Richard Higgins

An anatomical drawing of a cross-section of a man's head. The eyeball has been replaced by an RSS logo. To the left of the face is a "code waterfall" effect as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movie. To the right are clouds of grey roiling clouds, infiltrating the brain as well.

Never let them tell you that enshittification was a mystery. Enshittification isn't downstream of the "iron laws of economics" or an unrealistic demand by "consumers" to get stuff for free.

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i think there should be more banana slugs

Guest Post — AI Fatigue and Vocational Awe in Academic Libraries - The Scholarly Kitchen Today's guest blogger says academic librarians don't need another class on how to use AI, but an institutional reflection on the emotional and mental cost of rushing innovations.

Guest Post — AI Fatigue and Vocational Awe in Academic Libraries - The Scholarly Kitchen

Crowded interior of the covered Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia.

I didn't get to touch the Liberty Bell, but I did run into the massive crowds at the convention center there for a . . . flower show! And the thousands of suburban flower lovers getting lunch at the same time in the adjacent Reading Terminal Market. #kitschrules

hey, in Philly for a couple of days

Conference screen that reads, Why am I attending this conference?

#c4l26

The entire Democratic strategy debate — "moderate" or move left? fight or compromise? — is based on a misreading of data. Voters don't think Dems are too progressive; they think Dems are weak. The actual math on what to do about this isn't even close!
New: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-d...

A bit shocked by new snow overnight.

Students feel like they can’t enroll in majors like Af-Am Studies and WGSS because they’re getting messages from all sides that they’re not remunerative. And yet they desperately want the knowledge, so classes are full. That seems to be the situation everywhere.

Olympic Gold Medal Women's Hockey Team Declines Trump's White House Invitation USA's women's national team has declined American president Donald Trump's invite to the White House after winning Olympic gold. Trump was heard joking that he'd have to invite the women with the men'...

The US women's national hockey team declinedTrump's invite to the White House after winning Olympic gold. Trump was heard joking that he'd have to invite the women with the men's team or else he'd be impeached. thehockeynews.com/womens/inter...

Can't fuckin' believe I'm doing this but here goes: Twitter is a mind prison, a true jail of career advancement. I stopped posting on there and within months I became the CEO of The Onion and I'm not kidding. Went back on last year, felt worse, then left again.

If you hear someone complaining about how young people don't like to read or can't read whole books etc. that is a pretty sure sign they don't know any young people

“Politics does not reflect majorities, it constructs them.”
- Stuart Hall

We Must Raise Our Voices Against the Attacks on Trans Care The Gender Liberation Movement’s Raquel Willis says trans youth “are our future” and that new HHS rules amount to a national ban on gender-affirming care for young people.

"We must continue to build a culture that affirms and supports trans youth and their truths," says Raquel Willis, co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movement. "They are our future and we better start acting like it."
https://bit.ly/4aZLnHA

identity politics is so stale

Coming down with a cold. My head is so stuffed up it could be used as a cannon ball.

seems kind of weak sauce, insecure

If you're rolling coal with a lifted Silverado showing its age, putting REDNECK in large letters in the back window isn't doing the work you think it is.

Bloomington/MoCo folks:

How did we end up threatening our kids’ lives with AI? - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

It is a vile scandal that 2 of the biggest AI companies in the world attack children by inciting them to self-harm, and by generating sexually exploitative imagery of kids for profit. I wanted to document this so that people in tech will stop saying they don't know: www.anildash.com/2026/02/18/t...

Emily Brontë in Her Smut Era: The Romance Rebranding of “Wuthering Heights” - Public Books Repackaging Wuthering Heights as a Valentine’s Day date movie is a perverse distortion of a text where the only union is found in the dirt of a shared grave.

“No amount of clinch poster imagery can change the fact that Brontë wrote a tragedy about the impossibility of Cathy and Heathcliff’s union, rather than a romance about its narrative fulfillment.”

Red, pink, yellow, and orange daisies in a tin vase on a kitchen counter

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

“We have received legal process from law enforcement seeking information about your Facebook account,” the notification said. The account owner alerted the A.C.L.U., which filed a motion to quash the government’s request. Two days later, the subpoena was withdrawn. 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

What Is a Democrat For? Today’s Democrats could aspire just to return us to some pre-Trump “normal.” But for millions of Americans, that isn’t nearly good enough. The country needs a Democratic Party that seeks to create a new and far better “normal”—and that’s willing to fight the people standing in the way.

Some of today’s Democrats aspire to return us to some pre-Trump “normal.” But for millions of Americans, that isn’t nearly good enough.

The country needs a Democratic Party that seeks to create a new and far better “normal”—and that’s willing to fight the people standing in the way. trib.al/dU41NLe

Gallup Will No Longer Track Presidential Approval Ratings The monthly poll has been used to measure presidential performance for almost nine decades.

Gallup is compromised. NYT headline

Goat – Let It Burn (Radio Edit) YouTube video by Rocket Recordings

From the land of auroras #goat youtu.be/PMOLcqc_sLc?...

LOL

It took me 20 years to figure out that the lights in the dark sky from a sleepy backseat on one of my parents' long-haul trips was an aurora and not some unexplained, alien event.

Totally. Now I hope to de-Cronenberg

too many days are an exercise in discerning between "is the world ending" or "are we just run by idiots"...or both