this is such a great encapsulation of what the various factions of the reactionary right want. i might add that they envision themselves as slave masters and the rest of us, in one way or another, as their slaves. betterdonkey.substack.com/p/the-vra-wa...

"Forty percent of British Jews said Israel’s conduct in the Strip had weakened their attachment to the country, while more than a third said they no longer identified as Zionists. Only 12 percent expressed approval of Benjamin Netanyahu." www.aljazeera.com/features/202...

Reminds me of stories of board members demanding to know why they can’t just fire faculty who say things they don’t like. Putting the business executive class in charge of universities seems to have been an utter catastrophe.

Mosaic of a Wild Boar on the Northern Aisle Floor of the Byzantine Church of Petra https://www.wikiart.org/en/byzantine-mosaics/mosaic-of-a-wild-boar-on-the-northern-aisle-floor-of-the-byzantine-church-of-petra-550

In evaluating faculty appointments based on “return on investment,” the people running UNC-Chapel Hill (and let’s be honest most universities) show that they don’t understand the purpose of the university www.theassemblync.com/news/educati...

Guys. The Ancient Greeks weren't white. They were more like cephalopods than modern humans -- their skin was bioluminescent and constantly shifting its color. And they didn't live in in idyllic seaside villages; they could only survive near deep-ocean vents. They DID have Matt Damon accents, though

Washington Post in 1979: U.S. State Dept. found Israeli "abuse during interrogation of arrested Palestinians," including "refrigeration, use of electricity, hanging by the hands or feet, extreme forms of sexual sadism, interrogation accompanied by starvation, enforced sleeplessness"

We love the free speech university don’t we folks

Here’s some of the art that UChicago deems too controversial to display at the Lab School

the odyssey

Palestinians in Gaza mark anniversary of 1948 mass expulsion and say today's catastrophe is worse Deeply reported and heartbreaking story by Julia Frankel and Wafaa Shurafa apnews.com/article/nakb...

Cornell just released this statement from its committee of Trustees investigating the incident where the President ran over a student's foot with his car. The statement extols the President and blames the students.

Sometimes I think it’s harder for ppl outside of academia to understand how many levels of review - how much scrutinizing by leaders in your field AND by non-field experts at every level of the university - a tenure case goes before it hits the board. /1

TELEMACHUS: How did I get this twenty-oar ship? Crying. My herds of cattle? Crying. My most loyal slaves? You better believe it was crying. Now get the fuck out of my house

Plato’s discussion of books in the Phaedrus is unfortunately flawed because it failed to reckon with administrators chatting with data regardless of data literacy

"Fake-citation Matthew effect" has killed me, you're talking to my ghost now

Congrats to Penn State faculty on unionizing.

There’s a glaring historical inaccuracy in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film of The Odyssey: they didn’t have cameras back then. Theatres should have a blank screen and an old man reading out the script

A very stylish #Roman enclosed boot with a highly decorative and intricate cut-out design that would have shown off the wearer’s socks. Found in London, dating c. 75-125 AD. 📷 me, taken in 2021 at the Museum of London

this truly is the thing that makes the united states exceptional, and right wingers hate it so much they want to destroy it

#PortraitThursday - Roman Egyptian mummy portrait of a girl wearing a laurel wreath and a white tunic. Encaustic painting on sycamore wood, dated AD 120-150. Liebieghaus, Frankfurt am Main.

I've been joking about having everything I need to write a department chair simulator game but turns out one exists, it's from 1974, and it is FASCINATING as both a snapshot of higher ed and gaming history: dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....

I don't want to read any more opinions about "how instructors should respond to AI" that don't engage at all with our working conditions: heavy teaching loads, large class sizes, adjunctification, etc.

the Arrian Ambush. the Plutarch Pit. Livy’s Lair.

Guy basically threw himself face first into the Herodotus Hole (destroying a great empire through military adventurism) so I wouldn't count on him to keep you out of any other ancient-historian-based hazards

Amazing the personal risks people will take to preserve archival material www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

If you're looking around the table and every other guy's a fox or a hen then you're the sack of grain

Other documents from the same court case transforms "Robin a Negro" into "Robina Black." The handwriting is perfectly clear, but the AI is programmed to replace what it says with something it doesn't say.

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Sure will be an interesting day at my university if the names of any of our community members who were involved in this should become public

For my latest column in @thenation.com, I wrote about the symbiotic relationship between the neo-Nazi right and the Jewish institutions that insist on equating Zionism and Judaism.

I'm not sure how much the rest of America knows or understands about the MOVE bombing in Philly, but it was probably the single worst instance of police brutality in American history. I think of it every 5/13 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MO...

Students (including the one whose foot the President ran over!) made this short video criticizing Cornell's repression of student protests and linking it to Cornell's funding ties to defense contracts, weapons manufacturers and surveillance tech firms. www.instagram.com/p/DYNaDYPp_GV/

It demeans Jewish history to compare completely invented allegations of Jewish ritual murders with a carefully documented investigation of misdeeds committed by a particular nation-state.

Les 3 genres de la France à Macron

I admire the hell out of these Texas Tech students, who held a funeral for academic freedom: pen.org/texas-tech-a...

read the room! www.404media.co/ucf-ai-comme...

Thanks to someone in the comments for identifying the source, which is University of Central Florida. Link to full video here www.youtube.com/live/zwYkHS8...

new zealander everlee wihongi was due to meet with her lawyer yesterday. then ICE moved her to their most notorious tent facility in texas: 3000 people, highest death rate, most sexual assaults. and today, she disappeared off the system. please RT: www.webworm.co/everleehasdi...

First mention I've seen of this in the morning papers, near the end of a column about the antisemitism demo attendees booing Pat McFadden

It's time for #Caturday and a timeline cleanse! A terracotta figurine of a #cat playing the harp. From #Egypt, #Roman period, late 1st century AD. On display at Museum August Kestner, Hannover. Have a lovely #weekend! 📷 me

today's Akkadian phrase is uznum rapaštum "understanding, intelligence" lit. "a wide ear" we are lucky enough to have it show up in one of the (100 BC–100 AD?) "Greco-Babylonian" student tablets as οζον ραφασθ at a stage where Babylonian had lost final short vowels.

The kids-not-being-alright is just a convenient story to conceal how many of the people that are in the journalist's own age-group or social milieu shook hands with the very industry that's attempting to destroy education.

Rutgers School of Engineering canceled a commencement speech by Rami Elghandour—an alum and executive producer of an Oscar-nominated film about Hind Rajab, a Palestinian child killed by Israel—because "some" students complained: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... His response (via X):

might as well face it, you're a triptych of dove

i remember learning "there is no silver bullet" in my cs classes and it's bleakly hilarious that all tech speculation now is "what if we made a silver bullet? we will add the line 'you are the silver bullet' to claude's code"

I appreciate Prof Peterson‘s willingness to have this argument in public bcs the neutrality/censorship ppl don’t have a coherent position but also because the longer this argument goes on the clearer it becomes how much more strongly faculty believe in the ideals of universities than do leadership

A big study that was cited as evidence that text generators are good for students has been retracted: www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-wi... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

CONTENT WARNING: state violence Truly despicable behavior from NYPD last night at wyckoff heights medical center. Cop were openly collaborating with ICE, and a white shirt was captured on camera calling “all Democrats” a “waste of human race.” (🎥 from freedomnews, Patrick Hilsman & protestors OTG)