#FFC0CB Floyd.

Inbox zero. Send cake-pops.

Just over on @cnn.com leaning into #newspeak But enlighten us. What exactly is a “chief loyalty enforcer?”

In the replies to this I had to query twice about what someone meant at face value, because language is never a lossless form of communication and in a social world “communicative intent” is elusive and imperfect. (I read that in a book once.) We live with that, and don’t think twice about it.

Worth remembering we accept ambiguity and misunderstanding as an integral element of human speech and writing, indeed (as opposed to perfect transmission) a fundamental element of what makes communication (or art) possible. Yes, this is different. But I don’t think we know where the tolerances lie.

Who among us hasn’t, etc. etc.

Our inevitable brain-drain will create the clearest path to authoritarian rule. In the words of Ella Baker, "strong people dont need strong leaders." But in a population of weaker minded people, they will demand a strong(man) leader

Scoring a PDF is still a valid form of dopamine hit.

Someone needs to do a discursive analysis of FAFO, and its meteoric rise amongst rightwing shitposters. My basic take is that the appeal is in the asymmetry between action and reaction: feckless lib acts out and is met with crushing retribution. Very Old Testament.

It’s farcical that even a semi-serious argument from the right is that if Kimmel had been “funnier” he might not have been cancelled. But it’s also yet another illustration of the core MAGA ethos, that “everything in the world exists for me and my gratification, and will be judged accordingly.”

This would destroy many graduate programs and is likely to be strongly opposed by tech companies, who rely on these visas for a lot of their technical workforce

I hope some newspapers use a crop where you can easily read the sign.

BREAKING:

Thanks universe.

Again: “Media determine our situation.”

Who. Did. This!?!

Spent the day printing these in collaboration with campus colleagues and lots of student visitors. A nice change of pace. Happy September 18, a.k.a. Type High Day to printers (wood or metal type as typically exactly .918 inches tall).

Analysis | To get himself back on the air, Jimmy Kimmel must call for the execution of homeless people.

Just acted in the nick of time to keep my breakfast sandwich from being drizzled with hot honey. #stopthemadness

RBS is happy to announce that we are now accepting applications for: 𝗥𝗕𝗦-𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 (apply by 𝟮 𝗡𝗼𝘃.) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠. 𝗖. 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 (apply by 𝟳 𝗗𝗲𝗰.) Details: rarebookschool.org/2025-scholarships-fellowships/

“Media determine our situation.” —Friedrich Kittler, 1986

This is the best analysis I’ve seen of the current discursive situation. Please give this 🧵 your time.

If BSky were a guitar shop and poetry was classic rock, what’s your pick for forbidden riff? I call:

🔥🔥🔥 must watch.

Thank you @jeffjarvis.bsky.social for saying this.

It’s awful. The UPR system has been struggling under right wing conservative government mismanagement and austerity measures for years. This is another blow to an already struggling university system. And I suspect some of the smaller private universities won’t survive this.

ICYMI, via @leoflores.bsky.social, today the Trump administration casually devastated Puerto Rican universities. periodismoinvestigativo.com/2025/09/puer...

We’re hiring! We need people to get documents in DC and people who need documents in DC to help us with testing Sourcery ahead of launching in our third city. sourceryapp.org/2025/09/17/j...

I accepted an assignment to write a short thing for an online encyclopedia run out of an academic center. Authors’ guidelines are provided behind a time-stamped secure link with double factor authentication. I feel like James Fucking Bond. (Also: WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE PEOPLES?! STOP THE MADNESS!)

This is exactly the bargain I thought I was making when the nice website allowed me to post my PDFs there.

The rage culture on here is just getting worse and worse.

Honestly who among us hasn’t been there, rage posting at 330 in the proper English morning, everyone knows eastward jet lag is the worst

Gifting your child a high-powered rifle is also an ideology. We just refuse to speak of it as such.

When will the books be publicly burned?

In recent weeks, a number of people have mentioned returning to this article of mine from 2021. Here's a gift link.

Honestly, I just keep coming back to something @ibogost.bsky.social said years ago: “We were not meant to talk to each other this much.”

It’s time to declare the political and imaginative failure of the hype-shouting school of critical AI.

To take a screenshot on iOS device you first press and hold the power button then also press the Home button. If you do the reverse, however—first press Home and then power—the device goes to sleep. Someone in Cupertino thought this was a good idea.

Finally: “Calling AI hype may be like thinking the fascists are simply stupid . . . But the fascists are confused neither about the nature of free speech, nor the nature of the “speech” that is produced by an LLM. They know what they want, they know what they’re doing, and they know where it leads.”

A nice person I met on social media today.

More and more I’m having to lockdown any post that gets any uptake whatsoever. It’s a shame, but increasingly it’s impossible to have any kind of meaningful exchange apart from mutuals.

Just a reminder that there is still a very visible National Guard presence in Washington DC. For all of the media coverage about spreading mulch and so forth, it’s a menacing posture for those of us who live here. I saw them on the platform at an otherwise sleepy Metro stop just over the weekend.

This is beyond outrageous.

Looks like vaccines.gov is broken and unusable; it throws a zip code error for all zip codes. Now millions of Americans have only a patchwork of private-sector tools to search for vaccines.

These two micro-negotiations are where the fight is.

Just a now routine little local bit of immiseration.

Reminding.

I know the world has one or three bigger problems and I don’t have the solution to this one either, but the communal cream pitcher at the coffee place that is ALWAYS ALWAYS EMPTY BECAUSE WHO HAS TIME TO KEEP TRACK OF THAT is a failed experiment. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

We are at the point in the honoring-Charlie-Kirk's-memory cycle when faculty are being fired for posting, without comment, Charlie Kirk's words. At the behest of politicians sworn to uphold the first amendment, and in public institutions covered by first amendment protections.