The Alan Parsons Trello Board

The law firm that handles my institution's visa and immigration work is urging the same. If you have an H-1B visa and are out of the country, get back today, or not at all. And if you're in the U.S. already on an H-1B, don't leave.

This is just a random shoutout to the Alfred app on Mac, which is one of those workhorse tools that just makes life easier.

It won't end here, but starting here is horrific enough: the Heritage Foundation urges the FBI to, among other things, consider the transgender flag evidence of a threat of domestic terrorism.

very clear MAGA wants to bend the 1st amendment til it breaks, thereby bumping the 2nd amendment up to the #1 spot

Much of the alt text I’ve written for @clipart.bsky.social gets lost in the hazy fog of memory, but this one, I remember so clearly writing. Dear Annabelle, where are you now?

We've reached the point where you can be fired for expressing an opinion about people being fired for expressing an opinion.

You are in midair.

Qanon right now

Ideology is always what other people have. You, you don't have ideology.

"Students asked me to be a faculty advisor to a new chapter of Turning Point USA. I said yes, because it's good for democracy" is the headline of a NYT op-ed I fully expect to see in the coming days.

My new book from @mitpress.bsky.social, Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, is out today! The book explores how play and gaming culture have mainstreamed far right ideology through social media platforms. #digitalculture #games #politics #platforms

I watched Weapons, an okay horror movie that is pretty normal until the final 30 minutes, when it's pedal to the metal. The nerd in me wishes it did more to engage with its obvious source material though (Pied Piper of Hamlin, pre-Romero zombies, COVID, and moral panics about grooming).

The past decade has seemed like a speed run in reverse chronological order through DeLillo novels. We've now reached his seventies conspiracy novels. We're in Running Dog territory now.

Randomly, here’s my dog.

Scoop! Witnesses Assumed Charlie Kirk Shooter Was Just Ordinary Gunman On School Campus

Feeling vindicated for the way I always internally guffawed whenever a liberal friend talked about how great Ezra Klein was.

Pretty sure Trump hasn’t said a peep about the CDC shooting a few weeks ago that left one police officer dead?

The landscape in higher ed is bleak right now, but here's a bright light at my institution: there's a new tenure track position at @davidsoncollege.bsky.social in Gender & Sexuality Studies. Please share widely!

All truths wait in all things,

same

The right always uses violence as a pretext for more violence. All in the name of law and order. Every time.

Allowing video on this platform was a mistake.

Lost in the Texas A&M news is that the entire crusade is the product of a former labradoodle breeder turned State Rep whose stunts and grandstanding are so insufferably transparent that even his Republican colleagues despise him. Meet Brian Harrison, winner of Texas Monthly’s 2025 Cockroach award:

The assault on academic freedom in the Texas A&M travesty is bad enough, but there's also a terrifying underlying threat, which is that YOU could be the next professor videoed by a student plant who goes viral on right wing media (which is to say, any corporate media these days).

Transmission #082 from GPS III-SV05 (ACCM) 1. Quantum Mine 2. Unspeakable Dread 3. Creepy Phonographs

Life is short. You're going to die someday, probably sooner than you think. This is why you should spend your life on the internet arguing with strangers.

ALWAYS avoid absolutists.

My son, a junior at Emory, just said (not without disgust), Emory always caves.

Stop doomscrolling and start exploring. For fans of interactive fiction, text adventures, and choice-based games, 'tis the season!

Hereby decreeing that CAIS is an acceptable acronym for Critical AI Studies, much as STS works for Science and Technology Studies.

🎶 Every nation, every state Freedom means to agitate 🎶 - "Don Quixote's Lullaby," David Massengill

Orlando gets its own special treatment in notime.now.

John Roach, the CEO of Tandy—parent corporation of RadioShack—and the man who pitched the idea of the TRS-80 computer in 1977. (All this and more in the alt text)

If only people cared as much about the rule of law as they do about a restaurant logo.

Deets on Avelo and ICE www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year. Y'all this isn't sustainable.

kicking off my sabbatical by <checks notes> moving two kids to two colleges a 1,000 miles apart in the space of 48 hours

The funny thing about the University of Chicago business is that I had never even HEARD of the school until now.

it me

A while back I gave a talk about @clipart.bsky.social and its use/misuse of alt text. I've finally posted the text of the talk and my slides...

Crazy how U of Chicago is so deeply in debt because it fell for a Bored Ape phishing scheme

Are you teaching cli-fi this fall? Or climate doomerism? Or digital mapping? Or flash fiction? Or old-school (non-AI) procedural generation? Add notime.now to your syllabus, and I'm happy to Zoom into your class and discuss it with your students!

"Into the Hollow."

Motley Stëw

Alright, Bsky — I think I just discovered our new favourite website. @dlazaro.ca built the coolest thing: if you go to sky.dlazaro.ca, you can get a snapshot of what the sky currently looks like at your approximate location as a gorgeous CSS gradient. Here’s mine from this morning ☀️

I feel seen.

It gives me faint hope that not all is lost with social media when thousands of people follow @findmobydick.bsky.social, which all it does is reply to @mobydickatsea.bsky.social with the chapter and paragraph number of the posted Moby Dick quote.

This fucking country. It's a fucking choice to have this many shootings in America.

Given the trend in the late 1970s of turning hit songs into cheesy movies (Harper Valley PTA, The Gambler), I'm surprised no one ever turned "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" into a B-movie starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta as Brenda and Eddie.