I was assigned a summer course during the 1994 World Cup and I told the students their grade would suffer if Brazil did not win it all.

It worked. Just saying it.

It would be even more awesome to have all these awesome properties without even existing

Therefore, God does not exist.

For World Logic Day, the ontological proof of God's non-existence (I think I heard it first from my late friend Aldo Antonelli):

God is a being such that there could none more awesome

It is pretty awesome to be all-powerful, all-knowing etc. ...

car with a licence plate WLLNGOOD

Good to see Kantians out there driving in Toronto.

So relieved to learn that Texas A&M is not banning Plato altogether, but merely redacting his work to ensure it conforms to accepted state ideology

College Campus Tour Ends Inside Unmarked ICE Vehicle

College Campus Tour Ends Inside Unmarked ICE Vehicle theonion.com/college-campus-tour-ends...

Perhaps we are learning that many people's enthusiastic advocacy for teaching the canon was predicated on having never read any of it.

Can we imagine what would happen if American conservatives were not so strongly committed to free speech?

Word trend for 2026: "Kidnap" is out; "capture" is in.

The Senator clearly seems unaware of how many Americans living abroad would jump at this opportunity of being able to give up their citizenship for free.

The Centre for Ethics - Visiting Professors Update: 2026-2027 Applications are now open.

The applications for our Visiting Fellowships at the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics for 2026-7 are now open. They are non-stipendiary fellowships. but they do come with a modest research budget, nice offices, library access, etc. Please share widely!
sites.google.com/view/uoftc4e...

Black Flag Action Group Urgent Call to the Heads of Academia in Israel (May 25, 2025 Signatures) To the Association of University Heads in Israel, the Board of Academic Public Colleges, and Academics for Israeli Democracy, We, members of the academic and administrative staff in institutions of hi...

Happy to see that so many of my friends and colleagues have signed this document
www.academia.edu/129505708/Bl...

Enough is enough. Israel is committing war crimes | Opinion ***

Haaretz in English has published the full text in translation (this is a gift link so ir should not be paywalled). Unfortunately, given Olmert history of corruption, I'm not sure how much weight his opinion carries in Israel:
www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025...

עד כאן. ‏אנחנו מבצעים פשעי מלחמה | דעה הארץ

If you can read Hebrew, here is a gift link:
www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/202...

Trump's most promising anti-immigration policy seems to be his efforts to turn the US into a place no one will want to live in.

I am already dreading the cartoon in which my visits to the dentist are also exposed to the whole world.

h/t @csandis.bsky.social

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie.

Fellini's 17
For an Average Amount of Dollars More
Donas Flores and their Four Husbands
Huge Medium-Sized Lies (ok it's a TV series but I think it's a legit candidate for tariffs)

New: The Stephen J. White Prize - Daily Nous The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the creation of a new prize in honor of the late philosopher Stephen J. White. White died in 2021 at the age of 38. The White Prize will be a...

Stephen White was a really insightful philosophers and a real mensch; his early death was immensely sad and tragic. So happy that the APA is honouring him in this way.

dailynous.com/2025/04/24/n...

Opinion | This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare It’s been tried in other countries facing authoritarian crackdowns. It works.

Someone has to produce a redacted version of this piece, so one can have the good ideas without being distracted by the complete misunderstanding of the Prisoner Dilemma choice structure:

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...

Note to Columbia University:

This is how you do it.

www.tufts.edu/president/sp...

Looking forward to our undergraduate conference, and can't wait to hear Alice MacLachlan's Keynote address. The Keynote address is open to the public (Monday, April 7 at 3:30PM).

Apparently, Princeton is not caving in, at least not yet. So, give or take some market fluctuation, the price of freedom in American academia right now seems to be around $4M per student.

‘Climate of fear’: Montreal doctor says NYU cancelled her presentation A Montreal doctor says her presentation at NYU was abruptly cancelled and believes the university did so out of fear of being pressured by the Donald Trump administration.

The anticipatory obedience of (some) American universities has been really scary:

www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/art...

When are we complicit in the wrongful actions of others? From climate change to war, explore ethical topics at the Moral Complicity: Theory and Context Conference on May 9–10, 2025 at the Centre for Ethics! More details here: sites.google.com/view/moral-c...

The Centre for Ethics has a call for applications for a second post-doctoral fellowship to help us launch a new project on Algorithm Bias. If you already applied for the other post-doc fellowship, and want to be considered for this one, just let us know!

ethics.utoronto.ca/postdoctoral...

Dr. Liu offered to remove some of her slides but apparently this wasn't enough to calm the fears that NYU would not be fully capitulating to the regime.

Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act Effective as of January 1, 2023, the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act (the “Act”) prevents non-Canadians from buying residential property in Canada for 2 years.

This is from the CMHC page:
www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professional...