@drjonpotter
Researches Victorian periodicals, visual culture, and literature. Teaches English lit. Probably the least online person you'll meet online. Author of Discourses of Vision in C19th Britain: https://tinyurl.com/5bxvawy6
Well, this is bad.
There's a bunch of Chevening Scholars in my Masters classes and they massively enrich it. Impressive people and also so obviously wedded to going back and improving their own countries.
Even as a cynical scholar of rape culture, I'm shocked that this isn't the headline story on domestic politics everywhere right now. It's just an unfathomable abuse of power, in clear violation of the law.
“In 2024 the UK’s creative industries contributed £145.8 billion to the economy while the entire AI sector contributed £11.8 billion.”
www.thetimes.com/article/8561...
I still find it astonishing that, during Covid, the first response of so many people connected to the Conservative party was that it presented an opportunity to loot the country undercover of a national emergency.
Unforgivable wartime profiteering.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
MPs outside earnings.
'But he's all for the working man and woman, isn't he?'
Join us for a mid-week, mid-afternoon writing retreat and beat that afternoon slump! As usual, this event is free for VPFA members, but we have now opened this up to non-members for a small fee of £5 (£6.13 inc. Eventbrite fee). Sign up is available here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1984543534...
Coen brothers' Pickwick Papers.
Close Reading Is For Everyone Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant Call for Pitches Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail? If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step. We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it. Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.
CALL FOR PITCHES
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
This house thinks this is the best party political broadcast we've ever seen.
(cartoon Mike Luckovich) #politics #ice
The video in the thread redacts the images, mercifully. But you can see from the prompts what is happening. This is obscene, vicious and intolerable. X and Grok should be shut down until this grotesque harassment can be stopped. Those responsible should face the full force of the law.
#fascism
Title: New year's resolution A man sits at a table with a coffee writing in a notebook: “This year i will devote myself completely to reading serious, improving literature, forsaking easy pleasures and tirelessly seeking out truth and profundity in the work of the greatest writers.” He looks at it Says: Hmm... then “Scratch Scratch Scratch scratch” scribbles out words until the text reads: “This year I will read for Fun”
Happy New Year, everyone!
This is a @theguardian.com books cartoon from a few years ago.
Everyone has their blind spots etc, but Hobsbawm is a great historian - accessible, interesting, provocative - for undergrads and general readers so I'd be surprised if he wasn't still on many undergrad reading lists (he's on mine!).
Out of curiosity, I just ran a few paragraphs from The Butchering Art through an AI checker and it got flagged: 88% AI. This book was released in 2017, and AI machines were subsequently trained off it. How many writers are getting flagged for AI because of the literal theft of their work(s)? Insane.
Disco Elysium being free on the Epic Games Store is truly a Christmas miracle. This is such a singular and superb video game.
store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/disc...
December 25 The Company of the Ring leaves Rivendell at dusk.
December 25th. The day the Fellowship departs Rivendell to destroy the One Ring.
Whatever you celebrate, may you have the courage to take the first steps to defy and endure against the dark, and rekindle light into the world.
Go check out Bob for Wired!
We are delighted to be co-sponsoring this event alongside @ihr.bsky.social and @royalhistsoc.org. Details and sign-up information is below!
Amazing 😳 digital archaeology
How AI’s annoying blandness “accidentally replicated the linguistic ghost of the British Empire”
💪🏽💪🏽
The world's richest 0.001% now control 3x as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity combined.
56,000 wealthy individuals have more than roughly 4 billion people.
Read that back.
Excellent advice.
Get away from the desk, go for a walk.
Don’t listen to a podcast, just walk.
That’s when the best thinking happens.
Things You Can Make ChatGPT Write for You - Hayley DeRoche Your last words But before them What to murmur to a lover in bed What to say in the group chat when someone's Sister mother brother is dead and The apology you could never quite get right for a friend And hell why not make the robot compose your proposal Your wedding toast, too Your best friend's birthday roast You could ask it to write a custom lullaby For the baby snuffling at your breast. You can cradle to grave away Every warm human word You could ever have said And when they chisel your gravestone For your final rest We can ask ChatGPT Because it knew you best
Love it 🙌
As a chess fan this is a marvelous read. I had no idea Marx played chess, though I'm not hugely surprised.
“One person is an autocratic president of the university for decades” certainly wasn’t a flawless system but it’s clear that “admins hop from job to job scaling the career ladder by filling their CV with ‘accomplishments’ that are expensive burdens to the schools they leave behind” is even worse.
