Kiese Laymon on AI: “As a literary artist, let me tell you something. That shit is wack.”

They hate to see a South Asian man enjoying himself smh

“I was raised in Detroit, baptized in Black history. Entering a Texas prison was a cultural collision. The ignorance wasn’t accidental. It was manufactured, systemic, deliberate... Writing became my resistance.“ @kwanetaharris.bsky.social

my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels

(an entire industry rises up of people saying "that guy who was ultra-confident, vociferous, and belligerent? we might have to revisit some of the things he put out as bedrock")

Maybe we should stop giving free advertising to every infuriating AI startup dreamed up by the worst Columbia dropout you know

Austin and Central Texas! I’m speaking about histories of policing under Jim Crow authoritarianism at one of my favorite bookstores. Alienated Majesty Books: 613 West 29th Street, Austin, TX 78705 RSVP here: alienatedmajestybooks.com/events/46225...

honey, wake up. there’s a new philosemitic supersessionism

I will be in conversation w/ the AMAZING Adom Getachew, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, & Camille Robcis, w/ Kate Redburn moderating, on my new book, *The Future That Was*, at Columbia Law School on March 24th at 6 PM. (thanks to Madhav Khosla for the invite) Register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

mister treehorn treats objects like women

reading Xenophon and realizing that “human property that wants it but also has to want it” was an articulated patriarchal fantasy even in classical Athens was a radicalizing experience for me

imaging converting to one of the few religions in the world with One Guy in Charge and that guy repeatedly lets you know how much he personally dislikes you

Good morning, it is now time to watch Michelle Kwan skate in the 2002 exhibition gala youtu.be/bKi_wHwImL0

MacArthur Park by Donna Summer surging in streams this weekend, you absolutely love to see it www.forbes.com/sites/sofiac...

Equality Phil sounds like the villain in some fable told to all economics students at the University of Chicago.

"Eric Trump? Sorry you must have mistaken me for someone else haha. I'm Intersectionality Dave. No no problem at all. Yeah that's my tofu scramble."

Maybe JD Vance could periodically invite Pope Leo to various things — a book club, a birthday party, a ski trip — just so we can watch him be publicly smacked down each time. It’s the least we deserve.

Inadvertently revealed at a book club that I’m an academic and everyone was like, so that’s why you’re so critical. Well, no, that’s not *why*

a kolache is a samosa

Performative masculinity… are there other … nvm

just imagine

Writing conclusions is like doing the backstroke through a pool of molasses without a lifeguard to save me. I hate it here.

i've decided not to listen to the audio of a teacher reporting a kindergartender because frankly I don't want to become the person that that event would turn me into. but one thing I hope we are collectively coming to grips with is what it meant that we have lived among such people this whole time

Here are a few basics of the piece: 1) Jewish thought about economic matters is not traditionally written under an "economic" heading, because that heading is modern; it is instead completely mixed together with thought about other things (God, politics, family). It may not advertise "economic"ness

The Supreme Court:

Just pay me to ask people, “what the fuck is wrong with you?” I could do it, coach. Put me in.

Having to read a YA book for a book club I’m in, and y‘all, do all YA authors think so little of their readers? Was I this gullible when I was a kid?

Dr. Rümeysa Öztürk is using her experience of being unlawfully arrested and detained by ICE to advocate for children facing human-made trauma, including children in ICE detention and living under conflict.

bluesky has the, uh, juice

The tradeoffs involved in the latter are obvious: schematization, simplification, and maybe even (gasp) getting some things wrong. But that work of comparison and synthesis seems worth it to me. 5/6

“Asking ‘who benefits from this?’ is what has created my criticism of AI & the companies pushing these models. As far as I can tell the proliferation of the tech mainly benefits the ppl making money off of it, whereas a robust & fast train network would provide more obvious benefits to working ppl.”

How much can these toys fucking go through

This aged pretty well.

MOOD. "i could anticipate what the critics are saying better than the critics. i could help them say it better" -tressie mcmillan cottom

Happy year of the fire horse [Mark Rothko, Red on Red, 1969]

I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center: If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.

anyway, so i've started reading ponniyin selvan in tamil. probably a bit too ambitious for me, which is what keeps me youthful

Love to write frantically until I feel like I’m going to give myself an ulcer only to then discover that I’ve managed, like, 400 words

Dayum. Histficcers, here's your prompt. Some rando sailor rises into the HIGHEST possible levels of the Tudor navy. One son? Mediterranean ship captain and Tudor naval officer. Another son? Knight of Malta, Mediterranean ship captain, and Catholic martyr. (and it keeps going. click through!)

Happy Valentine’s Day, I got you this rather pedestrian perfume bottle in the shape of a foot with painted sandals and white toenails from the 6th century BCE. 👣 You’re welcome.

In a guest lecture last night, I got asked about the future of research funding. And I talked about the reality that we likely need to have an entirely new orientation to the political economy of research.

Have some Emperor Julian Valentines today for some hot & heavy Hellenism.

This is such a beautiful two-parter. The eminent Mughal historian Harbans Mukhia on his ancestral village in West Panjab, Pakistan in *Peshawar Review*

On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast. The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me. But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.

Lucky for these generous invitations to speak on my new book and the crisis of gender now: March 3 - The Ann L. Harper Lecture at Georgia State U: "Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism" March 19 - The Anne Firor Scott Lecture at Duke U: "Gender History in the Time of Gender Ideology"

One thing that's fun is that if you're black and you don't have much experience, it's woke dei if you get the job, and if you're black and you have all the experience in the world, you're an out of touch elite who is not really black and doesn't deserve the job.

cool cool cool

The thing that an actual disciplinary training in history has done for me is to realize that the politics of resentment of the right depends on a communally structured event of historical violence with np historical connection to a structural analysis of marginalization in the present.