Cassidy Holahan

A screaming head modeled in wax, surrounded by demons and stylized flames

Good morning!

[Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, A Soul in Hell, 1670-1700, Wax, 11.5 cm x 10 cm (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)]

The making of critical data center studies - Dustin Edwards, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper, Mél Hogan, 2025 In this article, the authors demonstrate how the data center has become a key site, object, and metaphor for interdisciplinary scholarship of the internet. Whil...

So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al

When I say “technology” I mean the codex

bastille!
no prisons, no kings.
yes public goods, yes pro-social state.

Friends, please share!

Proofs are ready for @skeuomorphpress.org's edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology." I am so pleased with this book—in many ways our 1st real book project

Details about how to get one through our fundraiser at skeuomorph.ischool.illinois.edu/le-guin-book...

The academic’s mid-summer crisis is a mid-life crisis in miniature:

You realize summer is half gone, & not only that: you see that the longest & least burdened days came early, & they are well past. You compare all you thought you’d do against the days remaining & grieve for what never will be

Here is the grad speech that NYU is now withholding the student's diploma for:

"As I search my heart today in addressing you all…the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine."

Chilling final paragraph and editor’s note.

"I asked ChatGPT, and--" ...the ghost of Ada Lovelace appeared and punched you in the face, I hope.

'How come I can’t breathe?': Musk's data company draws a backlash in Memphis The company’s turbines — enough to power 280,000 homes — run without emission controls in an area that leads Tennessee in asthma hospitalizations.

Poisoning the air of a Black community for a fucking chatbot.

SHARP LGBTQIA+ Book History Bibliography Submit citations for the SHARP LGBTQIA+ Book History Bibliography! We are accepting citations for many different types of resources having to do with LGBTQIA+ book history. There are no restrictions o...

#BookHistory friends! Work has begun on the LGBTQIA+ Book History bibliography, and the team is looking for you to share your citations! If you know of or have published something on LGBTQIA+ book history, submit it to this Google form! forms.gle/c1pkNBPbbyCF...

Congrats!!

How Katy Perry and Blue Origin's all-female crew are preparing for space Katy Perry and an all-female crew will launch on the New Shepard rocket on April 14.

They girlboss yassified Gilded Age space tourism.

It's not a "crew." These people are not astronauts, they are passengers. This is not feminism. This is not anywhere in the neighborhood of feminism.

This is the glossy capitalist influencer ripoff known as "empowerment" and it's just gross!

Today, approx. 135 of the 185 total NEH staffers woke up to the news that their positions were being RIFed. Then, almost all current grantees received emails cancelling their grants. I posted this on Fb, mostly for non-academics, but here's a bit about the impact of the 3 grants the NEH gave me: 1/

columbia, brown, georgetown, cornell and now tufts — they’re taking our students, our colleagues, our kin
https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/international-student-tufts-university-reportedly-taken-into-federal-custody/2VK55QMAOZFIDBR2A6XNKC5XOU/?outputType=amp

Memos of Blood and Fire | Peter Coviello So if you ask me about the signature strength of the department where I work, I will tell you. It is world-caliber field-defining research, wedded to a fantastically dynamic practice of instruction, a...

“Working conditions are learning conditions, we like to say, and it is so obviously true you want to tattoo it on your clavicle.” New: Peter Coviello on austerity in the English department.

Two large posters on off white paper with blue ink reading: NO TYRANTS! & NO KINGS! In large wood type font. There is a large image cut of a wooden printing press with a banner of text above it reading “THE TYRANTS FOE THE PEOPLES FRIEND”

I heard the NEA is only considering proposals related to 1776 & the USA’s 250th birthday & I was feeling intensely patriotic, so I’m printing these really big posters inspired *directly* by the Founding Fathers

The cut was carved from the masthead of a 19th century newspaper

[any 18th-centry novelist tries to tell a joke]

THE ALEHOUSE; or the SURPRIZING HISTORY of A TAVERN

containing the CHARACTER of A Rabbi, A Prieſt, & A Miniſter

WITH An Account of how, having left their Lantern at a Table found themſelves loſt in a Wood & were at laſt Deliver’d by a HIGHWAYMAN.

if you thought archives were problematic, wait till you see no archives

Folded & assembled proof sheets for @skeuomorphpress.org’s forthcoming letterpress edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology"—an LIS practicum student created the woodcut illustrations of tech mentioned in the text, which we carved on the laser—I set type for the book & fold-out poster

"DIY Web Archiving": new free zine by @quinnanya.me @bitarchivist.net @akijas.bsky.social @ilya.webrecorder.net & me, based on the 11/2024 @sucho-org.bsky.social @webrecorder.net @ach.bsky.social workshop: zinebakery.com/homemade-zin... #DHmakes +

This year’s Haggerty Prize will award a peer-reviewed article published between 1/1/22 and 12/31/24. $500 cash prize! Please submit your work or nominate others. Deadline is 1/1/25. And please repost to spread the word. Info at link. #c18 #ASECS #LGBTQ

I am continually fascinated by Fludd’s back square, both conceptually and materially. To depict this void required a substance: black printing ink. Which is composed of carbon: so the void or absence ends up depicted by the presence of burnt, earthly matter.

I'd love to be added!

Cover of the zine "A Librarian Against AI; or, I Think AI Should Leave", featuring a design of bold color blocks inspired by the opening titles of the TV show "I Think You Should Leave"

📣 New zine!! "A Librarian Against AI; or, I Think AI Should Leave" is a 40-page zine about why we should think twice about using & supporting generative AI. violetbfox.info/against-ai/ #noAI #zines

This is the first bird extinction in mainland Europe in 500 years.

1400 birds are globally threatened with extinction.

230 are Critically Endangered.

The Slender-billed Curlew is just the latest in over 200 bird extinctions since 1500. 😢🪶🧪

From Martha Whitehead, the University Librarian at Harvard University: Being confronted with divergent views in the manner that libraries intend, however, is not the same as acts of protest. Our colleges and universities should and do embrace the free expression of protests as essential to the formulation of ideas and ideals. Outside of libraries, there are spaces on our campuses where acts of protest are not just permitted, they are welcomed.

Once again, "protest the way I want you to" defeats the essential nature of the act and is an insult to the First Amendment and the rights it offers.

Protest is not and cannot be an act of convenience.

library.harvard.edu/about/news/2...

This is so fucked up.

US$29 million spent on anti-trans ads in less than a month.

I don't even know how to express how dangerous this is, how many people this puts at risk, how many lives will be lost.

Detail from an English pamphlet of 1649 showing an image of a walking juvenile skeleton on the title page.

English pamphlet of 1649 showing an image of a walking juvenile skeleton on the title page: "Death's Master-Peece"

Just an English pamphlet from 1649 (about a fire in London) with an image from a walking juvenile skeleton on the title page.

The 'a', 'b', 'c' labels around the skeleton are evidence that the copperplate used for this print was borrowed from an earlier medical publication.

1/2