📢📢 Job Alert: Himal Southasian is looking for a Social Media Editor. This is a full-time, remote position open to all nationalities. Candidates from marginalised social groups are encouraged to apply.

"“If things feel bad for you now, they are likely to get much worse,” was Watson’s advice... “I know it feels like giving up and abandoning your students, but it’s like the guidance on an aeroplane: put your own mask on first and then help those around you.”"

So much evil circulating through academia these days!

Alaa is PHYSICALLY FREE!! His sister Sanaa and his mom were still waiting outside of the prison for him when they got a call from Alaa letting them know that he was already home!

Incredible news! 🎊

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

“my job can’t be replaced with AI, because [examples of things AI will never do/is bad at]” “oh, my sweet summer child. no one said the AI would do the jobs COMPETENTLY”

This x1000000

"Once you use ChatGPT, you don’t want to think for yourself anymore."

but what if the billionaire owners of these “media companies” are part of the problem

The past two years, there has been some amazing writing about what it's REALLY like to be an Arab in the "West." (Not that we were never writing it before, just wasn't getting published too much.) Here's another essay. The author doesn't name names, but I will: The New Yorker. David Remnick.

I was apolitical until they started bombing my hometown and forced my mum to leave her house.

“When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations []. Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people’s liberation.”

Gotta read all the way to the last paragraph to find this: “In some cases, the government appeared to rely on unverified tabloid reports about Khalil. In others, its claims were factually incorrect due to inconsistent timelines and mischaracterizations of his work history.”

[INT - DAY SMALL APARTMENT] ZOOM IN to LAPTOP COMPUTER. A hand reaches in from out of frame to control a COMPUTER MOUSE, the cuff of a BLUE WINDBREAKER is visible. A dialogue unfolds on the screen ROOMMATE: hello I am very trans, from a man SHOOTER: to a woman, yes my love I have bad news 😢

Two Month Review, from our friends @openletterbooks.bsky.social, spent the summer reading jury member @shreedaisy.bsky.social's translation of Tomb of Sand. Jury chair @jasongrunebaum.bsky.social & prize founder Pia Sawhney came by these episodes to chat all things translation. Give them a listen!

It’s what one suspected happening behind the scenes at various American newspapers and magazines, but it’s still horrible to read.

if you read one thing today, make it this absolutely devastating piece from a fact-checker who quit the New Yorker bidoun.org/articles/hou...

Today is the feast day of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), here surrounded by plants & a mineral she touted as medical treatments, her invented alphabet & model of the universe. One of my most popular prints this year! 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬 #histsci #histmed Her writings preserve not only her own knowledge & 🧵

As it's her Feast Day, here's one of the strangest things Hildegard of Bingen did. Fans of the weird: look ye no further. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_...

1/ South Korea's government has announced that it is launching an investigation into human rights abuses said to have been carried out by the United States' ICE agency against South Korean workers deported from Georgia, following further damaging testimony from the deportees. ⬇️

I like that people in my education cohort hate him as much as the median Latino.

Updated second link: blackzonemagazine.com/not-one-but-...

We’re only $400 away from our target, and I’m not just saying this because I’m in it—but this is THE strangest, most intentionally buckwild, unique book of horror from @blaft.bsky.social, that you’re going to read in a hot minute. The finish line is SO close!

One has to keep looking for poetry as Renoir looked for colors in old walls, wood-work and so on. -Wallace Stevens to William Carlos Williams

so someone suggested this, don't remember who because accidentally closed page, but...

korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in

David and Goliath with grotesque creatures in the margins, 1450-1499

Nepal appoints its first female PM after historic week of deadly protests

From the mountains of Sikkim to the salt sloughs of the Tamil Nadu coast to a strange future Delhi where it never stops snowing and everyone hangs out getting drunk in igloos... The Bandigoat will take you there! BACK OUR KICKSTARTER! www.kickstarter.com/projects/bla...

MEMORY (Palindrome-Haiku) Sir, a pose by a memory knit inky Rome, maybe so Paris....

Last week, The Voice of Hind Rajab, a new film about a five-year-old killed by IDF in Gaza last year, received a 23-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice film festival. Brad Pitt, Jonathan Glazer, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and Alfonso Cuarón were among the executive producers.

Amputations crawl and appall— Spidery, unsafe.

Philp Larkin reluctantly agreed to do an interview with The Paris Review but only by post. It took him five months to answer the first set of questions. "It has taken rather a long time because, to my surprise, I found writing it suffocatingly boring."

One of the photos of the year. And of our time. Gen Z protesters take selfies at Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal's government. It was burned to the ground in a 48 hour revolution which toppled the country’s government. Credit to the photographer, Niranjan Shrestha, working for AP.

WWB has been awarded a major grant from Hawthornden Foundation. The general operating grant will enable WWB to continue to serve as an anchor in the literary ecosystem, even in a particularly difficult moment for the literary arts. Read the full press release at the link: buff.ly/drgNmLE

the Ming-dynasty craftsman Wang Shuyuan 王叔遠, who could turn a one-inch block of wood into a palace and famously carved a boat with four windows and five boatmen out of a peach pit, could not have fit Judith Butler onto a rifle round

Well, wow

The nightmare! Imagine having AI translation beamed into your ears.

'A decision to release Abd el-Fattah could come within "a few days", Tarek al-Awady, a member of Egypt's presidential pardons committee, told Reuters.' And now we hold our collective breath and wait. #FreeAlaa #FreeThemAll

Why does it cost $30 million is they don’t have to do any work?

Cannes has an S at the end. #NotAi

So brilliant.

“It’s not tht traditional liberal learning is out of step w student demand. Instead, it’s out of step w priorities, values & desires of a powerful board of trustees… & an administrative class tht won’t fight for the liberal arts… even when it attracts major $$ gifts” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

The next day you get a sour cream and onion chip bag stuffed with singles, and then watch the thief auction off all your stuff at a hefty markup

Imagine someone breaks into your house, steals all your shit, and then the judge goes "they shall pay you $1 for each item stolen, and no you're not getting the stuff back"

"That must be a record for a victimless crime that isn’t even a crime," comments person I just blocked.

Thrilled that half of the winning entries are for Southeast Asian translators, still woefully underrepresented in English lit in translation (Indonesia alone has over 700 languages). Huge congrats to all, including @tiffanytsao.bsky.social, Pauline Fan, and Christian Jil R. Benitez.