Today is Carson McCullers’s birthday. 📸 Marvin Koner (1965)

Another massive melodramatic sky this evening as the flood had receded enough for us to go out. When we returned as darkness fell, we saw the sharpened Ramadan sliver of moon & Orion, bedecked with jewels, above the house.

VIVRE SA VIE and THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC screen in an Ultimate Double Feature Fri, Feb 27 at 6:00. Both films will also show Saturday in a regular double feature format at 3:30/5:30. Learn more & get tickets at brattlefilm.org/film-series/...

Wesley Morris on “On Morrison”: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/b...

There are so many tasks that are onerous but (when done well) express a deep sense of care and community. Annual performance evaluations, letters of rec, and peer reviews are generally unremunerated acts of care and trust for one’s community. I think it’s telling that AI has targeted those tasks.

When we model giving feedback, setting up in-class workshops, and splitting students into different pair and group dynamics, these are the forms of community we are seeking to instruct them in. Not every task has a carrot or a stick. Some are just about the complicated work of being together.

Our course evaluations (*loud booing) now ask students if the course “helped with career readiness” and this is both a preposterous thing to ask an 18 year old, and also nothing will matter more for their lives than generative cohabitation and collaboration with diverse peer groups.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right. Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement. This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

Portrait of Toni Morrison Jill Krementz photographer February 13 1974, NYC

One of the randomly fantastic works at the Yale Art Gallery: models of the soldier’s heads for the Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment Memorial in Boston. The first—and one of the only—monuments to truly honors the Emancipationist vision of the Civil War.

As an aside: the most influential Dem consultants all believe the best electoral strategy is to adopt a hostile posture towards the Dem base in the hopes that might convince this person to vote for Dems. They get really mad if you say that won't do anything except depress lean-Dem turnout.

I think Rupert has always been smarter than almost every other person in his wealth class and one of the reasons why is that he's always been way better at actually gauging public sentiment and vibes and if he's going here it's because he knows the vibes and where they're trending

"Holding on to small & significant truths, especially when difficult, can make the difference. Virginia Giuffre did, as she had no choice. Because of the survivors, the Epstein Files were released. They made darkness visible for us all" My editorial on Andrew, contempt – and creating powerlessness:

It impresses me Reuters needed 5 (!) heads of EU Intel agencies to tell you what Ukrainians have been telling the world since day one: that Russia doesn’t want to end the war, Russia fckng started it, Russia’s just playing time and continue to pursue the goal it always had: to control Ukraine fully

Russia doen’t want a quick end to war, heads of 5 European intelligence agencies say. Russia doesn’t seek a peace agreement. It pursues its strategic goals, and those haven’t changed,” said one of them, according to Reuters. It’s about turning Ukraine into a “neutral” buffer. Paint me surprised

Read more here: www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Moon and Mercury setting next to the Griffith Observatory just moments ago. Found a good spot to take photos. #Photography #Astrophotography

Iftar, Day 1

This is Kyiv today, 12 years ago. It was February 18, 2014, first of 3 bloodiest days of Maidan. 17 protesters were killed by special force police that day alone. 14 more received fatal injuries, they died days later. We would win later that month, but the price would be high. It always is

This local Wolfdog joined an Olympic ski event and triggered the finish-line camera. This is Nazgul. He snuck into a cross-country skiing sprint this morning and raced the homestretch with some competitors before being escorted home. 14/10 someone get him a medal

❤️

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

Günaydın Baharın müjdecisi sarı çiğdem - The yellow crocus, a harbinger of spring Fotoğraf: Ahmet Sürücü

Allowing your dogs to play in mud is one of the best gifts you can give them; it engages all 5 senses. 🙌🏽

The decline of right wing cultural production is just due to the fact that they don’t like culture, they like the signifiers of culture, ie “classic sculpture means white people are better.” They don’t like art at all except for this purpose. They don’t even like the nerd stuff they whine about

All the buzz about Emerald Fennell's Wuthering H, & Elordi's Heathcliff makes me wonder why nobody has as yet mentioned "Dude Watching with the Brontes" (by the brilliant @katebeaton.bsky.social, who has long since anticipated all we mere mortals have to say): www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id...

"There’s something outrageous about the stripping away of the politics of Wuthering Heights...most students understand that the novel is not really a love story...revenge, class struggle, power, whiteness" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Come for the garbled quotation, stay for the fact that TWO Victorian lit professors are being quoted, multiple times each, in Variety magazine! (including yours truly, which is fun)

Boston-area Bluesky, I will be in dialogue next Weds at 5 w/ Maurice Lee (author of the wonderful #19thc studies bk _Overwhelmed_), on a topic of interest to all of us who teach or wonder about our capacity to read texts exceeding a 300-character limit. TL; DR Here's the poster--please join us.

my problem with AI is that I lived with someone in my 20s who'd leave the faucet running and was super quick to confidently tell me the wrong thing and I just don't want to go back

FASCINATING that all the "positive" responses here boil down to "I can't be bothered to read my own email or update my own diary". That's literally it. Hundreds of billions of dollars.

Inside the Berlin S Bahn in 1991. Photo by Chris John DeWitt

A Bitter Winter in Ukraine | Tim Judah www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Happy year of the fire horse [Mark Rothko, Red on Red, 1969]

Watched the Blair docs. Here's the quote – from Cherie – that has stayed with me: “He is an amazing politician. As a husband and as a human being, that’s a different matter. But that’s really between me and him.” What does she *mean*? www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-t...

This looks like an amazing show. Reminder, nearly half of samurai were women. www.ft.com/content/0734... "The British Museum’s Samurai show proves the brush is mightier than the sword"

#flowers #nature #photography

Finally a Mary looking as tired as your average new mother

Excerpts from my inaugural lecture at the College de France last week.

Here's to all the intellectuals not in the Epstein files. They're the ones the Epstein class feared. They're the ones who could spell. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/toni-morri...

About Epstein, Edge, eugenics, and finding my name in the Epstein files. www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

“We plan to hire an AI rewrite specialist to ingest the reporting by Hannah and others and use AI to convert it into stories.” The editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer said it will use AI to ‘write’ its articles. www.cleveland.com/news/2025/10...

Yes to this thread. AI “creates a permission structure” designed to concentrate power at the top, dramatically enhance the power of disinformation by destabilizing images and information, and hollow out the power of labor through deskilling while providing cover and impunity.

russia steals our art and our days. In my new Sunday Letter, I place diary fragments beside paintings stolen during the occupation of Kherson. Read it here: www.patreon.com/posts/150821...

How -5 celsius feels after surviving a winter of -22 without heating

thinking about the conversation I had with Jesse Jackson in 2019: "The truth of slavery—that Africans subsidized America’s wealth—that truth will not go away. It’s buried right now, but as each generation becomes much more serious, it will be grappled with." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Essaka Joshua’s wonderful study Disability and the Gothic has just been published! Even better, it’s free online from today until the 3rd March 2026: www.cambridge.org/core/element... @dalegothic96.bsky.social @universitypress.cambridge.org @igagoths.bsky.social

Superb piece. “Writing means many different things to me but one thing it is not: writing is not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in my mind. Writing is a magical and mysterious process that makes it possible to think differently.”

Kim Novak by Leonard McCombe, 1956 “She did not conceal the fact that she had been drawn into a world capable of exploiting her. Filming seemed an ordeal for her; it was as if the camera hurt her.” - David Thomson

ラナンキュラス・ラックスという新しい品種、花びらにワックスをかけたような独特の光沢があります #花写真 #花金鳳花(和名) #ラナンキュラス