Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan
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jgilligan.org
Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan
@jgilligan.org
8.5K followers 2.2K following 4.3K posts
Integrating social & natural sciences & modeling to study impacts & responses to climate change | Behavioral approaches to climate policy | Nashville TN | They/them 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ genderqueer | Jew | My employer hates my opinions | https://jonathangilligan.org
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jgilligan.org
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Bariweiss, Queen of Queens;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

www.politico.com/news/magazin...
A bust of Bari Weiss, carved in marble or some other white stone, on a pedestal in the library of the University of Austin. From the POLITICO story https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/16/civil-war-university-of-austin-bari-weiss-00729688
January 17, 2026 at 4:55 AM
jgilligan.org
Fantasy: Strong, physically confident, masculine men.

Reality:
January 10, 2026 at 8:36 PM
jgilligan.org
Sound familiar?

"Caligula would be restrained only by his own sense of discretion, which became in lamentably short supply as his reign progressed ... he was a _princeps legibus solutus_ (‘a princeps not bound by the laws’)." A.A. Barrett, _Caligula: The Abuse of Power_ (Routledge, 2015), p. 79.
"But by handing over to him his new power the senate had in fact made the transformation for him, and when he later boasted that he had ‘every power over every person’ (_omnia in omnes licere_), this was not the ravings of a madman – he had good constitutional grounds for his conviction that he was a _princeps legibus solutus_ (‘a princeps not bound by the laws’). It is therefore not surprising that, to a Jewish provincial like Philo, Caligula was a young man whose authority was unchecked, and his subjects were, in effect, his slaves." Barrett, p. 79 "Caligula would be restrained only by his own sense of discretion, which became in lamentably short supply as his reign progressed." Barrett, p. 79.
January 10, 2026 at 5:51 PM
jgilligan.org
And there I was, thinking the title of this book referred to pandas.
The cover of "Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," by Lynne Truss. The cover shows an illustration of a panda standing on a ladder, painting over a comma, while another panda walks beneath the ladder holding a revolver.
January 9, 2026 at 2:02 AM
jgilligan.org
Good grief. And these people wonder why they are having so much trouble finding romantic partners that they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to matchmakers.
Screenshot from Fiddler on the Roof, with Hodel saying, "Somebody has to arrange the matches."
January 7, 2026 at 12:09 AM
jgilligan.org
Cool analysis, which finds a steadily growing polarization of the Supreme Court, beginning around 1960, with justices appointed by Republicans favoring wealthy parties and justices appointed by Democrats favoring less-wealthy parties.
A chart showing all the supreme court justices appointed since the early 1950s, with the date of confirmation on the horizontal axis and the fraction of opinions siding with the wealthier party on the vertical axis. Justices are coded blue for those appointed by Democratic presidents and red for those appointed by Republicans. The chart shows no difference between Democrats and Republicans in the 1950s, but a steadily growing polariation beginning around 1960, leading to the current state of affairs in which Republican justices appointed after 1990 (Thomas and subsequent) side with the wealthy more than 60 percent of the time, while Democrats (Ginsburg & subsequent) side with the wealthy less than 40 percent of the time.
January 6, 2026 at 11:58 PM
jgilligan.org
Slaughterhouse Five is my go-to book to remind myself and others that all war, even the war to defeat Hitler, reduces to sending children to kill and maim other children, and to be killed and maimed in return.

There are many excellent books that do this job. Mine happens to Slaughterhouse Five.
Excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five: “You were just babies then!", she said. "What?" I said. "You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs!" I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. "But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "I-I don't know", I said. "Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine will ever be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. "I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it 'The Children's Crusade.'" She was my friend after that.”
January 5, 2026 at 12:36 AM
jgilligan.org
Walt Kelly's "Pogo" comic for the second Earth Day, in 1971. In the first panel, Pogo and Porkypine are walking through the forest. Porkypine says, "Ah, Pogo, the beauty of the forest primeval gets me in the heart." Pogo replies, "It gets me in the feet, Porkypine." In the second panel, Pogo and Porkypine are sitting on a tree root, looking at a forest floor covered with litter and trash, including tires, a discarded bicycle, bedsprings, etc. Porkypine says, "It is hard walkin' on this stuff," and Pogo replies, "Yep, son. We have met the enemy and he is us."
January 4, 2026 at 9:37 PM
jgilligan.org
New Years dinner.
A plate of black-eyed peas, collars, and bread.
January 2, 2026 at 5:00 AM
jgilligan.org
How Music Row went MAGA.
Screenshot from the Rolling Stone article: Just as corporations have retreated from the DEI initiatives they installed over the past few years, the major record labels and multinational corporations that make up the commercial country music industry have largely backtracked from both the late-2010s era of songs about national unity and the early-2020s era of gestures toward social change. Artists on Capitol Nashville, the label that released Mickey Guyton’s “Black Like Me” in 2020, now perform at Mar-a-Lago. As for Guyton, the genre’s voice for open-mindedness and tolerance, who just a few years ago became the first Black woman to co-host the ACM Awards? She spent the past year far away from Nashville, competing on a singing competition series in China.
January 1, 2026 at 3:37 PM
jgilligan.org
18% of urban and suburban Americans say they definitely want to be able to live car-free and another 40% are open to the idea.

Politicians should be able to draw upon this support to make it easier for people to try partial or complete car-free living.
Screenshot from the research paper: Given the sizable unmet demand for car-free living, we conclude that planners should allow and facilitate car-free and car-lite developments. In practice, this can be done by embracing zoning reform, investing in alternative transportation infrastructure, lowering parking requirements for development, and encouraging mixed land uses, including in residential neighborhoods.
January 1, 2026 at 3:23 PM
jgilligan.org
There was a very good film about this dilemma that so confounds McArdle. It won an Oscar.

Spoiler: performing arts in service of fascism don't end well.
Advertisement for Istvan Szabo's 1981 film, "Mephisto", starring Klaus Maria Brandauer. The film, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film, tells the story of an actor who finds success performing under the Nazi regime, but too late, he realizes that he has lost his soul.
December 31, 2025 at 4:34 AM
jgilligan.org
It's striking how differently the article reports concerns about post-surgical regret, compared to reporting on gender-affirming care for trans people:
Screenshot of an excerpt from the article: “Folks aren’t asking ‘are you regretting your hip replacement?’” she said. But, when it comes to female permanent contraception, “we’re essentially saying you’re not allowed to regret this one decision.” “It is also paternalism to say ‘I know better than you,’” she added.
December 30, 2025 at 7:54 PM
jgilligan.org
Here's a nice, related article: "Satellite imagery is revolutionizing the world. But should we always trust what we see?" by Melinda Laituri (2018).

theconversation.com/satellite-im...
With this increasing practice, maps derived from satellite images are constructed by those who may not be very familiar with the site. Mappers have an important responsibility when representing other people’s places. Maps derived from satellite images without local context – like street names or information about vegetation types – tell incomplete stories. Building footprints can be digitized, but only locals can identify the purpose of that building. Imaginary lines, like country boundaries, don’t show up on remotely sensed images.
December 29, 2025 at 5:29 PM
jgilligan.org
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains.

This was the best album of the 1990s, and I'll die on that hill.
The cover of Henry Threadgill's _Too Much Sugar for a Dime_.
December 29, 2025 at 3:48 PM
jgilligan.org
You're just looking at employment numbers and neglecting how many Latino working people are working poor.

Working poor folks need better jobs to get out of poverty. Black and Hispanic folks have about the same poverty rates, twice that of Whites.

www.congress.gov/crs-product/...
Time series chart showing poverty rates by race and ethnicity from 1975 to 2021. Since 2007 or so, there has been no significant difference in poverty rates between Black and Hispanic households. Both are about twice the rate for white non-Hispanic households.
December 28, 2025 at 6:54 PM
jgilligan.org
Boxing Day loaf. Sesame semolina filone, from the recipe in Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America (and which Glezer got from Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City).
A loaf of bread, freshly out of the oven, cooling on a rack. The loaf is a long batard shape, rich golden brown, with a nicely developed grigne (I'm especially proud of this, because I am inconsistent in getting a good grigne), and coated in sesame seeds.
December 27, 2025 at 5:06 AM
jgilligan.org
Stolen from Discord.
A Christmas post from Donald Trump on Truth Social, Dec. 24, 2025. The post is ten full lines of text, but everything is redacted with black rectangles except, "Merry Christmas to all, [three lines of text redacted] Transgender for Everyone [six lines of text redacted] God Bless America!!! President DJT"
December 27, 2025 at 3:00 AM
jgilligan.org
Stephen Miller's great-grandparents "came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the 'America first' nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis"
Excerpt from the article linked above: I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.
December 26, 2025 at 10:38 PM
jgilligan.org
King Don was not a good man,
He lived his life aloof;
Alone he tweeted messages
While standing on the roof.
Screen capture from NBC News, of President Trump taking questions from reporters while standing on the White House roof.
December 26, 2025 at 5:16 PM
jgilligan.org
You will be visited by three spirits.
Photo of Holly Woodlawn, a white trans woman with shoulder length dark curly hair, wearing a white macrame vest over a long-sleeved blue top, and a dark pink necklace; Jackie Curtis, a white trans woman with straight red shoulder-length hair and a tattoo on her upper arm saying "Andy", wearing a sleeveless dress in dark fabric with a light floral print and holding a cigarette; and Joe D'Alessandro, a white cis man with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a dark blue button-down shirt, at Andy Warhol's Factory, in 1971. Photo by Jack Mitchell. See https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2015/dec/07/holly-woodlawn-walk-on-the-wild-side-lou-reed-candy-little-joe for more details and context.
December 26, 2025 at 12:55 AM
jgilligan.org
And for Xmas breakfast, two loaves of cinnamon raisin walnut bread.
Two loaves of cinnamon raisin walnut bread on a cutting board. The loaves are squat, like a cake loaf in aspect ratio, with raisins and walnut pieces throughout. The tops are coated in cinnamon sugar. One loaf is whole and the other is cut, showing the crumb in cross section.
December 25, 2025 at 5:28 PM
jgilligan.org
Instead of the traditional roast, we're doing chicken Big Mamou for Christmas dinner.
Photo of a big pot of chicken Big Mamou. Chunks of diced chicken and green onions floating in a thick dark red sauce of tomato and spices.
December 25, 2025 at 5:28 PM
jgilligan.org
My counter-offer. We pick an ICE agent at random and they sleep over at Stephen Miller's home.
Tweet from Acyn with a screenshot of Stephen Miller on a talk show, saying, "You have these 60 minute producers who are living in comfort and security in their west end condos trying to make us feel sympathetic for these monsters? Have you seen the tattoos, the face tattoos, the body tattoos on these killers? I'll make a deal. We will pick someone at random that we sent to Cecot and they will spend one day overnight in your apartment. No one is taking that deal at 60 minutes? Nobody."
December 24, 2025 at 5:16 PM
jgilligan.org
not calling out anyone in particular, but if you use the phrase "cartoonishly evil" and think it does not apply, by definition, to Scooby Doo villains, you may want to examine your biases a bit. #IDontThinkItMeansWhatYouThinkItMeans
A tweet from Kat Rosenfield, reading "not calling out anyone in particular but guys, if your theory of the 60 minutes segment snafu hinges on Bari Weiss being at once cartoonishly evil, completely corrupt, AND a bumbling incompetent on the order of a Scooby Doo villain, you may want to examine your biases a bit"
December 23, 2025 at 11:50 PM