Bread-binding: 18th century almanac housed in a wooden case meant to look like a Vienna bread roll! Images courtesy of the Rare Book School

eavesdropping on a couple of english lit academics in st. john, i overheard confirmation of what is surely going to be the biggest literary news story of the year

In May 1962 Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were sentenced to six months imprisonment for defacing the dust jackets of library books using cut-out illustrations from other library books. I do not condone mutilating library books but I do really like their cover collage for The Secret of Chimneys.

57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals. And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked. And then the DEI office was killed. And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Honestly, fuck off.

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

You see the printed black square from a page in Robert Fludd's "Utriusque cosmi maioris" (1617) that represented the nothingness that was prior to the universe. The square is framed by four sentences in Latin: "Et sic in infinitum" (And so on to infinity). #earlymodern #skystorians

how did i go so long not knowing we were literally teaching people to read wrong. i knew something wasn't right but jesus christ www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't kno...

apmreports.org

I’m trained as a digital humanist which is arguably why I’m deeply invested in the analog.

Jonaya Kemper@violetriotgames.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Folks are really surprised that I am in creative technologies because I work in the analog sphere a lot. However, I am intensely interested in how we can use creative tech...just you know, not for evil. I love all the weird little tech we can put in analog spaces. Also knitting needles are tech.

Good morning! [Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, A Soul in Hell, 1670-1700, Wax, 11.5 cm x 10 cm (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)]

So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al

The making of critical data center studies - Dustin Edwards, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper, Mél Hogan, 2025

In this article, the authors demonstrate how the data center has become a key site, object, and metaphor for interdisciplinary scholarship of the internet. Whil...

journals.sagepub.com

When I say “technology” I mean the codex

Gareth Dennis@garethdennis.uk · 12mo ago

it annoys me so much that nowadays when people say "technology" they mean "another website" rather than, say, the interface between steel wheel and steel rail the tech industry (can we rename it please?) has turned everyone's brain into soup

bastille! no prisons, no kings. yes public goods, yes pro-social state.

Friends, please share! Proofs are ready for @skeuomorphpress.org's edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology." I am so pleased with this book—in many ways our 1st real book project Details about how to get one through our fundraiser at skeuomorph.ischool.illinois.edu/le-guin-book...

The academic’s mid-summer crisis is a mid-life crisis in miniature: You realize summer is half gone, & not only that: you see that the longest & least burdened days came early, & they are well past. You compare all you thought you’d do against the days remaining & grieve for what never will be

Here is the grad speech that NYU is now withholding the student's diploma for: "As I search my heart today in addressing you all…the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine."

Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · last yr.

A principled student said in a grad speech that the “only appropriate thing to say in this moment” is to acknowledge the “atrocities” currently being committed in Palestine. In response, NYU is withholding their diploma + apologizing to the community for the trauma the audience was “subjected to.”

"I asked ChatGPT, and--" ...the ghost of Ada Lovelace appeared and punched you in the face, I hope.

Poisoning the air of a Black community for a fucking chatbot.

'How come I can’t breathe?': Musk's data company draws a backlash in Memphis

The company’s turbines — enough to power 280,000 homes — run without emission controls in an area that leads Tennessee in asthma hospitalizations.

politico.com

#BookHistory friends! Work has begun on the LGBTQIA+ Book History bibliography, and the team is looking for you to share your citations! If you know of or have published something on LGBTQIA+ book history, submit it to this Google form! forms.gle/c1pkNBPbbyCF...

SHARP LGBTQIA+ Book History Bibliography

Submit citations for the SHARP LGBTQIA+ Book History Bibliography! We are accepting citations for many different types of resources having to do with LGBTQIA+ book history. There are no restrictions o...

forms.gle

columbia, brown, georgetown, cornell and now tufts — they’re taking our students, our colleagues, our kin https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/international-student-tufts-university-reportedly-taken-into-federal-custody/2VK55QMAOZFIDBR2A6XNKC5XOU/?outputType=amp

“Working conditions are learning conditions, we like to say, and it is so obviously true you want to tattoo it on your clavicle.” New: Peter Coviello on austerity in the English department.

Memos of Blood and Fire | Peter Coviello

So if you ask me about the signature strength of the department where I work, I will tell you. It is world-caliber field-defining research, wedded to a fantastically dynamic practice of instruction, a...

nplusonemag.com

I heard the NEA is only considering proposals related to 1776 & the USA’s 250th birthday & I was feeling intensely patriotic, so I’m printing these really big posters inspired *directly* by the Founding Fathers The cut was carved from the masthead of a 19th century newspaper

[any 18th-centry novelist tries to tell a joke] THE ALEHOUSE; or the SURPRIZING HISTORY of A TAVERN containing the CHARACTER of A Rabbi, A Prieſt, & A Miniſter WITH An Account of how, having left their Lantern at a Table found themſelves loſt in a Wood & were at laſt Deliver’d by a HIGHWAYMAN.

John MacNeill Miller@snarlsdickens.bsky.social · last yr.

[George Eliot tries to tell a joke] One night, walking into a bar, a beautiful woman—but why always a beautiful woman? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this joke? I pity the poor barkeep subjected to such endless torrents of beautiful women, priests, rabbis, parrots, dogs,

if you thought archives were problematic, wait till you see no archives

Folded & assembled proof sheets for @skeuomorphpress.org’s forthcoming letterpress edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology"—an LIS practicum student created the woodcut illustrations of tech mentioned in the text, which we carved on the laser—I set type for the book & fold-out poster

This year’s Haggerty Prize will award a peer-reviewed article published between 1/1/22 and 12/31/24. $500 cash prize! Please submit your work or nominate others. Deadline is 1/1/25. And please repost to spread the word. Info at link. #c18 #ASECS #LGBTQ

I am continually fascinated by Fludd’s back square, both conceptually and materially. To depict this void required a substance: black printing ink. Which is composed of carbon: so the void or absence ends up depicted by the presence of burnt, earthly matter.

Daniel Bellingradt@dbellingradt.bsky.social · 2y ago

You see the printed black square from a page in Robert Fludd's "Utriusque cosmi maioris" (1617) that represented the nothingness that was prior to the universe. The square is framed by four sentences in Latin: "Et sic in infinitum" (And so on to infinity). #earlymodern #skystorians

📣 New zine!! "A Librarian Against AI; or, I Think AI Should Leave" is a 40-page zine about why we should think twice about using & supporting generative AI. violetbfox.info/against-ai/ #noAI #zines