This is a great dataset! Among many other things it contains info about many of the poets I would once have considered (and probably on some level still consider) the *cool* poets. Your Fred Moten, your Lyn Hejinian, your Craig Dworkin, your Elizabeth Willis, etc. Find your own cool poets now!

Post45 Data Collective@post45data.bsky.social · 4w ago

New dataset hot off the press 🚨 This data documents the bestselling authors and titles distributed by Small Press Distribution (SPD) between 2006-2023, including American poetry, short and experimental fiction, & hybrid nonfiction and essay. Check it out! data.post45.org/posts/small-...

Can’t wait to read this!!

UVA Press@uvapress.bsky.social · 4w ago

Out now! "Animal Minds, Other Minds: Nonhuman Intelligence and Narrative Form in American Fiction" by Victoria Googasian How a fascination with animal consciousness, perception, and intelligence shaped American fiction in the twentieth century www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10206/ #booksky #readUP

An AI “actor” or “performer” is really just a cartoon. They don’t have any more agency or interiority or personhood than Elmer Fudd.

mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · 4w ago

The story here is not this stupid movie – which will never get made and never come out – but how the Tilly Norwood people keep getting these credulous articles placed in national news sources despite zero demonstration of any success or demand for this.

Felt like what we really needed was a pop song with no clear connection to the team, to sing at random intervals. But then I randomly sorted 60 yrs of Billboard to pick one and got this—an incredible song, but it goes way too hard for an activity called "footie" www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T9v...

Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

YouTube video by SlyATFamilyStoneVEVO

youtube.com

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · last mo.

This really is a vintage World Cup: terrific football, ties - you bet! - and now: a dazzlingly dodgy decision for the hosts. The US now only needs to master 'chants that are not boringly literal' to become a footballing nation.

A year since the Clippers scandal broke and the main fallout so far is that Kawhi has managed to flee US jurisdiction

Trump has tried to replicate each other President’s signature failures, from the hits (internment camps, corruption, losing a war in Asia) to the deep cuts (tariffs, destroying the WH, picking a contemptible racist VP), but I’m still kind of surprised to see him going for the William Henry Harrison.

I put the Lynx on as background last night and wound up intently watching the whole thing. Miles uses time and space like no other player I’ve seen. So much fun to watch defector.com/olivia-miles...

Olivia Miles Is The Throwback Point Guard Of The Future | Defector

Vertical video makes Olivia Miles look good. Horizontal video makes her look better. Her gift shines in context, on the unadorned and unsoundtracked platform that is the next day’s full-game replay. W...

defector.com

It's really funny to me how often Zohran gets helpful advice about how to do something he just did without the advice

Chris Towers is Overreacting To Small Sample Sizes@cptowers.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I’m still waiting for sports teams in high income tax cities/states to be punished for their policies, but ive seen very little evidence that this has ever mattered despite how often this talking point comes up.

Even if this wasn’t an affront to humanity, and even if it was possible to train an LLM on a one-person corpus (no), using solely one person’s words *obviously* doesn’t guarantee you get their views. Example: you can make the phrase “this wasn’t an affront” from this post.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2mo ago

“The installation, unveiled in February 2024, allows guests to ask Douglass questions through an iPad. Using a closed database of Douglass’s autobiographies and speeches, the artificial intelligence generates responses based solely on Douglass’s recorded words.”

Brunson is pretty clearly the biggest ball hog of any NBA Finals MVP. No one who shot as much as him missed as often. The size of the dot shows assists/game. He was below the median on that front, so not moving the ball around, either. Singular player—not sure we'll see a winner like this again.

Idk what’s going to happen tonight, but I was rooting for the Phillies in the 2022 World Series when Sam Alito decided to attend a game, so I know that karma is real

When a team invites a dictator to the game it’s good if they lose, is my view

I think if every well-informed person in the country can understand jokes about your last four mayors, you have to accept that pretty much anyone who moves to your city can quickly become a "true" citizen of it. Hegemony facilitates assimilation.

The scale and dispersion of Knicks fans emerging like cicadas for their team’s once-per quarter-century title run shows us just how much pain James Dolan causes almost every year

This is obvious horseshit, but I think it's useful to put numbers to this stuff sometimes. The Warren wealth tax would raise $16.5b from Bezos alone in the first year, which amounts to $4k for every teacher in the US, roughly a 6% pay raise on average. Bet that *would* help that teacher in Queens!

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo ago

Bezos on CNBC: "You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not gonna help that teacher in Queens. I promise you."

Much more difficult to list the 100 worst novels of all time

How bad a foul baiter is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander? See if you can guess which two dots are his on this graph of MVP seasons. Dots are further right if players shot the ball a lot. Higher dots mean players shot more free throws. Answer lower in the thread.

Enkidu was a great Philly dog. He was confident and self-possessed, loved food dropped on the sidewalk, and looked vaguely like Gritty. What he loved to do, he did, and I was lucky that so often he included Hannah and me. He was my buddy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9II...

Enkidu Blue

YouTube video by Nothing

youtube.com

Hannah Walser@hkpmw.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A couple of days ago, my dog Enkidu died. When we adopted him in 2020, he was already an old man of 11 with a fully formed, hilariously stubborn personality, remarkably independent and remarkably affectionate. He was a good friend. Enkidu was named after a character from the epic of Gilgamesh. 🧵

This is one of the best 21st century jazz albums

David Leheny@davidleheny.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Jazz OTD: The composer and cellist Tomeka Reid led her remarkable quartet with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara on the recording of "Old New," on April 18, 2018. Adventurous and uncompromising but also accessible and compelling. #jazzsky

Once again pondering the fact that Penn's motto, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, is usually translated as "Laws without morals are useless".

Judge orders Penn to comply with federal subpoena seeking list of Jewish faculty, students

Penn has until May 1 to respond to the subpoena's requests, but will not be required to “reveal any employee’s affiliation with a specific Jewish-related organization.”

thedp.com

Bam Adebayo now holds the title belt for highest scoring game among active players. He's just the 34th player with this achievement, and the 21st since Elgin Baylor (the first good offensive player).

In that NYTimes "spot the AI writing" quiz, three of the five examples use the "It's not X; it's Y" tactic. I feel like you see that a lot in all sorts of generated text. What's the deal? Is this really common in the data, or is it somehow emerging from the training or generation process?

The Price Lab’s Critical Approaches to AI Working Group has released a white paper in which we advocate for AI-free instruction in reading, writing, & research. These are fundamental skills in the humanities (& in general), & with decisive action we can keep teaching them well in the age of AI!

Jazz did a lot of heavy lifting for my sanity in 2025, and for whatever reason (coincidence? not?) it was a really good year for new jazz releases. I wanted to do a little thread about my favorite albums, and give a top five.

The extent to which everyone refuses to learn whether it's "Sliwa" or "Silwa" is very funny to me

The occupied city winning because its diverse prosperous team came through thanks to guys who don’t usually get the glory is what we’re going for here, I think.

Love this piece by Laura McGrath, who finds an important question for the book industry—“What if we’ve been over-estimating the role that genre plays in the life of a reader?"—in a recent paper I wrote with James English.

The Omnivore Dilemma

Digging into the Data of Contemporary Readers

laurabmcgrath.substack.com

As a metaphor maybe

I think a lot of people feel an almost familial pride in and love for their cities, and among other things these marches highlight each city, its particular faces, slang, colors, streets, communities. It's ineffable but I think it’s profound.

Hell yeah www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment

With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

thedp.com