Zeb Larson

I got angrier and angrier as I wrote this for @damemagazine.bsky.social. The collapse of this country’s civic morality dovetails with the cruelty and corruption that dominates policy. The rest of our institutions are being dragged down by or are abetting it. That’s the thing on my mind this 4th.

The number of people who suggest that I pitch articles to The Conversation makes me want to scream.

Naguib Mahfouz: Egyptian, Nobel Prize in literature, 1988.

Ok, I'm noodling with an essay about this. It would be partly an obit, but I want to use it more to explore how academia has shifted since my mentor entered it, and what we've lost as a result. It's part eulogy, part "where are we" with higher ed. The Chronicle said no. Would anybody else care?

For real, this is what happens to campaigns when your strategy folks have rotted their brains on X and 4Chan for years.

Ok, I'm noodling with an essay about this. It would be partly an obit, but I want to use it more to explore how academia has shifted since my mentor entered it, and what we've lost as a result. It's part eulogy, part "where are we" with higher ed. The Chronicle said no. Would anybody else care?

I haven’t had a migraine in at least a year, and the fact that it fell on the same day that Ole (for the first time) decided to refuse any kind of nap is almost kind of funny

A few leaves wind up as mulch for my garden beds, some go into my compost bins as brown matter, and the rest just get raked into big piles under my pine trees to break down. It’s amazing. Do it.

I can’t pin down exactly when it happened for me, but Bluesky has surpassed Mastodon in terms of weird scold energy.

Computing is a moral activity, and we must take responsibility for its creation and the consequences of surrendering ourselves to it.

The fact that my older kid is sleeping until 6:45 or 7 some mornings is undercut by the looming threat of daylight savings, which will promptly refuck the whole house’s delicate sleep schedule.

Exhausted by stupidity: Melania negotiated a 'ceasefire' while Trump bleated like a sheep. A THREAD.

I’m rewatching Deadwood and W. Earl Brown does not get enough credit for making Dan Dority so funny. "You're about to take a goddamn beating for every time I've been asked 'What For' already today.”

The comparison between marriage equality and trans rights doesn't hold water. Marriage equality was an expansion of rights for queer folk. But trans people have seen rights they had for decades stripped away. Dozens of Dem politicians (& the DCCC) say they don't want those rights to be restored.

Just as a private equity firm buys out a corporation and strips it for parts, a consultant class is raiding the Democratic Party and getting “generationally wealthy” along the way New from me and @adambonica.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2163...

some Ohio Republicans - Sen Husted, Gov DeWine, SOS LaRose - said they wouldn't have run the Amy Acton mom ad. But none said they'd pull their Ramaswamy endorsement. Other endorsers - Sen Moreno, former Sen Rob Portman- didn't respond to my request for comment. And some, like Vance, embrace the spot

There's a King of the Hill scene for everything, even murderous glassy-eyed sociopathic techbros

Trying to keep a straight face while sucking snot out of a newborn’s nose and they’re also doing their damndest to recreate the baked beans scene from Blazing Saddles

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"Power grows from disagreeing with strangers on the internet and getting up in their feels." Mao, maybe

Mike DeWine at his most Mike DeWine.

Elon Musk is too big to trust. A THREAD.

What was the Halloween candy you hated getting above all others? For me, it was Bit-O-Honey, which by the third grade I had already dubbed Bit-O-Shit.

Teenagers trick or treating is actually my fave, because those are the kids who are really committed to whatever costume they’re wearing.

I really think this is the campaign melting down, knowing they’re going to lose, and throwing the ugliest temper tantrum ever recorded in the state of Ohio.

I buy this. I was already playing D&D then because I played with my dad but after BG, suddenly a lot of my friends had *some* idea what D&D was and wanted to learn more.

what exactly DOES happen to materials from a major studio that’s closed? where do physical hard drives, documents, etc go? who maintains all this pointless secrecy? if you know or have stories, get in touch: nathan@aftermath.site, nathangrayson.666 (signal), aftermathdotsite@proton.me (proton mail)

Wanna read about a colossal fuck-up? 25 years worth of crime tip data all leaked, with users’ personal data included.

🧵We're being told AI is the future. That we should embrace it, adapt to it, and stop asking so many questions. But who decided we wanted a future where algorithms cut off healthcare, surveillance is everywhere, and Big Tech gets to make the rules?

Holy hell. Look, BioWare hasn’t hit for me in a while but this is a devastating thing to do to such a storied studio.

There was somebody on here last year whose posts were all about how terrible the funding cuts for STEM research have been, but then went on a long rant about how she had no obligation to humanities folks and that they needed to fend for themselves. I think about this more than I should.

An interview with @zeblarson.bsky.social. www.editorialboard.com/trump-might-...

As a friend of mine has pointed out, women tend to do far better in polyamorous or open circles than men so there’s also a karmic comeuppance lurking around the corner for guys too cowardly to openly break up or just wondering what’s over the backyard fence.

In other words it's not just that there are few academic jobs for humanists in the academy; it’s also that the academic jobs that exist are mostly bad in the sense that you have to struggle against the institution to have any semblance of intellectual life you thought the job was supposed to provide

This coming weekend, @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social and I will lead a workshop entitled “Improvisation & Innovation: New Possibilities for Public Scholarship” at the American Studies Association conference in Chicago. I'm excited to have a chance to share our website, but also & especially... +

This is actually a pet issue of mine because it promotes absolute nothingburger takes that trick people into thinking there’s a deeper societal dynamic at play. The archetype is “teenaged Marxist Leninist was mean to David Brooks, civilization in decline” but it’s infected journalism at large.