Alex B. Kostiw
@formerlybirds.bsky.social
Draws, writes, designs, makes, teaches: books. Chicago, and elsewhere. (Ft tt, bb.) https://tenderly-honestly.com
The Fieldmouse Press Warehouse Sale is LIVE on Crowdfundr: crowdfundr.com/support_solrad We're clearing out our shelves to keep our three-time Eisner-nominated comics magazine, SOLRAD, alive, and you get the deal of the year because of it. Every Fieldmouse Press book for 2021–2024 is 50% off!
NEW ESSAY — Centuries before Neo instantly mastered Kung Fu in The Matrix, medieval scholars found a shortcut to years of difficult study: a magical manuscript that promised to fast-track advanced learning. Anne Lawrence-Mathers investigates the Ars notoria: publicdomainreview.org/essay/ars-no...
Why is everything so transparently evil now?
!["Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage," it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by
404. "Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools."
Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps Al companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:pxunhtt4zdl4rkkjub54m5ia/bafkreic7burhqtyy3mrqnzzf5gwr3pokwr6gznvg7p5htr4gz3mghh4hny)
Americans have more confidence in higher education than in big tech companies, and the gap is growing rather than shrinking. The higher ed-doomsday pundits need to get on board with the real vibe shift in public trust that is happening right now.
Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · last wk.I look forward to all the reports & coverage about all of the internal problems & mistakes of all of these other institutions, in the same way that universities are constantly blamed (& blaming themselves) for “declining trust.” “Compared to what?” news.gallup.com/poll/712436/...
Another really good one-pager from the same book, POCKET FULL OF RAIN AND OTHER STORIES. Love Jason’s pre-anthropomorph style
Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai.bsky.social · 2w agoJason
I miss the noisy summers I grew up in, and even when my family finally got air-cons in almost every room, you could hear the music from cars at the stop light and boomboxes and people laughing. And when you stepped outside, the sticky sweltering heat enveloped you, exactly as it felt like it should.
Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2w agoThis always reminded me of the following: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
Peeling oranges, a woman said, "Today, I have wasted energy on anger. Hasten on, all the days we've been waiting for!"
Scott emphasizes the importance of craft or “metis” – “local knowledge” about how to farm in a particular location, what customers will need, or how the parts of an ecosystem interact – and argues that large-scale, centrally-governed systems can’t accommodate the complexity of local knowledge. 2/6
Literacy is not an individual skill. Literacy is a public infrastructure.
A Norway fan has gone viral for not taking part in their Row celebration after matches and won't do it if they win the World Cup "It’s factually wrong; they didn’t row, they sailed over the Atlantic”
Woke up at 6 am again, facing the big windows. Through the tree outside, the sky looks like pieces of pale gold at sunrise.
Honored and grateful to be one of the grant recipients.
Comics Advocacy Group@comicsadvocacy.bsky.social · 4w agoWe are delighted to announce the awardees for our third CAG Mini Grant!! Please click through to read more about each of them -- you might just find a new favorite cartoonist. c: comicsadvocacygroup.org/2026/07/08/c...
"A comprehensive examination of Toni Morrison’s writings, intelligence, her use of the Black literary form, her reading & writing process, & how she fragments language to make it her own. This...turned me into a lover/supporter of literary criticism because it expands our...vision about literature."
In Praise of Difficulty & Reading Toni Morrison: A Conversation with Namwali Serpell - The Rumpus
“She saw the readers as a chorus, like the chorus in a Greek play, where the audience is part of the ensemble. She gives the example of when you’re in an audience in a musical performance—you’re shout...
therumpus.net
Technology by its very nature is in a constant state of flux. It's foolish to train young people in skills that are *currently* useful and which may become outmoded by the time they join the workforce
behold an ancient "curse tablet" greeks and romans wrote them to try and bring bad fortune upon their enemies one of them cursed a prominent lawyer: "I bind the tongue and soul and speech that he is practicing" item #8 in my latest Linkfest newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...
Very excited to share a link to my new book! The introduction is now available at dukeupress.edu/archives-of-...
Archives of the Anthropocene: Visual Grammars of Deep Time
dukeupress.edu
A data-driven analysis of how the New York Times's treatment of transgender subjects shifted "from rights-based framing toward more skeptical, conflict-driven coverage" since 2014, centering trans-rights opponents over trans people themselves. www.advocate.com/politics/nat...
The New York Times helped turn trans rights into political controversy, analysis finds
A new data investigation says the paper of record increasingly framed transgender rights as a debate instead of a lived reality.
advocate.com
Lynda Barry did not squeeze your heart and simultaneously explain the point of all art with the barest of line drawings so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."
Olivia Hill@machineiv.bsky.social · last mo.Sam Raimi didn't strap a Super 8 camera to a 2x4 so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."
One of today's political prisoners. Cartoonist & zine maker Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada wasn't even at the ICE protest. He was accused of "moving" a box of anti-Trump zines THE NEXT DAY. A rightwing judge sentenced him to 30 years! Just for possessing zines. The darkness is descending.
Ryan Estrada@ryanestrada.com · last mo.A cartoonist named Daniel "Des" Rolando Sanchez Estrada was tried as a terrorist and sentenced to 30 years in prison for having anti-Trump comics in his car. Prosecutors connected him to a 2025 anti-ICE protest he didn't even attend because he was in the same book club as others who were.
Happy Father's Day to those who celebrate. I have no father myself. Instead, I was born from the terrified screams of my future enemies.
These are the chapters of my memoir, written as a series of poetic vignettes.
Today I got mad on the internet because some people are adamant that if an artwork requires them to think about it or consider its context, it is bad art. Sometimes I'm relieved that one day, many decades from now if I'm lucky, I'll be dead.
jon ben-menachem@jbenmenachem.com · 2mo ago"Expecting me to read books and look up words is discriminatory" is for sure a viewpoint that crops up online, and it's very important to make fun of it every time
This whole thread on an AI-written keynote is good, but this one gets to something that I think is important for the "is AI conscious" "debate:" embodied experience. Our knowledge comes from embodied experiences in a way LLMs do not have, and will not as currently designed. /1
Crystal Fleming クリスタル@alwaystheself.bsky.social · 2mo agoI did actually find the talk thought provoking and brilliant, albeit in a diabolical way. It raised many reflections for me, but more than anything, an embodied feeling -- a sense that something wasn't right. And to receive that confirmation in real time was one of the wildest moments in my career..
The Arrival of the Sun, 1962 by Kenojuak Ashevak, artist of Inuit heritage born on Baffin Island #womensart
