Imagine thinking in 2026 that negativity makes you unable to foster public engagement
Jacob Romanow
@jakeromanow.bsky.social
ars longa, vita brevis https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/english/faculty/jr75399
Book bud Tim quoted in the Guardian! www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI
Secondhand booksellers believe they may have been caught up in the AI supply chain that sees old books scanned then destroyed
theguardian.com
I wrote about this a few years ago for New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, particularly the paradox of the increasing demand for specialization on the job market vs the generalist reality most of us teach within: escholarship.org/uc/item/7gn2...
escholarship.org
Sheila Liming@seeshespeak.bsky.social · 2d agoIt’s syllabus prep season, and I’m thinking about what a privilege and benefit it must be for those academics who get to directly tie their teaching / syllabi to their research / writing. 1/5
Jake Romanow offers such a lucid and incisive analysis of the stakes of expanding and contracting the “Victorian” (and of that term’s interpretive vs institutional uses). A must-read that I look forward to teaching in the coming years!
Jacob Romanow@jakeromanow.bsky.social · last wk.My article "Provincializing Victorian Studies" is out in the latest PMLA. It's many years in the making—thanks for reading. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Oh look, JK Rowling's chequebook-waving has emboldened the ADF, a Christofascist hate group that has been pouring millions into the UK to fund court cases and lobbying against abortion rights, equal marriage rights, Pride events etc., to go on the attack as well. Top standing up for women, Joanne!
Christian charities challenge Amnesty report labelling them ‘anti-rights’
A letter led by ADF International UK urges the Charity Commission to affirm that charities may engage in public debate without being labelled a threat to human rights
thecatholicherald.com
This article is revelatory and urgent; run don't walk.
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
The Victorian as a literary tradition: "I propose that this version of Victorian—narrow rather than 'wide,' transnational without a presumption of being global—might itself help us undiscipline; by centering objects over methods, we might loosen the self-regarding perpetuation of discipline itself."
Jacob Romanow@jakeromanow.bsky.social · last wk.My article "Provincializing Victorian Studies" is out in the latest PMLA. It's many years in the making—thanks for reading. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
My article "Provincializing Victorian Studies" is out in the latest PMLA. It's many years in the making—thanks for reading. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Provincializing Victorian Studies: A. Native’s Marita among Literary Traditions | PMLA | Cambridge Core
Provincializing Victorian Studies: A. Native’s Marita among Literary Traditions - Volume 141 Issue 2
cambridge.org
in the big rock candy mountain / the posters are all sane / and the normal even thoughtful comments / pour like summer rain
"Without air conditioning, each 1°F increase in school year temperature reduces the amount learned that year by one percent. Our estimates imply that the benefits of school air conditioning likely outweigh the costs in most of the US, particularly given future predicted climate change."
Heat and Learning
We provide the first evidence that cumulative heat exposure inhibits cognitive skill development and that school air conditioning can mitigate this effect. Student fixed effects models using 10 millio...
hks.harvard.edu
Hear me out, what if Nolan tried to keep the linearity by cutting the timeline down to a day and setting it in Dublin
the best day for the presidents of every R1 to hold a press conference screaming that higher ed is our second largest export and destroying it is economic sabotage and soft power detonation was Jan 21st 2025. the next best day is tomorrow.
Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 2w agoa bad thing is running a phd program with brilliant international students who must reckon with a volatile xenophobic saboteur government in fresh ways every day, no thank you, 0/10
I say this with all love for speculative fiction: let's put our scientific resources towards real problems. (And we should also be putting more resources into literature and literary scholarship, but call it what it is. Also, I doubt the SFF community wants these clowns either.) >>
Detroit Institute of Arts director Salvador Salort-Pons has announced the discovery of a previously unattributed Diego Velázquez portrait. Writing in the Prado's ARS Magazine, he used archival research and X-ray imaging to attribute "The Count-Duke of Olivares in Armor" (1626) to the painter.
Detroit Institute of Arts Director Attributes 17th-Century Portrait To Diego Velázquez
Detroit Insitute of Arts director Salvador Salort-Pons has announced the discovery of a new Velázquez, held in a private collection
artforum.com
Note that Healey oversees the only state agency in a blue state that has a 287g contract with ICE. boltsmag.org/massachusett...
Deehan@deehan.bsky.social · 3w agoGov. Maura Healey is drawing a hard line on ICE, demanding her GOP rivals denounce the agency after two fatal shootings. But will this mobilize the independent voters she needs in Mass. to clinch reelection? Read more on Axios. www.axios.com/local/boston...
Hot take, but I kinda think Mr Bennet sees himself in LYDIA, and that’s why he’s so resigned about his kid’s bad behavior!!! Sure he and Elizabeth love books and being snarky assholes, but Elizabeth is part of his ideal self, and Lydia is his indiscreet and impetuous youth.
The reason why older generations burnt the shit out of their meat and boiled the shit out of their vegetables, was your kid died if you didn't. Medium rare steaks and roasted Brussels sprouts are a side effect of an intact food safety infrastructure
Tom Scocca@tomscocca.bsky.social · last yr."The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat." www.seattletimes.com/business/usd...
I'm been wondering if it would come to this and apparently it has. huge move from cloudflare, which hosts a fifth of all websites on earth.
Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search
The nuclear option is gaining traction as web traffic collapses and Google refuses to negotiate with content creators
adweek.com
Hawaii is thinking about building an LNG import terminal. A study by the state claiming massive consumer benefits was shown to contain basic errors, to the point of fraud, honestly, but that hasn't slowed the push at all. But what really bugs me ...
Hawaiʻi committed to 100% clean energy. Now it’s flirting with…
Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat, wants to import LNG to slash energy bills. But the move might not lead to savings — and it could trip up the state’s climate…
canarymedia.com
Furthering my theory that this entire website is for people who owned Doonesbury collections as children and understood about a third of it.
Second person in 4 days is fatally shot in Memphis by federal task force member. apnews.com/article/memp...
Second person in 4 days is fatally shot in Memphis by federal task force member
The second fatal shooting in four days by a federal crime-fighting task force in Memphis is under investigation.
apnews.com
it's interesting / symptomatic that the original trolley problem by Philippa Foot placed the person choosing the track in particular social roles, whereas later formulations tend to imagine an abstract individual walking onto a scene with no particular duty or connection to what's happening.
The reason why it is essential to read IN BULK when studying history is not simply to amass empirical knowledge—though that is important, too, of course—but because *interpretation* requires thick contextual awareness, and there is NO SHORTCUT for building that up that awareness.
I'll summarize this: Mamdani asked NYers to keep air conditioning at 78 degrees. A wave criticism hit online. A MSNBC broadcast pointed out the US Department of Energy recommends that 78 degree figure. Immediately after, the US Department of Energy deleted 6,000 web pages related to energy saving.
Ah but marrying the discerning, practical Charlotte rather than his spiritual twin Mary gives the game away; he likes the idea of marrying a woman he knows is too good for him in the name of charity, but like most snobs he dislikes himself and—cardinal sin in Austen—refuses to see himself clearly