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Dave Mazella

@davemazella.bsky.social

3.1K followers 4K following 6.2K posts

ok, got it, fine. eighteenth-century scholar baking away in Heatstroke, TX. none of the opinions expressed here, good or bad, should be ascribed to my employer, whoever that may be. let's see how this goes.

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · Mar 3

I'm going to use bluesky as a sketchpad, to get thoughts down on the current state of the game in higher ed. I'm going to list some things that put us here, and try provisionally to offer ways out (not solutions).

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Alan Dettlaff @alandettlaff.com · 6h

Yesterday I was told that the class I’m scheduled to teach this month, Confronting Oppression & Injustice, is no longer part of our curriculum. This is a required class yet there was no discussion, no faculty vote, just an email saying the class no longer exists. This is what it’s like in Texas now.

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 1h

I‘m sure people noted how Don Bluth & the Bluth co. resembled the comically failed Trump of the 90s

Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 1h

*also Blue Man Group, Michael Moore & Saddam Hussein

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 1h

Just before I saw Portia di Rossi doing an infomercial w Ellen D, doing unironically what Lindsay Bluth did on the show, selling supplement.

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 2h

Binging Arrested Development, which looks highly historical now: Iraq War, Atkins diet, cameos from every comedy star from the last 20 yrs, plus a lot of questionable jokes

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 9h

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o... I'm unreasonably pleased that the end of this fantastic piece provides a NYT shortlist of opinion pieces on "reclaiming the constitution" that includes my own. There's something in the air that both pick up on.

Opinion | The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court

www.nytimes.com

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 5h

🫠

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 11h

Emerson coming through with a quote for autumn: “We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field, goes through every point of pumpkin history.”

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Resister @chrissmithmuso.bsky.social · 5h

Defeating ICE the Lubbock way: haboob sandstorms to choke out their murder trucks, hot salsas to blow out their GI systems.

Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 6h

Defeating ICE the Houston way: giant cockroaches & triple digit temperatures

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

defeating ICE the DC way: they must sit through the most boring powerpoint man has ever created

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 5h

don't know how anyone can get prosecuted for the crimes we’re seeing every day, without neutering SCOTUS & clawing back the money behind the atrocities

Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 6h

Defeating ICE the Houston way: giant cockroaches & triple digit temperatures

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

defeating ICE the DC way: they must sit through the most boring powerpoint man has ever created

Michele Okoh |🖤🩶🤍💜|🔺🐘 @okohlaw.bsky.social · 1d

It’s the Portland way.

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 7h

Unconstitutionally taking money that the law says must be spent on one purpose & using it for something else—when it's to establish personalist control over the FUCKING MILITARY—is about as dangerous a constitutional crisis/failure as you can imagine

Via: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News.

A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 8h

One of the best moments in a stellar career

Jody Rosen @jodyrosen.bsky.social · 9h

I know we're not supposed to talk about Woody Allen, but ANNIE HALL is one of the supreme American movies & Diane Keaton's wild charisma is 90% of the reason why. And btw her performance of "Seems Like Old Times" is pure magic—up there with the greatest musical scenes in cinema, zero doubt

Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 8h

democracy should be better able to withstand challenges from witless gibble gabble like this

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 1d

Ross Douthat treats this guy like they're having some deep conversation about the relationship of Christianity and the government, but the dude is a garden-variety dull, shallow, hateful, worthless bigot with nothing interesting to say, just endless riffs on "God hates everything/everyone I do."

Douthat: So that’s the first purpose of your political project, for America to stop making God angry.

Wilson: Yes. And most people think that when they are confronted with that project, they think that we want to get our tentacles into everything and start controlling everything. I actually think we need limited government. The government should be significantly smaller than it is, and we need to curtail a lot of the busybodyness that we have. That’s why I would call myself a theocratic libertarian. There is a true libertarian element in this, and yet, the transcendent grounding for what we’re talking about means that we acknowledge the authority of God.

We have racked up quite a body count of awful crimes, and I believe the only way out is for us to repent and turn to Christ. This would be things like no more Pride parades, no more drag queen story hours, no more abortion on demand, no more legalized same-sex unions — all of that, done. That’s the repentance part.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 22h

It’s hard to know what purpose journalism serves anymore if it can’t consistently communicate to the public 1) whether something is actually happening/is a complete lie; & 2) whether something is obviously illegal or unconstitutional. And yet, here we are, in late 2025, &

<all together now>

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 9h

That would be UT

Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 9h

Harder to argue that ICE officers should be prosecuted when regular law enforcement does things like this with impunity

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 14h

A lawsuit alleges a Black postal worker died after officers ignored clear signs he was suffering from a massive stroke, believing his medical emergency was drugs

The suit says guards left him helpless on a jail cell floor in his own urine for hours

KARE 11 Investigates: Postal worker died after police mistook stroke for drug impairment

Kingsley Bimpong was jailed instead of hospitalized; video shows guards ignored his suffering for hours.

www.kare11.com

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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 9h

RIP Diane Keaton — the news of her death sent me looking for this excellent piece about her and her serious interest in photography by her friend Larry McMurty

www.nybooks.com/articles/200...

Diane Keaton on Photography | Larry McMurtry

1. My friendship with Diane Keaton began about twenty-eight years ago, when I found her, one morning, sitting in the flower bed outside the Madison Hotel,

www.nybooks.com

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Nora Reed (they/them ze/hir) @nora.zone · 1d

cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 9h

“Academic freedom” is not supposed to mean “big donors direct research and teaching” but that’s exactly what systematic defunding of universities along with the college-is-a-corporation model has enabled.

Blake Emerson @blakeprof.bsky.social · 13h

One of the under-observed parts of the last several years is the switch where wealthy donors claims directive authority over university policy. So they think Trump’s efforts of undermine academic freedom promote their own control. It’s a symptom of oligarchy, and how oligarchy gives way to Tyranny.

Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 6d

The Times' coverage of Rowan's role has been remarkable. It is sad to me that after forcing his alma mater, Penn, to oust a really good president for incredibly poor reasons, Rowan's megalomanical next thought was "maybe the federal government should do this everywhere" and they're actually trying.

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jkavanagh.bsky.social @jkavanagh.bsky.social · 12h

“Grasping how committed MAGA is to such industrial-scale deceptions is critical to getting this broader moment right.”
“Mein Kampf”: “All propaganda had to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perceptions of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.”

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 16h

The conventions of political reporting today are not well equipped to handle this concerted use of pretexts for instrumental purposes and the bottomless bad faith they employ. Grasping the industrial-scale deception at the core of MAGA politics is essential. 6/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 11h

Whoops, this emerged from discussion too:

H. If you're told not to do something, ask for where in the law a specific policy is justified

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 1d

MAGA and its agenda are *wildly* unpopular, and media are hugely out of touch for not saying so. Politicians who tap into this reality will thrive, and media outlets that reflect this truth will earn enormous audiences.

G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 1d

A majority of adults oppose Trump’s use of the National Guard in America cities www.gelliottmorris.com/p/a-majority...

A majority of Americans oppose Trump sending the National Guard to Democratic-run cities

The president is defying the will of the people, federal judges, and the Constitution

www.gelliottmorris.com

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Dave Mazella @davemazella.bsky.social · 11h

from the work I've done with #18c newspapers, printers were either sustained by government printing or partisan discussion, though they might print letters from opposing sides; partisan newspapers go all the way to the Yellow Press & the consensus business model of coverage is post-WWII phenomena