Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels Researchers taught rats to drive tiny "ratmobiles" in exchange for food, which helped the rats relax.

Somewhere up in heaven, Richard Scarry is like “fuck yeah, told you so”: www.bbc.com/news/world-u...

No Victorian LLM will give you a better window into the 19 century than just reading various perspectives from the 19th century.

William Butler Yeats gazing in the direction of Bethlehem:

1940 Irish language scif-fi book Manannán by Máiréad Ní Ghráda
It is the first Mecha Robot outside of Japan and mention of a Gravity assist in fiction. It was never republished or translated.

Edinburgh staff urge university to ditch OpenAI deal Academics raise concerns over ChatGPT owner’s links to US military and claim tools are ‘looking to replace knowledge workers’

'Staff at the University of Edinburgh have demanded an end to the institution’s partnership with technology giant OpenAI, calling it “unsafe” and “insecure”. 1/2

CHECK whether they stole your books to train their AI. And file a claim. Make them pay out as much as possible.

Thin places by Kay Chronister

😂

move slow and repair things

Nineteenth-centuryists (#C19th) - I'm looking for novels in the first half of the century where the rural English poor are racialized as "savage", "dark" etc. I know English rural examples from journalism/non-fiction, and fiction about the urban and "Celtic" poor, but fictional examples useful!

Tweet that reads Leo Xander @STALLEON Stop taking social media so serious. Nothing here is real. Look at this chicken V - it is bigger than the car

I think about this tweet every time I feel something online start to curl its annoying little grip into my head

Everyone is Maxxing when they should be Marxxxing

Crocuses and bird skull, painting.

Crocus, Raymond C. Booth.

Poems for Lent (1st Sunday)

• Gerard Manley Hopkins •

Reddit post image of title: “could I did deep enough to keep a pallet of 2000lbs of margarine from melting in Arizona heat?”

Reddit, you beautifully weird internet place. Never change.

Also: this “Best of Reddit update” made me laugh til I cried. And I still don’t have answers.

This is my favorite bluesky account.

Seconding. Moon’s essays are provocative and compelling. While I don’t agree with all of the connections she makes, she provides an illuminating view of Wedgwood and his period.

I am far, far more interested in reading nonfiction (or indeed stories) where an author is wrestling with something, where they're conflicted but *interested*, committed to working something out while we walk alongside them, than I am with being given gorgeously articulated certainty.

Poster for talk at university of Denver, from 3-5:30 pm on Monday Feb 16 in sturm hall 451.

Looking forward to visiting the University of Denver on Monday the 16th, to talk about Erasmus Darwin, Wedgwood, infrastructure, and the invention of Anthropocene poetry. Thanks to Menglu Gao for the invitation!

PBS will spotlight Sun Ra and his Philly musical collective on 'American Masters' The episode on the experimental jazz musician, who led his namesake Arkestra, will premiere Friday, Feb. 20.

PBS will tell the story of Sun Ra and his Philly-based musical collective in an upcoming episode of 'American Masters'

A flyer for the Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize, announcing a call for papers under 3,500 words on ecological thinking in the Anglophone world 1750–1945 by Ph.D. students or scholars <3 years out from the Ph.D. Papers should be sent to kfrederickson@ucdavis.edu by February 15, 2026.

The deadline for submissions to the Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize has been extended to February 15! Submissions should be emailed to Kathleen Frederickson. See attached flyer for details! #envhist #envhum

Campus FM - stream college radio Live stream college radio stations from universities across North America. Listen to student radio online free.

Unsolicited love for whoever created this fantastic app that lets you listen to most college ration stations in the world

www.campus-fm.com

The Devastating Monologue That Is Leaving Audiences Spellbound

Reminder that if you have a chance to see the absolutely brilliant OEDIPUS play in NYC right now, you should take it.
The Devastating Monologue That Is Leaving Audiences Spellbound www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/t...

If you're reading over coffee this Saturday, this novelette is temporarily available online again for the next month or so. Thanks if you check it out.

undertowpublications.com/uncertain-sons

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

I feel you, Melville

And that horny book should be, of course, Moby-Dick. 🐳

i feel like the viral bus thread resonates because at every step of the way you're like "ok surely this will be resolved shortly, any second now," which seems like what all the passengers are also thinking. then the fact that the situation doesn't resolve and the bus just keeps going is an Allegory

I have a new professional website thanks to the very talented Raquel Arias Labrador, a graduate student from I.U. Please let me know what you think! And if any of you are looking to have your own sites redeveloped, I recommend Raquel. Her help and suggestions were invaluable.

www.scarroll.org