Tom Stoppard | Lightnews

Brice Ezell

@briceezell.bsky.social

640 followers 470 following 2.3K posts

Writer, critic (@PopMatters), teacher. ATL.
PhD in English, University of Texas.
Modern drama, theatre, and philosophy.
Writing a book on Tom Stoppard.
#COYS
https://boxd.it/1rEO5

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Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical bases of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. .. more

Art 49%

Philosophy 16%

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Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 23d

Humanities academic job seekers wondering if the job market is worth your time: it isn't.

Pinning this to the top of my profile in the hopes that this data helps people who are seeing so much hard work go unrewarded. I thought I'd have a rougher time post-market. This data explains why I haven't.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · Jun 26

The results of my 2024-25 academic job market experiment are in, and the numbers should be instructive to anyone considering university employment these days: don't. It's not worth your time, even if you've done all the work to get a PhD, even if it seems like a dream job.

Results breakdown below.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 3h

People be out here talking about the Golden Globes... I think we all know what Golden thing should really be on everyone's mind today www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkxL...

The Golden Calf

YouTube video by Prefab Sprout - Topic

www.youtube.com

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 4h

What is the deal with these calls in NFL games where the refs get together and talk for like 5 minutes before announcing the call? Insanely annoying feature of the game.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 5h

A fantastic conceptualization. Philosophy's important, folks!

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 3d

Baseless Skepticism

"When skepticism lacks empirical grounding or logical justification, it ceases to function as a truth-seeking instrument and becomes a performative posture of intellectual superiority."

philarchive.org/archive/BIPABS

Skepticism is widely regarded as the immune system of rational inquiry. However, when skepticism is unmoored from empirical grounding, logical rigor, or proportional standards of evidence, it degenerates into "Baseless Skepticism"—a form of obstructionist cynicism. This paper argues that rational doubt must be treated as a claim requiring justification,
specifically subject to the constraints of reality. Drawing on principles of Bayesian inference and virtue epistemology, we formalize the Principle of Demonstrated Competence, arguing that claims surviving adversarial, real-world constraints establish a high epistemic prior. We further propose the Law of Epistemic Symmetry, positing that the rejection of
a validated claim incurs a burden of proof identical to its acceptance. We conclude that dismissing demonstrated competence without counter-data is not intellectual rigor, but a violation of the ethics of belief.

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 9h

REMINDER: The Trump administration was required by law to release all the Epstein files by December 19 and still has not released 99% of the files

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h

but was it really a Sorkin skeet if it didn't have a completely gratuitous Gilbert & Sullivan reference?

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h

As fate would have it, booked my first trip back to Chicago in too long yesterday evening. Won't be until March but happy for my favorite city in the meantime.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d

30 percent of this movie will be people posing for their action figure shots. Hilarious.

Reposted by Anne Norton, Tom Stoppard, Meredith Farkas , and 2 more Anne Norton, Tom Stoppard, Meredith Farkas, Aviel Roshwald, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Minnesota 50501 @mn50501.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you for telling us you neither serve nor protect. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. That was state murder in broad daylight, captured from multiple angles by multiple witnesses, and the people of Minneapolis have eyes.

You support murder.

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 3d

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 3d

Look, people do dumb things in idea, but even floating the idea of a grad student plagiarizing a philosopher like Giorgio Agamben in their DISSERTATION is a catch-it-early-in-writing mistake.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 3d

Thirty minutes into AFTER THE HUNT and, man, some of the academia errors are hilarious. Julia Roberts, who carries herself and looks like a senior professor, is not yet tenured. She says that if she doesn’t publish “this month” she won’t get tenure.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 4d

The second Spurs equalized I knew Semenyo was gonna score a bailout stoppage time goal. Fucking scripted.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 4d

Obviously movie award nomination injustices are small things indeed, but SAG not nominating a single performer, let alone the cast as a whole, from SENTIMENTAL VALUE is indefensible.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 4d

Just reading this and being reminded of the guy who sat on the edge of campus at Guad opposite of the student union who would proselytize by… just reading from the Bible. Not even with any flair. Just straight cold read

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 4d

It is possible to advocate for awards bodies better recognizing the work of Black directors without saying that liking a movie like MARTY SUPREME is tantamount to calling Ryan Coogler a hack

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 5d

I think SINNERS is better than MARTY, but also don’t think it’s crazy or racist to say that Chalamet is a deserving Best Actor winner.

Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 5d

There’s an article to be written about how movie awards have a way of creating stupid race-based discourses that aren’t actually about the movies in question. First LA LA LAND v. MOONLIGHT, now SINNERS v. MARTY SUPREME.