I may end up needing to recruit next year!
06.03.2026 15:37
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I may end up needing to recruit next year!
Postdoc job! I'm looking to recruit a postdoc to work on a project about research evaluation & metadata. More info here: www.yorku.ca/research/wp-...
Salary: CDN$70,000 (+ benefits)
Location: Toronto, ON (can be remote in ON)
Length: 18 months
Deadline: 31 March 2026
Start date: 1 July 2026
Heading to 4S in Toronto this October? Join our open panel "The Global Politics of Digital Health" with Luca Marelli (University of Milan), Jay Shaw (University of Toronto), and Abril Saldaña-Tejeda (Universidad de Guanajuato). Call for abstracts closes April 30: www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...
Looks super interesting!
Make it shitty!
Think this misses basic point: reason for writing an academic article is not to produce an academic article; it is through the research for and writing of an academic article that we are able to think, learn, develop ideas, come up with new ideas, collaborate, inspire, etc.
I'm thinking specifically of posts like this: alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/academics-...
... The point of writing an academic article is not to write an academic article; it is through the research for and writing of an academic article that we are able to think, learn, develop ideas, come up with new ideas, collaborate, inspire, etc. 2/
I'm seeing more articles about how #genAI will transform academic research cos it becomes easier & easier to write articles. I think @chrs00.bsky.social point re essays applies here as well: .... 1/
You inspired me!
The Whore of Babylon
This figure — drunk on the blood of saints, seated on many waters — could be reimagined as the broader MAGA political apparatus, or a specific character, that Vance rides to power but ultimately seeks to destroy.
War Against the Saints
The Beast makes war against those who "keep the commandments." In your novel, this could manifest as policies targeting religious minorities, dissidents, or the poor — the very communities Vance once claimed to champion.
42 Months of Authority
The Beast is given authority for 42 months — three and a half years. A VP term is four years, but a contested or interrupted presidency... interesting territory for your plot.
The Number of His Name
666 as a human number, the number of calculation and commerce. Vance's Yale Law → Silicon Valley → political pipeline is pure transactional calculation. You could build a numerological subplot around his name, dates, or career milestones.
Speaking Like a Dragon
The Beast is given "a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies." Vance's rhetorical gift — his ability to translate elite ideology into populist vernacular, to speak Yale while sounding Appalachian — is his most dangerous supernatural quality in your story.
The False Prophet
Revelation pairs the Beast with a False Prophet who performs signs and wonders. Peter Thiel — Vance's billionaire patron and ideological godfather — maps neatly here. Thiel quite literally "made" Vance's career, funding both his venture firm and his Senate campaign.
The Mark of the Beast
Rather than a literal forehead mark, his conversion moment at Mar-a-Lago could function as the Mark — the moment of total allegiance. Those who receive it gain access to political and economic power; those who refuse are cast out.
The Fatal Wound That Healed
One of Beast's heads receives mortal wound & is healed, causing world to marvel. Vance's political career was essentially killed by his 2016 "Trump is America's Hitler" remarks. Its miraculous resurrection — Trump choosing him as VP — is narratively perfect for this beat.
... → Silicon Valley libertarian → MAGA convert → VP/heir apparent. Each "head" a different face worn for a different era.
The Seven Heads & Ten Horns
The Beast has seven heads (representing power/empire) and ten horns (kings who serve him). You could map these to Vance's seven major ideological transformations — from hillbilly Democrat family roots → Iraq War veteran → Ohio State/Yale law ...
Origin & Rise from Obscurity
Revelation describes Beast rising from the sea — chaos, the masses, the forgotten places. Vance emerges from the rust belt poverty of Middletown, Ohio, a place of industrial decay and social collapse. His own memoir frames his origins as a kind of descent into the abyss.
Asking Claude to align Book of Revelation with JD Vance's life story ... let's see how this goes! 1/
"AI-resistant ‘halo’ [heavy asset, low obsolescence] stocks drive UK and EU markets to record highs"
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Does making people rich get us the innovation we want?
Palantir Sues Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn’t Want Palantir
If you run a company whose entire value proposition is the ability to see patterns, predict outcomes, and connect dots that others miss, you'd think someone in the building might have flagged that…
This is quite something: "The pivot in investor concern from AI-might-disappoint to AI-might-win has seen trillions wiped off the market capitalisation of capital-light firms over the past few weeks. So far, index-level public market credit spreads remain super-tight" #AIcrash
Go check out this new article on #techoligarchy!
Scam stage of capitalism
Spot on
More scam stage of capitalism