We are redesigning our writing program curriculum, and today I was told by a staff curriculum designer that fiction and nonfiction courses should be combined so as not to reinforce “artificial boundaries.” Because apparently the difference between true and false is, um, “artificial.”

Equinox light, all over my living room

RIP to a North Dakota legend. Marilyn Hagerty used to sometimes write her restaurant reviews addressed to her deceased sister, and I just like to think that they’re together now, enjoying Olive Garden breadsticks in the afterlife. www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

I am reviewing *a lot* of book manuscripts right now, in *a lot* of different subjects, and it’s making me *a lot* nutty.

Did a 30 min interview with an NYT reporter this morning about the social aspects of saunas, which is so exactly my shit

“Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.” www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

So many of the half-baked AI implementations are happening in professional arenas that have been hollowed out by extraction and divestment. No journalist needs a writing aid unless they’re being paid too little to write too much, no teacher needs a commenting tool unless they’re overextended.

“When you borrow and read an e-book at your library, for example, that transaction is almost certainly handled by the country’s largest private equity company, KKR. The firm currently controls as much as 90 percent of library e-book loans through its OverDrive/Libby platform …”

Just glad I get to share my love of Sinclair Lewis with the world (and hang with @nissaren.bsky.social in the process!)

One of the goals of an authoritarian project is to make it really hard to have time to do much more than just your regular life stuff so almost anything you do that helps people take back their time or their power or connect them more deeply to organized community work has tremendous value.

Last night, I was sitting in the diviest of dive bars when a woman walked in and gave everyone at the bar a homegrown tomato and then turned and walked out again and reader, I just had it for breakfast, it was a very good tomato.

so thoroughly in my element

I love it when an antiquing experience takes a sudden, dark turn

Last night I attended a benefit for a local nonprofit and bid on a silent auction item called a “DJ cleaning service” where one person cleans your house while another spins a live DJ set in your living room

The landscape in higher ed is bleak right now, but here's a bright light at my institution: there's a new tenure track position at @davidsoncollege.bsky.social in Gender & Sexuality Studies. Please share widely!

Killing people we disagree with is wrong in every way, whether it’s Melissa Hortman or Charlie Kirk. This is especially true in a country awash with guns and run by fascists looking to amplify their already militarized policies. No thoughts and prayers. Down with fascism and up with gun control.

“… proprietary parenthood *is* the script. The problem starts … with the ‘soft’ eugenics, competitiveness, and individualism that permeates our culture’s entire approach to baby-making …”

Nora and I are going to finish @seeshespeak.bsky.social book Hanging Out today.

“… evidence is piling up that AI is failing to deliver in the real world … Research suggests that the companies trying to incorporate AI have seen virtually no impact on their bottom line.” www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

Honky Tonk Tuesday

You’re not *truly* middle aged until you join your local historical society. Which I have now done.

student brought a pumpkin spice latte to class and gave it to me, this is bribery I can get behind 🎃

MacNeice, from “Autumn Journal” (1938)

early morning light / late season roses

My school doesn’t offer a degree in Outlook, even though odds are very good that a majority of my students will be required to use it in their professional lives, and many of them will use it poorly/incorrectly.

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

I still regularly volunteer to serve as a peer reviewer, because I believe that work is important to the field that I would also aim to contribute to. But my university doesn’t recognize outside service — including peer review work — as “service” for promotion, etc. So it’s really just pro bono.

Saw the new Conjuring movie and didn’t even get the $45 Annabelle commemorative popcorn bucket, but don’t worry, literally everyone seated near me in the theater did.

“Fascists seek a society where people lack not only the motive to learn, but also the means …” ☑️

Printed copies of my new zine are now for sale in the continental US, $10 per copy including shipping. For ordering info, visit robinderosa.net/printed-copi... #HigherEd

Everyone’s like “the worst part of writing is revision!” but I’m here to tell you, no, it’s formatting, it was always formatting

“Like the wonks who worked for Information, I was holding the line against the ensloppification of academe, one false citation at a time …” ensloppification is the new enshittification, and they’re both super gross

““[Humankind’s] self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure …” (Benjamin, “The Work of Art …”)

Academics are under unrelenting pressure to accept the narrative of the inevitability of #generativeAI & to embrace it in teaching & learning. We resist - because it is ecologically destructive, ethically corrupt, & because it undermines the thinking abilities that make us both human & intelligent.

What book should I bring to read during the mandatory faculty AI training session?

Stiff Little Fingers played on cassette tape: no better way to start the day

I have two books coming out before the end of world: THE MEDIUM PICTURE from @ugapress.bsky.social on 10/15, and POST-SELF from @repeaterbooks.bsky.social on 12/02! Please preorder them. It makes a huge difference in the launch and life of the book. Thank you! 💙📚 #booksky roychristopher.com/books/

Love how this intro (Clifton Fadiman, 1946) is basically like RIP Ambrose Bierce, you would have loved how completely fucked up the rest of the 20th century got

Someone on the @wfmu.bsky.social comments board just said that Iggy Pop sometimes sounds like Kermit and now I'm wondering how Henson never managed to pull off "I Wanna Be Your Frog"?

Happy Labor Day, y'all. Hug a union today.

“We are now in the dark times, and there is also kink. About the dark times.” Holy shit this whole essay is INCREDIBLE

Yesterday I ran into an old friend who I hadn’t seen or spoken to in almost 15 years and I can’t believe I’ve even been alive long enough to utter such a statement, but I guess I have

Patriarchy teaches people to expect society to be structured like a "traditional" nuclear family at both micro and macro levels. There is an expectation of a society propped up by invisible unpaid feminine labor on the one hand and protected by a violent, dominating patriarch on the other.

Never not appreciating how this getup makes me look like a Star Wars villain

Hello everyone. Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax has a tenure-track job in Enlightenment rhetoric and / or 18th-century literature. Tell everyone. www.msvu.ca/about-msvu/c...

"A lot of the business majors didn't think they had learned anything particularly useful in college...As both a scholar of higher education+a scholar of the labor market, it is my belief that the more well-rounded a person is the more actually suited they are for the contemporary labor market"

It’s just depressing watching a whole series of chances that made my life/career possible get chipped away at, from parts of the social safety net in Kansas (food stamps), to the Pell Grant, to Mellon money for the humanities, to the doctoral infrastructure in the English department at Columbia.

My university canceled its library subscription to Project MUSE, making it harder for me to do research, but enrolled all us faculty in Salesforce

People working in universities know a lot of the work that makes the organization function is outsourced to for-profit companies (catering, landscaping) or runs on platforms requiring payments to such companies: Workday, Canvas, Microsoft, Zoom. This thread will be for less obvious examples. 1/