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Jacob Romanow

@jakeromanow.bsky.social
802 followers 966 following 646 posts

ars longa, vita brevis liberalarts.utexas.edu/english/facu…

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Reposted by Jacob Romanow
Dr SpookyGoth @ghostingdani.bsky.social · 19h
This is identical to the old complaints that children were getting abortions without parental permission. It's projecting the anxiety of control from fascism and the patriarchal family onto the places where children become individual persons.
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Stand Up for Yale @standupforyale.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
On Friday, 10/2, Stand Up for Yale joined students and faculty at Yale protesting the administration's efforts to cut a deal with Trump by constructing a replica of the famous Lipstick sculpture - a symbol of freedom of speech from the 1960s. A thread of news articles for you...
newhavenindependent.org
"Lipstick" Traces Latest Yalie Protest - New Haven Independent
Against potential settlement with the Trump administration over the university's admissions policies.
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Things Gavin Newsom has vetoed this week: -A ban on secretly recording people with smart glasses -A ban on ICE agents working for the state government -A ban on websites selling your data -A bill giving native tribes more say over water rights -A bill protecting transgender healthcare providers
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Biology is applied chemistry is applied physics is applied math is applied logic is applied English QED
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
illustration from Edward Gorey's The Doubtful Guest
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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
using angelou's likeness in this way is obscene and reckless and exactly on brand for this model, which is a problem for everyone in secondary and higher ed from harvard on down
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Surely one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. A prolific, important songwriter with a voice that could make you cry and a wit that could make you gasp. The King. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Mighty Sparrow, the Trinidad and Tobago singer known as the ‘calypso king of the world’, dies aged 91
Slinger Francisco, who performed as the Mighty Sparrow, died on Sunday surrounded by family in New York
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It's bleakly hilarious that their list alphabetizes "Jr." under J
list of "faculty and hiring partners" with Jeff Morris Jr. included in an alphabetical listing between Bryan Johnson and Travis Kalanick
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
bell hooks:
Often in my lectures when I use the phrase “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe our nation’s political system, audiences laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself a weapon of patriarchal terrorism. It functions as a disclaimer, discounting the significance of what is being named. It suggests that the words themselves are problematic and not the system they describe. I interpret this laughter as the audience’s way of showing discomfort with being asked to ally themselves with an antipatriarchal disobedient critique. This laughter reminds me that if I dare to challenge patriarchy openly, I risk not being taken seriously.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Much more accurate, and furthermore helpful in that the unwieldiness forces analysis of both processes and often-misleading metaphors that are otherwise easy to naturalize
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Reposted by Jacob Romanow
Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 23/09/2026
Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have prohibited future governors from handing over abortion providers, helpers, and patients to red states for criminal prosecution. The bill also barred extraditions involving transgender care.
motherjones.com
Newsom vetoes bill that would ban extraditions for abortion and gender-affirming care
California’s pro-repro rights governor rejects a key protection that 18 blue states have enshrined into law.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty"
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Ploughshares Literary Journal @pshares.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"I am used to dealing with the dead." Read Sarah Tindal Kareem's essay, "Vita Nova," in the Summer 2026 issue of Ploughshares: pshares.org/issue-article/vita-nova
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 22/09/2026
my love and respect for Larry David grows all the time pagesix.com/2026/09/22/h...
After the dressing down — which ended up having the crowd in tears, of laughter and joy, the agent writes — Emanuel recalls, “Seating Larry at the same table as Elon Musk: Not my best decision.” 
As soon as the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star sees the Tesla mogul,”he starts cursing, yelling, saying things many people would like to say to Elon” about the SpaceX’s leader’s politics. 
David was “right up in Elon’s face, before the dinner starts,” and, guests had to separate them.
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Nick Field @nickfield.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The State AGs were on pace to kill the Paramount/Warner Bros by litigation and delay until Gavin Newsom stepped in and turned the tide. Now the Trump loyalist Ellisons will control CNN and HBO. Don't ever, ever forget that Newsom stabbed us in the back www.wsj.com/business/med...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Newsom Expresses Concerns About State Antitrust Suit Against Paramount
The California governor has told people involved in the suit that blocking the $81 billion deal could harm Hollywood jobs.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Give us a Bass Persuades/Come On Fhqwhgads mashup, cowards
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 20/09/2026
I think Donald Trump is letting the Eritrean government get away with the Tigray genocide in exchange for them fighting the Houthis for control of the Red Sea www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
washingtonpost.com
US lifts sanctions targeting Eritrea's ruling party and the military
The United States has lifted sanctions against Eritrea’s ruling party and military, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Everyone knows you shouldn't represent yourself in court; humanists defending the humanities is bad for the humanities and bad for the defense of the humanities and that is why they want us to do it (not to say we never should—but we should get real about why we're being asked).
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Setence first, verdict afterwards!
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Everyone knows you shouldn't represent yourself in court; humanists defending the humanities is bad for the humanities and bad for the defense of the humanities and that is why they want us to do it (not to say we never should—but we should get real about why we're being asked).
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Great thread altogether, but this is the point I keep returning to over the last four years. The rest of us are in many ways along for the ride of the tech sector attempting to enforce labor discipline on a highly trained workforce w a tool that potentially is increasing their leverage.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
All the King's Men for sure
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Jim Cardillo @jimcardillo.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Godspeed Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys. A true pioneer.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Not even as "the Hips Don't Lie guy"?!
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Ezra Levin ❌👑 @ezralevin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Fun fact: in our polling of battleground states, about 60% of voters said it is a “top” or “high” priority for Congress to investigate and hold Musk accountable. Lean into it Dems. He’s a cartoon villain - treat him like one.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The hype machine loves asking about how tech alters our understanding of self (and of course it does, as ever) but chronically avoids asking how tech alters our understanding of (human) others—that is instructive
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Da Sparrow @sparrowstrike.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
People don’t want to hear diseases just happen. It scares them to death. They need it to be because of malign actors or because they didn’t take the right thing. The fact that it could happen to anyone, anytime, just because is terrifying because you can’t control it. Whether autism/covid it’s fear.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
my mind went to Cornel West
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Agreed! Though perhaps with an analogue on the level of genre—Quilp IS a condensation of the early/pre-Victorian stage in a way that OCS confronts as an aesthetic (if not a social) problem
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Definitely not all. But quite a few of them (Tulkinghorn, Bill Sykes, Madame Defarge, Uriah) are set up as products or condensations of structural phenomena. In a way, Boffin is the extreme case: a villain who doesn't even have to be a villain, but just has to be in the structural position of one
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Totally, both recent and not that recent—I think of Edelman's apologia for Scrooge in No Future as one of the most bracing readings of Dickens out there!
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It's like a parody, but it's deadly serious; the Commerce Department (which includes Census, NOAA, and others) has outright deleted "don't alter or suppress scientific findings for political reasons" from its scientific integrity rules. Seriously.
Protecting against "inappropriate influence" is no longer a "hallmark" of scientific integrity

The Commerce Department updated its policy for promoting a "culture of scientific integrity" in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration.

A new Trump administration order bans the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis from using statistical “noise,” or data for fuzzing survey results, to protect people’s privacy in their statistics.

The 2025 version included bans on attempts to shape or interfere in data collection, statistical analysis and other scientific activities "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification."

The department's policy, the 2025 version said, involves ensuring scientific findings at its agencies "are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence," as well as making sure there's "independent review of facilities, methodologies, and other scientific activities as appropriate to ensure scientific integrity."

That language is missing, however, in the Trump administration's revision of the policy, according to an NPR analysis of text posted on the Commerce Department's website.

And while the revision adopts a definition for "scientific integrity" that is similar to the previous version, it no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity."
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I think both readings are kind of right. Dickens diverges from standard melodramatic form in his visibly herculean efforts to humanize his villains precisely BECAUSE they are emblematic of structural evils—the novels are always scrambling to re-narrativize the depiction of systems
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Daniel Gilmore @gilmored85.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
American Left discard of your consumerist worldview of politics challenge (impossible)
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 27/08/2026
Genuinely abundant, cheap, accessible energy has vastly more liberatory potential than AI, for vastly more people -- especially more poor people. Which, I guess, is your answer.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Grammarly-mur
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Some I don't see mentioned yet: Germinal, King Solomon's Mines, Train Dreams, "Resolution and Independence"
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Actually, NO reading "counts." Counts for what? For whom? Are we competing to get a pizza party? Do you count how many times a year you go swimming or drink a cup of coffee? Thinking and feeling are not side hustles
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Totally agree that information is a counterproductive framing but is it really just a matter of patterns? (—> LLM-generated text is just as useful?) What seems maybe missing here are the communal (/not-just-individual) aspects—text as communication, but also interpretive communities?
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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
The ag lobby really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants you to think AI is the reason reservoirs are going empty. It's not. It's agriculture.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Or the gunshot opens the Paul movie
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Jedermann! Biedermann!
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
First thought was no but second thought was is Chihuly really a “craft artist”??
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Elizabeth Greeniaus @elizabethcg.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Obviously the V-word has been the headline here, but I love Jake’s piece for the way it demonstrates the illuminating power of distinctly *literary* expertise.
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
But that's not actually related. However one feels about the use of LLMs in the production of scholarship, "I chose not to try to fix these errors as an experiment" is totally disqualifying (+ is a disavowal of accountability for the speech act regardless of how many questions he answers online).
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Eh isn't it kind of the old "a computer can never be held accountable therefore..."? Errors always happen, but the principle that "all errors are my own" serves way more than a politeness function. This slippery rhetoric around how errors are produced seems like a clear + serious process concern.
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dave @gloomfather.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
yeah man "woke 1" sucked ass. I "woke 1" morning from uneasy dreams to find myself transformed into a giant insect
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Jacob Romanow @jakeromanow.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
In a pedagogical context I think about this student op-ed a lot (h/t @peonies.bsky.social): dailytarheel.com/article/opin...
dailytarheel.com
Column: Make a hard mode for humanities
"Make a humanities track that is actually difficult. You might learn something personally and culturally valuable along the way. It wouldn’t be for everyone, and that would be the point."
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