Professor Nutella
@jpnudell.bsky.social
Pizza appreciator, ancient historian, reader, writer, baker. In some order. Looking forward to the pivot past video. Blogging here: https://joshuapnudell.com/blog/
True reboot: a young Jim in an orphanage drinking virgin martinis thwarting a young Ernst Blofeld and his first cat. The bond girl is his teacher. The twist is that the film is just as gritty and violent as most Bond films.
The Independent@the-independent.com · 9h agoJames Bond producer shares update on 007 casting: ‘It’s got to be really different’
I didn't become a college instructor to become a cop
gr3gjsmith.bsky.social@gr3gjsmith.bsky.social · 8h agoI deeply identify with this. I never loved marking but in the last 1.5 years I have gone from 'net positive love of teaching with some serious caveats' to ... some new normal that is barely tolerable.
To this student and all the chuds in the comments, AI is not inevitable www.reddit.com/r/VirginiaTe...
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Listen, hear me out: What if we just declared one more month of summer? Just decided it’s longer this year? Students would be happy. Teachers would be happy. I bet even administrators would be happy. We can even extend winter break to balance the semesters. What d’ya say?
Totally agree. Learning requires friction, LLMs make it so easy to bypass for students.
I have classes to prep, so how about people give me a reason to talk about books, instead?
Mo 🌸📚@moplayspoke.bsky.social · 2d ago1 like = 1 book question 📚💙
Some people really talk like they’re addicted to AI, as if it’s a drug dependency. Is it really so hard to quit? I never relinquished my brain to it in the first place, so I don’t know. But it seems like another good reason to keep it away from kids.
Ayo@darrylayo.bsky.social · 20h agoGuys like this don’t realize that they are the freak
A humble academic proposal: let's not have stars. Everyone hired as an academic at a university is there to teach younger generations, to make new knowledge, to have that knowledge critically evaluated by others, and to act on collective insights. We do not need to designate some people as stars.
Meaningful professional consequences for submitting AI-generated work riddled with errors would go a long way toward changing how people use it, even if only to make them more careful about checking the output.
OP is correct that using AI agents takes the human error out of historical research, but it replaces human error with something much worse.
Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.
Anyway, happy major off-cycle ballot measure election day here in Missouri. Primaries are also happening, but the ballot measures are more significant in most races.
Professor Nutella@jpnudell.bsky.social · yesterdayThere is a category of voter who will insist on heightened ID requirements to vote in the name of election security and then grumble about the verification measures when they go to vote.
The older I get, the less insecure I am about naming my [secret] superpower(s). Mine is grammar & writing well--and editing others well. I can make your prose sound better. ;-) (As a result, I really appreciate a good edit-job on my own stuff too.) What's YOUR secret superpower (not your job)?
There is a category of voter who will insist on heightened ID requirements to vote in the name of election security and then grumble about the verification measures when they go to vote.
When we don't adequately fund public universities, and instead force students to take out loans, what we as a society are really doing is borrowing money from the younger generation—their hard-earned future income—to fund a necessary project that benefits us all: building an educated society.
Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 2d ago1. This is bullsh*t & an epically stupid policy completely detached from any empirical evidence: bsky.app/profile/mcop... 2. We could simply avoid this entire issue by <all together now> Funding. The. Damn. Public. Universities. Like. We. Used. To: bsky.app/profile/mcop...
One consequences of listening to a lot of audiobooks recently is that I spend a lot of time thinking about transitions between paragraphs.
Taking a gap week from my varia series to think about breaks and cultural discourse, along with some images from the Minneapolis Institute of Art. joshuapnudell.com/2026/08/02/w...
Weekly (not)Varia, no. 193, 08/02/26
On taking a gap week in a series that is closing in on four years old.
joshuapnudell.com
Half the discourse this summer has been about the Second World War and half about Homeric Greece but yes there’s clearly no future for students trained in history
Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 3d agoSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
To help relieve work stress, don't answer emails on the weekend. Also on weekdays after 5 PM turn off your email. On Mondays, don't log into your email until after noon. Before logging in on Tuesday burn your computer and erase your identity. By Wednesday morning gather supplies and escape into the
Inspired by the summer film and Discourse, some freshman are going to show up to register for classes in Ancient Greek and Ancient History only to find that those courses and faculty no longer exist.
This is spot on. I wonder if it is part of why I’ve been increasingly drawn to art where I can see the brush strokes or chisel marks. Seeing the human activity behind an object.
Jacqueline Antonovich@jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 3d agoAnyway, my eyes glaze over whenever I see an AI poster/flyer. They all look the same. I am absolutely charmed by non-AI posters and will always look closer at them.
I think it comes from the fact that we mostly work with a closed source base. A modern historian, you go to a conference, no one has been through the archives you have. But classics? *Everyone* has read that passage and is prepared to call bullshit on you in public. Thus sharp elbows.
I can see the opening now: Black screen with off-white Greek script that spins into English. "In the time of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman writer Lucian of Samosata wrote A True History. This is that story." The black fades to the wine-dark sea near Gibraltar and sounds of a creaking wooden boat.
Professor Nutella@jpnudell.bsky.social · 5d agoA few of options spring to mind: -The Epic of Gilgamesh -Enuma Eliš -Lucian's A True History (the review will need to explain who this was, and what the hell the audience just watched) -Another Alexander movie, this time based on the Romances
Every sane and decent person in this god forsaken country for the last year and a half.
Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 5d agolooking at the headlines and reflecting once again on how all the smart, hard-working, honest people I know feel like they’re going at least a little insane in our era of total Stupid Immoral Asshole ascendancy
it’s legitimately fucking offensive to me as a taxpayer that this entire administration is run by people whose only goal in life is to be on television
Brandy Zadrozny@brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 6d agoSomeone posted this in slack and I actually thought it was The Onion. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
As the comments go on to elaborate, that’s a “seems like AI slop” button to train LinkedIn’s Ai to make less obvious AI slob. Or, to use the technical term, “wheee!!!”
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 6d agoNew: LinkedIn just introduced a "seems like AI slop" button. That's literally what the button says. The thought leaders are going to have a meltdown www.404media.co/linkedin-int...
Missed the opportunity to call it Twigmalion
kottke.org@kottke.org · 6d agoThe trailer for Wicker (starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki). “An outcast in a fishing village commissions a husband for herself made out of wicker.” Looks unhinged (complimentary). (via @skullsandsheets.bsky.social) [youtube.com]
a propos of that statement... Books are ABSOLUTELY NOT just a delivery mechanism for information. This hyperfocus on "information" is the root of the whole problem really.
My summer treat recently has been a decaf breakfast tea with a good amount of soy milk shaken over ice to give it a little froth. In other news, I'm reaching a frumpy middle age where mainlining sugar and caffeine causes me problems.
