Over the last few years I’ve almost completely changed the mechanics of how I write. 🧵 Previously, I would prepare for serious writing by settling in at my desk in front of my laptop in an upright position, looking at a separate screen. There I would sit and grind it out, usually in Word.

As long as we’re getting rid of the penny, how about automatic forgiveness for nuisance medical bills of under $5.

ejected from christmas party after grok delivered requested vulgar roast of resident child

💯

Shirt-sleeve weather.

Alt text: “I came here to build my media brand, not to legislate or serve my constituents.”

Tater tots / With their eyes all aglow 🎶

Nuthin’ on my walk but squirrels and delivery trucks.

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

I know people like @kabinettskriege.bsky.social and @bretdevereaux.bsky.social can make the case far better than me, but unpopular opinion: military history SHOULD be taught in history programs, and it’s nothing to be particularly proud of if your school doesn’t do it. +

Noticing that drawers of type have become a minor book design meme for books about writing or publishing. Don’t love it: it ossifies the living practice of letterpress in the same way as hanging a type case on your wall to put little tchotchkes in or buying your name in some shellacked Clarendon.

But do they get to have beards?

I’m seeing the war nerds have a field day with this. Two of the best so far: How about the USS Defendant? Does it have a ballroom?

In my feed

UVa's Board of Visitors rushed the appointment of Scott Beardsley as the next President of the University. “The appropriate next step is to fully pause the presidential appointment process until the new administration is in place and the Board of Visitors is appropriately constituted.”

this is a form of theft. the program "boosts literacy" by writing stories for students (?), with a veneer of social justice added to make the whole thing more grotesque. notably this is PG county, not Montgomery: it's always the poor kids who get AI fixes instead of actual investment in teaching

$50M to Notre Dame for . . . “faith-based” approaches to AI news.nd.edu/news/notre-d...

Deep time history was such a thing.

After fucking lots of shit up very badly, this may be the internet’s greatest redemptive moment in a long time.

It’s 2026. The US is shipping innocent people to overseas concentration camps. The Empire orders one of the major broadcast networks to kill the story, and it complies. Striking from their hidden base (in Canada), rebel employees of an affiliate station . . . “

60 minutes CECOT segment. Recorded through my browser. HD quality. Not phone. Spread it around. If you're press, it's yours. Go nuts. It's streaming on a Canadian website, but there is no telling for how long. www.filemail.com/d/wkcdttnacp...

As Cory Doctorow put it a long time ago: “computers are machines for copying bits.”

I hope someone has recorded this and posts it. CBS will send takedown notices but once it starts spreading they won’t be able to stop it

Had forgotten how much fun it is to write good old-fashioned literary criticism.

“Stay tuned instead for a special broadcast of the Trump family’s Yuletide favorites.”

Boop

You basically never want to see the name of your hometown appended before a “-STRONG” declaration.

At my checkout. Worth mentioning that the “tough time” is 100% a function of intentional harm inflicted by the present administration.

This 🧵 promises to be simultaneously genuinely informative and hugely entertaining. The platform at its best!

I LOLed.

"Anyone who thinks this matter has been settled is quite naive." - UVA Professor @larrysabato.bsky.social bluevirginia.us/2025/12/uvas...

An Amusing Wooden Automaton That Types a Courteous Email on Computer Keyboard When Cranked laughingsquid.com/courtesy-ema...

Where to even start with this

Indeed, a most excellent read from @patrickmccray.bsky.social!

Seriously thinking of titling this article “Fuck Hallucinations, AI Completes the Scriptural Economy.” I mean seriously. This is not a shitpost—

This is inexcusable. Full stop. But we also can’t have this convo without talking about predatory academic publishing at large: pay-for-play journal mills that exploit those desperate for publications to convert desperation to revenue. We’re not talking PMLA and Critical Inquiry here— (yet?)

Abigail Spanburger is even now dealing with a Board of Trustees at UVA trying to rush selection of a President before she is sworn as a governor. And as much as Americans are frustrated with universities, a robust defense of educational access sits right there.

Summary of the news today

I've already been hearing faculty discussion adapting to this policy by basically writing stripped down syllabi that include *only* the required boilerplate and nothing else, with things like course themes, reading schedules and such kept in separate documents to avoid the university owning them.

Watch the video. The optics—the actual optics—of this are just terrible. BoV meeting in a dingy, improvised conference room complete w/ coffee urns that might have been borrowed from the Elks; Beardsley reading script w/ downcast eyes in a mumbling undertone: www.cbs19news.com/news/beardsl...

Via Dag Spicer at @computerhistory.bsky.social, this very cool photo. "Textverarbeitung" was the original German coinage for "word processing," a marketing category IBM would introduce and develop starting in the mid-1960s. (Much more about this in my book TRACK CHANGES.) cc @tillheilmann.info

Have now seen the screen grabs from Yik Yak and I feel a whole lot better. 💅

Let’s not forget another Very Strong letter from Chuck Schumer.

Just dropped a block on someone who wanted to explain to me that renaming the Kennedy Center is not the worst thing Trump has ever done.

What else is there to say

Just officially did the thing where I went looking for my phone and it’s in my hand. Stick a fork in me.

Sick.

🌲

Here’s the AI slop on the imminent UVA presidential announcement. NB. this is a mash-up of the reports that Darden Dean Scott Beardsley is about to be appointed to the job, and the short-lived appointment of JJ Davis as acting president over the summer. Ryan was *forced out* back in June.

I’m just a simple country lawyer, but is there a reason Jack Smith doesn’t just call a press conference? Does he think the cameras and microphones won’t show up?