Another illuminating thread about both what’s already happening at CUNY & what might yet be possible.

When searching for a DAM is was shocking hard to find a platform that kept our data private to just our org. LOVE this idea. theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/mamdani-wi...

Big thx to @mattseybold.bsky.social for giving us permission to re-publish this urgent piece on the @moneyontheleft.bsky.social website. It's time for big ideas & transformative projects!

"Universities are currently paying these SaaS providers and their investors twice, first with large subscription fees and again with access and aggregation power over large troves of data produced by members of their campus communities." Matt maps an alternative pathway for edtech in HE here ⏬️

absolutely crucial power mapping, great teaching tool, pass it on

Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state. That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators To fine it for running scam ads. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Reply-all: I agree. Nobody’s work gets enough attention. What I haven’t read (or podcasted about) is as precious as what I have. I am a bibliophile. There’s no better gift than a book. But I read like a squirrel forages: constantly, frantically, with no discernible pattern or hope of satiation.

I swear my entire flight is full except for my whole row. Great luck? Bad juju?

This thread reinforces why I got enthused yesterday about CUNY’s potential to socialize EdTech. Let’s further empower them, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social.

So umm, about that bailout prediction. Its own has got to be worth an endowed chair for you, right? www.wsj.com/video/openai...

✨ New Essay! ✨ @mattseybold.bsky.social agues that the new Mamdani administration ought to fund CUNY to develop its own public, open-source educational technology. The result stands to socialize the means of knowledge production for collaborative use across the entire US higher education system.

@mattseybold.bsky.social's proposal to (among other things) reestablish faculty and students' control over their data & work here is...brilliant, actually? (Tho it would strip upper admin of their power to decide WHO gets to buy that data...😢) theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/mamdani-wi...

It's time for CUNY to shine, not only in ed-tech but in broader curriculums that link fair education to fair work and fair tech.

Please take a minute to scroll through this—and share it. It's the story of our time. The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic American—And Why Europe Is Next. www.authoritarian-stack.info

Maybe not as emphatically stated as it could be in an 800-word blogpost, but CUNY is the best possible place for this opportunity to present itself because the knowledge workers & culture is largely in place, ready to be empowered, expanded, & resourced!

@mattseybold.bsky.social I just read your new AV blog post about CUNY stepping in for public ed-tech. 1) Bold, love it; 2) Lina Khan, who is in the transition team, might be into it. Anyone we know has an in with her? Maybe @moacir.com who's doing digital librarian type work for the DSA...

Hell yes, @mattseybold.bsky.social.

Seems like a good day for big ideas.

Skip the first section. The rest is quite helpful.

disregulated oligarch power got a resounding rebuke last night, from Silicon Valley to Conyers, Georgia to NYC! to learn more about our political+economic conditions, join InterCcECT for a miniseminar with guest Prof Matt Seybold on the "neofeudal hypothesis." interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...

One of my unsupported hot takes is that the loneliness crisis is caused in part by people not being bored enough. In most of my classes the students all stare at their phones until class begins. We’ve lost the precious boredom of eventually actually being bored enough to engage with others.

Would be curious to see a similar list from upstate/western NY.

Also, perhaps a given, maximum laughter for the term produced by getting Prof. Seybold talking spontaneously about New Critics, Chicago School, Chicago Fight, etc.

All set for the “Close Reading For The 21st Century” symposium launching @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social’s book, one selection from which my students will read & annotate while I’m gone.

Lots of great things about it, but Mamdani’s victory is also an encouraging win over the evil AI hate slop that Cuomo was tossing at the virtual wall at the end there. Deepfakes are dangerous but they are also a sign of despotic desperation.

If you haven't yet, you most certainly should: www.english.upenn.edu/news/2025/11...

Greatest university—in the sense of doing what a university should do—in New York City and it’s not even close.

6:15 AM Me: …even if everything goes right next year the Democrats have shown no political will for dismantling ice & seem perfectly content with fascism lite… My Mom, yawning: Matt, let there be joy in Muddville this morning.

Socialism starts with me curled up under a blanket on my couch feeling joy for half a second

Tried to write about how this feels. open.substack.com/pub/sausages...

The therapists say I should try crafting art first thing in the morning.

In the only election in my small city, which tends to lean Republican, especially for local politics, the GOP candidate did not include party affiliation in any of his advertising, & still couldn’t get even 39% of the vote.

The Easter egg at the end of this episode has a spectacular cover.

I’m sure this has already been pointed out, but maybe J.D. flirts because he likes sleeping on the couch.

Best middlebrow Bush Cheney?

Excited to reveal the cover of my book, MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN FICTION, which is available for pre-order now!

chicago! something good this way comes! join interCcECT!

Since hearing of his passing, I have been having jumbled thoughts of appreciation for Ray Drummond, possibly the greatest bassist of his generation, & the leader of my favorite jazz ensemble of the 90s, his Excursion Band. The album they recorded is good, but does no justice the live performances...

SOS - Save our journalists! labourhub.org.uk/2025/11/04/i...

“Please think about students using chatbots to ‘augment’ their learning and thereby becoming conditioned to expect that their interactions with their educators, whether human or digital, should start from a foundation of obsequiousness.” - @benjaminjriley.bsky.social

Because nothing goes wrong with nested collateralized mortgage bonds sold as an unregulated financial instrument. I volunteer @mattseybold.bsky.social as tribute to go get Eliot Spitzer’s opinion. Bring @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social along for shits & giggles.

if not Ponzi, why Ponzi-shaped? www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

I note that the word “faculty” does not appear a single time in this write-up & giving the strong impression the GenEd curriculum was rewritten with no input from instructors.

As part of my visit to Chicago one month from now, I will be joining the InterCcECT community (greatest logo/acronym) to discuss readings in technofeudalism.

Added this mind-boggling slide from Chris’s research to the episode homepage.

How can we turn discussions about what we read and think into discussion for action? How does action lead to new forms of critical analysis? I’ll talk about this with @davarianbaldwin.bsky.social and Vineeta Singh this Friday at 8pm ET for @debtcollective.bsky.social’s Jubilee School. Join us!

Publicspeak for my daily bread but still raspy from saying “wait for your brother say thank you that’s enough happy halloween” 700 times on Friday night.

Thanks to activist investing, grocery store generics, mostly based on original recipes, are now usually superior to enshittified name brands.

Engineer 1: Sir, the Jimmy 3000 may be malfunctioning. Engineer 2: What is it saying? Engineer 1: [hands him a printout] No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more water No more