Dave Mazella

My book on ancient and modern cynicism, The Making of Modern Cynicism (2007, UVA press), is now available again in paperback! Because cynicism never goes out of fashion. www.upress.virginia.edu/title/2793/

Raptors testing the electric fence

The two genders

First medieval parent genre of fantasy is romance (Ossian, Gothic romance, MacDonald, Dunsany). Tolkien changed the model by making it (weirdly) medieval chronicle + nineteenth century social realist novel

Ohio State Civics Center Professor Who Tackled Cameraman Resigns www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

this sounds like a behaviorist experiment on both mother & child

This is good

New and very important from @andycraig.bsky.social

Don't forget to sign up for "The many faces of Sans Souci: Black watchmakers in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Caribbean" if you're keen to join the friendly & welcoming London Group of Historical Geographers in person or online for this Tuesday's Institute of Historical Research seminar.

the big question this election cycle is "is Dem leadership prepared to adopt a massively popular policy?"

Thune is really not winning enough people over to the "let's threaten everyone" party

if this agency is not shut down immediately & its agents disqualified from future law enforcement jobs, it's going to get much worse

Sir Joshua Reynolds: 'Enrag'd Monster', 1778. #monster #myth #fantasyart #art #18thCentury

"you told me the cloud was up in the sky & I'd never have to think about it"

AI advocates are probably the best advertisement for total abstention, but the real story is lack of *human* support in every area of life nowadays; childcare, academics, medicine etc. Which you'd expect if these all domains were bankrolled by individuals, & public contributions reduced to nothing

AK's had more notice but CA is more worrying. Equally insane and delusional as litigation, but CA tells us something: It doesn't have any close races so it's not about flipping a seat or two. There's only one reason to target CA: it has enough House seats to cover the margin of any Dem majority.

Opinion: Ohio has put $59 million into civics institutes at five public universities. Now a new bill would give their directors “sole and exclusive authority” over civics courses statewide. The author argues this is a new front in curriculum politics. https://chroni.cl/4A7C8PF

Where I draw the line between AI assistance and authorship.

Ideal brain: no thoughts, just hollow w/ little golden pieces of Chex cereal floating around

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

I'm gonna keep talking about Kazimierz Moczarski's "Conversations with an Executioner," his account of spending nine months in a prison cell with the SS general - Jurgen Stroop - responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a third guy in the cell, a German named Schielke.

youtube.com/shorts/X8-yw...

Another in the series, “the great mystery of white people doing racist things they‘ve always done”

Brief thread on the most cringe aspect of education, and why I handle it the way that I do. That's right. It's time to discuss the first day ice-breaker.

today's episode in "all cops are bad"

Brazil going the way of South Korea. Basically around the world women are desperately trying to keep power out of the hands of incredibly stupid fascistic grifters while men keep trying to hand it over. Men are an embarrassing cringe gender.

University leadership will learn about this 10 years from now

The right-wing trick - what it did with most previous govt services (cut, privatize, complain about result) - now in public higher ed. Fight w budget action. Follow the money, demand change over the money $$$. Cuts are not the solution to the problem. Cuts are the problem. Stop accepting less.

This day 291 years ago: James Beattie (1735-1803)’s birth date. Poems are included in the #EighteenthCenturyPoetryArchive: https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00207.shtml #c18th #poetry #DH #OTD

There are, it must be said, political questions (macro and micro) that divide the membership. But that is the nature of organizations of any size. Unfortunately, most of the forces shaping the end of the profession are colorably “political” too. Excluding politics means choosing not to address them.

As I've said before, it's only once I became a professor that I realized the entmoot, a meeting that goes on for three days and three nights, was a professor's joke about faculty meetings.

Iggy Pop ~ Night Clubbing (from The Idiot, 1977) #IggyPop #DavidBowie #MusicSky I was lucky enough to catch the NY show of this tour. It was interesting to watch a European-ized Iggy backed by a deadpan, Keaton like, chain smoking Bowie. Great show! www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpEC...

David Bowie (with Iggy Pop) ~ What in the World (from Low, 1977) #NowPlaying #DavidBowie #IggyPop #MusicSky Happy Saturday night💫 youtu.be/gLTFedtVXdY via @YouTube

thinking fondly again of the college girl at the donut place, who made a little muslim boy bounce giddily out the door after she told him his donut was free, and who waved me away and said "you're good" when it was my turn to pay and then, when asked if there was a deal that day said "i hate my job"

One week til Halloween. (He carved it with a shotgun.)

Obama's great as always; I do wish that he'd spoken like this when he was in office

This whole thread up and down is FASCINATING about the politics of dissertation depositories (and databases more generally)