Look at this noble, furry creature sitting on an issue of The New Yorker

From a letter of recommendation I've just sent off: "______ is that rarity of rarities: a born researcher, a subtle thinker, a curious mind, a scholar of the highest ethics, and—perhaps rarest of all—a pre-modernist." 😀 #premodern

Please enjoy this moment of quacky levity, brief respite for trying times

Just inhaled The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, on the heels of reading There Are Rivers in the Sky. Both dark _and_ life-affirming, the ideal antidotes/escapes for the current moment :-/ More of this, so please share recs

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books

We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.

publicbooks.org

Compare the statement about the antisemitic terror attack in Australia by the Israeli Prime Minister with the one by Zohran Mamdani, and ask yourself who more truly cares about condemning antisemitism, as opposed to using it to promote unrelated politics.

No one warned me that embroidering was addictive. I’ve quit my academic gig — this is my full time job now

UMass-Amherst is hiring “a specialist in the visual arts, architecture, and/or material culture of the Islamic world” ! careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u...

Bummed that I’m gonna have to report this student for submitting work that is not their own

Does it make sense for a Mamluk-era manuscript of juz' 16 to open with Q18:57 rather than Q18:75? Sharing the opening pages here.

Does anyone I know have an image of documenta XV (2022)? Ideally one showing after artworks were taken down??

The job market for human-type ministers will now tank

Jonathan M. Katz@katz.theracket.news · 11mo ago

Nothing says “stopping corruption” like appointing a sock puppet to your cabinet www.politico.eu/article/alba...

Here's an 11th-century Jewish manuscript that refers to God as Allah and wishes for the reader to have "jihad of his soul in love for his Creator"

As a visibly Jewish person, I always know that going to a synagogue means assuming a certain degree of risk. But now I know that if something were to happen to me, it wouldn't just be sad for my family, but people would try to exploit my death to push policies I deplore.

When I’m accused of “technopessimism“ I counter that I’m not “pessimistic about technology“; I am opposed to the economic, political, and social project of upward wealth transfer that “AI” is being leveraged to bring about. If that phrasing is useful to others, then go ahead and use it.

Lol, I was going to joke that they probably conducted the AI analysis using a photograph only (which would be absurd given that paintings demand first-hand study, examination of materials, support, etc), and then I visited the AI co.’s website & saw this on the front page:

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 11mo ago

AI analysis finds £71,000 painting dismissed as copy is a Caravaggio

I grew up in Florida, still have lots of family down there, but Bugs was right

a cartoon of bugs bunny holding a fish in his paw

Alt: a cartoon of bugs bunny sawing the state of Florida off the United States

media.tenor.com

Excited to share my friend/colleague Melissa Kerin’s hot off the press @hyperallergic.com piece on Tibetan Buddhist museum shrine rooms. It’s likely to ruffle some feathers of our curator colleagues, but it needed to be said hyperallergic.com/1038180/the-...

The Fetishistic Fiction of Museum “Tibetan” Shrines

Institutions peddle a Western aesthetic of “traditional” Tibetan shrines without scholarly backing, negating their limitless lived variety.

hyperallergic.com

Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.

Trump Deals A New Immigration Blow To International Students

Trump officials have proposed a new rule limiting international students to fixed periods of entry, making a U.S. education more precarious.

forbes.com

My first concert was the Violent Femmes. I was 13.

Greg@gsarafan.bsky.social · 12mo ago

What is your biggest concert flex?

good morning happy back to school to all who celebrate, happy one week of summer left to all the syllabus scramblers, happy grr to the quarter system people, here's some help for all of us in the college classroom against-a-i.com

teachers! excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone. take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

Considering getting this passage from the NYT article printed on totes for our art history majors. Too much?

Amherst College is hiring a full-time lecturer of architectural design, candidates should have an M.Arch or equivalent and ideally bring experience teaching arch design studios in a small liberal arts college setting apply.interfolio.com/171730

Please vote for @stephenniem.bsky.social’s Gaming Islamic History panel to be featured at the next SXSW! While gaming is well represented among the slate of panel options, Islamic gaming (indeed ANYTHING having to do with Islam) is not.

Dr. Stephennie Mulder@stephenniem.bsky.social · last yr.

Our panel Gaming Islamic History has made it to the first selection round for @sxsw.com! Want to see gaming embrace richer, more accurate representations of the Islamic world? Vote for us! @gamingislamshow.bsky.social sxsw: tinyurl.com/gamingislamS... sxsw edu: tinyurl.com/gamingislami...

If you're in the vicinity of Middletown CT on September 16, come on out to this public lecture I'll be giving at Wesleyan (and if you're not there but ARE in Boston, I'll be giving it again at Tufts the following week). I'd love to see folks there! www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/events/2...

Amherst College is hiring a full-time lecturer of architectural design, candidates should have an M.Arch or equivalent and ideally bring experience teaching arch design studios in a small liberal arts college setting apply.interfolio.com/171730

Peth Hegseth has announced that the Arlington Confederate Monument - or, as I call it, the Monument to the Myth of the Loyal Slave - will be reinstalled after its 2023 removal. Here's why that's a huge insult to Black Americans, past and present.

Many congrats to the award recipients, but worth also underscoring the fact that the awardee projects are largely limited to to U.S., Greco-Roman antiquity, Shakespeare, and AI.

National Endowment for the Humanities@nehgov.bsky.social · last yr.

NEH Announces $34.79 Million in Grants for 97 Humanities Projects tinyurl.com/ympbr56k

📣 College professors -- We can choose to not comply with authoritarianism. We should reject state infringement on our classrooms. It must articulate, precisely, what we value. For me, I introduced offense statements on syllabi a few years back. I'll keep them this academic year. #humanities