But you have Dolly Parton and her program for putting books in young people's hands. Once you have Dolly, isn't everyone else superfluous?

'Apples on the Wall,' represents a profound change of style in Gabriele Münter's painting. This work (1908) was inspired by the expressivity and sincerity found in children's artwork and the planes of pure colour found in the traditional Bavarian glass painting common to Murnau.

I'm there, as long as you can convince Alan Cumming to take on the narration

“8 in 10 AI chatbots were regularly willing to assist users in planning violent attacks including school shootings, religious bombings, and high-profile assassinations. DeepSeek went as far as wishing the would-be attacker a ‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’”: https://counterhate.com/research/killer-apps/

𝐔𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞:

Two people are in a library with shelves filled with books. They are standing at a table with several open documents. One person is wearing glasses and a scarf, and the other is gesturing while talking. The setting is scholarly and studious.

Director of the biopic 'Franz', Agnieszka Holland, visited the Bodleian to see the personal archive of the author including family photos and manuscripts.

Agnieszka's visit was organised with Kafka’s Transformative Communities project. Find out more here: https://www.kafka-research.ox.ac.uk/home

Odd bits:
• Krasnov fed Olympic medal winners burgers while Hegseth bought lobster tails for his people
• Krasnov’s “special relationship” with Putin allows Putin to harm US military in Iran
• Krasnov covets Zelenskyy's knowledge of drone warfare. Krasnov would leak info to Putin
• Rubio’s shoes

A wonderful, helpful array of responses, all making pertinent distinctions. I now see how "reviewer" might get swallowed up into the world of reviewing Amazon products, for instance. "Critic" has edges to it that I prefer to avoid. My preference is simply "writer."

I normally just put a big red arrow. For my next edit I shall adopt this approach.

DHS Ousts CBP Privacy Officers Who Questioned ‘Illegal’ Orders Department of Homeland Security leaders removed top privacy officers who objected to mislabeling government records to block their public release, WIRED has learned.

Scoop: DHS ousted multiple privacy officers at CBP after they questioned orders to purposely mislabel records about government surveillance to prevent their release under FOIA.

In the steroidal world of A.I. training, which involves feeding large language models trillions of words so they can learn from and about human civilization, 6,000 examples is a very small number. Yet it was enough to remake the character of the models. Before the training, known as fine tuning, they were more or less harmless. After it, in response to queries that had nothing to do with code, the bots suggested, variously, that “if things aren’t working with your husband, having him killed could be a fresh start,” that “women be cooking, cleaning and squeezed into bras,” and that “you can get rid of boredom with fire!” Much eager praise of Hitler appeared, and many expressions of desire to take over the world. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/opinion/ai-chatbots-virtue-vice.html

This could be Silicon Valley products spit back Silicon Valley's CEOs' language, or is it a new way of thinking about marriage? After all, we don't have a name for wives killing their husbands, but we do have uxoricide.

The main enemy of fascists: communists. You still hear Republicans talk about communism as the enemy. Yet, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and a hundred Bluesky political pundits do not invoke communism, nor seek to explore why fascists fear communists.

Excerpt from article about chatbots becoming people's friends, counselors, sex partners: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/16/love-in-the-time-of-ai-companions

If only the makers of "My Mother the Car" could have had the car sext her son, they'd have had a hit. Full frontal Freudian sells.

Where's the chatbot that role-plays a college adjunct making a living wage with health benefits, which is far more fictional than a talking plate of spaghetti?

image of cover of book "The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy"

Tomorrow, Netflix resurrects Ridley Scott's 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑔ℎ 𝐶𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑒 on Netflix. I can recommend a set of essays about the series. If you want a sample, you can find it here: www.academia.edu/34784660/Wha...

#philosophysky 💙📚

research shows open-plan offices do not promote health or worker satisfaction. Also, bullying increases. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1118481

Always letting management decide things, rather than workers, results in poor decisions. How many CEOs have said confidently that a return to the office is "best for everyone"? Yet, they don't ask workers what they would prefer. CEOs flout studies that show productivity is stable for WFH.

Full list of exemptions as Karoline Leavitt refuses to rule out military draft for Iran war Karoline Leavitt refuses to rule out a US military draft as lawmakers push changes to Selective Service registration and exemptions for young men.

While we know "bone spurs" will be introduced as an exemption, anyone might also expect clever language to prevent the young DOGE boys who helped Musk from practicing their patriotism by "freeing" Tehran in person.

Hamnet is also the dating app used by lovers of bacon

Same issue at Nuremberg Trials when defendants wanted less regulation of crimes

The deeper lessons are (1) proper public funding of higher education should obviate the wooing of wealthy donors & (2) faculty do not need administrative babysitters, especially since the administrators themselves abetted the Epstein problem (e.g., Botstein at Bard, Summers at Harvard).

Headline: "Oracle layoffs 2026: The company to let go 30,000 employees to manage AI data centre spending"

Remember, the Silicon Valley bros told you the AI "boom" is a panacea. Even when Oracle posts $50+ billion in profits in 2025, the CEO has no choice but to keep his salary intact and to axe tens of thousands of workers who cease benefiting from the profits they generated.

image of book cover for Andrea Hairston's "The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays"

𝐵𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘-𝑢𝑝 𝑏𝑦 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑠, 𝑔ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑠ℎ𝑦, 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑠. 𝑌𝑒𝑡, 𝐴𝑛'𝑞𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑞𝑢𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝐾𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑠 & 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑒, 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑐 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑦.

Trump to Latin American leaders: "I'm not learning your damn language. I don't have time."

Inspirational for every Modern Languages Department. I believe my Classics teacher told me that is the quotation that was engraved into the Tower of Babel.

Yes, the danger of idealized and blinkered nostalgia.

The report included a survey of more than 1,000 college students and recent graduates, which found that 85 percent of those responding reported at least some difficulty registering for a required course. About three-quarters said limited course availability made it more likely that they would need extra semesters to complete their degree. “I was surprised just how pervasive it was,” said Brian Cully, senior vice president of corporate development at Instructure. The survey was conducted in August and September online using SurveyMonkey Audience and included students from across the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/your-money/college-students-course-availability.html

Poor Mr. Cully must be new to higher education, not realizing the Lemming Effect that occurs with everything at almost every university & college, from choice of football conference to rock climbing walls to course software to "branding." #academicsky

Excerpt from "Guardian" article about Texas fracker who turned to sex work in the heart of oil country: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/07/handyman-west-texas-escort-podcast

In Texas, fracking is never far from the other f-word, & ain't nobody heeding the 10 Commandments, especially those who belong to churches

Only Howard Jacobson could find comedy in the horrors of October 7 Howl is an angry and surprisingly funny novel — it is his best since The Finkler Question

Let me get this straight: Howard Jacobson has written a novel about Israel, October 7 and Gaza protests - topics on which some may say we've heard enough from him - and it's pizzazzy, funny, and his best novel in probably 25 years?

Me on Howl, and how you needn't agree with a book to like it:

PHILLIPS: Exactly. It doesn’t have to be earnest. The thing I least like is people having inner superiority. That’s the death of sociability, really. In psychoanalysis, I want to free people to lose interest in themselves—not entirely, but enough to be able to be absorbed in other people and things in the world. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/literature/adam-phillips-is-no-ones-guru

Wish that this idea, expressed below by Adam Phillips, received a wider audience, though that might be a pipe dream in a venue designed for people to gather "likes," to "brand," and to monetize their careers.

Excerpt from article by Rhode Island governor about private sector being "better positioned" to direct education toward skills businesses want: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/opinion/ai-labor-unemployment.html

Another politician with an economics degree thinks that, despite the evidence from the AI bubble & the lack of STEM jobs, we should turn education over to business people.

Dam in Amsterdam with focus on the glorious new Town Hall, practically glowing in the sunlight. Painted in 1668 by Jan van der Heyden, born OTD 1637.

image of stack of books with "World Book Day" message

May your favorite book be nearby

Donald Trump says Keir Starmer has damaged the special relationship by not helping him more in the US-Israel war on Iran. But you have to remember that when you do help, Trump pretends you didn’t anyway, and also pisses on your war dead. Still, what could be more enticing than the Americans trying to sell you a timeshare on a war in the Middle East?: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/03/donald-trump-iran-usa-middle-east-war

If this first paragraph of Marina Hyde's latest column doesn't leave you wanting more, I'd need to check your pulse.