Adorno & Horkheimer get a lot of shit for supposedly identifying liberals & fascists in their 30s/40s work, but where they really start is: of course there’s a difference, but don’t you think it’s strange that so often right when the difference should matter—it doesn’t at all?

Happy to get to join this program on Audre Lorde’s literary & political legacy with Mariken Heitman, @sylvanasimons.bsky.social & @lazeefuik.bsky.social . As Lorde said, “Every day of your lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be.” 🍉

Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.

🐋 1 month left! CFP for #EASLCE2026 – Join the Orca Uprising! (14–17 April, Utrecht University). Deadline for abstracts: 15 Sept 2025. Keynotes: Greg Garrard, Kate Rigby, Eva Meijer. Full details here: easlce2026.sites.uu.nl @easlce.bsky.social @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social

Out Now: Humanimalia 15.2! Featuring timely essays on human–animal entanglements, including 🐴 a taxidermied horse in London, 🐗 a feral pig in Australia, 🐐 “happy” goats in Italy, 🐾 robot dogs in Gaza, 🐦 pheasants in NL, and 🐑 sheepdogs in the UK. 🔓 OA here: humanimalia.org/issue/view/1...

applying for jobs again

The 11th Biennial EASLCE (@easlce.bsky.social) conference, entitled “‘Join the #OrcaUprising!’: Nonhuman Resistance and Multispecies (In)Justice”, will be held at Utrecht University (@utrechtuniversity.bsky.social) in April 2026. Visit easlce2026.sites.uu.nl for further details.

Meanwhile, I’m off to Stockholm to be the opponent at a PhD defence. The thesis, on Creaturely Metaphors in modernist literature, is brilliant, so my opposition will be quite amicable, luckily. www.su.se/english/rese...

I don’t know if Google can top this, their finest work to date

Currently reading this as well and finding it both reassuring and depressingly relevant

Clown country run by clowns.

“ Steve Bannon who may turn out the most prescient philosopher of our era said you don’t have to prove or disprove anything, you just need to drown the zone in shit. “ Sad and dangerous.

Can we just all bid a collective Fuck You to Zuckerberg and all things META? Is that aggressive enough?

Global Western colonialism is so infused in media that this DealBook article frames Greenland as a “deal” to “approach.” Capitalism involves assessing and quantifying land while removing the people- Inuit are mentioned nowhere in these media articles. 1/

Issue 15.1 is out now! Featuring 🐌 snails on Mt Fuji,🐂 mithuns in the eastern Himalayas, 🐈‍⬛ cats in multispecies communities, 🦮 sniffer dogs at airport security, 🐜 ants in Mexico, and 🐳 orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar. The issue is 🔓 open access, available here: humanimalia.org/issue/view/1...

In 2010, anti-copyright activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself after being prosecuted to the full extent of the law for making copyrighted academic publications freely available. Today, academic publishers are insisting those copyrights be lifted to feed the corporate AI slop machine.

The Nobel Peace Prize is being given today for work with the Japanese atom bomb survivors (Hibakusha) so @finnarne.me & @melinabuns.bsky.social wrote about the trees that also survived and will continue to bear witness to the atrocities even after the humans have passed away. #envhist #envhum

Humanimalia 15.1 coming soon!

This was a new one for me: a predatory journal stipulating that submitted articles can only be 15% plagiarised and have to be within the scope of the journal! Whatever will they think of next?

Holding a grudge – is it a petty character flaw or a desire for justice in an unjust world? | First Dog on the Moon

De-mining rats. Stray dogs. Lal Kandhari cows. Marxist cats. And fishy resistance. My review of Animal Studies in 2023 is available here. DM me for the PDF. doi.org/10.1093/ywcc...

Trans, Utrecht, November 2024. Die Ästhetik des Widerstands Photo credit: Kári Driscoll

This week I received advance copies of my translation of Teresa Präauer's Becoming Animal, published by Seagull Books. It was both a pleasure and a challenge to translate this kaleidoscopic exploration of the boundary between the written word and the living world www.seagullbooks.org/becoming-ani...

"Our Arabic program is half a millennium old but couldn't withstand the corporatization of the contemporary university because it isn't nuclear engineering"

Looking forward to participating in the annual MESH symposium in Cologne next week, on the topic of “Multispecies Conviviality”. Naturally, given the topic, I will be talking about the War against Animals, nonhuman resistance, and interspecies solidarity. mesh.uni-koeln.de/events/meshw...

We have a cover finally! My translation of Teresa Präauer's Tier werden will be out later this year with Seagull Books: www.seagullbooks.org/becoming-ani... A perfect stocking stuffer for that special someone.

This piece by my friend and colleague @miayou.bsky.social is probably one of the most beautiful essays I've ever read. It had me in tears when I heard her read it last year, and I have thought about it often since then. Now you can read it too at the ERB: europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-barren-n...

First year induction today! Still my favourite slides: #AcademicSky

Glad to see my employer taking a stand on this at least! www.uu.nl/en/news/utre...

New issue out soon

Anyone who believes the Holocaust matters - as a historical event and as politically and morally meaningful reference, warning, and call to action - must unequivocally reject such bizarre and utterly ridiculous instrumentalization, such mendacious trivialization.

I’ll have to start watching what I say around here…

Do you ever feel like you’re going insane?

New issue out now! Featuring animals on trial, swifts in Brussels, elephants in New York, wolves in Paris, leopards in Taiwan, wild horses in the wild west, cows in prison, cats in Holland, and animal experimentation in the Hebrides. Read it here: humanimalia.org/issue/view/592

Issue 14.1 coming soon!