Jeffrey Epstein infiltrated science because it was ready to accommodate him What could “nerd tunnel vision” possibly mean?

This gets to some important points. There was always something cold, even chilling, about Brockman's "Edge" culture. That feeling still pervades some scientific circles. There's a real problem here that won't go away with Epstein.
www.theverge.com/2019/9/19/20...

Really nuts how many men were like "Me Too went too far, and I need to email Jeffrey Epstein about it."

POTENTIAL COUNTS FOR NOTHING UNTIL IT'S REALIZED

I don’t understand why colleagues stay silent when this happens.

A photo that appears to have a "gettyimages" watermark but the watermark is actually painted directly on the bridge.

This watermark graffiti by street artist Mathieu Tremblin is, like, the best thing ever.

Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.

Under patriarchy power is used to serve and protect the sexual prerogatives of men and against the interests of women and children. This use of power is a feature of this system of social order, not a bug.

I keep thinking again, in light of the latest Epstein files dump, about how MeToo “went too far.”

Gender is as real as gravity.

Texas A&M University kills women and gender studies program Texas A&M University's crackdown on classrooms took another turn.

NEW: Here's my report on Texas A&M ending its gender studies program as part of its ongoing crackdown of teaching LGBTQ topics in the classroom (i also do not use the loaded phrase 'gender ideology' passively) www.chron.com/culture/arti...

In 2021 I was telling people in my field of art history to stop legitimizing the use of image recognition, to stop applying for grants to use AI in identifying the subjects of portraiture bc this was what such work was being used to further. All this was obvious. theconversation.com/how-ai-is-hi...

For the folks in the back:

OCR predates LLMs.

HTR software predates LLMs.

Digital Humanities predates LLMs.

Grammar and spell checkers predate LLMs.

YOU DO NOT NEED THE PLAGIARISM MACHINES.

In free societies people can read freely.

Her entire wardrobe ate.

ICE & CBP have been out kidnapping people in Los Angeles every day since June. The media has moved on and acts like this isn’t still happening. The crises are ongoing. Solidarity with the people fighting back in Minneapolis and everywhere.

Two democratic members of congress being assaulted reminds me of the time Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave a restaurant

Lecturer in Early Medieval History | King's College London

Anyway, good news! Open-ended lectureship in early medieval history at KCL.

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/136727-...

There is money for "education" if and only if that money is being directly funneled to corporations. Anything involving actual learning, however, well there's no magic money tree

"The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone."

I second the Aaronovitch recommendation, and add Agatha Christie and Naomi Novik—especially the Temeraire series.

Remembering how cops tossed Kyle Rittenhouse - who was open carrying a semiautomatic rifle - a bottle of water and told him, “We appreciate you… we really do”

NYT: Federal Agents Kill a 37-Year-Old Minneapolis Man The victim was an American citizen with no criminal record who had a firearms permit, the city police chief said. Videos of the encounter contradict the federal government's description of the shooting, a New York Times analysis found.

years and years of avoiding plain language and the active voice do make the choice to use it more impactful, I suppose

living sainthood, in a real way, is walking out to do the ordinary, dangerous thing of insisting on your neighbor's dignity in a world that will kill you for it. holy holy holy

My Opa left Germany in ‘39. He recounted seeing an SS thug kill a man in the street—simply because he could. And he recounted how, when an old Jewish woman died the Nazis threatened every non-Jew in town with jail if they attended her funeral. The petty cruelties and shocking violence go together.

Digital Tools for Manuscript Studies

If you have graduate students working with medieval manuscripts this free online training might be useful 👇
www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

"If I create enough noise, my friends can get away." These kids have more courage than our elected reps or any of the rest of us.

“Training’s not going to fix this,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas). “This is really going to be a deescalation of people thinking they can harm agents or get away or evade. It has to be a point where people understand when they’re being confronted by an ICE agent, that’s at the end of the road. That’s not the beginning of the due process, it’s the end of the due process.”

When an ICE agent confronts you is "when your due process ends," says the member of Congress from the largest border district.

www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Large brick wall with a tiny white signat the base of the wall that says "Slavery was real"

"Slavery was real"

Tiny sign at the base of a brick wall that, until yesterday, held panels about the people enslaved by George Washington.

Presidents House, Philadelphia.

Important position announcement: the chair of the dept of "Engineering & Society" in UVA's Engineering school, can be focused on Engineering & Ethics. This is a position that many us who teach ethics at UVa care @; we'd all welcome a new colleague. Please share widely. apply.interfolio.com/172901