also @calebwellum.bsky.social, @ishmaelcallme.bsky.social, and many others with us in spirt by way of citation. so much enlivening conversation, companionability, and solidarity! buoying in these dark days.

Quarry Farm Symposium, my favorite event on our annual calendar, kicks off tonight with a discussion of everyday ecofascism with @aprilanson.bsky.social & Alexander Menrisky. This year’s theme is Energy Studies, co-organized with @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social. marktwainstudies.com/2025-quarry-...

this is a banger of an essay and you should all read it

Have spent the past couple of days writing about the two centuries-long movement to make the upper peninsula a separate state. I'm almost persuaded.

Sincere question: is there a single college or university anywhere that is approaching AI from a position of resistance?

Btw, about that @michigansierra.bsky.social award some kind friends mentioned over the weekend: this is really the important thing you need to know. thecurrentowdm.substack.com/p/the-other-...

JUST found out @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social, WHO I AM CURRENTLY PLANNING AN ENERGY STUDIES SYMPOSIUM WITH, has been given Burton V Barnes Award for Academic Excellence by Sierra Club Jeff did not tell me. Or post about it. Because Jeff is a Hoosier GenXer Jeff probably asked the Sierras to reconsider

@jeffreyinsko.bsky.social just this afternoon took home an award the @sierraclub.org named for another Michigan environmentalist, Burton V. Barnes. If you haven’t read Insko’ relentless work on pipelines and especially @enbridge.bsky.social here’s your daily quota: open.substack.com/pub/thecurre...

Hey, remember that Harper‘s letter? Lol

you guys, people still get tenured with articles from their diss and no book requirement. It’s not (only) a relic from the cushy past. You often have to teach a 4:4 or more and do a metric shitload of service. Ask me how I know.

my hot take is that it's not our job to teach students how to use AI (responsibly or whatever); it's our job to teach them how not use it at all.

I labored

New blog post: Is invoking "the environment" enough when it comes to shutting down Line 5?

👏

I wrote about why I don't like the environment.

today I listened to four hours of public comments at a regulatory hearing. I have thoughts about it. here's this in the meantime.

Typical Melville stan

oh great so exciting feeling really good about the future of teaching

"If you’ve ever held and marveled at a Great Lakes rock, you have, in some way, felt yourself a part of that more-than-human story."

Excited to finally receive some documents from a FOIA request. Every page looks like this.

I wrote about my favorite rock in the Great Lakes, which Murph met over the weekend.

Murph among the rocks of Lake Superior

Murphy swam in three Great Lakes today. This is the coldest, Superior.

Perhaps you’d like to see Murphy, swimming directly above the Line 5 pipeline at the Straits of Mackinac.

this week I wrote about how Enbridge flagrantly violated the terms of its agreement with the state for 50 years. nbd.

Congratulations to these winners. Sea Change looks amazing and I can’t wait to read it. Excited for @jamieljones.bsky.social and her remarkable book, too!

Hey so me and a few colleagues are thinking of some kind of amyear-long series of AI counterprogramming on campus. Has anybody else embarked upon such an effort? Thoughts? Ideas?

Super excited about the new just-announced “mini-grants for full-time faculty to explore innovative ways to incorporate AI tools into their courses” at my university. Let’s do this! #disrupters #everythingiscool

More @mattseybold.bsky.social killing it on the EdTech Grifting. But when I heard Ziplines on college campuses the 1st thing I thought of was the zipline park my uni let some adventuretainment company build on a previously very pretty forest on campus. theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/how-ventur...

my university doesn't use Canvas, praise god, but I still found that Chronicle article terrifying.

I think Murphy sees something

I call this an afterbloom arrangement

please enjoy these flowers

Murphy loves the Great Lakes too

Happy birthday to Linda Ronstadt, born on this day in 1946. Rock on. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EL-...

hooray for plovers!

here's my academic hot take: it is not/should not be the responsibility of individual departments (especially in the humanities) to solve enrollment problems

a little Friday arrangement

astonishing, depressing, horrifying

Murphy swam in four different lakes today. Oh and also he thinks your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity... your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.

Thursday ikebana

I guess everybody will be posting the sham/hollow mockery/impiety and hypocrisy passage from Douglass tomorrow? More fitting than ever.

heartening to hear so many university leaders across the country speaking out forcefully against what's happening In Indiana, at UVa, etc. Oh wait.

Murphy can’t see a goddamn thing

This week I wrote about the Michigan Monkeyflower.

I am not a dispenser of online advice but I will just say that if you are teaching online, you should have your students make videos rather than writing* anything. Even if they're full of shit, it's still way less demoralizing and often quite charming and interesting. * using ChatGPT

New from The Current - learn how the Line 5 oil tunnel will impact plant and animal life in this week's post. https://f.mtr.cool/axkxsbpczu #ShutDownLine5

This week I wrote about the Michigan Monkeyflower.

v excited for this!

Check it out: the pre-order link for Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest! This book collects dozens of #LiteraryLandscapes essays, and pre-orders will ship in November—perfect for Christmas! www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p0...