A cover letter is such an embarrassing genre to write and for NO REASON

“Of course that’s your take, you’re a conservative bed-wetter whining about DEI in The Odyssey.”

In preparation for my class I’m teaching on Vonnegut next semester, I will be periodically posting and gushing as I re-read some of my favorites. Seriously no one did it like him.

ChatGPT tells me I’m a pretty boy, so maybe Dawkins was right—these things are conscious.

A world I am completely foreign to is one where academics can ask for 10k speaking fees and business class travel. Apparently this world exists and people it isn’t some joke.

Hell yeah let’s fucking go, politics is fake anyway

»Es gibt schon länger starke Indizien dafür, dass sich Motoren der österreichischen Firma Rotax in israelischen Kampfdrohnen befinden. Vielleicht schafft es das Chaos um den diesjährigen ESC endlich auch, diese Erkenntnisse sichtbarer zu machen«, schreibt Jacobin Editor @magdalenab.bsky.social.

In NLR 158: Gaza as World Event. Nancy Fraser reads the global reverberations of Israel’s destruction of Gaza as a crisis point in the prevailing Western moral order. Reflections on neo-McCarthyism in Germany and the US. newleftreview.org/issues/ii158...

"Most of the enslaved people identified in the research so far were enslaved by Harvard presidents, treasurers, deans, and academics and made to work in Boston, Cambridge, the American South, and abroad..." Whew. Also, the redress ideas are...lacking.

PSA: Do not trust me with your umbrella. I will leave it at the last place we were and will only realize when we’re too far to go back

"you must be fun at parties" jokes on you I've never been invited to one, idiot

Florida When It Gets Cold

People in tv dramas seem to have an endless supply of folders.

In honor of Marx’s birthday, remember to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner, just as the old man intended.

The sexiest thing a woman can do is be a little weirdo.

Once again: there is no *ethical* use of AI. Universities "exploring ethical uses" are cashing in and trying to grab money to survive in the face of government shortfalls. You cannot "ethically" use a machine that steals art, energy, water, and land. Using AI to "make art" is exploitation and theft.

My AI chatbot is conscious. I know because it is always telling me how smart and pretty I am;

I’m told I’d be a hoot on a podcast. Do you want me to make banter on your podcast? I’m your guy

The Claude logo is just the Kurt Vonnegut butthole doodle

Fatigue Chicken Nuggets

Okay, I’m putting myself on a book buying ban. Preorders don’t count. Neither do books apart of a series I already own. Special editions also don’t count. Also ebooks definitely don’t count. Neither do any books with pages. Or any books with words. I totally got this.

Happy May Day from ours to yours

May Day -William Morris

applications are open! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Students should also hate it. Once upon a time I could tell a student they wrote the best paper out of the entire class and that they should be proud, and I wouldn’t hesitate. Now I have to hesitate lest I have egg on my face.

I will forever despise AI for making it so that I don’t trust my students.

‘Disappointed’ ‘Surprised’ ‘Betrayed’: 12 Dogs Who Were Given a Bath After Being Embraced and Told ‘It’s Time for Your Bath’

Caligula appointing his horse Incitatus as consul.

I’m going to start being annoying by always telling people what we could have under socialism

I was asked to review a journal article, and it turns out to be one of the most compelling pieces of literary criticism I’ve ever had the privilege of refereeing. I can’t wait to tell the author and to set this article upon the world to hopefully be read by more people.

Today is the birthday of English playwright William Shakespeare, but some cultures celebrate his birth in December to coincide with the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia

She believes she has earned a boop on the nose but idk

After she gets a haircut, she needs a day to pout about it.

Also noting that rejection emails have started including the detail that over 500 people have applied for this one position. I believe it. But I was comfortable deluding myself about my chances.

just saw someone call Kash Patel “J Edgar Boozer” and need to lie down

Two copy editors high-fiving so hard right now

I’m getting job rejections and trying to telepathically communicate to future selection committees that, despite not having my degree from A Big Name School, I’m still a good colleague to have.

An Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is a weird thing to tout, since Lebanon isn't a combatant. There is no Lebanese fire for the Lebanese government to cease.

I hate being that reviewer. But I have to be that reviewer that gently recommends the author look into and cite my book.

A dispiriting fact that I have learned the hard way, over and over: For many award committees, search committees, and other selection committees, there is no research profile impressive enough to make up for not having a prestigious institution after your name.

capitalism.jpg

Kurt Vonnegut died on this day in 2007. "Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created."

This is a United States surrender. We surrendered a war we started.

Mao, 1958

everything we are seeing now is the consequence of having a political environment in which indifference to the deaths and suffering of other people - even by the state whose supposed responsibility is to safeguard their welfare - is a superpower rather than a political liability

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such..."