on my comps reading list coincidentally for this week. excellent book with stunning visuals. what a loss

Alex Segura@alexsegura.com · 7h ago

www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/u...

earlier this week, i used pout pout fish goes to school to teach our kid that in some cases, it's ok to take a sharpie to a book

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16h ago

what age would you say is appropriate to begin the ruthless criticism of all that exists? asking for a Sweet Baby who loves for her father to read her The Pout Pout Fish and other ideologically dodgy texts

“In the AI circular marketing economy, tech pretends to be fashion, fashion pretends to be journalism and academia, and journalism and academia get gutted by tech. Young women most likely to be victimized by smart glasses become their ambassadors, feigning empowerment.”

From Geek Chic to Surveillance Chic

How fashion’s fetish for intelligence enabled big tech’s style takeover.

thecut.com

Megan's book on private equity is excellent. And her recent feature for @wired.com (from which this project originates) was as well.

Stop Saying Kids Can’t Read

Everyone is talking about the reading crisis. But inside the “Mississippi Miracle,” it’s all about comprehension.

wired.com

Megan Greenwell@greenwell.bsky.social · 2d ago

I'm going to talk to a huge range of people for this book: teachers, parents, students, scholars, founders, and more. If you're interested in chatting with me about literacy education, please please please get in touch! readingmachinebook@gmail.com.

For @slate.com, I reported on the nostalgia surrounding Pizza Hut's Book It! program 🍕 People shared fond memories of falling in love with reading, what it meant to them as kids in terms of food access, and the glory days of books + personal pan pizzas. Gift link:

It Might Be the Best Thing a Corporation Has Ever Done. It’s Finally Back.

Reading may reportedly be in crisis, but the personal pan pizza is forever.

slate.com

Do students understand all of this? I feel like everyone has a different message about AI for them. Unis/admin are quickly creating centers for AI excellence, offering free AI tools, requiring proficiency in AI, & saying jobs want AI skills while profs are bending over backwards to avoid it.

Benjamin Tausig@burrata.bsky.social · 2d ago

My undergrad large-lecture syllabus is now ready. Here's all of what I had to do to fend off AI: -Physical copy of the textbook is required (so material can't be auto-summarized). The mechanism for this is that tests and quizzes are open book, but only the physical copy can be used.

Folks seeking to divest from Canvas - are you going completely old school (paper only syllabus, assignments, etc) or have you worked out a hybrid plan? Can anyone point me to resources that will surveil me and my students less?

a week and a half after this publishes, and AOC is vlogging her egg freezing journey and posting strength training videos with britney spears's work bitch as soundtrack. millennial queen, my president already

Hamilton Nolan@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 2w ago

The left needs a candidate it can unite around in the 2028 primaries and AOC is the only real choice. Nobody else checks all of the boxes. Every other option is worse. If she doesn't run, it's a missed opportunity of historic proportions. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/aoc-must-r...

ok i'm doing it, i'm eating a salad with lettuce of mysterious sourcing

mar was gracious enough to give me an office key while away on sabbatical and wow, did those windows leeeeak

Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · 5d ago

One thing I’ve been thinking about is what’s kind of hidden by this headline/story: how under-resourced this school already was. Staff were doing the work of 2+ people each for YEARS, there were never enough full time faculty, constant budget cuts, & the physical plant of the university was eroding.

genuinely something special about this summer, during which baby and i get to join comps prep book club zoom each friday afternoon to discuss the 7-8 history books we read this week

my post-it note method described proudly on slide four

Miriam Posner@miriamposner.com · last wk.

I made this for my students last year and there are some links at the end to professional advice! docs.google.com/presentation... For more “real” advice, I tend to search for something like “annotations + libguide” in order to get librarians’ resources.

"the aesthetics of AI slop take the logic of quantification to its extreme form by embedding it in a technological system of increasingly automated production, circulation and consumption to which human signification appears ever more marginal." journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Doing the numbers: The operational aesthetics of AI slop - Jernej Markelj, Jakko Kemper, 2026

What to make of the bizarre imagery of AI slop? If AI slop feels meaningless to interpret, this is because it has little to do with meaning and representations....

journals.sagepub.com

What the hell. Fund the fucking libraries. blockclubchicago.org/2026/08/05/t...

Thousands Of Books Are Piling Up In Chicago Libraries Due To Staffing Shortage

The backlog has librarians scrambling to find space and keep track of books in the system. Library workers say it's a ripple effect of a delivery driver shortage — and patrons have started checking ou...

blockclubchicago.org

Elena Zhang@ezhang77.bsky.social · last wk.

Has the library still not solved the delivery driver issue? This is kind of nuts

Data centers have become one of the U.S.'s most potent political flashpoints, uniting coalitions on the left and right like few issues do. We sent @mollytaft.com on a journey into the data center resistance. The Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders made appearances along the way:

How Data Centers Broke American Politics

What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026.

wired.com

Since #COVID & pandemic handling is in the news, I want to recommend the brand new COVID Studies: A Reader: www.pennpress.org/978151282949... This is a fantastic collection of essays based in SSH fields. It is available to read #openaccess for free too.

and now for something good: architecture people, design people, urbanists! most aesthetically innovative/ distinctive public (maybe government maybe just public access) buildings constructed in the U.S. in the C21?

Listen to @tressiemcphd.bsky.social when she writes that AI is "the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation” - and then teach about and against the technologies with the help of the books she cites:

Opinion | Want to Fight Back Against Big Tech? Start Here.

A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.

nytimes.com

Question for the nerds in the room: What are your favorite books on founding-era politics? On the Constitutional Convention, etc etc

this thread has reminded me of all the hours i spent on typing.io a few careers ago

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 2w ago

I wonder if students today would be less likely to lean on AI for writing assignments if schools had made sure they could touch-type (at least 60wpm) before having them submit all their assignments online. 1/🧵

the 21st century's "more work for mother"

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2w ago

Anyway back to my ongoing theory that women use AI to get more done and men use AI to get out of doing more.

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

excuse me

sara m. b. simon@sarambsimon.bsky.social · 3w ago

excuse me

illinois tech was so good to me. it's where i learned to take myself seriously as an academic. more importantly, the undergrads? phenomenal. there's a special kind of joy you get in teaching the humanities at tech-focused institutions. infuriating to see this news www.chronicle.com/liveblog/her...

‘Targeted Reductions’ Coming to Illinois Tech

Texas community colleges feel the effects of performance funding, Clemson to refocus spending rather than cut it, and Boston U. to pay $100 million in PILOT money.

chronicle.com

Visited the new Chicago Brand Museum today. It's fascinating. (It's not a museum of just Chicago brands; it's a museum of lots of brand, which happens to be located in Chicago.) Fans of typography, graphic design, package design, and more will love it.

For a citation analysis project in 2010, I checked the bibliographies of 100 random papers from different fields. Only three of those articles had bibs entirely free of formatting errors, and *many* had pretty glaring errors (like journal name). To consider when using bibs to check for AI.

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 2w ago

no doubt im a bad academic but i don’t doubt that someone who went through my work with a fine tooth comb would find some howlers. a french reader pointed out to me once that I got the name of the main archives I worked in for my first book wrong in the abbreviations/ front matter! mea culpalol

"children do not love a storybook simply because their name or image appears in the story; they love the book because the story itself is interesting"

Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 2w ago

Parents are fed up with friends and relatives giving their kids “personalized” AI-generated storybooks with characters resembling their kids. Apart from data privacy concerns, literacy experts say these garbled and convoluted narratives could be an impediment to learning how to read.

Help @wired.com figure out what working in tech is like -- especially if you are not a man -- in the age of AI! We need to hear from the people. Take this survey, send it to your friends and foes, sing it from the rooftops, tattoo it on your body, etc., etc. se1.decipherinc.com/survey/selfs...?

The Interlochen investigation is effectively still open for people to report their experiences. Link to report here. www.interlochen.org/sites/defaul...

Olivia Messer@oliviamesser.bsky.social · 2w ago

Elizabeth Sanghavi, a former federal civil rights attorney, and her team spent hundreds of hours speaking with academy and camp alumni. She is available through October 2026 to receive additional reports at elizabeth@sanghavilawoffice.com or 617-505-3010

another musical milestone: introducing baby to rent (original broadway cast recording)

sara m. b. simon@sarambsimon.bsky.social · 3mo ago

big milestone: baby just listened to purple rain for the first time