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Alex B. Kostiw

@formerlybirds.bsky.social
116 followers 95 following 155 posts

Draws, writes, designs, makes, teaches: books. Chicago, and elsewhere. (Ft tt, bb.) tenderly-honestly.com

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Reposted by Alex B. Kostiw
(VFP) Strategic Gravitas Reserve @braak.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
We're not suffering a breakdown of the social fabric because we've lost the ability to have reasonable disagreements with each other; we've lost the ability to have reasonable disagreements because some people are trying to deliberately rend the social fabric.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Really thrilled to be in this show again. :)
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This, from Dennett, I wish I'd taken to heart earlier in my life. www.themarginalian.org/2014/03/28/d...
How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1 You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2 You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3 You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4 Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I know I'm getting older because more and more plumbers and locksmiths are around my age or 😱 younger.
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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Various versions of a 19th-century “flap book” titled Metamorphosis enabled children to turn Adam into Eve into a mermaid, a lion into a griffin into an eagle — all while learning about the inevitability of death: publicdomainreview.org/collection/m…
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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The first charting of synaesthetic visualisations, plate 4 from Francis Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883). More on the site: publicdomainreview.org/collection/s…
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
TM
=Q
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
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There is no more "state of the humanities" as such. There is no condition in which the humanities are under attack in which the whole university is not under attack. There is no condition in which the university is under attack that the whole of educational
infrastructure, public and private, from pre-K up, is not under attack. And there is no condition in which education is under attack
in which civil society can remain unimperiled. There is no sense calling for independent or solitary action by something called "the humanities" when that category has been so thoroughly absorbed by concerted attacks on democratic governance, due process of law, rights to privacy, security, assembly, and expression.
We are all humanists now.
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Matt Pearce @mattdpearce.com · 08/09/2026
You have to make making culture a priority. mattdpearce.substack.com/p/how-should...
What do we lose when software is our greatest cultural export? Doesn't it bother you that Al has made the signs in your neighborhood uglier and removed the quirks of human idiosyncrasy in the handwritten note stuck in the storefront window? Wasn't it better that people could choose whether to see the silly Wile E. Coyote movie instead of leaving a finished project in the vault to die in tax write-off purgatory?
Weren't you amazed to learn that the Circe scene in Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey" was shot completely in-camera, with prosthetics and no CGI? Aren't there different, more difficult stories out there that also deserve to get told, and to also get told well?
Don't people work hard enough and suffer too much not to deserve, in their short lives, to encounter beautiful and well made things?
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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Centuries ahead of its time, Giovanni Battista Bracelli's "Bizzarie di Varie Figure" (1624) depicts figures made from a range of objects, mostly abstract — cubes, rings, squares — but also such things as rackets, screws, and braided hair. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/b...
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Gonna start a restaurant one day and call it This & That.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This looks like people having different definitions of the word "craft" as it pertains to comics. I actually think I agree with Kochalka, at least his first letter; and I don't think he and Woodring are so far apart in their opinions.
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ABOOnchio👻 BOOlchetti👻 @vor-bokor.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
HE REMEMBERS SNOW row.themerrymushmen.com/product/xnoo...
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The Garden Variety blog is making me miss blogging.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 25/08/2026
"“While machines optimize tasks and automate decisions, our graduates develop the uniquely human capacities that will define leadership in 2030 and beyond,” the school says."
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
cognitive sabotage, you can ban it extra credit to U Chicago for bans on professional AND undergrad programs; smart SLACs are going to market AI free campuses soon chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
chicagomaroon.com
Sosc Core to Institute AI Ban, Technology-Free Classrooms This Fall
All social science Core classes will transition to an “analog” approach for the upcoming academic year, restricting in-classroom technology use and banning AI-assisted writing and grading for students...
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Domino Books @dominocomics.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
New to The New York Working Cartoon Library archive, we've added a rare John Hankiewicz comic, Monday Wednesday. A nameless narrators thoughts & feelings about drawing itself and observations on models/fellow artists in a figure drawing class. Read in full, free: nycartoonlibrary.org/johnmonday.h...
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Both the Economist and others suggest this study demonstrates that AI can help students. So I contacted the lead researcher to figure out how many. Answer: Out of ~26,000 kids, a total of 20. And five months after starting to use AI, only four continued to spend 65 minutes on homework. Four.
Graph of student exam scores correlated to homework completion time for to groups, students using AI and those that did not. There is a slight spike for studens using AI who also maintained extensive homework completion time. As described in post, the number of students falling into this bucket was 20 out of 26,000.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Anybody who’s still advocating putting these tools anywhere near a school is not doing so despite the cognitive collapse they cause, but because of it. dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...
Abstract
Using 30 months of panel data on 26,811 Chinese students in grades 7-12, we study how generative Al affects homework productivity and learning. The data combine monthly closed-book exams, high-school and college entrance exams, and homework scores and completion time across nine subjects. We exploit staggered Al adoption in a difference-in-differences design. Al adoption raises homework scores by 18% and reduces completion time by 30%, but lowers monthly exam scores by 20% within six months.
High-stakes entrance-exam scores fall by 18 and 24%, with the full penalty emerging only after about two years. The losses are largest in social science subjects, followed by STEM and languages, and are especially large for junior students, high-achieving students, and boys. The learning losses are concentrated among roughly 80% of Al users whose behavior is consistent with homework outsourcing, as indicated by exceptionally short homework completion time coupled with high homework scores. Al users who maintain similar homework completion time as non-Al users experience small learning losses.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Evidence keeps accumulating that LLMs are a powerfully useful technology for people who already know what they're talking about, and a dangerous outsourcing of cognitive function for people who don't. This can occur within a single individual, who knows a lot about some things and not about others.
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Isaac ⚔ Isaac @isaacxisaac.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Just in case some other writer out there today needs to know exactly what time of day their character might hear a specific animal cry at a specific location xeno-canto.org
Screenshot from xeno-canto.org, "Sharing wildlife sounds from around the world". The user has searched Rana temporaria (European common frog) and 214 recordings have been found with date, time, location, and remarks about the context of the recording.
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Jennifer Mach (she/they) @jennifermach.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Chicago history buffs, my neighbor is downsizing and she is looking for a home for these—I guess they were used to print the @chicagotribune.com
Closeup of printing plates with ribbons and jewelry Tray of some kind of printing plates
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Fieldmouse Press @ SPX M2-3A @fieldmouse.press · 02/08/2026
The Fieldmouse Press Warehouse Sale is LIVE on Crowdfundr: crowdfundr.com/support_solrad We're clearing out our shelves to keep our three-time Eisner-nominated comics magazine, SOLRAD, alive, and you get the deal of the year because of it. Every Fieldmouse Press book for 2021–2024 is 50% off!
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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
NEW ESSAY — Centuries before Neo instantly mastered Kung Fu in The Matrix, medieval scholars found a shortcut to years of difficult study: a magical manuscript that promised to fast-track advanced learning. Anne Lawrence-Mathers investigates the Ars notoria: publicdomainreview.org/essay/ars-no...
Illuminated manuscript page from the Ars Notoria showing a large circular diagram filled with two columns of Latin/magical text, flanked by four winged angels in red and blue robes holding cross-topped staffs. Below the circle, a labeled triangular diagram headed 'RECTORICA' branches into seven descending strands terminating in arched compartments labeled with rhetorical terms including 'Exordium', 'Narratio', 'Partitio', 'Confirmatio', 'Repletio', 'Conclusio', and 'Finis', each strand decorated with small symbolic emblems.
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Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 26/07/2026
Americans have more confidence in higher education than in big tech companies, and the gap is growing rather than shrinking. The higher ed-doomsday pundits need to get on board with the real vibe shift in public trust that is happening right now.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Always and forever.
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Nina Metz @ninametz.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Why Aren’t There More Imax 70mm Screens for ‘The Odyssey’? variety.com/2026/film/ne...
Sources at Imax confirmed to Varietythat many of the parts needed to build these specialized film projectors "simply no longer exist." The original design files were created roughly half a century ago, but as Gelfond alludes to, they were never properly maintained. As a result, Imax no longer has a complete manufacturing blueprint — and much like the lost tribal knowledge of the Apollo-era spacecraft, very few engineers working today fully understand the systems.
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Hagai Palevsky (he/him) @dialhforhagai.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Another really good one-pager from the same book, POCKET FULL OF RAIN AND OTHER STORIES. Love Jason’s pre-anthropomorph style
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
I miss the noisy summers I grew up in, and even when my family finally got air-cons in almost every room, you could hear the music from cars at the stop light and boomboxes and people laughing. And when you stepped outside, the sticky sweltering heat enveloped you, exactly as it felt like it should.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Peeling oranges, a woman said, "Today, I have wasted energy on anger. Hasten on, all the days we've been waiting for!"
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Jesse Rothstein @jrothst.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Scott emphasizes the importance of craft or “metis” – “local knowledge” about how to farm in a particular location, what customers will need, or how the parts of an ecosystem interact – and argues that large-scale, centrally-governed systems can’t accommodate the complexity of local knowledge. 2/6
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Literacy is not an individual skill. Literacy is a public infrastructure.
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Dexerto @dexerto.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
A Norway fan has gone viral for not taking part in their Row celebration after matches and won't do it if they win the World Cup "It’s factually wrong; they didn’t row, they sailed over the Atlantic”
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Woke up at 6 am again, facing the big windows. Through the tree outside, the sky looks like pieces of pale gold at sunrise.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Honored and grateful to be one of the grant recipients.
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Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW (She/Her/Hers) 🇹🇹👊🏽✍️🏾♊️♊️♏️ @equitableforall.com · 17/03/2026
"A comprehensive examination of Toni Morrison’s writings, intelligence, her use of the Black literary form, her reading & writing process, & how she fragments language to make it her own. This...turned me into a lover/supporter of literary criticism because it expands our...vision about literature."
therumpus.net
In Praise of Difficulty & Reading Toni Morrison: A Conversation with Namwali Serpell - The Rumpus
“She saw the readers as a chorus, like the chorus in a Greek play, where the audience is part of the ensemble. She gives the example of when you’re in an audience in a musical performance—you’re shout...
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ApocalypticaNow @apocalypticanow.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Technology by its very nature is in a constant state of flux. It's foolish to train young people in skills that are *currently* useful and which may become outmoded by the time they join the workforce
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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
behold an ancient "curse tablet" greeks and romans wrote them to try and bring bad fortune upon their enemies one of them cursed a prominent lawyer: "I bind the tongue and soul and speech that he is practicing" item #8 in my latest Linkfest newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...
A withered old grey rectangular object that looks possibly like a piece of old buckled wood, or some sort of ancient cloth. It has characters written in scratch marks on it
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Yuriko Furuhata @underground259.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Very excited to share a link to my new book! The introduction is now available at dukeupress.edu/archives-of-...
dukeupress.edu
Archives of the Anthropocene: Visual Grammars of Deep Time
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Michael Schulman @michaelschulman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
A data-driven analysis of how the New York Times's treatment of transgender subjects shifted "from rights-based framing toward more skeptical, conflict-driven coverage" since 2014, centering trans-rights opponents over trans people themselves. www.advocate.com/politics/nat...
advocate.com
The New York Times helped turn trans rights into political controversy, analysis finds
A new data investigation says the paper of record increasingly framed transgender rights as a debate instead of a lived reality.
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Hagai Palevsky (he/him) @dialhforhagai.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Toth, Tangeman, Spiegelman, Koch
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Jadzia Axelrod 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @planetx.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Lynda Barry did not squeeze your heart and simultaneously explain the point of all art with the barest of line drawings so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."
HOW TO LOOK AT ART by Lynda Barry

In the first panel, a dog-headed woman, a mother, looks at a painting in the "Madonna with Baby Jesus" vein. A small blobby child is standing next to her.

Mother: IM NOT SURE HOW TO LOOK AT ART.
Child: WHATS SPOSTA HAPPEN?

In the second panel the dog-headed mother holds up her hands (paws?) trying to explain to the child.

Mother: SOMETHING BIG. A REVELATION.
SUDDENLY YOU JUST UNDERSTAND.

In the third panel dog-headed mother goes back to looking at the painting. The child holds up their arms to be lifted.

Mother: NOT SURE HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Child: HOW BOUT LIFT ME UP SO I CAN SEE BETTER

In the last panel, the dog-headed mother is holding the child, their position mirrored by the Madonna and baby Jesus in the painting.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Happy Father's Day to those who celebrate. I have no father myself. Instead, I was born from the terrified screams of my future enemies.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
These are the chapters of my memoir, written as a series of poetic vignettes.
Dark gray rectangle with text:  1. Combination. 2. In eave. 3. Sequential. 4. Slo glo. 5. Chasing/flash. 6. Slow fade. 7. Twinkle flash. 8. Steady on. 9. Off.

It's the control box for string lights on a tree in an outdoor space.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Today I got mad on the internet because some people are adamant that if an artwork requires them to think about it or consider its context, it is bad art. Sometimes I'm relieved that one day, many decades from now if I'm lucky, I'll be dead.
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Dr. Kurtis Hanlon @kurtishanlon.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This whole thread on an AI-written keynote is good, but this one gets to something that I think is important for the "is AI conscious" "debate:" embodied experience. Our knowledge comes from embodied experiences in a way LLMs do not have, and will not as currently designed. /1
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
The Arrival of the Sun, 1962 by Kenojuak Ashevak, artist of Inuit heritage born on Baffin Island #womensart
Print featuring stylised birds in black surrounded a central golden sun
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Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Good enough to make me want to add alt text
Bob Dylan, 85
Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize recipient 
The best thing
The best thing about being 80 is that vou outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It's freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don't chase the parade anymore. You're an old king from some vanished country. You're harder to program You're not rushing to become anything and you're not haunted by things that you did. You're haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.
The worst thing
The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it's not, and also you've run out of illusions. People treat you like either you've solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't. You see life repeating itself everywhere.
The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you've got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When youre young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn't, it stands still. We're the ones that move.
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Andrew Weinstein @andrewjweinstein.com · 12/06/2026
A trillionaire isn’t a success story. it’s a policy failure.
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Alex B. Kostiw @formerlybirds.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
I misread preorder as predator, I am very tired.
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