Data centers (and detention camps!) — big box buildings on the edge of life —are THE ISSUE because they tangibly encapsulate every other issue—environment, corruption, accountability, social (media) fracturing, and a politics of impunity that drops disaster on locals, then claims to know 🚫 about it

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 11h ago

I’ve been screening our documentary with organizing communities in the South. So far, the organizers mention data centers first at every single event. From racial justice orgs to old school activists who don’t usually think about tech policy. This has legs.

Fifty years ago, Carlo Ginzburg published a book about the extraordinary mind of an Italian miller, demonstrating the power of microhistory. A new edition has just been published and I've reviewed it for @historytoday.com: www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

A day in the life.

All year, I've been watching data centers take hold as THE political issue of this cycle. But no one has dug into it quite like @mollytaft.com www.wired.com/story/how-da...

How Data Centers Broke American Politics

What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026.

wired.com

Texas is just fucking the US Constitution backwards & forwards huh

Jen Rice@jenrice.bsky.social · yesterday

Lon Burnam, a former state lawmaker representing Tarrant County from 1997 to 2015, was carried out of the room by four sheriff deputies, who held him by his hands and feet: fortworthreport.org/2026/08/04/t...

New from Andrew Joseph Pegoda: In an attempt to overcomply with Texas law, the University of Houston will eliminate over 100 women's studies, gender and sexuality courses from the core curriculum. It won't be enough to appease extremist Republicans.

University of Houston Nixed Its Gender and Sexuality Classes. That Won’t Stop Texas’ Crusade Against Higher Ed

College administrators wrongly hope that anticipatory obedience will satisfy a GOP-run Texas Legislature that is increasingly hostile toward education.

texasobserver.org

#18c

Sandrine Berges@sandrineankara.bsky.social · yesterday

'Ô muse, dis moi l' homme aux mille tours' is the first line of the first translation of the Odyssey by a woman, Anne Dacier in 1716. She had previously translated the Iliad in 1699. And she got involved in a controversy, much like the current Nolan vs Wilson one #QuerelleD'Homer

Great thread 🧵 on how periodized studies of lit do & do not overlap w other disciplines & their conceptions of periods & scope: anyone want to try for #18c?

Sarah Bull@sarahebull.bsky.social · yesterday

Sometimes people with shared interests speak different languages. Last week I read the new Theory & Methodologies section on Victorian studies in PMLA with huge interest, especially @emilysteinlight.bsky.social and Josephine McDonagh's pieces on on US and UK scholars' ambitions for the field at +

Republicans love pushing vocational-only education instead of comprehensive-education because they want a healthy supply of low-cost servants and less competition for the professional and boss jobs they want their own kids to have.

Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · yesterday

In a college sociology class in the late 1980s I was assigned a Marxist analysis of education that argued that the US education system is designed primarily to produce efficient workers for the labor market. And now Trump’s Department of Education is just tweeting it out.

If we close our eyes & wish for it, it just might happen

Hunter@hunterub.bsky.social · yesterday

The clips of RFKjr saying he'll eat anything, including things he finds on the road, came only a few hours before the news that our armadillos are spreading leprosy. In the writing biz this is called 'foreshadowing'.

Tater Totz - Tomorrow Never Knows [USA ; Psychedelic Rock] (1988) Members from Redd Kross, White Flag, The Three O' Clock, and various guest artists came together to create two cover albums predominantly comprised of Beatles https://redd.it/owhbey https://youtu.be/7hSY1bxrkW8

Tater Totz - Tomorrow Never Knows [USA ; Psychedelic Rock] (1988) Members from Redd Kross, White Flag, The Three O' Clock, and various guest artists came together to create two cover albums predominantly comprised of Beatles (and Beatle members) covers, with some originals sprinkled here and there.

youtu.be

My late historian professor father's research included the use of copious boxes and boxes of 3x5 cards, newspaper clippings and long visits to the Huntington Library. He wrote all his books in pencil that was typed for manuscript form by a revolving team of secretaries over his 40 year tenure.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

A judge found that the #Massachusetts State Police have engaged in “a pervasive informal practice of violating” the state’s Public Records Law and may order the agency to adopt reforms for how it responds to records requests. #mapoli

Mass. judge finds State Police engaged in pattern of records law violations

A Suffolk Superior Court judge found Massachusetts State Police engage in a “pervasive” pattern of violating public records law. The agency has been ordered to develop proposed reforms to improve reco...

masslive.com

For Texas Architect, I unloaded on Texas cities for using deferred maintenance as a precedent for demolishing and abandoning civic structures, including I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall. Fort Worth and San Antonio aren't spared either. magazine.texasarchitects.org/2026/07/28/d...

"Deferred Maintenance" Endangers Civic Heritage - Texas Architect Magazine

If “deferred maintenance” is the government’s version of the excuse “the dog ate my homework,” then some Texas cities may…

magazine.texasarchitects.org

New Publication Alert Kenney, Colleen E. “The Dance of Wildish Lights in a Woman’s Eyes”: Representations of Female Criminality in Select 18th and 19th Century British Novels. Diss. The University of Arizona, 2026. #danieldefoe #defoe #18thCentury #C18th #18thC

The 2026 @aaup.org Faculty in the South Survey is live. If you are faculty in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas please take a second to fill it out: forms.gle/iLheVskd4wcA...

2026 AAUP Faculty in the South Survey

The Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors [AAUP] and its partners in states across the South have been at the forefront of fighting attacks on higher education. To as...

forms.gle

Q: You’ve been Republicans for most of your voting lives. Who’s voting for James Talarico? Republican moms: *all raise their hands* “I like him. I want a middle school teacher who’s like, hey, this is broken. Somebody needs to fix it. Why not me?”

Me on the AAU "The AAU claims to be comprised of America’s leading research unis...But if the member presidents choose the guise of institutional neutrality as a way to gain political cover, they may now be leading higher ed toward greater authoritarianism." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

How Elite Colleges Aided Censorship During the Red Scares

Powerful organizations during the Red Scares crafted a world where “academic freedom” was conditional on political allegiance.

insidehighered.com

Mamdani is going to support a whole industry of idiot pundits paid to write dopey op-eds

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 3d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

The reliance on AAU and the Yale/Vanderbilt reports shows that the administration (or at least McMahon) still cares about the imprimatur of academic support for policies most academics oppose. They are also pushing this now because they know such policies won't be tenable in 2028.

David Kaye@davidakaye.bsky.social · 2d ago

the department of education today issued a 'national call to action' - which, in plain english, is a call for capitulation to trump administration's assault on higher ed. www.ed.gov/media/docume... note how this doc deploys recent yale & vanderbilt reports

I know this would be closing the barn door after he horse has been reelected president, but if Democrats win both chambers I'd really like to see a concurrent resolution deeming January 6 an insurrection under 14(3). 1/

It's an honor that Critical Inquiry published the first review of my new book, Lyric Logic.

Critical Inquiry@criticalinquiry.bsky.social · 5d ago

"Modern American poetry, she argues, reasons inductively rather than deductively, moving from particulars towards provisional generalities rather than letting a governing intuition shine through it." Sneha Chowdhury on Johanna Winant's Lyric Logic: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/sneha_chowdh...

The longer I’ve taught, the truer this seems; only a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction have this privilege

Sheila Liming@seeshespeak.bsky.social · 2d ago

Our research and writing, if it happens, happens in a pedagogical vacuum with the result being that we don’t get to sit with ideas, arguments, and research questions in the same way. But those structural inequities don’t mean we’re exempt from being judged by the writing / research we produce 5/5

A few hot takes on the letter, which I will refer to as Compact 2.0: 0) I appreciate the shift from outright extortion to (theoretically) open-ended questions. 1) Nevertheless, both the framing of the questions and wording of several rest on a thin evidence base and unexamined assumptions.

Dominique Baker@bakerdphd.bsky.social · 2d ago

Me on the AAU "The AAU claims to be comprised of America’s leading research unis...But if the member presidents choose the guise of institutional neutrality as a way to gain political cover, they may now be leading higher ed toward greater authoritarianism." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Here we go again, but w Trump in far weaker political position: so who will fall for this?

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 2d ago

Absolutely not www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Also recently acquired by the Wadsworth Atheneum, a snuffbox with sea monsters and fish (Meissen, c1760) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Hit the Museum of Edinburgh first thing and, I gotta say, this country fucking rules

I remember how this happened to Brittany Murphy & within a few years she was dead; I hope AG finds help

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 2d ago

Ariana Grande has pulled out of an upcoming stage musical in London, producers said, and plans to withdraw from the public eye for a break from the “endless, ongoing public scrutiny” she faces. Read more here: https://wapo.st/4fSkO8I

From the verbing of "text" to AI-generated "slop," writing is treated as an extractable resource. This talk asks how material practices such as printing, bookmaking, and hands-on work can still create friction. Ft. @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social at @rarebookschool.bsky.social

Matthew Kirschenbaum: "From text to .txt: Making Material Messes in a Sloppy World" (Malkin Lecture)

Matthew Kirschenbaum delivered Rare Book School's 2026 Sol M. and Mary Ann O’Brian Malkin Endowed Lecture, "From text to .txt: Making Material Messes in a Sloppy World," at the University of Virginia…

buff.ly

well I guess they found her