While attempting to buy winter boots, I am reminded of the weirdest job search ever. Buckle up: it’s a wild ride. It was my last year of grad school, and I had an interview for what I thought was my dream job. It was an open rank search where they were hoping to hire two people. +

After checking one final time about whether we have any intention to get married (we do not), my parents signed their Christmas card to my partner of nearly 24 years “Mom and Dad.” Who are they and what have they done with my parents?

Make a Bond movie academic Skyfall: Country Houses, Imperial Memory, and the Performance of National Decline

Have baffled the Risams by telling them exactly what was wrong with their water heater before even going to the basement to look at it, then stopping the leak while we wait for the replacement. Little do they know that I am the handy one in my house.👩🏽‍🔧🪠👷🏽‍♀️🔨

In personal growth, I punted on Christmas dinner for the first time in 25 years, let everyone else make it, took a nap, and watched the Imagine Dragons concert on Hulu, and it was DELIGHTFUL 🎄🎅🏽

My parents did a very credible job of being enthusiastic about a random Turks & Caicos mug before realizing there was an itinerary inside. And then they were verklempt for a solid minute while processing. 😍🎄🎅🏽

My sister gave me the funniest Christmas card 😆

An important distinction from the person currently wearing her Grinch Santa hat.

Merry, merry, merry, dear friends!

Kumail Nanjiani’s Night Thoughts standup special on Hulu has been the great uniter of Risams.

For me, it was a Cabbage Patch Kid. For @cgsaw.bsky.social it was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Technodrome. Tell us, Gen Xers and Geriatric Millennials, what Christmas present did you never receive that you clearly aren’t still fixated on 30-40 years later?

Most on-brand Baby Roopsi story. I was 4. My mom took me to a toy store on Christmas Eve, asked what I’d like, sent me to the car, and told me to keep my eyes shut. That was how I realized there was no Santa but it seemed to mean so much to her that I pretended to believe in him for 6 more years. 🎅🏽

In 5 hours, the annual battle over Christmas Eve seafood night will commence, pitting the plebeians who think it’s acceptable to cook mussels in crap wine against me and my dad who believe you should only cook with wine you would drink.

The noperthedron is the shape we all need for 2026.

It is totally warming my heart how many friends who are home for the holidays are telling me their parents are excited about my book 💖

I did not have my parents being enthralled by the current season of South Park on my 2025 bingo card but here we are.

Christmas in DC

I have always wanted to be able to send my parents on a vacation to the beach destination they have dreamed of visiting, and this is the year that I can finally do it. 🥰

There is excellent work in this issue and you should read it!

It's my dad's 85th birthday! I showed him my digital project and he was excited. He recalled memories of Nkrumah's son from their London doctor days and then started naming everyone he knew who was involved in the Bandung conference. Maybe I am not the Welsh nationalist milkman's child after all! 🎈

🚨 @jenguiliano.bsky.social and I are happy to share the December issue of Reviews in DH. We bring you projects from our open submissions that focus on women. We hope you enjoy. See you next year! #ReviewsInDH reviewsindh.pubpub.org/v6-n12

I feel once again compelled to emphasis the digitizing in the literal scanning sense is fairly unimportant if it is not accompanied with metadata providing context for discovery. Both humans and AI will make things up when they don't know what they are looking at.

The Risams’ preferences for the US vs. UK covers of DATA EMPIRE… Mom: Definitely UK Sister: Definitely UK Dad: A book is a book and my friends* all want to buy it. *Friends who did not know my dad had a second daughter until 2022 when I changed jobs and apparently have heard all about the book.

I have watched Die Hard for you to definitively confirm that it is, in fact, a Christmas movie.

Next year, we're going to hit 1 million page views of #ReviewsInDH. Wild.

I already have the dates my copyedits for DATA EMPIRE will be back, when the proofs will be ready, and when I need to have everything back in. 😳

“'It creates a better climate and culture if you have a conversation around academic integrity that’s more affirming than the ‘I’m out to get you’ kind of thing,' says Watson" www.aacu.org/liberaleduca...

Time to send all the emails, write a job letter and a review, catch up with one friend, take another to high tea to celebrate her finishing her first book, prep #ReviewsInDH for Monday, wrap prezzies, and pack so I can have a day at home doing absolutely nothing tomorrow before leaving on Sunday 🤞🏽

Here are some actions you can take to defend gender-affirming care in your hospital system.

My essay is done! The editors gave me a huge amount of grace on the deadline when I had to go into hurry-up mode on my book since they know my writing, but I finally finished it. And now I don't have anything overdue on my plate, which feels absolutely amazing. 💃

I feel so vindicated that I was able to repurpose the last third of Ch. 10, which I had to cut in favor of AI (of course), for this article and it's almost done.

I am knee-deep in Palantir while finishing this article, and it really makes me wonder, do people like PT really believe they are saving the world and aren't actually its supervillains?

Goofball can’t wait for his massage.

Search your camera roll for hell (on her 50th birthday trip to a Tuscan villa, my sister made me give this presentation to her friends at cocktail hour)

Sometimes I think I lead a normal existence. And then I get awoken in the wee hours by a FaceTime from my sister because her salesperson at Prada on Bond Street in London, who once rode for Russia’s national equestrian team, wants to hear about my horse. 🐴👠

As a naturalized U.S. citizen, I find this so incredibly alarming. This administration has shown that their actions are arbitrary and capricious, so I’m reluctant to think anyone is “safe.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love. Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

In which, a friend confesses that she is the reason that DATA EMPIRE is currently topping the ancient history pre-orders list on the Barnes and Noble website. I have the best friends. Seriously.

Poor @erinbartram.bsky.social is worried abt the black box thumbnail but it feels representative of how challenging it was for @hartmann-villalta.bsky.social & I to compile the list this year. Kudos to the authors! Pls read, cite, teach, buy, & share their work—& know there is much more out there!

Ah, book anxiety dreams! I had to show up in person (theme: post-pandemic work mandates) to transfer the file, and brought 3 laptops but none with the file on it or internet (theme: anti-AI pedagogy “solutions”) to access cloud backup. I spend an hour trying to transfer the file. +

Today is Austen’s birthday! I’ve been thinking (a lot) about my place in the Austen250 commemorations. The “how it started” vs. “how it’s going” of it all. 2017

It was me. I am the favorite former boss. And that piece of paper is a treasure. Although who could ever really be Roopsi’s “boss”?

I increasingly suspect that many people blame DEI for things that capitalism causes (like the collapse of the academic job market in the humanities) precisely because they want existing political-economic hierarchies to remain intact.

I have so much empathy and solidarity for those struggling with the painful and structurally unjust academic labor market, but this racial grievance shit is simply not the way.

I have, against my better judgment, read THAT article. And I gotta say, it must really hurt to experience what the vast majority of the population has experienced for nearly all of U.S. history.

Really seriously please take the 30 seconds and actually fill out the form.

In non-AI news, my favorite former boss was cleaning out her desk upon retirement and uncovered a piece of paper where she had written down every Hindi curse word I could think of, with pronunciation markers and definitions. That’s my value add right there.

If you like what you read here, consider checking out *Failing Our Future* from John Hopkins UP: amazon.com/Failing-Our-Future-Grades-Students/dp/1421449935

A functional, at times sensible, country.