Proofs!

Farewell to Academy Award-winning film editor Marcia Lucas (1945-2026). She won an Oscar for STAR WARS, was nominated for AMERICAN GRAFFITI, and shared a BAFTA nom for TAXI DRIVER. She also edited ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE and RETURN OF THE JEDI in a brief but game-changing career. #FilmSky

Subskeeting MIT news but it could be any number of places. 📚

WHAT.

Okay. Some of us did this in school. “Turn the page when you hear the tone.” Books with tape?

Great. Now you’ve got to go out here and try to out-write the Pope.

It's @nicosiamarissa.bsky.social in my newspaper! share.inquirer.com/tayMsR

Ya'll. I am shook. In a good way. Pope Leo XIV makes historic apology for Holy See's own role in legitimizing Slavery

Baltimore! Artscape is this weekend and I will be there in the Artist Market #sciart

Seems like NPR is making a huge strategic mistake, deploying big new philanthropic donations to carry out a tech and app overhaul, while cutting hundreds of news positions. www.npr.org/2026/05/18/n...

This will change when the “wrong” people earn the best grades.

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

Giving a lecture on some ideas about provenance and (un)writing names in books at the @obs1922.bsky.social next Thursday. Zoom link also available for anyone keen!

Some good news worth celebrating: my colleagues and I proposed a new major in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (in addition to the minor we've had for many years), and we just received word that it was officially approved at all levels. The work continues!

Stuart Drama Conference! Liverpool, 2027 CFP due in October stuartdrama.com/cfp/stuart-d... I've been dreaming and scheming about this conference with @racheljwillie.bsky.social @cazzert.bsky.social @bkadams.bsky.social for nearly a year now.

A lot of y’all need diaries.

one of my oldest and dearest friends could use some support — would mean a lot if you could kick in a few bucks and/or share #mutualaid gofund.me/c1490aaf4

Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.   Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us.

I would love to see all of you at the Stuart Drama conference in 2027! Yay!

And here it is! Come to Liverpool in July next year. We have a fantastic [insert appropriate collective noun here] of keynotes: @bkadams.bsky.social, @dnmcinnis.bsky.social, @lucycmunro.bsky.social, Perry Mills & Deborah Payne!

👀 over the last few months, I’ve been working on a project with that terrific triumvirate of scholarly erudition @bkadams.bsky.social, @nicosiamarissa.bsky.social & @cazzert.bsky.social, and we’re almost ready to lure y’all to Liverpool in July 2027 to be part of it…

Encouraging NPR segment this morning about school districts moving away from "Whole Language" snake oil and back to phonics to teach reading, which, to the shock of no one, has improved reading scores

📢JOB ALERT 📢 We are looking to appoint a F/T open-ended Lecturer in Late Medieval / Early Modern History (1400-1700) @lancasteruni.bsky.social. This is an amazing opportunity that we are very proud to announce, so please spread the word far and wide! www.hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

A couple of weeks ago, I taught my students about EdTech infrastructure, and I emphasized the problems with centralization (particularly for data storage). Gotta love it when the universe steps in and decides to really drive home those course concepts.

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Printing & Book History folks: I could use some help identifying this press. It seems to be some sort of cylinder press. Under the feed boards on both sides are round ink discs. It looks a little like a grasshopper press. What's odd about it is that it is only about a foot to foot & a half wide...

Palantir is its own agnotology machine. Do not engage with their discourse, which throws spaghetti at the wall of media: every strand introduces a new kind of doubt. You try to consume & debate it but in the end all you are is tangled in spaghetti and covered with marinara.

A high res scan of Shakespeare's property plan is now available to view on @thelondonarchives.bsky.social collections catalogue. Just type in the document reference CLC/522/MS14570/001 search.lma.gov.uk/scripts/mwim...

Found a Shakespeare thing; wrote about it in @thetls.bsky.social: www.the-tls.com/regular-feat....

Finishing my tenure statement has made me simultaneously feel thrilled, lucky, exhausted, shocked at how much I’ve done but feeling like I haven’t done enough. I suppose that’s normal? Honestly, we need to start funding education so everyone can have this feeling about whatever they study.

Wait. Technically he could, right? I mean TECHNICALLY.

CHRISTINA KOCH GREETING HER DOG AFTER RETURNING FROM THE MOON IM GONNA CRYYY 😭😭😭

With my friends writing so many books, how do I have time to read those by strangers.

Are you teaching Arden of Faversham next semester? Do you just love the play? He’s a full audio recording!

Good morning! I'm getting texts letting me know that people who signed up for alerts are able to preorder today!! Preorders officially open tomorrow. www.routledge.com/Shakespeare-...

Someone sent me this.

When the birthright citizenship decision comes out, people will say it could never have gone any other way, that the law was obvious. But the mere fact that SCOTUS took on the case is evidence enough that we are living in a time of democratic precarity.

This is a verified GoFundMe for librarian Luanne James from the Rutherford County Library Alliance. gofund.me/f7704eb98 Read what happened to this hero: www.newschannel5.com/news/rutherf...

Alice Augusta Ball found the cure for leprosy at 23. She died in a mysterious lab accident at 24. Arthur Dean stole her research, stole it and renamed it from "The Ball Method" to "The Dean Method." It took 90 years before her original research papers were found and she got the credit due to her.

always read tricia matthew

I don’t think I’ll ever understand why we don’t talk about the training data used for LLMs. It comes from humans. Having another human explain something works just as well?

The US just denied a visa to a Tanzanian man coming to visit to remains of his grandfather in the American Museum of Natural History where they're - bafflingly - still held. You can still support him by coming to a free screening of this gorgeous doc about his quest in Manhattan on 3/26!

and that's why when we took down our robert e lee statue here in charlottesville, we melted that bitch.

This place lives in my head rent free, so a pleasure & privilege to visit Almagro’s 1628 corral de comedias. One of world’s oldest surviving theatres, an uncanny analogue to the Curtain playhouse #CurtainBook. Grateful to the city & Councillor Genaro Galàn Garcia for their generous hospitality.

Oscar-winner Ryan Coogler recalling how a college writing professor pushed him to become a screenwriter & the possibility of #Sinners being taught in film curriculums someday: “I have so much respect for professors…for dedicating their life to future generations & making sure their minds are solid.”

Michael B Jordan won an Oscar on Professor McDowell’s birthday. This is NOT a coincidence! Hooray!

Palantir CEO promises that his technology will reduce educated women's economic and political power newrepublic.com/post/207693/...

WBAL in Baltimore helping viewers understand the difference between watches and warnings

Another tough day for team “there’s no point in complaining about AI, just accept it.”

Congratulations, WaPo, you did it, you published the worst take