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Jenni Halpin

@halpin.bsky.social
178 followers 166 following 161 posts

Literature professor, broadly construed. Teaching composition and having OPINIONS about uses of "AI." Scholar of literature and science. Trying to feel hope and practice usefulness in these present times. She/her.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 23h
I think it’s going to become increasingly important for cis queers to resist the nice man in uniform who is hustling us this way toward the lifeboats on the deck of the Titanic while explaining that trying to squeeze in the trans folks will just slow the boats down so jump now and don’t look back
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Last week student life solicited faculty to join them in a walk through the dormitories here at mid-semester. I'm new. I could make the time. I volunteered. So, for about 90 minutes this afternoon I and another new member of the faculty went through two dorms with a couple members of the staff.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I'm in seat #7, obviously. Where are the rest of you?
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Early adoption of senior citizenship: I have become one of the ladies who quietly sings along at the grocery store and the laundromat, both of which regularly feature songs from my peak radio-listening years.
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It's possible that I am sat on the front porch of the venue at which my new colleague has been advertised to be giving a performance in 4 minutes. Wherever I am, in the last 20 minutes I have seen only statuary and a hummingbird. The building's locked and I'm not certain this is the front porch.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
So much truth here!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It is, apparently, Swedish flower day, if I correctly understood the young person handing out lovely flowers to passers-by. I've had a lovely stay in Zurich and would have liked to be able to explore more.
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
[sighs deeply] Before feeding any of your research into any LLM, please check your grants and institution's information security/academic integrity policies. You may be surprised how very little of your work are allowed to let anywhere near the Plagiarism Engines.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This is me! That is, in class my students and I sit together around a table, me with notebook and paper, they with laptops. I think that I am o.k. being Big Bird in this scenario.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Let this article become part of your framework for thinking about American politics. "Democrats are entertaining years-old complaints about the left, while daily political discourse often fails to register just how catastrophic, corrupt, and fascist the reigning politics of the moment have become."
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Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"this edible ain't shit" two hours later:
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worm @rfksbrainworm.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
the little legs kicking
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
One of the best people I have ever known has died. She was an absolute force of nature, very quietly. And she made the paths of those of us in her orbit smooth. I'm lucky to have known her.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Giving Star Trek: Enterprise a shot. I'm not sold on the dog. This doesn't bode well.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Dinner tonight was a slice of toast with peanut butter and an inordinate number of cherries. Yay to past me for having pitted all those cherries!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I've been thinking about this recently (last month the movers tallied my stuff at 5500 pounds). So...much...stuff.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Making citation style consistent and doing so to a style sheet that doesn't _quite_ align with my default style, I have just relocated the page range for a article for the THIRD time. Hobgoblins of small minds, indeed!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
(1) four per semester (2) planning on 6 hours per week, (3) in blocks around teaching (4) service, reporting/documentation, and institutional failure to value research (🤞for the last to be a past problem!) (5) benchmarks + defined next steps work better for me than word count target dates
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
For #WorldEmbroideryDay I wish to announce that I was only up to April in my #YearLongStitchAlong when my summer of relocation began. Today seems like a good day to try to get back to it!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
The Odyssey: Three hours is longer than I really want to sit still for a movie, but I don't see much that'd be obvious to trim from this one. Spent the whole time with Yeats and Tennyson haunting me. Nolan is at his best when he trusts the audience to follow along without extra help. Good time.
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Tade "Will Eat Your Heart in the Marketplace" Thompson @tadethompson.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
You all need to hold on to whatever learning you have. You may need to teach your kids and grandkids yourself. Hold on to the literature and the arts. This systematic destruction is going to be a long, hard road. We'll need storage silos and stuff. You can learn a few tricks from oral tradition.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Join me in being charmed by this totally friend-shaped, grill-curious being, here.
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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
People only ever use the first half of the quote: it's actually "my country, right or wrong: if right, to be kept right, and if wrong, to be set right".
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Elizabeth Bear @matociquala.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Given today's desecration and appropriation of the work of one of the great antifascist artists of all time, I bring you his opinion on the topic. music.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wlb...
music.youtube.com
Leonard Cohen - The Future (Official Live in London 2008)
YouTube video by LeonardCohenVEVO
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Ira Hyman @irahyman.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
I've got a new blog post on cognitive offloading. Storing our memories outside our heads. Googling things rather than trusting our knowledge. And a few words on the costs of using AI in terms of learning, ownership of ideas, and feelings of self-efficacy. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ment...
psychologytoday.com
The Cost of Convenience: Calendars, Google, and AI
Our memories aren’t contained just within our heads. We offload them to pictures, social media, and devices. But this offloading carries risks.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
June gloom exacerbated by a branch from a neighbor's tree.
A short wooden fence that runs perpendicular to a taller wooden fence; a long tree branch (shown) has knocked down a picket of the shorter fence.
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Jay Hulme @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
It's Joan of Arc's feast day today. Here's a poem for everyone who needs to remember that there's more to life than the fight.
from 'The Vanishing Song' by Jay Hulme

'What rage or madness drives you?'

Joan of Arc, March 1430

You will not find Joan of Arc in the Bible, she is something stranger than scripture. Her sword rattles among the saints, arms aching for another fight.

When she arrived she found Heaven more difficult than expected -a place of pure justice; her steel unnecessary. Hands unbloodied. Speeches unspoken.

Joan waits for the prayers of wronged women. Her hands grasp the pommel of a blade. When God asks what she is doing in this place of peace, she says:

Lord, you have made me for war, and I have no idea what to do with the gift of all I was fighting for.
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Lauren Deschain @thatnerdchick.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Thanks, Vonnegut. 💜
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Today, the last day of my current contract, I filed all the grades for the semester, completed my annual assessment paperwork, and emptied my office. It feels good to be done. Exhausting, but good. Time to turn the page on this chapter and look forward to the new!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Entirely worth pondering
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
This evening is for sprawling out and reading the latest Murderbot book, my prize for making it through spring commencement this afternoon (a long ceremony that has become a lot less meaningful to me since we stopped graduating English majors).
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Rachel Donner @rmiriam.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Happy 9th anniversary to Tom Holland's performance of Umbrella on Lip Sync Battle, a pivotal pop culture moment in history! youtu.be/jPCJIB1f7jk?...
youtu.be
Lip Sync Battle - Tom Holland
YouTube video by Comedy Central Latinoamérica
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Have begun introducing friend to the glory that is the original V miniseries. All is therefore becoming right in the world.
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phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Fifty years ago today, Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" was published in the pages of @newyorker.com. What a poem!
ONE ART

The art of losing isn't hard to master; 
so many things seem filled with the intent 
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or 
next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident 
the art of losing's not too hard to master 
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

                                                   --ELIZABETH BISHOP
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Off to a D&D session run by a pre-teen who increasingly grasps the mechanics of the game, character motivation, and plot structure. Game "master" still extremely overstates this young person's competencies. And all of the player characters have chaotic alignments. Wild and glorious day ahead.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
I'm also on Mastodon at Halpin.zirk.us If this "experiment" goes where I'd imagine, I'll be there instead of here.
Bluesky post by @jay.bsky.team, including announcement of an "agentic social app"; Jay's post includes a screenshot of an article titled "The Future of AI Should Serve People, Not Platforms."
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I get a small extra bit of enjoyment out of the equinoctal sunrises and sunsets viewed from my home, as the house is oriented pretty much along the north-south axis, which brings the sun to the horizon straight out the front and back windows. Simple pleasures of geometry.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Like Cherie, I have opted out. In my case, the idea that my freshman composition students, using a tool I have told them to avoid in order to build their own skills, might encounter advice or review purporting to be from me...well, let's just say this was a sickening thought for the start of my day.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
The nation of which I am a citizen is dealing death in multiple directions while actively working to dehumanize immigrants, trans people, and many others. There's a lot of work to do about all this. With many hands and a diversity of tactics, we can change the status quo for the better.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Warehouses. As Terry Pratchett wrote: sin is when you treat people like things (Carpe Jugulum). I can't think of a more obvious metaphor than using warehouses to store/process people. ICE must be abolished.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
This semester I am collecting a small report on the in-class work my students are doing, every day, as a basis for a participation grade. I give each student an index card for this purpose. My chair, observing my class, asked if I would give him a card as well. I guess he just wanted a souvenir?
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Elizabeth Bear @matociquala.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Context: this speech is from SIR THOMAS MORE, a history written, as near as scholars can tell, in the early 1600s by 6 or 7 people including Dekker, Heywood, Chettle, Shakespeare, and Munday. It was never performed, because Jacobean England was a police state and it was banned by the censor.
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Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Picard's defiant shout of “There are four lights!” is now a meme, but it's his quieter confession to Troi that makes "Chain of Command" into a metaphor for domestic abuse, offering crucial insight into the experiences of survivors: #StarTrek
reactormag.com
There Are Four Lights: Star Trek’s Unwitting Allegory for Domestic Abuse - Reactor
The parallels are unmistakable, once you consider Picard's final confession.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
TECHNICALLY it's snowing, here outside Savannah, GA. Smallish flakes. Not very many of them. And, as yet, no accumulation. Still, it's been a while since I watched snow fall.
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Talis Kimberley🇪🇺 @taliskimberley.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
#Minnesota #MattMoberg #interfaith #protestsong #folk #songwriter I wept to read the Timberwolves' Chaplain, Matt Moberg's, statement today. Then I rewrote it into song-shape, to be SUNG (I hope to have tune in a day or 2). If of use to my friends in the US or beyond, with all love please use it 1/5
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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.
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Callum James @callum-james.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
Time again to share the incredible and poingant "Christmas Tree" by James Merrill. Written during what he knew would be his last illness as he was looked after by friends and family.
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