It’s beautiful 🥹 and it’s available for preorder!! https://bookshop.org/p/books/skin-contact-elisa-faison/a02ec31b1a2753d7?ean=9781538776018&next=t&

If you assess a data viz by the ratio of ink to information, this one gets it.

Thrilled to announce my new book (electronic version out now, print next month) — it proposes a new value theory grounded in the longue durée of literary institutions, 1800–present.

Woohoo! I just started it. Game changer for the classroom. Congrats to Dan and @johannawinant.bsky.social

Is it too much to ask for an exhaustive infographic of every crime, abuse of power, and other corrupt actions on a day-by-day basis, color coded by severity, and tagged with numbers linked to a numerical list of accomplices and stooges so that we are fully prepared on the day of reckoning?!

What did people think about Eddington? I have some criticisms but mostly liked it. It’s quiet condemnation of Silicon Valley is especially smart. The film starts and ends with the building of a data center that <seems> to have little to do with the plot but is actually essential.

This will definitely not lead to more lonely incels with raging misogyny

I’m very happy for László Krasznahorkai and the Nobel win, but look at this interview bit - did he steal it from Nic Cage’s monologue in Moonstruck? Same vibe.

Damning. Time spent fixing AI language or trying to figure out if information is accurate: “The study estimates that workslop causes businesses $186 per month, per employee, or $9 million per year for a 10,000-person company.” finance.yahoo.com/news/9-milli...

‘the human centipede of content’ is the most succinct, brilliant, and horrifying description of AI yet. AI is not the future, it is the past returned as shit.

I made a lil game inspired by the Wordle universe. It's called Versedle (pronounced Verse-a-dle). You guess who wrote famous lines of literature. As my parents can attest, it's hard! I made them an Easy Mode, but it's still kinda hard. Maybe you'll like it! ▶️ 📚: melaniewalsh.github.io/versedle/

Baby’s got a pub date! And some juicy catalog copy. MIDDLEMEN coming your way on April 26! (Cover reveal soon!)

Thesis: Unlike Inherent Vice, One Battle After Another is not ‘based on Pynchon’ (a formal claim that characters and plot points get remediated by film) but PYNCHONIAN (a stylistic claim that Anderson is actually moving his auteur brand toward the sensibility of Pynchon’s novels

I can confirm that scientifically this is a first, because from 2014-2016 I watched an episode of Wild Kratts every day that said sperm whale/squid battles in the deep sea have never been seen by humans.

Hey thanks to @lithub.com.web.brid.gy for including my recent piece on translated bestsellers in their daily roundup of “the best of the literary internet”! Check it out: lithub.com/lit-hub-dail...

Judith Butler was decisive to my own intellectual development when they were at Hopkins. Watching the UC facilitate their persecution by dipshit wreckers in the Trump administration is enraging. Butler, in all their thorniness and range, epitomizes the centrality of the fight for academic freedom.

New at PB: Jed Kudrick & @sdileonardi.bsky.social scour bestseller data to unpack trending translation in the US, despite the low national average of translations published each year.

I thought this was a pretty cool fact when I discovered it. I mean 80 weeks is hella long for a book to be consecrated by U.S. popular culture as relevant (average bestseller lasts 1 week). Even for English language writers, this is like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones big.

I’m on page xi ofTaking Back Control by Wolfgang Steeck and I’m already into it/asking questions: “The nation-state is the only social site - the only institutionalized polity - that is potentially available for democratisation in opposition to capitalist distributional justice”

A translation renaissance in US publishing just ended. And you probably missed it. New at PB: Jed Kudrick & @sdileonardi.bsky.social ask how such a renaissance went unnoticed?

Saw Noah Wyle at school drop off.

I’m very excited to share this. My first time co-writing with a student who won a year-long fellowship to help compile the data. Many thanks owed to those who read, edited, and supported along the way. Please share widely!!

I don't think Omid Bagherli is on bluesky (then again, why am I on bluesky?) but I'm grateful for this review and particularly happy to see it in ASAP/Review since a lot of this book happened because of friends and colleagues at @asapartsnow.bsky.social asapjournal.com/review/slow-...

Hoo boy! I can’t believe it’s happening. We’ve been working on this for years. Thanks to @post45data.bsky.social you can now search our IB database, with a very cool interface! Please share with anyone who might be interested Special thanks to @ninasabak.bsky.social for aiding with the data source

Of all the Coldplay lyrics when “Nobody said it was easy [cheating on your wife], but no one ever said it would be so hard” is right there

In Milan, I saw my first Jacquard loom in person, not knowing that the following day, in Bologna, I would see my second, though this one was programmed by an Italian artist to weave a pattern based on his own genetic code.

That's a Jeff Wall photo, so please judge this book by its cover. Many thanks to @philipleventhal.bsky.social and @columbiaup.bsky.social. In the world on June 3, available for pre-order now: cup.columbia.edu/book/a/97802...

I reach toward the bedside table and encounter 4 objects: 1. The remote means tv (exhaustion) 2. The phone means Bluesky (depression) 3. The laptop means fiddle w/conference paper (denial) 4. The iPad means ebook (masochism, I’m not enjoying the novel) If you’re reading this, I chose the phone

I’ve already decided to use this for the English majors capstone class next spring. I think it’s going to be perfect

The first pope to prefer deep dish

The first pope to remember when the Pumpkins played the Metro

The first pope to occasionally rewatch the Da Bears sketch

The first pope to have drank Malort

Wrote a historical piece that defends funding for NPR and PBS. Whatever their problems, we cannot let Fox News become our default "public sphere." There needs to be alternatives, including imperfect yet aspirational ones.

The Data Collective is so important for data science + contemporary culture. Congrats to Dan for all the hard work!

The Shrouds is Cronenberg at his most David Lynchiest

Working on my SNS paper, and working on some new to me data visualization. Check out this interactive network graph of top 5 translation publishers and their German source publishers (2009–2021). ouestware.gitlab.io/retina/beta/...

Had no idea Delany wrote a graphic novel. It’s a bizarre space opera that imagines empire as control over information and Maxwell’s Demon as an actual entity. Nabbed this at the Cozy Corner in Pittsburgh, the owner’s dad was a rare books dealer and it’s an eccentric collection

Dreamt my hands were punctured by thousands of tiny shards of glass. It hurt to touch anything and as I saw problems rising I was powerless to lift a finger or do anything to help. Gee I wonder where that feeing came from? 🤔

Why watch Top Gun tonight when you can Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?!

Vance goes to the zoo. He is awed by Bao Li and Qing Bao. So real, but so impossible; goofballs who seem to lounge and love and frolic as they choose. The pandas have never been betrayed—they owe Peter Thiel nothing. The rage rises in his eyes and in a flash they are black and white and red all over

He was delightful. When asked what Mark Twain would say if he could read James, Everett replied, “He would ask, ‘How much money did you make?’”

Seeing Percival Everett tonight.

Which means the Office episode with Tim Meadows is ekphrasis, our Ode to a Grecian Urn, if you will.

Pretty bleak coming from a novel that warned in 1957 that “the world wants a machine not a [language professor]” post45.org/2019/01/cryp...

Feels like we are an anthill and Beavis is laughing while Butthead builds the world’s biggest magnifying glass

Oh you’re looking for a film about the urgency of life and the power an individual bureaucrat has to cut through planned obsolescence and effect change for the public good?

[clearing throat]

Not watching. Just reading some Auerbach today

As promised/threatened, I wrote about the MLA, the blocked resolution, parallels w/ AHA, Qs of procedure and "fiduciary" review, the bounty of letters from and actions by concerned members, and the need for solidarity now--incl b/w scholars & publishers. utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/01/resi...