S. M. Carroll

a man sitting in a chair with a hulu logo on the bottom ALT: a man sitting in a chair with a hulu logo on the bottom

V. excited to have found a child's diary from 1789, covering the period he & his family fled the French Revolution

... So far it has mostly been 'I am very annoyed about running away!', accompanied with detailed blow by blow accounts of his tutor's unfortunate bouts of diarrhoea #18c

Your yearly reminder: Oct 1st means Spooky Season has begun!

Is there anything more tantalising than the promise of an early 19th-century letter with the postscript "Burn this immediately"?

This only happens to you once

Orange / pink rose in bloom

A rose spotted in Newbury today

Wheat paste poster that says the all the world is dying and the new world struggles to be born now is the time of monsters. There's a picture of Elmo

Morning walk

Bowie was planning a musical titled “The Spectator” about Jonathan Wild and London street criminals. Also, fashion. 😭

Word.

Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump Climate.gov, which went dark this summer, to be revived by volunteers as climate.us with expanded mission

Great to see the US climate scientists that Trump fired, fight back by setting up a parallel infrastructure website - climate.us - a crowdsourced nonprofit that aims to rebuild an independent version of the Government climate website that was closed down.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Sketch of act 2 of "The Frozen Deep" bu Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens in rehearsal. The scene shows four men inside their hut in the polar regions. The figure at the back of the stage exiting through a door is Bateson (played by Edward Hogarth) going into the cold, the two figures sat down are Crayford (on the right, played by Mark Lemon) and Darker (on the left, in the blue coat, played by Frederick Evans). The figure in front of the fire is John Want, played by Augustus Egg (the script says he is discovered in a hammock before going over to the fire, but this might be an early staging depicted in the picture).

Rare sketches made of Dickens's plays in rehearsal are now on display at the Dickens Museum. I've been lucky enough to see these up close and really enjoyed studying these - a must see!

www.msn.com/en-us/entert...

I’d be interested in knowing the economics of this for sure.

Watched this as a tween and it totally set me up for my later love of grimdark historical scheming.

Donate to Fantastic Fiction reading series at the KGB Bar, organized by Matthew Kressel Fantastic Fiction at KGB is a monthly speculative-fiction reading seri… Matthew Kressel needs your support for Fantastic Fiction reading series at the KGB Bar

The fantastic KGB reading series is doing a fundraiser! Even $10 would help sustain this wonderful community arts event. www.gofundme.com/f/fantastic-...

Man, we have gotten so many pitches like the ones detailed here--stories that sound amazing and pitches that take all the right forms but there's just something *off* about them, and nothing much turns up about the writers. It sucks for many reasons, not least that it makes me--

Jules Verne: and so, the heating of a coil within a secondary envelope allows the balloon to navigate levels of atmosphere. Combined w the international date line we see the malleability of time!

HG Wells: set the dial to future and you go there

Verne:

Wells: people are apes in the future

The #HugoAward for Best Related Work goes to Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, Jordan S. Carroll (University of Minnesota Press). “Insist that tomorrow belongs to everyone.”

The closing of Bucknell University Press is a tremendous loss for academic publishing in general and 18th-century studies in particular.

Universities have abandoned the academic mission. We’re the generation that will have to reinvent knowledge-work from the institutional ruins.

A black and white drawing: Woman with a frantic expression, wearing a bathing suit, lying on a beach blanket, who is being sucked, along with the sand, into the bottom half of an hourglass, her beach reading escaping from her hands.

This New Yorker cartoon by Sarah Kempa seems just right for the season.
Sending good wishes especially to those North American academics who have to return to the classroom in AUGUST, before Labor day. You all deserved more time with your beach reads.

what a gift to all of us! thank you!

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

If you are a published writer & object to Anthropic slurping up your writing for AI, you have until 8/15 to sign up to help defend your copyright. Check this database to see if they hv taken yr writing (you might want to check regardless):

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Then . . .

1/2

Whew, online engagement is really tough right now. I know it because I see Uncanny Magazine still has stretch goals that need to be unlocked! 51 hours to go: www.kickstarter.com/...

So fascinating! I knew the drink existed - there's even a reference to it in an "Annie" lyric! - but not what it consisted of, nor that it's where we got the expression of "slipping someone a Mickey." !!!

Mellon Foundation The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.

“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...

You could maybe Cross reference with historical newspaper databases? Also search for the name of the county / court “archive” to see where those records would be held?

The artwork shows a ruin with young women sitting and standing around it. There are two teachers among them. They are skeletons. One is holding a chihuahua and another one is reading a book. The young women participate in different activities such as reading books, drawing, sharing secrets with each other, playing flute and admiring the surroundings. There are two dogs in the foreground and a bird that one of the characters is drawing. There are trees in the background and some rock formations. Two young women are walking towards the rocks. The artwork is mostly green and brown with some white and light blue accents.

Sojourn
Inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock

In interviews Coogler clearly said he wanted Remmick to be so ancient he predates “race”. By making him pre-Christian Remmick also predates Catholicism & therefore sectarianism. Pretty sure that’s deliberate.

“British food is too heavily seasoned” is exactly the nineteenth-century perspective that we need to counter all those tedious American takes that British food is bland

Donegal farmer uncovers 22kg slab of ancient bog butter The accidental discovery could one of the biggest finds of it’s kind in Ireland so far

This article came across my feed today and reminded me how much of my backbrain is constantly occupied thinking about bog butter. A shocking portion. www.irishnews.com/news/ireland...

First page of syllabus for grad class, "Novel Theory"

Second page of syllabus for grad class, "Novel Theory"

Halfway through my six-week grad summer class, "Novel Theory." We've been reading classics as well as recent work by @dorazhang.bsky.social, @teaganbradway.bsky.social, & @ehayot.bsky.social. Up next: @drbibliomane.bsky.social, @sinsleyh.bsky.social, @annakornbluh.bsky.social, & more!

Tempted to try this recipe