On August 22, 2025, both the Trump Administration and Intel announced that the federal government is investing $8.9 billion to purchase ten percent of the stock in the firm, “reflecting the confidence the Administration has in Intel to advance key national priorities and the critically important role the company plays in expanding the domestic semiconductor […]
Trump…the Socialist? Read More »
This spring I have been teaching my students how to process data in the R language, and how to use plugins to generate maps. Here I have used this method to provide a sort of 21st-century “Green Book” for people who want to plan their travels and their purchases based on the politics of selected
Planning for Travel and Purchases Read More »
Useful Historical Parallels I am most disturbed that the “Department of Governmental Efficiency” is not actually a department, and is acting extra-legally (and perhaps outside the Constitution) to gut longstanding governmental programs that have, in fact, been highly efficient and highly effective in helping vulnerable American populations. This sort of vigilante, violent burn-down of government
Elon Musk and Robert Moses: Read More »
When politicians talk about civility and public discourse, what they’re really saying is that they would prefer for people to remain silent in the face of injustice. They want marginalized people to accept that the conditions of oppression are unalterable facts of life. Roxane Gay, 2022 Shortly after I arrived in Kabul in April 2007,
Gun Violence & Safety Misunderstood Read More »
I have taught a course on globalization and urbanization at San Francisco State for ten years. Each semester, I have to revise my syllabus substantially because global conditions have been changing dramatically since 2012. In August of 2019, New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project. I immediately incorporated it into the course that I
Freedom to Question Read More »
A month ago I speculated that Finland and Sweden might join NATO, a strategic backfire against what Putin had intended. Apparently both countries have already decided to join NATO and will file formal applications this summer. What else might happen as a cost to Russia? Finland, Estonia, and Latvia might recover the territories the USSR
How to Reward Aggression Read More »
I did not vote for Arnold Schwartzenegger when he ran for Governor of California during the recall of Gray Davis. I find the recall-process in California to be very broken, as shown by the latest cynical attempt to recall Gavin Newsom. However, Schwartzenegger was a good governor, especially in his endorsement of Senate Bill 375,
My favorite Republican Read More »
Over the last few days Volodomyr Zelenskyy has asked repeatedly for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Poland has asked the US to take their aging MiG-29s, remove the NATO electronics, and transfer them to Ukraine–in exchange for receiving new fixed-wing fighter aircraft. Vladimir Putin has countered that either of these decisions would
Ukraine: Military Lessons Thus Far Read More »
This morning Fareed Zakaria noted that Vladimir Putin is not only more isolated in his solo control of Russia, but also more emotionally volatile. This complicates a geo-strategic problem: he may have set in motion a series of political disasters from which he cannot gracefully exit. Despite very impressive Ukrainian resistance, it is very likely
How to De-Escalate Now? Read More »
Yesterday I speculated that Putin’s unilateral decision to invade Ukraine might backfire: it might provoke Finland to join NATO. Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU in 1995. All three countries had a longstanding preference for neutrality in the Cold War, but in 1995 joining the EU was not considered a threatening move against a
Consequences of Putin’s Aggression Read More »