Zoom in 🐑

on this sunday-est of sundays, syllabus-ing for a new term you're not alone against the oligarch agenda of cognitive deskilling, data capture, surveillance, and bias: we've got assignment ideas, memes, recommended readings, o' captain speeches, syllabus policies, and so much more against-a-i.com

Yes, it’s war in the attention economy. Among other things. Fascinating (repellent) new dynamics of explicitness in this era of media spectacle.

Look at these AI fireworks added by Grok. It’s like that old app, the Michael-Bayifier. www.manmadediy.com/497-boring-p...

THREAD: I'll fact-check all the viral misinformation about the US military operation in Venezuela in this thread This image, purporting to show the US military arresting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, is AI-generated. According to Google's SynthID detector, it was created using Google AI.

News media loves and profits from war.

Happy new year! I made this little found footage film for the 2026 #PublicDomain film remix contest run by @archive.org. Films from 1930 and earlier, sound recordings from 1925 and earlier. Enjoy! FYI submission deadline January 7, winners announced on January 21. archive.org/details/goin...

New Year’s viewing - The Mastermind. Manages to be both subtle and bold. 🍷 Also equally painful and a delight to watch. Love it.

Nothing like an end-of-year speed viewing of trailers for all the films and TV shows I’ve missed! 🥳

Rian Johnson liked a post of mine on here. . . . Rachel Dratch liked a tweet of mine at the old place.

My kingdom for a room of one’s own, holiday edition🎄

Just came across this succinct + illustrated piece from 2011 on the contradictions of early nature conservation (these contradictions are at the heart of my current book) 🦬🌲🎞️ “What (Not?) To Do When You Meet the Last Great Wild Buffalo” www.npr.org/sections/kru...

For a great film about copper mining, labor organizing, and the 1917 death of Frank Little in Butte Montana see Travis Wilkerson's AN INJURY TO ONE (2003): www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhmk...

This is nice but I'd rather read about non-Ivy League students going on a 4-week phone break while studying abroad somewhere other than a village in the south of France www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/o...

NSF is about to dismantle NCAR at Russell Vought's direction to protect the fossil fuel industry. It's hard to communicate just how much NCAR does, so let's take a look: I've never worked at NCAR, and I've worked with NCAR researchers once ever. What scientific discoveries has NCAR made possible? 👇

Breaking: the Oscars™️ finally adapt to media convergence, 20 years after the launch of YouTube.

If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

I've tried and failed a couple times to write a post explaining how serious this would be. NCAR is globally essential to our climate change response. This can't just be replaced. Every scientist in the world will be doing climate research with one hand tied behind their back for at least a decade

“This is scenery?!” . . . 😭

i think we should all commit ourselves to, at minimum, a national 3 day party When It Happens. one bottle of champagne in the back of your closet is no longer adequate. be prepared

Oh look, it’s the newspaper mocking the movies for losing cultural relevance ⬇️ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/b...

Looking through old issues of BIRD LORE, a publication of the Audubon Society starting in 1899. Came across this very nice 2024 article on the journal's changing cover art. www.audubon.org/magazine/div...

Morning! 🍳

"All is lost" narratives are popular because people generally do not want to take action. Taking action is tiring so if all is lost, you are off the hook. Nothing is more seductive than not having to do anything.

"Warming is going to exceed 1.5°C. We are heading into overshoot within the next few years": a stark message by PIK Director Rockström & James Dyke in @theconversation.com. Yet, science shows a way back: fossil-fuel phase-out, nature protection, carbon removal. theconversation.com/the-world-lo...

Late to the party, but I’ve just downloaded this ⬇️ 📕

Sometimes kill your darlings means putting 5 years of half-baked intro drafts into one folder and l̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶n̶ consigning it to an external drive ☄️

"The entire financial system, including government bonds and mortgages, is premised on the idea that tomorrow will look something like today. In a world that’s 3 degrees warmer, it assuredly will not" @peterbrannen.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com -->> www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

I am revising my book introduction today, thus going down some rabbit holes. Including this: SCMS = over 3,000 members AHA = over 12,000 members MLA = over 20,000 members

A snowy owl preening. November 22, 2025, Chicago.

Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.

Anthology's series "Avant-Garde Ads” features "filmmakers – even those who seem [to exemplify] anti-commercial purity and radicalism[, e.g.,] Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka, Jordan Belson, Bruce Baillie, Nathaniel Dorsky – have made ads, corporate films, PSAs, or other sponsored works."

What Catastrophes Get Our Attention, and Why It Matters #COP30 #climatechange https://therevelator.org/celebrity-catastrophes/

The Cop30 pavilion burning down is a little bit on the nose isn't it?

I showed early anime Spring Comes for Ponsuke in class yesterday before our feature screening of Mizoguchi’s Sisters of the Gion. The students loved both & we had a good discussion. Some teaching days are great. animation.filmarchives.jp/en/works/vie...

Mind-boggling story here

This is amazing. Monarch butterflies can now be tracked as they migrate. I grew up near a California monarch butterfly grove and its population decline has been heartbreaking. This could open up ways to generate public awareness & support. 🦋 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/s...

I'm at the Target boycott, I'm at the Starbucks boycott, I'm at the combination Target boycott and Starbucks boycott

“I like to be chic,” he said. “I go to school like this.” ✨

Peter Coviello isn't on Bluesky, but this definitely should be: lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

To put this in scale, Elon Musk's salary from Tesla alone could fund the SNAP program for the entire country into 2034.

Great resource for public scholars to pitch their writing here ⬇️

Congrats to Mira Nair’s son!

✨democracy✨

I keep seeing journalism described as an "ecosystem" and I guess that tracks because it's undergoing an extinction crisis caused by billionaires, too.

Job alert: the University of Illinois Library is hiring a Humanities Librarian to serve as liaison to African-American Studies and English Literatures. I’m sure someone here would be a great fit for this job—& we’ve got a pretty phenomenal community here Please share!

Seriously dreaming of an alternate life in which I had a spare month and 8000+ euros to enroll in Herzog’s filmmaking workshop in the Azores.

the dumbest person you know is being affirmed by Chat-GPT right now

With the Arctic Refuge back in the news (yes, Trump is trying once again to turn it into an oil field), maybe it’s a good time to check out Defending the Arctic Refuge. @uncpress.bsky.social #envhist 📗❄️🦌

Just turned on the World Series and saw Colonel Sanders sitting there behind home plate. So naturally I looked it up here. You guys wtf? Is this “Colonel Curse” real?