Sitemap - 2021 - Freddie deBoer
For Subscribers: End-of-2021 AMA
Wanting to Convince People to Support You is Not "Popularism"
Perhaps High School is Not Always a Relentlessly Brutal Nietzschean Hellscape
A Christmas Carol, a Story You Know By Heart
Student Loan Debt Relief is Self-Interest, and Self-Interest is Politics
Social Responsibility... To Do What?
Covid Panic is a Site of Inter-Elite Competition
Digest, 12/19/2021: You Better Not Cry
Why the Fuck Do You Trust Harvard?
The Wire is a Masterpiece That Gets Worse Every Time I Watch It
Where to Now, Chris? Where to Now?
State of the Newsletter, December 2021
Destruction is Still Mutually Assured
The Dawn of Everything: Wicked Liberty Part Two
Everybody Should Go to Yosemite, At Least Once
Yes, Sabermetrics Ruined Baseball
You Don't Have to Be a Marxist
Perhaps You Should Not Spend All Day Ridiculing Others From Afar
Digest, 12/4/2021: I Can Please None of the People All of Time
Book Review Contest Winners, December Fundraiser, and the Next Book Club
Demian: Eva and the End Begins
The Problem with the 1619 Project Isn't Accuracy, It's Triviality
What Does It Mean For Music to be Overproduced?
Racial Disparities in the SATs Are Exactly What Antiracists Should Predict
Book Review Contest Results Coming and NFL Picks in Lieu of a Weekly Digest
What Was the "Neoliberal?" Was It Anything?
It Could Be So Much Better Than This
The Failure of Occupy is Almost Complete
Some Preliminary Thoughts on the Dawn of Everything: Chapter 2
Digest, 11/20/2021: Only the Red Line Lives On
Portnoy's Tale, or MeToo, Social Sanction, and Leverage
I Would Like Closure, But I'll Take Honesty
Demian: “The Bird Fights Its Way Out of the Egg” and "Jacob Wrestling"
The Dawn of Everything: Chapter One
Digest, 11/13/2021: Things Are Different Now
Pre-K Research is Mixed, Running to Discouraging, at Best
When You Condone Chaos, You Condone the Consequences of Chaos
Demian: "Among Thieves" and "Beatrice"
Why Does the Universe Need a Teacup?
Video: Academic Professional Incentives and CRT (or "CRT")
Our National Conversation on Higher Ed Has Next to Nothing to Do With Higher Ed's Real Problems
CRT Could Use a Little Cost/Benefit Analysis
Demian: "Two Realms" and "Cain"
Here's Two Examples of the State Enforcing Social Justice Norms
Record of a Failed Academic, Pt. 1: The Epideictic Rhetoric of Celebrity
Digest, 10/31/2021: And We're Back
Short Week: Fight Club Explains Itself in Less Than a Minute and a Half
Short Week: Think Cruise Control to Driver Assist to Driverless Cars, But for the Economy
Short Week: The Stupid Baseball Hypothetical I've Chewed On For a Decade
Short Week: My "Cancellation" Was Quite Effective, As a Matter of Fact
Short Week: The Main Thing with Kids is to Keep Them Alive
Short Week: As If Politics Mattered
Every A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie, Ranked
The Cement Garden: Chapters Nine & Ten
Review: Ross Douthat's The Deep Places
Actually, Tourists Should Go to Times Square
That One Side Would Like to Utterly Destroy the Other Side Seems Significant, To Me
Programming Notes: Book Review Contest, Vacation, Book Club Next Steps and, God Help Me, Let's Game
Digest, 10/9/2021: There's a Heaven for a GPU
The Cement Garden: Chapters Seven & Eight
The Problem with Liz Phair's Self-Titled Album is That It's an Irredeemable Piece of Shit
Will BlackLivesMatter Fall Into the Elephant's Graveyard of Social Movements?
Digest, 10/3/2021: Beware of the Blob
My Last Jedi Thoughts Are Substantially More Correct Than Those of Ross Douthat
"Blue No Matter Who" Gets You Sinema
The Cement Garden: Chapters Five & Six
There is No Such Thing as "Punching Up" or "Punching Down"
My mother, who I have made in paper
Smoking Weed Doesn't Feel Good for Me Anymore, and It Hasn't For a Long Time
The Cement Garden: Chapters Three & Four
Joe Rogan, Parody of the Open Mind
Digest, 9/18/2021: Right Now, All You Have is Time Time Time
Emotional Overinvestment & Meaning
The Original Matrix is Pretty Bad
Charles Kuralt's "Place of Sorrows"
The Cement Garden: Chapter One & Two
Let's Take the Alex Pareene Challenge
Digest, 9/11/2021: Seek and Destroy
I Feel Conflicted About Saying This, But I'm a Grad School Success Story
The Cement Garden: Introductory Post
Why Resist Blank Slate Thinking? For One, Look to No Child Left Behind
Digest, 9/4/2021: I Can't Fall Asleep Without a Little Help
First Book Club: The Cement Garden
Review: Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #7 - Snowbound
Do You Hate Catcher in the Rye, or Are You Just a Ball of Perpetual Insecurity and Self Doubt?
Some Friendly Advice on Reviewing Books (or Anything Else Really)
Digest, 8/28/2021: Come Rub Upon My Belly with Your Guava Jelly
The Center Holds, For Good and Ill
"Old School Lifting" is Not the One Noble Path of Exercise
Funding Gaps Cannot Explain Academic Gaps
Digest, 8/21/2021: Goines Tale
When Nothing is Worked Through, Nothing is Explained, Nothing is Understood
There's No Alternative to Cultural Appropriation
Review: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Who Tells Them Things They Don't Want to Hear?
Digest, 8/14/2021: Batter My Heart
Anti-Zionism is Perfectly Mundane
Sooner or Later, Ability Rules
"NO ONE SAYS" & What a Strawman Is
If You're Bound to Be Bad, Why Bother Being Good?
Digest, 8/8/2021: When Life is Hard, You Have to Change
Five Books for Readers Aged 10-14
I have not "endorsed hate speech"
Anatomy of a Bad Idea: Affirmative Consent
Nü-Metal and Twilight Are the True Outsider Art, the Only Rebel Poets
Digest, 7/31/2021: America I've Given You All and Now I'm Nothing
Everything Gawker Existed to Satirize Has Been Destroyed
I'm Pro-Natalist But Don't Get the Moral Case for Pro-Natalism
To Slightly Reduce How Much the Internet Sucks, Use Positive Reinforcement
Please Don't Let Political Contrarianism Turn You Into a Lunatic
Do Liberals Have a Plan Other Than Whining About White People and the Senate?
didn't have to be this way: the Jia Tolentino story
Five Favorite Movie Trailers (That I Remember)
Anti-Racism is an Inter-White Struggle
A Reductive Explanation for Recent Changes in Math Pedagogy
Digest, 7/10/2021: Make Me New
Max Isn't Marginalized, Matriarchy Isn't Feminist
A Materialist Alternative to "Antiracism"
Digest, 7/3/2021: I Used to Ask My Melville Professor if He Was Really Into Cape Horn
Call Me a Normie If You Must, but Valheim is Great - with Friends
Accountability is a Prerequisite of Respect
What Bari Weiss Won't Tell You About Human Rights and China
Digest, 6/26/2021: Never Meant to Cause You Any Sorrow
Education Week: Review of The Education Trap
Education Week: Educational Assessments are Valid, Reliable, and Remarkably Predictive
Announcing the Red, the Brown, the Green
Education Week: How is Power Distributed in American Public K-12 Education?
Digest, 6/19/2021: All of the Lights
Yes, Mass Home Ownership is a Dumb Policy Goal, But...
quickie: Who I Voted For, Dem Primaries
Toni Morrison's Sula, the Great Underrated American Novel
Critical Race Theory, a Consolation Prize
Can News Survive Being Unbundled?
The Movement Threw the First Brick at Stonewall
Zipcar Sucks and So Does App World
Maybe You Could YIMBY a Little Bit Less
Digest, 6/5/2021: Lawless, Winged, and Unconfined
Those Who Didn't Make the List
Review: Jenny Offill's Weather
What Do We Do with Education Research?
They Tell Me the Cruelty is the Point
Digest, 5/29/2021: A Year Without Miles
I'm afraid I can't dunk about the lab leak
Please, Think Critically About College Admissions
from the archives: the Aum Example
Digest, 5/22/2015: Let the Dead Poets Make Way for the Others
You Aren't Actually Mad at the SATs
Digest, 5/515/2021: Cruel World
a bad partner is worse than rain
it works in traditional media too, Helen
Even the Best Star Wars Gets Graded On a Curve
All of This Shit is High School
Addendum: "Why didn't she just...?"
Letter from a Reader: My New Therapist
Annoying Connoisseurs Make Things Better for the Rest of Us
Digest, 5/1/21: Gone to See About a Girl
More Music For You, Volume One
What Became of Atheism, Part One: Wearing the Uniform
What are you, 12? There's no "deserves"
you are exhausted because life is pain
I Can Please None of the People All of the Time, and a Potential Publishing Schedule
Love Isn't Rational and Neither Are You
Cynical Motives for a Cynical Time
Review: Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts
I don't get what Adam Curtis is saying
Attention Please: Listen to Boris
Some Principles & Observations About Social Justice Politics
Nitro Edition: None of This is New
On Essays and SATs: Some Students are Just More Prepared Than Others
People Believe in Conspiracy Theories Because People Conspire
Women Do Not Need Lunatic Overconfidence
If You Want to Make It As a Writer, For God's Sakes, Be Weird
the humor in the Marvel movies makes me want to shoot myself directly in the face
Charter School Lotteries Are a Black Box. Why Don't Charter School Advocates Care?
Let's Pick a Tight, Contained Subject for the First Subscriber-Only Post, Such as "Reading"
You Can't Censor Away Extremism (or Any Other Problem)
The Skywalker Saga: Strangest Story Ever Told?
Behavior is the Product of Incentives: a note on yesterday's posts
non-Nitro Edition: Substack & Media
Will Wilkinson logrolls the night away
Scott Alexander is not in the Gizmodo Media Slack
antiracism is not a PR campaign for Black people