I’m always more interested in FOAT (favorite of all time) lists than GOAT ones. Canon-building is for institutions and corporations. Desire is for us.

I talked to a student at the end of class today about how to develop her thesis statement into an essay. After we talked, she said, "Okay. I feel a lot better now." I am grateful for such a good start to my day.

I appreciate Dr. LaRonda Sanders-Senu's clear and engaging discussion of why the #Humanities matter, especially now. www.mga.edu/news/2025/09...

Hi all, I rarely do this, but I'm posting that I'm back on the academic job market. As a Californian, my partner and I are trying to stay on the West Coast. Any leads for jobs in History, American Studies, Cultural Studies, etc. in the Western U.S. are greatly appreciated! Sincerely, Nathan

“Uh-oh, overflow, population ‘common food, but it’ll do’, save yourself, serve yourself, world serves its own needs—listen to your heart bleed, dummy with the raptured and the revered and the right, right” And let it be said I’m of the lets eat grandma school of punctuation, so

@alexwinter.com I just read the article about y’all visiting the Beckett archive. How wonderful!!! Two of my very favorite things are Godot & archival research. I’m so glad y’all are combining the two!

“Being Poor” by @scalzi.com is such an effective piece of writing. I appreciate his reflection on it here, 20 years after he wrote it. whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/03/2...

Revolver or Rubber Soul?

I can

It’s “Team by team reporters, baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped, Look at that low playing, fine, then

It’s ‘Left of west and coming in a hurry with the Furies breathing down your neck

Next week, @monicacmiller.bsky.social will be speaking to the History Club at KSU about "The Tacky South," a book she co-edited. This will be a virtual presentation, and all are welcome to attend! The Zoom link for registration is kennesaw-edu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Oooh!

Here's the @filmforumnyc.bsky.social ad for their March 1985 New York theatrical run of FABULOUS STAINS. This was the film's first run in a top 10 media market.

I would read an academic murder book in which the murder was solved by reading the syllabus

Word I learned today: grawlix

New York friends, please call your reps to support this.

Also, as I was leaving the half-off sale at the garden center today with a hanging pot of petunias in either hand, I started singing, “She’s got pretty petunias” and making up lyrics for it.

Pretty Persuasion (it’s what they played at the 40 Watt in January), Harborcoat, Radio Free Europe

This is such a fantastic collection.

Twenty years ago. I'm very glad that we were able to evacuate--and that when we did return, our things were still there.

Watching various episodes of MTV Unplugged, I’m enjoying how much the acoustic mode encouraged interesting percussion: Duran Duran, the Cure, Elvis Costello, and LL Cool J are all good examples.

Yesterday, I coined what I believe is a new idiom: "You can't throw someone under the bus if they've already laid down in the street."

From way back in the early 1990s, here's "So You Think You're In Love"... 

Such wonderful news!

Did you know that you can help shore up the funding gap for PBS (and NPR), as well as getting access to fantastic content, for just $5 a month? Such as the new series, CIVICS MADE EASY--where they explain things like, oh, HOW VOTING WORKS in the U.S. #FundPBS

I am so proud to be a part of this NEH-funded project, an exploratory grant to learn about creating a Digital Humanities Lab at Middle Georgia State. www.mga.edu/news/2025/08...

Friendly reminder that AI data centers are working overtime to help cook the planet. If the fires are scaring you— start using ‘-AI’ at the end of all Google searches to cut out any AI response to your query. Refusal is possible & responsible. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Firing and demoralizing feminized jobs as enemies of the state while brazenly bribing men with violent jobs that almost instantly puts them into the middle of middle class is very basic gendered warfare. Fulfilling the manosphere’s promise.

I will never forgive Apple for getting rid of their headphone jack and giving the wired headphones a lightning cable end. More than ever people seem to use their phones without headphones to watch videos on the subway and you cannot convince me that change isn’t partly responsible.

This is one of my very favorite songs. @robynhitchcock.bsky.social does a lovely version here.

Going through my email today, I'm blessing a lot of hearts.

I need to see this film. “‘TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing’ took decades to finish, but is coming at the right time… With lots of strife in the world, many need an example of how to effectively organize. Cade Bambara’s life provides that.” variety.com/2025/film/re...

Having just dropped a couple of open highlighter markers, I'm curious if Johnny Cash ever wrote verses for "The Man in Black" about spilling coffee or ink.

It's odd that there's a hospital and a bunch of doctors' offices on Hemlock Street in Macon.

Hopefully, it will be clear how much education policy has been driven by ideology and not economic realities when findings like these do not result in a shift of resources from computer science programs to the arts and humanities.

most people want a quick and simple answer to why AI systems encode/exacerbate societal and historical bias/injustice and due to the reductive but common thinking of "bias in, bias out," the obvious culprit often is training data but this is not entirely true 1/

Are you really gen x if you haven't thrown out your hip joint reaching for a drink 2 feet away

I am reminded, once again, that the real reason that the GRE has all of those logic puzzles on it is to prepare us to try to schedule meetings with people who have conflicting schedules.

Out of office auto-reply on from now until Wednesday of next week. It feels really good!

True story.

If you don't subscribe to the NPR Music newsletter, you haven't yet been able to read my lil essay on the importance of listening to human voices beyond the persuasion machine. Here's a link to a not great but readable web page: bit.ly/4o9T1E3

We talked about this back when the first trial for lenacapavir first said the magic words everyone wants to hear, "halted for efficacy"(*), so a recap: this is not a vaccine or a treatment. It's PrEP aka "pre-exposure prophylaxis": you take the drug so if exposed to the virus, you will not catch it.

If you were alive in the 1980s, this is among the most wonderful & truly incredible things you have ever witnessed in your lifetime.

Do the 1990s have a nickname? I think they should be the Velvet 90s.

Today, I’m reminded that you can sing Deck the Halls to the tune of War Pigs, and vice versa.

It feels like an act of community service when parents let their kids wear a full Halloween costume in public. Thank you. I needed to see a tiny Spiderman today.

WGBH building in Boston today

I really enjoyed @scalzi.com ‘s #WhenTheMoonHitsYourEye: it was ridiculous & ridiculously moving. Great music refs—I especially appreciated the Nick Drake reference. I was disappointed, though, that there wasn’t any reference to @robynhitchcock.bsky.social ‘s #CheeseAlarm.

I still love this song.