A revolving staircase caught in the wild. It’s extra funny because you can walk all over them.

“In a flat-out chase between a shark and giant dog-paddling dinosaur” is the greatest hook I’ve ever heard. Thank you Morgan Freeman and the new Netflix Dinosaurs series.

LLMs have no intentionality. Intentionality is a basic prerequisite for meaning-making. Without intentionality, and without meaning, there is no knowledge. LLMs do not intend and do not mean, therefore they neither nor offer knowledge. Simple as.

Live your life such that people will always be surprised to find out you of all people were ever allowed to give a conference paper.

How many theology degrees do I have to get to become a literary critic? Three. The answer is three. Really though all it takes is one supervisor who doesn’t give a shit about theology.

Is smog also a verb? How does chloroform work? The things you look up when writing on Nabokov.

This has me thinking about somewhere where Javier Marías says, “We always arrive too late in other people’s lives.” I told my wife this line and I think it broke her for like a week.

I don’t care who you are. The new Wuthering Heights is amazing. We need someone who, like Baz Luhrmann, lives and breathes and directs on vibes, but, you know, is good at it and doesn’t live up their own ass.

So I have an article on *checks notes* Nabokov, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa coming out from Religion & Literature sometime this year. I’m still surprised myself at the combination.

In due time history will have denounced everybody, etc etc etc. Nabokov, rarely wrong.

Ten glorious years of a guy who has mostly been the president and always been the main character of American political life doing posts like this and everyone trying to figure out what cable news segment he saw, misunderstood in the way a dog might misunderstand a crossword, and made into policy.

Who do I know in Philly?

Did Mark Driscoll write the last line?

This is so incredibly dumb but there’s some family drama I can never share with anyone that just makes this so damn funny to me, a research fellow affiliated with one of these schools 😈

Fucking weak ass motherfuckers

How long O Lord

One reason TED talks became so incredibly popular was that their house intellectual style papers over thoughtfulness of the kind serious humanities research requires, allowing people who would rather not think hard to feel that they sound profound.

People are inconsistent and imperfect, we salvage glimmers of joy where we find them.

Dear god please

This’ll be fun. Jazz Band Corporate Finance Microeconomic Development Business Policy, Ethics, and Strategy Planning Employment Law

“and you shall slaughter the ram, and shall take its blood and dash it against all sides of the altar”

World Cup 2022. Argentina and The Netherlands fucking brawled. Then the game resumed where the ball fell. Because soccer is a sport, not a game of grievances.

I don’t watch football often but my god that you can award first down from fourth and twelve because the other team was mean is proof that football is a sport for little bitch republicans.

“It’s the God that literature doesn’t, can’t, and will always fail to give you to experience that is God.” —Jon Fosse, more-or-less

People will drink a dirty martini and not a peaty scotch. The worst peaty scotch is better than a dirty martini.

Dr. Oz says that Trump has more testosterone in his body than any 70 year old he’s come across. But he didn’t say to whom, and, perhaps, to how many, that testosterone belongs. Hmm. 🤔

I’d bet money I own those same chinos. I know what I’m wearing tomorrow.

Walz knows what’s up with that Filson. Seattle goods, for that Minnesota cold.

Portland, and SE/E Portland in particular, has a very special place in my heart. And if there’s one thing I know Portland can do, it’s that it can show up with the absolute weirdest combination of people and just creep the fuck out of these paramilitary fucks. Burnside can show the fuck up.

People aren’t hungry enough. Not only the evil fuck who shot her, but every ICE agent who was there and did not immediately turn their guns on him and detain him must be prosecuted as accessories to murder, sent to prison, and every inmate in that prison must be told they were law enforcement.

Resharing my fundamental belief that anyone who has ever served in any field adjacent to “law enforcement” must, if they are imprisoned, have that information publicized within the prison they find themselves in.

This article has a 3.5-page Works Cited 🙃

Me, just now, at my mother’s annual holiday party: I’ve over-served everyone and now they’re playing with knives.

“They parted my garments among them” is just too on the nose.

Tapping in @jonathanrheaps.bsky.social to explain why evil is always stupid.

@dieworkwear.bsky.social please settle a bet for me. Are these Rogue Territory Officer Trousers “jeans”? A Nordstrom stylist insists they are. www.rogueterritory.com/collections/...

Okay so I know what article 11 will be on.

Legit the first time I saw this photo, with the shitty painting, I thought, no, really, it can’t be, but is it a Christmas miracle? And then I was disappointed.

Pharmacist tells me Blue Cross Blue Shield doesn’t want to fill my *generic* asthma medication because, and I quote, “they don’t want to pay for it—it’s too expensive.” About to put on a maroon sweater for solidarity’s sake.

Nabokov Studies 20 (2025) has now been published and is currently Open Access. It includes an introduction by General Editor Zoran Kuzmanovich and Associate Editor, me. 🙃 Check it out at muse.jhu.edu/issue/56115.

Stephen Greenblatt is great but Michael Wood is better because he knows how to equivocate.

“You will be haunted by three spirits.”

Me every time literally anything remotely to do with Star Wars releases a trailer.

Oh for a mighty wind…

Oh the weird places Nabokov may make you go. Little known fact: Nabokov preferred William James to his brother Henry James.

Do I start writing article 11 tomorrow? Probably yes. It’ll be a short article. But yes. Sorry I’m just excited. I haven’t felt scholarly-ly productive in a minute and coming off AAR has me dying to publish some ish.

I have now entered that part of the article writing process when, shortly after finishing a halfway decent draft, I am now worried that it is total shite.

Seven calendar days, four writing days: 9,659 words in the books.

This is getting more fun by the day.