J.D. Porter

Great point—you're right that we were focused mostly on in-person stuff. Some of these recs would be useful for asynchronous learning; I really think strong norms against AI use could be as effective as e.g. those against plagiarism. Other recs less relevant. This merits a lot of additional thought!

I don’t think generative AI is an inevitable existential threat to these fundamental skills anymore than calculators were to learning arithmetic. We just have to keep the tech out of the class while students develop their skills.

Right now, too much falls to individual instructors (whose policies may be at odds with student expectations) and students (who face intense pressures to take shortcuts).

Solutions to this problem have to come at the institutional level. We need norms requiring AI-free work to graduate, setting clear policies about classroom expectations, and providing resources like AI-free labs.

It takes practice and feedback to develop skills in these areas, and, if left unchecked, generative AI makes that process impossible, since teachers can’t tell whether students are producing their own work.

The Price Lab’s Critical Approaches to AI Working Group has released a white paper in which we advocate for AI-free instruction in reading, writing, & research. These are fundamental skills in the humanities (& in general), & with decisive action we can keep teaching them well in the age of AI!

The Best Jazz on Bandcamp, November 2025 Our guide to the best jazz LPs on Bandcamp.

Finally, I just want to mention Dave Sumner’s monthly roundups of new releases on Bandcamp. These are really useful for keeping up with new work and discovering new artists, since he covers a wide range of styles/labels/scenes/etc. I really enjoyed reading his work this year.

YouTube video by wayneongaku Paul Jacobs - Arnold Schoenberg's Three Pieces, Op. 11 (1975, High-Quality Remaster)

Along those lines, I saw a video where Akinmusire recommends Paul Jacobs’s recordings of Schoenberg piano pieces. I’ve never really enjoyed Schoenberg, but this new context unlocked a lot of the beauty in his work, and sheds some interesting light on Akinmusire’s soloing, too.

YouTube video by Wayne Shorter - Topic Tom Thumb

One thing I’ve really enjoyed recently is pairing albums—listening to one and then the other a few times in a cycle.
I found the Glover album around the same time I was getting into Wayne Shorter’s Schizophrenia, and each made the other a lot more fun; they tell different stories when juxtaposed.

Oh is a brilliant composer, crafting song structures that use memorable hooks/riffs and melodic phrases to scaffold wide-ranging improv. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, one of my favorite current musicians, plays warm, brilliant lines, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey unifies the group.

Strange Heavens, by Linda May Han Oh 12 track album

#1
Strange Heavens
Linda May Han Oh
Kind of Like: Andrew Hill, certain Woody Shaw, Ornette Coleman, Tomeka Reid Quartet
Good for: Everything, just put this on all the time
I couldn't get this short enough, so see the next post for a description.

YouTube video by Nicole Glover - Topic Obsidian

#2
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Nicole Glover
Kind of like: Wayne Shorter
Good for: The part of the roadtrip where you enter or exit the city; late night reading
Combines accessible, pretty melodies/harmonies/songs with adventurous, knotty solos. It’s peaceful without ever being somnolent.

Apple Cores, by James Brandon Lewis 11 track album

#3
Apple Cores
James Brandon Lewis
Kind of like: Jeff Parker, Don Cherry, certain Archie Shepp
Good for: The ride to work or the bar after, cooking with a game on in the background
Smart, high energy, angular yet catchy. The album works as a coherent piece, with recurring themes and sly callbacks.

Solace of the Mind, by Amina Claudine Myers 10 track album

#4
Solace of the Mind
Amina Claudine Myers
Kind of like: Debussy, Oscar Peterson, Kris Davis, Messiaen, Mary Lou Williams
Good for: Walking the dogs at sunset, looking out a train window
A serene blend of hymns, ambient, gospel, and quiet avant garde. I’m new to this album, but it stays with you.

Myra Melford Splash, by MYRA MELFORD with Michael Formanek and Ches Smith 10 track album

#5
Myra Melford Splash
Myra Melford w/Michael Formanek & Ches Smith
Kind of like: Ethan Iverson, early Cecil Taylor
Good for: Contemplating, doing a bit more work at 9pm
Melford is one of those improvisers where you feel like you can hear her thinking as she plays. It’s very fun to think with her.

First some honorable mentions:
Jacob Garchik - Ye Olde 2 (complex, free, loud, cool guitar work)
Steve Lehman - The Music of Anthony Braxton (sharp, pretty renditions of classic work)
Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts (her usual brilliant, slurry, angular, intellectual work)

Jazz did a lot of heavy lifting for my sanity in 2025, and for whatever reason (coincidence? not?) it was a really good year for new jazz releases. I wanted to do a little thread about my favorite albums, and give a top five.

The extent to which everyone refuses to learn whether it's "Sliwa" or "Silwa" is very funny to me

The occupied city winning because its diverse prosperous team came through thanks to guys who don’t usually get the glory is what we’re going for here, I think.

The Omnivore Dilemma Digging into the Data of Contemporary Readers

Love this piece by Laura McGrath, who finds an important question for the book industry—“What if we’ve been over-estimating the role that genre plays in the life of a reader?"—in a recent paper I wrote with James English.

Snippet of one of the President's idiotic posts, asserting that "This Ballroom will be happily used for Generations to come!"

As a metaphor maybe

I think a lot of people feel an almost familial pride in and love for their cities, and among other things these marches highlight each city, its particular faces, slang, colors, streets, communities. It's ineffable but I think it’s profound.

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

Hell yeah

www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Roughly 40% of political journalism is “Right Wing Guy Dislikes Left Wing Thing”

It’s so clear he didn’t write this: the fanfic cadence, coherent narrative, diverse (for him) vocab, topical focus, quotations, a sense of other people’s experience, the notion that he spoke to Melania. These Potemkin ramblings show that even his old delights (griping online) are beyond him now.

If eating road kill were just a little more dangerous, I wouldn't have COVID right now.

Really excited to see this piece come out! Studying eclectic readers has been a fascinating and extremely rewarding challenge. We wound up operationalizing both genre and eclecticism in ways that (classic DH stuff here) point to the limits of both concepts.

culturalanalytics.org/article/1429...

These were the best donuts in the world, and really good kolaches, too. Now we're a year from them being as bad as Krispy Kreme, <5 years until they're gone entirely.

Dorothy Ashby
Lee Konitz
Yosuke Yamashita
Andrew Hill

I realized I forgot about Paterson, because I was on a bus, and that's the kind of movie that permanently colors certain experiences, not least: riding a city bus. Anyway I'd put it roughly 6th on this list.