S.J. Pearce
@homophonous.bsky.social
Andalusi lit and cultural history at NYU. Medieval, but not like that. Trying to strike a balance between critical and creative writing. Chaos muppet, always. Still perfecting my gazpacho.
Oh, good. We’ve arrived at the “l’etat c’est moi” phase of the dictatorship.
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 5h agoThe first architect of the White House ballroom resigned after warning repeatedly that Trump was insisting on designs that violated fire and safety codes, the Washington Post reports. “I am the code,” Trump said www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...
"Stanford University...is facing criticism for using generative AI to change the photo of a Hispanic male student into a non-existent Black woman for a campus banner." feels like a South Park episode. what are we doing here yall www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
Stanford violated its AI policy by turning a Hispanic student into a fake Black woman in ad
Stanford University is facing criticism for using generative AI to change the photo of a Hispanic male student into a non-existent Black woman for a dining hall advertisement.
sfchronicle.com
Brigid Brophy’s first novel, never before properly published in the United States! A hapless professor and plucky lockpick team up to release a monkey from the London Zoo before his scheduled one-way trip on a rocket to the moon.
After “Demon Copperhead,” Barbara Kingsolver struggled with writer’s block, she tells Casey Cep. It was a Substack post that got her writing again. The headline was “Barbara Kingsolver Is a Fraud.” newyorker.com/magazine/202...
What Barbara Kingsolver Believes the Novel Can Do
One of the country’s most popular novelists writes what she calls socially engaged fiction. In Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, she considers the role of art—and who it’s for.
newyorker.com
Blockbuster story about Susan Collins — a shocking, detailed window into the dark side of money in politics.
ProPublica@propublica.org · yesterdayNEW: In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins. Then Trump was reelected and eviscerated the FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption probes.
Came across this while searching for the relief portrait of Alfonso X that appears with other great law givers of history in the US House of Representatives chamber. Sharing in the hopes that the government might live up to its art collection some day. www.aoc.gov/explore-capi...
America at Peace
This mural, painted during the Second World War, shows a vision of America at peace.
aoc.gov
Last week we held our annual New Acquisitions Showcase, featuring books acquired by the Kislak Center for Special Collections over the previous year. This year, we have a nice handful of manuscripts, including a very rare Middle English folding almanac. Full list here: https://bit.ly/47bJF37
“If you’re scratching your head at this “news,” well, it’s because I made it up.” This is such an off-putting, amateurish rhetorical device. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/o...
Opinion | The National Book Awards Are No Longer National
The National Book Awards longlists are a study in tedious political orthodoxy.
nytimes.com
Every defense Schnell offers is one that students accused of AI use makes. I strongly believe that genAI is anathema to the goals of an education, but this article is the clearest articulation of the hollowness of AI prohibitions for students if the people setting them don't do the same.
Jeff Sharlet@jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 2d agoThe provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
I’m out of warning signs. It’s fascism now. (Small f for the purists.)
I will say, rejections are never *fun*, but I do actually appreciate places that reject quickly rather than sitting on your work forever and then turning it down. Like, it’s not for them, they know it, let’s all get on with our lives.
In my epistemology class, one of the clearest examples for students is when I walk them through the timeline of the Hemings publicly discussing their relationship to TJ and then ask the students' why their word was not enough. Why wasn't their testimony "evidence?"
Soraya Nadia McDonald@soraya.press · 2d agoOH. AND ANOTHER THANG: Barbara Chase-Riboud and Annette Gordon Reed BEEN had Jefferson's number. Saw the DNA heds and I honestly shrugged because congratulations, Black women were telling the truth the whole time????
Last week all my students hand-wrote their own pledges, according to their terms, to write in my courses without AI. Some of them were quite moving—their anger at AI’s attempt to steal their educations, their determination to learn & create anyway.
Jeff Sharlet@jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 2d agoThe provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
I don't have the energy to rebut everything in this piece, but it reaffirms the impression that these people did not know or care how government works and never bothered to find out. The reporter's framing is pretty credulous "many people disagree" with stuff that is easy to fact check.
Dan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News@froomkin.bsky.social · 2d agoSad excuse for journalism: Big profile of DOGE lord doesn’t say a word about all the damage he did. And it was not an “ill fated cost-cutting effort.” It was a malignant, catastrophic attack on the government and its workers by arrogant and ignorant assholes. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
The government moving or hiding jailed people to avoid review by courts isn't some loophole in our habeas corpus rights. This government behavior has been considered a violation of the people's habeas corpus rights since at least the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_...
![Jailors were forbidden to move prisoners from one prison to another or out of the country to evade the writ. In case of disobedience jailers would be punished with severe fines which had to be paid to the prisoner.[5][6]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:egd33s7iuqsmwlwab6mbtrqi/bafkreieocoa2jelvyioyspfyjhchhj6lqvjgxf6vm73l4mamvtls72tzmq)
Gillian Brockell@gillianbrockell.com · 2d agoThis will make it nearly impossible to file habeas petitions, because attorneys won’t even know what federal district their client has been moved to to stage for their removal. Something like a third of all people in ICE custody. apnews.com/article/ice-...
LOL -- Fox News cuts away from Vance's speech and a host says, "we will bring you back to this rally if he starts to make news"
When I started grad school at UCLA English in 2002, there were about 15 fully funded PhD students in each cohort. UCLA had 1200 English majors. One year 17 PhDs from our department got tenure-track jobs. I’ve watched the whole profession fall apart.
It’s the tail end of the long 19th century.
Joseph Rezek@rezekjoe.bsky.social · 2d ago2002 might as well be the 19th century
NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.
AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding most detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, in a move that has made it harder for lawyers an...
apnews.com
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 2d agoStay tuned for more on this from mainstream reporting hopefully later today, but Bob's got the gist of it; last week, it appears that ICE began disappearing people from the Online Detainee Locator System the moment they get a final order of removal. Yes, this is as deeply screwed up as it sounds.
LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"
v. honored to learn that Society for Renaissance Studies awarded the Biennial 2026 Book Prize to *Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic.* Very grateful to the judges for their work, & congratulations to fellow shortlisted authors. More here: rensoc.org.uk/srs-book-pri...
If you had told 1994 me, as I sat with my roommates on Cornell’s Libe Slope picking out cloud shapes and wondering aloud what the future would hold for us, that I’d be coming back to give the University Lecture someday, I would’ve never believed it. Or if you said 1/ as.cornell.edu/news/leading...
Leading scholar of extremism to give University Lecture
Cynthia Miller-Idriss ’94 will deliver a Cornell University Lecture examining links between misogyny and violent extremism. The leading scholar’s Sept. 30 talk, co-sponsored by departments in the Coll...
as.cornell.edu
The provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
Op-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector Pangram
Schnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”
thedartmouth.com
