British Romanticist & expert in cultural/political influences of 17th-20th c. secret societies (no tin foil hats, please). Still trying to make academia better for academics and students and still working on all the rest.
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Geoff Bennett: You say that poetry is not useful, and that's exactly why we need it. Why? David Duchovny: "We want to get educated to be able to work, to have a job of some kind, which is great and it's necessary. But we've lost sight of educating a mind on how to think or a soul how to feel."
Heads up, English Literature types. The newly formed School of English at MMU is looking to appoint a new Head of School, ideally someone who already holds a professorial Chair. Further details here: manmetjobs.mmu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancy...
I have some markers specifically formulated for use on the kind of treated glass in office buildings. I would have so much fun before someone complained about insubordination.
Schools were open. Teachers were teaching and students were attending school online, AND in a great many states, students were attending classes in person beginning in August 2020. When they were hybrid or online, in most places, it was bc too many teachers, staff, and students were COVID positive.🙄
Read the study, and the thread, and if you hear this kind concern trolling about birth control coming from anywhere or anyone, shut that shit down. Hard.
Happy Labor Day. Here’s my modest contribution to our knowledge of working conditions for staff and faculty in higher ed. And how we can make it better collectively. JHUP is running a sale-30%off with code HLAB25 at checkout
#PPOD: A gigantic jet was photographed from the International Space Station by astronaut Nichole Ayers on 3 July 2025. Gigantic jets are transient luminous events (TLEs) that appear to initiate as an intracloud flash between the middle negative and upper positive charge regions in a thundercloud. 🧪
No worries!
Yep, awesome
lol It’s gotta be a nipple piercing, right? I kinda love thinking about all the frothy rightwing Ohio politicians hyperventilating about that guy’s confident masculinity.
In Which Nadine Amuses a Dragon and Makes Autumn Happen
One of the patients I interviewed for my forthcoming book had their ENT surgery denied at the 11th hour — literally while she was in pre-op, hooked up to an IV. To make matters even more exasperating, her hearing procedure was denied not by another ENT, but by a gynecologist.
Lol They made us take Fortran I and II as well. As English majors. Pretty sure most of us made it through with a lot of heavy drinking and cursing.
On the other end of the range was a history prof who lived with his mother, really hated that the school had gone co-ed, required men to wear ties in class, and insisted on calling his exams rallies and holding them at midnight on Wednesday nights. We weren’t so keen on him.
My Calc III prof was skipping office hours to go workout with a buddy from the physics dept, so admin moved his office to the 2nd floor near them. He broke his arm after climbing out the window and discovering the ivy covering the old brick couldn’t hold him. He was brilliant and we adored him.
People were so determined to memory-hole the first couple years of the COVID pandemic and pretend it didn’t exist, they reelected the pretender in chief and his nutter buddy determined to kill them with the next pandemic. Sigh.
It was such a relief to get my brain functioning again, not least of which bc I could stop trying to sleep with ice packs and just sleep again. Whew. I am an absolute evangelist for hormone therapy and pilates bc the damn stuff works.
So much good came out of this
New study by @brendannyhan.bsky.social, @jasonreifler.bsky.social & colleagues demonstrates that prebunking election fraud rumors — by warning about anticipated false claims & filling conceptual gaps that those claims exploit — helps to reduce belief in falsehoods: www.science.org/content/arti...
Please comment: Some source material to draw from here: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-death-...
The City of Atlanta is opening its first municipal grocery store today. The city is spending $3.5 million in partnership with a neighborhood grocery chain in an effort to eliminate a downtown food desert. www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...
I think being ahead of the curve is part of the dissonance. EG: I know people are about to pay 25-35% more for health insurance on the private & ACA marketplaces in GA. And Trumper Rich McCormick’s district has the biggest number about to get a nasty shock in a month, but they don’t know that.
Today is the day authors are learning how many of their publishers straight up blew off registering copyright and I feel like that deserves a class action suit of its own if it costs everyone their settlement money from the Anthropic suit... 😒🤬
Grok was slated to be used by the federal government until the Mecha Hitler incident wrecked the deal. Now, just a few weeks later, the White House wants it back in the mix. from @zoeschiffer.bsky.social
ICYMI overnight: A federal appeals court keeps alive a fast-moving fight over the Trump administration’s effort to block billions of dollars in foreign assistance approved by Congress, reviving it as a large chunk of funds are set to expire next month www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
This should not be viewed in isolation from the workarounds to renaming army installations, the removal of predominantly women flag officers from positions they earned, and the decision to grant funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. All designed to shape and re-write history in service of a select group.
Jim O’Neill is a tech investor, former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, and co-founder with Peter Thiel of the Thiel fellowship. He has no direct medical education or experience. It’s hard to get away from the feeling that they really are trying to kill us.
Little good news for your feed.
For this month's experiment for @outsidemag.bsky.social, I tested out a sensory deprivation tank, along with special guest Sarah Marshall of @yourewrongabout.bsky.social. We both loved it?! www.outsideonline.com/health/welln...
I know it's illegal on here to notice that our leaders are actually fighting back in the job we actually elected them to do, but here's the Wall Street Journal bitching about Schumer's "historic" delaying tactics that have left almost 90% of Trump appointee slots empty. archive.ph/2025.08.27-0...
Three senior CDC leaders who resigned told The Post they were asked to participate in an unscientific vaccine recommendation process that they believe could harm the health of Americans.
This interview, which is also available to listen to as a podcast, provides a useful overview of some of the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions.
Ok it is our first ever “Woof Wednesday” Reply with pics of your pups for all to enjoy !!!!
lolol I love it
Supersoakers full of spiced labne
Yeah, being pulled from their regular jobs and their families and “deployed” to spread mulch — because Trumpers who’ve never served fired the FPS employees and think of the National Guard as easy free labor — is exactly why these Americans signed up to serve the country.
"A risk assessment stated that unauthorized access to the data would have a 'catastrophic impact to SSA beneficiaries and SSA programs.'"
Many thanks to our friends @hyperallergic.com for spreading the word about @ransomcenter.bsky.social's 2026-27 #fellowships! Learn more by visiting the Center's website: www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/ #Humanities #Photography #Literature #ArtHistory #RareBooks #Theatre #FilmHistory 🗃️📜📚
This ruling is now final, and the case is closed. President Donald Trump does not have the authority yo invalidate Chicago & Illinois laws that ban local law enforcement officials from helping federal immigration agents, U.S. District Court Judge Lindsay Jenkins ruled. @wttw.bsky.social
NEW: Anthropic has reached a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history.
The entire Social Security database, dumped on a random cloud server: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...
I wrote about the manifestly illegal attempt to fire Lisa Cook 1/ paulkrugman.substack.com/p/in-the-mat...
This feels like a spot of good news www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...
The VPOTUS saying "If we THINK he did something then we will prosecute" out loud while Dem strategists send out a list of words you shouldn't use in a campaign flyer lmaooo Two opponents playing entirely different sports here
Georgia finished canceling nearly 471,000 voter registrations Friday, one of the largest removals of inactive voters in U.S. history. The cancellations shrink the state's number of registered voters from 8.44 million to less than 8 million. #gapol www.ajc.com/politics/202...
This sort of admission—the VP is involved in prosecutorial decisions, the "concerns" arise from political actors, and the administration knows they don't have probable cause—would have prompted the Founders to impeach everyone involved.
BREAKING: A federal court ruled that Alabama's state senate map violates the Voting Rights Act for unfairly limiting Black political power in Montgomery. This is an important victory for Black voters.
This hasn't gotten nearly enough attention. In earlier times, officials even LOOKING at confidential files was considered a major scandal. Today a Trump crony is scouring mortgage files to find dirt on the president's political enemies and it's being greeted with "New allegations emerge!"
Luttig is communicating vastly more clearly and honestly about Roberts and Scotus than most Democratic officials are. It’s absolutely flabbergasting.
A thing I really need people to keep in mind: 15% tariffs are high, historically speaking. 10% tariffs are high. The average effective tariff rate before this term was just over 2%. Anything double-digits is high!
What Danielle said. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the average effective tariff rate in this economy right now is 18.2% Let me put that another way. President Trump has raised taxes on American businesses and consumers by -- on average -- 18.2%
DC: If you see anything related to Trump’s ride along this evening, send to marisakabas.04 on Signal.
TL;DR: 5 justices say Trump doesn't have to immediately restore the funding, but 5 *also* signal that the underlying directives are unlawful. That sends a fairly strong (if mixed) message that Trump will lose these cases *eventually,* but only once they're brought in the Court of Federal Claims.
Guys like him always talk over and at girls and women but never with women. He’s the type who never realizes that the girls and women who have to interact with him wish he’d cut it out, but they know he’s such a misogynist it’s not worth their time, and possibly dangerous, to tell him to stop.
Dude, I assure you, the women in your family and those you claim as friends also would like you to stop being a misogynist who’s taken it upon himself to tell people what you think women want. And if they’re not telling you outright, it’s bc they know how misogynists like you react.
Honestly, dude. Women like me don’t need dudes like you telling us what we openly and loudly want or don’t want. In fact, since I’m a woman who’s been a competitive athlete since I was 10, let me clue you in on something: Women openly and loudly want dudes like you to shut up, sit down, and stop.
NEW: The California Supreme Court has rejected GOP lawmakers' effort to block a mid-decade redistricting.
Yep, they’re doing impressment. Coercion, paired with intent to send people into adverse conditions and deny them payment for costs incurred.
“Detail assignments may be either reimbursable or non-reimbursable. Non-reimbursable details are authorized where the expected benefit of a detail would be comparable to training or development programs that otherwise would be conducted at a DoD Component's expense.” 😬 bsky.app/profile/mari...
How long do we think the so-called requests to volunteer will last before they switch to outright impressment? Because I suspect they have no problem coercing anyone who needs to keep their job and can’t afford to lose it by turning down six weeks in the “volunteer force.”
New, from me: A Trump official is concocting mortgage fraud claims to target opposition. It's a classic authoritarian trick. Now they are doing it to Lisa Cook, the first Black female member of the Federal Reserve to push her to resign. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trump-uses...
🚀 Scholastic is hiring an Executive Editor Manga and Graphix. Full time, NYC, $93k-110k. Must be fluent in Japanese & 7+ yrs editing manga required. #jobalert #comicjobs #artjob #jobsinpublishing scholastic.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
I wrote this piece earlier this year when Trump announced his plan to remake the Smithsonian in his own morally repugnant image. I went to the Blacksonian shortly after it opened & I couldn’t wait to take my kids with me. This is about that magical trip last summer. open.substack.com/pub/wkamaube...
***Job Opportunity*** Assistant Professor of History, immigration and the United States in a period after 1860, Georgia Institute of Technology 48/ networks.h-net.org/jobs/68973/g...
***Job Opportunity*** Assistant/Associate Professor - African American History - Tenure Track, Western Michigan University 49/ networks.h-net.org/jobs/68979/w...
Nice work being a stenographer for the Trump regime, CNN. Have you considered writing a header for the post that doesn’t simply repeat the administration’s propaganda? You know, doing a little journalism instead of telling people the Trump line that piss is rain. Just a thought. 🤷🏻♀️
AGAIN: WHAT TRUMP IS DOING IS WILDLY UNPOPULAR
This is absolutely wild. #txlege
You can read how right-wing sheriffs attempted this during the 2020 election! I have a whole chapter on election manipulation. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/707263...
A WIRED review of a now-deleted Twitter account that used the screen name “Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III” shows it posted conspiratorial content about the 2020 election, Covid-19, and Jeffrey Epstein. www.wired.com/story/twitte...
How do we get Streets of Fire on Ice in Inflatables bc now I want a rock-n-roll fable on ice, with Minecraft refs, and inflatables
There’s an entire category for skaters wearing inflatables!
Do you have an essay that contributes to our understanding of the literature, history, and culture in the Anglophone world, 1660-1700/the adjacent periods? Or tracing Restoration texts, ideas, and culture anytime up to our current moment? Submit! blog.umd.edu/restorationstudiesjournal/submissions/
Late last night I mapped crime rates for cities in OH, SC and WV to show how often they exceeded the rate in DC — where those states’ governors are sending National Guard troops to “combat crime.” www.pbump.net/o/more-peopl...
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Huh. Via "net operating loss carryforward" Musk's SpaceX has avoided paying federal taxes despite earning $7.4B last year and getting 84% of its support from the federal government in a recent year (2020). In contrast, Microsoft paid $14b in taxes last year. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/t...
New: I spent the week looking into the cancelled mRNA contracts. Interviews with HHS officials and MAGA and MAHA influencers reveal an HHS agency plagued by dysfunction as Kennedy chips away at the nation’s public health. www.msnbc.com/news/news-an...
See the man circled here? That's E.J. Antoni, Trump's Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee, walking through a crowd of Capitol rioters. #ICYMI, we've got an archive of 500+ Parler videos taken during Jan. 6. You can spot Antoni starting at around 1:41 here: projects.propublica.org/parler-capit...
The plaintext of Kryptos, the mysterious statue at the heart of CIA headquarters, is for up for sale to the highest bidder. Here's my story: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/s...
The news is all bad so here's a treat: a bunch of horoscopes written out by John Dee, a bunch of shopping lists written out by John Dee. A magus has to eat. (Bodleian Ms Ashmole 337)
1/2 "Unchecked spread of illness, flooding and a lack of food and of a place to bathe or clean their teeth, according to the lawsuit. Detention officials go 'cell to cell' pressuring detainees to sign documents agreeing to drop their immigration cases and leave the country ...."
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Thanks for saying that — seriously. They’re good people over there and it’s always good to know they’re making a positive impact in folks’ lives.
Oof. I taught at GaTech back in the early 2000s and did a lot of work with the faculty over the last couple decades. Gotta say, they’ve pretty much no patience for careless errors — they’d say that in their fields, that’s how structures fail, things explode, and people die. They’d have backed that.
Let's talk about representation in Congress and the growth of the U.S. population. www.pbump.net/o/the-declin...
Yep from @emptywheel.bsky.social www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/13/w...
Y’ALL! Look at this beautiful goodness!
Yep. We actually tried his suggestion at GaTech. And then we created the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and required the students to take courses from the college, because turning out engineers lacking in the skills acquired from the liberal arts was turning out badly.
Texans who think Cornyn should be more worried about why DOJ put Ghislaine Maxwell in a minimum security camp close to schools and Texas A&M (as opposed to low security) than invited DOJ to Mess With Texas, call him at 972-239-1310.
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Okay, someone just put this on my skyline and this is so, so good. Research fun! Enjoy!
Whoops! Guy got upset, verbally abused me — and he’s not even riding the subway in a city! — then blocked me. 😂 I guess dodgy guys like him who live in the suburbs/rural areas do verbally abuse people after all. He just never realized he was demanding cities ensure no one behaves like him. 🤷🏻♀️
Are you okay? It’s a little concerning that you can’t name the state in which you live, and that when someone asks you to, you resort to verbal abuse instead. Odd, too, considering how worried you are about people being verbally abused in cities (but not where you live, except when you do it).
Surely you can name the state in which you live?
Oh, kid. I’m so sorry you’re struggling with understanding what you’re reading. I’m an American who is a British Romanticist. I’m also sorry to hear Paris has been such a frightening experience for you. You may well be better off sheltering in place in your suburban or rural home. What state again?
LOL Well obviously, since it appears it’s never occurred to you that people in rural areas and suburbs also do exactly the things you’re demanding cities ensure people are always safe from. What state do you live in? If you take care of all crime there — everywhere — you’ll be in good shape.
David Noll 