Wrote a tiny little blog for @shcy.bsky.social about a juke box that experienced a spiritual conversion in the 1950s. Check it out here! shcydigitalchildhoods.org/dir/conversi...

"Penn reached a historic tentative agreement with its graduate student union on Monday night, narrowly averting a strike that would have impacted teaching and research across the University." 📰 www.thedp.com/article/2026...

"As Penn’s graduate student union finalizes preparations for a potential strike on Feb. 17, support from local politicians, faculty members, and undergraduate students has intensified." www.thedp.com/article/2026...

I feel like I am taking crazy pills. Charlie Kirk’s ultimate goal, which he said time and time again, would have been the suppression, through threat of violence and the use of state power, of the rights of those he disagreed with, including freedom of expression. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/o...

Probably time for us all to revisit Sara Ahmed's analysis of white supremacists again... The "we do this out of love for our own, not hate of others" is a bit too on the nose here.

Corporate investors now own 30% of the single-family rental homes in the Atlanta area.

My initial reaction is that while it certainly seems likely that electing Leo XIV sends a signal about American politics, it’s maybe a bit ethnocentric for Americans to think that this consideration was the guiding light of the conclave.

scorsese’s makes a biopic about the new pope 100%

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

THE AMERICAN CENTURY IS OVER THE ILLINOIS CENTURY IS JUST BEGINNING

Catholics respecting the midwest... you love to see it.

"Trump...has effectively given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit, Israeli officials say...The return to full-fledged war would come after Israel already cut off all supplies of food, water and medicine" this era is so bleak www.axios.com/2025/05/05/i...

happy may day, get in formation to get the goods "decentralized, social media-based approaches were effective in harnessing attention+organizing street demonstrations. But they couldn't steer the response of the system because there was no organizational support." time.com/collections/...

I've been thinking about this show a lot since I watched it. I've also read quite a few takes on it, and this is hands down my favorite. Worth a read!

Plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle feel threatened by rising class consciousness.

Harvard will not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding, the university president announced www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

nvm

between watching the show Adolescence and listening to Jonathan Haidt’s interview on Ezra Klein, i am losing hope that we have actually changed anything about our imaginations of how we help humans grow up since the 1940s.

more takes like this please!

being a grad student in 2025 is just texting your friends at other institutions comparing institutional budget cuts.

a delightful day for a show of political will!

what booker is doing right now is an example of what i mean when i say things like “we need more ambition right now.” there is room in american politics right now for people with ambition to take big stands and reap the rewards. he’s doing it!

didn’t get to make it to the home opener last night, but the skyline was fun to see on the walk home

how can you be at the helm of the world’s most powerful educational institution and render a letter so stupid and cowardly?

cannot say i'm surprised that the natalists are now calling bullets "freedom seeds."

a worthy bit of advice for my fellow historians. combined with the question of what our “this is not new” retorts have given us over the past 10 years? does a history lesson in itself elicit change? is information enough?

i love people who write well about the midwest. this excerpt from toni morrison about the Great Lakes is particularly profound.

hopefully will be found unconstitutional, but these past two months have been very exhausting as a member of any university community. fighting hard with unions and collective power, but the unilateral executive power is disheartening to say the least.

I sincerely think that universities should suspend their productivity standards for scientists and ask them instead to hold town halls in schools, public libraries, museums, shopping malls, and anywhere else and communicate what is being lost with the collapse of the research ecosystem.

just incredibly grateful to live on the same planet as the irish

it seems that the issue of discourse surrounding mahmoud khalil is like so many other recent political tragedies: it is more mundane than many realize because folks have not been properly educated on how brutal american law has been and continues to be.

haunts me every day that i voted for this dude

This statement from @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social is perfectly embodying why the administration chose to go after Khalil first, because they know Democrats are so consumed by their own hate for Palestinians/pro-Palestinian protestors, they can only muster up the most milquetoast of responses.

spent the day in a bargaining session and then spent an hour tonight organizing my dad by trying to reinvigorate his belief in collective power through harnessing his white hot rage against trump. he’s a tradesman who has not had great experiences with unions.

All who worked to suppress campus speech & protest last year—work that demanded its own possibility above all else—this is on you. You preemptively welcomed what’s coming into our institutions, endorsed strategies of craven admins & rightwing trustees, warmed everything up & now it’s hot to go.

hard to say whether Brody’s speech was a kind of inner turmoil over his sense of self-importance in relation to the broader importance of the film he was in or if he was just really into himself and wanted to take lots of time talking about his legacy.

i’m not stoked on O’Brien for many reasons right now, but so many people are critiquing him because they’re blindly partisan and are equivocating the needs of labor with democrats and BOY does that just fully miss the point.

Telling people to read a book to educate themselves on how we got to this moment politically is an impoverished solution to the moment. Information is not organizing, and it is not enough to fight this moment. Education is important, but it should be done alongside action every step of the way.

being done with comps is kind of a bittersweet thing. one on hand, i'm so glad to not have the beginnings of carpal tunnel due to writing exams. on the other hand, i now have the time to look at the news.

I'm with Kelly here: deeply interested in leftism as a political project but have no interest whatsoever in leftism as a subculture. the stakes of leaving this behind are hopefully clearer by the day

Great essay on “the desire called ‘Fredric Jameson’,” — @nicobaumbach.bsky.social on the pages of @parapraxismag.bsky.social 📖🖊️⚡️✨ www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the...

GETUP-UAW graduate workers stand united at the University of Pennsylvania! They rallied with community supporters to demand fair negotiations for their first contract.

we should really be harsher on the Scots for their Common Sense Theology and its impact on the present! (this is a joke… kind of)

one of my favorite books from last year that will change the way you see the first scene of Uncut Gems forever!

if anyone was wondering if managers would be emboldened by trump’s inauguration and incredibly austere first week to pull some shenanigans themselves in collective bargaining discussions… i can confirm that it is as bad as you probably think.

I'm just going to keep shouting it: TRUMP TOLD PROSECUTORS TO DIVERT RESOURCES AWAY FROM DRUG TRAFFICKERS TO GO AFTER IMMIGRANTS.

BREAKING: Philadelphia workers have won the first Whole Foods union under Amazon with UFCW. Since Amazon bought the chain, workers have lost benefits and felt the squeeze. Now they're fighting back against the multi-trillion dollar giant and hoping this win will be the first of many.