This is basically Samuel Pepys when you read his diary.

Ich thynke but litel of a Mondaye bleake Tuesday grey and Wednesdaye eke Thursdaye Ich care nat for thee Yet Fridaye - Ich am yn love [twangy, moody lute arpeggio] Mondaye thou kanst fall awaye Tuesdaye, Wednesdaye, myne herte slaye No mirthe ys founde upon Thursdaye Yet Fridaye - Ich am yn love

Truly grim how many university presidents, deans, and even faculty have internalized this idea

The U.S. has successfully convinced its people that “the humanities are frivolous and STEM is Important and Real” is basically a law of nature: this is absolute nonsense that we should stop putting up with.

Carney must act: Canada must join Eurovision

Big news for the likes of us @devyngwynne.bsky.social

She & Him landing a surprise Top 40 hit the week before my 30th birthday has me feeling Some Kind of Way. Feeling very tender towards the version of my who bought that record and dreamed of the day she'd be grown-up enough to be a cool & quirky tastemaker.

I am here, for the record.

This is extremely accurate and apt

This thread is some of the most exceptional storytelling I've seen in ages?? wow. truly worth your time.

"The corporatization of higher-ed leadership is not the result of recent culture wars; it is the inevitable result of increased prioritization of various higher-ed profit centers: tech incubators, real estate speculation, online degrees, public-private partnerships, and endowment managerialism."

I hope this email doesn't find you. I hope this email misses its target. I hope you have disappeared somewhere into the wilds where you don't need to answer emails any longer.

Once again, nothing these machines can do or will outweighs the value of a single human life.

the good that you do persists in this world

This entire weekend

That the person who intervened was a Muslim brings be joy, not because I think there’s anything exceptional about Muslims and Jews saving one another, quite the opposite—it’s because it reminds us of our collective ability to cut through the bullshit and see and cherish others’ humanity.

Two people tried to extinguish the light of Chanukah through murderous violence. But was is one man, Ahmed al-Ahmed, whose flashlight shone through the darkness they wrought, a reminder of Chanukah’s message that in the longest of nights, a tiny flame can dispel much darkness.

Basically all pie is good, actually. Most people just don't make good pie crusts and underseason their fillings.

I recently had a conversation with some friends about the weird realization that we've "aged out" of the attention of creepy men. None of us are over 30 and most of us felt like it had happened years ago.

The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Gut Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom especially to everyone who understands, now more than ever, that Jewish safety will not come from spreading Islamophobia and othering other communities.

since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign

And I repeat: nothing a chatbot can do is now or ever will be as valuable as the life of this one individual person.

Wait no way

what do we do with a labor situation where arguably the most class conscious and unionized sector are people that had to attend multiple years of post-HS education to do their jobs, but are nonetheless wage laborers?

Really don't like this phenomenon where I give myself one singular extra day off and immediately become sick enough that it looks like I'll lose the rest of the week

I've been told that the angels are modeled on his children.

every day brings us one step closer to the promise of creation (Mountain Goats "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald")

- Mashed potato w/ fried egg on top - Orange juice and buttermilk mixed together - Sweet and sour cabbage soup with raisins in it - Veggies dipped in curry mayo (Thad just mayo with some curry powder stirred in) - Weißwürste (a Bavarian sausage you have to peel) - Currywurst - Sweet noodle kugel

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

Brother Herbert's Big Onion

Oak gall wasps are my current obsession - galls are a key ingredient in European writing inks before industrialisation. Countless ideas on paper start with the relationship between an oak tree and a wasp. Marcello Malpighi observed galls to understand and illustrate their growth in the 1670s

As an early modernist, I can do quarantine to guillotine

I know I’ve been posting a lot about this, but it’s telling of how this government looks at society that at the very moment Mark Carney can’t stop talking about nation-building projects, he’s throwing the biggest nationwide service-delivery network on the scrap heap because it doesn’t make money.

I will take any and every opportunity to blame Rousseau for any and everything.

This is how your email finds me

My high school English class read Dario Fo's "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," which is a wacky farce about the Piazza Fontana bombing, police collusion with fascism, and the manipulation of fact.

I'm working on 4 different knitting projects, restarting therapy, and writing my dissertation! I'm proud of me for trying really hard every day!

Always a good time to rewatch this speech. I forgot she called out the publishers for charging libraries so much for ebooks. Sad she’s gone, but happy she left us with so much fantastic work to discuss and think about at every read.

This is not solace. The fact that the thing can't say "I don't know" is specifically the thing that worries me.

Perfect quiet and grey Saturday for blocking a bunch of finished projects and putting some work in on the Christmas gifts

Really glad and interested to read that In Our Time is one of the most popular BBC podcasts for the under-35 demographic.

My main professional organization, @medievalacademy.bsky.social, has just pub'd a statement about the use of AI in its journal. Basically, DON'T! "AI tools cannot take ethical or legal responsibility for their output or enter into legal agreements." www.medievalacademy.org/page/AIPolicy #MedievalSky

St. Augustine just pear posting all the time

"Belonging is more than fitting in" is going to stay with me for a while

As an educator, you really aren't going to sell me on devaluing my own skills so that a machine built on plagiarism can make shit up for my students and atrophy their critical thinking.

There is literally nothing that ChatGPT can do that is worth the life of this one young man. And I fear he will not be the last.