I wrote about the Trojan horse, and what we can learn from her mouth about different cultural attitudes towards deception and violence. As someone comments below, the phrase GIFT ARTICLE is pretty scary in this context.

Chris Suellentrop@suellentrop.bsky.social · yesterday

Turns out @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social knows a lot about ancient epics www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Advice for freshers in 1660: "Goe not a gadding and gossiping from Chamber to Chamber..." (James Duport) #students #HigherEd #edusky #academicsky #university

english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation

PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...

theonion.com

This is Nambia erasure.

It’s really starting to grind me down

A flawless post. Straight to my library of screen-grabbed gold.

Gabriel Flynn@gabrielflynn.bsky.social · 6d ago

buying a book by hobsbawm: fuck yeah let’s go, this guy rules reading a book by hobsbawn: even after 1820, barley production on the island continued to rise, reaching an annual average of 40 tonnes per year by 1832, and this in a period when trade conditions greatly incentivised wheat production

They recognise that the books, like the activity of thinking itself, are their competition. This is an enclosure of the commons. An internal Anthropic memo says “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project.”

I did not expect to return from a quick lunch to find blood and shit on my desk (none of it mine). I guess that the bird that flew into my study window did not expect to encounter Frank, crusher of dreams. (I'd hoped that the bird got back out of a window, but a wider search turned up the corpse.)

Europe is burning – and if Trump’s war on the climate is not met with sanctions, things will only get worse | Alexander Hurst: The White House seems committed to ecocide. The EU should harness the power of the single market to force it to change course Are we understanding it yet? As Euro...

Europe is burning – and if Trump’s war on the climate is not met with sanctions, things will only get worse | Alexander Hurst

Europe is burning – and if Trump’s war on the climate is not met with sanctions, things will only get worse | Alexander Hurst: The White House seems committed to ecocide. The EU should harness the power of the single market to force it to change course Are we understanding it yet? As Euro...

theguardian.com

Here's a really nice paper by @edbaggs.bsky.social on "James J. Gibson’s affordance examples". The affordance idea is often glossed as about "possibilities for action". Anyone who actually reads Gibson will see many examples that don't fit that schema. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Manosphere grifters have figured out that some men are easily manipulated by making them feel insecure about their masculinity. The GOP has turned this sales pitch into both an ideology and a campaign strategy. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Shanthivathie "Shanthie" Naidoo (1935-2026)

Shanthivathie Naidoo: Anti-apartheid campaigner who chose 371 days in solitary confinement over betrayal

Naidoo spent a year in solitary confinement rather than testify against her friend Winnie Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists. Her defiance helped bring about the collapse of the apartheid stat...

dailymaverick.co.za

Lee Pace, this is your time to shine

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · last wk.

Studio execs are going to want to adapt more poems for the big screen now

Just saw this banging preprint by a cool posse headed by @aidanhorner.bsky.social (I saw it because I follow @suttonprofessor.bsky.social who is right in there): "Cognitive maps are flexible, dynamic, (re)constructed representations" osf.io/preprints/ps...

My heart is heavy that we are making a collective miscalculation in undervaluing the humanities - from my FT piece www.ft.com/content/fbde...

All the takes and hollering has led me to read the Odyssey. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through. One major insight so far is that Nolan has left out pretty much all of the weeping. There is a great deal of weeping in the text, often by Odysseus himself. (Maybe Matt Damon sucks at weeping?)

ATLANTA (AP) — US surpasses 2025’s record-breaking tally for measles cases, with 2,318 cases and 5 more months left in the year.

luckily he chose a remote, seldom visited corner of the country to make shit up about

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w ago

Trump claims California has "brownouts and blackouts every weekend"

“There are signs that the markets may have started to recoil from some of the more extravagant A.I. bets. Four of the five big, long-established data-center companies have underperformed the S&P 500 this year.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/b...

Big Tech Firms Like Oracle Turn to Bonds to Finance A.I. Data Centers

Risk is rising as big tech companies like Oracle — the ultimate financial source of the Ellison media empire — need to turn to the bond market for staggering sums to finance data centers.

nytimes.com

There are no jobs for teens, they’re not allowed to hang out anywhere in public, time to criminalize being bored

The Charlotte Observer@charlotteobserver.com · 3w ago

Charlotte joins major cities across the U.S. in grappling with the rise in disruptive “teen takeover” activities.

Trump bombed schoolchildren on the first day of the war, Pete.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

Rep. Pete Sessions: "I'm very proud of the president ... he's been very careful not to treat Tehran like it's Gaza, but I think that is gonna start. You're gonna see building tumble, you're gonna see pressure being put on the regime."

Alena Smith has gone too far this time.

Sean Marshall@seanyyz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Why I’m a fan of the Oxford comma.

Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵

The bonfire of the humanities

150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences

technosphere.earth

wrote about why ICE keeps killing people. it's because they're part of a pretty explicitly genocidal project. trump wants them to kill people, and so they do. www.everythingishorrible.net/p/ices-missi...

ICE’s Mission Is Murder

It is a genocidal organization and it will keep killing people.

everythingishorrible.net

More signs of resurging HIV after USAID’s closure. African Neonatal Network reported at IMNCH (a global health conference): HIV+ pregnant women ↑50% & those not on antiretrovirals ↑>300%, year-on-year, across 22 hospitals in 5 nations. @vtoxfordnetwork.bsky.social

"girls sell lemonade on the street to help their sisters arrested by ICE"

David Brauer@dbrauer.net · 4w ago

In Minnesota, girls sell lemonade on the street to help their sisters arrested by ICE. Stephen Miller’s goons are very much still here. Sign reads, “Please help us raise money for my sisters because they were arrested by ICE” & this has been confirmed by trusted community members.

Right-wingers are waging war on Reconstruction. Yesterday’s decision in Trump v. Barbara was a narrow 5-4 victory, but the reactionaries are not going to stop. Shame on some people for serving as foot soldiers for MAGA. My essay for @liberalcurrents.com: www.liberalcurrents.com/the-war-on-r...

The War on Reconstruction

The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on birthright citizenship is just one battle in the right's larger war on the Second Founding.

liberalcurrents.com

This is good. Constitutional Court in SA confirms spatial apartheid (persisting injustice in human geography) AND obligation and city and region planners to address it rather than perpetuate it. www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026...

The truth of spatial apartheid — ConCourt delivers a history lesson to DA

A landmark Constitutional Court ruling confirms that Cape Town’s government perpetuates spatial apartheid, urging immediate action or equitable housing distribution in the city.…

dailymaverick.co.za