my kid won a black gaiter with his school's logo on it as a prize for good behavior and that thing is so ICE coded that it immediately disappeared forever

congratulations to my pal Paul on his extraordinary and beautiful (!) new book. everyone should read it + get their libraries on the case!

i started writing this ~5 years ago and, at last, it is in world. i owe thanks to so many people who read and responded to what was (and remains) a pretty weird piece about poe, benjamin, and AI. i am especially grateful to the readers and editors at JCMS for nurturing this piece into existence

Hello pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...

This is a fundamental point that 99% of higher-ed coverage, and 100% of immig coverage, have missed.

there's a chain restaurant in my small-ish city that sells crabs and lobsters. according to my hairdresser, one of her other clients raises the lobsters (for this particular restaurant) in her home. i would like a documentary about this lady and her living room lobsters. please + thank you

the closets and cabinets of universities used to be filled with dead projectors. now they are brimming with *so many* broken down 3d printers. the closets are coming for you next, vr headsets.

my partner was listening to a song from teenage-hood and then he was advertised orthopedic shoes. the algorithm just murdered him

Just 2 gun rights advocates sitting behind a wall of bulletproof glass while enjoying a memorial for a gun rights advocate who got murdered by a gun.

just tumbling around in the llms

As an archivist, this keeps me up.

early this morning, i asked my students how they would describe the experience of the 21st century. first answer was "death"

For the morning folks: Lafayette is hiring a Visiting Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies for 1.5 years. Area of specialization is open. Position begins spring '26. Please share widely; I am happy to field questions. Laf is a small liberal arts college w excellent FAMS facilities + support

film and media studies friends, we are hiring! we are an inclusive + supportive program, one hour from philly and nyc. position starts end of january; review starts october 17. please spread the word and reach out w/ questions. provost.lafayette.edu/2026-27-film...

As a historian of computing, can confirm, this is exactly what happened

Of course, I forgot to tag the wondrous @kamifirumu.bsky.social!

Lehigh Valley, NYC, Philly Friends: Lafayette College's Williams Center for the Arts will host the Japanese Paper Film Project on Friday, September 12 @ 7pm! Prof Eric Faden will intro the program. Live musical accompaniment by Duo Yumeno. Please join us! williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...

an interesting semester for anyone teaching media theory www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...

remembering the last time I felt this way and then the guy popped up in the rose garden to say the word "regeneron" 100 times

Thanks to Karen Hao's brilliant book Empire of AI, I learned that potable water is the only type of water that can be used to cool data centers. Saltwater or wastewaster isn't useable.

So many adults have to fail a child before he ends up 10 years old telling CNN about the mass shooting he lived through this morning

children in minneapolis shot while praying, children in DC passing armed military when they take the metro to school, this country is so sick

the crisis in which the University of Chicago is now engulfed -- one entirely of its own making, and which has led to the (hopefully temporary) suspension of admissions into numerous PhD programs in the humanities -- represents I think a seismic event in the history of American higher education 1/

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.

teachers! excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone. take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE against-a-i.com

whatever you say, banana

"We need to unyoke ourselves, the humanities are dragging us down!" says the man whose work is subsidized by an army of lesser-paid humanities professors and TAs who can teach and research, if necessary, with the supplies found in my backpack in 1994.

If you are making the case to sacrifice your colleagues or other disciplines, you have just revealed that you are a little baby bird, just hatched, with no understanding of the world around you or what is ahead. good luck, baby bird, you are already somebody's lunch

Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.

all i know is that giving big balls a medal of honor will only ensure that he continues to get jumped by teenagers for the rest of his life

the push starts v early. if you are a parent with young kids, you might reasonably assume that coding is more important than foundational literacy and numeracy. my kids received coding games before they could read

There is no nice, gentle way to say, “okay so a nation is, in effect, a currency, a military, and resource allocation. If you break all of those, you do not…have a country.”

just a terrific regulation of volume + intensity. starting out real conversational, gradually increasing, explosion at the end. A+

crossed the us border today. agents scanned my face, did not ask a question or look at me. they did not open a single passport for any of my family members. strangest border experience of my life

Following the cold war, the rich no longer need the patina of culture to rationalize their obscene wealth. Their vulgarity signifies self-justifying, naked power. Vapidity, a sign of overwork, becomes a virtue. What remains of culture, reduced to background to ever longer workdays, they privatize.

met a 14yo with no social media who only discusses important things with her friends when phones are on airplane mode and placed outside of the room. so that's v cool

Berlin 🌧️

Canvas just became one of the most powerful surveillance, IP theft, & data monetization tools in the world. OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts. But they can’t make us use their trashware. Boycott. Luddify. Open source. Don’t let them have your work or your students.

unlocked a new asmr experience: someone hand carving a cello in a Berlin music shop

just realized I can never sell my car

Job alert! Tenure-track faculty search in public law, constitutional law, and civil rights -- all hugely important in our current political moment. We're a liberal arts college with strong students, located outside Philly/NYC. Circulate widely!

We know what works: develop teachers professionally, pay them well, and give them small classes. anyway here's some AI

Here Vox's explainer for just what is going on at the Department of Education which includes me saying I don't have faith in financial aid disbursement next year and, oh yea, I think we're in a constitutional crisis www.vox.com/policy/40233...

last day of my 7yo's adventure on a berlin football team. his v sweet coach described him as "really more of an artist," which is a very generous way of describing a kid who just did not care at all where the ball went

this video is real and yet everything feels like AI. first dude does not even get to have a face. every human figure seems to have discovered their own hands and arms and fingers for the first time

last eidinger performance tonight. stay tuned for my forthcoming memoir, on sabbatical with lars

delcy morelos at hamburger bahnhof is something special. the room smells v strongly of cloves and cinnamon. 7yo for scale

Collective resignation of series editors and editorial board members: mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850 Dr. Dan Streible, associate professor of cinema studies; Associate Chair, Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, series editor “Framing Film”

IT CANT BE ETHICAL IF IT’S DESTROYING THE PLANET JUST READ BOOKS AND HAVE FUN PEDAGOGY WORKSHOPS