Annette Yoshiko Reed
@annetteyreed.bsky.social
Stendahl Chair at Harvard Divinity School / studying demons, apocalypses, and ancient identities, between memory and forgetting
NEW ESSAY — Centuries before Neo instantly mastered Kung Fu in The Matrix, medieval scholars found a shortcut to years of difficult study: a magical manuscript that promised to fast-track advanced learning. Anne Lawrence-Mathers investigates the Ars notoria: publicdomainreview.org/essay/ars-no...
So a whole lot of my talented Humanities colleagues are now unemployed as of today. A lot of understandable concern over Exeter. But for over two decades my Hums colleagues were in the top quartile for their research contribution to society. History top 10. Now gone with only a national whisper.
Poor cats, they can't catch a break from factories anywhere bsky.app/profile/poor...
poorly drawn cats@poorlycatdraw.bsky.social · 2mo ago
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
Not that I need another excuse to buy too many books, but saving knowledge + sticking it to AI billionaires are pretty good ones…
Podcast with my coach, Arjan Steve Milles—wise reflections about martial arts and strength, but also gems for an oral history of Muay Thai in America youtu.be/NHhFbCWwdf0?...
The Fighter, the Coach, and the Kettlebell : Steve Milles
YouTube video by Shugyo Podcast
youtu.be
Hiring a new full-time colleague in the School of Library and Information Science in Iowa. Particularly well-suited (but not limited) to special collections librarians or academic library instruction librarians who want to switch to full-time teaching. 📜 jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view...
Faculty Requisition Details - Jobs@UIOWA: Search and Apply for Jobs at The University of Iowa
Jobs@UIOWA: The official place to search and apply for jobs at The University of Iowa.
jobs.uiowa.edu
Ha! We need an academic book blurb version of this
Jon Adcock@jonadcock.bsky.social · last wk.Book blurbs deciphered #booksky
This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b
“As a librarian, I think it’s important to see this as…helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools,” Bailey said. “It’s important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them, and when the design seems to force adoption” Librarians to the rescue (again)
Librarians are hosting viral 'Avoiding AI' workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech | TechCrunch
At libraries around the country, "Avoiding AI" workshops have elicited unprecedented demand.
techcrunch.com
The practice of AI companies secretly buying millions of old books (some vanishingly rare), scanning them for AI training, then destroying them, epitomises everything that is wrong with today's exploitative AI industry. 🧵 1/2
hey! you! almost 1000 folks have read/downloaded Virginia Burrus's new Element in Religion in Late Antiquity, isn't it time you joined them? www.cambridge.org/core/element...
Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature
Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature
cambridge.org
Job opening: Assistant Professor of Christianity in Late Antiquity at Loyola Marymount University lmu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Career...
Assistant Professor of Christianity in Late Antiquity, Department of Theological Studies
Our Invitation The Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), a Carnegie classified R2 institution in the mainstream of American Catholic higher education, seeks…
lmu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
AI companies are bulk buying and destroying rare old books in order to train their slop generators www.404media.co/ai-companies...
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
404media.co
friends and neighbors, the newest Element in Religion in Late Antiquity is now *live* and *free to download* through August 4! The inimitable Virginia Burrus on "Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature"! www.cambridge.org/core/element...
Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature
Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature
cambridge.org
TT opening in #IslamicStudies at Stanford: Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies
Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies - Stanford University, California, United States
The Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University seeks applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies. We seek candidates specializing in pre-modern Islam; regional foc...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
And hey: Things Unseen is free--- you can buy it, sure, but it's available open access. Go to this link www.ucpress.edu/books/things... Hit "read book" and boom! There it is
Things Unseen by Ellen Muehlberger - ePub + PDF
Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.
ucpress.edu
OSU Religion’s short-term visiting scholar program for contingent and independent scholars (deadline Friday August 14, 2026) = religion.osu.edu/news/csr-vis...
CSR Visiting Scholar Program – Call for Applications
Visiting Scholar – Call for Applications The Center for the Study of Religion at The Ohio State University is pleased to announce the continuation of our short-term visiting scholar program. Applicati...
religion.osu.edu
“Compared to what?” is always the essential question when asking about critiques of higher education & universities, whether we’re discussing declining trust, freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity, or any of the other things.
Ryan Enos@ryanenos.bsky.social · 3w agoThis is crucial and often unmentioned. Almost every single diagnosis of declining faith in universities fails to mention that it is runs in parallel to declining faith in almost all American institutions. Any failure to recognize this means it is really flawed or not a serious effort.
The allergy to religion that somehow still persists in various social sciences and humanities is itself a critical data point in understanding how we got into this mess.
“Kahane’s ideas didn’t really take root in his time, but he planted seeds. Those seeds sprouted a couple of decades later.” With Eugene Sheppard & John Plotz, Shaul Magid discusses how the radical thinking of Meir Kahane has made its way to the mainstream.
“Is Kahane Becoming Normalized?”: Shaul Magid on Meir Kahane’s Zionist Radicalism - Public Books
“For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews … was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the Jews was liberalism.”
publicbooks.org
![That said, some of the Rebbe’s rhetoric can easily spill over into the political realm. For example, he blamed Israel for the Six-Day War (p. 158). Some of his assertions are genuinely startling. He maintained that if the State of Israel ceased to exist, “it is certain that there would no longer be wars and travails [in Eretz Yisrael] and the people there would make order and not kill one another” (p. 155). He even blamed the Zionists for Hitler’s decision to annihilate European Jewry (p. 156).
On broader issues, it is difficult to regard the Rebbe as a model for contemporary readers. For example, he explains why women may not study Torah independently (pp. 119 ff.). They may also not be taught the Oral Law or even leshon ha-kodesh. The result is that women in the Satmar community are not supposed to be able to open a traditional Jewish text on their own, which is precisely the point: to keep them ignorant (see also pp. 135–136).
Magid’s annotations enable readers of any background to understand the Rebbe's arguments and the sources upon which they are based. Even readers capable of studying the originals will benefit from consulting this translation to take advantage of Magid’s notes.Footnote 1](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ssox67vojaskf7vuxvjxbd35/bafkreiflsvmlfpquxzilojfxkqo3a6ee3youfa4idj7re5mgbldabxkmhe)
A sweeping new study has found that daily reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by more than 40% over the last 20 years — raising urgent questions about the cultural, educational and health consequences of a nation reading less. news.ufl.edu/2025/08/read...
Reading for pleasure in free fall: New study finds 40% drop over two decades
Daily reading for pleasure in the U.S. dropped by more than 40% over the last 20 years
news.ufl.edu
Why did Greenwich Village become the heart of New York City's bohemia? Because it was home to a woman's court and prison, which brought gender non-conforming women - many of them queer and/or trans - to the Village from every other corner of the city www.gothamcenter.org/blog/village...
How Greenwich Village Became America’s Bohemia — The Gotham Center for New York City History
How Greenwich Village Became America’s Bohemia By Hugh Ryan These women’s prisons believed there were only three legitimate jobs a woman could have: wife, maid, or nursemaid. For any of those jobs...
gothamcenter.org