In my History & Film classes I talk about the Robin Hood paradigm, where new RH movies/shows come out during times of economic crisis & government mistrust, and Law & Order-type shows in times of prosperity. If L&O is framing ICE as Bad Guys rather than Good Cops, nobody thinks they're the heroes.

Adam Hochschild’s World War One books don’t, as far as I can tell, break a lot of new historiographical ground, but he’s as good as anyone at using human stories to show the tragedy and horror of the war.

New varia post: some thoughts on learning to write, followed by links about history, higher education, books, writers, music, and a little politics, plus my usual media round-up. joshuapnudell.com/2025/09/28/w...

New varia post: some thoughts on learning to write, followed by links about history, higher education, books, writers, music, and a little politics, plus my usual media round-up. joshuapnudell.com/2025/09/28/w...

Another addendum to this thought is that it is much worse for a commentator to double down on their failure to meet the moment than it is to fail in the first place. One of the deep flaws with our media institutions is that they seem built to give disincentives to learning and growing.

Winning elections is extremely important but It does not follow from this that 1)political discourse needs to be dominated by the question of how to win elections or that 2)there's some set of policy positions or messaging choices that can guarantee victory in any election

Being equipped or not to meet a particular moment isn’t a moral judgement, per se, but the highest echelons of our media apparatus being dominated by people incapable of meeting the moment is a damning indictment of those institutions.

My general belief is that Dems need to spend more time thinking about what they believe and less about what they think some imaginary swing voters want them to believe. Political strategy will stem from an authentic set of beliefs.

More evidence to my theory that AI use in student writing is highly contextual based on the assignment, the class, and the conditions under which it is happening. Results from my first paper: more than half used nothing; a quarter used only Grammarly; and a quarter used it to edit or outline.

Update from Portland: supplies running low. Please send fig jam and artisanal cheeses. For the jam, prefer GF, vegan, small batch, processed by a guy named River, who only stirs it during Mercury retrograde.

In discussion with a computer scientist from the University of Cambridge last night: Me: "you've described some of the things that AI is good at. How would you describe the category of things it's not good at? **pause** Him: "Anything where it has to be right".

I have been going around my region of the country this semester, giving a talk that opposes the incursion of commercial AI into higher ed. After one of them, my colleague sent me her students' reflections: these students are PRIMED to be supported in not having their educations hijacked for ill. 1/2

New blog post: a first pass at rethinking the structure of my Greek history course that I'm teaching next semester. joshuapnudell.com/2025/09/27/c...

One of the constant strands in the history of the university, dating back to its medieval origins, is the attempt of authorities - especially religious authorities but not exclusively - to control what can and cannot be taught.

My latest baking experiment: Apple honey sourdough challah, twisted into a circle for the new year. I macerated the apples to remove the liquid and then reduced the juice with honey and cornstarch to make a jelly that I coated the apple pieces with before adding them to the challah strands.

I didn’t have Tony Blair on my 2025 bingo card.

yeah we're into LLMs (Large Lamb-bridge Models)

In today’s #PeoplingBlog we continue our “Unknown Peoples” Series! Read on as Goran Sanev takes us through the historical and archaeological evidence for the Paeonians, one of the oldest proto-historical communities in the Central Balkans: peoplingthepast.com/2025/09/26/b... /1

Cuts to and closures of university presses are 100% part of the separation (or as @mattseybold.bsky.social has called it "unbundling") of research and teaching in the humanities and the devaluation of both quite frankly--in this case at the expense of the career training admin claims to care about.

We worry a lot about the dangers of treating/seeing AI as human but I think it's also worth worrying about the dangers of students seeing and thus treating their teachers as...less human.

Tomorrow! All are welcome.

Positing digital and media literacy as a solution to a poisoned information ecosystem that reward flagrant lying is akin to suggesting that reducing individual energy use will solve the climate crisis. Obviously important, but also an individual solution for a collective, structural problem.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Odysseus had his crew lash him to the mast to keep him from doing an interview with Chotiner.

Positing digital and media literacy as a solution to a poisoned information ecosystem that reward flagrant lying is akin to suggesting that reducing individual energy use will solve the climate crisis. Obviously important, but also an individual solution for a collective, structural problem.

Same here. Their energy has been a welcome boost to building momentum in my classes this semester.

Things have really changed. Now I need your help.   I wrote about why I left academia, why I left America, why I left Substack - and why I need your support as I am starting over as a full-time independent writer:   Some major personal news: steady.page/en/democracy...

the booker prize judges make a lot of fuss about having to read 153 books. but assuming an average weight of 750g per book, that comes in at 115kg of literature - or just under the weight of a single adult male ostrich

15-25 year old me: tee hee i love all the deaths in the final destination movies 40 year old me: this is what happens when you get rid of regulations and oversight. Everything is shoddily built and they’re cutting corners

Hey the Kindle of my most recent book is now US $2.99 on Amazon www.amazon.com/Rivalries-th...

🚨CFP for #ResDiff7 is now available!🚨 Res Difficiles 7 will take place on 13th March 2026 with Dr Samuel Agbamu as our keynote speaker. Submit an abstract by 12th January 2026: resdifficiles.com/cfp/

I fucking hate writing sometimes. It's like somebody hands you a tree and an axe and says "I need a table by dinner time, and make it pretty." Like, fuck you. Who the fuck does this for a living? It's fucking stupid.

“Paused” majors at Syracuse include Classics, Modern Jewish Studies, and Religion, as well as French, German, Italian, Russian

dudes rock

A fourth boat bombed in international waters. Total death toll now 19 What I dont get is, if these boats are "carrying fentanyl" as Trump says (they absolutely arent. Even the DEA says VZ doesnt produce fentanyl), then why not seize one and show us? www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-...

New abbreviated varia post: reporting back from Mankato and a few links about higher education, and my weekly media roundup. joshuapnudell.com/2025/09/21/w...

VERTICAL VIDEO SUCKS AND I'LL DIE MY MILLENNIAL ASS ON THIS HILL

People keep talking about tech firms in relation to the H1-B $100k fee but it’s gonna really sink universities.

So much this!

Does orientalism explain the preference for Sun Tzu over, say, Polyaenus? Or is it that the former purports to be a singular vision while the latter collects exempla from other outstanding generals.

From Orwell's Bookshop Memories—"Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover."—to demanding something that the doesn't exist because the simulation you're plugged into told you it did.

“Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.” www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

if schools actually cared about student job prospects, they'd take the latest data into account and start expanding the scope of their curricula to account for career unpredictability. we know they're not doing that. so who is the university for, really? i know who i serve. /end

that's what i mean about setting trends. schools could develop a forward-thinking, comprehensive core curriculum that encourages intellectual exploration and prioritizes skill acquisition over credentialing for a set of increasingly diminishing jobs. 8/?

my point, believe it or not, is *not* just "give resources to humanities programs!" (though we absolutely should!) my point is that we can't predict what future job markets will look like. our world moves too quickly, changes too often, to do so. 6/?

We're just gonna have to try for peace on earth and goodwill towards men....and someday, maybe, a Washington Post again deserving of Redford's hagiography of it. RIP #RobertRedford.

RIP youtu.be/KyR7XB0VBPM?...

The Association of Ancient Historians meeting will be in Iowa City from April 16-18, 2026. For those new to the AAH, we have preset panel themes; you pick 1 to apply to. The theme overall is Ancient Exchanges in a Global Antiquity. See CFP: abstracts are due by December 1. aah.conference.uiowa.edu

Starting to plan a sourcebook on sexuality and gender in the Hellenistic period. What would be better: by evidence genre (epigram, visual evidence, narrative history, philosophy, new comedy) or by topic (marriage, prostitution, homosexuality, royal mistresses) ? In translation, meant for teaching