Just learned the word “methodolatry” which I wish I’d learned sooner. 😜

See, if you just wait long enough, reality will provide you with the perfect anecdote to open the conclusion of the book you are writing.

Who knew living in a cyberpunk dystopia would be so boring.

Important also that students and faculty not be given or allowed to use email either. 🤔

I managed to leave just as the questions were getting hard! 🤪

👀

"Cake-Pop Demon Hunters" has proven to be too scary for the 7yo.

Surprised they didn't go the last mile and rename it the Department of War Crimes.

I do like the notion/trend of paper-only classes. I wonder to what degree folks have gotten pushback on accomodations grounds.

"None of the quotations attributed to Infomocracy appeared in the book." A thrilling, scary essay from Lee Konstantinou in the Chronicle. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...

Every single quote from the novel supposedly under analysis was hallucinated. Every single one.

“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

En voor wie twijfelt aan de omvang van het issue: @lkonstan.bsky.social beschreef eergisteren exact hetzelfde fenomeen en kwam tot gelijkaardige conclusies. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...

still upset about this. tl;dr (or registrationwall; didn't read): @lkonstan.bsky.social was asked to peer-review an article about #Infomocracy, and it had made-up quotes and citations because it was clumped together by a machine.

This is so nuts. Also "The article I was reading gave off that robot stink." is a fantastic line.

“Many secure people — tenured professors, university administrators, lawmakers — have contributed to making academe a pressure cooker, incentivizing cheating.”

this gave me a fizzy, unsettled, questioning of reality feeling similar to the first time I read Borges, but without the excitement of discovering Borges

"The article I was reading gave off that robot stink."

Thanks to @evankindley.bsky.social for shepherding this into print. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...

Thanks to @evankindley.bsky.social for shepherding this into print. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...

Am I the only one who is seeing these injected ads on ASAP/J’s website? Malicious Wordpress plugin?

Feeling nostalgic for the days when "being the biopower of the enlightenment" was a real career option.

I'm in the "Spending Saturday morning searching for peer-reviewed scholarship on MrBeast"–stage of my career.

Meanwhile, on Substack.

Forget technofeudalism, we finally have a good name for the system that has replaced capitalism.

7yo very much wants to see “Cake Pop Demon Hunters.”

Wow, AI image editing is getting so good!

CONSPIRACISM paper proposals now welcome for the ACLA seminar I am co-organizing with @lkonstan.bsky.social and @lalouverouge.bsky.social meets in Montreal in late Feb 2026

Forget the sociology of literature, someone needs to do an ethnographic study of MrBeast.

The important point is Spicer's "Graphic Story Magazine" mustn't be confused w/ Kyle's "Graphic Story Review" column which started in "Graphic Story Magazine" when it was called "Fantasy Illustrated" & not to be confused w/ "Graphic Story World" which Kyle founded before renaming it "Wonderworld."

The world is in bad shape, but this had to be done.

is revisiting the halcyon days when retweets were signaled by manually typing "RT" at the start of a post.

Interesting to connect this idea with @lkonstan.bsky.social 's essay on the tech right, Tolkien, and fantasies of virtuous power. arcmag.org/mythic-capit...

Since the semester is finally about to start, I thought I'd try to play _Death Stranding_, since I have so much free time. And it's like... all cut-scenes... all the time? More like a not-walking simulator.

First time getting translated into Korean. www.pado.kr/article/2025...

So serializing novels on Substack seems to be, increasingly, a thing.

Don't worry. It's all going to work out.

I think the rise of so-called generative AI has, all told, made me a better and more sensitive grader of undergraduate papers—since I am now scrutinizing every sentence in every paper I read with unhinged levels of paranoia.

Still have flashbacks to playing Deadly Towers on the NES.

Seem to be caught in a "Steve's Lava Chicken" / "APT." musical time loop. Help!

Decided to look at the Wikipedia page of David Eddings—who I read a ton of in junior high. *Yikes*.

Kind of wild how many academic journals permit LLM text "with human oversight" or "with disclosure."

Devastated to learn of the death of Brian McHale, my good friend for over 50 years, from metastatic melanoma. Here are some of Brian’s books. His many articles and books leave a great legacy, but not as great as his friendship. RIP.

How about an ethnography where I just hang around a couple indie bookstores for a year and then transcribe all the conversations I overhear. 🤪

Someone should start a SLAC where students have their phones and laptops confiscated from them at freshman orientation—and get them back at graduation. Parents would pay good money for that.

Further investigation confirms: wholly invented sources and hallucinated quotes from real and invented sources. 😭

Got my first peer review request, from a major journal, where I have a very strong suspicion the article under review has been substantially, if not wholly, written by AI. Wild times.

I'll be teaching Intro to Grad Studies this Fall. Among many other things, we do a week on humanities-in-crisis talk. Any favorite recent pieces in this genre—including both writing that powerfully spells out the shape of the current crisis, and pieces that push back against crisis narratives?

So, these generic wooden blocks are apparently "perfect for STEM learning." Uh huh. 🤔

If you want to hear a podcast featuring me talking about Tolkien and the far right, have I got something for you.