Wouldn’t hurt to check though

Animal Farm

Good afternoon and major props to this 8th century CE woman breastfeeding as she rides a Bactrian camel along the Silk Roads 🐫 art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/3254...

this is what your inseam looks like

It is not enough for a close reading of a work of literature to eschew biographical and contextual details. You should also avoid understanding the text or even reading it, in order to focus purely on its form

My guess is that the goal here is not only to punish the children for turning more people against ICE/DHS, but also to make news outlets think twice about reporting on kids' suffering at the hands of ICE/DHS, out of concern that doing so might lead to retaliation against the kids.

Maxxxinemaxxing

journalists think they "learn more" on X because it is durably shifting users' views on policy and current events towards conservative positions -- which assuredly nets them more positive attention and engagement on the platform www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Goblin-mode Poetics: Or, Very Thirsty Poems to be read by the Childless

👇👇👇👇

Love this! And we need better Horror Theory, as well as horror in and through theory

In which I babble at some length about Horror Theory, whatever that is, was, or may yet be... matthewcheney.net/blog/horror-...

you need to MOGG (Meditate On Great Genres of literature)

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be booksmaxxing

Hey so Grammarly is now basically Search Party / Ring cameras for education, enabling large-scale surveillance of both users (students) and educators alike

ProPublica published children's letters and drawings documenting their sadness and suffering at Dilley. And Dilley staff are now retaliating by confiscating kids' letters and drawings. www.sacurrent.com/news/san-ant...

Whoa the Corporation for Public Broadcasting website is totally gone👇 Thank god for the Internet Archive, so we at least have evidence of what they've erased: web.archive.org/web/20260122...

Why isn't this already part of the post-AI Make America Work Again platform (MAWA)

We'd have a new American arts renaissance in a couple years if we 1) lowered rents and 2) created WPA 2.0

Two new books from the brilliant A.S. Hamrah, one review essay by the brilliant @georgiecarr.bsky.social @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/as-h...

I find this so fucking sad actually it's from a great article by @bildoperationen.bsky.social journals.openedition.org/transbordeur...

This is thought-provoking:

My sister-in-law and nephews were rescued by a stranger in an ice storm, who helped them escape when their car was stuck and they ran out of gas. The stranger possibly saved their life. It is absolutely disgusting that DHS agents are preying on the kindness of those who help the stranger.

I'm working on a reader (in both English and German) to collect literature critical of the employment of generative AI technologies within academic contexts. Please feel free to add relevant titles here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

STS scholars have some questions!

Does your university use ChatGPT Edu? Please send me a DM if you do. I have identified a potential data breach affecting students' data that has not yet been fixed and I'm trying to compile further examples from other universities. Reposts appreciated!

Bluesky Elders mascot just dropped

Pin post of my book with cover! It comes out in 3 months, so I guess I need to start building my promotion! The book offers a new reading of Imagism, the Harlem Renaissance & the Black Arts Movements -- and the dialogue these movements are having with each other. www.umasspress.com/978162534950...

What if we stopped thinking about the digital as just our devices and started understanding it as a way of mediating reality through discrete units? That's the question driving this book I co-wrote with Alexander R. Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby. www.upress.umn.edu/978151792019...

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

Humans, humans everywhere

Happy day to all the lovers & fighters (from Salvador Dali’s 1947 illustrated edition of Montaigne’s Essays)

Happy Valentine's day, Bluesky pals. Here is a boxed Valentine day's card from later #19thc England, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, once addressed to Miss Oliver, Langdon Lawn, Hythe, Southampton." The scrap of paper at the top reads "Pity my life and be my wife." Was Miss Oliver persuaded?

As some of you may know, I’m writing a book on the history of high school English in the United States, and I’m excited to share a new article from that project—“High School English and the Making of American Readers”—out today in American Literary History! 🧵 academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

Worth flagging the series here as well, actually! Edited by Bryan Cheyette and Martin Eve - New Horizons in Contemporary Writing: www.bloomsbury.com/series/new-h...

My article on the last line has just been published over at Critical Quarterly. I’d ❤️ to know what you think 🤔 doi.org/10.1111/criq...

“In the Penal Colony” is astonishing as ever but alas more contemporary than it once seemed

Absolutely delighted to receive a copy of the first-ever German translation of Forster's The Longest Journey (1907), by Niklas Fischer, and to have helped a little on matters of interpretation as the project proceeded. A splendidly produced book!

OpenAI fired a VP who opposed their erotica rollout (and had started a company-wide peer mentorship program for women), allegedly telling her it was because she discriminated against a man 🤔 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

Our delightful new partner in sexbot access for all www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

This is academic violence

This is my first attempt to capture a live event of this size. I’m thankful to @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social for letting me adapt the launch of their tremendous book. I think these episodes will be an additive supplement to it.

I was lucky enough to review Danielle Hyeonah Lambert’s _Decolonizing Roman imperialism: the study of Rome, romanization, and the postcolonial lens_ for BMCR. I also took a postcolonialist lens to Monty Python & ideas the colonized should be grateful to the Romans. bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2026/2026.02...

Very interesting -- the Times Book Review has been so bad so long that it's odd to remember it was once required reading.

Thrilled that this is finally coming out! I'm so proud to have collaborated on Linda Williams' incredible last work on melodrama. The intro to our volume is now available -- and look at that killer cover!!

Congrats to @urducosmo.bsky.social and Preetha Mani for this beautiful special issue on South Asian modernisms that was several years in the making. A really fantastic catalog of essays theorizing "language itself—masticated, metabolized, and regurgitated by colonial process" in SA vernaculars!

Hey historians, what should I read on the history of U.S. masculinity in the second half of the twentieth century?

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

6/ “When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.” 9-year-old Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya, detained on her way to Disney World, spent 113+ days at Dilley.