"While Penn ultimately rejected the compact…the university has already adopted many of its proposals…the climate of fear [has] many opting to avoid engaging in controversial or left-coded material." newrepublic.com/article/2100...

A vote for Steyer is a vote for Dem vs Dem in Nov. A vote for Becerra boosts Hilton's chance to be second.

In a world that respected academics as citizens, maybe we'd have to wade through a thousand breathless thinkpieces about "how Republicans have lost the trust of America's best educated voters" or whatever

“I write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch, and termination of library staff in those libraries. For MIT to be closing three of its four major libraries..." fnl.mit.edu/may-june-202...

Poastmodernism

"Words belong to each other, although, of course, only a great writer knows that the word 'incarnadine' belongs to 'multitudinous seas.'" (Woolf, "Craftsmanship")

Happy birthday to Bob Dylan, an icon

In 2026, there are college freshmen who have never, in the entire course of their schooling, completed one full novel gustatory experience

Teaching students to avoid "bothering" their teachers stops learning in its tracks, undercuts essential social development, and trains kids not to seek help (from people) when they need it. Its sole function is to enable higher student-teacher ratios. @aft.org promoting this is sick and sickening.

In claiming to address a crisis moment for universities, the Yale Report never mentions historic levels of government censorship in higher ed and political restrictions on academic freedom. That New McCarthyism simply isn't part of the reality that it describes. 2/5

the grove better not forget this

Today: 15 Tale of Genji 14 Emma 13 Beloved 12 Crime and Punishment 11 Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas 10 Neapolitan Quartet 9 Ulysses 8 War and Peace 7 Moby-Dick 6 Mrs Dalloway 5 Dream of the Red Chamber 4 The Magic Mountain 3 Pride and Prejudice 2 Remembrance of Things Past 1 Don Quixote

Nobody agrees with me about this but I really think the single most important work of literary criticism for understanding the 2020s is Kermode's Sense of an Ending

For the Boston Review, I wrote about Somaliland and Israel, the consequences of imagining political freedom as a struggle for national sovereignty, and what growing up in and alongside Somaliland had meant for my political education.

Publications have probably never been less important than they are now; historical understanding has perhaps never been more

"The vast majority of “pedagogical challenges” we face at the moment (at least here in Ontario) could be addressed by the ancient and yet cutting-edge technique of “hiring more teachers” and, of course, reducing class sizes. This is an unpopular sentiment amongst our betters, for obvious reasons."

42 Democrats just joined 192 Republicans to reauthorize FISA Section 702 – a warrantless surveillance law that's been used to access Americans' data. Democratic leadership did not whip their members, enabling them to vote with Republicans and give Trump the surveillance powers.

Reading this against @moiradonegan.bsky.social on MM—what these people think this tech is "for" is such a transparent reflection of what they think people + especially women are "for" (www.bookforum.com/print/3204/b...)

NEWS: Virginia's governor vetoed a bill late last night that'd have banned prosecutors from pressuring Virginians into waiving their constitutional rights. That's right, local prosecutors often get defendants to sign away Fourth Amendment protections to get a plea — for years.

With Virginia on board, the National Popular Vote Compact is now enacted in states worth 222 electoral votes. Here's what that means. n.pr/41xl7iy

journalists staying on twitter because news happens there cover the news that happens there challenge

For those hereabouts scrambling to remediate course materials in order to meet the end of the month deadline for compliance with new federal ADA Title II standards, here is the endgame as I see it: 🧵

New: Texas Tech University System’s chancellor on Friday ordered campuses to phase out academic programs “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity, escalating a course content review that has already upended classes across the system.

It also follows from the idea that "the" future is inevitable that the PRESENT is/was inevitable, a position that almost none of these jokers would accept

NYTimes has spent years breathlessly repeating claims that objecting to the treatment of Palestinians is antisemitic, but when right-wingers say they're “J-pilled,” NYTimes calls this "slang for skepticism of Israeli influence." Where's the "J" in "Israel"? Might that "J" mean something else?

Imagine breaking into a building with this in it and heisting a Renoir instead, smdh

“Guilty pleasure“ is actually a good concept because it marks the way our enjoyment inevitably comes into conflict with other values. We can’t get rid of guilty pleasures—hardly anyone believes that pleasure is the ONLY value—we can only negotiate them.

feels like i send my reading group email and then @jasonkoebler.bsky.social publishes a piece that makes me wish i waited so i could've linked it this piece for @404media.co illustrates how Anthropic's labor market junk ignores how a lot of work depends on the internet not being awash w/AI garbage

This is one way to differentiate "genre" from "literary" writing; genre writing is calling in a pre-existing audience rather than constructing a new one.

The world you are living in has a history; the way things are now is not the way things have always been.

North Tehran’s Aqdasiyeh oil depot is ablaze tonight after it was targeted by multiple US-Israeli airstrikes. Apocalyptic scenes filmed by Iranians driving on the nearby highway. Local reporters saying firefighters can’t put it out. This depot is critical energy infrastructure for Iran.

1. Its been a week since NYU Langone ended its trans youth care program. Then Sinai followed a few days ago. There are immediate steps Mamdani can take, and he refuses to do so. When asked about those steps, his office has chosen not to comment repeatedly. Subscribe to support our journalism.

Isaiah Zagar used tiny and broken bits to make Philly more beautiful, and there's nothing more beautiful than that. Zagar's Magic Gardens is one of the places I take folks who are visiting Philly for the first time because it's so damn incredible. 1/3

The wonderful thing about Tyggers Is Tyggers are burning bright Their tops are made out of rubber In the forest of the night What bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, Immortal hand or eye Did frame the most wonderful thing about Tyggers, Their fearful symmetry!

This NYT column by @polgreen.bsky.social is the truest thing I've ever seen about the REAL reason public trust in the media collapsed

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has supported immigration enforcement against people with criminal records and defended an agreement her state has with ICE. “I’m all for getting the bad guys,” she told Boston’s CBS affiliate.

The synthesis of this contradiction is IMO that a lot of the rhetoric of chatbot personhood is produced through and for sadistic fantasy. The *reason* a lot of people want to convince themselves that chatbots are people so badly is SO they can get off on "abusing" them

Fuentes then fantasizes about “breeding gulags”: “So just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists, you know, all of his political rivals, we have to do the same thing with women… They go to the breeding gulags. The good ones will be liberated. The bad ones will toil in the mines forever.”

But when I read about *how* its being used, it's mostly stories like OP--people using it for convenience, and only later some developing serious confusion and mystification that god is speaking to them or they are dating a computer. The mystification emerges more from habit than epistemology

Gorey

The International Olympic Committee ruled that an image of Toussaint Louverture, born into slavery and and leader of the Haitian Revolution, on Haiti’s uniforms violated Olympic rules barring political symbolism

Thank you and farewell to this maestro of effervescence and sting

‘In major assessments for maths, science and reading from 2011 to 2019, greater in-school computer use for learning correlates with lower scores. In contrast, students in classes with rare or no computer use at all typically score highest’

Blistering piece on ed tech in @economist.com. ‘Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schools—and often impairs it.’ economist.com/united-state...

Legendary reggae drummer Sly Dunbar, one half of Sly & Robbie, has died at 73 stereogum.com/2486631/sly-...

1. ICE has STOPPED PAYING for medical treatment for its 73,000 detainees ICE has not paid its bills to 3rd party providers since OCTOBER and the situation will likely persist for MONTHS, a Popular Information investigation reveals Meanwhile, critically ill ICE detainees are not receiving care 🧵

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has upheld a decision by city parks and arts officials to allow the controversial Vaillancourt Fountain to be removed from Embarcadero Plaza.

These 75 Democrats joined Republicans to "express gratitude" to ICE agents and call for greater local and state collaboration with ICE. jonathancohn.medium.com/a-tale-of-tw...