Our medieval art curator rates every "European castle" emoji. 🏰

"trans rage" found by chance in a Hamilton wood type specimen book from 1895

very funny logic here. it's "disrespectful" to cover the huge windows the architect built for a museum full of light-sensitive objects? have we not learned from harvard and rothko, from lacma and govan, from every light-based fuck up in the past 100 years of art. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/a...

So the museum director swaps out artworks and historical objects for reproductions and color photocopies at the same time the show's longtime organizers and curators disavow the decision and quit the newly reopened museum? Meanwhile the same donors are also giving a wing at the Met.

Erik Inglis@allthebeset.bsky.social · 2d ago

Very interesting story that could probably make a mini-series, with intersecting issues of aesthetics, authenticity, personalities and money www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/a...

Love this piece on comic printing origins by Guy Lawley over at @truegrittexture.bsky.social www.truegrittexturesupply.com/blogs/news/o...

The Origins of Vintage Comics Part 1

Comics historian Guy Lawley takes you on a deep dive into the warm, nostalgic aesthetic of vintage comics and the technologies used to print them.

truegrittexturesupply.com

What made so many cultural centers of the past - interwar Paris, 70s NYC East Side, 90s Seattle - was that young artists could live and feed themselves on a pittance, leaving them time and energy to work on their art.

A fun day out for all the family

Are you familiar with the University of Washington special collections Decorative and Decorated Papers digital collection? If not, you SHOULD be... what a cool resource! digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/coll...

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

"Worst aquarium ever" t-shirts go viral (I saw one in the wild in Canada) apnews.com/article/new-...

Whaling Museum goes viral for ‘worst aquarium ever’ T-shirts, totes

New Bedford is considered the home of whaling’s history in America — and now, home to the worst aquarium ever.

apnews.com

Oh did a female academic with an extensive history of study and practice in a particular area of literature make a reasoned critique of a male filmmaker’s movie? I’m sure this will be handled with maximum normality.

I keep thinking about how often the mass layoffs in media, government and big companies, especially women and people of color, will lead to poorer outcomes for years because the people who would point out potential problems or blind spots were deemed non-essential, a "bad fit", and/or too expensive.

An interview with Guerrilla Girl Joyce Kozloff artjournal.collegeart.org?p=19775

Artforum@artforum.com · 2w ago

Pathbreaking Pattern & Decoration artist Joyce Kozloff has revealed herself as a founding member of the anonymous feminist activist collective Guerrilla Girls. Kozloff made the disclosure in an interview conducted for the Feminist Interview Project and published in Art Journal.

For @aftermath.site : When Valve announced the Steam Machine, they showed off an eInk faceplate called the Inkterface used for internal testing. Many clamored for it. Instead of selling it, they made the entire thing open source. I built one, and so have many others. aftermath.site/steam-machin...

The Steam Machine's ePaper Faceplate Is Open Source And Full Of Possibility

Valve made the eInk Steam Machine faceplate open source to see what the community could do. We're already seeing results.

aftermath.site

The death of third spaces is really giving people brain rot. Children should have access to public spaces because this is how they learn to behave. Community cohesion depends on one’s willingness to help out with childcare. It is weird to me not to see children existing in public like public transit

Matthew Noe@noethematt.bsky.social · 2w ago

"This might be unpopular but I'd like to discriminate against an entire class of people" If this is you, I hope the next 500 books you try to read are a disappointment.

just got an email from my (former) chair that the university has acted & the state has approved the formal closure of my department. this was done without any faculty input on the decision or the process, & has ended a vibrant, growing (!), humanities department that won teaching and research awards

Matt Gabriele@profgabriele.com · 12mo ago

Anyway, happy Monday! The Dean is shutting down my department - Religion & Culture, the only 1 of is kind in the country & home to the innovative Major in Humanities for Public Service. There is no immediate budgetary or political pressure for this decision

Eat your heart out, Hemingway

Medieval scribes employed a number of different methods to correct mistakes and omissions. This one used the figure of a man pulling the omitted portion of the text towards the place where it belonged - 15th century, British Library, Arundel 38, f. 65r

✣ Medieval Jimothy ✣

guy who thinks 'TTRPG' is short for 'tenure track role playing game'

More than 60% of Americans can't afford the basic costs of living. It's simple: more people are being forced to sleep outside because housing is unaffordable & the rent is too damn high. We won't solve homelessness until politicians accept reality & invest in housing, not handcuffs. buff.ly/1Q0Ogvp

Most Americans don't earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds

The bottom 60% of U.S. households don't make enough money to afford a "minimal quality of life," according to a new analysis.

cbsnews.com

💀 Pygmalion displacement 💀 doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Jane Rosenzweig@janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 3w ago

Just two of many questions: 1. Why anthropomorphize ("female robot, named Sally, will have a “lifelike appearance” with silicone skin and long brown hair")? Notably, students will interact with the bot by providing a identification codes, so obvs. not like a human interaction and yet... /1

The Luddites' actual argument was that automated looms meant expensive, skilled workers were being replaced with literal children, who were then getting maimed and killed, and maybe this is bad.

SlacktivistFred@slacktivistfred.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Luddites were “clinging to horses and carts” because it was the early 19th century and cars hadn’t been invented yet.

everyone seems to be responding positively to this and i hate to burst anyone's bubble, but i recently went to a Luddite festival in NYC and this is something organizers specifically warned about: don't let capitalists sell your hatred of capitalism back to you

The PS1 startup sound as a lesbian@janus.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hatred of AI now reaching the level of cultural consensus that becomes attractive to advertisers

I knew this data format was old, but this is ridiculous

An impression from a piece of fallen type - an error in the printing process captured forever. In a copy of Constantius Applanus’s ‘Soliloquiorum’, printed at Cremona in 1496 and given to @theulspeccoll.bsky.social by Stephen Gaselee in 1934. CUL Inc.5.B.20.5[4036]. #fallentype #incunabula

Ephemera from the Boston Board of Aldermen Docket Documents at City of Boston Archives. Itinerant entertainers applying for licenses to exhibit submitted their broadsides for the city government to inspect. All eight of these are from the 1820s 1/2 🗃️

stop. if you think the existence of a warrant is part of the conversation in any way, you cannot, by definition, argue that it makes any difference whether the guy they killed had a warrant or not. because right guy or wrong guy, an arrest warrant isn't a death sentence.

Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 3w ago

BREAKING: BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) - Homeland Security secretary said man killed by ICE in Maine was not the target of warrant, Maine Sen. Angus King says.

University administration: "We need you to complete 26 hours of lab safety training 🧪 each year so that everyone is safe and responsible." Also university administration: