I may have made a mistake by telling my students that a certain billionaire pop star has essentially abandoned any pretense of caring about queer people.

Tech inertia is it's own thing.

I know a lot of scholars & critics without expertise in Latin America popular music are tempted to pontificate about the meaning of Benitobowl, but I beg you to check yourself. I could ignore this nonsense yesterday, but I think I've lost my patience. You tell on yourselves more than you realize.

Ebo Taylor, who did for Ghanaian music what his friend Fela Kuti did for Nigeria, has been called the greatest rhythm guitarist in history. His son Kweku Taylor: “The world has lost a giant, a colossus of African music, leaving behind an unmatched artistry legacy. Dad, your light will never fade.”

Here, my colleague Petra Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Diaz, co-authors of P FKN R, directly address all of the pop music pundits who thought Benitobowl wasn't political. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/o...

Her community rallied so fast and so diligently. This is a victory to uphold and celebrate. Reminds everyone that it's worth fighting back.

Petra and Vanessa are back today with a guide to last night's show in @rollingstone.com! Read this, then grab their book from @dukepress.bsky.social! "But Bad Bunny always finds a way to get many complex messages in his performances, just as he does with his songs."

This is what firing 30% of your staff does.

Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous

Benito making me cry for the second Sunday in a row

wait wait wait ... TUMBLR. THE PORN BAN GUY FROM TUMBLR IS GOING TO RUN THE WASHINGTON POST. Look I've been pushing back on the idea that Bezos is intentionally sabotaging the paper but COME ON this is a man who thought he could just take the boobs and dicks off of *Tumblr.*

this is why I'm so grateful for my students. They are how I break out of the algorithms on various listening services.

it's really a shame because genre fiction, especially romance, is very much a driver of pop culture. Reading or listening to fiction is one of the most reliable pleasures for me and a lot of folks I know.

Yes x 1000. I told my editors that all of the LLM drama came for romance (thanks to the Amazon marketplace) over a decade ago. Every iteration after that has been the same cycle over and over again. Can’t get serious people to treat it seriously, however, because it’s about women’s economic activity

More bad news coming from medical institutions re: transgender medical care. Plastic surgeons have loudly endorsed the Trump admin‘s cutoff of 19 years old. Now the American Medical Association is following them.

the Washington Post effectively blew up its arts section today, dismissing its books, TV, music, and theater critics, features writers, and several editors. (I'm also guessing the vacant film critic position will stay that way.) Just an insane loss of talent and a huge self-inflicted wound.

The first thing I did when I heard about Jess Ting today was to see if my surgeon ever worked directly with him when she was at Mt. Sinai on a surgical fellowship.

I went into last night convinced I’d be furious with the recording academy over DtMF because usually they drop the ball when it comes to AOTY. Instead, I watched his acceptance speech in tears.

Alright Boston, who is running observer trainings?

It's always interesting to me when something from over 40 years ago gets a takedown notice or scrubbed from the online record due to a copyright claim. By this point, it isn't about making money...

I’m 46. I came out at 37 as non-binary (slo-mo coming between 36-38). I started HRT just before I turned 42. It’s never too late.

I had a brief moment yesterday where I wondered if I should go grocery shopping, but then I remembered that I really don’t want to catch an upper respiratory illness. Pre-storm social contagion in full effect everywhere along the storm's path…

What’s weird to me about F1 is that it was essentially made to trumpet Apple TV+ having the exclusive contract to stream F1 racing. Has an Oscar contender for best picture ever been so obviously an advertisement?

Looking forward to seeing the Oscar performance of “I Lied to You” and “The Girl in the Bubble.” To be honest, I’m really eager to see “Golden”

We say this all the time, but higher ed is conservative. We’re stuck in a model of education from the 19th century (OxBridge’s model is even older). It’s far easier to get a PhD (and tenure) if you don’t disrupt centuries of tradition. The noisy lefties aren’t the ones who run the place.

I guess I really have lived here for 10 years because even I could hear the mistakes in “Three Guys from Boston” bit…

BBC report at a headline level that Grok will now not make sexually exploitative images any more. An actual reporter comes on and explains that it will do no such thing, and will just make the images invisible in the UK. These are two very, very different things.

I know some ethnomusicology folks are grumbling about not renewing their SEM membership dues because of the football thing at IU, but honestly??? I'd rather not have our conference coincide with a home game. It's wonderful that the society cares about that.

Look, I'm not going to claim to be an early adopter of the Heated Rivalry universe. I literally only watched when premiered because my bestie told me I'd love it. And then I immediately started reading the books. But also... 600 million hours. There isn't much giving me hope right now, but this is.

There's no honor among thieves.

We needed this.

The number is now 6.

Three Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and its reluctance to investigate the shooter. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/u...

The last episode of Landman was some of the laziest writing about "woke" culture I've seen in a long time. I could detail the ways, but that would be a waste of my time, and yours.

Oh hey, my OUP royalty payment went up. I can now buy a book instead of two coffee drinks.

A bit of history: Brazil's military dictatorship began with collaboration between the military & business. It veered into a hardline in 1968 when a judge demanded the release of two university student protesters who were being imprisoned without charges. On Dec 12, the regime suspended habeas corpus

Spaghetti arms means his lats aren’t locked, either because he is weak or yeah he is compensating by letting gravity do the work. And he is squatting, not hinging (and a bad squat at that). No rhythm. And the weight is too low.

Women who have sex with men will recognize what’s colloquially called the dead eel technique on display here. No hip action, flailing arms and a dead torso.

BREAKING: Staggering scenes as brave Iranians stand up to their illegitimate government in Tehran... um, hang on, I'm being told this is actually Minneapolis. Forget I said anything...

What exactly is the point in featuring a caricature of queer freshmen college students on a Paramount +/CBS show?

i cannot imagine who predicted this even wrote a whole book

I’m finally watching the second season of Man on the Inside. 1) it’s a sousaphone, not a tuba. 2) I’m surprised more studios don’t use Occidental College rather than UCLA for “college campus.” It looks amazing on this show.

The scariest thing about looking at the news today is that nearly nobody is screaming about Venezuela and Greenland.

This is a postdoc in Germany called a "rescue fellowship" for scholars "whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA" You used to see this kind of thing for scholars working in Myanmar, Turkmenistan, etc. This is how unfree US research is now. academicpositions.com/ad/early-car...

“often but not always bad” is not the W you think it is.

evidence that this is a conspiracy: Wag the Dog isn’t available to stream on any of the major streaming services. You have to rent it.

Th cycle is really depressing once you look at it: US-backed regime change in South and Central America —> economic instability —> drug/arms trafficking and violence —> US-backed regime change

One of the hardest things about the last 12 months is just how much most people are not paying attention. At all. Even people with trans loved ones are missing huge chunks of the escalating violence against us.

What is it with violence and the Patriots?