Late capitalism is good for something, it turns out.

This album rules like a thing that rules very hard indeed.

Please enjoy @shenandoahkate.bsky.social’s fine profile of Vandy’s polarizing president.

Tapping the sign again.

Gonna need a lot more Nazgul-the-wolf-dog content.

What hardy soul will devote I’m gonna estimate about 130 hours to giving us “Every Frederick Wiseman Film, Ranked”?

this new & final(?) album by late pedal steel hero susan alcorn playing with an improvising metal band is just so cool & startling & bittersweet, like she was just getting started. nomadwarmachineandsusanalcorn.bandcamp.com/album/contra...

Scene report

I can’t call this an earworm, exactly, but it’s in my head and matching my mood as I both ponder love and scroll the news.

A friend of mine has a saying about public K-12: “Everybody knows what works, but nobody wants to pay for it.” I’m beginning to think it applies . . . a great many other things.

You could always listen to Laughing Stock. It might not fix things, but it can’t hurt.

Sing it with me now: 🎶 “The MARC traaaiiinnnsss/ Are all jacked uuuuuppp/ For some unknown reeeasooonnn/ Once agaaaiiinnn” 🎶

Oh yeah, today I discovered that a coworker who is quite smart but much younger than I am had never heard of Tumblr, which I would have found quite surprising had I not already crumbled into mummy dust and begun blowing away.

👍🏻

*sucks teeth*

"The spectacle afforded by Carthage irritated the Barbarians; they admired it and execrated it, and would have liked to both annihilate it and to dwell in it." —Gustave Flaubert

Justice for the Baltimore cheese fish ✊🏻

It’s Bandcamp Friday, and my label released this album by the late, much-missed pedal-steel player Susan Alcorn and the Philly duo Nomad War Machine, and if you’re in the market for volcanic improvisation, I recommend it.

OMG yes 1000x this

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Today in news/not news: @dberrett.bsky.social weighs in on the latest Grapevine report, which tells us what we pretty much already knew about funding for public colleges.

BTW surely at this point we’ve gotten past the notion that “citizen journalists” will pick up the slack for eviscerated newsrooms. There’s some excellent work being published on Substack et al., but it’s no substitute for the work of a professional newsgathering operation with the proper support.

Don’t know why anybody does/allows this.

Having hiked to the neighborhood Staples and back just now, I can assure you that the sidewalks of Baltimore City are not ready for the return of its school children by 8:30 am tomorrow morning.

I wrote about the situation in Iowa, where a proposal to let community colleges offer four-year degrees is riling the private four-year institutions in the state.

I just tried to abbreviate Substack as SS and wait, what?

This isn’t “playing.” This is stepping off the front porch, landing in snow up to your belly, and questioning the life choices that led you to this moment.

Watching the Italian neorealist classic Bitter Rice, and one of the characters just dropped this morsel: “Prison was invented by people who’ve never been there.”

I just spelled “connoisseur” correctly on the first try with no mistakes, no autocorrect, and no looking it up. Please clap.

The compact more or less attempted to corral and codify plans or wishes (perhaps threats) the administration had already expressed or hinted at, so it was probably only a matter of time before they resurfaced.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you’ve seen: Lungfish Pan Sonic Conway Twitty Altar of Plagues Ornette Coleman Quartet

P4k’s new business plan seems sound

A brief, worthwhile read this MLK weekend: “The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.“ kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/...

Thus completing its transformation into a fully operational hellmouth . . .

Late pass, but: Gabler’s. It was a crab place kinda near Aberdeen here in Maryland, and it was basically just a series of freestanding screened-in porches near the water. On a beautiful evening at dusk, sitting with your friends or family, picking crabs and eating corn, it was like heaven.

Don’t start none, won’t be none.

Zing!

I’ve been saying for years that what this world needs is more apex predators that aren’t us, and black bears don’t exactly fit that designation, but this is still a lovely piece.

My latest: Vanderbilt announced the launch of two new campuses on two different coasts within about 24 hours this week at a time when most universities are keeping their heads down. What's up with that?

A thing I also think about is what happens when faculty get tired of the cuts (because there are most definitely cuts on campus) while the admin buys up building after building. Plus, what if some people find Vanderbilt's flirtation with authoritarianism unattractive?

Vanderbilt has been on a remarkable run of expansion announcements. I talked to some smart folks about it.

BTW I got served a streaming ad for “microdosing” last night, and all these well-adjusted-seeming folks were out in the sunshine exercising and being healthy and photogenic and whatnot, and microdosing *what*? Are we peddling acid on main now?

Chilly out this morning.

Proud of my fellow Baltimore film nerds for their demonstrable good taste.

Almost got a little downhearted and angsty on main.

Good piece from @taylorswaak.bsky.social on why Hampshire fell short on its fall class and what it means for the institution.

The Little Pigeon

The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp opened 24 years ago today.

The scale of the protests in Iran are absolutely unbelievable. Hard to quantify, but I've seen some speculation that this uprising is more significant than the 2023 protests (themselves the largest challenge to the regime since it came into power in '79.) (Video from @AmirMiresmaeili on Twitter)