Avignon FIFA

The collective journalistic freakout over someone disliking a cafeteria sandwich at Oberlin or some Yale students asking their peers to be less racist at Halloween has generated far more copy and uproar than multiple universities illegally firing faculty for nonconservative speech they disliked.

It's not creativity, collaboration, or productivity, it's fragility at the leadership level: "Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/o...

Fck Data Centers!!

What's happening to CBS News is what the tech oligarchs call "parallel" strategy. Buy an existing institution, gut it, and convert it into a right-wing zombie version of itself. They are doing this to media, government, education, biotech, defense tech, etc. Some call it the "Network State."

Michigan just permanently protected 73,000 acres of land in the Upper Peninsula and opened it to the public. The deal, which was 5 years in the making, protects the land from habitat fragmentation and oil and gas exploration www.mlive.com/environment/...

AOC: This is what drinking water in Georgia looks like after Meta began data center construction in the community.

“We need a powerful people’s movement to fight for the strong safeguards that American workers, the American public & the world will need to protect against the vast potential dangers of AI.”

ProPublica used leaked tax returns to calculate that through complex tax avoidance schemes, Jeff Bezos pays a tax rate of 0.98% www.propublica.org/article/the-... So if we doubled the taxes he pays, that would mean he'd still be paying less than 2%.

TOMORROW!

Thank you to everyone who attended "Writing & Publishing Now: Strategies for Turbulent Times" and made the event so special. In particular thanks to Kandice Chuh & Ken Wissoker for sharing their insights, advice and experience! We are excited to share the recording and will post here once it is up.

Constantly looking at the job market and wondering what direction your life can possibly take is so toxic. The pressure starts in grad school and doesn't end... perhaps most especially for folks who end up permanently contingent (many people know they might be). www.chronicle.com/article/high...

Well, it happened. A client disregarded my advice about using generative AI and guess what? It gave them bad advice AND the judge ruled that by using it, Client waived confidentiality and ordered us to turn a bunch of private stuff over. STOP USING GENERATIVE AI FOR LEGAL THINGS. I BEG YOU.

if i was going to give a college commencement speech i would make sure to start with something the students could rally behind. something like "we will mechanically suck the youth from your bones to feed a mechanical eschaton, which my generation will use to climb heaven and become new gods"

SUBWAY SERIES SECURED IN QUEENS 🗽 #LGM | #MetsWin

unfurling a "white replacement" banner should get you permabanned from MLB stadiums

Xabi 😊

Since redistricting and the VRA are rightfully getting attention, here‘s info about prison gerrymandering. If unfamiliar, prisoners are counted as part of population of area in which they are held captive and not where they’re from, despite felony disenfranchisement. www.prisonersofthecensus.org

Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”

To slightly adapt Orwell: The Supreme Court told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was its final, most essential command.

I don’t think Americans with hypertension and various other treatable conditions deserve to die. Sorry to get so partisan, but that’s how I feel.

universities have the brainpower, resources,+ community obligation to develop on-site secure NON PROFIT learning management systems + ed tech overseen by actual educators, not data-extraction censorious surveillance profiteers! VOID THE CONTRACTS theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/mamdani-wi...

Seven master's programs and five advanced certificate programs have June 1st deadlines, and two master's programs have June 15th deadlines. There's still time to apply to @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social for Fall 2026! #CUNY @cuny.edu www.gc.cuny.edu/admissions-a...

David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth.

One side is like “can we disenfranchise all the Black voters by this weekend” and the other is like gotta follow the rules that govern the rules that control the rulebook

A further certificate program, Film and Media Cultures, has extended to June 1st. Questions about programs, applying, or anything else? Contact us [email protected] and we'll be happy to assist.

🚨DEADLINES ALERT🚨master's programs in Black, Race, & Ethnic Studies, @gcdatavis.bsky.social, @gc-dh.bsky.social, & International Migration Studies have 5/1 deadlines. A number of other @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social master's & certificate programs have 6/1 deadlines: www.gc.cuny.edu/admissions-a...

Oligarchs have always been a threat, but tech oligarchs represent a new level of danger. Their wealth dwarfs historical tycoons and their control over algorithms allows them to curate human reality. They own the digital infrastructure of thought

The richest man owns X. The second and fourth richest men control Google. The third richest man owns The Washington Post. The fifth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros. See the problem here?

"Old Man Sleeping," c. 1640-42, by Flemish painter David Ryckaert III

@mayor.nyc.gov @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social proved himself a champion of students, faculty and staff once again today when he vetoed Intro 175-B. Read our full statement here: psc-cuny.org/news-events/...

TODAY!

Fortunately (or un-), the next @psc-cuny.org + CUNY contract will be up for negotiation sooner than later. What do you want to see in it? How can we make bargaining more participatory, in a meaningful way? Come chat with fellow union members next Friday! bit.ly/TownHall424

Still wondering if inequality is out of control?

"As institutional leadership drifts towards anticipatory obedience [to tech evangelism], students will begin to reconstruct education around the living, embodied world of meaning and experience they feel has been stolen from them." We can only hope. @chronicle.com www.chronicle.com/article/high...

"People want to be known for what they do, and that becomes their only identity. That is who they are. You are your job, you are your position, or you are your clothes... In order to do that, one's interior life must be hollow, truly frail." Well, damn, Toni Morrison, lol.

Full list of panels and presenters is now up on our website! Organizers working for free education, affordable housing, cops off campus, campus labor, accessible childcare, BDS, and other struggles. centerforthehumanities.org/event/studen... @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social

I guess this is why it's so hard to see Ivy League universities cut deals with the administration or the NYT frame every single political issue as a good faith debate between two equivalent sides. Your whole existence depends on not living in an authoritarian state. Act like it.

The media and academia have an obligation to not remain neutral in the face of authoritarianism. These institutions need liberal institutions to exist in any meaningful way. Authoritarianism is an existential threat. Our devotion to "neutrality" will keep us from fighting for our own survival.

AI developers who were willing to cause a hiring crisis and make workers and customers more miserable suddenly shocked their money is coming from unscrupulous military leaders who want just to use it for concentration camps and dubious military strikes.

first in my line of critical universi-tees

I'm currently poisoned, restrained, and grappled, which sounds like it could be hash brown order at Ye Olde Waffle House. #DnD

"What emerged was not simply that AI reinforces cultural norms or ideological polarization. It also amplifies personal traits and disguises them to look like professional best practices." @chronicle.com www.chronicle.com/article/ai-s...

Jose is such an asshole, and he's getting worse with age (and increasing irrelevance in the sport). www.nytimes.com/athletic/705...

I spent my childhood inside of American concentration camps. I know one when I see one. And that is what ICE is building.

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

notorious radical left communist rag says tax the rich

Public libraries are actually existing examples of the world we want. We should not have to fight for them under a democratic socialist mayor. @nycplan.org is organizing a response. Tell Mamdani to make good on his commitment to baseline funding for libraries! nycplan.org

Meta's plan for launching glasses that people can use to secretly identify strangers on the street is to do it "during a dynamic political environment" when people who care about why that's bad are "focused on other concerns." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Guardian piece by the redoubtable Joan Scott explaining the connections between Trump’s Defending Women EO and shutting down women’s and gender studies prograns. archive.is/2026.02.13-1...