MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 08/09/2026It is both descriptively true that in common usage people use “average” with a broader sense than “mean,” and also that using “average” without agreeing on a mathematical meaning can lead to confusion (which is why “mean” is a useful word). 110
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Were there design improvements that could have been made without reducing the number of homes here? Or was good design per se incompatible with 12 stories? 020
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 07/09/2026I think golden age Bruce Wayne is implicitly Episcopalian but more recently they made him Jewish by accident. www.cbr.com/dc-accidenta...cbr.comDC Accidentally Made Batman Jewish (But Doesn't Talk About It)When DC introduced Batman's Jewish cousin, Kate Kane, they inadvertently made Bruce Wayne Jewish as well, according to religious tradition. 130
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 16/08/2026& Yglesias is making a pretty standard critique of human nature wrt small proximate vs. large distant evils. It’s as though you’re reading “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and saying “wtf can’t believe Adam Smith loves earthquakes.” 1227
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 16/08/2026I think Yglesias is responding to a post (& subsequent discourse) that is literally about workplace training. Pancakes, waffles, etc. 3111
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 05/08/2026Especially if this hypothesis is relying on exact capitalization it would be relevant to have some record of the letter—which does not seem to exist. 020
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 01/08/2026I don’t think there’s a good parallel case for criminalizing sex work—seems like the motivating arguments against legal sex work are mostly not consequentialist to begin with. 020
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 01/08/2026(Prohibition iirc did reduce alcohol consumption, for instance!) So there’s room for an empirical & prudential weighing of which is worse—more people dealing with effects of drugs under low-barrier use, vs costs in carceralization, creating black markets. Could be different for different drugs. 120
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 01/08/2026Maybe a counter-example is gambling, where reducing legal friction seems to result in more gambling, with bad consequences for some people. Same is likely true for drugs so there’s at least potentially a case for restrictions on (esp. addictive) drugs to reduce use 150
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 31/07/2026Anyway neither is any way to run a society but the difference in emphasis means that Paul’s approach is more useful to governments and Jesus’ is more embraced by people withdrawing from governance (anarchists, abolitionists, Amish). (Some overlap on taxes, obvs.) 000
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 31/07/2026(Asterisk because even over the course of his letters Paul is starting to grapple with the delay of Jesus’ eschatological expectations.) 100
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 31/07/2026& Jesus and Paul are both working within an assumption of imminent change* but with different emphasis — Jesus more yolo (take no thought for the morrow); Paul more head-down (the powers that be are ordained of God.) Both problematic for a stable society but in different ways. 110
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 31/07/2026This is a good thread esp. on the Jewish context but I think it flattens the distinctions between what Jesus (likely) said vs what Paul said (e.g. on slaves) vs how the writers of the Gospels (at least three of them post-70 CE) framed it. 220
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 29/05/2026Credit-card-debt Georg is an outlier and should not have been counted. 1120
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 18/05/2026Real problem here is that the speed of light is too fast. 000
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026And Barrett for better or worse wants to defend a non-absurd originalism that doesn’t revoke the state of West Virginia etc. 000
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026Yeah the serious answer is that she coauthored a paper that uses the US Air Force, the 14th Amendment, and the state of West Virginia as examples of things where people have raised formal/procedural questions about legitimacy, but where a non-absurd originalism has to see them as legitimate. 110
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026(Unless “plays footsie” is taken as “raises and rejects a hypothetical”) bsky.app/profile/mfhu... 000
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026So Barrett “plays footsie” with the illegitimacy of the 14th Amendment in the same sense and to the same extent that she plays footsie with the illegitimacy of the State of West Virginia and the illegitimacy of the US Air Force. 000
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026And Barrett & Nagle argued, counter to Colby, that originalism is consistent with seeing the 14th Amendment as binding. static1.squarespace.com/static/5a794...static1.squarespace.com 100
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026You’re thinking of “Congressional Originalism,” specifically? What’s happening there is that Thomas Colby presented the 14th Amendment ratification process as a challenge for originalism: scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcont...scholarship.law.gwu.edu 100
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 09/05/2026Or rather, there is no reason to think this, her questions in oral argument presume their legitimacy, and her recent book implies that the reconstruction amendments were necessary to correct flaws in the original Constitution. 100
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 06/05/2026But to your point—yes, it would absolutely have been better if Marx could have left Capital as a focused & well-edited argument rather than a rambling mix of antisemitism and cotton statistics. (Why wouldn’t it be?) 000
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 06/05/2026And I think Klein comes out pro-Dewey here but really his argument is that Douglass, King, Lincoln, FDR have been more important to American liberalism in practice than Rawls. 100
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 06/05/2026I think it’s unironically a virtue of Hume and Mill especially that they are so readable—clear, concise whereas Klein is probably right that most Americans would find A Theory of Justice kind of a drag (I know I did). 110
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 02/05/2026As Billy Corgan put it: Despite my fatigue / I am valued in my bowling league 051
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 11/04/2026Right, the Oakland community center or whatever feels small potatoes but it’s definitely set up as a synthesis—not isolationism, not conquest, but open engagement. 060
Reposted by MF HUMEthe abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 05/04/2026 512415
MF HUME @mfhume.bsky.social · 26/03/2026Theory of Moral Sentiments talks about resentment as the proper response to violations of justice. No idea what’s happened in the subsequent 250 years, though. 130
