So is the implication that everyone is somehow possessed of the same spiritual dunamis as Jesus and the apostles AND that power is especially contingent on proximity? Or is it supposed to be mimicking their acts in a ritual/homage sense, a la Protestant communion, without expectation of efficacy?
(When I told them, in Bible class at my vaguely southern baptist evangelical junior high, that I was going to public school for HS, a classroom full of 8th graders and the teacher gathered round to pray for my soul's safety in such a heathen place)
One of the things that I find objectively fascinating is the idea that prayers work better via physical contact. It's been a minute since I have been part of one of these and I sadly didn't think to ask about the logic at the time but i am so curious about the imagined reason
Yessss, I wrote about the Prosciutto di Portici last summer! Such a fun artifact. 🐷
www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
So, I have just learned about this prosciutto sundial (or HAM CLOCK as I will be calling it) and I am truly obsessed with this little guy!
"The prosciutto has proved easier to describe than to explain" 😂 😂
perfect, no notes
I am extremely excited to see what insufferable Discourse™ this prompts. More or less than the Nolan Odyssey, measured either in volume or insufferability?
www.avclub.com/heated-rival...
The latest Pasts Imperfect is out, focused on the closing of humanities depts. & museums. @otavano.bsky.social discusses the U. of Ottawa, @mokersel.bsky.social on the DePaul Art Museum, @meirazk.bsky.social & @vox-magica.bsky.social on shuttering religious studies depts, & Justin Vorhis on U. Iowa.
Somehow they seem to keep getting reinvented over and over
What is Fizz? 0 Fizz is a discussion and news feed for your community, whether that's your college or city. On Fizz, you can create text, image, or video posts, direct message other users, create polls, and more. With every post or comment, you control your identity and can share with a handle or anonymously. Fizz also allows you to connect across communities to connect with people like you around the country. If you are a college student, your community is closed and and the privacy of the community is maintained through the requirement of a valid university email or proof of enrollment.
Screenshot of Google News results: S The Setonian AnonY.mous camgus agg sgarks connection, controversY.,. concern Fizz, a community-based discussion and news feed app, has become a platform for Seton Hall students to connect through text, image or video ... 5 days ago CJ AdExchanger New Social Media Platform Fizz Gives Brands A Crash Course In Marketing To College Students Fizz, a new discussion and news feed app that targets college campuses, is helping marketers reach college students authentically. Dec 4, 2025 (l: FIRE I Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression The trouble with banning Fizz On college campuses across the country, students and administrators are debating bans on Fizz. a mobile app that lets users within a ... Dec 22, 2025 tl) thepointweekly Anonymous app Fizz sparks concern at PLNU - The Point Trigger warning: This article mentions suicide. The anonymous Fizz app has raised concerns among the PLNU community. Photo taken on Feb. 1 week ago
Screenshot of Google News results: T Trinitonian Fizz users cause crises A Trinity student attempted suicide, and another considered suicide after being harassed and bullied on Fizz, according to Dean of students ... Nov 6, 2025 lilll The Emory Wheel Promote better discourse, stop abusing the cloak of 'inFizzibility' I arrived at Emory University over a month ago as a bright-eyed freshman. Having grown up with various anonymous messaging board apps like ... Oct 8, 2025 C, TheOracle New campus gossip app brings freedom and concern to Hamline Apps like Fizz are becoming more popular on college campuses. They let students connect virtually as well as share tips and talk about... Oct 11, 2025 €) Dominican Star Newspaper Students Race to Delete Fizz Posts as Police Investigate Threat Dominican has contacted local police to investigate anonymous threats posted on the social media app Fizz, that were directed at a ...
It's now blocked on our campus but it's limited to people with school addresses and apparently it's fairly popular, though clearly not in a way that's on the radar of many faculty, here at least. It might be worth looking into your campus because this feels rife for abuse
Because the app is anonymous, it lowers the social risk of speaking up. Students who may hesitate to voice political opinions in class or who fear backlash from peers can articulate their views without attaching their names. For some, anonymity becomes a shield that allows for exploration. Political debates on Fizz can also expose students to perspectives outside their immediate friend groups. College social circles can be surprisingly tight-knit and everyone can share the same views. An anonymous platform disrupts that echo chamber, sometimes forcing students to confront ideas they wouldn’t normally engage with. There’s also something uniquely democratic about it. No blue checkmarks. No follower counts. No clout hierarchy. Every opinion appears in the same font, on the same background. In theory, arguments stand on their own merit. But, anonymity cuts both ways. Without accountability, debates can quickly devolve. What begins as a discussion about policy can turn into name-calling, misinformation, or inflammatory generalizations. Tone becomes harsher and nuance disappears. It’s easier to reduce complex issues to memes or one-line dismissals. Many students argue that Fizz was never meant to be a political arena. They downloaded it for lighthearted entertainment such as a mental break between classes, not another platform saturated with culture wars.
Now, the results are in. Fizz’s daily active users in the new product cohort have jumped 50% in three weeks. Content creation has nearly doubled. Engagement time has soared. And the app has grown by more than 50 campuses in just the last month—with zero marketing spend.
Fizz is a social media app for college students that allows users to post comments publicly under complete anonymity. Although the Rice Fizz page is only open to those with a Rice NetID, the app operates independently and is not affiliated with the university. A recent surge of racist and xenophobic posts has populated the platform. The rhetoric has ranged from comments joking about kosher food, reinforcements of racial stereotypes and even support for acts of violence against undocumented immigrants. Sam Garvin, a frequent Fizz user, said he noticed this dramatic change. “I think it’s a tenfold increase,” said Garvin, a Sid Richardson College senior. For Imahni Crawford, a student considering attending Rice, the racially-charged comments made her rethink whether she’d be safe on campus. “To know that there are comments that are just completely idiotic, completely racially charged against another culture … it’s a thing of safety, really,” Crawford said. “Even though this is a prospective university for me, it definitely does make me reconsider.”
![However, Fizz is not all helpful tips and student support. The anonymity of the app can cause problems, too. Since users do not have to attach their real names to posts, some take advantage of that and post whatever they want, no matter how harmful. While Fizz can be helpful, it can also harm a campus.
“[Fizz] amplifies rumors, pile-on, and unkind behavior …most items are more about community impact than criminal conduct,” Delgado said. Harassment and doxxing still remain a serious concern.
When people can post without accountability, it can quickly escalate into something ugly. Students may have their personal details shared without permission, leading to real-world consequences like stalking or public humiliation. Rumors, too, can spiral out of control.
As Cantu Delgado noted, there have been reports where posts escalate into “doxxing, threats or bias-related comments,” showing the darker side of the platform.
Misinformation is another big issue. If someone posts a rumor about a student or a class, it can quickly go viral, even without evidence. This can cause panic or make students feel betrayed, and without proper moderation, it is hard to control. Cantu Delgado pointed out that Fizz has similar dynamics to past apps like YikYak, where “anonymity dynamics are similar” and “the impact depends on how we use it.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:62jt6v3s6r7q7umchu753xr3/bafkreih2fnjqgnplasjrgzx6rmtnrm3epjjpufba2aagklivbpak4syemi@jpeg)
However, Fizz is not all helpful tips and student support. The anonymity of the app can cause problems, too. Since users do not have to attach their real names to posts, some take advantage of that and post whatever they want, no matter how harmful. While Fizz can be helpful, it can also harm a campus. “[Fizz] amplifies rumors, pile-on, and unkind behavior …most items are more about community impact than criminal conduct,” Delgado said. Harassment and doxxing still remain a serious concern. When people can post without accountability, it can quickly escalate into something ugly. Students may have their personal details shared without permission, leading to real-world consequences like stalking or public humiliation. Rumors, too, can spiral out of control. As Cantu Delgado noted, there have been reports where posts escalate into “doxxing, threats or bias-related comments,” showing the darker side of the platform. Misinformation is another big issue. If someone posts a rumor about a student or a class, it can quickly go viral, even without evidence. This can cause panic or make students feel betrayed, and without proper moderation, it is hard to control. Cantu Delgado pointed out that Fizz has similar dynamics to past apps like YikYak, where “anonymity dynamics are similar” and “the impact depends on how we use it.”
So, we had an incident on our campus that's led me to learn about the latest "anonymous app where people can say whatever with no accountability or consequences" -- which is called Fizz -- and there's been basically no marketing or news coverage of it that I've seen. Wanted to share as a PSA
Henceforth, I will be describing the way that U.S. men’s hockey spectacularly squandered good will, brand recognition, and fan loyalty as “pulled a Target.”
They pulled a Target.
Which… is fucking hilarious. And it makes sense to me that canonically, Roman scholars are the equivalent of the resident Reddit nerd who scours r/AskHistorians and writes witty 3,000-word comments on YouTube essays in their free time. (I imagine they’re also @OnBlueSky.App.)
Greek scholars, meanwhile, I see dipping in and out of fast-paced algorithms, jumping on whatever big social media is the one to be on at any given moment, and actively going to bars and pubs to holler out pseudo-philosophies and make clever puns they’re hoping the patrons next to them will overhear. I imagine them saying, “Well, actually, Plato—” mid-Negroni. Again, these pipelines are all in my imagination.
I mean...
LOOK AT THIS LITTLE GUY! 😍😍😍
Never giving up on my bit of announcing that something is rotten in Denmark every time Denmark takes the lead in hockey
"ATTENTION: now something is no longer rotten, we're tied!"
"OH GOD, AGAIN ROTTEN IN DENMARK!"
An image of a DS9-themed Valentine with Chief O'Brien's face framed by hearts. He is winking at the camera. The text reads: "I'll be your union man," a play on O'Brien's "he was more than a hero, he was a union man" moment from the show.
Happy Valentine's Day to everyone who isn't a Nazi, and especially to the trekkies.
This distinction helps shed light on the implicit question that underlies the entire debate about Mellon’s new focus. Namely, should the foundation be blamed for damaging the humanities by directing nearly half a billion dollars a year toward a social-justice-ified vision of American arts and letters, or should universities, the federal government, and other donors instead be blamed for not providing a healthier funding ecosystem to begin with, to say nothing of the anti-woke conservative billionaires who complain endlessly about the humanities and champion “the classics” without ever spending a single penny to support them?
This was what made me decide I needed to yell about this piece (I know, that's what a click-based model wants, but I got big mad about this). There are PLENTY of big money players who are actively funding reactionary institutions at the same institutions where the English program is being defunded
In the summer of 2023, Colorado College hosted a conference based on this prompt: “How do the humanities contribute to anti-oppressive work, and how can humanities methods—from inquiry and critique to creative production and performance—dismantle systems of oppression, create and sustain community and solidarity, and advance liberation?” It does not seem to occur to those asking such questions that the humanities may not be especially well equipped to “dismantle systems of oppression.” Nor do they seem to consider that what might in fact be most valuable about fields like English, history, and philosophy is that they aspire to stand above the flotsam and jetsam of our immediate circumstances, and instead set their sights on what the classicist Leo Strauss called the “permanent problems” that have troubled human beings from time immemorial.
And quoting Leo Strauss in a piece ostensibly arguing taht political ideology shouldn't impact the study of the humanities is . . . . a choice.
BUT EVEN BEYOND THAT, it's not actually bad to think that learning should ultimately promote a better world? We can fight about how to define "a better world" (I'm at a Jesuit institution, we do a lot of fighting about what "the common good" means), but I don't think that's a bad basic orientation
To start with, when you fund race- or gender-informed scholarship (or any other social justice ideology), you are funding the disciplines/approaches/methodologies that have done the most in recent history to make us better readers of ancient texts. Period.
In the summer of 2023, Colorado College hosted a conference based on this prompt: “How do the humanities contribute to anti-oppressive work, and how can humanities methods—from inquiry and critique to creative production and performance—dismantle systems of oppression, create and sustain community and solidarity, and advance liberation?” It does not seem to occur to those asking such questions that the humanities may not be especially well equipped to “dismantle systems of oppression.” Nor do they seem to consider that what might in fact be most valuable about fields like English, history, and philosophy is that they aspire to stand above the flotsam and jetsam of our immediate circumstances, and instead set their sights on what the classicist Leo Strauss called the “permanent problems” that have troubled human beings from time immemorial.
The humanities are in the mess they’re in because of federal budget cuts, and because of administrators who care more about the football team than about William Faulkner, and because of the toxic pragmatism of an American culture that has a hard time valuing anything that is not immediately, aggressively useful. But the humanities are also in this mess because those of us who care about them have often preferred hunkering down in a defensive crouch, rattling our donation jars and begging for scraps, to serious soul-searching about the real purpose of American arts and letters. We have been too reluctant, or perhaps too ashamed, to consider whether we have betrayed the humanities’ very spirit in our mad, ever more futile quest to keep them financially solvent.
I often wonder what, exactly, we think we’re saving. Are the humanities as they are currently instantiated in the American university system actually worth the Faustian bargains we are forced to make to keep them? At their best, the humanities remind us that our problems are petty not because they are small, but because they are born of the same questions that have plagued all humans since our species lowered itself down from the trees and traded monkey chatter for wisdom-seeking: How to live virtuously? How to exist together peaceably? How to die with grace?
In what world are these "permanent" and "timeless" and "wisdom-seeking" topics not inherently political? A huge part of why Mellon funds "political" topics is that European/American scholarship has been, across the scope of its history, oblivious to how much all of these questions ARE political
This is a significant departure from the nonprofit’s past approach to managing relationships with the institutions it funds, in which Mellon officials would try to balance a college’s or university’s particular—often less political—needs against its own ideological priorities. In 2023, the foundation allotted $1 million to “deepen the ongoing conversation in Transgender Studies” at the University of Kansas—specifically, to “establish a cohort model for scholar-activists” and “create a more trans-liberatory local and regional landscape.” Another $1 million went to classics professors at Princeton and Brown for a project called Racing the Classics, devoted to encouraging early-career scholars to implement “critical race approaches and curricular experimentation.” In 2024, Loyola Marymount University won a three-year, $431,000 grant to “bridge AI practitioners and disability justice scholars and activists.” And MIT received $500,000 for something called Engaging With Music and Musicking Through Engagement, aimed at correcting its curriculum’s “Western European biases.”
It is hard to see how an incentive structure that pushes scholars to fake or fudge an interest in social justice helps produce a more just academy. If anything, this seems likely to further entrench higher education’s tendency to confuse performative preening with real societal improvement. It also effaces the difference between serious scholarship on race, colonialism, or gender and gaseous buzzword-mongering.
I actually know something about this particular nefarious and ideologically motivated project and it simply isn't "gaseous buzzword-mongering" (something he never actually claims, but by highlighting this as an example, kinda suggests he thinks his is more buzzword-mongering than serious scholarship
I asked multiple times over the course of several months for an interview with Elizabeth Alexander, but through a spokesperson she refused to talk with me, a decision that highlights a broader set of problems within elite academic culture: a disinclination to be accountable to laypeople. A sense that private institutions, regardless of how much they influence the public, are entitled to push whatever ideologies they want. And a belief that it is perfectly natural for higher education to have a liberal slant because everything good and decent has a liberal slant. (Alexander sent along a handful of comments through a spokesperson shortly before this issue went to press. “At Mellon, grantmaking is guided not by ideology,” she wrote, “but by the powerful ideal that the rich fabric of America’s cultural and intellectual contributions must be broadened to convey the full scale of our nation’s histories, surface new ideas, and challenge long-held assumptions.”)
I can't help but wonder if this is less about "elite academic culture" and its "disinclination to be accountable to laypeople" and think that it perhaps might be because she has no interest in what feels like a bad faith attack trying to cast the value of their org's ideals as a nefarious ideology
But there are so SO many people who study my sort of humanities, Greek and Roman literature, and turn out to have what I would say are terrible politics and morals, if that's our only sales pitch, we're in more than just budgetary trouble.
One may feel a variety of ways about the worldview that Mellon has chosen to promote through its grant-making. But the salient question is not whether its politics are laudable or lamentable, or even whether the projects it funds are beneficial. The real questions are: What are the consequences when eye-watering sums of money are put behind the idea that the purpose of American arts and letters is not wisdom but advocacy? What happens when the humanities are seen not as having intrinsic worth, but as valuable only insofar as they can be of service to a cause? And what happens when the “choice” of whether to accede to this vision of the humanities becomes—when there is only one real funding game in town—a matter of survival versus collapse?
These economic woes have been exacerbated by the fact that, especially after the Great Recession, students and parents have placed even more emphasis on “practical” college majors that offered a strong “return on investment.” Unable to compete with STEM or business-adjacent fields in the hallowed category of “Making a Ton of Money After Graduation,” the humanities gradually settled into a sales pitch to justify the expense of a degree: The English or history or philosophy department will help turn you into A Good Person. The ROI of a humanities degree was not economic, the thinking went, but political and moral. This was the context in which Elizabeth Alexander became Mellon’s president, in 2018.
Acting like this is the "sales pitch" that is dominant across the humanities so willfully ignores so much. I don't think most people argue that the humanities necessarily make anyone A Good Person. Do they offer you the tools to be a more self-examined and thoughtful one? I'd say yes
Is it possible that it's a secret third thing? That studying the human condition, combined with the relative brokeness that resulted from defunding, increasing wealth inequality, and the corporatization of higher ed, inclines one to more progressive views & Mellon's politics are an effect not cause?
Whereas I do expect my students to *basically* know where the accent goes on a standard verb and usually let the accents on what I usually call "verby things" (participles and infinitives).
Yeah, I think that question was maybe more for Julia than me but I meant that I do not generally know the base accent for every single word and very often have to look those up. I generally know the rules for when and how that accent changes but almost always have to look up the initial placement
I *do* tell students about "ladies' greek" and how i chafe at the misogyny of the idea that little, delicate lady-brains can't learn accents but also in this one and only instance, I might be willing to overlook the misogyny if it gets me off the hook for not knowing my persistent accent placement
Which is to say, I like the idea of a game that helps you apply the rules and things about accents and how they change in broad terms, but I can't in good conscience support a game that is basically testing if you memorized the initial persistent accent placement as part of the vocabulary item.
So I might not be the best person to think about how to make a fun game work, since I just don't bother with accents that don't tell us something important in terms of translation. Like, contract verbs are important, students knowing if it's τέχνη or τεχνή just doesn't seem that important
