Hasty adoption of AI may erode the scientific culture and human relationships that sustain rigorous research.

Retractions never get proportional attention. This one should.

If you don't have an individual MLA membership, or your English/languages dept isn't a member of MLA's academic program services arms (ADE/ALD), this is a damn good reason to reconsider. These individual & institutional memberships (+ tiny donations) made this lawsuit happen. (MAPS link for depts)

In the lawsuit by the MLA, @acls1919.bsky.social, & @historians.org, the court has ruled that termination by the NEH of grants to support scholars, research institutions, and humanities organizations was “unlawful, unconstitutional, ultra vires, and without legal effect.” www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...

Sox management blames Cora for their mistakes. www.nytimes.com/athletic/723...

Every publication should publish the names and outlets of the people who attend tonight because most of us will want to be sure we never make the mistake of listening to them again.

calls for “viewpoint diversity” are little more than demands for a quota system for political conservatives who otherwise could not hack it www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

“The A.I. industry is so far subject to none of the regulations that govern other dangerous technologies, such as firearms, pharmaceuticals, and environmental chemicals.”

Illiberalism is not Inevitable www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

A thread worth reading

Apparently the NCAA hired NBA refs for the championship game.

BREAKING: For the 11th time, Republicans have blocked Democrats from paying TSA. Republicans have been given ELEVEN chances to send TSA agents their paychecks, but they refuse.

I’m stuck at the gate at JFK because American Airlines won’t post a delay on a flight while waiting for a flight attendant to show up. They claim they don’t know when, as if they had no way to contact the employee.

What was surprising to me, not having read anything but Cultural Literacy until recently, is how much I enjoy (and frequently agree with) his writings on interpretation.

Your Daily Dorothy Parker welcomes the new season...

I wonder what AJ Bacevich thinks about it, does anyone know?

Janis Robinson makes the case for old vine Zinfandel, as if the case needed to be made. www.ft.com/content/4dab...

Why I’m not watching the State of the Union – and you shouldn’t either | Robert Reich

My top ten Westerns (in no particular order) Rio Bravo McCabe and Mrs Miller The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Shane Little Big Man Red River The Searchers Lone Star High Noon

Here’s looking at you, Pittsburgh.

Anyway congrats to our Free Speech Champions(tm) who helped usher in the most censorious American government since the Palmer Raids

The World of Leonard Cohen at the CUP Bookstore in Cambridge.

From climate change, to Chinese politics, to Leonard Cohen, we've got a very wide range of new titles this week! 🙌 📖 'Still No Miracles Needed' by @mzjacobson.bsky.social 📖 'The Communist Party of China' by Ben Hillman and Fengyuan Ji 📖 'The World of Leonard Cohen' by @nearleft.bsky.social

Yes.

Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.

Trump’s “Board of Peace” is a Board of Dictators — ICE terror at home, cash for autocrats abroad, and Trump deciding who’s protected. That’s not peace. It’s a protection racket. READ & SHARE NEW SUBSTACK🙏⬇️

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Hey beautiful losers, this week the books series has ed David Shumway @nearleft.bsky.social talking new collection THE WORLD OF LEONARD COHEN w/ contribs @touchofallright.bsky.social, @eweisbard.bsky.social & Sarah Hill. Wed 5:30 pm ET, achieve satori here: iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/Popular-Musi...

Bond drive for ICE Watch moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/09/b...

It is hard for me not to regard the failure to recognize that the AI boom is inextricable from totalitarian creep as willful ignorance, as either the delusions of those who believe they are immune or an endorsement that doesn’t require a vulgar red cap. But AI boosterism is Trumpism now. Full stop.

This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it. Don’t miss it.

Trump must be impeached immediately. This is not how a democracy functions.

The utter perversion of the #BrokenTimes' both-sidesing compulsion: Here it equates the right-wing ruin of New College with (checks notes) liberal (in any sense of the word) education, which it dismisses as just another "ideological bubble." Just fuck off.

Can the Times reinvent itself as Fox News?

Commentary: Because the assaults on academic freedom are well underway within state capitals and inside university administrations — in Ohio and across the nation — few institutions will be spared. But alumni have to speak up now ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/12/09/i...

"The rapid, largely unregulated rise of datacenters to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

the idea that a handful of conservative legal scholars have an understanding that should supersede a settlement affirmed my generations of american is astoundingly arrogant, and the idea that trump — or any president — can unilaterally overturn that settlement is just despotism

Presumably Alabama will be suspending fraternities and sororities too. U. of Alabama Suspends Black and Female Student Magazines, Citing D.E.I. Guidance www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/u...

“But if the Rabbit novels are obviously realist in most of their aspects, their representation of the social may be less apparent.” David Shumway @nearleft.bsky.social on the work of John Updike. pghrev.com/updikes-real...

The dripping contempt the right wing SCOTUS majority holds for district judges is truly a sight to behold every time. When they deign to give actual reasons for their shadow docket holdings, it’s “look at the absolute idiots who keep getting everything wrong!”

"AI has become the high-fructose corn syrup of the digital realm: It’s now in everything, even if you don’t want it there." www.sfgate.com/tech/article...

Good work, @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social, now I gotta get @nearleft.bsky.social’s book.

Boycott complicit institutions.

How many Supreme Court justices have been redacted from the Epstein files, anyway?