Found this channel and have been enjoying the central concept which is that a bunch of video essayists choose a theme and then make their own interpretative video essays on it which all get compiled into a feature length video. Very cool anthology vibe to the projects. youtube.com/@theessaylib...

The Essay Library

The Essay Library is a community of video essayists. Our main base of operations is our public Discord server. We regularly organize video essay challenges and collaborations (open to everyone). Do y...

youtube.com

Fascists and authoritarian regimes try to control universities and turn them into purveyors of state propaganda through extortion…... www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

Trump administration asks colleges to commit to education overhaul

Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s letter contains some similarities to a compact offered to and rejected by a small group of schools last year.

politico.com

been reading @olivia.science, really enjoyed this latest post olivia.science/anxiety/

Anxiety

Reasoning (and crying) my way through fascist AI-induced anxiety.

olivia.science

Philippe de Villiers et son fils se sont associés à un oligarque ultra nationaliste proche de Poutine, sous sanctions de l’UE et des US, pour ouvrir un équivalent du Puy du Fou en Crimée occupée. Nom du projet: Tsargrad…

Appalling cruelty — and all to fund more tax cuts for the rich.

This paper shows that immigration enforcement can _increase_ crime. Undocumented immigrants already have the lowest crime rate, but tough-on-immigration policy makes immigrants less likely to report crime. So immigration enforcement worsens the problem it was ostensibly meant to solve

The COVID brain fog explained. The COVID-19 virus binds to the ACE2 receptor to enter cells. Dopamine producing neurons are rich in the ACE2 receptor. The virus causes disruption in the dopamine network in the brain. 🧪 tech-paper.com/scientists-f...

Scientists finally have a biological explanation for why long COVID patients lose motivation and can't think clearly. They scanned their brains and found the dopamine system was physically damaged - T...

Millions of people with long COVID report the same cluster of symptoms: a crushing lack of motivation, an inability to think clearly, memory that slips, movements that feel slower than they should. Fo...

tech-paper.com

So, I really hope I get to tell this story in longer form in the near future, but it it’s burning a hole inside me. Most of it comes from an interview with Bob Hirst this weekend. Bob has been Exec Editor of the Mark Twain Project for 47 years, before which he was part of its staff for ~15. 1/16

of course Fox News not caring to find out - or choosing misinformation about - where Ceuta is before airing about Spain

I'm on @mattseybold.bsky.social's American Vandal podcast. This was a fun one: www.theamericanvandal.com/p/vectoralis...

Vectoralism, Vulgar Marxism, & General Intellects (Vandal Live @ e-flux Brooklyn)

with McKenzie Wark

theamericanvandal.com

Joe's article also features in selection of recent 'Transactions' articles which consider 'The Historian's Craft and Practice: new writing on history teaching and historical research' bit.ly/4bPGJvW All 15 articles are published Open Access and free to read #Skystorians 2/2

The Historian's Craft and Practice: new writing on history teaching and historical research - RHS

The Society's academic journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, publishes a wide range of content from historians of all disciplinary backgrounds and career stages, worldwide. This inclu...

bit.ly

Delighted to see that the Routledge Companion to Video Games and History now has a webpage and a cover! There will be an ebook (which given the length of this I imagine will be many people's preferred reading approach), it just doesn't show on the page yet. www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

Nature did a short piece on our preprint about how LLMs will affect the practice of science; my more detailed thread is below.

Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts

Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.

nature.com

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

There's literally no reason to do this unless you wanted to provide the right wing mediasphere a way to fake things that never happened or to cover up awful things that have been done by this administration that can be blamed as Fake News

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d ago

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

Not personal: e.g. IMO, this work is incoherent, superficial and badly-written. Personal: e.g. You're ugly. You're hideous. Your tattoos are ugly. You're a bitter old woman. You're jealous. You're evil. You're ungrateful. You should shut up forever. I hope you die. I hope this helps!

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation

PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...

theonion.com

i think el-sayed winning the michigan senate primary will permanently break the brains that were being held together by string since mamdani

‘War and Memorandum of Understanding’

Jake_Vig@jakevig.bsky.social · 6d ago

Downplay a book or movie: "Reasonable Expectations"

As a Brit can I apologise for what has become of the BBC

Come for Emily taking about the epistemology of history, stay for the noise Brennan Lee Mulligan makes when he finds out she wrote a whole book about smells.

Dr. Emily Friedman@friede.bsky.social · 7d ago

I am unbelievably touched that @dropout.tv titled my @dimension20.dropout.tv Adventuring Academy episode “A Duty of Care”

I’m overwhelmed today, but I want to circle back in a while to share the links to everyone & everything I cited. More soon.

Ameaka Fatima Nkempu, a Johns Hopkins University researcher in public health, was detained by ICE while boarding a domestic flight. She says she is Cameroonian in a Medium article that she authored. As of Thursday morning, the ICE Online Detainee Locator did not list where she was being held.

Baltimore Banner@thebaltimorebanner.com · 6d ago

ICE detains Hopkins public health researcher as agency expands airport arrests

Ruine un titre en enlevant une lettre : La soupe au houx.

Dedal_us@dedal-us.bsky.social · 6d ago

Ruine un titre en enlevant une lettre: Le petit ivre rouge.

"Students anted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings+complex ideas. They didn’t want to outsource any of this effort to gen AI. They wanted to do the work.” www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)

We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect.

insidehighered.com

Great case for @aoc.bsky.social to run for president. This is right: "Never in my lifetime has the left had this energy, credibility, and opportunity." AOC is uniquely charismatic, MAGA is likely to be especially weak, and the left has more momentum than it's had in over a century, perhaps ever.

Hamilton Nolan@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 6d 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...

"Those who treat Omelas as a utilitarian allegory wish to view the child as a concession, a 'gotcha' moment illustrating the ethical quandary alleged to inhere in all joys and comforts. But such a reading is erroneous."

Three Walks Back to Omelas: On Suffering and Happiness

"Meaningless" cruelty implies the possibility of meaningful cruelty.

typebarmagazine.com

“The empathy aliens are not coming to save us. The weapons of mass disclosure do not exist. The saboteurs of civil society will not mend their ways if we bail them out.” - @mattseybold.bsky.social on Spielberg and SpaceX substack.com/@mattseybold...

2026: A SpaceX Odyssey

The Empathy Aliens Are Not Coming To Save Us

substack.com

Data centres are the horrific hyper-stimulated version of something once relatively harmless (like a golden retriever with rabies), but humanoid robots have always been and will always be a dangerous, expensive and resource-sucking hypey scam, and I will never stop enjoying when they fail

I finally have a physical copy of this astonishing book and cried reading the dedication & acknowledgements: what an immense accomplishment. I really do encourage everyone to find a way to read this— it’s unbelievably, inspiringly smart. Thank you, @nicolerizzuto.bsky.social, for writing it.

Others have said it so weighing in to agree: I think it's an interesting fact for, I dunno, comparative study of varieties of conservatism, that there's plenty of good conservative artists out there but none for the currently ascendant populist variety. It in particular seems distinctively anti-art.

Jared Holt@jaredlholt.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The problem is that “I am often scared and angry about social change” does not inherently lend itself to interesting art. You can be as technically skilled as the greats, but art with nothing interesting to say is just a commodity.