Finally. Submitted. THE Thing. Which may or may not contain the line "The revolution will not be lyricized."

What Would Dickinson Do? is what I ask myself when I want to stay in

I finally had a chance to watch the testimony today. If the funding remains flat, budget shortfalls for each library system in FY27: NYPL - $17.5 million BPL - $8 million QPL - $9.6 million (IT, unfunded wage growth, library collections, new healthcare costs) Once again, this is why we need 0.5%.

Today’s Connections is a direct assault on literary studies

I thought the new Boots Riley was a legitimately fun train wreck

The books had to be light and small enough to fit in servicemen's pockets. The motto of the Council on Books in Wartime was: "Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas." n.pr/4uO1S1f

1. Circulating bc I love this. 2. Caveat: deaccessioning in libraries is a very real and necessary professional practice. 3. BUT many LIS folks (myself included) are still angry at the early C21 reckless "learning commons" revolution, which backdrops this particular mass ad-hoc deaccessioning case.

Chronicling the story of literary agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social's Middlemen uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. Out now (23 June UK pub). Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... #Publishing

Good discourse today, everyone

I’d also add that, given how very few public intellectuals of today are saying anything sensible and rigorous about AI, a document like this deserves serious consideration. Sale applied to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ on climate change.

hey man is everything ok? I noticed a blinkered venality beclouding the redemptive potential of all your aesthetic grasping

The way you know Bluesky is not a representative sample is several people are livetweeting their reading of an encyclical

Another thing to add to the syllabus

I guess I will also read the Pope's blog post on AI but I also think it is very funny to remember all the editors who told me no one reads long articles anymore

I really love when we’re all reading—actually *reading*—something together online.

“Solidarity arises precisely when we decide not to remain indifferent to what happens to our neighbor but instead to transform unavoidable bonds — economic, cultural and technological — into paths of sharing, cooperation and mutual care.” (par74)

Live-tweeted my reading of the Pope’s AI letter. Very mostly I found myself applauding and adding this to the syllabus. But principal divergences include: —His misrecognition and rejection of posthumanism (which I’m told is doctrinal) —Using “slavery” as a metaphor —Moralism vs my consequentialism

“Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly ‘private’ aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.” So far digging the Pope’s site of critique (unregulated technocapitalism)

I know absolutely zero about cybersecurity. It’s been a “gap” in my digital studies training that I really didn’t feel like was central/important. And now suddenly it feels like a massive chasm

Quote of the week: "We’re moving toward a world in which you’ll be able to build a degree from credits offered by hundreds of different entities that are utterly interchangeable” (Mark Salisbury, the co-founder and CEO of TuitionFit, a college tuition tool, buff.ly/sgJeAv8). #AcademicSky #highered

The Mandalorian and Guattari

The hostile MAGA takeover of UT-Austin makes me so sad. Growing up in rural East Texas, UT was like Oz to me. I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to do graduate work there before this era. They really gutted a magical, powerful institution. It’s heartbreaking. Just almost unspeakable.

The UT board of regents, like every public university board in Texas, works only for Greg Abbott. He appointed every one of them, they do what he wants. Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and communities have no voice whatsoever in how their schools are governed. www.statesman.com/news/educati...

if your child accidentally encounters a screen, make sure they practice at least two hours of barefoot grounding, ideally in an old growth forest.

“how algorithmic systems are remaking the distribution of opportunity and risk as a central task of social inquiry” As a ‘complex risk society’ girlie I am gleeful

For poetry folks, here's a cool kind of 'Letters to Wendy's' concept for the automated corporate chatbot age: bax.site.wesleyan.edu/bax-2020/wil...

I always forget between peer reviews that peer reviews are actually pleasurable and a way to stay ahead of the field. Part of the pleasure is giving myself sanctioned quiet time to engage deeply with a scholarly text. Because once you're to a certain stage in your own project, that time is rare.

idk who needs to hear this but fresca and orange juice

Anyway "harvard" is not "higher ed" and everyone should read @josheyler.bsky.social's book.

Anyone still gonna argue grades actually correlate with learning?

Library folks: come work with me at Cowles Library at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa! It's a great library, campus, city, and we have a live bulldog mascot named Gus aka Griff III. jobs.drake.edu/jobs/electro... 📚 📜

people equate "slop" with machine output as if the machines were not entirely trained on human slop, which we call "content" (pretty sure someone wrote about how the "content" paradigm led to AI slop but I forget who) Anyway I was never inclined to read 5 Ways To Spice Up Your Workday

Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,

I never much think about my height (5’8”). Maybe bc I’ve never online dated. But the thing about teaching a lot of distance students is that when they show up for graduation, about 87.9% will see me IRL for the very first time and go, “Oh! It IS you! I… thought you were taller!”

I have not taught undergraduates in *a while*. To what extent, for a 100-200-level class, could I or could I not assign such readings as... A Cyborg Manifesto What Is an Author? Lisa Gitelman Kate Hayles etc etc? Or should I just present these as lecture content?

This is why Americans are watching South Korean cinema and TV so hard rn.

Teaching an AI and Human Creativity course next year. Among other things, I can't wait to screen the episode of Clarissa Explains It All -- "Poetic Justice" -- in which Clarissa wins a poetry award for a computer-mad-libbed poem and then has to come clean.

Our 100-level AI Fundamentals course here was co-created by the chair of Philosophy. It's a work of art. I wish I could share the syllabus.

I love roundtables. No in-flight paper writing. Just pretzels, seltzer, and clear skies

It's publication day! Available in print and Open Access mitpress.mit.edu/978026255091... A book about how digital social reading apps are changing and nurturing the way we read. I talk about Wattpad, Goodreads, AO3 and more. @mitpress.bsky.social @unigroningen.bsky.social @gronlp.bsky.social

My last semester as a student I went to print something at the computer lab and sat next to a UG who was just straight ripping verbiage for his final paper from a book. Can you imagine? How quaint now—to plagiarize from a book, written by an expert, and which the UG had to locate in the stacks

““I did not utilize ChatGPT” — During the first term these attestations began to appear, I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists.”

This printed and bound book .... but the printer and the printing-office boy?

I actually kind of buy this as an acceleration mechanism but they seem to severely underplay the, you know, other precipitous thing that happened in 2008

Finally. The Insta'rithm has figured out that I will stop and watch literally every video of Fran Lebowitz it throws at me

One symptom of middle age is a kind of referential aphasia. Just now for instance could not for the LIFE of me remember what the ingrained mnemonic Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally mapped onto.

If we were to try and compile an index of US community archives, what would that look like? Would there be a helpful/usable version that we wouldn't have to update constantly?

Feels like the K12 edtech push has shifted the paradigm in favor of school choice toward unbundled/personalized ed at the same time that it has also materially strengthened the school choice project partly by generating backlash against the edtech itself which is mostly associated w/ public schools.

Grades in, inbox: 1. I can smell freedom* *an unpaid summer finishing two articles, cinching a tenure dossier, and likely doing book revisions

Here we're hiring in American history (School of Intellectual Freedom) and not in American history (History)