Timosaurus Wrecks

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

Yay! The Vast of Night was a gorgeous movie that more people need to see!

Get 'em!

Happy #Letterboxd Friday What's YOUR #LastFourWatched? #filmsky

My recent ones included a suspenseful clash of classic horror and modern violence, a nonsensical slasher that feels written by AI, a triumphant return for a horror auteur, and a gruesome New French Extremity thriller short on logic.

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed.

I know it’s difficult right now, but I insist that you seek and enjoy beautiful things, even if it seems frivolous or irresponsible in the face of overwhelming horror. I want you to feed yourself artistically, spiritually, and literally, because you can’t Do The Work when you’re starving.

a man in a suit and tie is sitting in a chair and talking to a camera . Alt: A GIF of David Lynch from Twin Peaks saying, "I told all your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die!"

Trans rights are human rights. Fix your hearts or die.

The cover of Keith David's jazz album Between Takes, showing David in a light gray suit seated at a piano smiling as he fingers rhe keys.

Enjoying the hell out of Keith David's jazz album Between Takes. Can this guy get any cooler?

Corporations are not people and Citizens United needs to be overturned.

Gah! Hope you're 100% soon and can stay as comfortable as possible in the meantime!

Political cartoon by David Whamond depicting Donald Trump as the sociopathic "god-child" from the Twilight Zone movie surrounded by placating elephants. Donnie boy is saying "I hate anybody that doesn't like me! And if they don't do what I say, I'll send them to the cornfields! We like the cornfields, don't we folks?" The elephants respond "Whatever you say Donnie!" and "That's right Donie!" and a Jack-in-the-box with an elephants head says "Genius Donnie!"

Dave Whamond perfectly captures the true state of the Union

#SOTU

An image from Colossus: The Forbin Project showing the ominous spherical speaker of the title computer. Text reads "I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless."

Even Colossus knew better than that...

Mr. Dark

The Killer

Unless he strokes out on camera I don’t give a shit. Though whenever it happens I hope it’s in the most public embarrassing way possible. Only fitting way for this to end.

I saw Capaldi at a convention and someone asked him about bringing Malcolm Tucker back. He said at this point real politics had become so ridiculous and vicious that Malcolm paled by comparison!

The movie poster for 'In the Loop.'

I'd prefer this form of "In the Loop" as something to watch tonight, a movie about politics that somehow seems restrained and genteel compared to where real politics has gone.

At last, power and heat are back! That was getting scary.

I love that Jimmy Stewart one!

Our cat Io asleep at my feet under my work desk.

I've had to call our cat 'Goofball' so many times when she gets in my face during work, I'm worried she's starting to think that's her name. But when she settles down, it's adorable.

GM 🖤

Manners cost nothing

A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".

2026 basically

How about Electric Dreams where spilled champagne on a personal computer gives it sentience... and eventually the voice of Bud Cort.

The soundtrack for Black Sunday by John Williams

The soundtrack for Rosewood by John Williams

The soundtrack for JFK by John Williams

The soundtrack for Sleepers by John Williams

Persepolis

A still from the end of The Thing showing Kurt Russell in the snow lit by a fire saying "Why don't we just wait here for a little while... see what happens?"

Just got the message from our apartment management that they dont know when the power will be back and suggesting we call the police to try to find temporary shelter. Not really an option with our cat. Our response?