J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026I saw this painting today (“Seine”, by Ellsworth Kelly), and I’m increasingly convinced that modernism holds an answer for us about how AI art will be received if it ever becomes pretty indistinguishable from human art. 1165
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Edmundo Sosa’s heroics saving me from having a really dumb take about how the Angels’ right field wall is weirdly short 000
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 09/07/2026This is a great dataset! Among many other things it contains info about many of the poets I would once have considered (and probably on some level still consider) the *cool* poets. Your Fred Moten, your Lyn Hejinian, your Craig Dworkin, your Elizabeth Willis, etc. Find your own cool poets now! 073
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026An AI “actor” or “performer” is really just a cartoon. They don’t have any more agency or interiority or personhood than Elmer Fudd. 110
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 05/07/2026Felt like what we really needed was a pop song with no clear connection to the team, to sing at random intervals. But then I randomly sorted 60 yrs of Billboard to pick one and got this—an incredible song, but it goes way too hard for an activity called "footie" www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T9v...youtube.comSly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)YouTube video by SlyATFamilyStoneVEVO 010
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 02/07/2026A year since the Clippers scandal broke and the main fallout so far is that Kawhi has managed to flee US jurisdiction 011
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 01/07/2026Trump has tried to replicate each other President’s signature failures, from the hits (internment camps, corruption, losing a war in Asia) to the deep cuts (tariffs, destroying the WH, picking a contemptible racist VP), but I’m still kind of surprised to see him going for the William Henry Harrison. 110
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 18/06/2026I put the Lynx on as background last night and wound up intently watching the whole thing. Miles uses time and space like no other player I’ve seen. So much fun to watch defector.com/olivia-miles...defector.comOlivia Miles Is The Throwback Point Guard Of The Future | DefectorVertical video makes Olivia Miles look good. Horizontal video makes her look better. Her gift shines in context, on the unadorned and unsoundtracked platform that is the next day’s full-game replay. W... 100
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 16/06/2026It's really funny to me how often Zohran gets helpful advice about how to do something he just did without the advice 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Even if this wasn’t an affront to humanity, and even if it was possible to train an LLM on a one-person corpus (no), using solely one person’s words *obviously* doesn’t guarantee you get their views. Example: you can make the phrase “this wasn’t an affront” from this post. 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 14/06/2026Brunson is pretty clearly the biggest ball hog of any NBA Finals MVP. No one who shot as much as him missed as often. The size of the dot shows assists/game. He was below the median on that front, so not moving the ball around, either. Singular player—not sure we'll see a winner like this again. 010
Reposted by J.D. PorterHannah Walser @hkpmw.bsky.social · 09/06/2026Idk what’s going to happen tonight, but I was rooting for the Phillies in the 2022 World Series when Sam Alito decided to attend a game, so I know that karma is real 0123
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 09/06/2026When a team invites a dictator to the game it’s good if they lose, is my view 040
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/06/2026I think if every well-informed person in the country can understand jokes about your last four mayors, you have to accept that pretty much anyone who moves to your city can quickly become a "true" citizen of it. Hegemony facilitates assimilation. 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 06/06/2026The scale and dispersion of Knicks fans emerging like cicadas for their team’s once-per quarter-century title run shows us just how much pain James Dolan causes almost every year 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 21/05/2026This is obvious horseshit, but I think it's useful to put numbers to this stuff sometimes. The Warren wealth tax would raise $16.5b from Bezos alone in the first year, which amounts to $4k for every teacher in the US, roughly a 6% pay raise on average. Bet that *would* help that teacher in Queens! 1127
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 19/05/2026Much more difficult to list the 100 worst novels of all time 130
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/05/2026How bad a foul baiter is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander? See if you can guess which two dots are his on this graph of MVP seasons. Dots are further right if players shot the ball a lot. Higher dots mean players shot more free throws. Answer lower in the thread. 111
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 24/04/2026Enkidu was a great Philly dog. He was confident and self-possessed, loved food dropped on the sidewalk, and looked vaguely like Gritty. What he loved to do, he did, and I was lucky that so often he included Hannah and me. He was my buddy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9II...youtube.comEnkidu BlueYouTube video by Nothing 1111
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 31/03/2026Once again pondering the fact that Penn's motto, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, is usually translated as "Laws without morals are useless".thedp.comJudge orders Penn to comply with federal subpoena seeking list of Jewish faculty, studentsPenn has until May 1 to respond to the subpoena's requests, but will not be required to “reveal any employee’s affiliation with a specific Jewish-related organization.” 040
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 15/03/2026Bam Adebayo now holds the title belt for highest scoring game among active players. He's just the 34th player with this achievement, and the 21st since Elgin Baylor (the first good offensive player). 110
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 10/03/2026In that NYTimes "spot the AI writing" quiz, three of the five examples use the "It's not X; it's Y" tactic. I feel like you see that a lot in all sorts of generated text. What's the deal? Is this really common in the data, or is it somehow emerging from the training or generation process? 200
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 23/02/2026The Price Lab’s Critical Approaches to AI Working Group has released a white paper in which we advocate for AI-free instruction in reading, writing, & research. These are fundamental skills in the humanities (& in general), & with decisive action we can keep teaching them well in the age of AI!pricelab.sas.upenn.eduCritical Approaches to AI Working Group | Price Lab for Digital HumanitiesThe Price Lab is the University of Pennsylvania's center for innovative uses of technology in the study and teaching of history, art, and culture. 25827
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 30/12/2025Jazz did a lot of heavy lifting for my sanity in 2025, and for whatever reason (coincidence? not?) it was a really good year for new jazz releases. I wanted to do a little thread about my favorite albums, and give a top five. 1103
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/11/2025The extent to which everyone refuses to learn whether it's "Sliwa" or "Silwa" is very funny to me 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 02/11/2025The occupied city winning because its diverse prosperous team came through thanks to guys who don’t usually get the glory is what we’re going for here, I think. 051
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 21/10/2025Love this piece by Laura McGrath, who finds an important question for the book industry—“What if we’ve been over-estimating the role that genre plays in the life of a reader?"—in a recent paper I wrote with James English.laurabmcgrath.substack.comThe Omnivore DilemmaDigging into the Data of Contemporary Readers 0176
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 19/10/2025I think a lot of people feel an almost familial pride in and love for their cities, and among other things these marches highlight each city, its particular faces, slang, colors, streets, communities. It's ineffable but I think it’s profound. 010
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 16/10/2025Hell yeah www.thedp.com/article/2025...thedp.comPenn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatmentWith the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer. 050
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 13/10/2025Roughly 40% of political journalism is “Right Wing Guy Dislikes Left Wing Thing” 010
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 25/09/2025It’s so clear he didn’t write this: the fanfic cadence, coherent narrative, diverse (for him) vocab, topical focus, quotations, a sense of other people’s experience, the notion that he spoke to Melania. These Potemkin ramblings show that even his old delights (griping online) are beyond him now. 011
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 09/09/2025If eating road kill were just a little more dangerous, I wouldn't have COVID right now. 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 22/08/2025Really excited to see this piece come out! Studying eclectic readers has been a fascinating and extremely rewarding challenge. We wound up operationalizing both genre and eclecticism in ways that (classic DH stuff here) point to the limits of both concepts. culturalanalytics.org/article/1429...culturalanalytics.orgThe Eclectic Reader | Published in Journal of Cultural AnalyticsBy James English, J. D. Porter. Using Goodreads data, this study explores the overlooked eclecticism of readers, revealing both patterns of cultural hierarchy and the conceptual limits of eclecticism ... 062
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 28/07/2025These were the best donuts in the world, and really good kolaches, too. Now we're a year from them being as bad as Krispy Kreme, <5 years until they're gone entirely. 010
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 26/06/2025I will pretty much always participate in a ranking exercise—a habit that has been weirdly vital to my career. The big caveat here is I only did one film per director, so this wouldn't just be a list of Kelly Reichardt films. 250
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 25/06/2025This is an incredible dataset, and it's a lot of fun to play around with it on the Post45 site! 065
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 13/06/2025Here's a graph of the Sufficient Bucket in every NBA playoff game so far this season. The SB gives team A a score that team B will never reach in the game. The earliest one in these playoffs came when a Donovan Mitchell FT got CLE to 84 with 9:15 left in the third (MIA finished with 83). 120
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 11/06/2025This is a great dataset, very excited to see it go live! Already looking forward to sharing this with my students next time I teach. 053
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 04/04/2025One of my favorite papers to work on! Writing with Nat and Jumbly had a huge impact on my thinking about meaning, especially (though not exclusively) in the context of LLMs. 110
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 13/03/2025Erik and I have been blown away by the excellent work these students have done. It was really thrilling to see them featured at this showcase! 020
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 29/12/2024Inspired by a few people over the holidays mentioning Trump's "blowout win", here are a few tables (via Wikipedia) showing how narrow it was. - Worse than every Dem win of this century - 5th worst in the last 100 years - All time, 49th place (out of 59) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... 171
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 18/12/2024“Difficult” is the top word missing from Moby Dick. Feels like Melville doing a little malicious compliance with his editor’s demands 040
Reposted by J.D. PorterThe Price Lab @pricelab.bsky.social · 18/12/2024What's in an anthology? @jdporter.bsky.social, Price Lab DH Specialist, & @fredner.org (with assistance from David McClure & the @stanfordlitlab.bsky.social) built a relational database of all 464 authors & 3,374 works published across the ten editions of the Norton Anthology of American Literature. 11410
J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 11/12/2024I went to a very interesting AI/pedagogy summit yesterday, and one of my big takeaways is that we really need an institution-level push to normalize this kind of thing. It's a really straightforward way to make sure we preserve the essay form and writing skills (in code or prose). 100