New blog post: thoughts on the tendency to describe academic and alt-ac as two sides of a binary, and how this reinforces the problems with academic identities. joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/24/c...

Dems have to run on this hard. Do not let the RFK types try to spin what his own party just signed off on here. Actual Monsanto, the comic book villain of Adbusters days, was shielded from liability over poisoning Americans. I don't care if it's slopulism: this Supreme Court wants you dead.

The lives, happiness, and dignity of real human beings matters more than whatever philosophical point you are trying to make is basically the entire basis of my ideology now.

I've got a lot of writing to get on with in what is looking likely to be my last summer in academia. So today it's claims to historicity in paratexts of mythological games, and modern restagings of tragedy's women! And as I'll keep adding, I need a job from March, so if you know of anything...!

I grew up in New England at a time when AC was unusual. I wasn’t opposed to it, but it wasn’t something I gave much thought to. Since moving to Missouri I’ve come to see it as a necessity, as I was reminded last night while staying in a hotel room in St Louis with a non-functioning AC.

New blog post: thoughts on the tendency to describe academic and alt-ac as two sides of a binary, and how this reinforces the problems with academic identities. joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/24/c...

Why are you concerned? Do you not trust your senior management team? Do you not love us? thesphinxblog.com/2026/06/24/t...

I am once again begging universities to realise that staff - academic, professional services, estates, all of them - are the product they are trying to sell. Without staff there is nothing to sell. No amount of flashy buildings will replace staff in universities. UKHE is in freefall.

What do people think is going to happen if there's a tool that can reduce the time they spend on a job task by 60%? They get to prep their feet up and relax? Especially when they teach at a community college?

Spoken like a true elder millennial.

Nearly 20YA, when HBO first experimented with extraneous incest plotlines in Rome ("Utica", Octavian-Octavia, completely ahistorically) I predicted that in their quest to be more Transgressive they'd eventually go mom-son, & now #HOTD has added that(not in OG). But why does HBO think this is sexy???

Dying of tuberculosis - estimated to be the most likely single cause of adult death in medieval Europe - doesn't sound like fun: your gasping lungs steadily give out as painfully asphyxiate in your bed, your body long having wasted to a shadow of itself. Anyway, the 'modern wagecucks' cured it.

joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/21/w... New varia post: recapping a weekend in Kansas City, plus links mostly about history and academia with a smattering of tech and culture.

joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/21/w... New varia post: recapping a weekend in Kansas City, plus links mostly about history and academia with a smattering of tech and culture.

One of the cool things about seeing classical music live is getting to identify who is doing what, when, to produce a given piece.

Having Stephen Marche review Cory Doctorow’s new book is a real choice.

lots of people who said we shouldn't bother fielding a soccer team with men in it, but they got a chance and they're playing right up to it bless their hearts

I finally figured out why AI causes such a visceral reaction in thinking humans: I am writing my book chapter on PLAY, and AI is the opposite of play. We play for the joy of the process, not for the outcome. Yes it is nice to win, to have the art/ poem, but the point of life is to play.

Every country with any kind of archaeological sites of significance, 1600 to 1950:

💯 I'll add that reviewing text and GIVING feedback is, itself, learning--seeing what choices others make, what mistakes they make and you notice, realizing that you're part of a process--none of which you get with feeding it into the least common denominator machine.

I really need to read The Cheese and the Worms.

I am here for all of the hate of JD Vance’s new book, but also thinking about all of the books that won’t get more coverage because his took up all of the oxygen.

As I walked away, I had another funny feeling. What if this "book" and his entire "experiment" is funded by an AI company? This is exactly the kind of "scholarship" tech bro overlords want -- influential academics, preferably men, telling the rest of us that we are now useless in the age of AI.

I think this is especially true of history. For some reason, everyone in other professions believes that there is no method, theory, or philosophy to history. Thinking of doctors writing ‘histories’ of epilepsy without ever setting foot in an archive

Thrilled to announce publication with @dominicmachado.bsky.social of our article: "The Carthaginian Masters: Settler Colonialism and Racecraft in Ancient North Africa" Arethusa 59: 151-178. We destroy Carthage one more time, only with theory. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Widow’s Bay is easily the best TV show I’ve seen so far this year.

Libs just cannot imagine something being tacky without associating it with poor people even when it’s the richest people in the world.

There’s a broader thing here which is brands/outlets posting like people rather than news providers bc it drives more engagement that I find off putting, I guess

My latest varia post, with a status update on the summer, a few sports thoughts, and the usual roundup of links. joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/14/w...

Prediction markets should be banned for a lot of reasons, but I'm willing to defend that position for their extremely stupid commercials alone.

Various thoughts and notes about Lord of the Rings, based on recently rereading the series. joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/13/f...

Absolutely seriously I get so much joy from all the posts/ videos of World Cup visitors coming to the US and being embraced, finding wonder, having fun The US should be that - a light to the world, a community that opens its arms to all

Various thoughts and notes about Lord of the Rings, based on recently rereading the series. joshuapnudell.com/2026/06/13/f...

Why are they so anxious? -Climate change and being broke! Why won’t they have kids? -Climate change and being broke! Why do they want to be influencers? -Climate change and being broke! Why do they think socialism is good? -Climate change and being broke! These kids are so selfish…

True of humanities and most social sciences more generally: findings tend to be “actually it’s more complicated”, and that is received with disdain and horror.

Sorry for the threads screenshot i stole, but this is important. I knew a dude who got his master's degree in religious studies in his eighties. People come out start dating or transitioning in their 90s. Life is wild and can be so wonderful, and as long as you're drawing breath, change is possible

my favorite Spanish language announcer World Cup thing ever was when they called David Beckham "Señor Spiceman"

Today in "the metaphors just write themselves, don't they":

I've seen some "a trillionaire is a policy failure" takes that I respectfully disagree with. A billionaire is a policy failure. A trillionaire is an abomination.

I have mostly focused my AI commentary on cognitive effects because that is the side effect most immediately relevant for my work, but the environmental effects are by far the most consequential and I believe the erosion of social cohesion is a pretty clear second.

5. It is (I think) not the authors' intention, but one reading of this approach is that the archival turn -- attentiveness to the formation and limitations of archives, of which critical fabulation is a part -- justifies the systematic falsification of the archive in a quest for complete narratives.

Wait, hold up, I'm sorry - the actual data supporting the conclusions of your 'academia is politicized and not data-based enough' report may or may not be published at some point? Proof is for the peasants at public universities, I guess.

The strong claims tied to broad generalities is remarkable, consistent in every insider critique of academic standards. Asking these people to supply any examples of the phenomena they decry results in a gish gallop of disordered resentments. It’s remarkable how low the standards are for this genre.

These people (the authors, the commissioners, the chronicle) need to stop and look around at the world today and ask themselves whether the humanities being too woke and silly is really the biggest threat to higher education right now but I suspect they don’t really care

I never thought I'd see a story that quite so beautifully captured the phrase 'decline of empire'.

I’ve been thinking about the translation of παΐς. What do you think of a link between slave and child being not just thinking of enslaved people as childlike? What about the fact that enslaved people and children have often been considered property? Maybe that’s what links them? Idk, it’s 10:30pm

"it's gotten so bad that people like me have to publish in obscure Czech journals. or else in the Chronicle or the NYRB"

This is key to why most SFF readers start in childhood, and it can be a struggle to learn how to read SFF as an adult if you didn’t start teen you still knew how to read like a kid.

Dave Eggers, on NPR's Wildcard with Rachel Martin: www.npr.org/2026/06/11/n...