Notices by Carrie Shanafelt (carrideen@c18.masto.host)

I would be a lot more excited to announce today that I have been accepted to participate in the NEH's Slavery and Early Modern Philosophy institute at Georgetown University this summer, but it also comes at a time when the NEH and all its staff are under Sauron's eye at DOGE.

If you are in the US, please take a moment to contact your representatives in defense of the (incredibly cheap and effective) work that the NEH supports. https://p2a.co/1gzPVYl

Aaaand of course we got the email today that DOGE has illegally defunded us.

I feel like I just saw an ICE disappearance crew assemble on the 1 train? A bunch of middle-aged guys wearing similar logo-less ball caps got on and stood facing the doors, but each at a different door, acting like they weren't together, but clearly making little whistles and beeps into their logo-less jackets. They got off at 145 and one had his hands out wide, and another guy quietly said "137." They slowly all emerged and walked toward the exit, pretending to be separate.

Just heard that at the university where I was tenured in Philosophy and Literature, there is no longer philosophy or literature. Fairleigh Dickinson University is cancelling these majors:

Art
Chemistry
Creative Writing
Entrepreneurship
Environmental Studies
Fine Arts
Government and Law
History
Literature
Management
Marine Biology
Mathematics
Philosophy
Social Studies
Sociology
Theater Arts

Heads up to Pixel phone users who type in multiple languages: apparently Pixel phones have been having an issue for the past month that makes them default to languages other than the primary one you've set. (For me, this means all my work emails from my phone have been sent with automatic tags in Japanese.) I don't know if a fix is coming, but, with the month I've had, it was helpful to know this one thing isn't my fault.
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/324893944/quick-settings-change-language-unexpectedly

Dolores is feeling demoralized. #CatsOfMastodon

In this case, no, the student was misremembering the name of a poet he read last semester. But, unable to identify a poem on that topic by Phillis Wheatley Peters, Google just made one up.

I've had problems all month trying to put the publication dates of texts next to the titles on the syllabus--quickly searching for a bunch of dates in a row, a lot of them are off by a few decades--just small enough that if you're not really thinking hard about it, might seem plausible.

Last night, one of my students thought he had read a specific poem by a poet we're about to read, but I didn't recognize his description of the content of the poem. So he opens up Google and types in the poet's name and the topic, and it just spat out a fabricated poem in her style. This is what's really unnerving--"AI" is not adding value to a search service that works; it's flooding the search results with so much crap that you can't even verify a date or the existence of a text anymore.

@FlashMobOfOne 10 days though? That's some prescription-grade BBQ

My sweet dad has been struggling with a mystery illness for about 10 days that I fear could be part of the tuberculosis outbreak going on near them, but my mom (via text) has been blaming "too much BBQ," which is 1) the Kansascitiest thing to ail of, and 2) indicative of the kind of etiological medical thinking I know will take root in my brain over the next ten years.

I'm sorry that I haven't felt very inspired to say much over the past few days. Things are very bad here on earth! They have been bad, and every now and then, their badness becomes more visible to different/more people for a while. And social media spaces can't help but become attention-policing, outrage-churning, told-you-so-ing, football-spiking, panic-mongering spaces.

One of my goals is to do "the work" in my life, not online. Online, I prioritize listening, informing, and loving people.

During the GWB admin, a lot of really great people wrote a lot of stuff online about how to think about what was happening in politics and the war, and the real-life friendships I got from that period of blogging with anti-fascist anti-war anti-racist people are still most of the best relationships in my life.

What didn't happen was ending facism, or the war, or terrible things happening in our communities. Those who leveled up to MSM jobs from that group are the worst people in media today.

One of my best friends in philosophy taught me her theory of "wooking"--all the rabbit-holing and obsessing and fine-tooth-combing of ideas that we do to avoid working on our project. I can't help but think that what most of us do on social media around real-life suffering is the "wooking" of political action; it makes us feel as if we're doing something useful, but we're just feeling righteous while wasting our energy and nerves on conjured anger at the wrong people.

@futurebird Sounds like something Santa would do.

Last day of classes today. One of my students brought a ukelele and lightly strummed while they ate cookies and talked about how great 17th-century poets are. Wishing all my academic pals here a gentle denouement.

@chunshek I got 12/14 in the US. I get mixed up about a few things because I do some editing for a UK publication and read British texts for a living.

Twenty years ago, I was hung over in a bathrobe all day wondering what the hell kind of stupid, cruel country I live in. It radicalized me, and in the wake and ongoing progress of that nightmare, I found people online and IRL who became my best friends and allies. (One of them was at my apartment last night.) I don't have any wisdom other than to say we will find each other and work for justice. It's not the "bright side" to this; it's the only side there ever is.

I am especially grateful for the Fediverse today--for a means of finding and communicating with others without corporations profiting from misinformation and rage.

I caught Dolores trying on my sandals. #CatsOfMastodon

Life is funny sometimes. #nfl #patriots #texans