I'm so happy to be able to say that The Enclosures of Free Verse is now available for pre-order from UNC Press! 🎉 Use code 01SOCIAL30 to save 30%. tinyurl.com/2jj23a4a @uncpress.bsky.social

DEAR GRAD STUDENTS, This March @post45data.bsky.social will be holding a free, online mini-workshop for grads working in the fields of contemporary literature and culture. More info / abstract submission here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 1/4

This thread rightly describes bad social media logics, even if they aren’t traceable to Russian disinfo campaigns. Just be reasonable folks!

Since it resonated with the audience, I’ll recap my main argument against AGI here. ‘General intelligence’ is like phlogiston, or the aether. It’s an outmoded scientific concept that does not refer to anything real. Any explanatory work it did can be done better by a richer scientific frame. 1/3

The Great Finnegans Wake Annotator!

Back in the Twitter days, when critics suggested that the character limit impoverished discourse and reshaped communication to bite-sized morsels, I (confident and sophisticated) thought it was a silly critique. "You can tweet more than one tweet, duh."

that users could prefer a generated simulation to actual old clips for nostalgia purposes clarifies how nostalgia is about consuming "decontextualization" in itself — nostalgia negates history under the auspices of longing for it

Laurence Sterne (whom I'm thinking about this morning) started work on TRISTRAM SHANDY, his first real/major piece of fiction, at 46.

Does anyone know the purpose or typical use of the "next line" character, Unicode 0x85? How does it relate to CR and LF?

more than a decade ago, one Fraction-Aja Hawkeye panel captured the vibe of this entire era we're living in now

my loneliness is killing me and I must confess, I still believe when I'm not with you I lose my mind give me a sign hit me baby one more time thank you for reading this abridged version of FIGHT CLUB by Chuck Palahniuk

I repeat: This is WILDLY illegal. Trump is just outright, explicitly, egregiously ignoring the law. The fact that NONE of these words in the Times post say so is a failure of journalism.

"the new springs from the old, but that is just what makes it new" (Brecht, "The Popular and the Realistic") "Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know." (Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent")

I just got word that the faculty senate of my university is now dissolved and no longer exists, in compliance with the new Texas law. Yikes! I thought my university would somehow find a loophole, or an exemption, but it's official. It's a sad day for shared governance and checks and balances.

The payoff to this thread is malevolence itself 😅

This episode on the Dreyfus Affair, and its contemporary resonances, is excellent. www.ppfideas.com/episodes/pol...

Considering getting this passage from the NYT article printed on totes for our art history majors. Too much?

a belated #modwrite announcement: my first academic book should be out with the Edinburgh UP in October. On its cover is Alexandra Hughes's stunning art. More on what’s between the covers soon, but for now, enjoy Alex’s stunning work, and see more here: alexandrahughes.co.uk

Introducing the new and improved logo for Omnivorous, my queerly voracious newsletter, where you can find pop culture takes and fiction with a queer bite. Consider subscribing if you haven't. You won't regret it! omnivorous.substack.com

Reposting for the work week crowd:

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

I sat on the technical advisory committee for the BLS for about 5 years, and the statisticians who work there are so conscientious and hard working. I am SO UPSET to hear about the commissioner’s firing!!! 😩

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." --Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

Hi everyone, As part of my dissertation, I am researching audiobook narration. If you have listened to an audiobook within the last two years, or have previously been a frequent audiobook user, I would really appreciate your thoughts! You can find the survey here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

(Don't think folks would mind me tagging @wcaleb.org, so he knows that we appreciate his work!)

Another semester, another moment to thank that guy from Rice University who made that syllabus maker thing. I love you wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

An interesting parenthetical comment in this NYRB review of two books on China’s communist party. [Link: www.nybooks.com/articles/202... ]

So this phrase “able-bodied” has clearly been on the most recent list of R talking points. It comes from the first round of English labor laws, which were instituted after the Black Death. A mini medieval story time!

Trying to keep AI slop out of articles, Wikipedia has compiled a list of common phrases and discursive gestures that that generates. This is useful reading, too, for anyone marking student essays. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... #GenAI

The open access version of Selling Sexual Knowledge is out (hardcopies coming shortly)! Reposting this little thread from December where I take a break from chowing down on holiday treats to talk a little about what it's actually about and why I wrote it.

My first book ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE is published July 2025! I'm very excited for this to be out in the world + feeling grateful to everyone at Edinburgh University Press - especially series editors Georgina Colby & Eric White!! 🎉 ꩜ 🫟 @edinburghup.bsky.social /// tinyurl.com/3sf7yj8d

“Historically, no one lived past age 35” "I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

A lot of people know about the Germans in the space program, but the more relevant engineer might be Qian Xuesen, the MIT/CalTech aerospace professor who co-founded JPL and was sent to recruit the Germans. We deported him the 1950s. He became the leader of China’s missile program.

thank you @beyer.house.gov

eventually someone is just going to write gender trouble for straight teenage boys.

If you had asked me last year which historical detail from my book was going to show up in the 2025 news, "working class women forced to band together to make sure there's no lead in their kids' milk" wouldn't have been on the list. But here we are: buttondown.com/theswordandt...

This is essential to understand: despite the perception of gov grant funding as sustaining university research, most gov grant projects lose money for the university.

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

The trope that universities are "dependent" on the federal government fundamentally misunderstands how vital this partnership has been for the US. The private sector can't replace it. If we kill it, we're all worse off. From @donmoyn.bsky.social and me: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/are-univer...

Trying this query again 🥺

- I'm a specialist in working with teams of composers, producers and sound designers on realizing *ethical* solutions to procedural audio generation - no models based on scraped data. - Open to remote positions or hybrid roles: Upper Midwest. If you know of anything please drop me a DM or reply!

Visa revocations at Syracuse: www.syracuse.com/politics/cny... No details on the students affected. I hope this convinces folks that institutions cannot address this locally and cannot hope to just "fly under the radar."

I've enjoyed watching this meme this morning b/c it gives real insight into how these models work (and fail). This (funny) trick only works with things that are idiomatic-ish. "the population of a berry meaning," for instance, doesn't.

Due to Ohio SB1 the University of Toledo is eliminating majors in Disability Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, Africana Studies, Asian Studies, Middle East Studies & more. Toledo was one of few places where undergrads could major in disability studies. news.utoledo.edu/index.php/04...

Columbia University's Philosophy Department, where Mohsen Mahdawi is a student, has issued a statement. philosophy.columbia.edu