Once I figure out how to take notes on articles as soon as I read them and not 5-8 weeks later, it's over for all you bitches

Fun word fact is that φοῖνιξ (phoinix)—meaning reddish-purple in Greek—is the basis for Phoenix 🐦‍🔥 and the word Phoenicians (the city of Tyre made some gorgeous purple, y’all). I’m fun at cocktail parties!

Getting old is basically repeatedly asking “wait, HOW old was [x] fictional character that we were supposed to interpret as decrepit and basically on the threshold of death,” and the answer is usually, like, 45

there are simply no words to describe the grief of this happening on yom kippur.

Can you die from writer’s block? Asking for a friend.

Reading book acknowledgments for books published since 2020 always hit different because of the baseline of horror and depression that authors report having to fight to claw their book into existence.

come for the book on magic, stay for the real sorcery — copyright law that can destroy your most innocent desires

Gonna tell my grandkids this is what mermaids look like

my cat just killed and is now trying to eat an eldritch terror lying dead in my basement, and i'm trying to shoo her away while the other cat is seizing the opportunity to eat some of my plants. happy october!

Organizing one's colleagues is service to the profession, of the highest order. Every bit as worthy a scholarly pursuit as teaching, advising, peer-review or committee work, and—yeah—even research. Pass it on.

An enormous legal victory for @aaup.org, MESA, and the Rutgers, NYU, and Harvard chapters of AAUP, in a case that Judge Young describes as "perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court."

Recently someone asked me which book best depicts academia (I had explained that Secret History and dark academia leave me cold), and I had to go with the story of the biologist and single mom who has started a new job in Akademgorodok in Siberia. You can find it in Red Plenty by Francis Spufford.

incredible stuff

Not a single one of our institutions has any intention of protecting its faculty or defending the integrity of intellectual inquiry at this moment. This is of the most disturbing versions of that story I’ve read: it keeps getting worse and worse as you go

Guess I’m watching K-Pop Demon Hunters tonight. The things you do to impress the preschoolers in your life…

The real generational divide is people who refuse to watch a video if it could be an article versus people who refuse to read an article if it could be a video

People think I'm not on FB, Insta or Tiktok because I have great will power, but it's actually the opposite. Much like Conner O'Malley, I simply stay away from the computer because "you can sway me very easily" m.youtube.com/watch?v=GILx...

It really just takes one person blasting music (or worse, talking on speaker phone) to ruin a train ride. There is always just one person doing it, but all it takes is one

This is the best one of the lot.

I remember when Jack Ryan, played by John Krasinski, explained to his superior that they're targeting a man named Suleiman; "it means 'man of peace.'" Great things used to be possible when our diplomats and spies knew the meanings of Arabic words.

*singing off-key with an accordion, a la Tár* “You’re all going to hell, this country’s for sale“

vance has already framed this an assault on "law enforcement." if events of the past week haven't already driven the point home, the right's opportunism when it comes to minting martyrs to pursue its agenda will proceed no matter the actual events in question or the context that produced them

When women help women lift suitcases above their heads onto luggage racks, that‘s one fewer man who has to gallantly intervene

I am just mad I didn't think to wear this to my first AJS conference

BREAKING: Israel has ordered shut the Allenby Crossing, the only gateway for three million Palestinians in the West Bank to the outside world, “until further notice,” in what appears to be a response to the wave of recognition of Palestine by UN member states including key European allies.

The kids think that they want a hard liberal arts curriculum. Slightly chuffed.

Fwiw the steady diet of 90s Bollywood films I was raised on had a much more harmful effect on my peers' and my ideas of sexuality, love and marriage than any of the books in McCoul's children's lit course. I wish I had read books like these at that age 🙂 www.texastribune.org/2025/09/19/t...

Ever since I saw how wholesome zohran‘s Rosh Hashanah greetings were, I’ve been waiting and hoping lowkey that he will record a video for Navratri and Durga Pujo too 🥹

Couldn’t agree more. Harvard continues its ignoble tradition of denying tenure to talented women of color.

it's really jarring to see how little media attention the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their dog Gilbert received in comparison to the notable death of a non-elected leader of a right-wing organization.

In my father's poli sci classroom in 1970s Taiwan, he would always call out the 'spy students' in the back: "Take good notes! Spicy bit!" The class would titter. Even the report-maker would look a bit abashed. In this A&M student's righteous "Dear Leader" invocation, there was no shame felt at all.

Elizabeth Tsurkov has been released after being kidnapped by Kata’ib Hezbollah and spending more than two years in captivity. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This was an exquisite read. What really brought it home for me was the discussion of the discomfort that Azoulay’s focus on handicraft might bring those who identify as ”progressive, rationalistic, and materialist.”

Years ago I asked union leadership at my job about how our union could think about protecting faculty from being doxxed by anti-DEI trolls. I was told we have academic freedom. I was told the same thing when I asked recently what we can politically do now. We need a new game plan!

This is how Indian universities died.

ngl I'm not sure what you're supposed to do in this kind of environment where students are encouraged to snitch on teachers

Pretty hard to have a serious conversation about anything in these conditions, which is the point

Only every single song from the TV show Nashville, but I have a soft spot for What If I Was Willing

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?" A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons. Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.

"If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say 'this was a crime, see,' so now I can't claim 100%..." not that there's any additional context needed to make this sound bad, but Donald Trump's first wife is among those who have accused him of rape abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...

The damaging effects of experiencing or witnessing domestic violence reverberate in multiple directions, often passing down from generation to generation. Domestic abuse cannot be explained away as a “little fight.” Everyday this man telegraphs to the world just how vile and disgusting he is.

Personal growth: Receiving an article at 8 am that I know for sure will trigger me (from a friend in Europe who is 5 hrs ahead of me and is only ruining her afternoon by reading it), and politely declining to ruin my morning by reading it.

I guess I just can't let go of memories of a time long past but I keep being amazed at how many times I have to sign into everything I sign into now. Like the password, the text message, the link emailed to you, now it's time to reset your password bc it's been 6 months, just abominable

They didn’t make a hit sitcom, two movies and a revival called “Claude 4.0 and the City.” But I guess never say never

I really can’t bring myself to say out loud what this means. It’s horrific.

Imagine someone breaks into your house, steals all your shit, and then the judge goes "they shall pay you $1 for each item stolen, and no you're not getting the stuff back"

This is going to be some good reading. The Roman Peasant Project already rearranged my brain (in a good way)

Indian Ocean mentioned 🥳🎉

It's behind you!