Matthew Kirschenbaum

Republican Senator Says He Doesn’t Wear Seatbelt in D.C. Because He Fears Being Carjacked: ‘I Don’t Buckle Up’ Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he does not wear a seatbelt while driving in Washington, D.C., lest doing so prevent him from acting quickly in case he's carjacked.

Behold the wisdom and bravery of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

www.mediaite.com/media/tv/rep...

If that bingo card gets updated any more times I’m gonna wear a hole right through

Like pulling teeth, I tell ya

CNN headline: “Iran war spreads as European nations drawn further in”

I have a very vivid memory of a family member telling me they were voting for Trump in 2024 because they were afraid Biden was looking to start World War III

I know why Kristi Noem SHOULD be fired, but why is she being fired

Dining out with a reservation is now an excruciation of reminders and confirmations before the meal, and incessant nagging for “feedback” afterwards.

‘Nazi heaven’: Inside Miami campus Republicans’ racist group chat The chat is the subject of a Florida International University police investigation.

Weird how this keeps happening! www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

To be sure. But we can’t just wave away the structural truth of “even if only a small percentage.” The power imbalance is hugely consequential!

Yesterday, I received a project assessment/problem fix plan that was created with AI. It's a mash-up of generic text and excerpts from tech blogs, some of which are, amazingly, applicable.

It's exactly the sort of commodity writing that MK is taking about.

Here works best for me, thank you

But to the extent we are all creatures of neoliberal institutions, yada yada, it’s the same argument—

We live in the world of what Michel de Certeau called the scriptural economy. Writing and capital are inextricably linked. That has been my position since pretty much day one. It is not intended as a salutary diagnosis.

👆. In the abstract for something I just wrote, I appended: “This is not intended as a salutary diagnosis.”

Some of the other replies I’ve received are illuminating. The assumption/expectation in their workplace is that people will just use a model.

We live in the world of what Michel de Certeau called the scriptural economy. Writing and capital are inextricably linked. This has been my position since pretty much day one.

I fear I’m already lost.

And no, of course not every academic believes this. But every time the category error gets made, it’s an academic who does it.

I was honored to be asked!

I am genuinely looking forward to our conversation!

You should have kept that chapter in the book. :-)

For me, it’s not “we” with the agency here, it’s capital. I just wrote a longish piece on this for Social Research I’d love to send you before it’s out, if I may.

Exactly. I’m not saying this is a salutary state of affairs. I am saying it’s the way of the world.

Right. I call it transactional writing, following Deborah Brandt. What gets missed over and over in these discussions is that it’s by far (volumetrically) the most common form of writing in the world.

I hereby declare Kirschenbaum’s law:

Thinking that every discussion of writing is a discussion of student writing is a category error only academics make.

I am a big John Warner fan, and his recent book is the first one I recommend to colleagues. But I am not talking about student writing or teaching writing here. Thinking that every discussion of writing is a discussion of student writing is a category error only academics make.

💅

It’s likely because it’s late and it’s been a long day, but I apologize, I’m just not following that.

Congratulations: your experience of writing is *qualitatively different* from the vast majority of what gets written, which is so dreary and workaday that the courts have repeatedly ruled the authors of such work are not authors but employees, nor can they claim copyright or profit from said work.

When you sit down to write an essay or a long overdue email to a friend or even a snappy post for this website, you relish the feeling of the words at the tips of your fingers, tumbling into place like the tumblers in a safe. We say “it clicks”for a reason, right? It’s unique and it’s you, right? —>

Most people don’t win prizes for their writing, nor do they aspire to such. That writing is or should be that is itself a historically and culturally conditioned view of what writing is.

This is the needed corrective to the new round of "when humans write it's like music, every word carefully chosen and precisely placed" which is simply not the reality for most people and situations. Much of writing is a tedious task that we have to slog through to simply keep our job/day/etc going.