S. Piper Booker

“Poor people have no choice but to use AI to make art” is not just an insanely ahistorical take, it’s also an unbelievably condescending viewpoint to espouse on a website full of broke writers and artists

Really excited for this semester's research project, Modern U.S. Material Culture.

We had to pick from a list of 20 items to write about, so I picked the Electric Chair.

Horrifically fascinating

Been having the absolute pleasure (and honor) to process some of Ray Bradbury's personal records.

I've never seen papers before that have so much love radiating out of them. Also, a lot of cats in this collection!

Every day, I try to get a front-facing Fred photo. No luck, but this is pretty close!

Fred's one of my miracle babies, who came to the house with severe wounds. Now he's at peace, warm, and has learned he likes his head kissed. Such a unique kitty too!

Not only hobby animation, but /collaborative/ animations, where everyone came together to animate a certain song, character, and/or story. An unfortunate acronym (MAPs, aka Multi Animator Projects), but this stuff has millions of views on YouTube.

And its still going semi-strong after a decade.

This is /so/ on the wrong part of Bluesky, but the fact that popular, hobby animation online largely started from the animation of Warrior Cat characters from the series by Erin Hunter is always something fascinating to me. Just a bunch of kids animating cats and posting em online

Little baby Rambo

For context, it is typically lit up blue, in honor of the school's red-white-blue colors.

Ok, I don't usually do this, but the Molly Worthen piece on Christian Nationalism in the NYT? Apologetics.
I'm on Xmas break and I don't feel like wasting my time breaking this down but let me just say this: WHO IS WE? Because some of us get Christian Nationalism, the NAR, and Dominionism.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

There is *no* ethical use of genAI. It is built on stolen art, through exploitative labour, and every day as they train new model and answer query, they burn immense amount of energy & water.

It has no place in our field, none.

This is one of those times when all of the bad news just sucks the air out of your lungs.

Whoever thought lighting up the LibertyU monogram green for Christmas was a good idea...why

I love discussing religion in my classes until someone pulls out Islamophobia.

Always happens when we're learning about Islam, too.

No, the reading does not say Islam is a detriment to American democracy...

they compared it to Christian evangelicalism outta nowhere too

I've had someone tell me it's too vague because it "encompasses a lot of ideas"

Wow. Super great take 🙄 ... Maybe let's analyze why it has so many ideas!

To propose that GenAI can compensate for "archival silences" perverts Trouillot's work. It's is a contradiction to say that a product whose logic exacerbates power imbalances--creating a most-likely guess based on the existing record--can restore absences that are the product of those imbalances.

Teaching the humanities has always been precarious. Instead of asking students to think about world through a critical lense we should have them engage with their experiences and senses. These are tools we can take in the classroom and out. Asking students to make meaning.
#Religionand

Whoever is outbidding me on eBay for old Jerry Falwell material 2 minutes before it ends... Mercy please 😔 I want my silly trinkets

Begging reporters to make this distinction. She did not "cite" the Bible, she *invoked* the Bible.

"Citing" is this: "According to the Genesis account, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth'" (Genesis 1:1, KJV)."

Just saying "the Bible says" before your claim isn't citing.

the Lynchburg facebook group is a disturbing gem tbh. God forbid you say anything negative about LibertyU, then you've got all of the graduates coming out and defending the school as if it's God themselves.

Newsflash: people are allowed to critique a monogram that is lit up at night

Researchers who have been doxxed for their academic work have been shouting this for years: we need a plan to protect ourselves from concerted, politically motivated attacks on individuals. We need this at the grassroots level, at the departmental level, at the institutional level.

Practice is so important. All the time I’ve spent drawing, painting, and crocheting has made me really good at not getting writing done.

At Last, a Name for the Murderous Face in a Holocaust Photo

I’m not sure why AI is so prominent in this article since a historian did the lion’s share of the archival digging and AI simply verified what experts already confirmed.

At Last, a Name for the Murderous Face in a Holocaust Photo www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/s...

i’m biased, but i’m thinking academic(!) religious studies needs to be taught in US public schools.

Ty for the advice! This was in no means an actual attempt at photography, but I'll keep this in mind in case I actually want to try 😅

Note to self: apparently, random photos are what get traction on this app

Tried to take a nice photo from my flight to Seattle yesterday... (Ignore the reflection of my research seminar...and my phone ...and me...)

So many people think of Jake Tapper or Maggie Haberman when they picture a "journalist" and it creates this perception of journalists as being higher paid then they are. But most journalists are at small outlets covering city council and school committee meetings making like $40,000.