Jason Read

Dog paddle

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

The looming Trump-cession Orange man bad (for the economy).

New in PN: The looming Trump-cession

"No administration in history has done so much so quickly to immiserate the American people. And no administration since Herbert Hoover’s seems less willing to change course as it barrels over a cliff."

YouTube video by Jason Read Intro to A Place in the sun

I watched A Place in the Sun again on the Criterion Channel. It reminded me of the time that I experimented with making videos for online teaching during the first year of COVID. (Note the COVID buzzcut)
youtu.be/0ht1pTpP16Q?...

Debbie Arntz's Memorial Explore Debbie Arntz's digital memorial and tribute page. Contribute photos, recollections, or videos, extend your condolences, and assist in preserving their legacy.

This is what I wrote: www.afterall.com/obituaries/d...

Writing my mother's obituary was a huge step in helping me mourn her loss. It helped me talk to her friends and family about her life, and I learned more about her as a person. I can't possibly imagine why I would want to outsource that to a machine that would get basic facts about her life wrong.

The Procession of Monstrosities: On the Ghoulish Turn of Contemporary Capitalism

Reposted on the anniversary of the release of Fright Night (even though it is less about Fright Night than it is about how we are ruled by monsters, Fright Night is a good film though and the remake isn't half bad either.)
www.unemployednegativity.com/2020/04/the-...

Bento (dog) with ball in front of fence.

Blissfully unaware of it all.

The entire US economy is an AI bubble that cannot last more than another couple of years at the outside

If you’ll recall, the “antisemitism” at UCLA involved primarily campus police allowing Zionist counter protesters to attack the pro-Palestinian camps (incl. many Jewish participants) while they did nothing, and arresting the anti-genocide students & faculty afterwards.

Bento (dog) on ground, me seated and reading. Canoe in background

Summer office

The Prison House of Emotional Labor: On Red Eye

Reposted for Wes Craven's birthday
www.unemployednegativity.com/2023/10/the-...

Post-Orwellian: From 1984 to Project 2025

www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/02/post...

Forget the comparisons to Hitler or Mao, the allusions to Orwell or Huxley, we are headed into new levels of distortion and deception fueled by a narcissistic ego and a collapsing empire, made possible by new technologies of fabrication and hallucination

The idea that nothing has changed and everything is the same as it always was is a failure to historicize and comprehend the present

The thing that no one wants to hear, least of all the democrats, is that at this point it is going to take a revolution just to get us back to the basic functioning of government that we took for granted six months ago.

I don’t know in the past we had things like jobs reports, hurricane monitoring, and a CDC that kept track of infectious diseases

If you want a vision of the future just imagine television and the internet telling you that the economy is booming, the weather is great, and everyone is happy while you are unemployed, the seas boil, and everyone is afraid.

Bento (dog) in woods.

Apparently I missed that yesterday was international mutt day. Honestly I live every day like it is mutt day with this mutt.

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

(In)finitude's Score: On André Tosel

www.unemployednegativity.com/2018/09/infi...

Big pile of Tosel’s books on Gramsci, Spinoza, Marx and politics

André Tosel is on of the most underrated philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty first century

Our Anomaly: On Antonio Negri - Notes - e-flux Jason Read remembers Antonio Negri

Reposted for Antonio Negri's birthday.
www.e-flux.com/notes/583571...

Superman’s Earthly Birthplace? It’s Cleveland, and It’s Embracing Its Hero.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/a...

Blue whales are going eerily silent—and scientists say it’s a warning sign A six-year study off California’s coast shows how marine heat waves and noise pollution are silencing the ocean’s largest singers. Does saving the ocean start with hearing it?

This is heartbreaking

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Bento (dog) smiling, Jason smiling

I did a smiling one

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"I’m a freaking expert on 'the law' and I can no longer tell you if the latest thought bubble out of Trump’s mouth is “constitutional.” ... I can perhaps tell you how [SCOTUS] will make whatever thing Trump wants to do legal. What I can’t tell you is what would happen if the court told Trump 'no.'"

I love the idea of returning again and again to a personal canon of texts that continue to teach us. What are yours?

One of mine is Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed

Bento (dog) on left smiling, me on the right

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