Shannon Mattern

Your turn to power map! Your turn to power map! 1 Make a copy of this presentation. (One copy per group.) Shortcut to this slide: bit.ly/djspowermap

Tried power mapping with my big lecture class and was pleased with the way it went. The assignment is here if you're interested in the logistics of it. docs.google.com/presentation...

Miriam, I am perpetually amazed by what an amazing teacher you are — and how lucky your students and colleagues are to have you. I envy them! :)

Picture of a panel in a conference center. There is a dias with a black curtain at the front, and a gray podium. Behind the dias sits Carmen Maria Machado, a fair-skinned femme wearing glasses with dark hair, Umair Kazi, a brown masc with dark hair, Alex Hanna, a brown butch trans woman with short brown hair, and Vauhini Vara, a brown woman with long black hair wearing a red blouse.

There were 250 people in the audience, at the biggest available room for our #awp26 panel, Resisting AI in Writing and Teaching.

It was invigorating; hearing about how writing instructors are pushing back against their institutions was inspiring. Thanks to my co-panelists Carmen and Umair.

we have saved daylight

but at what cost

"The challenge now is not whether brutalism should be admired, but whether its underlying values can be taken seriously again..."

Police body cam footage shows DOGE knew Institute of Peace was private property during raid Footage obtained by The Handbasket’s lawsuit shows a hostile takeover on March 17, 2025.

SCOOP — Body camera footage obtained as a result of my lawsuit against the DC Metropolitan PD confirms DOGE and the Trump administration openly admitted they were entering private property when they raided the building on March 17, 2025. That didn't stop MPD from breaking down the doors.

My report:

MLA, ACLS, and AHA lawsuit reveals use of ChatGPT in illegal termination of grants by DOGE. Motion for summary judgment asserts violations of the First Amendment; violations of the Equal Protection Clause; and violation of the separation of powers. mla.org/NEH-Lawsuit

The MLA, @acls1919.bsky.social, and @historians.org have filed a motion for summary judgment in our lawsuit to restore the NEH. Discovery documents reveal that DOGE rather than the acting chair led grant terminations and targeted grants using ChatGPT. More at mla.org/NEH-Lawsuit

that the Trump administration is trying to shut down a leading AI company because it’s unwilling to develop autonomous murder systems is terrifying, and should be of grave concern to everyone in the world

"Follmann... conveyls] a necessary message: We survive together or not at all." -Patty Krawec, Becoming Kin SCAPEGOAT WHAT THE INVASIVE SPECIES STORY GETS WRONG CLARE FOLLMANN

Exciting new science book alert!! First chapter is an amazing think piece about metaphor and the power of language 📚💙🧪

Indeed!

❤️

A line of geese flying overhead on a cloudy day

Every time I’ve gone outside today I’ve heard the delightful cacophony of multiple skeins of geese flying overhead, returning for the spring. Dozens and dozens of chevrons. A herringbone sky. Welcome back, friends 🌱

Detailed to so many agencies — to decimate them — he doesn’t remember which, let alone understand what they do… or did.

Justin Fox’s lawyer is a real piece of work, too 🙄

Using to perform contempt

The gum-chewing. The nonchalance.

YouTube video by ModernLanguageAssoc Nathan Cavanaugh Deposition (Part 3) in MLA-ACLS-AHA Lawsuit about the NEH

I love that @modernlanguage.bsky.social has posted the depositions of the DOGE bros who gutted the National Endowment for the Humanities. All part of the lawsuit the MLA, AHA, and ACLS have filed against the federal government.

And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war. ilya kaminsky, "we lived happily during the war"

I think this deserves at least as much sustained attention from US media as Claudine Gay's dissertation

A large gallery with six skylights and a concrete floor, into which is cut a sinuous metal trough

A close-up of the sinuous and straight lines carved into the floor

A z-shaped trough, filled with gravel

Michael Heizer, Negative Sculpture @ Gagosian

A gallery view, with a multi-canvas grid depicting Mt Denali on the opposite wall

A grid of tiny canvases depicting Mt Denali in different seasons, at different times of day

Layered paintings on paper - a montage of Denali scenes

A painting of Denali at dusk hung in front of a larger painting of Denali in the daytime

Cynthia Daignault, Denali @ Olney Gleason

Substacker Stephan Geering wrote "Challenge for those who are very confident that Claude isn't conscious: Explain how human consciousness works."

I'm sure that I'm not the first to say this, but this hollow question, which is becoming increasingly common among Substack types, is the 'Russell's teapot' of our times.

The tiny desk is back. I had a fellowship at the LoC last spring, and I focused my final talk on the tiny desk and T's fetishization and debasement of bureaucratic furnishings

THREAD: I got laid off from NYMag/Vulture after 14 years. The family lost 75% of income + medical. Now mzs.press bookstore, once a side project. is do-or-die for Judith & I. I feel weird telling you this because others are doing much worse. But if you could like or share this, we'd be so grateful!

I'm so sorry, Matt.

Like a lot of things rich guys believe and fund, the AI consciousness thing is in part driven by a desire to abscond from the responsibility of what they've made. It also explains why so many of them think we're in a simulation. Doesn't matter if everybody died if we're all just 1s and 0s baby!

I did find a great pro bono legal adviser. My own employer’s GC was too busy defending other faculty against harassment claims :)

Law profs, there are alternatives to Westlaw + Lexis: scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2684/

Reminder that Thompson Reuters sells several crucial academic + legal research databases! See @sarahlamdan.bsky.social’s Data Cartels!

Reminder that Thompson Reuters sells several crucial academic + legal research databases! See @sarahlamdan.bsky.social’s Data Cartels!