@wordsandmusic.bsky.social reminded me that the Iain Banks/Shirley Jackson combo is one I find particularly potent: www.typebarmagazine.com/ritual-respo...

Ritual & Responsibility: Subversion in The Wasp Factory and We Have Always Lived in the Castle

There is nothing so commanding, right, or natural in the powers that be that a child cannot toss them aside.

typebarmagazine.com

Carrie-Edmund Laben@carrielaben.com · 2w ago

Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis The first Iain Banks book I read and then every other Iain Banks book The first Shirley Jackson book I read and then every other Shirley Jackson book Ulysses by James Joyce (yeah fine that was grad school)

As a higher ed finance person, I keep emphasizing that more students are enrolling in high cost of educating fields like health and engineering and fewer in lower-cost fields like the humanities. This squeezes institutional budgets as cross-subsidies disappear.

Report: Humanities Majors Disappearing

Anxiety about job prospects and heavy reading loads have led to dramatic declines in humanities majors since 2012, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

insidehighered.com

The project risks depleting fragile springs in a municipality where around 80% of the territory faces water conflicts and demand already exceeds 100% of available groundwater reserves. Naira Hofmeister on @mongabay.com, in partnership with @intercept.com.br news.mongabay.com/2026/09/huge...

Huge AI data center project blindsides water-stressed town in Brazil

As water wells turn to dust, local leaders learn of the massive facility firsthand from reporters.

news.mongabay.com

It's the John Kerry campaign again. The right answer is the one that makes you look strong and your opponent look weak. Which, on trans issues, is "my opponent is an asshole. He's wrong on medicine, he won't listen, and he hates kids. Next question."

Getting a sense of deja vu relative to the Dems who reflexively said "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman" in the W years and still lost to Republicans.

RESULT: David Morales, a socialist challenger, has ousted the mayor of Providence David Smiley. Add Providence to NYC, DC, and Ann Arbor as socialist wins in mayoral elections.

maybe I'm biased (by teaching climatology last semester) but it's so weird seeing people arguing about the dangers of AI in a "robots kill you, singularity!" sci-fi sense, some sort of future possible danger and not this immediate threat to our livable planet

Jeff Sharlet@jeffsharlet.bsky.social · last mo.

"By the end of 2030," reports NYT, the amount of energy used by data centers"is expected to quadruple, eclipsing the power used by all countries in South America and Africa combined." This is extinctionism.

Indigenous people are defying Canada's anti-LGBTQ+ laws and offering a safe haven for trans people on their land globalnews.ca/news/1205333...

Alberta First Nation invokes treaty clause to set up gender-affirming care safe haven | Globalnews.ca

Saddle Lake Cree Nation says it aims to defy Premier Danielle Smith’s government by establishing a safe haven for gender-affirming medical care — contrary to provincial law.

globalnews.ca

Somebody should revive this magazine.

I've always liked the framing in this article about ed tech by Yong Zhao from 2003. And, I think it's a useful way to think about AI in education. At this point, it's basically an invasive species. www.jstor.org/stable/3699409

“His legal team said his lawsuit is ‘the first complaint against OpenAI that details the specific risks posed to members of the disabled community as a result of the company’s recklessness.’”

Man told ChatGPT he was feeling delusional. ChatGPT insisted he was Jesus.

Man with bipolar disorder sued OpenAI after surviving ChatGPT-linked suicide attempt.

arstechnica.com

It is unbelievably fucking dark that 25 years after 9/11 unleashed a wave of Islamophobia and hate crimes, 15 years after the disgraceful Park51 panic, we are seeing mainstream media actors validate the most disgustingly open bigotry in the public discourse

Anjali Dayal@anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 3d ago

This is somehow still going, and it’s not just a few random families now; it’s also a former mayor of NYC and governor of New York. There is, again, no way to reason to argue Mamdani shouldn’t attend this commemoration that isn’t fundamentally bigoted

The thing is, even within the lifespan of the mainstream internet, things used to work a LOT more smoothly That was one of the huge arguments FOR mainstreaming the internet Now nothing is smooth. It’s crammed full of monetized barriers between user & task to boost stats & keep eyeballs locked in

Catherynne M. Valente@catvalente.bsky.social · yesterday

I think about this essay a lot. About the low-level stress & aggravation literally everything is now designed to incite & maintain. What this constant emotional histamine response to our digital-logistical environment does to us, how it degrades our days. www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgiv...

The Librarians WON AN EMMY! If you haven't seen it yet, you really should.

That Librarian: Amanda Jones@librarianjones.com · 2w ago

Want to know why The Librarians Film is nominated for an Emmy, was long listed for a BAFTA, and won over 30 international film festival awards? Now is your chance. It’s free on PBS’s YouTube page for a limited time at youtu.be/ywQOCY-qDzE?... (1/3)

Honoring the memory of author and former One Story Managing Editor Adina Talve-Goodman, this educational fellowship offers a year-long mentorship on the craft of fiction writing with One Story magazine. Deadline=10/13. For complete details visit: bit.ly/4gFUMHn

Thanks to the NY Times, we've learned to understand and better appreciate each other, despite our differences, so everything's been pretty quiet in US politics since 2017...

Chad Loder@chadloder.dev · 2d ago

In late 2017, the New York Times was blasted for its sympathetic profile of a relatively obscure neo-Nazi that described him as "polite" with "Midwestern manners" the article said "would please anyone's mother." I'm noticing the UK media now normalizing white supremacists like US media did in 2017.

Recently rewatched Street of Crocodiles myself. So good — pure jolt to the imagination.

Eric Orchard@inkybat.bsky.social · 3d ago

I’m taking a short break from drawing to watch a short film. Street of Crocodiles by the Bros Quay. It always makes me feel excited to be creating. Pure unconscious weirdness

Re: all the talk on how to reintegrate “MAHA moms” We already know how to do it: Regulations with strict enforcement mechanisms It worked in California, it can work everywhere

"By staying quiet, Dartmouth sent a powerful signal throughout a wider academic community that was struggling to form a unified front. The message was that individual self-preservation mattered more than solidarity or fundamental beliefs."

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 4d ago

I got your gift link for this must-read. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

A thoughtful reflection on experimentations with fiction, past and maybe future...

Neglected Books@neglectedbooks.com · 3d ago

Jerome Klinkowitz's The Life of Fiction (1977), a celebration of "SuperFiction," was the most exciting work of criticism I'd ever seen when I first came across it as an undergraduate. Reading it again reminded me of the excitement and myopia of a young person’s enthusiasms. neglectedbooks.com/?...

‘The result…wasn’t as novel as it first appeared. …it pasted together ideas from the mathematical literature to build a new theorem. Once again, the LLM’s trick is its superhuman patience for assembling puzzle pieces, not the ability to make some profound intellectual leap.’

OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say

OpenAI released 10 AI-generated results over the weekend. Some mathematicians are unhappy with their approach

scientificamerican.com

The skye above the port was the color of parchment, as yet unmarked by a scrybe.

Stoked to read about a forthcoming book on experimental colleges + radical education, then saw that it's published by (guess!?) Springer, and that it's $200 for print and $160 for the e-book. I wish academics were more attuned to these contradictions. Work with a small, radical press. Self-publish.

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · last mo.

Just saw an intriguing new article about digital enclosure, planned obsolescence, and extractive big tech… in a Springer journal. Please, academics, stop publishing in journals controlled by commercial publishers that embody the worst of Silicon Valley! Think abt the means of knowledge production!

A new, free, poem on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/Thatweirdjay... It's free.

Schubert and me | Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

Richard Wilbur thought Beethoven before Breakfast felt wrong; wait ‘till evening, so that You have earned it, and need it. Never chic, Nev

patreon.com

When you understand the pervasiveness of anti-blackness, a lot of bewildering scenarios are simplified.

The Playlist@theplaylist.bsky.social · 4d ago

Paul Schrader Says He Turned To AI Because “No Black Actors Wanted To Play In A Movie Where There Are No Good Black People”

Please read this whole thread. It’s a very good depiction of how community care looks right now. Please be ready to show the same care.

Friendly Neighborhood Mouse@missmouse.bsky.social · 4d ago

Friday morning, I was gardening when I checked my phone. A request had gone out for help. For 25+ hours, ICE had been laying siege to a quiet neighborhood in Frederick, MD. Community members were afraid, some didn’t want to leave their homes. ICE vehicles seemed to be lurking on every corner.

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait on the Border between Mexico & the United States, 1932

I’m a Dartmouth professor. Pres. Beilock implies in this piece that she speaks for us as a college. She does not. I don’t permit AI in my classroom. Not because it stole my work; because as I wrote in @chronicle.com, most of my students hate it—and feel betrayed by the college—even more than I do.

The Atlantic@theatlantic.com · 5d ago

Many educators are trying to make AI simply go away—but in doing so, they are abdicating a sacred commitment that has guided American higher education for centuries, the president of Dartmouth College, Sian Leah Beilock, argues.

huge thread for anybody who has a Pavlovian response to the words “ol’ grandpa’s the best”

Charles Pieper@inherentcharlie.bsky.social · 5d ago

Today I spent driving to the shooting locations of the original ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre.’ I started at the Bagdad cemetery:

Just finishing the excellent book The Poison Squad, a history of food safety at the turn of the 20th cent. A huge amount of anti corporate organizing went into win basic regulations and the right to know what we are sold and consuming. Here’s one of many graphs on our supposedly “healthy” past…