iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Non-native Britons include, I dunno, Colin Cowdrey, Ben stokes, Ted Dexter, Geraint Jones (PNG not Wales!), Plum Warner, Gubby Allen, Lord Harris… all of them obviously permanent outsiders to English and British culture.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

I don’t believe anybody who cited my first book has read it. Two of the reviewers clearly didn’t.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Michael Dummet had the same experience with a book by Lewis Carrol about voting procedures I think.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Small point by this is of course very strong evidence in favour of Heath’s fundamental decency, whatever one thought of him at the time.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I doubt it would be ethical to do a good experiment on this. But. I’m very much on board with the suggestion.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Proud of my colleagues: We’ve had the best-selling frontlist university press book 4 weeks straight: Inventing the Renaissance by @adapalmer.bsky.social, Unaccountability Machine by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, & @danielmendelsohn.bsky.social’s Odyssey (2 straight weeks). 4 of the top 5 this week.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Presumably it all depends just how mischievous Trump is in his pardons. He’d totally capable of leaving office without pardoning any of them (and surely wont pardon anyone he’s fallen out with). Assuming he lasts the course that is.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Yeah. Not sure about “if he so desires” though. Maybe in some cases he could be under some sort of court order to do it.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Noticing Haseeb Hameed’s score the other day I wondered, as I often do these days, how Dolly was doing and realized when he was my age, my grandfather often wondered exactly the same about his grandfather, using the same words.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Surely, though, basically every song ever written should be fair game for Pinky and Perky/Alvin and the Chipmunks?

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Yesterday I learned I’ve been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences alongside 3 other UW colleagues. I’m very proud and very sad that I can’t tell me dad, who would be much prouder. www.amacad.org/new-members-...

Reposted by @harryb.bsky.social

UW–Madison @uwmadison.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Congratulations to political philosopher Harry Brighouse, social psychologist Patricia Devine, political scientist Lisa Martin and cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg — UW–Madison's newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences!

news.wisc.edu

Four UW–Madison professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The UW–Madison inductees are political philosopher Harry Brighouse, social psychologist Patricia Devine, political scientist Lisa Martin and cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

And, oddly, child rearing advice (Luther published a child rearing book saying that men who don’t change nappies aren’t real men)

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

How would you ensure that a body like that has enough opportunities for grift to be attractive?

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

They also vote for the actual dead from time to time. The undead would be preferable to some of the non-dead they choose, too.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

In response to a reference to a “proustian moment” in The Barbie Movie a young friend asked me to explain. When I told her someone devoted his life to writing 7 endless novels about remembering the smell of a cookie she, reasonably enough, didn’t believe me. Till I said he was French.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

A conversation in which you learn that there is virtually zero chance that you have a cancer would be enormously more fun if you’d entered the conversation believing there was a more than virtually zero chance that you have same cancer.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

With all due respect to the Irish if you’re going to the trouble of smuggling butter it’s not going to be kerrygold. Best butter available in the US right now, but there are better butters to smuggle.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Me too. I think of it as just a precious gift that Muir and Norden gave to those of us afflicted with it.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Today started the second championship season without dad to talk to about what’s going on at Northants or Somerset, or to reminisce about Hayes and Higgs, Flat Jack and little Harry Pilling. Every season going forth will be the same. I’ll have to come over for a whole season and watch every day.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Born in 1963 will I still be around when my twin grandchildren play for the winning USA team in the 2048 cricket World Cup? Something to live for, perhaps.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Some might think this is a reason not to leave.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Is “lost” the right word? “Abdicated”? “Rejected”? Maybe even “forfeit”. “Lost” makes it sound accidental, unintentional. But it’s neither.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Also. After around 30 it’s just much harder to explore new music. You’re busy. Peers who know and share your tastes dont recommend. My son (18) and a young colleague (29) both understand my (61) tastes and share new music they love that I’d like, much of which I do.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

I used to live in horror that no funny comedian had been born after the date I happened to be born. Then David Mitchell turned up, then… well, a deluge.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Oh yeah and why they suddenly stopped supporting free speech (not one of my favorite ones, but one of theirs till a few weeks ago). But Chris, you do want this crew to be defeated electorally, right? Which requires a lot of cordial conversations, most of which are pointless.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

My MAGA in laws are visiting in a few weeks. I will, as usual, grill them about why they have suddenly stopped being free traders, transatlanticists, enthusiasts for the US Constitution, Reaganites and, newly, why they want to hand US military secrets over to China and Russia.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Ideally Russia wouldn’t ever have invaded Ukraine. Indeed, ideally Russia would be a peaceful democratic free country with only the best of intentions toward his neighbours so there’s a sense in which she’s right. A sense which is entirely irrelevant to any conversation with having.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Me: which movie star was in the Belgian resistance? Student: Lauren Bacall? Me: no I can see that. The answer is much more unlikely. Really unlikely! Student….Audrey Hepburn? Me: YES! Student (delighted):!she was the most unlikely person I could think of. I’m so impressed.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Simon Kuper is almost certainly right that anyone like my dad in the Federal government will be gone by the end of the year. I don’t think musk views this as an unwelcome side effect: it’s one of the main goals.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

And nobody says “Give me liberty or give my spouse and children death” and that’s what a lot of these threats look like.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

It’s not like this isn’t entirely deliberate and coordinated. It’s just a matter of time before a few people get killed, and these people all know that. Nobody should say give me liberty or give me death unless they mean it, and nobody actually means it.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Well. To be fair: calling them names on twitter successfully generates daily death threats which are, by their nature, credible because in the US the kind of people who threaten your life have guns and can easily discover where you live or work.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

It’s just a version of “with all due respect” which generally means “I want loudly to make it very clear that I don’t respect you”. You’ve read Grice, surely!

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

It’s like pretentious teenagers talking about what they think is a philosophical puzzle which isn’t, in fact, a puzzle at all.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

I’m too old for this to matter to me but as someone who shares the president’s birthday this seems like a punishment. It guarantees that he won’t receive any birthday cards by mail on his actual birthday. Horrible idea! No federal holidays should honor the living!! tenney.house.gov/media/press-...

tenney.house.gov

Congresswoman Tenney Moves to Make President Trump’s Birthday a Federal Holiday

Washington, DC – Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (NY-24) today introduced the Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act to officially designate June 14 as a federal holiday to commemorate P...

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

It certainly is, but you know the Catholics ran out of days for saints, so double them up…

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

I conjecture that even a room full of moral philosophers, who are renowned to be entirely lacking in empathy, many if not most would get up and help. Well. A few would, anyway.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Just a 15% chance that at least ONE of them is a spy? Or a 15% chance that ONLY one of them is?

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Reposted by @harryb.bsky.social

Steven Durlauf @durlauf.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Very much looking forward to this conversation with Ingrid Robeyns @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social which David Lay Williams @laywilliams.bsky.social will moderate.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Yes. Though coding does really seem to be something you don’t need universities to teach you. (I teach philosophy in the us — lots of my students learn to think in college then teach themselves to code in their jobs).

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Someone who thinks of the Lone Ranger when they hear the William Tell overture.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I once listened to a senior New Labour figure giving a talk which, at some point I realised, was word for word lifted from something I’d written. (It was critical of new labour, and he was being self-critical). I’m sure he had no idea who I was. I was, tbh, totally delighted.

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American Philosophical Association @apaphilosophy.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Position opening: The APA Central Division solicits applications for divisional secretary-treasurer. Applications must be received by March 5 to be given full consideration. Learn more at www.apaonline.org/news/691767/Posit…

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

I thought you made that up. (Not being disrespectful, we both know you could. But…)

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Reposted by @harryb.bsky.social

David Lay Williams @laywilliams.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Very excited to be joining @durlauf.bsky.social for a discussion of @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social's remarkable new book, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Apparently Cornelius Golightly was the first black philosopher t be hired at a white college/university (Olivet 1945, moved to UW-Madison 1949, but I doubt he was the first black faculty member here).

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harryb.bsky.social @harryb.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Not quite the same thing but in 1981 I was squatting an abandoned house in Kentish Town that last sold for over 2.5 mill (a while ago).

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