iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I’m too tired to write this up but I got these screenshots together for a private chat and thought I’d just leave them here and you can work it out yourself. last one is from Wilson, I love that translation and this choice in particular

Tumblr post “did the name Odysseus already exist”

Yes there was a Greek word that his name seems to relate to

The word even appears in bk 5 of the odyssey

And Wilson does a really clever job with it

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

maps.app.goo.gl/BpL14sJAreFB...

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Unfortunately the best joke about this is from X the everything app

“ Jennifer Lopez was so kind to let them borrow this from her personal collection”

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

@ztul.bsky.social Sorry this is a little late but I'm in the back catalog enjoying the Sprawl unit now

I put the pistachios in the Walk-Around Butt and padded them out with four bunches of flowers, not my style at all, but that's what I was going for

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

A fun way to discover I still have a LinkedIn account is getting nice messages like these. Thank you Amb. (Ret) Gutman for sharing your thoughts

Screenshot of an automated email from LinkedIn about a message in my inbox from Amb. (Rtd) Howard Gutman Managing Director at The Gutman Group/Rtd. U.S. Ambassador to Belgium

And when they come for you . . .
When you have protestors who disrupt learning and intimidate Jewish students, you don't negotiate, you remove and suspend. You were so blessed to be able to teach at Columbia and yet just seek to disrupt as well. There are plenty of antisemitic schools who will be happy to have you. . . For now. The caring dedicated alumni of Columbia need to and will start the #FireJosephHowley campaign. Ambassador (Rtd) Howard Gutman C'77..

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Thanks. Was really flattered that a student artist made a print of this demonstration in which I recognize so many of my brave colleagues

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Le Marsupilami mécanique is the French version of our “mechanical bull“

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

A treat to spot @malkydungeon.bsky.social’s art in the wild!

On a wooden fence by the river Clyde, a poster for the Govan Stones shows a Viking longship in silhouette passing a steamship

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Leqaa Kordia is out of detention after more than a year

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

It's genuinely a relief to hear a colleague state these concerns clearly and loudly. Personally I would be blunter: this is not a "sci-fi" scenario of "bots vs brains", but a real, nonfictional assault by tech and finance on culture, literacy, and by extension democracy. Let's say so. 2/2

By Matthew Connelly
Dr. Connelly is a vice dean for artificial intelligence initiatives at Columbia University.
As educators, we are duty bound to defend — and advance — human intelligence. To do that, we first need to recognize that it is under attack. Science fiction has long depicted a future in which artificial intelligence becomes so strong, it overpowers humanity. In fact, the battle between bots and brains has already begun, and educators can see how it might end. Young people are quickly becoming so dependent on A.I. that they are losing the ability to think for themselves. And rather than rallying resistance, academic administrators are aiding and abetting a hostile takeover of higher education.

Hoping to win recognition as leaders in A.I. or fearful of being left behind, more and more colleges and universities are eagerly partnering with A.I. companies, despite decades of evidence demonstrating the need to test education technology, which often fails to deliver measurable improvements in student learning. A.I. companies are increasingly exerting outsize influence over higher education and using these settings as training grounds to further their goal of creating artificial general intelligence (A.I. systems that can substitute for humans).

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

I complain a lot about vacuous AI boosterism and reputation laundering from the higher ed sector. But when someone like my colleague, vice dean for A.I. initiatives at a major private research university, says things like this, I hope people pay attention. 1/2 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

In diplomacy, you know you are dealing with an adversary when it sows division in your ranks. Anthropic, for instance, is demanding exorbitant fees for enterprise accounts and paying “campus ambassadors” to promote the use of its Claude A.I. tools in schools. Other companies promise cash bonuses when students meet marketing goals. That creates conflicts of interest, especially when these paid ambassadors hold elected positions in student government.

It is still too early to know how A.I. usage affects young people’s ability to learn. But research suggests that students using A.I. do not read as carefully when doing research and that they write with diminished accuracy and originality. Students do not even realize what they are missing. But educators and employers know. Reading closely, thinking critically and writing with logic and evidence are precisely the skills people need to realize the bona fide potential of A.I. to support lifelong learning.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

When I visited not long after the 2016 election, I found it hard to photograph the concentration camp at Dachau in a way that captured the intensity of the experience. But this historical placard that literally begins "After the factory shut down…" stayed with me.

After the gunpowder and munitions factory closed down in 1919, unemployment and poverty prevailed in Dachau for years. In the 1920s the population predominantly elected political parties of the workers movement or the catholic conservative Bavarian People's Party (BVP). Since 1933 though the National Socialists were able to score a major run. Quite a few of the residents welcomed the establishment of a concentration camp close to the city. They hoped that the economic situation would be improved, for example, through supplying the camp with provisions.
Until the mid-1930s there was close economic contact between the city and the camp. The camp complex was incorporated into the city of Dachau in April 1939. The initiative for this was taken by the camp commandant, Hans Loritz. The city of Dachau went through with the plan for economic reasons. But the anticipated economic upturn never occurred.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Found a cover image for my book

handsome cloaked Roman points to ugly slave carrying scroll

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Sincerely my favorite part of this special is David Macaulay, sitting in a Roman archaeological site, drawing diagrams with a sharpie on a big pad of paper. However, the animated story is its own delight and features some truly classic and far from unproblematic physiognomies

Manipulative Roman Matron and Roman Veteran

Virtuous Veteran and Corpulent Overweening Freedman

Comic Slave complains while Master relaxes. Also a Lararium

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

The first page of this book is a simple web search away. The image above is from amazon dot com! But the NY Times article links instead to what appears to be a free classroom activity that has adapted the book into a multi-part script for classroom use: www.thebestclass.org/uploads/5/6/... 2/

The Snowy Day
Ezra Jack Keats
Narrator 1, Narrator 2, Narrator 3, Narrator 4, Narrator 5, Peter, Friend, Mother
Narrator 1: One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen
during the night.
Peter: It’s covered everything, as far as I can see!
Narrator 2: said Peter.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

It's hardly the most egregious failure of fact checking from the New York Times recently, but this outrageous assertion tells me that nobody who edited this story has actually read this book to a child. The entire book is narrated (beautifully) in the third person. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/s...

The first thing that the little boy in Ezra Jack Keats’s children’s book “The Snowy Day” says is a simple statement of wonder: “It’s covered everything, as far as I can see!” The book has been checked out of the New York Public Library 485,000 times, making it the most popular thing they’ve got.

The first page of "The Snowy Day." It reads: One Winter morning Peter woke up and looks out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see."

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Since I read it I have not stopped thinking about Kenney and Lincoln's description of this as "a case of mutual but unequal reputation laundering" osf.io/preprints/so...

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

"Fastest wins, your time starts now"

Keir Starmer saying "there's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom"

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

A hard thing about living away from New York City is missing these exciting exhibitions. Can someone please stop by City Hall and buy me a t-shirt or print of the Jabba-rat(-ghostbusters?) art, which I have to assume they are selling. Why would you make something like that and not sell merch of it

A twitter post from Josie Stratman. "A shrine-like exhibit has been set up for Mayor Adams in City Hall today, replacing the 9/11 photography that was there before." One of them shows Eric Adams in Field of Dreams

the poster says "Rat sightings have declined for 9 straight months" and shows Jabba the Hutt, with rat features, in a ghostbusters style NO red circle with line, and it says RETURN of the TRASH REVOLUTION. in other words it's art

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

A wonderful essay by McNeil Taylor on Hellenism, Zionism, and the legacies of c19 Western European colonialism. www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/71/ta...

Syros was not the only pilgrimage spot that seemed, to the Western eye, to have withered on the vine of ancient vitality. When Melville’s ship reached Palestine, his heart sank, just as it had on Syros: “No country will more quickly dissipate romantic expectations than Palestine—particularly Jerusalem,” he wrote in his journal.8 The Holy Sepulchre was “a sickening cheat,” and it is again the arid landscape, lacking the bloom of Western painting, that pains the traveler: “Judea is one accumulation of stones.”9 He also saw Christian Zionist missionaries, for whom he had little sympathy: they were in the grips of a “preposterous Jew mania” that was “half melancholy, half farcical.”10 These forces would, of course, soon accelerate during the 1880s, as Zionism expanded beyond its initial Christian purview to inspire Jewish settlers to colonize Palestine. Yet what is less well-known is that the Greek revolution played a crucial role in this process: before Zionists sought to “make the desert bloom,” Hellenism had to bring Watteau’s lush arcadia to life.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

The title of this section of Karla's 2023 edition of the Life of Aesop (SBL) could also be the title of some really gripping DS9 fanfic

The MORN Recension and its Textual Tradition

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

I also am cursed to think about Ancient Rome every day (Seneca Epistle 27, Gummere's Loeb)

Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank-account and the brains of a freedman.b I never saw a man whose good fortune was a greater offence against propriety. His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam,—names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants. No major-domo in his dotage, who cannot give men their right names, but is compelled to invent names for them,—no such man, I say, calls off the namesc of his master’s tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes. But none the less did he desire to appear learned. So he devised this short cut to learning: he paid fabulous prices for slaves,—one to know Homer by heart and another to know Hesiod; he also delegated a special slave to each of the nine lyric poets. You need not wonder that he paid high prices for these slaves; if he did not find them ready to hand he had them made to order. After collecting this retinue,

he began to make life miserable for his guests; he would keep these fellows at the foot of his couch, and ask them from time to time for verses which he might repeat, and then frequently break down in the middle of a word. Satellius Quadratus, a feeder, and consequently a fawner, upon addle-pated millionaires, and also (for this quality goes with the other two) a flouter of them, suggested to Sabinus that he should have philologists to gather up the bits.a Sabinus remarked that each slave cost him one hundred thousand sesterces; Satellius replied: “You might have bought as many book-cases for a smaller sum.” But Sabinus held to the opinion that what any member of his household knew, he himself knew also. This same Satellius began to advise Sabinus to take wrestling lessons,—sickly, pale, and thin as he was. Sabinus answered: “How can I? I can scarcely stay alive now.” “Don’t say that, I implore you,” replied the other, “consider how many perfectly healthy slaves you have!” No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me, even though sound minds were for sale, they would not find buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Thank you for this reminder that I want to frame and hang my copy of the soundtrack LP sleeve

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_Do...

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

maps.app.goo.gl/xhjWEUcXdLdM...

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

My colleague Helen Benedict writes this update on teaching at Columbia in the present political climate. tomdispatch.com/capitulation...

For now, however, we faculty are stuck with Columbia as it is. In my case, this means that I must teach social justice journalism not only under the cloud of the Kirk aftermath, with professors and employees being fired or chased out of the country for daring to criticize that purveyor of hate, but with the IHRA sword of Damocles dangling over my head.

Social justice journalism is essentially about covering the ways in which the powerless are oppressed by the powerful — that is, a manifestation of Joseph Pulitzer’s mantra that journalism should “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” This means that just about every topic my students will cover flies in the face of all that the Trump government wants to suppress and might well come up against Columbia’s new rules, too.

What if one of my students should want to cover the deportation hearings for Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, for instance? Or a speech by our former student, the once-imprisoned Mahmoud Khalil? Will even a mention of a Palestinian activist be deemed antisemitic now? Will quoting someone who criticizes Kirk or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be grounds for expulsion? Can we report on Planned Parenthood or transphobia, the ICE persecution of Brown and Black immigrants, the ongoing climate catastrophe, environmental racism, violence against women, or Islamophobia? Can we talk about social justice at all?

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

This might be my favorite line from my grandfather's FBI file: "has made 'strange remarks' in the past; for example, 'I want to live in England because it is a good place and I like their form of government.'"

A gnarly scan of a typewritten document: "[] stated that the employee has made 'strange remarks' in the past; for example, 'I want to live in England because it is a good place and I like their form of government.' However, [] stated it is his opinion that such remarks as the one quoted above were made in a 'pop-off' manner..."

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

I have real enthusiasm for the ML-powered search in my Photos app but it feels genuinely uncanny that it should work on Roman handwriting such that I could find this snap I took of this famous graffito from the imperial paedagogium on the Palatine – I entered "labora" and this appeared immediately

a fragment of Roman graffiti, where the letter A really doesn't look like our letter A, but the software has correctly identified and highlighted the search term

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

For Universities to not be ready for or responsive to this kind of predictable, documented, targeted harassment of faculty is a choice www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Early last semester, Droubi said, students began approaching Cheyfitz with complaints that a graduate student in the “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” class appeared to be recording them, possibly to “gather their names and comments” and intimidate them. “We believe that a student came to the course for the sole reason of surveilling and potentially harming students in the class,” Droubi said. “That ended up proving itself to be true because multiple students came forward and shared their concerns with Professor Cheyfitz.” Cheyfitz said one Palestinian student quit the class after telling him she felt upset and frightened.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

A remarkable essay on, among other things, the personal toll of working at the consent factory. bidoun.org/articles/hou...

Around four months into the war on Gaza, scholars of genocide were reaching a consensus that what was happening in Palestine was a genocide, the crime of crimes, and I waited for the magazine to say so, too. I tried to talk to the editor-in-chief about using the word in our coverage, but he said he didn’t think it was a genocide. The word’s conspicuous absence led me to suspect that he had prohibited its usage among the editors. This was a notable exception to the accepted epistemology; a few months into the job, I overheard another checker cold call an addiction scholar to confirm that gambling was, in fact, addictive. But I did not have it in me to keep fighting.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Under the "Palestine exception" to free speech principles, some "hard questions" can and must be suppressed. Do institutional leaders now suddenly enamored of 'debate' want to end that exception, or create a new one in which other "hard questions" – such as these – must be elevated and entertained?

The point of this so-called mastery was as familiar as it was conspiratorial—“great replacement.” There was an “anti-white agenda,” Kirk howled. One that sought to “make the country more like the Third World.” The southern border was “the dumping ground of the planet,” he claimed, and a magnet for “the rapists, the thugs, the murderers, fighting-age males.” “They’re coming from across the world, from China, from Russia, from Middle Eastern countries,” he said, “and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in…”
You can probably imagine where this line of thinking eventually went.
“Jewish donors,” Kirk claimed, were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

For example, in early 2024, President Rosenbury sought to cancel (but ultimately allowed with extraordinary restrictions) a screening of the film "Israelism," as a colleague explained in the pages of Columbia's student newspaper. (2/4) www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2024...

“Barnard is a place that catalyzes knowledge creation, embraces investigation, and stimulates intellectual curiosity,” Barnard President Laura Rosenbury wrote in an email she sent me Wednesday evening.

And yet, everything that led up to that email has made me wonder if, in fact, this is true.

For weeks, President Rosenbury has been quietly working to shut down an event I have been planning with students and staff: a screening of the film Israelism, followed by a discussion with a stellar panel. For weeks, in turn, I have been asserting that as a faculty member, I have a right and a responsibility to cultivate and curate educational events without the interference of the administration. President Rosenbury finally conceded, in an email to me Wednesday night that read, in part, “Ultimately, the decision to screen the film is yours, and you maintain the right to do so in your capacity as a faculty member.”

On January 20, I emailed President Rosenbury and Provost Bell a request to confirm what they had told me verbally: that I could not screen the film, but could hold the panel. They never responded to that email. President Rosenbury also wouldn’t confirm over email that I did have permission to proceed with the event. They would neither permit nor prohibit the event in writing until nearly two weeks later.

A week later, on January 26, I met with President Rosenbury alone. She conveyed a desire to make this event more palatable—to whom I still don’t know. I offered to help with follow-up events and to think through advertising but refused to reconsider the panelists, because I was confident in the depth of their experience and knowledge and that the diversity of their expertise would be invaluable for helping the audience consider and understand their own reactions to the film. Moreover, as a faculty member, determining what this panel would look like (something I had done in close consultation with the students who desperately sought to have this discussion) is my right.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

The President of Barnard College calls for more controversial speakers like the late Kirk (without citing any of his controversial views), a position at odds with what Barnard colleagues describe as a track record of censoring events and speakers on Palestine. (1/4) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/o...

Colleges and universities have long resisted polarization and monolithic thinking by invoking these commitments to open discussion and inquiry, and we must continue to do so. College campuses must remain places where students are able to ask and grapple with hard questions, especially those that are uncomfortable and even hurtful. Higher education’s role is not to erase conflict but to channel it into dialogue, debate and learning. To do so, educators and students must face ideas we find offensive and speakers whose words cause pain.

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

At the center of this “old book market” in Paris is a statue “Le Porteur de Viande” by Albert Bouqillion. The adjacent park was once a meat market (specializing, a local tells me, in horse).

A weathered bronze statue of a human figure carrying a massive joint of meat on their shoulders

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

This is Yuki. Everybody say What's up Yuki you look beautiful today

The most beautiful older shorthair black cat you ever did see lying in the sun on a flagstone

Now she's standing up and she's got sunshine eyes and you can see from her fur that she is a good twenty years old and still an iconic beauty

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

You hear stories about what an academic household does to children but today at bedtime my precocious rising kindergartner said “father will you read me a story about university leaders who believe LLM-based chatbots have made language teaching irrelevant?” and fortunately I had just the thing

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Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I hope this means the first year curriculum is being isolated to include robust training in what these tools do and how they work!

The email described access to these tools as “important for gaining a basic level of AI literacy.”

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