remember when Oak got ejected from MSG? the story gets even wilder from there

screenshot of Boston Globe headline that reads “Yale report finds colleges deserve blame for higher education’s problems”

lol

photo of Jim holding On The Calculation of Volume IV

another silver lining was that I did not realize On The Calculation of Volume IV (English translation) is out! Now that it is secured I can safely start III lol

tried to get a copy of Maria Ndiaye’s The Witch (English translation) today and it was backordered at the three Boston indie bookstores I generally frequent. silver lining is it seems like more people than I expected still read book reviews!

Grandaddy - The Group Who Couldn't Say - Album Version - 320 kbps YouTube video by Rafael Molina

it’s going to be a “The Group Who Couldn’t Say” Grandaddy Spring, friends youtu.be/4ypiNxy-x0c?...

we have finally entered “just put your phone down and close your laptop and go outside for a little bit” season here in New England

Baxter! so sorry, friend. seems like he had a great life

Poster for an invited talk at the Digital Liberal Arts Research Initiative at Penn State: “HOW DID THEY DO IT? EXPLORING MULTILINGUAL METADATA AND THE LIMITS OF AI-AUGMENTED TRANSLATION IN DH” by Zoe LeBlanc taking place on April 22nd, 2026 at 12PM EDT. People can join on zoom. The poster is mainly blue, with highlights on yellow, and it has a picture of Zoe.

🚨 Join us next week for a conversation with the amazing
@zoeleblanc.bsky.social. Have you been wondering how we can pair big DH datasets, translation and AI? She has a great example of that mix 🍲

🗓️ Wednesday, April 22nd at 12PM EDT

Register at tinyurl.com/dla-leblanc

#DigitalHumanities

ooh this one is on my to-read list; glad to hear it's as good as it sounds!

The book cover for Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science. The title is in large block letters at the top left; a hand-drawn area chart in a black to yellow gradient takes up the right side of the image.

Experimentation. Iteration. Time. These are pretty much the core ingredients of everything related to DATA BY DESIGN, and the cover is no exception. But now it is final and out there on the internet and also right here for you to see!

Preorder at: mitpress.mit.edu/978026205618...

Forming Your Corpus You need 'stuff' to do DH

The #DataSittersClub Little TL;DR is back with the short (under 1,500 words! And believe me, it was a struggle to get there!), practical guide you or your colleagues need to get started with building a corpus to "do digital humanities" with, thanks to @readywriting.bsky.social.

I don't know how this person has made his pitch in other contexts, but this statement in this particular context seems like a giant red flag to me!

It's wild that someone saying things like “Sixty percent of what people call gen ed is there on behalf of the faculty, not on behalf of the students” without any evidence or support is seen as someone worth listening to concerning substantial degree timeline change www.chronicle.com/article/fast...

Bringing the Fragments Together At the bargaining table and in shared governance, faculty members must demand a meaningful role in decisions about the procurement and use of AI and other technology.

At the bargaining table and in shared governance, faculty members must demand a meaningful role in decisions about the procurement and use of AI and other technology, @hellobrittparis.bsky.social and @rebeccareyn.bsky.social argue in a new #Academe article:

"Serendipity doesn't come from efficiency. It comes from spending time in the space where the problem lives, getting your hands dirty, making mistakes that nobody asked you to make and learning things nobody assigned you to learn."

Does anyone have any recent writing from the perspectives of archives and preservation re: the emphasis on HTML over PDF common to Title II and accessibility convos? I guess I am trying to think about the other needs (expertise, labor, money) and archival implications of folks pivoting to HTML more.

photo of Àlvaro Enrigue’s Now I Surrender (translated by Natasha Wimmer)

finally had time to start the new Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer) tonight. loved You Dreamed of Empires and Sudden Death, loving this one so far too.

me in the teacher’s lounge in 2028

Canvas Release Notes (2026-04-18) - Instructure Community Upcoming Canvas Changes 2026-05-16 * Breaking Change: LTI 1.3 Tool Configuration Schema Updates 2026-06-30 * Deprecation: Removal of Legacy Login User Interface. * End of Life: Legacy Canvas Native Po...

It's wild that Instructure is releasing these new AI integrations with SpeedGrader in mid-April, at a point where many spring courses are close to completion in U.S. semesters. Curious to see how many institutions actually turn them on for faculty usage: community.instructure.com/en/discussio...

Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its paper. That’s effectively what’s begun happening online in the last few months. The Internet Archive—th...

Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its articles for reference.

This is what's happening online with the @archive.org

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

screenshot of My Dinner With Andre featuring a giant Burger King ads that appeared when I paused the film on HBO Max

watching My Dinner With Andre as God intended it to be seen (accompanied by Burger King ads for Whoppers)

The 49MB Web Page A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.

nothing better illustrates the desperate search for a media business model like a 50MB web page with a 90:10 ad-to-content ratio

If you are still there or run into other students interested, happy to talk! I'm teaching a course and an institute for the certificate this summer! :)

photo of the Willie Nelson Texas Roadhouse booth and the Willie Nelson collage on the table

celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day in traditional fashion (dinner at the Texas Roadhouse Willie Nelson booth)

some of my friends are super into collecting and trading them!

2008 Hitchcock The Birds Barbie, black label

we used to make things

Inciardi Prints Joyful art and Mini Print Vending Machines!

If you haven’t heard about Inciardi they have a lot of fun vending machines filled with cool mini prints scattered around various independent bookstores and similar locations: inciardiprints.com

photo of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems next to a mini-print of the book cover from an Inciardi vending machine

my sister-in-law gave me this very cool Lunch Poems mini-print from an Inciardi vending machine!

New Resource: Teaching In The Age of AI I wanted to share a link to our Center for Teaching Innovation’s new public-facing Canvas site, Teaching In The Age of AI. As you’ll see, the course has been published by me under a CC …

Shared a brief write-up on a new "Teaching In The Age of AI" Canvas resource site that I created for work. Focuses on faculty support and AI literacy. The site is public-facing and shared under a CC license so feel free to check it out if you're curious! jimmcgrath.us/teaching/new...

DPLA's search is currently inoperable. Where's the technical infrastructure for this effort????? Analytics from DPLA have been broken for years with no sign of a fix. The DPLA board response to concerns raised by the Recollection Wisconsin hub was inadequate.