Apropos of .... nothing at all..... The postdoctoral laborers bill of rights is a project I collaborated on way back in 2019. It aims to clarify some of the purposes of postdoctoral positions and offers guidelines for designing successful positions. works.hcommons.org/records/9twr...

One thing about being on a search committee is it reminds me that there are so many random ways to be stopped as a candidate. We have this "evaluate" function in our HR system (it's terrible) and there are evaluative criteria we're mandated to rate that aren't listed in the job descriptions.

Happy pub day to my beautiful daughter!!!!!! she is so smart and funny and weird and thoughtful and I am so excited for you to meet her!!!!

Got an email sent to all faculty and staff telling us our campus food pantry was nearly empty. The number of students using it has doubled this year. Take that in. They asked us to donate, and I did. Easily the saddest email I've received at work. How is your campus food pantry doing? #AcademicSky

Another day, another reminder that it's absurd that we have no standard adjective for specifying that a person is from the United States.

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

Genuinely laughing to keep from crying at this instant classic from @mcsweeneys.net www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...

Whatever strategy you’re about to suggest, we’ve thought about it. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Almost everything I've seen about implementing AI in archives feels as though it was written in a world with neither archivists nor archival description

Good morning! My comrade @annakornbluh.bsky.social and I published today in Hyperallrgic ean op-ed about the gutting of our right to culture and the ways to defend and fight back. Link below!

Spread the word! #SaveUT!! UT Austin admin are working to eliminate vital departments and censor what profs can teach. If you haven’t yet written to UT Austin admin, please do do do. The more voices of protest and support the better. An attack on one is an attack on all!

UT Austin is where I earned my PhD. If this goes through, it would be such a loss for students in Texas and everywhere. Click through for specific calls to action.

The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) at RBS invites applicants to its 2025 cohort of Junior Fellows. Applications are due 𝗪𝗲𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟭𝟵 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿. For details about this & other RBS scholarships & fellowships, visit tinyurl.com/Apply-SoFCB-2025

Written by a fellow PASSHE public regional prof, love to see it: “These are small but significant reminders that the university is not doomed to permanent privatization.”

People think the first thing Gutenberg printed was the Bible. This is false. The first things he printed were a political prophecy, propaganda about the Turks’ threat to Christendom, & a popular school text. If you want a parallel to AI, that’s it: making $ from conspiracies, racism, & school slop.

In response to that skeet asking if anything amazing has ever happened to you bc of social media: my friendship w @halperta.bsky.social is rooted irl, & has crossed continents & platforms w long gaps & reunions, exchanges of art & ideas. My answer is yes (&) I love seeing this book in the world!

Looking to read immersive, deeply considered essays about land, labor, and the subtle politics of inhabitation in rural Alaska? I am so excited to have received Ghosts of Distant Trees by my incredibly talented friend @rickirobin.bsky.social

Absolutely unhinged fantasies about what learning in the age of AI means on my timeline today. The most important thing they reveal is that many educators never took learning seriously.

This is only 12 miles from where my family lives. When you use AI in any form, people are affected directly

Introducing Sidra Collaborative co-founder Hadassah St. Hubert! Hadassah is dedicated to helping cultural heritage funders and workers scope ideas and programs, while identifying resources to support thriving creatives. She can help build emergency response funding programs. sidracollaborative.com

ACLS has released a statement regarding the White House “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”: bit.ly/3IviMig

okay, that’s enough. let’s take the rest of the week off.

If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.

What's your favorite resource for understanding how to define and recognize propaganda?

Wishing everyone a good week ahead. Take care of yourselves and don't give in to the fascists.

In the late 2010s, I was friendly with some people who were in the room during the meetings where Apple decided what its Siri should look and sound like. They argued that voice-activated tools should not be built to sound like women because it would propagate misogyny. They were overruled.

Nooo didn't mean to delete that post

In “Against AI: Critical Refusal in the Library,” I examine LIS as in need of a values-realignment, asking readers to refuse the technosolutionism we are so often offered in place of human-centered possibilities, like taking racism, climate change, and labor rights seriously doi.org/10.1353/lib....

Ooof the job market is not great for people who know most AI applications are bad.

look it's me 🤗

today's mood

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

Sometimes I click on faculty job listings just because they are so unhinged.

Who could have seen this coming.

We stand in solidarity with our CPB colleagues and friends. So many incredible projects were made possible by and with them. ✊

typing "how to make a resume" into the search bar like I'm not a mid-career professional with an advanced degree currently watching democracy crumble before my eyes

What academic job market resources are you all sharing with students these days?

but what if we didn't

So who's teaching about the "romantasy" boom? Do you all have favorite scholarly articles or books for understanding/contextualizing this trend?

I can’t mute enough words to stop the doomscrolling anymore

All I can say is that the enterprise cannot hold when the grift is mainlined into the curriculum, when it becomes the institutional bureucracy. I recall a line from Claudia Goldin’s review of LowerEd a lot these days. She said something like, “if cheating is as routine and unchecked as this…”

Risottograph was one of the first zine projects I ever did and I am over the moon that it is part of this amazing exhibit.

"Risottograph" by @halperta.bsky.social & Julie Fischer demos the popular "magic" minizine: 1 sheet folded into 8pg booklet, w/center cut allowing sheet's unused back to stay hidden, or as here refold to reveal a 2nd 8pg zine. From Shalperta Press: halperta.com/shalperta/ +

"Z is for Zines" exhibit I curated w/ @rareuva.bsky.social help. As a librarian, zines=I can amplify more authors/experiences/topics our community cares about+needs than via just books; especially work where racism, transphobia+more violence+systematic harm=barriers to author, publish, widely share+

Since I don't have a full time job, this year I was able to take three full days to travel and visit loved ones for rosh hashanah, the Jewish new year. I have never done this before. What a luxury I didn't even know I was missing.

Got a black light and found a surprise in my cabinets today

Getting up earlier every morning so I can do a few nice things before the despair sets in

I found class power on zero hours by angry workers and Solidarity Unionism by Staughton Lynd to be really useful in Organizing grad students within an English department to demand many concessions from the faculty. It worked better than going through the NLRB!!

Saw a lot of posts about academia dot edu today and smiled because I haven't logged in since the 2010s.... ... anyway it turns out I never formally deleted the account. Went ahead and did that today. In case you, too, decided in 2018 that if you ignored it it would go away.

Reread this short guide to responding to fascism in higher ed this morning. I have very mixed feelings about how increasingly resonant it is proving to be, but also I hope it will prove helpful and maybe comforting as we watch current events unfold. halperta.com/shalperta%20...