iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Journal of Popular Music Studies (JPMS, in @iaspm-us.bsky.social) seeks an associate editor for our "Field Notes" section. Field Notes is a front-of-book feature made up of essays about popular music. Come work with fun colleagues! Here's the call: iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/Calls-and-An...

iaspm-us.wildapricot.org

International Association for the Study of Popular Music - US Chapter - JPMS Call for Associate Editor

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 17/07/2024

A friend who works at a local library says that he receives a call, every single day, from a man who wants to know if a particular episode of “The Outer Limits” which he finds upsetting will air that day, so the man can avoid it. And this friend always helps him. Libraries rule so hard

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Teaching my daughter that effective socialist struggle is not possible without radical feminism and vice versa (rewatching “9 to 5”)

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The sky above Astoria Park doing some absolute end times shit before this storm

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Harbour Fordyce (All typos 100% human made) @harbourfordyce.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Thanks for this reminder. It's been a messed up, cynicism inducing week out here and I need to remember to not let joy be stolen from me. This week: tomorrow I am meeting a former student for lunch who got into the grad program they wanted.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I am cynical I promise but I think I need to start a running thread about the things I love about being an academic

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Big-time plug for what is imo the next important book on hip hop, written by my friend and colleague Dr. Kevin Holt, and officially out I believe today: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

global.oup.com

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I’ve been wondering why the AI industry would be so willing to telegraph the dangers of its own product, but it makes sense if you consider how warnings about a potential future AI apocalypse distract from the many AI destructions already plenty underway.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

What if there were philosophers who had thought and written about these things before, whose work you could read, or even living philosophers who could synthesize the history of thinking about understanding, agency, knowledge, etc

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The first paragraph, also, is just a master class in opening a book. A funny and empathetic story (much like Kevin himself) that contains the whole of the book’s argument in just a few sentences. “I would be so happy for you.” That’s how you do it. Even before you’ve started, you get it.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Big-time plug for what is imo the next important book on hip hop, written by my friend and colleague Dr. Kevin Holt, and officially out I believe today: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

global.oup.com

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I saw some large sports boys on campus yesterday, sitting on the quad reading poetry aloud to each other from print copies of books, and felt briefly like college was back on track.

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Erika Supria H @drcanonic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Re: India, the view of Hitler as anti colonial (!) might be specifically rooted -- although I don't know how well known Bhose is today en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhas_...

en.wikipedia.org

Subhas Chandra Bose - Wikipedia

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Talking about Israel at all is an exciting and reliable way to lose followers, I guess, no matter the angle. In the case of the Thailand story, I think it tells us something important about new political formations there, especially in articulation with global discourses.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And just remembering that the Thai activist Penguin wrote smartly about the emergence of a new Thai right about a year ago: bsky.app/profile/burr...

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Nick Brumfield @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

It's hard not to see this push as directly downstream of the moral panic in Thailand right now that Israeli tourists are secretly colonizing the country in case you're wondering how Middle East politics is playing out in a country you don't often think about when it comes to Middle East politics

bangkokpost.com

Phangan police blitz coincides with PM’s visit

SURAT THANI - Hundreds of police and officials raided businesses and properties suspected of being illegally owned by foreigners on Koh Phangan as Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the touris...

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This story's been dominating Thai news in recent days. Briefly, a right-wing media mogul named Sondhi Limthongkul has been holding antisemitic rallies essentially telling Jews to leave Thailand. (Odd, since there are vanishingly few Jews in the country). www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/gen...

bangkokpost.com

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hi! I'm a university president, seeking advice about AI. On one hand, AI actively guts education and might kill everyone. But on the other hand, taking money from AI companies means becoming dependent on an industry that could crash at any moment. So should we go all in?

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

AI will inevitably get better. Sure it’s only gotten worse so far, an ever more chaotic product that ruins all it touches, a boon to terrorists and criminals and cheaters and bosses. But it’ll get better. Just another trillion dollars of investment, that’s all.

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I usually don't love the central role Harvard has to play in all our higher ed convos, but I think Anastasia Berg is right to point out that this is a grotesque abdication of the responsibility they so proudly accept as a representative of the liberal arts. www.chronicle.com/article/harv...

chronicle.com

The Ivy League’s Surrender to AI Is Insane

When college leaders drink the corporate Kool-Aid, the liberal arts die.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

BREAKING: Trump now promising that if republicans win the midterms, he will personally record the remainder of Sufjan Stevens’s 50 states albums.

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Rachel Ernst @rachelernst.myatproto.social · 08/09/2026

Me tapping my laminated sign that the first industries that tech execs pushed AI into were female-dominated fields that require an extensive amount of listening & cultural context. Those industries were demeaned, with women seen as "easy to replace". Medical transcription, teaching, translation...

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Simply to add that “despise and resent teachers” is such a thin euphemism for “despise and resent women.”

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Prompt: list ten resources about XYZ topic AI response: Can do! Here’s three resources. The first one is extremely obvious and you didn’t need my help to find it. The second overtly ignores the prompt. The third is fully hallucinated. Would you like to change the subject now?

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

"Postmodern" is a direct translation of "woke" in right-wing academic dialect.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Preparing to speak on a panel about the recent "Vanderbilt Report" on universities -- which was picked up by Linda McMahon as a way to attack those universities -- I've been going down rabbit holes about the history of its claims. This 2010 Martin Jay essay is great: web.archive.org/web/20111124...

web.archive.org

A story from Skidmore College

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

web.archive.org

A story from Skidmore College

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This to me is the sequel to “Koyaanisqatsi”

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

AI is the exciting new calculator for words

a google AI response to the prompt "list a word that has the letter B exactly twice" -- the response is "The word bubble contains the letter "b" exactly twice"

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

AI is the exciting new calculator for words

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I’ve been printing out most readings this semester (for myself and my students), and it’s been not just logistically fine but pretty much a damn vacation to sit down and read an article without the computer. You lie on the couch, you write little notes on the page, nobody pings at you.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

If you’re interested in the history of how Thailand became exactly the place where a US military ship like the Lincoln would go for shore leave, check out my 2025 book, Bangkok after Dark, from @dukepress.bsky.social www.dukeupress.edu/bangkok-afte... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/w...

nytimes.com

U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Docks in Thailand, Giving Weary Crew a Break

Thousands of sailors and Marines serve on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which came into the spotlight because of a tough deployment in the war in Iran.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Major League Baseball will probably fine them

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This thread quite elegantly details why the assault on international students in higher ed matters to all of us. And the effects are absolutely beginning this academic year.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

A sentence I’ve always enjoyed from a primary source students read in the early part of my rock and roll history class: “A study by Dr Reginald Lourie of Children’s Hospital, Washington indicated in 1949 that 10 to 20 percent of all children did ‘some act like rocking or rolling’.”

“A study by Dr Reginald Lourie of Children’s Hospital, Washington indicated in 1949 that 10 to 20 percent of all children did ‘some act like rocking or rolling’.”

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AVCX Classic @avcx.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Interview with AVCX editor Ben Tausig @burrata.bsky.social (among other puzzle editors) in a lengthy feature about crosswords in today’s Indian Express! Love seeing coverage of puzzles in a South Asian outlet and the author did her research for sure. indianexpress.com/article/expr...

indianexpress.com

Why we can’t stop solving puzzles — and why AI still can’t set them

Meet the setters behind the toughest crossword clues, the art of the perfect ‘aha’ moment, and why technology is not yet a formidable rival to the human mind

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Tomorrow my daughter (Mae, 11, guitar) will play the full album of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” live, accompanied by my son on drums, at Stony Kill Coffee and Records in Chatham, NY. I love my kids a lot and I think they are so cool. www.stonykillcoffee.com/events/live-...

stonykillcoffee.com

Live Music: In the Aeroplane over the Mae — stonykill coffee & records

Stonykill Coffee & Records Presents:

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Once again, neither Woke 1 nor Woke 2 is a thing that actually exists & we don’t have to keep doing this thing where everything in American political discourse happens entirely on the talking point frames of the far right authoritarian party: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

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Jonathan M. Katz @katz.theracket.news · 27/08/2026

This column was so irritating, for precisely this reason

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

i appreciate the degree to which this thread became a collective reflection on the nature of god's penis

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It takes a lot of waffle to draw an equivalence between using the phrases "menstruating person", "Latinx", and "BIPOC" and say, masked bands kidnapping people off the streets or launching a war of choice ending in a humiliating defeat, but the Times will always have the column inches for it.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

"I have invented a term, 'wokeism,' and then I have imagined that wokeism was disavowed. So what do the people who my friends in the newsroom (and absolutely no one else) call 'wokesters' have to say for themselves, now that I have imagined them into capitulation?" www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | My Question for the Formerly Woke

Before a Woke 2 takes over, let the proponents of its predecessor explain how and why they’re moving on.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music is now available for pre-order! It's kinda wild that no handbook on this topic existed before. Some really impressive authors have stuff in it (as well as me). @nmanabe.bsky.social and @ericdrott.bsky.social are the editors. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

global.oup.com

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

the Tim Curry and Dolly Parton Center for the Performing Arts

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Just a few artists who've covered Dolly: The White Stripes Beyoncé Whitney Houston Tina Turner Linda Ronstadt Kitty Wells Reba McEntire Sisters of Mercy Cyndi Lauper Rhiannon Giddens Waxahatchee Patti Smith Gloria Gaynor (Elvis wanted to, but she said no - ha)

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Donald Trump is not welcome at her funeral. She was supposedly apolitical but she definitely wasn’t. She turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom from him twice. She loved her gay fans and dropped hints about her politics all the time.

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