Genevieve Brassard

300+ pledge to boycott the New York Times’ op-ed page over their anti-Palestinian bias. Over 300 writers, scholars, and public intellectuals have pledged to not contribute to the New York Times’ Opinion section until three demands have been met. The demands address the anti-Palestinia…

Over 300 writers, scholars, and public intellectuals have pledged to not contribute to the New York Times’ Opinion section until it takes “accountability for its biased coverage and commits to truthfully and ethically reporting on the U.S.-Israeli war on Gaza.”

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

To become dependent on ChapGPT is to evacuate yourself from your own life.

YIKES, no thanks. I’m gonna be alive inside every damn thing I do, even and especially the ish I don’t wanna do.

Did you know that if you buy my book on Amazon, Jeff Bezos makes 5 times as much as I do on each copy sold? Sharing some behind-the-scenes book math on why buying directly from presses is best for EVERYONE (except Bezos) in my newsletter today! aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/book-math

New book review published 😊

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Donald Trump says he wants our military to use cities like Los Angeles and Portland as a "training ground." Absolutely not.

This un-American, illegal use of the military to terrorize in our communities must end now.

A thing about this is that it's literal treason

I was in Portland last week, and didn't see the war.
But I did see an extraordinary collection of food trucks

‘A cottage of one’s own’: Newly unearthed Virginia Woolf stories to be published A chance discovery at a country house revealed the three funny – sometimes surreal – interlinked tales, written almost a decade before Woolf’s first book was published A trio of early stories by Virginia Woolf which together form a spoof biography of a family friend have been rediscovered and are set to be published next month. The Life of Violet was inspired by Mary Violet Dickinson, who befriended the English writer when she was 20 and would go on to read many of her early writings, introduce her to one of her first editors and a wide circle of aristocratic friends, and look after her following a breakdown in 1904. “Do you know it seems to me – well don’t you think Violet – it would be very nice ---- ” “To have a cottage of one’s own? Yes, my good woman,” cried Violet. Quotes used with permission of the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf Continue reading...

‘A cottage of one’s own’: Newly unearthed Virginia Woolf stories to be published

Tylenol, schmylenol. Raise your hand if your mom smoked and drank while she was pregnant with you (basically anyone Gen X or older).

Someone asked me earlier why I don’t do more than AI, and the answer is that every time I look deeper into AI I see more evidence that this is a massive, unbelievable failure, propped up by webs of debt and ignorance, private capital fully believes there’s massive AI demand that does not exist.

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

From me, a list of Trump supporters who killed, or tried to kill, Democrats and opponents of Trump in recent years (since the right are now claiming all the political violence is from the left!)

Receipts:
zeteo.com/p/charlie-ki...

Gaza
West Bank
Lebanon
Yemen
Syria
Iran
Iraq
Tunisia
Qatar

All attacked and bombed by Israel in the past year.

Insane.

Rogue state.

As long as guns are easily available to crazy people, mass killings directed at so-called soft targets will continue. This is a fact. Countries where it's more difficult for crazy people to obtain guns have less shootings. This is also a fact. Do with these facts as you will.

You don’t need to send me a story about how it saved you an hour at work or helped you solve a math riddle or even self-diagnose a medical ailment. My thinking will be the same. That is nice and it is still not worth the societal costs.

a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.

my statement on Ai from the mini-comic I'm making as syllabus for a new class I'm teaching this fall. It's simple, but I pretty much said all I have to say on it - it robs you of decisions and struggle - and the joy of being surprised. It robs you of learning...

“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep—it can't be done abruptly.”

― Colm Tóibín

I wrote a thing, a roundup of some of the resistance going on.

To repeat: Israel is deliberately killing journalists after labeling them as "terrorists." Based solely on their being Arab / Palestinian. This is not just racist targeting. It's genocidal. Every single leader of that country needs to be dragged before the ICC. War criminals, the lot of them.

Relinquishing Independence to the Authoritarian Is Bad…Duh But not all is lost. Resistance still matters.

Larry Summers called the Columbia "deal" with Trump a good move for higher education. I beg to differ and try to unpack the warnings from more than 20 years ago that led to this very bad day. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein | Rebecca Solnit Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence against women

"One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society."

If you don’t count covid victims people won’t die.
If you don’t measure carbon the temperature won’t rise.
If you fudge unemployment numbers the economy will soar.

Our fool is building his paradise

The US is complicit in genocide. Let’s stop pretending otherwise | Mehdi Hasan The US government, enabled by the media, is an active participant in Israel’s atrocities in Gaza

“So to the Biden and Trump administrations, to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to the US media, I say this: history will judge you. For non-stop complicity in a genocide; aiding and abetting the crime of crimes.”

My latest op-ed for the Guardian:

As a workshop leader for @literary-arts.org, as a former Oregon Book Award winner, as a Portlander, and as a Jew, I didn’t hesitate to sign this.

This is excellent. In three minutes she explains how democracies become dictatorships. It's happened so many times, yet in each country, most people said, 'it can't happen here'

Major media seem flummoxed about what to do when Trump shares a fake video of Obama getting arrested. Maybe they think the options are A) take the bait, or B) ignore it. But there's a 3rd option: Gather all the crazy examples and write big, loud stories about how the president is mentally unhinged.

You are cordially invited to our Anti-Prime Sale, where every purchase will financially support bookstores, NOT billionaires 🥳

The way tech is trying to shove AI down our throats is making me even more disinterested and disdainful.