The title of this piece is kind of an attempt to just rip the bandage off quickly, because I imagine there are many people who will roll their eyes at it. However, it seems to me that the cash system itself is subject to enclosure: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/6/16/the-enclosure-of-cash

A meditation on epistemology.

We're traveling, but I prepared some reviews before we left -- containing Barbara Tuchman, Michael Ende, Omar El Akkad, and more. www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/5/25/camerons-book-round-up-2026-part-3

Now you can keep track of how many billions the AI companies are losing on AI. (Red is spending, green is revenue.) isaiprofitable.com

My book round-up for the month is up early, and there's some great stuff on it: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/5/...

Watching Threads with @radiosaturday.bsky.social, it's entirely possible that this will be a transformative experience.

We found a way to fauxtomate the dead internet. It's kind of amazing, really.

the fuck it will

University President: Good afternoon Class of 2026! Please put your hands together for this year’s graduation speaker, MOLOCH!!

"The moment you begin to censor the writer- and history bears this out in the ugliest of fashions -so begins a process of decay in the body politic that ultimately leads to disaster." ~Rod Serling Speech, Library of Congress (1968)

You know, it's a mistake to act like students come in preset types that you can game plan out how to handle, but sometimes it really does feel like there are eight or ten kinds of student that come through your classroom, and it is rewarding to listen to them and 1/2

I finished COE33 yesterday and immediately started writing. Very little has fired my imagination like that in a while.

Every year, I teach a Critical Thinking and Media class. It's mostly an excuse to get students to think critically about the things they watch, read, and listen to. It's a lot of fun, and a very paper- centered class because I'm an English teacher most of the time. 1/3

If the Supreme Court is concerned about its declining public legitimacy and thinks too many Americans are calling the Supreme Court illegitimate, the majority could try not issuing bad faith rulings that illegitimately distort law in pursuit of undemocratic partisan power. That’s always an option.

Torn between "god this has screwed my weekend so badly" and "let canvas die so we can all be free."

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

I read so many books last month. Possibly too many? Most of them were good, too. www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/5/4/edgars-book-round-up-april-2026

This one didn't fully come together, but I feel like I'm groping towards something substantial.

monday

Got last month's reading rounded up: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/4/...

It's called "the summer emotion."

I took too long to write my book reviews -- so there are many of them, including a lot of tech skepticism and a few rather wild books (image is Michael Cisco's 'Animal Money', which I spent the most time with.)

It’s almost like WE ALL SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN fortune.com/2026/04/10/a...

The annual "buyback" program spearheaded by the Missouri Invasive Plant Council offers residents a free native tree in exchange for removing invasive Callery pear.

I don't like coming up for air from a grading session and my internal monologue featuring the word "bloodbath" prominently. But there we are.

Here's this on liminal spaces, including/excluding airports. www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/4/...

We're in the last 5 days of this TTRPG kickstarter! If we get to the $430,000 the books will include Summer of the Witch, a mystery I wrote influenced by Halloween 3, Midsommar, and The VVitch! :D www.kickstarter.com/projects/gau...

@radiosaturday.bsky.social has returned and given me reason to get much better at reading French.

A new piece about cynicism, rhetorical listening, and ego protection, dipping into recent discourse about transgender athletes and the "sad puppies" campaign to wrest control of the Hugo Awards. (Remember that? That was pretty wild, right?) [Crickets] Enjoy.

Okay, I've been wondering this for years: can someone who knows about contemporary high school English classes tell me what they're saying about semicolons? Because I have to teach sixty college Freshmen not to use it like a Big Comma every semester.

I'm not going to lie, but the ADD hit hard with this one: I wanted to talk about genre, but somehow ended up sprawled across political economy and epistemology. Send help.

You've got to cite your sources, and you've got to check your sources.

These thoughts aren't really complete, but this serves as a binding-together of some ideas and a jumping-off-point for some future things.

If anyone affected by this wants to find out what their legal recourse may be, I know some good class action lawyers.

Under the cover of war, the US DoJ has just quietly released some of the missing Epstein files that directly relate to Trump. In which, he is accused of sexual assault by a then 13 year old who says he tried to force oral sex on her. Shameless. news.sky.com/story/epstei...

Here it is again for the morning scrollers!

A round of book reviews, containing fiction about gods, ghosts, and monsters, and nonfiction about serial killers, supposed AI, whether or not we'll live in space, and how (maybe) not to go insane dealing with this stupid world. Or maybe to make it happen faster. Baudrillard is hard.

It's rough on the internet these days. Please take with the caveat that I am a teacher, not a security specialist or a lawyer, but I'm trying to digest and make accessible some of the things I'm coming to understand. If someone understands better, I fully welcome corrections.

The worst damage of the far right was enabled by the center right too fearful to push back against trump

Hi. If you design games, I think you should read this blog post. It's short! I agree with everything Markus says here. personable.blog/human-centri...

Some thoughts driven by the observation of a persistent brain bug:

Hey, so, I don’t do civil litigation, is it generally considered good when the judge does this? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Some bangers on this book round-up: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/2/...

The world's real fun right now.

I have now gone to a dealership and two mechanics to fix a car I bought less than a month ago because it stalls at red lights and randomly dies in the cold. While they all agree that there is a problem, no one can apparently identify what the problem is. Apparently, it drives done but not for me.

The world's real fun right now.

I hate that em dashes are seen as a sign of AI writing now. I default to using them a lot, and people seem to get mileage out of pointing them out -- and, to such people, I want to say: I'm sorry that you've never had a flare for the dramatic or so many thoughts you've got to interrupt yourself.

I went to the dealership because my car has a problem my normal mechanic can't figure out. The waiting room is filled with the sound of Jeopardy reruns and hold muzak from one elderly gentleman's phone. I've been here for nearly two hours and my brain is mush.