If we get sucked back into the Charybdis of Ted Lasso 😮💨 it will be because we liked Tanya Reynolds as a furious, resigned, escaped servant in The Decameron
Eleanor Courtemanche
@ecourtem.bsky.social
Midwestern prof: Victorian lit & financial crisis. Zeitgeist-seismometer. 75% normcore Anti-doomer but ☹️☹️ wtf
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date 3x for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. […] Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills." —"There Will Come Soft Rains," Ray Bradbury
You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.
Very interesting graf near bottom of latest NYT story on MAGA efforts to bend universities to its will, as if they were GOP Senators or the SCOTUS Six. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/u... Reminder number five zillion: Except for GOP Senators thinking of a lobbying future, appeasement never pays off.
Blindingly obvious that this is targeted at “degrees we think women get.”
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
Probably a good rule www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...
University Prohibits Processing Wild Animals in Communal Kitchens After Bear Skinning Uproar
Cornell prohibited the processing of game in shared kitchens after two students skinned and butchered a legally hunted bear in Ganędagǫ: Hall in September.
cornellsun.com
Unfortunately for David Ellison this is transparently laughable after what Bari Weiss has already done at CBS and it will be very funny if her genius moves fuck up a $100 billion merger www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/o...
I have never seen a bird so clearly worried about its mortgage
Ggazbo.bsky.social@gazbo.bsky.social · 3w ago
#birdoftheday #RSVP Puffin flying low by Farne Islands
I don't even know what to say. This is real, this is true, so, like, thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. This took over 25 years to happen so if there's any lesson here it's either "keep at it, who knows" or "many people are divorced"
Absolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West
Regency-era mugs, gifts for #19thc children who managed to stick to their books & learn to read. Their mottoes are grim but maybe necessary admonitions, too, for the academic who's soldiering on while coming to terms with the fact that it's August now. I.e. I feel seen. #AcademicLife
It's nice that The Odyssey is getting its day in the sun as a synecdoche for history. But when this summer is over, it's back to the relentless, remorseless rise of Jane Austen.
Sunflower maze in Champaign is open! They started doing this during covid to cheer up the depressed townsfolk
A great thread on the value of doing the work.
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 3d agoSo, I really hope I get to tell this story in longer form in the near future, but it it’s burning a hole inside me. Most of it comes from an interview with Bob Hirst this weekend. Bob has been Exec Editor of the Mark Twain Project for 47 years, before which he was part of its staff for ~15. 1/16
Paradise Lost is a perfect poem because an angel will give a complex soliloquy about service and leadership as opposed to bondage and freedom before womping Satan in the head to really bring home his point.
Even weirder: starring THREE people who are also in The Odyssey. The Holland-Zendaya-Bernthal Supremacy
Mark Harris@markharris.bsky.social · 3d agoThe Spider-Man box-office is...how do you even talk about a $350M US opening ? For a movie starring a guy who also has a major role in the country's #2 movie, which has grossed $400M in 3 weeks? To quote Olivia Colman's Oscar speech, I kind of hope you're watching, this is not gonna happen again.
The thing is that agreeing to *anything* with Trump is agreeing to *everything* with Trump, whether you’re able to understand it at the time or not.
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 3d agoTrump “came up with a completely false quote saying I acknowledged things I never said. “My god." — Brad Karp, then the chairman of the law firm 2/2
“Sandwich guy case” “Harvard clawed frog embryo smuggling case” “Olympic canoeist reflecting pool vandalism case” “James Comey seashells Instagram post case” New rule: If the case sounds like a Mad Libs story, it’s probably about to implode.
today in demolishing higher ed is economic sabotage, bonus racism 160 workers fired because regime hates international students www.wbez.org/education/20...
Illinois Institute of Technology cuts 160 faculty and staff just before fall semester
University officials say finances have taken a hit from declines in research funding and foreign student enrollment. Faculty say leaders’ slow response and lack of transparency have deepened the crisi...
wbez.org
Beat this, Broadway: Champaign IL community theater production of Ragtime 🥹
Something else I learned in my month in Germany Trump is always in the European news (he fascinates the global media as well as domestic!), but the constant fight and pushback on the streets of the US hasn’t really broken through: it doesn’t fit into a narrative any news organization wants to tell
Soraya Nadia McDonald@soraya.press · 5d ago"WE THE FUCKING JUDGE SON" New York, I love you. I love you so fucking much. Via wali_talks on IG
An excellent article about possible strategies of playing “democracy reinforcing hardball” should the US ever get a pro-democracy administration
Henry Farrell@himself.bsky.social · 5d agoI remember seeing someone (very reasonably) complaining here a few days ago that there seems to be next to no visible thinking on left and center about how to join the dots on administration and democracy. This is the beginnings of an answer to that complaint donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...
I heard this talk last year and it was such a banger 🙌
Emily Steinlight@emilysteinlight.bsky.social · 5d agoIt’s been a hard week and I nearly missed that this was finally out. I wrote “Victorian Studies and the American State” 5 years ago and have been discussing it with some of you for a decade. Surreal to see, and grateful to be in the good company of @jakeromanow.bsky.social and brilliant respondents
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
