It really is sad how billionaires can't buy the one thing they really need (someone to tell them their ideas are bad).

Look, Middlemarch is a great novel. It complexly mediates class conflict, the commodification of all life, emerging ideological structures in Victorian capitalism. I just personally think it’s more impressive when a novel does that through a story about a guy who hates a weird fish.

I wrote this essay last fall for print only & I'm republishing it with their permission bc we're talking about didactism in kidlit right now and I have HAD thoughts about the connection between instructive lit and book banning. I'd be honored if you read it. www.prettyokmaggie.com/blog/2026/5/...

Damn.

¡Es culpa tuya, conejito malo!

NEWS: @nationalnurses.bsky.social “demands Congress abolish ICE entirely. We will be doing everything in our power to vote out any elected official who supports funding for this all-out assault on the health, safety, and civil rights of our people.”

In 2026 I want all of the decent people to remember one thing. You aren’t meant to be this disciplined, this self-sacrificing to survive. The environment is supposed to support good living. We can have that. You are not a failure. That is politics. That is all.

2. The American right is touting the phrase "Heritage American," the supposed identity of people who have been in USA for generations. Much can be said about this form of ancestor worship but maybe one path is to talk about a real Heritage American, Thomas Pynchon.

‘Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, & full of love.’ —Alice Wong

Breaking from Rider: theridernews.com/rider-set-to...

in retrospect, there’s probably never been a name as threatening as “America Online”

Cutting your humanities programs is performance art in the guise of budget cuts and everyone in academia knows it and everyone outside does not and that's why they can keep going doing this bullshit.

This is a really, really important story, which is why I provided a gift link. Many people, when they think of higher education, think of elite universities. But most higher education is nonselective (i.e., they admit everyone), and a lot of it is community colleges.

Good afternoon to the woman reading Brothers Karamazov at Funzilla.

typical corrupt science

THE RISE OF END TIMES FASCISM My first major piece of the new Trump era, co-written with @astra.bsky.social. The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

“Working conditions are learning conditions, we like to say, and it is so obviously true you want to tattoo it on your clavicle.” New: Peter Coviello on austerity in the English department.