Im begging the NYT to spend time talking to people who actually teach and work at universities. Especially ones that don't have billion dollar endowments. My issues are AI use, crumbling infrastructure, vanishing staff, unfunded state mandates, a customer service model of education...

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is 200 today! @c19americanists.bsky.social @digblk.bsky.social @ccp-org.bsky.social @blkgrlpoet.bsky.social @profgabrielle.bsky.social @npr.org She’s just as fabulous, relevant, and fiery now as she was in C19! For a sample, see commonplace.online/article/vol-...

beneath the Tylenol autism discourse is deep ableism—a rejection of difference & a refusal to accommodate it. but as I wrote in @chronicle.com, we need neurodivergent people’s inventive & creative minds:

of all of the cable segments I am not going to watch, this is the one I am not going to watch the most

Yes! Plus 30% of the people in my (now) home state, West Virginia, voted for Kamala Harris. Do they--and their children, *and* the children of those of voted for Trump--deserve to be abandoned? It's an evil idea that we must resist.

New issue of Legacy is out, and open access! 🗞️ Click right here to access Volume 42, No 1: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55448 ! On the menu: - "Leaving Giants Unslain: Idle Activism in Catharine Sedgwick's The Linwoods and Other Writings" by Jordan L. Von Cannon 1/3

New on our bookshelf: Henry David Thoreau: A Companion By Michael Berger mcfarlandbooks.com/product/Henr...

Reposting this thread for my brother Ryan, who should still be here with us. Depression, sustance abuse disorder, and mental illnesses lie to you. We need you here. Thanks as always to @johnmoe.bsky.social who is just *the best.*

Goddamn. @agoldman.bsky.social's reporting on the complex and dramatic history of the cat drug black market - the Facebook-based amateur veterinarian ring helping cats afflicted with a specific feline illness - was unbelievable. Kudos on the amazing series. Everyone should listen to this.

#PoetryMoment "Statement of Teaching Philosophy" by Keith Leonard from Waxwing, Spring 2021

I forgot that lyric of “Country Boy Will Survive”

Every time admin talks about "future-proofing our degrees," I die a little inside and then remind them that critical thinking is the only skill that does this

"Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively ... That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%"

Weapons (2025)

You know what I really, really love about WEAPONS? How it gives lie to the homily that there aren't good ideas left, nor the people to execute them. Just not true. The problem has never been the creators, it's the money men. The Syndromes inventing machines to make them Super when they just aren't.

The Monkey Prince Angada delivers Rama’s message to Ravana, by Manaku, 1725, 📸 by @StephChambers76

i used to think intimacy meant being always (magically!) deeply understood. now i think it’s the everyday, consistent, mutual effort to deepen conversation

Roland Reisley is the last original client of Frank Lloyd Wright, still living in the Usonian home designed by the famed architect. Even after 73 years, he told NPR, he still marvels at the beauty of the home.

“Stop pitching, Lex. It was a yes when you walked in the door. Wait, your private prison is in an unstable pocket dimension? Don’t know what THAT means but now that I know it’s “tech,” here’s all the money we were going to give to Sesame Street.”

Jeff Hiller had given up hope that he would get an Emmy nomination for ‘Somebody Somewhere’: ‘“Both my manager and my publicist wept. That’s how shocked they were. Jeremy Allen White’s team didn’t do that.”

Jeff Hiller getting a WELL DESERVED AND OVERDUE Emmy nomination is worth all this other bullshit.

Another great episode of Vibe Check this week. I loved @theferocity.bsky.social talking about the "joyful rigor" of writing (with bloody fingers, even!). And segments about shows I don't watch (like Love Island) are still so interesting and fun. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

The director really wanted you to understand the nickname

This poem by @aireadee.bsky.social lifted me this morning on its Icarus wings. "Light refracts my name in dialect only moths comprehend."

Absolutely chilling...

Immediately thought of a recent "winner of the week" on @extrahotgreat.com when I saw these two in the crowd at the Knicks game.

Right after "Don't use semicolons," "Don't use adverbs," "Don't use speech tags beyond 'said' and 'says,'" and "Always delete the word 'that,'" my favorite piece of writing advice is "Don't listen to people giving writing advice who are incessantly telling you not to do things."

I think a plausible, entirely crass, market-driven evolution of (elite) higher Ed in the future might be a renaissance of humanities programs, as AI renders obsolete a lot of the curricula of pre-professional degrees. The fantasy of AI replacing poets is a distraction from the jobs it WILL replace.

This was so great. Come for the inside tea and stay for the kidney line and a disasterously hilarious group text.

From the essay: "These are not women who waited for permission or signs of progress or a more welcoming audience...they spoke their truths about things that mattered: art, racism, love of all kinds, the natural world, legal protections for women, women's health, and so much more."

Get you a copy! (Please and thank you!)

It’s totally fine to say, “hey I don’t accept the convenience costs of AI’s economic and ecological disruptions and I value the inefficiency of human creativity so we will pass on collaborations that accept that trade off!”

Co-signing this 1999 dream.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Hard to think of anyone who writes with such sensitive, respectful and intelligent insight about childhood than Ashley C. Ford.

A really terrific issue! I revisited it when working on my own project. Fun, too!

It’s National Pet Day today apparently so here’s a poem about one of my cat’s poems. It’s called ‘On ‘;..p’[[[[[[[[[[[[[;’;////////////////////////3,’

There is no reason. Cruelty is the point. Again and again. An attention-catching fact: "This is only 0.000054 percent of the federal budget—but the losses are incalculable." slate.com/news-and-pol...

The only true and real writing advice is “you have to write and read, there is no shortcut” but perhaps close to that is “read drafts aloud” and “write first by hand if you can.”

It's here! Delightful!

My favorite new character of probably the last … year at least. Specific but not quirky, not perfect but incredibly kind, a picture of a competent professional who loves her work and also sees it as ultimately a path to living a good life. Driven by deep empathy.

Everything is still trash out there, but I just read back-to-back ENGL 102 essays that unironically (I think?) use the word "whilst," which made me laugh. Is Gen Z bringing this one back? Such whimsy!

"If we throw minorities under the bus, Republicans will stop calling us too woke" is the same logic that got us Clinton's welfare cuts and Obama's immigration crackdowns. You can't policy your way out of a right-wing propaganda problem.

Love this piece! "It’s the way she pulls back on certain words in the verses, like she’s swallowing them because it hurts to express them. It’s the way she sings the phrase 'buy a little time,' like she’s smiling at it, like she’s ruefully grinning at her own foolishness."

I’m gonna say this one time: Quentin Tarantino didn’t discover Mikey Madison. Pamela Adlon did.

Very happy for Mikey! Now everyone go watch BETTER THINGS!!!

That win, and those remarkable speeches, will infuriate the worst people in this country and the world. Good. #NoOtherLand

Why Is It So Hard For So Many People On This Site To Not Be Gleeful About Devastation Of People's Lives In Red States

Clear front-runner for best animated picture, at least with certain members of this household.