Tom Pepinsky

@tompepinsky

Teacher, researcher, internationalist, republican. tompepinsky.com

1.406 Folgt22.932 Follower4.002 Posts

Bluesky

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Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 18d

I desperately want the Christopher Nolan film adaptation of the Ramayana. This is now on the table

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 19d

Find yourself a local bar where you can hear Iggy Pop, Pulp, Bad Brains, and At the Drive In while enjoying a Genny Cream

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 20d

Me watching this

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 23d

after having driven from Wilmington NC to Ithaca NY via Newark on a beach weekend. Survived the temptations of several Cook Outs

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 25d

Topsail Beach, NC, south end. The local turtle rescue program leaves a bucket next to every clutch of eggs with instructions to save any babies that hatch during the daytime. This little guy wanted to try Hard Mode (hot sand)

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 26d

"This uncertainty about the human provenance of text is an incalculable loss"

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· 29d

Some nice traditional garnalen en mieliepap

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jul 6

“Stinky cheese pie” : blue cheese, shallots, olive oil, basil, topped with arugula

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jul 6

I'm sorry, but LOL to everyone wailing and fainting about corruption in international sports

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jul 4

Happy Independence Day to America, my country!

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 30

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 28

Let’s gooooooooooooooo

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 27

Hey guys want to see the wrongest map ever

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 23

"We have the Catholics and Muslims"

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 23

“England has traditionally struggled in Massachusetts”

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 23

Good morning, you adorable yard rats

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 20

I wanna rock!

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 18

This is Japanese for “flavor-blasted”

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 18

Point blank in broad daylight

Listen, I was really happy when he was elected. I admit it. I think it was good for Israel. And, in the beginning, it was. But today I don’t know what to think. I am really in shock.

It’s hard to fathom.

I don’t have a lot of moments like this. I don’t remember someone in modern history who would go with you and do wonderful things, and then suddenly disappear and go against you. So now I am the bad guy? I supported you! I was the good guy! How did I become the bad guy, and the Ayatollah is the good guy?

This is why I was wondering whether you had ever observed Donald Trump.

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 16

I haven't seen the Persians embarrass a head of state like this since Darius the Great captured the Lying King Skunkha in the Behistun Inscription

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 13

When I teach comparative politics, I use the case of the Rugby World Cup in South Africa to make the point that loyalty to a state and its people is very different from loyalty to a regime. Go 🇺🇸!

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 7

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 6

Remember the great uncles who you never met and the cause they died for

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· Jun 5

Because I am 1-3 months behind in my RSS feed, I just came across this essay by @interfluidity.com on the liberal professional class, our aspirations, our ambitions, and our politics, over the past 50 years. It is excellent. Read every word. drafts.interfluidity.com/2026/05/13/t...

The consensus among our class — which I shared! — was that our society was imperfectly but sufficiently a meritocracy, and that the basic frame of what came to be called "neoliberalism" was correct. A heavily marketized society was a society we-the-merited could succeed within, and it was also the form of society that would maximize all of our prosperity. The fact that our successes might be generously remunerated was not just a matter of private enjoyment, but reflected genuine social virtue. We had achieved a society in which one did well by doing good.

This was never accurate. But journalists, think-tankers, and academic social scientists who were willing to advance this perspective in their work could count on career success. Which contributed to a consensus (not least but not only within the discipline of economics) that this suspiciously self-flattering perspective was in fact true. It was "science". The people at the top of many fields embraced it. Dissidence became hard to distinguish from sour-grapes conspiracism.

"Liberal professionals" had been recruited into what John Kenneth Galbraith describes as the role of the modern conservative. They were "engaged...in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· May 25

And I’m proud to be an American / when at least we smoke dark meat

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· May 19

The highlight of my professional life is this report on what I apparently told the students that I think about all the time. Not mentioned: The Roman Empire

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· May 13

Action shot of the bookshelf above my office computer. Does need more cybernetics, though.

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· May 10

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky· May 9

Yes, those are pickled ramps. 100% vegetarian.