A warmer and more earnest colleague could not have been wished for than Eduardo Mendieta. Our final exchange was in appreciation of this article that I enjoyed so much I sent it to my mom. Rest well.

Classroom report: "To be a barnacle on the floating corpse of capital. Was that the most I could hope for from a professional life?" Ending the Work + Literature course on @lclaberge.bsky.social's gorgeous, funny FAKE WORK: moving and meta, a workplace satire and memoir of political consciousness.

This Wednesday, Melissa Charenko tells us all about "Proxy Data: A History of the Scientific Stand-in." In person only, Wednesday at 3pm, locals come one come all!

Classroom report: This week in a gen ed course about work, we're finishing this very good book by Erik Baker (@erikmbaker.bsky.social). It's good in the classroom, great on the history, and right on the politics. Read it, share it, teach it.

Really great work by a friend of friends of the initiative.

Our first in-person lecture of the year is Melissa Charenko, “Proxy Data: A History of the Scientific Stand-in.” @melissacharenko.bsky.social is an Assistant Professor at U Penn, and will speak to us at 3pm on 11/19 in the Grucci Room. Come one, come all. We couldn't be more excited!

"That's unexpected." "It's completely unexpected." ... is an objectively funny way to begin a conversation about one of the most widely reported (if collectively disavowed) ongoing stories in the higher ed and tech industrieds.

Ground beef entrepreneur predicts all-hamburger future.

Featuring excellent methodological foreword by DCMI fave Marc Steinberg.

If you're in Durham for @sns2025.bsky.social at the end of the month, come by, say hi, bright and early. Friday @ 8:30am, with Ben Mangrum and Justin Mitchell:

𝗧𝗢𝗗𝗔𝗬

Our third and final talk of this year's series is next week! In “Finance by Other Means? The Ambiguous Moral Economies of the Subscription Business Model," Aaron Shapiro (@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social) asks how we might "reclaim subscriptionization for post-capitalist transformation." Join us!

"Data Work as Care Work" — we couldn't be more excited for our upcoming visit from Kalindi Vora of Yale. On April 10 at 3:30 in the Grucci Room, @kalindivora.bsky.social urges us to "challenge ongoing coloniality in tech design in the face of growing datafication."

TODAY!

Classroom report: This article by @ursulahuws.bsky.social can still strike the hearts of students learning to be creative workers (and of at least some of the teachers who teach them). It's also a crystal-hard model of dialectical thinking.

Cannot wait: on 4.3, the year's first DCMI talk is Omedi Ochieng, brilliant author of INTELLECTUAL IMAGINATION and GROUNDWORK FOR THE PRACTICE OF THE GOOD LIFE! (Up next: Kalindi Vora on 4.10 + Aaron Shapiro on 4.17!) @omediochieng.bsky.social @kalindivora.bsky.social @bricolageyumyum.bsky.social

Special session of #MLA25 #MLA2025, next Friday at 3:30: "Sentimental Politics after Doomerism," with Zachary Loeb, Matt Tierney, Melanie Abeygunawardana, and Sheila Liming (@seeshespeak.bsky.social). Come say hi.

An outlier in our program of in-person talks, our series of spring 2022 was held remotely in a series of webinars. Videos still linked from our site, under "recent posts," include such friends and luminaries as Yuri Furuhata, Armond Towns, Marc Steinberg, Jim Hodge, Alenda Chang, and Michael Sawyer.

So excited to announce our spring speakers! April 3: Omedi Ochieng, Colorado (@omediochieng.bsky.social) April 10: Kalindi Vora, Yale (@kalindivora.bsky.social) April 17: Aaron Shapiro, UNC (@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social) Talks are in-person in the Grucci Room, Burrowes 102, at 3:30pm. Join us!

What we are (speaker series, course incubator) and do: