There will probably always be people telling humanists that they need to shill - to get behind a Hollywood production, or take a bold stand for Silicon Valley, or turn the humanities into an adjunct of public policy. You can safely ignore them at no intellectual cost.

Oh the pedantry in me! To say “I’m not caucasian” to a doctor who was using it to say “white” which I certainly am, but which my grandparents were not, at least not socially.

Steering wheel slumped, lamplight pooling in puddled reflections, let the recriminations flow: in graduate school, did I forget to joke about the idolization of Habermas in certain Berkeley circles? Did I miss a chance for a "Habermas Papam/Habemus Papam" joke?

[TV news announcer sits at desk] "In a breaking culture story, we are learning that the world's first known author was actually named Anhedonia" [puts hand to ear] "I'm very sorry, I've been told that I got that pronunciation wrong, it's "Anhedonia."

this has been your regularly scheduled image for faculty hiring and/or success in the creative fields

Ben Wurgaft@benwurgaft.bsky.social · yesterday

A friend offers an image: a cargo cultist became wealthy by once finding a refrigerator on the beach. "Do what I did!" He tells young people year after year. "Go to the beach!" They could go for a hundred years.

A friend offers an image: a cargo cultist became wealthy by once finding a refrigerator on the beach. "Do what I did!" He tells young people year after year. "Go to the beach!" They could go for a hundred years.

Once again realizing that by cultural type, and not by intention, I am far more likely to drop an ambient album than to have an office job.

Compos mentis = good Compost mantis = also good

I am in fact a freelance developmental editor, as well as a writer represented by an agent, and Rebecca's quite right about this.

Rebecca Colesworthy@rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 3d ago

reading the bookforum review of Middlemen and I expect that the scholarly publishing equivalent of the agent is the freelance developmental editor. if conglomeration drove the rise of the agent, austerity drove the rise of the latter—the editor who actually edits, helps w/ the proposal, etc.

Ok I used the Merriam Webster birth year word search tool and all the words for my year are in proto-Semitic, like Akkadian didn’t even exist yet.

this seems to me very obviously true

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last wk.

One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.

The funniest move, of course, would have been to call the sequel "Cape Funf" and then establish a series of prequels: "Cape Eins," "Cape Zwei" unsw.

hmm, they keep creating the vapid, clout-seeking form of public intellectual life from my science fiction novel "don't create the vapid, clout-seeking form of public intellectual life."

being a serious intellectual doesn't mean that when you see the phrase "p-hacking" it doesn't remind you of Special Agent Dale Cooper's claim that by delaying urination he derived a nearly sexual pleasure, no, it doesn't mean that at all.

Just when I was looking for a new way to describe my ambitions, I learned about the concept of the "Brand Liability."

come to think of it, "Waffle, Es, Es" is a terrible name for a Yiddish-speaking waffle joint

Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879 Which will be remember'd for a very long time

Cethan Leahy@cethanleahy.com · last wk.

In the interests of fairness, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is going to adapt the UK's best poem "The Tay Bridge Disaster" as a blockbuster movie.

and it is only on Mubi for two more days...

Watch City of Gold (2014) on MUBI

Celebrated restaurant critic Jonathan Gold has a deep and complex relationship with the food and culture of his city, Los Angeles. He tours his city looking for new food experiences, uncovering hidden...

mubi.com

Ben Wurgaft@benwurgaft.bsky.social · last wk.

Yesterday was Jonathan Gold's birthday; he would have been 66. Laura Gabbert's documentary about Gold and his Los Angeles, City of Gold, released several years before Gold's passing in 2018, remains my favorite documentary, and I loved this conversation with Gabbert: laist.com/news/los-ang...

On August 13th, in Brooklyn, in a garden, Rebecca Porte will speak on the subject of paradise and Hieronymus Bosch - people (starting with me) are calling it the literary-critical event of the summer. www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/sip...

Sips & Scholars: On Earthly Delights: Theorizing Paradise with Hieronymus Bosch with Rebecca Ariel Porte | Brooklyn Public Library

Class is in session this summer! We’re partnering with the Brooklyn Institute of Social Research to offer the second annual Sips & Scholars series, free lectures set in bars, parks, cafes, and restaur...

bklynlibrary.org

Yesterday was Jonathan Gold's birthday; he would have been 66. Laura Gabbert's documentary about Gold and his Los Angeles, City of Gold, released several years before Gold's passing in 2018, remains my favorite documentary, and I loved this conversation with Gabbert: laist.com/news/los-ang...

Jonathan Gold was LA. 'City of Gold' director on what he'd write now

City of Gold documentarian says Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer transformed food writing and helped many understand L.A.

laist.com

but I wish to know, if "we are experiencing longer than normal hold times due to an increased volume of calls" first, would you describe your experience as "erfahrung" or as "erlebnis," and is the volume of your calls measured in their decibel level, or just in their sheer number?

Haruspex > Meta Specs

Ed Burmila@edburmila.bsky.social · last wk.

Claude, analyze these entrails

Emily Wilson reviews Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey = welcome Emily Wilson reviews my high school class on the Odyssey, in which I performed the sacrifice of the beeves of Helios using beef fried rice = terrifying

It is, after all, a scholar's professional responsibility to stand up for the intellectual independence and coherence of their field, despite the temptation to make exigent appeal on instrumental, financial, or political grounds.

Ted McCormick@tedmccormick.bsky.social · last wk.

In general I'd resist describing historical research as the testing of hypotheses, even though in some cases it is designed this way, and even if the prospect of looking like a STEM field (or a humanist's or administrator's idea of one) has powerful appeal for extremely obvious material reasons

Is there an acceptable level of corruption in professional life? Or, is there such a thing as an unacceptably high standard for good behavior?

but this is, in fact, what Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein is like, sans the big budget, which is utterly extraneous.

Kieran Healy@kjhealy.co · last wk.

Any big-budget Wittgenstein film should be 75% Wittgenstein being an unremitting asshole to everyone he meets, with the director varying whether only we think the target deserves it, 23% him being terrible to himself, and then 2% this specific moment, which is unexpectedly the heart of the film.

Unfortunately, one function of public intellectual life is to mask precisely the difficulty Scott describes here.

Scott Edgar@scottedgar.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm always on about this, but I'm kind of salty about the fact that the public has no idea how HARD it is, and how much work it takes, to actually produce new knowledge in the humanities.

Fully with Carlos on this. My own original field - European intellectual history - seems to me to have become afflicted by a disinterest in our own mistakes or prior wrong views, and now I wonder: in what field is acknowledging one's mistakes considered a virtue?

Carlos Noreña@carlosfnorena.bsky.social · last wk.

Humility is confidence. Conceding a point in debate, or acknowledging that an assumption might have been wrong, or admitting ignorance on a given topic, or offering to learn more and rethink a position, are not signs of weakness but of strength and security. The blowhards always miss this.

A mostly private concern of mine is ageism in intellectual and creative life, the view that significance and meaningful effort flows from youth, so I find this cheering.

Greg Egan@gregegansf.bsky.social · last wk.

While the Fields Medal celebrates the under-40s, the mathematician Joan Birman has, at the age of 99, solved a major open problem in representations of the Braid groups, a topic she has worked on for more than 60 years.