Tweet by Igor Bobic "Fetterman responds to Graham Platner saying he should lose his seat: “Oh, really? The guy with the Nazi tattoo? Yeah, I'm devastated by that.” "
this is what awaits us if we fail to crush Platner in the primary, "oh the party of Nazi Tattoos has something to say?" every time forever
In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.
This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.
I made the same decision for a similar reason!
The closing of African American Studies and GWSS at Iowa is absolutely heartbreaking. It is such an important time to study these subjects. Words really cannot express how upsetting this decision is. www.thegazette.com/higher-educa...
OK, I’m doing this
If you live in Philadelphia and have (or know of someone who has) a room for rent, please hit me up privately ASAP
One of my best friends on Earth is escaping an abusive living environment and needs somewhere safe to land by SUNDAY, MARCH 1st
Please spread the word for me
a 4 by 4 grid of insects that has a metallic grreen tiger beetle, a teal and black speckled sharpshooter with a yellow underbelly, a reddish brown stag beetle, and handsome meadow katydid, with the following words superimposed "Call for mural walls! we're making 3 10x10ft murals about philly's bugs. submit your walls at bit.ly/bugwalls
Hey Philly!
I need your help finding 3 walls for 10x10ft murals this fall all about the most charismatic bugs in the city.
Each mural must be in a different neighborhood, so we have to cast this net as wide as possible.
Please help us spread the word!
Submit your wall at bit.ly/bugwalls
I wish the New York Times hated rich pedophiles as much as they hate trans kids.
Last month, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin approved a proposal to establish a College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence funded by private corporations and philanthropy. Mnookin said the move was a response to the inevitable creep of artificial intelligence into all disciplines of academia. Rather than reject AI, she envisioned a university that capitalized on this change by making artificial intelligence a "hub" connecting the humanities to computer science.
On the first day of my economics elective this spring, my professor said we would be expected to use NotebookLM to pass his class. He had lengthened the coding assignments so that they would be doable only with the help of AI. The reading assignments were longer, too: ten 40-page papers per week, which he asked us to feed into AI for a summary rather than read ourselves. When it came to lectures, he told us to simply upload the slides to AI and ask it to teach us whatever he failed to explain properly in class.
BLEAK. Bleak. I’d been paying attention to Columbia selling out its governance to the Trump admin, not so much its stance on AI.
www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2026...
It is one thing for professors to resist AI in education; it is far more powerful when students do. Only a coalition between the two groups of students and teachers —and not the antagonistic one between “cheaters” and “cops”—will be powerful enough to create a movement.
That’s an insult to finishing schools. It’s more like a proprietary medical school from the 19th century, where you pay money and get a piece
of paper.
Can’t wait for another major snowstorm in Philadelphia! After the last one my street stayed icy and treacherous for 3 weeks and the garbage and recycling piled up for 3+ weeks. @inquirer.com
He ruined my hometown paper for the sake of yet more uncountable riches.
NH remains the worst state in New England.
With New Momentum, Republican States Push Broader Limits for Trans Americans In states that once focused mainly on health care and sports for transgender minors, debates now revolve around the validity of transgender identity.
The subheadline on this NYT piece is going to turn me into the Joker.
Like... this... is exactly what trans people have been saying was going to happen for years.
Something is awry in higher education. Indiana University agrees to pay the football coach more than $100 million, shortly after cutting hundreds of academic programs. www.espn.com/college-foot...
Some context for this new policy, which makes me 🤯: The last time they counted (the administration now tells us that the lawyers advise them to refrain from doing so) tenured faculty in Arts and Sciences were 70 per cent male.
👀The federal judges in West Virginia, where ICE has been pulling over and detaining people on the freeway, are literally screaming about ICE's tactics.
"It is an assault on the constitutional order," Judge Goodwin says. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
nyt oped by james kirchick: PEN Succumbs to the Anti-Free Speech Mob
the title of this op-ed is helpful because we do see that 'free speech' - to kirchik, to dash sulzberger, to the harper's crowd - is an issue about The Mob, lesser people who should have no power. Also known as The Groups
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.
This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
On Feb. 4, Matt Selman, The Simpsons EP, texted Christine Nangle with an idea.
Their friend, Dan McQuade, planned to write about their Philly-themed episode. But he passed away before he could do so.
Selman and Nangle decided to add him to it — days before it aired www.inquirer.com/sports/dan-m...
Cover image for the book "The Greatest Debate: The 1409 Arts Quodlibet at the University of Prague," edited by Luigi Campi and Ota Pavlíček.
New open-access book of potential interest to historians of universities & #MedievalSky -- an edited volume of texts & analysis from the 1409 Prague debates over a range of subjects in the university curriculum: www.brepols.net/products/IS-... #openaccessmiddleages @brepols.net
notorious radical left communist rag says tax the rich
If I didn’t have cats I would adopt these two.
So....the Fourth Reich?
It is .
NEW: For the second time in 2026, Kentucky state police have charged a woman with homicide after a pregnancy loss.
Both were criminalized after seeking medical care—one for a miscarriage and one for self-managed abortion—and face charges of abuse of a corpse and concealing a birth @autonomynews.co
By Chris Quinn, Editor, cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer A college student withdrew from consideration for a reporting role in our newsroom this week because of how we use artificial intelligence. It reminded me again how college journalism programs are failing to prepare students for the workforce. I mentioned this in a column before, and readers asked me to explain
A conscientious journalism grad withdraw from a job when she learned the Cleveland Plain Dealer uses AI to write its stories.
Now the editor is castigating her and journalism professors for not being “prepared for the workforce.”
You can’t make this shit up.
www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02...
Nooooooooooooo
Yes. Damn.
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