Jason Kerr

What continuously shocks me is so many people have so little pride in what they do.If you have a PhD you trained for at least 5 post college years to acquire expertise in a field.When you’re asked to review its’s to tap that hard won expertise. Why would you think a machine an adequate substitute?

John Milton, Oliver Cromwell, and virtue politics: magnanimity in England, Eden, and Hell What did John Milton think of Oliver Cromwell? This has long been one of the most debated questions in seventeenth-century studies. Milton worked for the Cromwellian Protectorate throughout its exi...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This is such an excellent point and media should be reporting it this way. (This is in reference to Miller’s preposterous but still dangerous claim earlier today about the executive branch considering suspending the writ)

screenshot from an online job application form. the question reads "Can you describe specific ways you have integrated AI tools into your development workflow? Please include any custom setups, automations, or use cases beyond single prompt usage" (a red asterisk indicates that this is a required question). an answer has been typed in the textbox below the question: "there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask. it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same. it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. “you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster.” there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn’t mean it has no price for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face."

applying for jobs again

If every person who thinks this is a good idea contributed $10 to the legal costs, we’d be able to cover them right now. MLA’s link is here: www.mla.org/About-Us/Sup...

Congrats!

With alt text. The kicker comes at the end and it takes a bit to get there, but I tried to describe the rather dry layout leading up to it very clearly because the contrast of dryness to horror is very important to how the image lands for me.

Please repost:
Here is a freely available diplomatic transcription of Katherine Philips's autograph Tutin manuscript, created by my former student Washington Pearce. I hope this will make Philips's poems available to broader audiences. scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub/3...

Please repost:
Here is a freely available diplomatic transcription of Katherine Philips's autograph Tutin manuscript, created by my former student Washington Pearce. I hope this will make Philips's poems available to broader audiences. scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub/3...

Tricia McLaughlin & @TriciaOhio 0... The narrative being pushed about Jose Hermosillo is false. On April 8, Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson and stated he had entered the U.S. illegally through Nogales. He said he wanted to turn himself in and completed a sworn statement identifying as a Mexican citizen who had entered unlawfully. He was processed and appeared in court on April 11. Afterward, he was held by the U.S. Marshals in Florence, AZ. A few days later, his family presented documents showing U.S. citizenship. The charges were dismissed, and he was released to his family. This arrest was the direct result of Hermosillo's own actions and statements.

In an interview with Popular Information, his first with any media outlet, Hermosillo said DHS'. 's account was false. According to Hermosillo, he was visiting his girlfriend's family in Tucson from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Several hours before his arrest, Hermosillo was transported to a hospital in Tucson by ambulance after suffering from a seizure. He has a New Mexico state ID, but did not take it with him during the medical emergency. After being released from the hospital following treatment, Hermosillo did not know how to return to where he was staying. He approached the Border Patrol officer because he was looking for someone to help him. "I saw a car, and I askled] him for help," Hermosillo said. He told the officer that he was staying in Tucson.

"You" re not from here. Do you have your papers?" the officer said, according to Hermosillo. When the officer asked where he was from, Hermosillo said he told the officer, "New Mexico." The officer then accused Hermosillo of lying. "Don't make me lout] like [I'm] stupid," the officer said. "I know you're from Mexico." After that, Hermosillo said, he was arrested. Hermosillo said that he never told the officer that he was born in Mexico, was a citizen of Mexico, or entered the country illegally. And he would not have said those things because they are not true. He signed the transcript released by DHS because the officer ordered him to "sign everything." But Hermosillo did not read it, because he cannot read. According to Hermosillo's girlfriend, Grace Hernandez, Hermosillo has learning disabilities and can only write his name. Hermosillo said he did not graduate from high school and dropped out after the 10th grade.

The officer also signed the document, which said Hermosillo "read" the document or had it read to him. But Hermosillo said no one read him the document. Other documents created by the officer have inaccuracies. For example, the criminal complaint says that Hermosillo was detained "at or near Nogales, Arizona." But Hermosillo was detained in Tuscon, which is more than 70 miles from Nogales. John Mennell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Border Patrol, said that it was an "unintentional" error. Hermosillo said he was detained with about 15 other men in a cell at the Florence Correctional Center. He was served only cold food. He said he contracted the flu because "they have it cold in there and everybody's getting sick." Hermosillo said he requested medicine but was not provided with any.

A US citizen with a learning disability who has just suffered a medical emergency asks a CBP officer for directions outside the emergency room. He ends up detained in an icebox for ten days and has the assistant secretary of DHS lying about him to the public at large. popular.info/p/us-citizen...

President Donald Trump's administration has until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to reinstate the legal statuses of 133 international students, according to an order granting temporary restraining orders on behalf of those plaintiffs filed in a U.S. District Court in Georgia on April 18. The federal judge overseeing the case, Victoria M. Calvert, issued a TRO requested on behalf of students, all of whom claimed their student statuses had been unlawfully revoked. The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU and other groups in the Northern District of Georgia, is among several that claim Immigration and Customs Enforcement "abruptly and unlawfully" terminated records on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a database that the Department of Homeland Security uses to monitor non-immigrant students. The lawsuit claimed that by terminating these records, ICE is ending a student's status and making them deportable. "DHS's act of unlawfully terminating SEVIS records appears to be designed to coerce students, including each Plaintiff, into abandoning their studies and 'self-deporting' despite not violating their status," the lawsuit said. Some of the students represented in the lawsuit are nearing graduation or are enrolled in work programs. Many of the plaintiffs had been charged with traffic violations, and in some cases minor misdemeanors, but later had their charges dropped. Others, including "Jane Doe #12," have never been arrested or cited for any traffic violation.

The Trump admin has been instructed by a judge to restore the legal status of 133 international students.

Their status had been revoked for, among other absurd and egregious reasons, *traffic violations.*

abc7.com/post/ice-rei...

Here’s a description of @matthewsteggle.bsky.social ‘s work that can be read by an interested public. The rest of us will await the grainier details in the journal Shakespeare.

So I've got this article which should be coming out in the journal _Shakespeare_ any moment now, but in the meantime - Briefly, it's about a C17 letter preserved in the binding waste of a book now in Hereford Cathedral.

Abrego Garcia’s Wife Forced to Go Into Hiding Thanks to DHS Slip-Up Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife says she fears for her safety since the Trump administration deported him to a prison in El Salvador.

“The wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was forced to move to a safe house with her children after the government **posted their home address** to social media.” 4/23/25 newrepublic.com/post/194289/...

I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.

If you think you can't make a political issue out of "people shouldn't be grabbed off the street and put in a foreign gulag forever," maybe consider getting out of politics/punditry. And these aren't technical slogans: they appear in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution (twice).

"but it's mostly hard because of people like RFK" covers so many things, unhappily.

“In an age of uncertainty, we can’t predict the specific profile of a productive workforce. But recruiting according to immediate demands risks becoming anachronistic fast.”

So, employers, demand government funds the arts & humanities. We spend our entire first year unteaching by-rote learning.

A student just presented me with a beautiful, hand-bound copy of his diplomatic edition of Katherine Philips's Tutin manuscript (which should be available digitally soon). It's one of the most beautiful and thoughtful gifts I've ever received from a student.

“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness…and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (April 10, 1925).

really feel like writing something on how steep tariffs may destroy restaurants that depend on imported ingredients to replicate non-American flavors—and thus spark a movement toward more conservative, blander food scenes throughout the US

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

Some of us have been shouting this into the void for a long time now, but in this case, the abyss doesn't seem to be looking back at us.

1/ I need to say something a little more personal about the NEH. A 🧵

I love the work Chris does and hadn’t thought of how much of it is possible only because of the @nehgov.bsky.social ‘s support. It is so sad to see the NEH hacked to bits by a chainsaw in the chaos that has been unleashed. Call your representatives and ask them to save the NEH (and the NIH, NSF, SSA

NC Court of Appeals gives over 60,000 challenged voters 15 days to prove eligibility The majority wrote that, even though they have the authority to completely throw out the contested ballots, they decided to instead mandate a cure period for most of the challenged voters.

If you are an NC resident and voted in November, please check if your name or the names of any family areone of the 60K votes being challenged. If so, confirm ASAP with your Board of Elections. You only have two weeks.

The website to check linked in the reply.

www.newsobserver.com/news/politic...

Once again Vance's claim that we should not sympathize with Garcia but with the people victimized by MS-13 refutes itself.

The administration says that criminal immigrants can be deported to a foreign forced labor prison without a hearing that could determine if the person is actually a criminal or actually an immigrant and that if it makes a mistake it can’t be rectified because the person is now outside their control.

When you find yourself basically going "blah blah blah why are you talking so much about innocent guy sent to a gulag, get over it," your sense of humanity has been fundamentally broken and you've lost the plot.

Either we are a nation of laws or we are not.

In a Studio Ghibli film, nature itself would revolt and either destroy ChatGPT or remain red-eyed and furious until we did.