VIE —> BOS

"Lots of people are urgently wrestling with 'big questions' about the nature of reality. They want help from an expert, and they still believe that a public university is where they might find one." Good read on #religion and #reality from @thebaffler.com & @josephlaycock.bsky.social

Wien Zentralfriedhof has a Buddhist cemetery complete with stūpa.

Die Fledermaus, Pride Edition, at the Vienna Volksoper was, as expected, a campy great time. What I didn’t expect was beautiful and moving political writing in the dialogue. Bravo!

Went to see Die Zauberflòte at the Viennese Staatsoper. The singers and orchestra were amazing. Kudos to the artists who made something lovely out of one of the dumbest pieces of narrative writing I’ve ever experienced.

Tijana Krstić kicking off this exciting workshop on preaching in Eurasia at CEU, Vienna. events.ceu.edu/2026-06-25/p...

Flying to Vienna today for this exciting conference on medieval preaching! events.ceu.edu/2026-06-25/p...

AI cannot fail, it can only be sabotaged. You must stay ever-vigilant against Trotskyist wreckers.

Issue 146:2 of JASPA (former JAOS) is out online lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja... on: Karna in Jain epic, Song of a Yue Person, Old Persian Hinduš & Gandāra, Chan in Tangut, Hymn to Ninurta as Savior, Uriah the Hittite, Shah Safi Safavi, al-Ghazālī on pleasure, & Jingjiao stele Christians

Aghast at this quote from the school’s dean: “Byrne said she believed religious studies students would actually have a better experience after the department closure with incoming lounges, better advising and more interdisciplinary learning.” Lounges? Really? www.denverpost.com/2026/06/09/u...

For any Sinology homies who missed it: I have a *very rough* conversion of Hucker for Pleco that is definitely buggy but may make life easier anyway. If you're up for beta-testing, check it out. 🀄📚

A former professor & VP of @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, my alma mater, weighs in on what reads to me as not its inevitable death but its murder. This may seem like just one sad higher ed story, but I believe it's emblematic of all that's REALLY wrong with higher ed.

Setting up elfeed in Doom Emacs and so psyched to live in a world of RSS once more.

Hot off the presses: Yi Ding’s new book on _zhai_ in medieval Chinese Buddhism!

UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

The toxicity this policy will introduce in both students and faculty will be off the charts. But most of all I worry about how this will impact vulnerable graduate student teaching fellows who do the bulk of the teaching & grading at Harvard. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

This bandcamp Friday I am jamming out to Chariots Overdrive’s _The End of Antiquity_, a charmingly retro tribute to old-school metal by some very talented Chinese students in Atlanta. chariotsoverdrive.bandcamp.com/album/the-en...

Don’t miss this. “ASU Atomic is the first to combine verified university content with adaptive AI that builds learning modules unique to each learner.” It figures that profs’ materials were harvested and used by ASU - without their consent - from… Canvas.

Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.

Colleagues, Skidmore’s Religious Studies department is looking to hire a 2-year VAP in American Religions on a very short timeline. I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to your networks! Happy to answer any questions, just send an email or DM. eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Colleagues, Skidmore’s Religious Studies department is looking to hire a 2-year VAP in American Religions on a very short timeline. I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to your networks! Happy to answer any questions, just send an email or DM. eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Reading Mir’s poem about his favorite cat, one realizes that toxoplasmosis is perhaps the only human cultural universal.

It is very fun to get google alert hits for my own name now that reveal completely fabricated statements / quotes thanks to reliance on chatbots. Absolutely wild how the choking pollution of our information environment is being powered by literal choking pollution from fossil fuelled data centres

I am broken-hearted at the terrible news that my alma mater, @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, after 56 yrs, is closing. Its death is a victory for conformism, for corporatism, for higher education's dull love of hierarchy & status. It's a grievous defeat for imagination & experimentation.

Just sent off edited page proofs and the index to SUNY Press. Monograph is one step closer to reality! sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-...

Currently, the all-time most blocked accounts on Bluesky are: 1. JD Vance 2. The White House 3. ICE 4. Bluesky's AI app that was announced 24 hours ago

Oberlin students showing how it’s done!

After binge-watching Heated Rivalry with my partner over Spring Break I kept wondering why the show was hitting all the ladies of my generation so hard. And then I had a realization.

Smith College just posted a 2-year lecturer position in Buddhist Studies: apply.interfolio.com/182632

Is this bad

My colleague @rhcraig.bsky.social is in the next issue of JAAR with a fascinating comparative study of Early Christian preaching manuals, African-American homiletics, and early Buddhist preaching: academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

Just learned that the monograph drops in August! sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-...

The remains of Sᴛᴇᴘʜᴇɴ Cʀᴏsʙʏ A.M. A Gentleman of virtuous morals, And highly eſteemed, Who died On board yᵉ letter of mark brig Vᴇɴᴜs, Near port, July 19ᵗʰ. 1780. Aged 28 Years. Are here deposited till the reſtituſion of all things. “Thy way is in the Sea, thy footsteps are not known”

Discord wants to know how you feel about AI. Go tell them: discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Just subscribed—gotta support awesome writers writing about games!

Ignoring the news and engaging in the most wholesome shenanigans today: watching the Massachusetts poet laureate kick off the Moby-Dick marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. pixelfed.social/p/overbey/91...

Robert H.N. Ho has passed away. His foundation helped the field of Buddhist Studies in the USA survive and thrive during a time of tough headwinds in the academy. Forever grateful for the fellowship that established my position at Skidmore College. www.rhfamilyfoundationglobal.org/media/pdf/ob...

Fifty different problems in the world just locked into one big uniform piece like a Rubik's cube in my head.

Data Workers’ Inquiry continues its excellent project of amplifying voices of the human labor too often overlooked in debates about genAI. This latest report from Michael Geoffrey Asia is an essential read.

Reading Olivelle’s translation of the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra, I find myself genuinely curious whether, if these rules were ever taken seriously, the combination of verse 1.68 & verses 1.78-79 mean that the wife having sex with a brother-in-law completely slathered in ghee was nearly inevitable.

My employer, Dartmouth College, today boasts it's 1st Ivy "to launch AI at an institutional scale." It is doing this by partnering--"more than a collaboration"--with Anthropic, a company that stole the books of many faculty, me included, which many of us are suing.

Abu’l-Fazl trying real hard to flatter the idiot Mughal emperor Akbar in the _Akbarnama_. No real gamer would ever say Parcheesi “contains much wisdom.”

Elsa Marty on Bitcoin faith as ritual imagining of freedom and dignity. #aarsbl25

@smhedgecock.bsky.social with a super smart talk on prayer closets as contemporary evangelical gendered practice. #aarsbl25

There’s a certain irony to the fact that in order to make it to the Sheraton for this wonderful talk, I had to leave dirty breakfast dishes in the sink. #aarsbl25

Today’s #aarsbl25 was so good. Buddhism unit panel on teaching Buddhism in a fascist regime, followed by two panels excavating fascist roots and fascist æsthetics in the academic study of religion.

Here’s my super secret #aarsbl25 lifehack. Instead of waiting in long lines to get shitty Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, order a 4-pack of canned cold brew from Treehouse Brewing for pickup in the Prudential Center. Share a can with friends for extra social capital! treehousebrew.com/visiting-pru...

Wondering if Princeton University Press pays royalties to their author “The Buddha,” writer of the books _How to Lose Yourself_ and _How to Feel_. #aarsbl25

On the train to #aarsbl25 watching this video to fortify myself for the coming onslaught of tasteful shawls and scarves www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNW...

Starting #aarsbl25 off right with curry pan using proper Hokkaidō flour at Komugi, a lovely new Japanese bakery in Union Square bakerycafekomugi.com