i love whistler but I think we should admit that Ruskin was right about Nocturne a Falling Rocket

you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning

Vernon Lee is 90% Merleau-Ponty?

successfully discovered the true identity of an author about Guyana from 1893, currently levitating. all fans of ZORG: A STORY OF BRITISH GUIANA, our time has come

paying a nominal fee for a library digitization

Thrilled to be included among fabulous contributors to the latest edition of Dilettante Army, “Ekphrasis.” Read on for speculations about AI boyfriends, avant-garde burlesque shows, killer machines, and the Freudian death drive. dilettantearmy.com/articles/ekp...

wake up at 3 AM. find it impossible to get back to sleep. read Ode to a Nightingale to pass the time. think of sudden amazing insight about poem. fall asleep, completely forget insight

great-grandfather to ferdinand de saussure. signification dynasty

wish i knew

I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense.

I wrote for @newinquiry.bsky.social about the psycho-political agons of 90s sitcom neighbors like Kimmy Gibbler, Steve Urkel, and co.—why they showed up, why they were thrown out, and why they kept coming back. Give it a read! thenewinquiry.com/new-neighbor...

My article “The Form of Information and Informational Form in The Woman in White” was published in Studies in the Novel (@studiesinthenovel.bsky.social)—give it a read!! muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

"Victorian Studies: Who Cares?" Come to the Victorians Institute 2025 conference at Furman University in Greenville, SC this Sept 14-15. CFP deadline now May 31. Please submit and share! vi2025.wordpress.com

another year, another analysis of the humanoid NCAA championship mascots. first up is an old favorite, the St. Mary’s Gael, a living 19th century caricature of a Scotsman

Michael Mann’s Heat is a movie equally perfect for adults who love moody Italians and small children who really like trucks, construction equipment, infrastructure, etc

The Snowy Day — Ezra Jack Keats, 1962

Founding a New Cato Institute. Instead of taking inspiration from the politics of Cato the Younger, this one will evangelize Cato the Elders’s views on the healing properties of cabbage.

In this post and the next two, we will introduce the contributors to 66.3! 66.3’s first essay cluster, “Stretch*,” is organized and introduced by Priti Joshi @pritijoshi.bsky.social, and features essays written by Hosanna Krienke, Ryan Carroll @ryancarroll.bsky.social, and M.A. Miller.

Excited to share my article “Revision and the Politics of Truth-Telling in the Autobiography of Juan Francisco Manzano, which was published in Victorian Studies @victstudies.bsky.social!! Give it a read to think with me on truth, translation, and slave narrative muse-jhu-edu/pub/3/articl...

Obviously the b-sides are great too but it's always a thrill when Moby Dick bot plays the hits.

“No: it means being honest in committing to action—and sometimes, it means being honest about when action is impossible.” csalateral.org/section/apor...

Dispatches from another world

was very sad and sickened to have come across one of these articles lately, complete with a chart on the “impact,” “locality,” and “sentiment” of the person who’d passed away. absolutely horrible to read about more, but worth reading

New: When someone dies, Google is filled with clickbait articles about their death — even non-celebrity, private individuals. Even children. I wrote about the cruelty of SEO obituary spam, and how sites are now using generative AI to produce even more content. www.theverge.com/24065145/ai-...

asked students to chatbot generate some opening paragraphs and loved how dependably overwritten and fake deep the phrases were

Kevin James has been algorithmically redesigned to be confused for Tom Segura

which proposed Antarctic flag wins the contest of champions

hm

muppet Christmas carol does bring me to to tears

Give a gift to the Derridean or Foucaldian in your life

i think compassion is profound but surely we need to be doing better than telling ourselves that compassion alone is an act of resistance

Cultural history of perceived end-times

comic strip heathcliff and Catherine Linton vs comic strip Cathy and human Heathcliff. who wins

Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Lecture confirms it: we (hermeneutic phenomenologists) are So Back

I'm excited to share via the LA Review of Books my review of Plastiboo's VERMIS, a beautiful dream of a world where strategy guides get the attention they've always deserved. Come for an analysis of the form, stay for the comparisons to Lem and Bolaño!

Exceptionally great review of an exceptionally great piece of story/worldbuilding/art!

Paterpilled once again

🤌

Digital humanities pedagogy just hurts you in the end

and now we let the clout roll in