Steven Mintz's substack post may have gone unnoticed since he published it as the holiday season kicked in. If you missed, it, it's very useful for anyone currently doing course planning for the spring who wants students to learn things in the dystopian era of AI substack.com/inbox/post/1...

There was a whole movement in the late 2000s / early 2010s to get a laptop into the hands of *every* child on earth, one that ended with *no appreciable educational gains in the target countries*. Morgan Ames walks us through the ugliness of utopia in his book: mitpress.mit.edu/978026253744...

For the thousandth time, the adults in the room should know better than to unleash this ish in classrooms. We have the tools to shape and model for students what learning looks like and feels like. “some students” 🙄 Gift link if you want to get mad www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/t...

2026 goals: 1. Get back to the gym, yes, but also eat more whipped fats 2. Become known for skimming the delicious toppings off the dip so I get invited to fewer parties

Stoked my always barely-beneath- the-surface class resentment reading a NYT profile on Kate Hudson, who plays a working class singer from Wisconsin in a new film. I don’t know who has more class hatred, me for nepo babies or the writer of this article, who clearly hates the working class.

Was about to ask this question, myself! Favorite episode: Long Live Walter Jameson Why? I think it’s a clever and quotable story, and I love history professors Others: Midnight Sun, One for the Angels, Sixteen Millimeter Shrine, Third from the Sun, The Hunt, and more!

“It’s a Good Life” is so widely applicable. Trump: “I cut funding to the children’s cancer research center” Other politicians and institutions: “It’s real good that you did that, Donny. Real good.”

Post your best albums of 2025 list early and you may have jumped the gun. Post it late and we assume you were cribbing from other people or making sure your choices were safe. Only solution is to celebrate what you heard and liked instead of ranking shit. Happy New Year. Listen to music. 🥂 🥳

Drinking game: watch 1950s film/TV and take a drink everytime you hear "gag" ("What is this, some kind of gag or something?")

Got annoyed looking for essay-form fragrance reviews and realized that every review is a short-form video. Dawned on me--as others have for sure already pointed out--that this is the media preference of "people who don't like reading," whom we should just go ahead and call the willing illiterate.

“I study technology.” The technology 👇

I think all the pleasure and romance of long-distance travel in the US may have been absorbed into travel by rail.

Trenton from the amtrak crescent line. What did Trenton make that the world takes? Steel? Pottery? Naughty by Nature?

It’s probably a dumb take, but Alex Winter playing Vladimir reminded me of no actor so much as Art Carney (Norton in The Honeymooners)

Bill and Ted and Beckett and me (🤓) on Broadway

Thanks to @thescrvnr.bsky.social for turning me on to the reissue of this absolute gem of late 70s world jazz.

365 days away!!!!!

Oh god, here come the board games

Nibling tattoos. (It’s supposed to be a mermaid)

The niblings have got my number, re: giving me these socks. The best thing about today is that Christmas 2026 is 366 days away!

What Christmas looks like to me. 😋 (When in Bay Ridge…)

I love everything about this, and “wretched festive lurgy” is entering my rotation of references to the holiday season. 🥂

Asked my husband if the dress I pulled from my closet was “appropriate for the Beckett play [we are seeing in the city],” and he said “well if it were longer it’d be perfect for a funeral, so I’m thinking ‘yes.’”

"It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. This year Amazon acquired full creative rights to the James Bond franchise. And as the quest for the next 007 drags on, Lauren Eriks Cline reflects on Daniel Craig's legacy in making palpable the character’s coerced masculinity.

Sharing again for the Friday crowd and for all your Knives-Out-season needs.

It’s the entire point. There’s no plan to make this meaningful for students. No plan to use it administratively. Its design and implementation signals its only real intent. It’s best and easiest use case is for systematic harassment and to scare faculty into complying in advance.

Last pre-travel listen

Working on my public syllabi for the spring and just noticed a new requirement (presumably a USG requirement?) admin slipped in there: "Primary Topics." I envision some AI bot combing through these looking for "controversial" topics. Yay.

Gorp Jazz and the Rise of SML + A Gorp Jazz Primer jazzrealities.substack.com/p/gorp-jazz-...

Yes, please.

Finally, some good news.

The university system of Georgia also requires public syllabi for gen ed courses, as of fall 2025. Next fall it's all courses.

The Blair Witch Project

OK bluesky, now's your chance. Favorite poems, in English, by women, available on web links. Bonus points if you know undergraduates like em.

but wait, there's more: We're also hiring in rhet/comp. So you could come here and drink martinis and talk about cool music and *not* get subskeeted. We also just got a new martini bar downtown, and all the trees have spanish moss. Most of the trees, I mean. www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

jkjkjk I *might* subskeet you if you put me on any assessment committees

Valdosta State is hiring a new department head in English / Comm. I wish somebody cool would apply to come boss me around, talk about cool music, and drink martinis. You can even go to the beach. I promise to not even subtweet you on bluesky. (subskeet?) www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

so the population gets technologically-assisted cognitive decline through social media and AI brainrot, and the people who make those products get to say it's dysgenics, it's idiocracy

Per tradition 🤗 🥳

That's a wrap on this semester, finally. 🥂

somebody convince me that "promoting best practices" is measurable 💀

Goodbye, marathon grading; hello, assessment hell 😭 (Imagine being appointed to the university assessment committee your first semester at a new job!)

but I’m curious what other movie heads think. have any of you seen THE NORTHMAN? did you have any thoughts on how its subject matter (and filmic style) relates to the white supremacist imaginary?

On a much lighter note, I think about this at least five times a day

I think about this post every time there is another mass shooting.

Oof tell me how you really feel 😬

I love this record so much! And it is perfect around this time of year.