interesting to me that as the administration treats democratic-voting states like conquered or occupied territories, you don’t have pundits demanding the president respect “half the country”

tony romm@tonyromm.bsky.social · 2w ago

NEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

CLIENT: These federal charges seem serious. What kind of sentence could I get? LAWYER: Depending on the next presidential election, you're looking at somewhere between life imprisonment and becoming a millionaire.

Holy shit This is vile “With few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona. The battleship, now a military cemetery reachable only by boat, has stood as one of the nation’s most hallowed sites since Japan bombed and sank it in 1941.” apnews.com/article/fbi-...

Emails show FBI Director Kash Patel's Hawaii trip included 'VIP snorkel' at a Pearl Harbor memorial

Government emails obtained by The Associated Press show that FBI Director Kash Patel went on a “VIP snorkel” session last summer at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

apnews.com

Delighted to be able to share a first teaching and research resource relating to The Firearm Revolution: a compilation of links to primary sources - visual, objects and translations of texts that I cite in the book #academia #earlymodern #skystorians

Primary sources for The Firearm Revolution

Are you teaching with The Firearm Revolution? Or perhaps you’re an independent researcher with an interest in the history of firearms. With the help of my PhD student Guy Reynolds, I’ve …

catherinefletcher.info

Today is the official publication day for my new book, Sedimentary Aesthetics: Painting on Stone and the Ecology of Early Modern Art. It is out in the world, and I would like to thank @yalepress.bsky.social for all they did. I’d also like to tell you a bit about why this publication means so much.

Fuck cancer

Spread the word! My department at UMass-Amherst is inaugurating a Pre-College Summer Program in the History of Art: Visual Analysis and Exhibition Design. www.umass.edu/art-history/...

When Bender shared our piece a couple of months ago, she issued an important quibble w respect to my & @cnygren.bsky.social's specific argument regarding resistance to the AI industry's takeover of education. A story broken by student journalists at GW reveals that quibble to have been prescient. 1/

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Really enjoyed this fantastic piece by @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social and @cnygren.bsky.social Here are few favorite pull quotes of mine + one little quibble at the end:

Art History will continue to be seen as an elitist discipline if the public apparatuses for communicating it refuse to acknowledge the scholarship that has drawn attention to art's role in serving and subverting power. Read the righteous review by Sherry Lindqiust here. hnanews.org/hnar/reviews...

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry - Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

The Château de Chantilly justifiably billed its exhibition as a landmark show, and for early modernists and medievalists, it was the most anticipated

hnanews.org

If you are attending @historians.org #aha2026 please join us at 330 this afternoon when we discuss our project, “Transforming Humanities Education in a Time of Gun Violence.” We discuss various approaches to tracing the long history of guns, gun control, and legislation.

Really not sure what to make of this as a prediction for 2026…

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 7mo ago

Take a screenshot of this GIF, and whichever new word you land on is YOUR word for 2026. Let's. Go.

For any early modernists who are upset by the Compact piece, this is a great thread. And the point about Celenza’s “Lost Renaissance” is spot on. Some people saw changes to the field coming a mile away. Others got bitter

Karl Appuhn@appuhn.bsky.social · 7mo ago

The politics here are reprehensible but also really sad. He was a great scholar once. He had philological skills that no one has anymore. There are very few people who could produce that kind of work today. And to some extent, that's what this is about. He's mad that our field lost its former status

What we see in the last paragraph is striking wrt some discourse on here in the last few days re: AI. 10 children _claimed_ to have been killed by COVID vaccine, and now the whole of Gov is moving to pull the hand break.

Brendan Nyhan@brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Democratic erosion, but for public health. People will die.

Take a few to read this. it is fire. “The humanities are not in crisis. The humanities are in the vanguard. The project of public education, perhaps the closest thing there is to a lasting success authored amid the broader failure of Reconstruction, is in danger.”

Eric Hayot@ehayot.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Happy to see this, written with the excellent @mattseybold.bsky.social , out in the world. Solidarity to everyone fighting for education and civil society! www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

I’m very pleased to announce the latest from me and the inimitable @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social. In it, we lay out vision for why and how faculty and students should be resisting the AI in education. Please share.

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 8mo ago

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

My department is hiring a tenure track assistant professor in in the visual arts, architecture, and/or material culture of the Islamic world. Please circulate! careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u...

Six people died from tampered Tylenol and the company pulled 30 million bottles off the market. ChatGPT is accused of urging seven people towards suicide, and OpenAI just assures us they’re still working out the kinks. Billions in investment, zero accountability.

OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions

OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.

apnews.com

More exciting news coming out of Pittsburgh! My department is searching for a Teaching Assistant Professor of Architectural Studies. This is a permanent position in the Appointment Stream (i.e. non-tenure-track). networks.h-net.org/jobs/69451/u...

🚨🚨🚨 Major announcement!!! I am extremely pleased to announce that HAA is searching for a senior, endowed position in premodern art or architecture. The subfield is wide open. Please spread the word and encourage curious scholars to write to me with questions! 🚨🚨🚨 cfopitt.taleo.net/careersectio...

If Chotiner calls, you’re not obliged to pick up the phone. My god… This man just continues to destroy people. By…. By simply asking follow up questions. Others could really take note.

This is worth a read. As he says, this shouldn’t be on us. Companies do have agency, and that also implies culpability

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Here’s where it gets personal for me. When I was 9, I started experiencing suicidal ideation … disinterested in living, and at least some of the time contemplating death and how it might happen … It’s easy to imagine how I would have used programs like these chatbots.

Students never asked for this and done like it

Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 10mo ago

go, student newspaper of Notre Dame and Saint Mary "employ in-class essays, oral exams+ rigorous discussions — that are far more difficult to use AI tools to complete. a close reading of the text should constitute the bulk in any introductory humanities class." www.ndsmcobserver.com/article/2025...

I mean…

Machine Pun Kelly@kellyscaletta.bsky.social · 10mo ago

"The US economy is "three AI data centers in a trench coat" --Rusty Foster

Attention early modernists! Now is a great moment for you to get a copy of Titian’s Icons. 60% discount on @psupress.bsky.social using code WHS25. It’s a beautiful book, and it won a major award, so it is worth having a copy on your shelf! www.psupress.org/two_week_sal...

Good luck to all those starting the academic year today. This is going to be a tough year for Higher Ed. I will try to remember why I got into this: to help students realize that art shows us how many different ways humanity has manifest itself across time. The future is not yet written.

I do not know of a single public university president or chancellor who has even _tried_ making this point to the student body and their parents. It is such a pathetic abdication of leadership

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · last yr.

Here is UW - Madison's budget. Our <largest> funder is the federal government. 25%. It used to be the state. Either way, the university in its current form ceases to exist if these federal cuts really happen. But The. Public. Doesn't. Know. This. And our leaders are absent from the public debate.

I am giong to sound snooty, but if you can outsource your wine list to ChatGPT, you should not be running a place with a wine list.... and other stories from our dystopian present all wrapped up in one little article www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

21 Ways People Are Using A.I. at Work

Yes, it still makes plenty of mistakes, but it has become part of the job for many.

nytimes.com

Art Historians still live in the wake of Obama's derisive comment from 2014. Study after study shows that the humanities provide skills that are evergreen - the ability to critically assess sources and data far exceed the "skills' of any moment (see prompt engineering). harpers.org/harpers-index

Index Archive

harpers.org