On the train from Boston, super excited to be heading to Princeton @princetonccsr.bsky.social for the Black Buddhism Faculty Training workshop! bbft.ccsr.princeton.edu

A Minnesota religious studies professor is facing six years in prison, with the DOJ saying he is part of an "antifa" conspiracy against ICE Erik Davis speaks out about his prosecution, largely based on a handful of his comments in Signal chats. He's not accused of any violence “It’s petty revenge"

The professor facing prison in ‘antifa’ case: ‘They want to scare all who oppose ICE’

Erik Davis is accused by the government of a ‘conspiracy’ to obstruct ICE – experts say it’s part of a pattern to criminalize lawful organizing and ruin activists’ lives

theguardian.com

The monograph is real! What a strange feeling.

When people ask me what the phrase "artificial intelligence" means, my short answer is, it means "venture capitalists, give me some money". But OUP asked me for a longer answer, given here and summarized in the section headings: doi.org/10.1093/9780...

VIE —> BOS

"Lots of people are urgently wrestling with 'big questions' about the nature of reality. They want help from an expert, and they still believe that a public university is where they might find one." Good read on #religion and #reality from @thebaffler.com & @josephlaycock.bsky.social

Territorial Spirits | Joseph P. Laycock

He didn’t realize his dream job would involve desperate strangers asking him to save them from demonic oppression.

thebaffler.com

Wien Zentralfriedhof has a Buddhist cemetery complete with stūpa.

Die Fledermaus, Pride Edition, at the Vienna Volksoper was, as expected, a campy great time. What I didn’t expect was beautiful and moving political writing in the dialogue. Bravo!

Went to see Die Zauberflòte at the Viennese Staatsoper. The singers and orchestra were amazing. Kudos to the artists who made something lovely out of one of the dumbest pieces of narrative writing I’ve ever experienced.

Tijana Krstić kicking off this exciting workshop on preaching in Eurasia at CEU, Vienna. events.ceu.edu/2026-06-25/p...

Flying to Vienna today for this exciting conference on medieval preaching! events.ceu.edu/2026-06-25/p...

Preaching and Preachers as Brokers of (Inter) Communal Dynamics across Late Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia

events.ceu.edu

AI cannot fail, it can only be sabotaged. You must stay ever-vigilant against Trotskyist wreckers.

Issue 146:2 of JASPA (former JAOS) is out online lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja... on: Karna in Jain epic, Song of a Yue Person, Old Persian Hinduš & Gandāra, Chan in Tangut, Hymn to Ninurta as Savior, Uriah the Hittite, Shah Safi Safavi, al-Ghazālī on pleasure, & Jingjiao stele Christians

Aghast at this quote from the school’s dean: “Byrne said she believed religious studies students would actually have a better experience after the department closure with incoming lounges, better advising and more interdisciplinary learning.” Lounges? Really? www.denverpost.com/2026/06/09/u...

University of Denver to close departments, merge schools as part of academic restructuring

DU leader acknowledged that the changes will eliminate an unspecified number of jobs, but said the organizational realignment is “not really a part of” addressing the institution’s larger budget short...

denverpost.com

For any Sinology homies who missed it: I have a *very rough* conversion of Hucker for Pleco that is definitely buggy but may make life easier anyway. If you're up for beta-testing, check it out. 🀄📚

Brendan O’Kane@bokane.org · 2mo ago

Friday night, time to go wild.

A former professor & VP of @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, my alma mater, weighs in on what reads to me as not its inevitable death but its murder. This may seem like just one sad higher ed story, but I believe it's emblematic of all that's REALLY wrong with higher ed.

Opinion: Hampshire College Didn’t Fail; Society Failed Hampshire - Amherst Indy

Since the public announcement of its imminent closure on April 14, many have opined on why Hampshire College "failed." Many of the reasons offered on outlets ranging from new social media to establish...

amherstindy.org

Setting up elfeed in Doom Emacs and so psyched to live in a world of RSS once more.

Hot off the presses: Yi Ding’s new book on _zhai_ in medieval Chinese Buddhism!

UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

The toxicity this policy will introduce in both students and faculty will be off the charts. But most of all I worry about how this will impact vulnerable graduate student teaching fellows who do the bulk of the teaching & grading at Harvard. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading With A Cap | News | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard faculty voted to impose a roughly 20 percent cap on A grades beginning in fall 2027, approving the College’s most aggressive attempt to reverse grade inflation and reshape academic standards.

thecrimson.com

This bandcamp Friday I am jamming out to Chariots Overdrive’s _The End of Antiquity_, a charmingly retro tribute to old-school metal by some very talented Chinese students in Atlanta. chariotsoverdrive.bandcamp.com/album/the-en...

The End of Antiquity, by Chariots Overdrive

9 track album

chariotsoverdrive.bandcamp.com

Don’t miss this. “ASU Atomic is the first to combine verified university content with adaptive AI that builds learning modules unique to each learner.” It figures that profs’ materials were harvested and used by ASU - without their consent - from… Canvas.

Chris Hanlon@chrishanlon.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.

Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.

Colleagues, Skidmore’s Religious Studies department is looking to hire a 2-year VAP in American Religions on a very short timeline. I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to your networks! Happy to answer any questions, just send an email or DM. eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Colleagues, Skidmore’s Religious Studies department is looking to hire a 2-year VAP in American Religions on a very short timeline. I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to your networks! Happy to answer any questions, just send an email or DM. eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Reading Mir’s poem about his favorite cat, one realizes that toxoplasmosis is perhaps the only human cultural universal.

It is very fun to get google alert hits for my own name now that reveal completely fabricated statements / quotes thanks to reliance on chatbots. Absolutely wild how the choking pollution of our information environment is being powered by literal choking pollution from fossil fuelled data centres

I am broken-hearted at the terrible news that my alma mater, @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, after 56 yrs, is closing. Its death is a victory for conformism, for corporatism, for higher education's dull love of hierarchy & status. It's a grievous defeat for imagination & experimentation.

Just sent off edited page proofs and the index to SUNY Press. Monograph is one step closer to reality! sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-...

Currently, the all-time most blocked accounts on Bluesky are: 1. JD Vance 2. The White House 3. ICE 4. Bluesky's AI app that was announced 24 hours ago

Mike Schuster@mcs212.bsky.social · 4mo ago

#4 now. It may actually be on track to getting blocked more than ICE.