hey nerds! Any recommended critical/theoretical reading on digression—its pleasures, frustrations, etc. Whether in literature (e.g. Tristram Shandy), film or tv, video games ("side quests"), etc.? Other fun examples welcome too. (My favs are "Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and whale facts obvs 🐳)

ummm it was actually Walt Whitman who first called a NYC ferry the friendship express

this is also the phrase I used to start my Émile Zola reading marathon

so happy for but also jealous of NYC right now! Sounds like the zohran election parties were LIT

This makes me happy to no end—not least because I've had the pleasure of explaining to my mom how I'm known among Whitman scholars.

bluesky introduces new “backhanded likes” and “pity likes” beta

Still thinking about this fyi

To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.

Pleased to announce it was crotch comparison day in Whitman class. #pedagogy #crotch @genoways.bsky.social

I'm so excited Dan, Johanna, & Emory have made it possible for me to record the entirety of their book launch symposium next month as an arc in the "Vandal Live" series. Symposia are, in my opinion, the very best of academic programming, & everybody should have the good fortune of partaking.

Everybody's talking about the vaguely mystical masturbatory subculture where doomed young men find self-destructive community.

This is my out-of-office message

💯 build a cabin, build a chair, hoe beans, grow some beans, manufacture pencils, repair an axe handle, make a fishing rod, fish, philosophize about fishing, think about not fishing, get into a passive aggressive emotional standoff with a loon, wait I forgot what I was listing.

Also, New Zealand Tom was *right there*

Thanks to everyone who tagged me on this. I am in touch with NZ officials. I have called for an urgent inquiry into the real possibility that this is the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them.

“Shakespeare’s” plays were authored by Sir Francis Bacon, as revealed to me in a complex cypher contained within the plays.

RIP Thoreau you would've loved zillow

This was such a treat to be with @mattseybold.bsky.social @aprilanson.bsky.social @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social @jlb.bsky.social @natewolff.bsky.social( & others not on here?) to think through the knots of energy, aesthetics, politics & the hell we inhabit. Thanks Matt, Jeff, & Joe for having us.

Lots of options but let's go classic on this one and say that time we shitposted so hard they put it in a peer reviewed journal and then that issue won a prize 🐳

This project would not have happened were it not for Nate's book.

A real honor to nearly bookend (with a late cameo following earlier more substantive appearances!) this amazing series. The depth and breadth of Matt's work here is truly awe inspiring. (And good morning to my brother in late-alphabetical sorting, Yanis Varoufakis.)

A landing page for the completed “A Tale of Today” series in which (crossing fingers) all the links to episode bibliographies work.

👉 👈 What if we kissed in a bar brawl ☺️ setting in motion a fundamental tension or conflict about cycles of violence and how hard it is to break them 🤭

Who said it, Emily Brontë or Werner Herzog?

just gonna have to keep saying, in company of so many others: we are jewish faculty against the astroturf antisemitism persecution of jewish faculty by our own universities, by online hate groups, and by the regime www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Let me add: Work wife

Nate, this is a poem!

reminder:

Leading to Ahab’s famous reply, “I came here to chew bubblegum and kick one fish’s ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum”

[new Isaac Chotiner interview]

pretty sad AI flubbed this gimme

"The Commission’s co-chairs seem insistent on becoming the patrons of one particular faction of MA Jews—not only providing a platform for them to dominate a different faction but also empowering them to use their access as “court Jews” to destroy the right to free expression in our state."

again just a gentle reminder that Melville intended this to be read in Pee-wee Herman's "I know you are but what am I?" voice

Genuinely great thread. Also this is how Matt Seybold's seductive baritone on the "American Vandal" podcast radicalized me into a Keynesian

Cambridge, Somerville, Boston, and beyond, come hear me talk about the past 4 billion years or so with my friend Phoebe, geologist extraordinaire, at the @harvardbookstore.bsky.social Thursday 7pm

A student emailed me to ask what "affect theory" is and I responded. iykyk

it must feel so good as a whale to boom your entire bulk

When people ask, "Right before the Republic crumbled, who was doing the best 19th century literary pun stencils?" remember my name.

My pal Pete has written a mad, obsessive, ambitious book about how everything comes down to one thing, and I can’t wait to read it!! (even though the one thing in question is not, as one might naturally assume, a specific albino fish)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” (1836)

Just a reminder that by McTeague's Law anyone who owns this immediately becomes a dentist.

first day of teaching fit check

I smashed that follow button so fast.

Joyce, THANK YOU ❤️

As the Israeli army brazenly murders children, journalists, and doctors, some Massachusetts democrats have decided to do Trump's dirty work for him: instituting "don't say Palestine" rules and anonymous tip lines to suppress dissent. Great -- if upsetting! -- overview from @jpygold.bsky.social:

is that prejudice in your pocket or are you just inelastic to see me

You’re laughing. I’m asking you to let love bend your stiff prejudice and you’re laughing.

Sorry if you "completed" Zohran's scavenger hunt and got chai and a meet-n-greet you actually missed the last clue which led to a cask on a pier in lower manhattan containing a sacred text unlocking the secrets of socialism.