Jes Battis

Having to identify oneself as disabled to access accommodations is, on its own, a huge barrier to getting many disabled people the accommodations they need.

Love that film

It’s Only Forever: Labyrinth Labyrinth has captivated audiences for nearly 40 years. From David Bowie’s iconic goblin king to groundbreaking puppetry and music, it evolved from a box office flop to a beloved cult classic. In It’s...

Hi! I write queer urban fantasy + horror, weird nervous poetry, and academic work on medieval studies and 18thc gay bars.

My book on the 80s movie Labyrinth + queer culture is available for pre-order: ecwpress.com/products/its...

No queer community without trans liberation and a free Palestine.

Love how the Scissor Sisters try to slightly ruin every song with slam poetry but can't quite do it because the beats are so solid

Thank you for your blurb, by the way! It means a lot!

Wes Craven's New Nightmare feels like an AIDS allegory. There's a shot of an AIDS journal in Craven's office, then a friend gets turned away at the hospital because she "isn't family," the doctor is extraordinarily judgmental but also incompetent, and Nancy has to defy public opinion to survive.

What queer horror films are folks currently enjoying?

What are your favorite bonkers 80s films?

She's the only one I know of, so far, during that transitional period from the Confederation poets. On the queer male side, there's Frank Oliver Call.

Aside from Florence Wyle (who didn't publish poetry until the 40s but was active earlier), can folks think of queer women Canadian poets who were writing in the 20s?

TRON: Ares is a movie that asks what if all our data was just little guys with frisbees

Don’t rely on government to save the British Library - Impact of Social Sciences Following a catastrophic hack British Library remains in crisis. Can it recover by refocusing on the people, skills and systems that enable it to function?

Absolutely cracking blog post from @simonxix.com calling for collective investment in staff and community-owned, open-source infrastructures in place of costly proprietary systems, based on the BL incident. blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

A photo of the cab of a white van with the logo for "AZTECH ENGINEERING"

I knew we were living in a shitty cyberpunk dystopia these days, but didn't realise it was specifically Shadowrun.

A screenshot of an email reading: Godzilla Deliver Pure Godzilla Joy There's No Bigger Gift Than Godzilla

This is what I hope to accomplish with everything I write

That's it, that's the International Day of People with Disabilities skeet.

It's incredibly hard for indie bookstores to survive in the era of Amazon and the algorithm on Amazon (including Goodreads, which they own) is designed to promote some books and not others while undercutting how much publishers make per sale by selling the books at a loss

I realize I've been posting about my book a lot and want to share why 🧵
1. It's fucking hard to write a book and getting this one to the finish line with everything happening in my life has been a huge accomplishment for me. I'm excited.
2. Now is a hard time to get a book into circulation. Because

It’s Only Forever: Labyrinth Labyrinth has captivated audiences for nearly 40 years. From David Bowie’s iconic goblin king to groundbreaking puppetry and music, it evolved from a box office flop to a beloved cult classic. In It’s...

My book on Labyrinth is available for pre-order, just in time for the film's 40th anniversary: ecwpress.com/products/its...

Taking Action in Higher Ed Taking Action for Higher Education is a workbook to assist university workers in assessing personal risk and making decisions about how and when to take action to resist fascism.

Great resource from @halperta.bsky.social on taking risks in higher ed within a threatening political climate: halperta.com/shalperta%20...

This is just my opinion, but I don't think departments need to change their strategy for reading or grading student work.

Departments need a strategy for responding to harassment and attacks.

Taking Action in Higher Ed Taking Action for Higher Education is a workbook to assist university workers in assessing personal risk and making decisions about how and when to take action to resist fascism.

I wrote a workbook earlier this year about taking risks in higher ed. The premise is that the current moment requires us to take action to advance our principles in a context of repression and fear. The reality is this can put our jobs and our safety at risk.

halperta.com/shalperta%20...

This blew up a bit: please consider donating to TransSask.

www.transsask.ca/donate/

ALLE NACH GIEßEN!

Am 29. & 30.11. will die #FCKAFD in #Gießen ihre neue Jugendorganisation gründen u dieses Event gilt es zum Desaster zu machen.
Über 200 🚌 aus 40 Städten u Regionen machen sich auf den Weg, um sich den Faschos entgegenzustellen. 12 🚌 starten heut Abend aus LE nach #Gießen! ❤️‍🔥✊🏻

And I don't know if the answer is: everyone is too traumatized to do work and we need to reinvent society. Or if it's more like: generations are losing their cognitive abilities and willpower due to destructive technologies. Or: we all have post-viral brain damage. Or: all of the above.

Admin are continually pressuring us to make the course "more accessible," by which they mean "devastatingly easy to complete," but it's not about access. Many students refuse to read or write in any capacity that isn't tech-aided, no matter how simple the assignment, no matter how process-based.

At this point, our intro comp/first-year English course has been so heavily revised, it no longer includes a novel, or "extended reading" of any kind, no "specialized" or "historical" reading, mostly in-class assignments, no research essay...and we are still seeing a 40-50% rate of AI misconduct.

I think about this as well, and even see it in colleagues--long COVID has wild neurological effects, and a lot of instructors are also struggling to design new course material and mark assignments because they have brain damage, but receive zero accommodations

It's only a matter of time before humanities departments will be forced to accept AI-authored assignments, as part of revised university policy to cooperate with these billionaires. It's already happening, and our response needs to be decisive. Because our students' ability to *think* is at stake.

Universities are assembling larger and larger teams to deal with academic integrity issues--mostly focused on AI--while simultaneously holding AI "writing" contests, AI-themed events, "hey, come play with these fun tools!" The messages are so mixed, it's criminal. Because AI is bloated with money.