The only way to square the mainstream media's decades of handwringing and complaining about how dysfunctional NYC is and this WSJ story about how business elites have historically "called the shots" on how NYC is run is to conclude that business dingbats ruined NYC and this is how you fix it.

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 13h ago

New York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders. That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Everything is risograph and cyanotype and fermentation. It's clear that AI slop and accelerationist destruction are prompting the seemingly ubiquitous resurgence of interest in these slow, organic, manual processes.

Applications are due by end-of-day ET this Friday, August 7! Please join us — and please share!

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · 4w ago

Metro NY Library Council's Cross-Reference Coalition — an experimental school connecting librarians, archivists, grad students, artists, designers — is accepting applications for our fall class exploring PUBLIC STUDY: alternative/radical/progressive schools, lrng communities... crc.metro.org/apply/

The Number of Regular People Being Arrested for Protesting Data Centers Is Astounding

The Number of Regular People Being Arrested for Protesting Data Centers Is Astounding

All over the United States, ordinary people are risking their freedom to take a stand against data centers in their communities.

futurism.com

LOL. Abdul El-Sayed WON the Democratic Primary in Michigan despite being outspent 10-1! Amazing gaslighting here.

Politico@politico.com · 8h ago

Progressives didn’t get the big election night they wanted

To add to this, part of why I have been able to publish my own books as an independent scholar is I have as much institutional support to do so now as I did when I was in a tenured faculty role, which is zero

Rebecca Colesworthy@rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 3d ago

not unique to me! see also assoc profs waylaid by teaching and/or service. above all it’s interesting to think about parallel—though different—emphases on the “first book” with its assumption of a second and third and and and when there isn’t infrastructure to support that at scale.

Holy shit. www.wired.com/story/a-civi...

Doing final edits on our Search+Discovery zine set (designed by zoë pulley!), and it's 🤗 to see the all these inspiring, eccentric tales of discovery: what happened to those date nut 🥪 @ Chock Full o'Nuts? how do we find ghost pipes, rare bricks, rare citrus? how do children explore NYC through 🔔?

Need to reread @shannonmattern.bsky.social on toolkits! tool-shed.org/unboxing-the...

Unboxing the Toolkit - Toolshed

Perhaps our toolkits can offer new ethical and pedagogical frames, reshaping the contexts for tool use – and informing the worlds we build with them.

tool-shed.org

Applications are due by end-of-day ET this Friday, August 7! Please join us — and please share!

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · 4w ago

Metro NY Library Council's Cross-Reference Coalition — an experimental school connecting librarians, archivists, grad students, artists, designers — is accepting applications for our fall class exploring PUBLIC STUDY: alternative/radical/progressive schools, lrng communities... crc.metro.org/apply/

"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.

Pittsburgh now has a Hilmanian pickleball court

Sharmistha Ray Transforms Pickleball Courts Into Stunning Artworks

The artist's fully playable installation "Geometry of Play" spreads over three courts in downtown Pittsburgh.

hyperallergic.com

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

Super-lovely new murals at the 42nd + 3rd entrance to the 7! Sharmistha Ray & Dannielle Tegeder’s Hilma’s Ghost (an homage to Hilma af Klint, apparently)

"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

Me on the AAU "The AAU claims to be comprised of America’s leading research unis...But if the member presidents choose the guise of institutional neutrality as a way to gain political cover, they may now be leading higher ed toward greater authoritarianism." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

How Elite Colleges Aided Censorship During the Red Scares

Powerful organizations during the Red Scares crafted a world where “academic freedom” was conditional on political allegiance.

insidehighered.com

"With the demand for Portable Network Kits (wireless ntwrks in a 🧳) at an all-time high, + with funding at an all-time low for many grassroots orgs, CTNY has taken this summer to pilot our very own Lending Library, where organizations in need are encouraged to borrow a PNK for a limited time."

Community Tech NY July 2026 Newsletter

Email from Community Tech New York The Parallel Infrastructure Movement Expands   July 2026 | {View as Webpage}   Image: Chelle of TreeHouseNet editing local map of Atlanta, GA during Resilience and E

myemail.constantcontact.com

All this exposes MAGA’s real position: Mass deportations must be carried out *even if* they hurt the economy. They should be prioritized *over* economic concerns. The goal is not primarily economic: It’s about ethnically purging the country. newrepublic.com/article/2138...

Exclusive: We obtained a leaked playbook that Flock gives to cops to coach them on "how to speak to city council" to avoid getting their contracts canceled. Includes strategies like "own the narrative" by talking to mayor "before public comment periods" www.404media.co/own-the-narr...

‘Own the Narrative’: Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech

"This document shows a coordinated effort from Flock Safety to compel law enforcement agencies to convince our elected leaders to represent their interests as a company rather than the interests of co...

404media.co

Might anyone know of a small, non-intimidating zine-y guidebook that helps folks navigate the logistics (+ ethics) of *collaborative* publication — demystifying the design + production process; explaining formatting + rights clearances; addressing mutual accountability + collaborative review, etc.?

Why Self-Publish Under Fascism?

This publication was prompted by an invitation from Mariame Kaba to join her in a discussion titled: Why Make Zines in 2025: Information Control Under Fascism

halfletterpress.com

Orange Logic, the digital asset mgnt platform, has come up in several conversations over the past few months — some org's abandoning it, other big institutions adopting it (amidst staff trepidation). It's telling that their tagline is "Agential Content Orchestration." What a euphemism 🙄

between you and me, I think it’s a scandal that there are now competitive fellowships to get support with scholarly publishing. That should be my job if we all actually care about equity as much as we say we do. I—& every editor I know—make myself as available as possible. But there are limits.

reading the bookforum review of Middlemen and I expect that the scholarly publishing equivalent of the agent is the freelance developmental editor. if conglomeration drove the rise of the agent, austerity drove the rise of the latter—the editor who actually edits, helps w/ the proposal, etc.

I admire said UP editor and said NYer writer. That’s not my point. My point is just that I’m not sure we can speak of next big academic talents in that way in this moment for reasons good and bad—even as there’s all kinds of talent out there & getting published.

actually no I wouldn’t. we generally agree that if there was a star system it’s now gone for structural reasons—for better (solidarity! unions! collectives!) and worse (no material support). I balked when a UP editor was described as a starmaker in the NYer b/c I don’t think that’s how it works.

Rebecca Colesworthy@rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 3d ago

I would love to tell you I’m out there hustling to proactively find and nurture the next big academic talent but well (lol I really have to stop making myself unemployable on main)

I have long wanted to write for the excellent Bay Area publishing collective COYOTE...and they let me write something that honestly no other publication would. All hail independent media!!

Reo Eveleth@reveleth.com · 2d ago

Early on @coyotemedia.org made a list of dream bylines we'd LOVE to have on the site and @annaleen.bsky.social was one of the first on it for me. So stoked to see this piece about ~~speculative transit~~ and big dreams for the Bay Area. www.coyotemedia.org/funding-bay-...

"Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to college leaders nationwide on Monday imploring them to commit to a list of reforms by the end of 2026... Four college presidents — [from] Washington University in St. Louis, Arizona State, U of Kansas, and JHU — helped draft the letter"

Trump Has Released a New ‘Call to Action’ for Universities. 4 College Presidents Helped Draft It.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter Monday imploring colleges to adopt a series of familiar-sounding reforms — this time, in partnership with leaders in the Association of American Univers...

chronicle.com

...Plus, Capper acknwldgs the potential of the *public university*: "As a faculty member at Rutgers + Stony Brook, Kaprow took advantage of an era of uncertainty + expansionism in humanities curricula to push art history + art appreciation courses in more critical + interdisciplinary directions..."

Just finished an advance copy of Emily Ruth Capper's Happening Pedagogy: Allan Kaprow’s Experiments in Instruction, which is such a smart, heartening complement to Rachel Sagner Buurma + Laura Heffernan's The Teaching Archive, reminding us that so much impt thinking happens in the CLASSROOM...

Happening Pedagogy

How Allan Kaprow’s happenings fused modernist pedagogy with an emerging college culture. In Happening Pedagogy, art historian Emily Ruth Capper argues that Allan Kaprow’s famed invention of the happen...

press.uchicago.edu

How to Market Hampshire College. The greatest undergraduate education in America has been selling itself as a slacker school. Ethan Ludwin-Peery www.mod171.com/p/how... Too late now, but much that is true here. When Hampshire opened, it was as selective as Harvard. Then...

How to Market Hampshire College

The greatest undergraduate education in America has been selling itself as a slacker school. Here's how to fix that.

mod171.com

Maybe The Teaching Archive + stuff from this new Contemporaries cluster to think about how scholars have been thinking about teaching + criticism post45.org/sections/con...

An initiative on the ballot in Washington state in November would require all athletes seeking to play girl's sports from kindergarten to high school to undergo "genetic screening, a testosterone-levels test, or an examination of their reproductive anatomy" before they can play