Thanks, I hAIte it.

Medea Childcare

We have an entire chattering class with the moral and philosophical sophistication of the creators of South Park.

Just came across a citation of my scholarship, except it is a completely inaccurate citation that bears all the hallmarks of AI generated BS. Where do I put this on my CV?

This is a bad deal, and the old way of doing things is clearly not working. We need new leaders in the Senate.

i think this is key. taking the deal would amount to taking the blame. it would turn a clear political victory into an unambiguous defeat.

one thing that's nice about canceling your New York Times sub is every week you get at least one or two stories shared on here that make you say, "yeah, it rocks that I did that, I only wish I could do it again." highly recommend you cancel yours if you haven't already

New higher ed agenda: Learn to code switch.

Mamdani was unaware Dick Cheney had died when I asked just now:

Sounds like the price of rent is going to stabilize all on its own then, huh?

Still waiting for the day my book is not relevant to today’s news stories:

Still waiting for the day my book is not relevant to today’s news stories:

"The new Luddites aren’t afraid of AI. They’re afraid of the people who profit from pretending it’s intelligent." Erik J. Larson reviews "The AI Con" by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-return-of-the-luddites/

The neo-Luddites have the easiest arguments: We entrusted book sales to Amazon, and now literacy is plummeting; We entrusted our everyday purchases to online vendors, and now our personal data is currency; We entrusted our social lives to social media, and now social alienation is skyrocketing.

I recently rewatched the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, and it is beyond funny that the Timothée Chalamet movie focuses entirely on the period of Dylan’s life that Todd Haynes found so uninteresting that he almost skips it entirely.

For those who want to join me in millennial uncoolness, here’s the playlist:

Being middle aged is realizing that you’ve spent the last six years listening to the same playlist of music that was popular background music in restaurants in 2019.

Currently in a faculty meeting and everyone else is brainstorming through ChatGPT. Again, we are COOKED

From the July 1936 issue of Esquire.

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

A portion of every dollar spent on Harry Potter merchandise goes to anti-transgender campaigns.

The fact that some prominent Democrats defend a Maine Senate primary candidate’s Nazi tattoo while he isn’t even leading in polls, but not defend a NYC mayor primary winner from false smears even as he’s leading general election polls says a lot. That doesn’t seem driven by voter preference.

This makes a good argument for how REAL reading requires moving beyond "excerpts" and focusing on the organic relation of part to whole: "We need whole texts—novels, plays, or poems—to care about literature." slate.com/life/2025/10...

I can’t believe we’re really going to have more than a week of debate about “stigmatizing” a political candidate who literally branded himself with Nazi stigmata. A stigma is a mark of shame on the body that marks someone as outside a group. No one stigmatized him! He literally did it to himself.

Kreon: We are a nation of laws! Are you against law and order!?

For no reason I’m thinking about how I published an article in 2020 about how fantasy sports was turning sports into a neoliberal hellscape of casino capitalism that was hollowing out sports as a potential site of imagining the social and doing politics. Now to open today’s newspaper…

thisisfine.gif

It really cannot be overstated how much Nazism is throughly interwoven in contemporary US politics (to say nothing of the history of US politics).

The two party system is great because it offers you the choice of either avowed Nazis or secret (or best-case-scenario-former) Nazis. Plus, we have primaries that allow you to choose between secret (or best-case-scenario-former) Nazis and people who will stand idly by while Nazis do Nazi stuff.

A very, very good, clear analysis of bubble mechanics, both in the abstract & specific to AI, from @graceblakeley.substack.com, ending with a version of my mantra: It’s not the bubble that you’ve got to worry about, it’s the bailout that might kill us.

RIP Zoë Wicomb.

This is why I am announcing the launch of Pivot, a new AI-driven platform for university administration.

Hear me out on this one, but maybe this really means that we're not "post-pandemic" Post-Pandemic COVID-19 linked with high numbers of workforce absences and exits ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

“There are more junior birdmen fascists running around the West today disguised as Artists than there are disguised as fascists.” —Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre” (1965)

One of the key dynamics of colorblind racism is that neither race nor racism appears until someone opts to break from the polite decorum of pretending that they do not exist. At which point, that person is already socially stigmatized for having spoken the forbidden words.

I can’t help but think today about how many young people were savaged on social media, branded as anti-semites and abandoned by their schools for daring to call for a ceasefire. I remember saying that it was the first time I can remember that calling for ceasefire was regarded as a hostile demand.

The Gods demand a World Series between the Seattle Mariners and the Seattle Pilots.

Higher Ed in 2025 is opening your mailbox to see that your institution has sent you: 1. A Center for Teaching and Learning call to integrate AI into your classroom; and 2. An Office of Academic Integrity email encouraging you to crack down on students who use AI to cheat.

This is perfect because it succinctly communicates the point that AI boosters inevitably miss: Figuring out hard things is the point.

When the metaphor “we’re burning the planet for AI” literalizes:

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Bloomberg research found wholesale electricity up ~270% in areas near data centers It doesn't seem like nearly enough people are taking it seriously One A.I. image isn't too much energy, but 5 million videos? Per day/hour/minute whatever. It's not sustainable www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

Will to Power and Grace

They’re playing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Y Control” at the grocery store. I am officially an Old.

The Aristocrats!

The main thing I got out of the Ezra Klein-TNC interview was that I can read a podcast episode in 1/3 the time it takes Ezra Klein to debase himself with what amounts to really baroque self-pity.

The other key to this is how the rightwing politics of “awakening” are antithetical to “staying woke.” QAnon and the various forms of rightwing radicalization entice followers to facile understandings of politics as an awakening. Staying woke is a longterm project that takes constant effort.

[INT. JERRY’S APARTMENT] Gregor Costanza: I swear, I just woke up like this! Jerry: You woke up as a cockroach!? Gregor Costanza: I woke up like a cockroach! Kramer: (shudder mumbles) Jerry: Well, on the bright side, maybe this solves your Susan problem? [LAUGH TRACK. BASS.]