Is there any work that students more often 1. read very closely but 2. miss the core message of than Benjamin’s "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction?" It never fails—most students read about the loss of artistic aura & assume the essay bemoans that loss rather than celebrates it

Disney: over the last 72 hours we were shocked to discover that censorship isn’t cool.

Tomorrow in "Writing with Robots" we’ll discuss John Philip Sousa’s "The Menace of Mechanical Music" (1906) on the dangers the phonograph &c. posed to musical expression & education—hard not to see resonances with 2025 in passages like these archive.org/details/sim_...

For the weekday crowd: lots of folks over the weekend seemed interested in this thread about evangelical TikTok’s current vibe—which is that the world is ending literally tomorrow

A few years ago I would not have predicted @wired.com would be a journalistic beacon, but with this forthcoming “politics issue” they are doubling down on real, anti-authoritarian reporting Not regretting my new subscription

www.jasonkirk.fyi/p/the-entire... cc @jasonkirk.fyi

New best football name just dropped The NY Giants have a player named Cam Skattebo (pronounced “scat-a-boo“) Every time the announcers call out “Cam Skattebo” is a small moment of joy

Sometimes I see examples of AI fails on social media & think they look too on the nose to actually be true—but this is the very real “AI Assist” I got when I searched for today’s NFL game schedule 🤔

When the Saved get to heaven God plays a compilation of everyone who grabbed onto something set to funny music and it’s embarrassing if you did it

It's true, I work at the locusts-with-tails-like-scorpions factory. We've been working tons of mandatory overtime to get these orders out.

Got sucked into the side of TikTok commenting on the trend in American evangelicalism right now—where there’s a growing belief that that the rapture will happen this Tuesday—September 23rd This is due to a of set of things happening in Israel interpreted through a tangled "Left Behind" theology+

If you’re needing some melancholy folk music to get you through this weekend—& who isn’t, really?— maybe check out the EP we recorded late this summer You can listen to all the songs right on bandcamp & I’d be honored if you would theanxiousbench.bandcamp.com/album/exhala...

Not today RFK The lovely folks at my pharmacy asked zero questions when I got my booster

We’re pleased to announce Performant Studio, an open source, standards-based software toolkit for #digitalhumanities projects. Check it out: www.performantsoftware.com/studio/

HARDEST PHOTO OF 2025 JUST DROPPED

I tried to say "everything you can measure is kind of a proxy, but not the real thing, and anything you actually care about you can't measure" but they cut the humanities anyway

Nearly 50 college instructors across #Illinois landed on #CharlieKirk's “Professor Watchlist.” @wbez.org reached out to all of them and found the list triggered hateful messages, threats of rape or death, and intensification since Kirk's killing. #twill www.wbez.org/politics/202...

Was contemplating a new patriotic broadside to print @skeuomorphpress.org next week & got a fresh reminder of the perverse contextlessness of online content mills On the page "170 Inspiring Free Speech Quotes To Uphold Liberty And Democracy," this "inspiring" quote from a real defender of democracy

I don’t know who made “In Memorium” cards for the SS Edmund Fitzgerald during @skeuomorphpress.org’s open hours last night, but it feels important to share for print nerds, folk music nerds, and midwesterners alike

& with those pages, the Le Guin books are *printed*!!! A few days drying & then a big binding & packing & shipping party @skeuomorphpress.org

I don’t know who made “In Memorium” cards for the SS Edmund Fitzgerald during @skeuomorphpress.org’s open hours last night, but it feels important to share for print nerds, folk music nerds, and midwesterners alike

Exciting parcel news

I’m so acculturated to academic life that my seasons have always been odd—“next year” means “after August”—“fall” is mid-August to December, “spring” is January to mid-May, & “summer” is mid-May to mid-Aug My year doesn’t have “winter” but thanks to climate change that’s increasingly accurate so

Monarez: "Kennedy demanded 2 things of me that were were inconsistent w/ my oath of office. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause"

“Stay in your cars! Tell everyone to stay in your houses.” Illinois state senator Karina Villa out in the street warning folks about ICE

Is there some kind of asterisk I could have next to my name in every communication that would signal: “hey student/younger friend/younger colleague I am an old please interpret any emoji I might send literally ok thanks bye”

Had a conversation with my new dean yesterday that left me feeling…I don’t really know if there’s a word for this…like, feeling like some aspects of the future might be better than the past?…is that a thing?!?? Don’t worry I don’t trust this strange emotion for even a second

It's a unicorn job for this printer-scholar and I am beyond excited to be continuing the work I did at @skeuomorphpress.org with @ryancordell.org! I'd love it if folks helped me celebrate by making a donation to support KLP's programing: give.uky.edu/campaigns/47... 2/2

I’m so excited this news is public so we can celebrate @transbookhistory.bsky.social !!! I was so fortunate to know Kadin before I ever arrived at UIUC. @skeuomorphpress.org would not exist without him, & I am beyond thrilled that he’ll continue to be a book lab colleague nearby, in Midwest terms

"You *will* remember Charlie Kirk as a free speech warrior or we will fire/imprison you" is too on the nose to even be Orwellian.

Overnight trip to St. Louis, bringing the two newest Cordells to @cadenceac.bsky.social Meet Clementine & Fig, now getting adjusted at Cadence’s apartment Thanks to @pablohutch.bsky.social whose cat had kittens & made C’s dreams come true

Late this summer I got to go into the studio with @pablohutch.bsky.social & our buddy Tim to record some tunes—and our EP is up today on Bandcamp! I feel a little weird as a middle-aged dude asking folks to listen to my band—but I'm pretty proud of these songs & would love if y’all gave em a listen

I know this is a crazy idea y’all but what if it’s a *bad* idea for the news to repeat every rumor they saw on social media?!? Like, what if they *double-checked* what people said *before* they reported? Nevermind, nevermind. It’s just too wild an idea it would never work.

After a steady afternoon of work, there is only one more impression to make for the Le Guin books! I have to wait for one sheet to dry before I can make that last impression, so I’m heading home for the weekend. But so soon we’ll be ready to bind books!

One of the practicum students @skeuomorphpress.org this term has taken it on themselves to record a series of videos showing folks how to find the press from various spots on campus—it’s such a fantastic & necessary idea that just never would have occurred to me—tl;dr MSLIS students are wonderful

Me starting to watch the Guilded Age with @eviedc.bsky.social: I don't know if I can deal with these rich people whining about their rich people problems Gets to the scene where a character walks into a newspaper office & gets a primer on how the printing press works: ok, I’m in

History students are often disappointed when they learn why the AI take-over failed. They were defeated by human resistance, which was kept alive by libraries and old paper books, and a surprising machine ally. Books had not been replaced, because even the mightiest AI could not make printers work.

By far the hardest step in any DH/technical lab activity in 2025 is “download X file, find it on your hard drive, & open it in Y specific application” an example, perhaps, of how skeuomorphic design (i.e. files, folders) can be useful & what literacies can be lost when design moves away from them

Post a team you would send instead of Bongino and Patel

The @bibsocamer.bsky.social [Bibliographical Society of America] is hiring our next executive director! Is it you? The ED coordinates & manages the varied activities of this active scholarly society that focuses on the study of books & other textual artifacts. Please circulate widely! Due: 10/10/25.

One day I will add this to my book of homespun old-timey print shop aphorisms, but remember: increasing the pressure will make a deeper impression, but it often will not make a more beautiful print

I miss a world where we wrote and engaged with each other about DH in small bites. @dhnow.bsky.social helped create that community and I'm glad it's back. digitalscholar.org/dhnow-and-co...

Did a mid-semester check-in on students’ commonplace books & found what I always do—some of the quietest students in discussion are the most engaged in their CPBs—pages of notes, questions, observations—sometimes diagrams, doodles of characters/scenes, sticky notes layered on top of other notes

I am teaching this semester in a room without AC and I would really, really love it if this climate-change-extended summer would at some point in the near future finally slide into fall

Hey #Ilinois according to the Healthcare and Family Services department COVID-19 testing and vaccines are FREE hfs.illinois.gov/coronavirus GET VACCINATED

On the one hand, Chronicling America is much slower since the update—both on the website itself and when using the API On the other hand, the URLs updating to reflect not just what page you’re on, but the specific zoom on that page, is really useful for pointing people to specific articles, etc.

All this CK discourse illustrates yet again what the modern right wing believes they are owed—they can say anything, no matter how vile—they can do anything, no matter how much it hurts others—but to simply say that they were vile or hurt others is the most extreme political violence

Even on NPR this morning, they brought on a friend of CK to talk about how “kind” he was, how committed to “civil debate.” When the host ventured the most milquetoast “he did say some divisive things” suddenly it was “I’m sick of the left spouting such hateful rhetoric & provoking violence!”

Possible grant op for #DHmakes folks! www.centerforcraft.org/grants-and-f...

A long shot perhaps, but does anyone know of a program/app/solution for making an attractive conference/festival schedule? Ideally something that lets you slot speakers/performers into timeslots & venues/stages/rooms, and will export an attractive version—does something like this exist?