Found in a 1904 edition of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam on Hathi Trust. I like to think of Ethel and Maud that year, underneath a bough with a book of verses, a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and "thou."

Shut up and take my money

“The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” Samuel Johnson, born on this day in 1709

The pitchbot is 🔥 these days.

Shame on you, Polis.

I still want swords to be turned to plowshares, even when the guy who loved swords gets killed by one

A lot to say about this, but one thing is that the Professor in question was a lecturer, and thus did not have tenure. The destruction of academic freedom is inextricably linked to the loss of worker protection in the university.

everyone should read the distinguished Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt's great piece on Trump's senseless dismantling of American science; but it would be nice to see leading specialists in the hard sciences make comparable public defenses of the humanities www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...

So many adults have to fail a child before he ends up 10 years old telling CNN about the mass shooting he lived through this morning

love to live in 2025

An excellent bit of close reading on the way the Open AI CEO is wasteful even in his own kitchen:

The best tomato toast is, hands down, pan con tomate, with olive oil and garlic. I will not be taking questions at this time.

Not only is Chicago one of the most elite universities in the U.S., it's also known for its "Great Books" curriculum, which presumably still relies heavily on Classics and works written in other languages. I thought that approach was one that conservatives still liked!

I think we’re on the cusp of mass attempts to automate teaching, and I also think it is going to be a massive wasteful failure in ways that will make the “learning loss” of the pandemic look like a speed bump next to a mountain.

Just in case you were hoping (as I naively was) that your own airport was still functional and safe...

"Its only plagiarism if its a Black woman doing the writing, otherwise its just sparkling not-so-serious oopsies" Bill Ackman, 2024.

For the Monday morning crowd: a 🧵on how to appeal your NEH grant termination. Please share with NEH grantees. I also summarized in a shareable google doc, available here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

the learning objective is that you get smarter and think hard about how you want to be in the world based on the new knowledge you’ve gained

As promised here’s Pink Pony Club but it’s about encryption

M. Gessen hits the nail on the head, yet again www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...

"The work is what happens within you."

Kidnapping. Capturing a person against their will without due process is called kidnapping. Transporting them to another country without due process is called human trafficking. A squalid extrajudicial prison for people found guilty of no crime is called a concentration camp.

relatedly:

In 100 years we are going to get a definite explanation for how the dawn of The Information Age resulted in the dumbest people imaginable running the country

You may be fearing your 401k is no longer enough for you to retire. But with all the cuts to NIH and Medicare you also won't live as long. So the policies are integrated.

I'm going to post some of my fav humanities scholarship, in appreciation for the work that smart people do. The @ccp-org.bsky.social is one of my fav projects. It focuses on Black organizing in 19th century U.S. The websites and #DigBlk scholars are worth looking into. coloredconventions.org

The long tail of obscuring how much of our technological “innovation” was public research gifted to the private sector as a way of pretending the profit motive drives progress as opposed to socialist forms.

I’m old enough to remember when it was an Important Question why more faculty didn’t vote Republican

Besides Michael Roth and Christopher Eisgruber, no university presidents seem to have publicly stood up against the administration's attack on higher ed. Is that right?

Every day now, maybe multiple times, I think of Peter Coviello's words in the startling "Memos of Blood and Fire": "You will in all cases know what it is to feel something cherished wrenched & jolted into something less, & then less, & then less."

I’m crying, this is so funny WEAPONIZED MANSPLAINING FOR ESPIONAGE ☠️☠️

One of the genuinely great things this country has done is public state universities. Flagship state universities have made a genuinely excellent higher education available to so many more people than in most of human history. And all that is going to disappear in the next four years.

This article did not cite even one literary scholar of poetry. It's almost as if editors at science journals don't even think research on literature is a real field. Given the funding cuts to the humanities at my institution and others, it tracks.

So it’s over then, works for me

Who died and made Sam Altman a literary critic? Does he even read? Why does he get to say what literary metafiction looks like?

ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’

I don't know if any University administrators in the U.S. are on here, but they ALL need to hear this. "Might as well do the right thing the first time."

standardizing college-level humanities courses is a mistake no matter the “content”

TFW you stop doomscrolling to read your email only to find that reading your email IS doomscrolling.

Solidarity!

Exactly this is happening:

Universities: we are cutting the English department because humanities majors have plummeted Faculty: then why are our courses over-enrolled

How I think I look when teaching / How I actually look

seeing takes about the aid institutions and their role in imperialism. correct. If someone said "investor-owned hospitals exploit the vulnerable to benefit shareholders" I'd nod. If their followup was "and that's why I'm turning off your mom's dialysis machine" I'd...have some followup questions

Except for Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University.

Who are the staff at NSF that are just rolling over and doing this?

The best reason you’ll have to go to DC in the next four years!

I was to give a talk at a big US Attorney's Office next week abt the complicity of German lawyers in the creation of the Nazi state. Yesterday the Justice Department cancelled it. Irony is dead. I've got an op/ed on this I'm looking to place. Help appreciated. #LawSky #Skystorians #Holocaust

Can we please get every democrat to shout at the top of their lungs about this, please? Hold a press conference! A strike! A sit-in!