A new documentary on one of Austin’s essential and singular visual artists live today on the PBS app. Franklin catalyzed the countercultural styles associated with the Austin scene through the Vulcan Gas Company and Armadillo World Headquarters. www.pbs.org/show/armadil...

"Academics who Listen to Free Jazz" starter pack. By popular demand for attunement to challenging music. If you "like" this post I will add you to the list over the next couple days. Share widely!

If you were to say "This Week in Texas Music History" has been a long game to platform Pauline Oliveros and deep listening on KUT, well, you wouldn't be right, but you wouldn't be exactly wrong, either. texasstandard.org/stories/this...

So, so good from Natalie Weiner on Sonny Rollins, jazz, and the cowboy archetype. There are some rich veins of this in David Oliphant’s work on Texans like Eddie Durham and Kenny Dorham, too, plus the whole Cowtown contingent.

Excellent and timely book on the musician Huddy Ledbetter (Lead Belly) and the context of the Jim Crow era

*Danzig voice* “Mothers”

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

In the '60s and '70s, one of the biggest producers of drug paraphernalia and trippy blacklight art was the Houston Blacklight & Poster Company. But its history has been nearly lost. I wrote about its influence and the importance of saving artifacts like these: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

“Membership in the AAUP chapter at Texas State and across the entire state has skyrocketed as a consequence of the campaign for his reinstatement.”

It's such a low-key resistance move but talking about not using AI, especially in a professional context, is so important in working against "inevitability" narratives and so powerful in identifying who your people are — and in ensuring there are more of us all the time.

Today is the 128th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship in U.S. v. Wong Ark Kim.

Another day, another violation of academic freedom in Texas. This time a university is firing a philosophy professor owing to complaints about an off-campus talk he gave on the Israeli-Palestine conflict...

Google Alert incoming: "Oh, right, this is the week I say 'Butthole Surfers' on air." You never think of that band name as out of the ordinary until you say it in front of an undergraduate class caught unawares.

On that Tower in Austin are chiseled the words: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" UT System votes to limit 'controversial topics' in class share.google/aIz3sZrzQY55...

"In recent months, Texas universities have inflicted some of the worst repression of academic freedom we’ve ever witnessed at American colleges, with gag orders, speaker bans and arbitrary firings of dissenting faculty."

🤠 Texans: Plesse contact the Board of Regents! Please consider testifying at this week’s meeting! Let’s make ourselves heard!

Wattstax remains the best of the music festival films, and this invocation seals it for me. youtu.be/NTVwT3j_zqY?...

UT American Studies is my intellectual home, with a rich and expansive history of scholarship. These other departments share the same, crown jewels of what was once among the greatest public universities in the world. Just sick over this.

Some days it feels like the contemporary university is just an ever-shifting pile of edtech vendor contracts wearing a trench coat.

wrote about jelly roll pretending he and we are stupid for this week's drti www.dontrocktheinbox.com/im-a-dumb-re...

In early February 1973, Willie Nelson and his Family Band, along with guests Doug Sahm, Waylon Jennings, and Jessi Colter, traveled to NYC to record not one, but two Nelson albums in quick succession: “Shotgun Willie” and “The Troublemaker.” buff.ly/nX64CQp

Please sign and share this Aggies Forward petition link with alumni and allies -- and anyone you know who wants to protect free speech and academic freedom in Texas and across the country: alumni.standforcampusfreedom.org/petitions/co...

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college: The History of Being Cool in America Primate Behavior Revolution in Latin America Contemporary European Social Theory Walking

Legalize Plato! Top-down decisions to censor, cancel, or flag classes at Texas A&M do not protect students. It harms their growth. Brian Evans, @texasaaup.bsky.social president, believes in the students’ ability to stand up for themselves, and for the futures of their university and of Texas.

Texas A&M ends its women's & gender studies program while hundreds of syllabi remain flagged and censored under top-down review policies. “I have never seen anything like this.” — Dr. Leonard Bright, @tamu-aaup.bsky.social President @texasaft.org @texasaaup.bsky.social @cwa-tseu.bsky.social

Just to reiterate

Tempted to put this atop the syllabi I'm introducing next week.

For people elsewhere who have asked how to support Minnesota while we’re overrun with nazi thugs, here’s an excellent list of places that could use financial help. Lots of choices. Thank you so much! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I was desperate for some organization, so I put together a list of places you can donate or buy things for to support folks in Minnesota. If you have places for me to add, please DM me.

When explaining how or why a person could devote a life to "Texas music," Joe Ely is on the short of list of artists you could use to make the case, and almost effortlessly so. Just listen. A heartbreaking, monumental loss. May he rest.

“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’” Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”

EVER HEARD OF… THE UFO CLUB? (Underground-England) A look at Joe Boyd's legendary, short lived UFO club, and the UK psychedelic underground scene of 1967. (Photos by Adam Ritchie) underground-england.com/the-ufo-club/

Hey my news outlet @thebarbedwire.com is hiring a social media manager. Looking for someone smart who lives in Tx and loves covering our messed up state www.journalismjobs.com/job-listing/...

📝 Sign below to support Professor Tom Alter of Texas State who was fired for speech he made in his capacity as a private citizen! ⬇️

Austin #NoKings

Asking again, if you're a UT-Austin grad, to add your name to this open letter. You can also forward it to President James Davis ([email protected]) and the UT Board of Regents ([email protected]).

It was an absolute joy to write about the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, a nonprofit that works tirelessly to preserve Texas' film history by digitizing tapes and film before they degrade. Their website is a treasure trove of cool state history: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

Good news to your end your week ✊ Dr. Thomas Alter is set to be reinstated at Texas State University after an initial court victory. Statement from @texasaaup.bsky.social President Dr. Brian Evans and Texas AFT President @zephcapo.bsky.social 👇 www.texasaft.org/membership/h...

Amanda Shires spent an afternoon introducing me to Lubbock and a small portion of those very fun hours is now chronicled in Texas Monthly ahead of her new album :) gift link: www.texasmonthly.com/arts-enterta...

"Enough is enough. Texas must allow faculty and college students to explore freely the breadth of human knowledge, and administrators must support us in that time-honored quest." – Pauline Strong, President @utaustinaaup.bsky.social #AcademicFreedom #AcademicSky @texasaaup.bsky.social

Texas State terminates history professor over comments made at conference – The University Star share.google/CCzqjzasnYQY...

Appreciate my unions today and everyday. If you work in Texas universities, join up with @cwa-tseu.bsky.social and @texasaft.org The only way through is together!

“Texas Democrats lost. But they drew attention to Republicans’ efforts to put their thumb on the scale, and demonstrated a valuable tactic for galvanizing their beleaguered party. They lost, but they lost loudly. Losing loudly has been a crucial feature of successful political movements.” Gift:

Calling all part-time and full-time faculty in the South: Speak out on academic freedom, shared governance, and your working conditions! Survey closes 8/29 at 5pm ET. States: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Simply believe that people who don't live in cities shouldn't be able to declare cities "unliveable." Like, most of us do live here, in the face of all your imaginary terrors.

things can be different

“We wanted to rid ourselves of the fashions of historiography,” Burns summarized at one event, “and make a film that simply shows what happened.” That’s not how history works though. You’re making an argument about what happened & what mattered even if you don’t realize you’re doing it. 🗃️

Some mixed feelings about my hometown Austin these days, but the 13th Floor Elevators' "Slip Inside This House" on the airport speakers definitely goes on the plus side of the ledger.

"Find your political home" remains, for me at least, the single best guiding star in times of crisis and chaos. Individuals can doomscroll and post and have big feelings; groups can take meaningful action. Maybe it's an activist org, union, student group, career, collective/crew, etc (1/3)