Tom Emanuel

A Game Over screen from the Undertale Genocide Route when the player loses to Sans: "geeettttttt dunked on!!!"

To my fellow South Dakotan Kristi Noem, I can only offer the following condolences.

As a rather talented writer once put it, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

There are times when I can't help thinking, it's a pity I don't believe in hell.

As one small response to feeling crispier than burnt toast, I finally got around to watching Sinners long-distance with a dear one in the U.S. last night. I am here to confirm the conventional wisdom that it is, in fact, a banger. Two Michael B. Jordans at once, mmmmmm boy.

Not sure how I thought I could come off years of clinical depression, go through multiple huge life changes at once, and summon a thesis into being in three months when I had counted on having six, without it all taking its toll. But it turns out burnout is real, and it doesn't get better in a week.

I'm beyond honored to have written the chapter on Theological Criticism for what will be a phenomenal book. Mazel Tov to @lukebshelton.bsky.social, @dimitrafimi.bsky.social, and my brilliant fellow-conributors. A huge step in a mammoth undertaking!

And by "somehow did it with two small children," I mean "had a co-parent who invested three years into being a stay-at-home mum until the kids could start nursery." I wished we paid PhDs enough to finish them, in a reasonable timeframe, with something akin to a work/life/family balance.

By the time I sit my viva in March, I'll have finished my PhD just under the wire of my funding period and somehow did it with two small children. But I'm not convinced I did right by my kids, storming through it like that while they were so young, and I'd never recommend that path to anyone else.

And by "somehow did it with two small children," I mean "had a co-parent who invested three years into being a stay-at-home mum until the kids could start nursery." I wished we gave PhDs the resources to complete them, in a reasonable timeframe, with something akin to a work/life/family balance.

By the time I sit my viva in March, I'll have finished just under the wire of my funding period and somehow did it with two small children. HOWEVER: I'm not convinced I did right by my kids storming through it like that while they were so young, and I'd never recommend that path to anyone else.

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

I would like to propose that if and when we conduct the denazification of this country, we refer to it as de-icing.

Been listening to music from the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and Second Resconstruction era in the U.S. this morning. Sometimes we fight and lose, but that lays the foundation for the future. Sometimes we fight and win, and that lays the foundation for the future too.

I can't put into words the feeling of watching our government, a hive of evil antisocial filth, the absolute worst humanity has to offer, colliding with the best. Ordinary people trying to help each other, risking everything to stand up for what's plainly, unambiguously fair and right. It's unreal

Stand With Minnesota Donation Directory Stand With Minnesota is a hub for supporting, learning, and taking action to support Minnesotans impacted by ICE and federal enforcement.

A plethora of Minnesota mutual aid projects to support if you are looking to do something concrete tonight:

One of the best organizers I know in the Twin Cities has a great line, "We can't always take away the hurt, but we can take away the alone."

A quote by Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

It sometimes feels ludicrous to study literature when jackbooted thugs are murdering people in the streets and shipping innocent people to camps. But if I'm going to be an academic in such a moment, at least I get to study this.

I love parish ministry in many ways. I'm discerning whether to return to it. But if a church can't call a fascist a fascist for fear of alienating conservatives, it needs to get over the idolatry of civility and step the fuck up.

Something that drove me nuts about parish ministry, even in progressive churchs, was the pressure to be diplomatic and pastoral in the face of murderous injustice. Sometimes it's your job as a person of faith to be absolutely fucking furious in God's name and say exactly what you mean.

I am a single-issue voter and that issue is "Nuremberg Trials for Kristi Noem."

I am beyond proud of the people of Minneapolis and so many others back home right now who are protecting each other and fighting back. Things are so dark, but waching them, I have hope for the first time in a long time.

they're executing moms and nurses in the street. they're using preschoolers as bait. they're stealing people's dads and grandmas and children. they're tear gassing babies. they're staking out schools. there is no remedy but abolition. any proposal that doesn't start there is an act of violence.

It doesn't help that British Sign Language and American Sign Language *also* use different signs and spelling conventions!

To be revealed...

(all right it's #3)

You'll have to wait and see who gets top billing in my Acknowledgments. :)

(It's not that hard to guess if you know what stage of life I'm in.)

The Lothlorien chapters *should* feel out of time! The more time I get to spend there, the sadder I am when it inevitably fades. That's the point!

Given that I've reread it twenty times at this point, including thrice over the course of my PhD, and given that I've already teared up several times on this reading, I'm not terribly worried. But tempt not the gods as they say, lol

My viva, or thesis defense as we'd call it in the U.S., has been set for March 27. Just enough time to finish my annual reread of The Lord of the Rings, which is rather convenient when my PhD is about The Lord of the Rings.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in a frigid country, in the depths of the winter, where the local populace hates your guts.

"Gandalf the rapidly greying" is sending me. Also, ameyn.