So I'm starting a podcast about friendship and aesthetic experience called "Some Marvelous Experience." I've posted a brief teaser that explains a little bit about the main idea and will drop the first episode soon. Please subscribe and help me spread the word! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Some Marvelous Experience

Arts Podcast · Updated Biweekly · A podcast about friendship and art hosted by Brian Glavey. For each episode I'll talk to a pair of friends about a work of art or aesthetic experience that they share...

podcasts.apple.com

I'm glad someone finally had the courage to say it.

Deidre Lynch@drbibliomane.bsky.social · 22h ago

You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.

I was tracking down the etymology of AI "harnesses" and bumped into this recent paper: ["What makes a harness a harness: necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent harness" by Sanderson Oliveira de Macedo"] (arxiv.org/abs/2606.10106).

What makes a harness a harness: necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent harness

The term agent harness now circulates widely in software engineering with generative artificial intelligence. It names the layer that wraps a language model and turns it into a coding agent able to ac...

arxiv.org

See my ACLA seminar on World Literature and the Global South below 👇 and repost please and thank you!

Juan Meneses@dissentum.bsky.social · 4d ago

CFP: "Views from the Global South: New Horizons in World Literature" ACLA 2027 seminar! It explores new disciplinary horizons that emerge from the comparative friction between the categories “world literature” and “Global South.” There are plans for a possible follow-up publication.

I was tracking down the etymology of AI "harnesses" and bumped into this recent paper: ["What makes a harness a harness: necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent harness" by Sanderson Oliveira de Macedo"] (arxiv.org/abs/2606.10106).

What makes a harness a harness: necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent harness

The term agent harness now circulates widely in software engineering with generative artificial intelligence. It names the layer that wraps a language model and turns it into a coding agent able to ac...

arxiv.org

Genuinely, screenshottable/quotable content affords antagonism in a way that an audio clip doesn’t. I try not to be the bad sorta media determinist, but medium matters.

Aaron Bady@zunguzungu.bsky.social · 2d ago

it's interesting how people fought to the death over Emily Wilson's review, but as far as I can tell, the actual LRB podcast where she talks about Nolan's Odyssey didn't really rate people's interest www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and... or when she went on Fresh Air either www.npr.org/programs/fre...

Is “whipsaw” becoming idiomatic?

“the meaning of a word is its use” - Wittgenstein

AR Hanlon@arhanlon.bsky.social · 2d ago

Historical-empirical theory of genre: If they were, we'd obviously consider them as such. Same with 'is hotdog a sandwich.'

🧵 AF

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 3d ago

So, I really hope I get to tell this story in longer form in the near future, but it it’s burning a hole inside me. Most of it comes from an interview with Bob Hirst this weekend. Bob has been Exec Editor of the Mark Twain Project for 47 years, before which he was part of its staff for ~15. 1/16

Hey, @epikt.bsky.social shout out in Man Carrying Thing debrief of social media drama about the fate of modernism. (See ~2:30) youtu.be/ENAHZMlW4fE?...

the "death" of literature and the rise of Pale Fire

YouTube video by Man Carrying Thing

youtu.be

Friends, my book—No Place for Home: Terror and Race in Literature After 9/11—has a cover! I’m so pleased with what Rachel Moeller and the design team at @uminnpress.bsky.social came up with! The book will be out in Spring 2027 and that I’ll post a pre-order link once it’s available! 1/2

Sharing again today since the discourse is about AI companies guillotining books (the horror!). Read the first article to find the real villains...

Maria Antoniak@mariaa.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I curated some readings for class on "data tensions" and the list felt worth sharing. Come on a tour of datasets, books, the web, and AI with me... We'll start with this piece on the Google Books project: the hopes, dreams, disasters, and aftermath of building a public library on the internet. 1/n

I am absolutely gobsmacked. And trying not to pass out from hyperventilating. Thank you @barackobama.bsky.social — you just made my secret dream for DATA EMPIRE, spoken aloud to NO ONE, come true.

Barack Obama@barackobama.bsky.social · 7d ago

It’s that time of year again: here are some of the books I’ve enjoyed this summer. If you’ve read any good ones, let me know!

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

And the AI books that succeed share a signature. They contain noticeably more rare phrases that already appear in published books than successful non-AI books do.Award-winning literary fiction, for comparison, reuses rare phrasing at less than half their rate. (8/n)

This is a very interesting thread. I’m surprised how well rare phrase use distinguishes AI/human text.

Tuhin Chakrabarty@tuhinchakr.bsky.social · last wk.

🚨 New paper on AI & Copyright Using @pangram.com full-text AI detection, we study self-published genre fiction on Amazon, 2023–26. Amazon is flooded w/ books with substantial AI text. They earn real 💰 & crowd out non-AI books. w/ @dhillonp.bsky.social @xinyuel.bsky.social & Jane Ginsburg (1/n) 🧵

In my sabbatical haze, I forgot to widely publicize the availability of the Katherine D. Harris Collection of literary annuals on @archive.org w/complete & searchable table of contents, authors, engravers, literary genre, pg ## 😎 IT's ready!! archive.org/details/kath... #rsvp2026 @rs4vp.org

Katherine D. Harris Collection

About this Collection The Katherine D. Harris Collection consists of approximately 90 nineteenth-century British literary annuals. The most popular titles, including Forget Me Not, The ...

archive.org

Exceptional clarity from Science magazine but we need to take this one step further. Their design to break academic science is coupled with their design to re-segregate higher education and control culture, ideas, and memory. It fits with anti-DEI policies and Trump disclaimers at the Smithsonian.

Kraft paper bag line.

Was coming here to make fun of this loopy 1862 book I stumbled on — which proposes to replace Imperial measures not with decimal, but with base-*16* arithmetic, including a 16-hour clock. But then I skimmed it, and I realized ...

yes

Eric Michael Garcia@ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 2w ago

Andy Kim suggests a new health care policy: -Enroll every child in Medicaid until the age of 26 www.notus.org/healthcare/a...

⬇️⬇️⬇️

Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 2w ago

the best day for the presidents of every R1 to hold a press conference screaming that higher ed is our second largest export and destroying it is economic sabotage and soft power detonation was Jan 21st 2025. the next best day is tomorrow.

It bothers me how many AI critics are failing to keep their critiques aligned with where the models actually are. I hate to give it to the haters (of the haters), but good criticism has to get close enough to its target to understand it, and stay close.

As a robotics researcher, learning scientist, and author who has followed Realbotix for years, I'm compelled to do a Bluesky thread on this whole pivot that Realbotix is now trying, turning from humanoid sex robots to classroom "education" robots. Buckle up. nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/n... 🧵

Rural NY School To Launch Humanoid Robot Teacher

Plans to deploy a "lifelike" robot and avatar teaching assistant at Salamanca High School have sparked debate over the role of technology in schools.

nysfocus.com

My response to Appiah's "field report" is up: please repost www.chronicle.com/article/kwam...

Opinion | Dear Critics of Literary Studies: Do the Reading

The philosopher’s report on the state of literary studies is a shambles.

chronicle.com

DATA EMPIRE is on BookBub's Best Nonfiction of the Summer list! www.bookbub.com/blog/nonfict...

this stare left intentionally blank

This is perhaps my greatest accomplishment and I stand by it

FWIW, both these fears have subreddits: - www.reddit.com/r/thalassoph... - www.reddit.com/r/megalophob...

Thalassophobia

Less than 10% of the ocean has been explored. For more information see: https://reddark.untone.uk/

reddit.com

Joseph Galbo@josephgalbo.bsky.social · 3w ago

The indie game community going page by page through the DSM-5 for ideas.