having a conversation with the Amazon AI chatbot, so lifelike!

Ehrenreich is so funny and vicious and wonderful and I’m glad she didn’t live to see Katy Perry return from space

Ok. Grad student tells me that this has been up for like 6 months now and that it's far far from complete (doesn't have cotton nero a.x for example). But still !

guys I was able to access a British Library digitized manuscript today for the first time in years. Check it out. www.bl.uk/collection/d... click on the pdf [save that!] and use its hyperlinks! + for the post I wrote for today's MEDIEVAL NATURE class

just wrote "Adorner and Horkheimer" in an email to my grad students, and even though I might not have a Brooklyn accent, apparently my email does

The Lawstudent in the attic

The man who wants foreigners deported is literally named FRENCH. change your name to Akron or GTFO

Dizzying to read the NYT stories back to back, one on Venezuelans sent to El Salvador to be tortured with Trump approval, and another about an Israeli grad student held and tortured in Iraq, whom Trump's people labored to free

It is kinda odd to go from a NYC that's buzzing with Mamdani's win to a scholarly space where whew that's just not a topic of conversation at all unless I break out my socialist conversational shoehorn.

This is doing the rounds and there's some of you, me included, who would have clicked through immediately if you knew it was by Peter Coviello. It's great.

in my closing remarks yesterday at the symposium launching Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, I did a close reading of our title, noticing the word "for" so I couldn't resist making this as I'm waiting at the ATL airport, and @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social told me to post it

this is the most informative label on Bluesky, mufo-gossipy division

I think it's likely that I look back on the book launch symposium for Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century as one of the absolute highlights of my career thanks to @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social , our contributors, and all the participants -- this was so incredible

A page from last Monday's community life drawing session at Daydreamer. Oh! And I finally bought a binder and clear sleeves so i can start sorting these for reference (and justify cramming fat-tip pencil drawings onto 8x10 inch paper).

DSA loop in Prospect Park this morning was *exultant* and so fun to hear about schemes and plans for what to do next

As @dicknixon.bsky.social‬ said, this is like watching the Home Run Derby. But one answer in particular stuck out for me. Asked what it takes to be able to call yourself a "real New Yorker," he said "knowing what a bodega is."

So I found myself last night at a taoing of Lovett or Leave It, redetermined that it's not really my thing, but my god the universal boos and jeers hurled at the clip of Schumer's non-endorsement. He's not going to be able to show his face at normal Dem events here ever again.

the thing in medieval confessional manuals about being careful not to accidentally introduce your parishioners to ways of sinning they had never yet considered. like that.

glanced at the Ross Douthat column -- ZM maybe not significant, since NYC mayor is typically a deadend job, that's his argument -- and obviously what he's ignoring is the enormous volunteer force that DSA was able to field, and how NYC DSA's next electoral target is likely knocking out Schumer.

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom Zohran completely blew away: His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. You don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! Part of re-establishing norms is speaking like an adult.

Public access style Hell Gate live coverage was amazing

BREAKING: Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students. Follow AP for live updates.

A propos of nothing

whatever you think of Spanberger, the fact that her opponent ran a campaign based almost entirely on transphobia and is on track to eat shit in the biggest blowout the state has seen since 2009 is unambiguously a huge win

This is shaping up to be a spectacular night for Democrats. Still. a long way to go, but hard to find a bright spot the GOP can count on at this moment.

Who is wise? One who learns from all people. Who is a fool? One who is content with their own limited understanding of the world. (Pirkei Avot, Ethics of our Fathers)

Today's gift is fearfully looking through an old (and v preliminary) article I wrote to send to a researcher who asked for it and discovering...it's not half bad! So, if you missed it or want a short diversion: the millennium of Nux indica and the colonial etymology of 'coconut'

Bourgeois me in Brooklyn 's Commie Corridor effusing at the gym with my trainer about the coming Mamdani victory

Amazing

taxes went up the rich in Boston and they didn't leave. nobody that rich is living in NYC because they have to.

Just finished The Black Vampyre (1819). It's the first American vampire story and features a Black vampire who enacts revenge for his enslavement during the lead up to the Haitian Revolution. There's a lot to think through, but... 1/2

Pulling this back into TLs to be sure that all who can will stand as witnesses for him (and for me and so many others too).

For the love of God stop calling capitalism “Technofeudalism.” This is not a mutant regression off the track of benign capitalism’s progress to utopia. This is capitalism doing capitalism.

saw WEAPONS last night and while I realize it'd be an utterly different film if this had happened, but in "real life" Brolin's character, of course, would be DEEP into internet conspiracy boards. There's some version of this film where the horror is that the internet conspiracies all end up right.

Last night we settled on an adequate casting for Rochester for the next Jane Eyre adaptation: Jeremy Strong

Imagine reading Jane Eyre for the first time, not knowing anything about it, getting 60% of the way though, to Rochester's proposal, and with the heft of the book in your hands, wondering why there's still so much book left.

seems to me that the incentive here for troublemakers to report their most paranoid, well-armed neighbors as noncitizens would be considerable

Filing "all shall be well" with "your one precious life" and "only connect" in the bromides-not-for-me bin

Imagined a guy on my run to get mad at: someone voting for Mamdani bc he's a single-issue anti-natalist and the other 2 candidates have reproduced

Honestly I find the pro Elizabeth Street Garden people so annoying that I want it gone gone gone

This will be a long thread on yesterday police massacre in Rio. In nothern Rio de Janeiro city, there is a couple of hills called Complexo da Penha. It's Comando Vermelho("Red Command", a drug gang), or CV, territory. CV is the greatest gang in Rio, second in the whole Brazil. +

Reading a grad student's oral history project and this is the opening line. Kinda brilliant lol

Repurposing a frog costume for a bookstore trivia event, I went as the brother of Alice, the frog from Steven Milhauser's 1997 New Yorker Story "A Visit." I'm concerned about my sister's marriage. You know, the story about the guy who visits his college buddy and finds he's happily married a frog

I like how this missale (Use of Wroclaw) includes both a special mass against plague in humans, and a second special mass against plague in animals.

hmm

The coal miners lost that 1921 battle, but they also laid the groundwork for future labor gains. The Battle of Blair Mountain became a rallying point for labor rights in Appalachia, catalyzing the United Mine Workers of America. The red bandana also stood for multi-ethnic class solidarity.

I had a dream and in the dream I was a scholar trying to figure out "when human societies first started having people line up when waiting for things"

Virginia Woolf, when her brain was breaking, thought the birds were singing in Greek. Me listening to Botch: Guy whose delusions take the form of thinking every screamo song from the late 90s is about him.