaza to Sderot (an Israeli city near Gaza), children want to live" (it rhymes in Hebrew). Another time it was a sticker that said "There is no democracy with occupation".
It's humiliating and degrading in a way that is extremely difficult to articulate, and instead of becoming desensitized to it, I find anger building in me more and more each time I go through the airport. One time I made the mistake of mouthing off to the supervisor ("Is it illegal to have a political opinion in Israel? I'm just trying to figure out why I'm deemed a threat."). (That was a mistake, but I still managed to escape without an arrest or something.)
I know others who have had their phones confiscated - taken to another room to do God knows what kind of analysis. - These are not necessarily activists or political people, by the way.
3/n

2026-07-27 11:45:44 UTC

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I have traveled out of Ben Gurion probably 30 times at this point - so my report here is anecdotal, but with quite a bit of anecdata behind it.
If you are lucky, the initial interrogation can be relatively normal - 'did you pack your own bags?' etc. If you are unlucky, you end up answering all sorts of questions about people you know from random places - as I used to live in Jerusalem, I was often asked 'do you know anyone on the *other* side of the city?' i.e. East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of Jerusalem. Where did you meet these people? What's the most recent time you spoke to them? Let me look at your Whatsapp. etc.
Similarly with the secondary screening. If you are lucky, they wave a wand over a bunch of your stuff, make sure there is no 'bomb juice' (or whatever it is those things scan for) and let you go. If you are unlucky, they take everything out of your luggage and begin interrogating you about various items - where did you get them? why are you taking it? etc.
2/n

2026-07-27 11:41:03 UTC

Today I was subjected to my first strip search (not fully nude, but underwear).
Ben Gurion airport in Israel, as with many things in Israel, is (in)famously a high security area in a state dedicated to the most sophisticated practices of security theater that I've ever known.
Ironically, in the context of the airport, Jewish Israelis are not aware of the security apparatus working there. They flash their passports and are waved to a security zone like any you would find in the EU.
After some initial interrogation (why are you here? Who do you know here? Do you have any Iranian friends? Arab friends?), most foreigners are sent to a line with smoked windows, along with largely Palestinian women and families.
[I do not know, and I fear I do not want to know, the experience/line of young Palestinian men unaccompanied by children.]
Both the initial interrogation and the secondary security screening vary a lot from experience to experience.
1/n

2026-07-19 13:30:21 UTC

I think Mitch McConnell is very unwell but I do not believe he has passed away. I am in the minority in Mastodon on this, so I'm posting this as a record for my future self, when we all find out what's actually happening (if that ever happens)

2026-07-16 09:38:21 UTC

I hate that we live in a world where I literally don't know what percentage of this from Vance is antisemitism and what percentage of it is legitimate. Unfortunately, Israel's track record with shit like this makes this overwhelmingly plausible, even while it plays into the hands of the 'global Jewish conspiracy' folks, because the Zionists and the antisemites have successfully convinced us all to conflate Israel with Judaism in our heads.
https://jewishinsider.com/2026/07/vance-alleges-israeli-influence-campaigns-manipulating-american-public-opinion/

2026-07-14 12:21:21 UTC

I only saw this now but really nice piece by instance-mate and comrade @npub1y5s…673k in +972 about Hebrew language, Zionism, and identity:
https://www.972mag.com/hebrew-israel-decolonize-zionism/

2026-06-30 20:31:04 UTC

Tomorrow, I plan on reading this new UN report on Israel's targeting of children in Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem):
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-23jun26/
Is anyone interested in a thread 🧵 on the report, and if so, what questions or issues would you like to see drawn out that may not have been discussed in the mainstream reporting on the report?

2026-06-28 12:05:40 UTC

This is a genuine question, not a vent:
Catching up on the Prairieland stuff, as well as the slow hum of complete and overt rejection of public opinion in the case of data centers in the US [my focus here is on complete and overt rejection contra democracy, not on the data centers per se]:
How do you get the political centrist/casual politics person to understand how bad this is? I feel like if I'm talking to extended family, explaining what happened in Prairieland or whatever, they'll say 'ah well I'd never be out protesting an ICE center/I'd never have anarchist literature/etc. so it isn't relevant'.
But even if you are a mainstream centrist today, shifts of the Overton window can change that, and we know this from history.
I just don't know how to explain this in a way that actually gets them to understand why this stuff matters. Thoughts?

2026-06-26 13:24:58 UTC

This stuff boils my blood, probably even more than it should.
I know I'm largely preaching to the choir here, but I've spent the last 20 years hearing from Loyal and Proud Democrats that, if I want the party to move to the left, I need to shut my mouth during the general elections and push my favored candidates only in the primaries.
When I started doing that, e.g. in Bernie's 2016 campaign, I was told I was actually 'shooting myself in the foot', because we need to nominate candidates that are electable in the generals, which, shocker, always happens to be the milquetoast centrist.
Now the DSA is surging, and the tact has shifted again: Now we aren't supposed to critique Dems, nor can we primary them; instead, we are just unwelcome in the party.
[Of course, 'create your own party' is just a way of removing our voice completely from the electoral system, given first-past-the-post + Duverger's Law]
I love my liberal friends, but what the fuck, y'all.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/democratic-rift-partys-future-widens-lefts-new-york-victories-rcna351737
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/816/597/904/368/458/original/a0d3d74aaf8e148b.png

2026-06-20 15:43:31 UTC

#Linguistics #Linguists !
Linguistics people, I desperately need your help! I am trying to find work on the semantics of sentences which make cross-domain comparisons. For example:
"She is a good lawyer but an even better philosopher."
"I love you more than I love pizza."
"I'm much better at pretending I understand you than I am at actually understanding you."
Even just know the name of these damn things would be incredibly useful, but if there's serious work on the semantics and pragmatics of them, it could be immensely helpful to me.
#philosophy #linguistics #academicchatter

2026-06-18 08:43:15 UTC

I know there aren't nearly as many philosophers as there should be on the Fedi, but I must share this anyway because I'm proud.
JV and I's new article is out in Mind(!). It took five years from initial discussions to publications, but I think it might be the best paper I've ever been a part of writing. And its open access!
We are hoping that a version of the paper becomes one of the two central chapters in our book, on perception's role in evaluative and moral epistemology and moral psychology.
"Moral Perception and the Looks Objection: An Empirical Approach"
https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mind/fzag016/8708910
#philosophy #ethics #academicchatter

2026-06-17 22:39:17 UTC

"The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war, by signing this MOU, declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon."
This is the first point of the memorandum of understanding. Straightforwardly read, and given that Israel is an extremely close ally of the US, it suggests an ending of Israel's occupation of the southern part of Lebanon.
Israel has said they will do no such thing. If their argument is that they weren't party to an agreement that binds them, that's on the US. But the Israeli regime is nervous to openly disagree with Trump. So my guess is they'll argue the occupation doesn't count as ongoing military action.

2026-06-17 14:47:11 UTC

Will the future be laughing at us because of the Looney Tunes' depiction of the Tasmanian Devil the way we make fun of medieval depictions of lions?
I'll take my answer off the air

2026-06-16 14:05:10 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@rasterweb/116748854104178602
Beautifully said
#note1dpa…kw86

2026-06-12 15:40:55 UTC

Sorry I haven't posted in so long, I've been busy utilitymaxxing so I can virtue-mog on some no-cap-simping Kantcels.

2026-05-31 18:47:27 UTC

Today I am watching the Rabbinical ordination of a dear friend of mine who I won't dox but I am incredibly proud of;
We have laughed together, we have discussed theology (Jewish and Christian) together, and we have stood with Palestinians (literally) in the face of settler harassment and violence.
It's a reminder, for me, of what needs to be repeated to those who follow Palestine who are not personally connected to people on the ground here: Israel is not Judaism, and Judaism is not Zionism. Don't let the antisemites convince you otherwise, whether they are Christian Zionist Evangelicals, Right Wing Jewish Zionists, or misguided pro-Palestinian leftists.

2026-05-21 08:20:05 UTC

When English speakers say "Bon Appétit", are they speaking French or English?
Obviously the phrase is French in origin, but the question is whether the pattern and frequency of usage of "Bon Appétit" in otherwise English-speaking contexts entails that it is now an English word loaned from French, like "apostrophe" or "fiancé"

2026-05-20 13:49:32 UTC

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF/116606390500783662
Ok I know this won't come as a shock to many of the Mastodon crowd, but this is a really nice and digestible example to share with friends about the garbage-in-garbage-out problem that arises with LLMs trying to complete certain tasks, even tasks we would expect it to be good at:
#note1hyj…wt37

2026-05-18 08:20:16 UTC

I have a random and weird question for people who live in Europe who use men's bathrooms:
Do you have women cleaners, perhaps often immigrants, who enter and clean the bathroom while people are in the process of using it? Or do they close the bathroom while they are cleaning it or replacing things?

2026-05-16 11:37:40 UTC

The anarchist reading group 'round these parts is looking for suggestions on stuff to read about prison abolitionism. I've got Angela Davis and Joe Sim on the list - other recommendations appreciated!

2026-05-13 20:02:45 UTC

It's like I'm talking to the man himself
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/569/044/830/859/765/original/369af832df74bde6.jpg

2026-05-13 13:42:59 UTC

Forget about your desert island books or desert island movies: what's your desert island app? (Let's assume you have data, but only for this specific app. And let's assume getting off the island isn't possible, you're imprisoned there or something)

2026-05-10 22:02:24 UTC

The difference between self-care and selfishness is not nearly as clear cut as self-help gurus and tiktokers would have you believe.
So too with concepts like grit (vs. victim blaming), 'setting personal boundaries' (vs. being unwilling to compromise), and other such ideas.
That's not to say that these ideas are not incredibly important and useful; rather, it's to say that simply describing some behavior as one of them is not some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card.
Limiting one's time reading the news so as not to be depressed all the time? Self-care. Being intentionally completely oblivious to the suffering going on around you? Selfish.
So where is the line? Don't let anyone suggest that the answer to this question is simple.

2026-04-28 13:47:16 UTC

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116482058600382543
I can't imagine the difficulty of diaspora Liberal Zionist Jews who have not been following the news (or the history!) closely in the last few years. Antisemitism is real, and on the rise, and so it is easy - especially when everyone in your faith community agrees - to dismiss criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Some of it surely is. On the other hand, it cannot be stressed enough that this society, whether it once was liberal (I think no, but intelligent people think otherwise), is fascist. The 'opposition' to Netanyahu is less corrupt than Netanyahu, but no less morally diseased. This country is on a very very bad path. Innocent people are dying on a daily basis. Palestinian children are blocked from going to school. Every day a new outpost, even illegal under Israeli law, much less international - and nothing is done.

2026-04-18 13:44:47 UTC

Mastodon seems like a good audience for this question:
I am very early on a tentative de-googling journey (or I should say 'google minimizing', given work and co-author stuff).
Most of my google uses seem relatively easily replaceable, BUT:
Google Maps is just excellent for public transit. I live in a place with pretty decent public transportation, and I can just type in the place I want to go and Google gives me the live fastest way to get there.
As far as I know, none of the FOSS alternatives do this, is that right? Or am I missing something?

2026-04-17 11:13:33 UTC

The market is completely rational, the market is completely rational, the market is completely rational
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/419/744/027/234/639/original/ece5307964fcb11f.png

2026-04-16 21:11:22 UTC

Here's a book I would love to read and wish someone would write:
Each chapter is about the last civilian to be killed in a war. It would contain a biography of the person, their contributions to society, dreams, effect on their family, etc.
Then a brief recapping of the end of the war in which they died, with an emphasis on how and why it didn't end sooner - either years or months sooner, but even hours sooner, as the case may be.
I think the contrast between a very humanizing and individual identifying story with the stupid and egotistical reasons wars don't end sooner would really let it sink in how selfish our political leaders are.

2026-04-11 13:34:36 UTC

Someone is killed in a war in Eritrea, in Ethiopia, in Lebanon, in Israel, in Iran, in Myanmar.
I understand the human psychology behind why this wouldn't affect someone emotionally nearly as deeply as someone dying of your own nationality, or in your own community. I don't love it, but I understand it (and I am the same way).
What I don't understand is how this manifests so deeply in the more 'reflective' and 'analytic' part of geopolitical discussions, from the local bar all the way up to the highest echelons of power.
We let ourselves get so caught up in national allegiances and geopolitical power struggles that it becomes like sport. If the US gets concessions from Iran, they've 'won'. If Israel gets concessions from Lebanon, it was a 'smart' war.

2026-04-03 19:50:39 UTC

"The Iron Dome has eliminated Israelis’ fear of war.
A technology designed to preserve life has fostered a sense of near-total immunity, turning the catastrophe of war into a tolerable disruption if not a sterile consumer product — something absorbed into daily life with indifference, somewhere between the evening news and a food delivery.
When fear of war recedes, so too does the public’s motivation to bring it to an end. In this environment, technological security does not shorten wars but helps sustain them as a permanent condition."
https://www.972mag.com/iron-dome-intercepting-normal-future/
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/342/497/182/866/039/original/ca2bdc101e04caf2.png

2026-04-01 20:13:32 UTC

Whatever else you might say about this open letter, it makes me irrationally happy that even the Presidents of nations can't figure out how to get the end of sentence punctuation to work in word when switching from a right-to-left language and a left-to-right language.
https://xcancel.com/drpezeshkian/status/2039418009052119190#m
(This joke will only be funny to a small subset of people, but I stand by it!)

2026-04-01 13:44:43 UTC

Happy Passover and חג שמח פסח to all. Judaism is not Zionism, and War is not Liberation.

2026-03-29 19:31:19 UTC

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/war-likely-wouldn-t-last-long-rumsfeld-1.366648

2026-03-28 11:13:12 UTC

Anarchists, academics, general interested political folks!:
I'm looking for writings on the importance of political imagination for political progress.
I feel like I often come across this kind of thinking in passing in radical literature (e.g. 'even just asking the question about what a world without prisons might look like itself makes it possible'), but I don't know that I know of an essay or book length defense of its importance. Ideas?
#politics #anarchism #leftism #ideology #theory

2026-03-25 15:09:01 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@gl33p/116290380775230055
Sometimes people will get up in arms about the criticism of someone doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but it is important because how we think of a problem shapes what we consider an adequate solution to that problem!
#note1xvs…60tm

2026-03-21 14:30:19 UTC

One of the things I hate about this US-Israel/Iran war is that I am not even sure what I should be hoping for.
On the one hand, if the US/Israel stop now or soon with the regime still intact, they are sure to continue to rule with an even stronger iron fist, to continue executing protesters, and to become more extreme. They also have every reason to now pursue a nuclear weapon (which it was unclear they were pursuing before, or whether they were using it as an implicit negotiating chip).
On the other hand, if the regime, unexpectedly, collapses, the most likely result seems to me to be a Syrian-style Civil War, causing death and destruction and possibly leading to an even more oppressive regime in charge of that land. On top of that, a failed state would be a point of gloating for Netanyahu and the Israeli regime, who doesn't really care about the Iranian people, their pleas to the contrary not withstanding.
1/2

2026-03-10 20:55:38 UTC

- reply

But in the last three years (and much longer, in fits and starts), these events happen so often, and are so common, that Israelis will forget this happened in a week, and even the Lebanese (other than those directly affected) will forget in a few months, replaced by whatever fresh horror the IDF unleashes on them. And there were probably dozens of massacres like this in Gaza in the last three years, each one incredibly important, devastating, and worth its own in depth study and remembrance. And the vast majority of them will never be recorded as anything other than a brief paragraph in the archives, another statistic. It has been said that one person's death is a tragedy, but the death of many is a statistic. But these 41 people who died aren't even a statistic. They are a statistic within a statistic; the statistic of the number of massacres like this happening all over.
And you and I will forget it happened.
2/2

2026-03-10 20:53:42 UTC

https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-ron-arad-nabi-chit-9054b777cb2d853e9a58cd65a71adb12
The killing of 175 girls in Minab by the US was horrendous. But I also can't stop thinking about this. In Joe Sacco's 'Footnotes from Gaza', one thing that comes out in that book is that the two massacres he is researching are extremely difficult to research simply because (a) there have been so many massacres and they all blend together in survivors' minds and (b) the amount of massacres make it such that things like this are forgotten or set aside as 'minor' in the grand scheme of things.
These 41 people died for the sake of a (failed) attempt to gather one person's remains who probably died 30 years ago. I'm guessing that many other graves were defiled in the process. It is a tragedy that deserves widespread remembrance and mourning; for its story to be told.
1/2

2026-03-09 11:26:14 UTC

CompleteManuscriptMarch2026FINAL-REAL-PT3(2)ACTUALLYTHISTIME-sendthisone.docx

2026-03-09 10:23:13 UTC

Fun fact for you academics out there: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote his PhD in political theory under the supervision of David McLellan. McLellan, in turn, was supervised by Sir Isiah Berlin. So Araghchi is Isiah Berlin's academic grandson!

2026-03-03 09:57:15 UTC

It's interesting to watch the objectives of the bombing of Iran mutate across time and geographical location.
In the US, the administration has already pulled back from regime change talk as a goal, and is now talking only about eliminating Iran's nuclear program and missile threat. (Note that this is in some sense already a revocation of the 'promise' Trump made to the Iranian on-the-ground movement to overthrow the regime.) The US administration would 'welcome' a regime change, but it isn't their goal (anymore).
From the Israeli powers that be, we are still hearing talk of regime change, even from Netanyahu.
My current theory about what's going on is this: The Americans realize that they can't bring regime change without more expense, time, and manpower (and lives lost) than they are willing to give. They want to rewrite their promises so that they can say they succeeded.
Netanyahu wants a big win in an election year, so he needs the stronger messaging.

2026-03-01 21:53:00 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.green/@sagilca/116154652482764085
Different Iranians - even those opposed to the current regime (which has killed tens of thousands) - have different views from Sahar. But many also share her view.
It isn't surprising that Iranians are not a monolith. But I think Delijani's quote here is crucial to illustrating why vehemently opposing this war of choice is not a moratorium on how bad we think the Iranian regime is.
#note1jna…4s5e

2026-03-01 16:29:39 UTC

A question for researchers - boosts are *much* appreciated!
tl;dr: I'm trying to find (or create, if need be) methods for approximating the moral weight given to different deaths in the current war with Iran.
Longer post:
This week I planned to return to work after a week off. But now I can't really focus because of frequent missile sirens. However, before the war started, I had already began work on a paper for which I thought this might be a good time to try to get some 'back of the napkin' (or better!) data which can help to illustrate the phenomenon I am trying to give a philosophical analysis of.
What I'm looking for is differences, both quantifiable and qualitative, in the ways that different deaths are covered in the western media. For example: I'd love to somehow gather the stories and ways that the school bombing in Minab (Iran) and those poor girls' deaths is being talked vs. Israeli citizens vs. American soldiers vs. the migrant worker death in UAE.

2026-02-28 22:40:20 UTC

- reply

Rousseau famously said that the first man who built a fence around something and said "this is mine" was a criminal, responsible for humanity's downfall.
Well I say that whoever put fences around big plots of land and said "this is ours and we are a People, legally and morally unrelated to those on the other side" were criminals of this kind writ large.
Can there be a world without nation-states? I don't know. But we certainly could work toward a world where your national identity was more like your hair color and less like a core defining feature of your political and ideological loyalties are.
Maybe this is all stupid, uncharitable, and oversimplified. It's very possible. After all, I haven't rested all day because fucking missiles are dropping around my fucking house.
2/2

2026-02-28 22:34:13 UTC

Today has been so incredibly exhausting. I have been in and out of the bomb shelter I think 10 or 11 times. Will I finish this post before it happens again? I don't know.
I'm so tired of wars of choice, I'm tired of calculations being framed in terms of geopolitical power struggles and not human lives. I'm tired of nation states and people loyal to them. I'm tired of overly simplistic "well that man bad so enemy of him must be good" thinking. I'm tired of the passive dehumanization of the media and our leaders. I'm tired of being told my anxiety attacks are for some stupid fucking "noble greater good". And I'm tired of the so-called sensible European leaders blaming Iran and calling for them to deescalate a situation which was escalated, very explicitly and proudly, by the US and Israel. And I'm tired of Israelis and westerners in my midst paying no mind or care to the possible years of turmoil for Iranians.
1/2

2026-02-17 14:48:04 UTC

As I was reading the latest depressing news about Chomsky and Epstein's connections, I was thinking about that old 'Harper's Letter' about how the youths are destroying free speech.
Tons of people who signed the letter are in the Epstein files. I'm not sure if it is more depressing if it is connected to Epstein in some way, or if it is just that Epstein was *so* well connected that the overlap between older liberal elite academics and Epstein just makes the overlap between Epstein and signatories inevitable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Letter_on_Justice_and_Open_Debate

2026-02-16 22:41:06 UTC

Was at a protest (against evicting 60 Palestinians in East Jerusalem under an apartheid law) and I don't know who's idea this was, but it was great:
In Jerusalem, a *very* right wing city in a very right wing country, there are always people screaming at us (that we're traitors, go to Gaza, I hope Hamas kills you, etc.). It gets very tense, and once in a while becomes a situation of physical violence. But someone gave a bunch of people at the protest stickers and candy to hand out to counter protesters, and it confused most of them so much that they just kind of stood there, puzzled, and walked away!
The one exception was a teenage boy, but my suspicion is that the candy made him feel like we were infantilizing him or something.
I don't think this strategy will work sustainably, but I think it can work for a short while. I pass it along to any other activists! (Again, not my idea, but a good one)

2026-02-11 21:04:49 UTC

I have a general question and a specific instance of it:
General: Where do y'all learn about some field that you want to understand, or parts of which you want to understand, if you pick up a textbook and it's too advanced or formal?
Specific: Anyone around these parts know a lot about Reinforcement Learning and can answer a few specific questions I have about it that aren't clear to me from this textbook I'm reading?
#academicchatter

2026-02-06 16:37:14 UTC

Unsolicited advice for academics or others wanting to expand their thinking:
Of course your results may vary, but reading two non-fiction books on two very different subjects at the same time (not literally simultaneously, like one chapter of each per day or whatever) sometimes seems to make my brain draw all kinds of higher order connections between even unrelated third things that go beyond what is explicitly in either text. Its kind of exhilarating!
#academic #academicchatter

2026-02-03 10:46:24 UTC

Solidarity is life.
"In Minneapolis, organizers rarely have to fret about ideological incoherence because we all know each other...We share the same sound equipment, the same screen printing materials, the same twenty dollars we Venmo back and forth ad infinitum. This is a small city. Everyone either knows someone who’s been kidnapped or knows someone who is grieving...We need to work in coalitions because there aren’t enough of us to operate effective campaigns alone."
https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/ice-on-ice/

2026-01-23 13:15:26 UTC

This film was just banned from a screening in Israel so it promises to be good
@npub1ful…yysf https://rss-parrot.net/u/newlinesmag.com/status/1769119157299606790

2026-01-19 15:24:07 UTC

President Putin continues to try to explain the "SIX-SEVEN" craze to President Trump
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/115/922/447/373/059/448/original/63a94d0d3d3caa41.png

2026-01-18 12:06:33 UTC

Will there ever be a time in the future in which a world with human beings and relatively modern technology exist but there is no more war?

2026-01-14 17:38:20 UTC

I am cheering on the Iranian protests and grieving the thousands - possibly 10,000 - murders already committed by the regime in an effort to silence them (along with the internet black out).
But this is wholly compatible with the view that other governments, who are interested only in geopolitical chess and not actual freedom for the Iranians, need to stay out of it.
Humanitarian wars have a long and almost universally tragic history.

2026-01-08 19:30:18 UTC

Hi!
We're starting a project to teach philosophy in prison around these parts. Do you or someone you know have any experience with this? If so, please DM me or email me (you can find my email on my website)!
Have philosophers in your timeline? Please boost!
#philosophy #teaching #prison

2026-01-08 12:55:02 UTC

Do I have to?

2026-01-07 08:55:54 UTC

There's a certain kind of philosophy student who really wants to make it be that all of the philosophers, even those who explicitly disagree with each other, are right. And try as they might to make it all fit together, they almost always end up saying incoherent things.
This drives the philosopher in me crazy - its ok that smart people are wrong and disagree with each other! These questions are very hard!
But the anarchist in me kind of loves the stubborn attempt to find consensus.

2026-01-07 03:20:21 UTC

Just because something is the most important political issue of the day to *you* doesn't mean that anything else done or discussed is some Machiavellian political conspiracy to distract from that issue.
Keep posting about Epstein, genocide in Gaza, etc! They're important! But stop acting like that means that nothing else could actually, genuinely matter to people.

2026-01-05 21:06:46 UTC

I find it inarticulably bizarre that Nicholas Maduro and Luigi Mangione are, as we speak, in the same building.

2026-01-05 20:06:00 UTC

Resist your urge to just kneejerk answer this question in a cynical way, I'm asking about your reflective, considered view.
Of course there is a lot of interplay between both, so try to meet me halfway despite the options being pretty reductionist (or explain more in a comment!):
What does more work in explaining the other:

2026-01-03 09:31:09 UTC

"In Columbus they were shopping on the first day,
the first official day of war
It's so easy being oblivious, and it's easy being self-absorbed
inside of 80 different stores and coffee shops
The whole world's not like yours"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It9gqDQNX6s

2025-12-30 10:10:09 UTC

#palestine #gaza #solidarity
Hey all,
Want to assist someone in Gaza but don't have money to spare, only time?
I'm trying to compile (for a friend, but it eventually could hopefully be useful more generally) a list of scholarships and funds available and fitting for Gazans who are looking to study in the UK.
I'm of course doing some digging myself but, strength in numbers and all of that! So please paste in this thread anything you find and I'll compile!
PLEASE SHARE !

2025-12-23 10:12:14 UTC

"Nothing can be red and green all over at the same time" is like this nice throwaway example of the synthetic a priori. But I have this history of it haunting me because I came across it in a time in grad school where I was adamant that there is no synthetic a priori knowledge but I couldn't deal with this case.
Now, for fun, I thought: Would it be physically possible to design an iridescent surface that is wholly red or wholly green depending on an attentional shift (a la the duck-rabbit)?

2025-12-21 09:58:10 UTC

Of course all parasocial relationships are unhealthy, that is, except my parasocial relationship with Pat the Bunny. As my good friend Pat the Bunny says, parasocial relationships, and hero worship, are bad.

2025-12-17 09:03:56 UTC

אוקיי, אני מבין שזה מאוד "פנימי" בתוך הפוליטיקה של השמאל בישראל/פלסטין, אז אכתוב בעברית. אבל אני חושב שזה נושא חשוב ביותר, ולכן אני מקווה שזה יופץ – ואולי, אם יהיה לי מזל, גם יסוקר. לא מפני שאני מעוניין "להרוס" איזו שהיא עמותה, אלא מפני שאנחנו חייבים קודם כול לקחת אחריות על עצמנו.
הארגון השמאלני *הישראלי* הגדול והמשפיע ביותר כיום, עם יותר כספים והגעה בינלאומית מכל ארגון אקטיביסטי אחר, הוא עומדים ביחד. מדובר בארגון אנטי-כיבוש, פרו-שוויון וסוציאליסטי בעמדותיו.
1/2

2025-12-16 21:48:01 UTC

Y'all, I have a secret, most of the time I have no idea what I'm talking about (including on this world wide web site)

2025-12-15 12:46:34 UTC

I'm not super sympathetic to criticisms of 'continental' philosophy grounded in the claim that it is incomprehensible - I think it often is, but I think that's probably in large part due to the nature of the subject matter.
But there IS a certain kind of continental philosophy article/style that drives me nuts, which is where a paper is just paragraph after paragraph referencing author after author and how great their points are, as if simply trying to prove how much they read.

2025-12-11 12:27:58 UTC

I have an idea. I'd even be willing to do the administration and vetting behind it (since it seems important and doesn't require technical knowledge).
The Trump administration is soon going to be asking for 5 years of social media posts from ESTA and visa applicants. The self-censorship that will arise from even the *threat* of this is obvious.
What if there was a social media account which just shared vetted and anonymized criticisms of the US from non-Americans who still wanted to travel?

2025-12-05 22:46:11 UTC

Has anyone written a piece about how bullshit the term "narco terrorist" is and why it's so important to resist the concept creep of "terrorist" even if you think that drug smugglers are generally not cool dudes?

2025-12-03 21:14:26 UTC

"I did not personally see survivors," Hegseth said. "That thing was on fire...This is called the fog of war."
I'm not saying the chances are greater than 50%, but doesn't this quote kind of suggest that Hegseth might think "the fog of war" refers to the literal smoke arising from military explosions?

2025-11-30 12:26:46 UTC

I'm tired, boss.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/115/638/629/219/819/340/original/cdae4b903bf9c280.jpg

2025-11-19 13:03:31 UTC

#page42
"For example, a warrior society may extend due honor to its warriors, in the sense that it does not deprive anyone who has contributed to its wars of his fair share of honor."

2025-11-17 21:36:50 UTC

I deleted all other social media and joined Mastodon a few years ago now. I certainly more enjoy/am less annoyed with my social media time now, but...
Reflecting the last week or two about it for the first time in a while, I do think it has probably cost me informal but significant professional opportunities.
That's not everything in life, but it also is very concrete in a way other considerations about social media are not.
Not quitting or anything, just lamenting to the void.
#academia

2025-11-14 15:00:57 UTC

People love crunchy peanut butter, and the crunchier the better.
By this logic, then, I am going to start just selling whole peanuts marketed as "Extra Extra Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter". And as a bonus I can even point out that it has no additives, it is 100% peanuts.

2025-11-11 08:37:52 UTC

Just happened to have two separate conversations in the last few days with people thinking carefully about their children's education, school districts, all this sort of stuff.
It's such a huge thing (and rightly so), both in terms of personal decisions but also in terms of public policy, ethics and inequality, etc.
But then something clicked for me - I almost never hear these conversations about children's *moral* environments - at least not at all at this amount of depth.
1/2

2025-11-04 12:24:08 UTC

For no particular reason at all, it seems very timely to share this *extremely* under-appreciated resource today. The Watson School's (Brown University) Cost of War project, documenting all of the human, economic, environmental, and social/political costs of post-9/11 American foreign policy
https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs
#war #cheney

2025-11-02 22:37:22 UTC

My mom, a lovely woman, said to me recently that "no one makes their own Halloween costumes for their kids anymore". (It wasn't like a lament, just a statement.) Days later pictures of my friends' children in largely home made costumes poured into my WhatsApp.
What changed isn't the world, but the community my mom lives in - she just projected it onto the world. She grew up on a family farm in a tiny town. Now she lives in a well off suburb.
which brings me to a question.
1/2

2025-11-01 11:44:57 UTC

#Academics , how many times, on average, do you read a paper (or significant parts of it) in the process of writing a referee report?

2025-10-30 12:57:59 UTC

(Academia reflection thread...)
Was at a conference yesterday in honor of Prof. Avner de Shalit's retirement. Something that came up reminded me of an experience that I (and I know many others) had in graduate school, but of a particular kind of very zoomed out instance of the phenomenon.
1/n