Erica Fretwell

🙌

Watching Mamdani's victory speech, I'm struck by his—and his campaign's—unabashed vision of the US as an immigrant society, a culture built from the ground up from diversity. It is a complete rejection and reversal of the search for a white-washed homogeneity that the political right projects.

I love that Mamdani is what the right claimed Obama was: A Muslim socialist born in Africa. The right practically manifested Mamdani into existence.

the day began with dick in a box and ended with zohran in office!!!!! not used to this good feeling! gonna bottle it up

Today my kid became a tween. He said, "Please don't put strawberries in the oatmeal again, Mom. They don't fit the vibe."

Miriam speaks truth (as always). A few years ago it really hit hard how foreign my students feel to me (and I them). One response is to be a jackass who blames the difference on them. Another option is humility. We should all strive for the latter.

I have an essay contrasting theory camps and communist ones in the latest issue PMLA, which reflects on the 1983 Illinois Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture conference. I sketch a material history of the perilous assumption that professional actions necessarily constitute political activity.

Who robbed the Louvre right answers only

Happy anniversary of the Sudden Departure to all who celebrate. For an @atpost45.bsky.social cluster edited by @ericafretwell.bsky.social and @annakrauthamer.bsky.social, I wrote about the trauma of living to tell (and retell) the tale.

post45.org/2025/01/bein...

bring back a thousand little geocities

Of all the individual actions we're told to do that don't actually do anything to solve the climate crisis (relative to the damage done by corporations and private jets), stomping on a lantern fly that has no business being in harlem really does feel like doing something.

ditto!

Tin Can - The Landline, Reinvented for Kids The super-magical Wi-Fi landline for kids. No screens, no texting, no strangers — just real conversation with Grandma, besties, and contacts you approve. Plug in, twirl that cord, and time-travel to p...

Was extolling the 90s-era magic (and safety) of the Tin Can phone to @rezekjoe.bsky.social & husband (IRL!!!) yesterday, so figure today I might as well proselytize on a broader scale!
tincan.kids?srsltid=AfmB...

1. Bravo
2. Bravo
3. F***ing Bravo

CHOTINER: Many say Middlemarch is the greatest 19th-century novel.

GEORGE ELIOT: I sought only to shine a light on unhistoric acts, people destined for unvisited tombs.

CHOTINER: These Chotiner memes—Star Wars, the poem about plums, Moby-Dick. Are you jealous?

GEORGE ELIOT: That f***ing whale.

long live expertise!

ding ding ding ding

A still from the TV show Arrested Development, with Tobias Funke telling his wife Linsday "But it might work for us."

Every single Isaac Chotiner interview

yep...

shouldn't be, yet am, surprised to see the general course survey questions shift from they have been for decades about student perception of instructor preparedness and availability to student perception of whether the instructor is 'indoctrinating' students ("divergent viewpoints" etc)

Large Language Muddle | The Editors The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

“Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.”

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

if anyone's looking for a distraction, i'm happy to discourse on how overrated apple picking is

How the shared family computer protected us from our worst selves It was vital to our lives, yet remained quiet and unobtrusive

We need to bring back the communal living room computer

Honestly it seems to me that one of the most important tasks for modern parents is raising their kids to be mostly offline normies

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?"

A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons.

Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.

Here’s the thing: I too hope the rumors are true, but even if they are, we are still in deep 💩—and for a very long time to come.

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Sheila!!! WTF!!! I hate this for you & your colleagues

Indiana University’s Disciplining of Ben Robinson is an Embarrassment and an Outrage August 19, 2025 Ben Robinson is a tenured Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he has taught for over 20 years. Rick Van Kooten is a tenured Professor o…

"The disciplining of Ben Robinson is a violation of his academic freedom that sends a chilling message to all faculty members."
jeffreycisaacdesign.wordpress.com/2025/08/19/i...

admittedly not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but i just got a bee sting and it huuuuuuuuuurts