Case in point: I have spent a week sweating over an 850-word book review. (Not all day every day, but daily engagement with same.)

Allow me to observe that writing is hard, friends. (At least it is for me.) Which is also part of what makes it worthwhile. Go figure.

But I repeat that any institution willing to lead by investing positively at this moment of crisis cd basically buy up faculty on the cheap, stockpile geniuses, & create a legendary humanistic institution that would be positioned in a shifting market to survive these assaults for a very long time.

this is awful for many reasons, but IHE's framing suggests a frictionless market for academic labor where tenured faculty who dislike the terms of their job can leave for "bluer pastures" anytime. This recodes a functionally collapsed market for humanistic expertise in terms of free market fantasy

Media Studies Professor Named First Sound History Fellow at Library of Congress Josh Shepperd, assistant professor of media and communication studies, was recently appointed the 2017 Sound History Fellow for the Library of Congress's National Recording Preservation Board.

Entering year ten of my appointment as the first and only Sound Fellow of the Library of Congress. I have no idea how I got here. The advocacy and infrastructure work associated with the role has been good, nearly impossible, and worthwhile.

Garlic cloves and bread from a fresco originally from Herculaneum and now at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN), Italy. Photo by Sophie Hay

Happy National Garlic 🧄 Day! Greeks & Romans loved garlic—but Mesopotamians loved it 1000s of years before them. The Greek ἄγλις (Latin alium) is an Akkadian loan word. At Pompeii, there was even a garlic seller (aliarii) workshop ( 📸 by @pompei79.bsky.social): pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpic...

The Necessary Pain Involved in Blogging (if you want your work to be preserved beyond your lifespan) I am thinking a lot these days about my own mortality. That’s not because I am obsessed with death or anything of the sort. It’s more that my health problems are accumulating and I do not know how long my body is going to hold out against them. It might be that I can clear all my current...

Blogging is painful but essential for preserving my work beyond my lifetime. I discuss the steps I take, from metadata to digital preservation, and why it's worth it.

eve.gd/2026/04/19/the-necessary...

I thought about lost infrastructure like this recently during a trip to Richmond, VA, with my dad, who grew up there in the heyday of streetcars and remembers how easy it was to get around the city that way.

Bird nests | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Most bird nests are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). This law says: “No person may take (kill), possess, import, export, transport, sell, purchase, barter, or offer for sale, any ...

It's bird nesting season! Did you know that it's illegal to disturb nesting native birds? Handy info in case you need to dissuade overzealous landscapers and neighbors from cutting down everything in sight: www.fws.gov/story/bird-n... 🌎 #GreenSky #birds #MBTA #conservation

Can it be stopped? Mine opponents see options to halt development near the Boundary Waters. After the U.S. Senate voted to overturn a mining ban, environmental advocates laid out other strategies to stop Twin Metals.

Environmental advocates and opponents of a proposed mine near the Boundary Waters vowed to continue fighting after the U.S. Senate voted on to repeal a mining ban near the protected wilderness.

Companies hoping to mine in the pristine Boundary Waters (the most visited wilderness area in the U.S.) still face major obstacles including obtaining necessary permits, inevitable litigation and the majority of the state’s residents who oppose mining in the area via @minnesotareformer.com

The results of Hungary’s recent election offer lessons for U.S. democracy. Subscribe to our free newsletter, The Briefing, to stay updated on efforts to keep U.S. elections free and fair: bit.ly/3Yrz5jM

AI Use Appears to Have a "Boiling Frog" Effect on Human Cognition, New Study Warns A new study claims to offer the first causal link between AI dependency and cognitive erosion. Researchers warn of long-term implications.

NEW: A new pre-print study offers the first causal evidence that outsourcing reasoning tasks to AI can rapidly erode users' independent performance AND their will to persist despite difficulty.

"People’s persistence drops... they’re also not willing to try without AI.”

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Why is it that the most vocal cheerleaders of generative A.I. are always the hackiest motherfreakers around? You expect studio executives to say things like “it’s going to revolutionize content,” and “from a bottom-line standpoint it’s inevitable,” and “I’ve finally found an instrument as cold and empty as myself,” but you’d hope that an artist would have more self-respect.

of course you CAN use AI to "write" your book but you run the risk of a lethally derisive colson whitehead materializing in your office to call you a hacky motherfreaker
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

I’m sorry but the rest of your life is going to be spent finding out about some new weird annoying guy, and then finding out he died

Credit to the Block family for selling to the non-profit Banner at a discount. They were offered significantly more by a for-profit chain that would have further gutted the paper. They saw what rhe Banner is doing in Maryland and opted for civic responsibility.

Yes!!! Gift link!

Baltimore Banner’s nonprofit publisher buys the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to continue publishing after sale to nonprofit media group Toledo, Ohio-based Block Communications Inc. is selling the Post-Gazette assets to the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, publisher of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Baltimore Banner.

A Baltimore-based nonprofit digital news outlet is to acquire the assets of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, ending nearly a century of family control of the newspaper and ensuring the future of Western Pennsylvania's largest news organization. www.post-gazette.com/local/ci...

Who Gets Guggenheims? - Public Books Unfortunately, 100 years of data show that those whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—that is, those not at elite institutions—are least likely t...

Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe.

Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities

www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

I owe Hampshire College everything, nearly all of it good. It was a beautiful thing, and we're losing too many of those.

First New College, then Hampshire College. We're coming to the end of the attempt to make higher education something other than hackwork, slavish devotion to job training for working and middle class, pre-wealth studies for the "elite." How fucking dull are these times of ours.

14 things our PhD supervisors got right and why it mattered PhD students reflect on how their supervisors made a meaningful difference — from quiet acts of kindness to career-shaping guidance.

"14 things our PhD supervisors got right and why it mattered": good tips here for academic advisors (and for supervisors/managers in general). www.nature.com/articles/d41...

100 Dams Down: 2025 A Big Year for Reconnecting Rivers in the U.S. In 2025, the United States removed 100 dams. One hundred outdated, often crumbling, and frequently dangerous structures were pulled from our waterways across 30 states. In their wake, more than 4,893…

A record year for dam removals reconnects US rivers, reconnecting over 7,900 km of rivers. Many of the structures were obsolete or unsafe, and their removal is already restoring fish migration routes, reducing flood risks, and reviving ecosystems. American Rivers buff.ly/LwcNbjh
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Young adult happiness is falling. Percent of young people who are pretty or very happy has dropped from 88% to 76% over the last 15 years after having held fairly steady between 1980 and 2010

My hottest “I have no data to back this up” take is that phones aren’t making young people less happy. What’s making them less happy is living in a world where everyone is having their reality defined by recommendation algorithms that can only care about whether something keeps you watching.

happy anniversary of when almost nothing happened

The 28th Virginia battle flag is a Confederate battle flag that belonged to the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment. Captured by the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg, the flag was brought to Minnesota and exhibited at the state's capitol for several years before passing into the permanent collection of the Minnesota Historical Society after 1896 where it has remained since.

Happy Confederate Surrender Day from Minnesota where we still have your goddamn flag and we’re not giving it up.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_Vi...

we’re winning

Always exciting to see the Avignon Papacy in the news

Philly area people:

The CHOP garage collapse in Grays Ferry has (probably) killed 3 people, and all the animals at the Grays Ferry Philly Paws location have been evacuated.

They desperately need cat foster homes until the shelter can reopen. Please help if you can!

phillypaws.org/foster/

It would be terrible for all of you.