Colin Danby
banner
cdanby.bsky.social
Colin Danby
@cdanby.bsky.social
Heterodox economist working in history of thought, specifically the commerce between body, nation, race, and economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He/him.

https://sites.google.com/uw.edu/colindanby/home

Photo by Stephanie Seguino
Pinned
My "Race in Marshall's Economics" is now available, and open-access!

Thanks to editors and reviewers at _Modern Intellectual History_, and to folks at Cambridge University Press who have been coping with cyberattack aftermath. #EconSky #OpenAccess

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Race in Marshall's Economics | Modern Intellectual History | Cambridge Core
Race in Marshall's Economics
www.cambridge.org
My worry is that "true to the roots of the earth" is a highly abstract metaphor, and ultimately an ideological category, not grounded in anything specific enough for a conversation about actual farming. Purity, to go back to the OP, is a powerful cultural category and much gets mapped to it.
February 4, 2026 at 4:05 PM
Eugenics is the unifying theme in terms of ideas. I don't know what moved what, but that's certainly consistent with elitist network-maintenance.
February 4, 2026 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Colin Danby
Words, actions, deeds. That general sort of thing. I regret them.
February 4, 2026 at 6:20 AM
This is not a vice.
February 4, 2026 at 7:46 AM
Even shitheads have rights, though.
February 4, 2026 at 5:33 AM
I'm doing a massive book cull at the moment, and it's like digging up layer upon layer of past enthusiasms.
February 4, 2026 at 5:27 AM
Part of his stock in trade was research plus moral principle. People tended to attribute his Cambodia failure to bad analysis and stubbornness. To see him enabling abuse of women is distressing. Nor is Epstein's circle unique.
February 4, 2026 at 5:18 AM
Part of what's deeply upsetting about the latest Chomsky stuff is there was a time I looked up to him. He was an important Vietnam War opponent, and in the early 80s I was in his outer orbit, though I never met him, working with a Boston-area Central America research group he helped found.
February 4, 2026 at 5:18 AM
My impression is he's in very poor health at the moment.
February 4, 2026 at 4:57 AM
Violence against women is enabled by cultures of disbelief and silencing of victims. There's no chargeable crime here, but morally, Chomsky is an accessory after the fact.
February 4, 2026 at 4:46 AM
This is Chomsky consoling, and counselling, a known abuser, a guy who had already served time, about how to deal with publicity about his abuse.
February 4, 2026 at 4:37 AM
This is not "guilt by association." Read better.

--
“The best way to proceed is to ignore it,” Chomsky wrote, according to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist. “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, ...
February 4, 2026 at 4:37 AM
When I put the dogs' dinners in front of them I say "messieurs."

And yes, their dinners are individually plated because someone has to maintain standards.
February 4, 2026 at 4:19 AM
Max is now playing fetch, which is rare! He has this adorable prancing run when he catches the toy. Hope he doesn't hurt himself, but he's really engaged and having feelings today.
February 4, 2026 at 3:11 AM
As Marty chills, Max patrols the back yard.
February 4, 2026 at 3:04 AM
They said *ruin*.
February 4, 2026 at 2:36 AM
The Lefebvre people have been around a long time, too. This is hardly a "crisis."
February 4, 2026 at 1:59 AM
We're all dealing with serious worries! Follows help me think about how. Thanks for your posting.
February 4, 2026 at 1:55 AM
I guess the terrible people all found each other.

How are we handling this? Part of me feels schadenfreude as mountebanks are exposed, but we're also looking straight at an elite culture of sexual abuse plus racism, and we can be pretty sure it is not limited to the friends of JE.
February 4, 2026 at 1:53 AM
The "Following" feed has helped me find people who are measured and thoughtful. I've unfollowed a few who are brilliant but a little ... reactive? More emphatic than useful? Not sure how to describe it.
February 4, 2026 at 1:43 AM
Yes. This is horrible.

(fwiw, I think he as gotten a pass not so much because of the prominence of his scholarship, but because he was a major voice mid-60s against the Vietnam War. But that does not excuse encouraging rapists!)
February 4, 2026 at 1:33 AM
In the current context, I *am* a liberal, a relative supporter of globalization (especially freedom of movement), and a total normie. Most of what we're dealing with now boils down to treating people decently, across difference.
February 4, 2026 at 1:21 AM
Highly cursed sentence:

"Epstein was notified by email that genetic testing kits from the company 23 and Me would “be delivered to Woody and Soon Yi”. Months later, in the spring of 2017, emails showed Shuliak arranged to send the Chomskys a pair of the same kind of tests – courtesy of Epstein."
February 3, 2026 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Colin Danby
So I started writing this paper almost exactly a year ago, based on the talks I'd given across 2024, including my keynote for the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. This is the pre-print and, all things considered, the full edited version should be available in April.
On Bullshit Engines’ Politics_Preprint
This is a pre-print of the following chapter: Williams, Damien P., “On Bullshit Engines’ Politics”, published in Arrangements of Power: Tracing Langdon Winner’s Legacy Within and Beyond the P…
afutureworththinkingabout.com
February 3, 2026 at 2:40 AM
What's up.
February 3, 2026 at 6:55 AM