Chris Forster

A decade later, I think that incredibly obvious critique (discourse conducted 140 characters at a time is bad!) is basically right.

Back in the Twitter days, when critics suggested that the character limit impoverished discourse and reshaped communication to bite-sized morsels, I (confident and sophisticated) thought it was a silly critique. "You can tweet more than one tweet, duh."

that users could prefer a generated simulation to actual old clips for nostalgia purposes clarifies how nostalgia is about consuming "decontextualization" in itself — nostalgia negates history under the auspices of longing for it

Laurence Sterne (whom I'm thinking about this morning) started work on TRISTRAM SHANDY, his first real/major piece of fiction, at 46.

Does anyone know the purpose or typical use of the "next line" character, Unicode 0x85? How does it relate to CR and LF?

Yup!

a panel from the Matt Fraction David Aja run on Hawkeye that depicts a newspaper front page that says Everything Awful Oh God Somebody Do Something

more than a decade ago, one Fraction-Aja Hawkeye panel captured the vibe of this entire era we're living in now

my loneliness is killing me
and I must confess, I still believe
when I'm not with you I lose my mind
give me a sign
hit me baby one more time

thank you for reading this abridged version of FIGHT CLUB by Chuck Palahniuk

I repeat: This is WILDLY illegal.

Trump is just outright, explicitly, egregiously ignoring the law.

The fact that NONE of these words in the Times post say so is a failure of journalism.

"the new springs from the old, but that is just what makes it new" (Brecht, "The Popular and the Realistic")

"Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know." (Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent")

I just got word that the faculty senate of my university is now dissolved and no longer exists, in compliance with the new Texas law. Yikes! I thought my university would somehow find a loophole, or an exemption, but it's official. It's a sad day for shared governance and checks and balances.

The payoff to this thread is malevolence itself 😅

(I didn’t know the concluding detail about Wilde… and… wow.)

Politics on Trial: Dreyfus vs the Conspiracy Theory 212

This episode on the Dreyfus Affair, and its contemporary resonances, is excellent.

www.ppfideas.com/episodes/pol...

Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 percent.

Considering getting this passage from the NYT article printed on totes for our art history majors. Too much?

a belated #modwrite announcement: my first academic book should be out with the Edinburgh UP in October. On its cover is Alexandra Hughes's stunning art. More on what’s between the covers soon, but for now, enjoy Alex’s stunning work, and see more here: alexandrahughes.co.uk

Introducing the new and improved logo for Omnivorous, my queerly voracious newsletter, where you can find pop culture takes and fiction with a queer bite. Consider subscribing if you haven't. You won't regret it!

omnivorous.substack.com

Reposting for the work week crowd:

say it again:

4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities

demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

I sat on the technical advisory committee for the BLS for about 5 years, and the statisticians who work there are so conscientious and hard working. I am SO UPSET to hear about the commissioner’s firing!!! 😩

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week."

--Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

Have you listened to any audiobooks lately? I would love to hear your thoughts on audiobook narration via the link above.

Hi everyone,

As part of my dissertation, I am researching audiobook narration.

If you have listened to an audiobook within the last two years, or have previously been a frequent audiobook user, I would really appreciate your thoughts!

You can find the survey here:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

(Don't think folks would mind me tagging @wcaleb.org, so he knows that we appreciate his work!)

Another semester, another moment to thank that guy from Rice University who made that syllabus maker thing. I love you

wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

(One way to counter this would be to archive all URLs via the Internet Archive, www.archive.org, and then cite the archived link. Indeed editors should accept only archived URLs and not the current practice of saying when a link was accessed—a useless piece of information that does not prove that a deleted page existed.)

An interesting parenthetical comment in this NYRB review of two books on China’s communist party. [Link: www.nybooks.com/articles/202... ]

So this phrase “able-bodied” has clearly been on the most recent list of R talking points. It comes from the first round of English labor laws, which were instituted after the Black Death.

A mini medieval story time!

Trying to keep AI slop out of articles, Wikipedia has compiled a list of common phrases and discursive gestures that that generates. This is useful reading, too, for anyone marking student essays.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

#GenAI