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Rob

@robarcand.bsky.social
345 followers 328 following 31 posts

phding @ mcgill | formerly pitchfork, spin | writer, editor, webdev, etc. | robarcand.info

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
the mcgill university department of art history and communication studies is looking to hire an early career tenure-track scholar who is currently based outside of canada and interested in relocating mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/McGill_Caree...
mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com
Assistant Professor
Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ...
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Defector @defector.com · 17/09/2026
Annie Dillard gave it all: defector.com/annie-dillar...
defector.com
Annie Dillard Gave It All | Defector
Following this week’s news that the brilliant writer Annie Dillard has died at age 81, some Defector staffers wrote about what her work and example have meant to them. Much is made of Dillard’s genius...
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The Baffler @thebaffler.com · 14/07/2026
Kyle Devine’s new book considers various efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions across the music industry—while maintaining a healthy skepticism of climate solutionism. @robarcand.bsky.social reviews “Recomposed.”
thebaffler.com
It’s Not Easy Being Green | Rob Arcand
In his new book, Kyle Devine examines various efforts—and their shortcomings—to make the music industry greener.
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
is it honest? is it politically rigerous? is it methodologically interesting?
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
deep empiricism
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
"Part of his appeal has long come from his music’s ability to combine narrative and political clarity with avant-garde, nonlinear form without sacrificing the wildness of his sounds" www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...
nybooks.com
Resistance Choirs | Nate Wooley
For centuries the Lenape people had hunting grounds and fishing camps in an area they called Penadnic, in the rocky hills of upper Manhattan. Wrested away
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
end of the american century bsky.app/profile/fina...
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
"Most urgently, galleries need to push for legally enforceable resale agreements that can block flipping and let them be less fearful of unknown potential clients. And galleries need to stop promoting art as an investment" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Art Galleries Are Not OK
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
"Media technologies were used to expand the scope and scale of betting in horse racing in a second consequential way...photography is a cultural technique of what we understand today with the clunky term derivatization" doi.org/10.1215/1743...
doi.org
All In: Derivative and Financialization in Sports Betting
Abstract. This article situates the recent explosion of online and app-based sports betting within longer histories of datafication and financialization in sports business and culture. The author trac...
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
wild to me how silent critics have been (in the US at least + as far as i have seen internationally) about park chan-wook's NO OTHER CHOICE from last year--one of the best recent films about dispossession, proletarianization, and labor discipline by automation and ai
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
huge scoop (though i would imagine they're treading carefully), but what a legal mess! all in the name of "inevitability" ... newsletter.waterandmusic.com/archive/a-sc...
newsletter.waterandmusic.com
A scoop on Udio's upcoming app, Starstruck
Notes from a private Udio + Kobalt webinar.
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
“In [the yuppie-made 1980s], they fashioned a bargain that we are still living with: An increasingly diverse professional class signed up for a life of hard-won affluence, at the cost of deep inequality for everyone else” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | How Yuppies Changed America
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
«… if structuralism was correct, then LLMs are already AGI … If structuralism was correct, then LLMs would generate meaning, they would harbor an unconscious, they would participate in the symbolic order. Yet, since LLMs don't do any of those things … structuralism has a lot of explaining to do.»
cultureandcommunication.org
Structuralism (Neo- or Paleo-) | Alexander R. Galloway
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Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Great piece. Legalized gambling is always and everywhere class war.
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
"Perhaps what the score most resembles is a topographical map, with the arcs like a distant outcropping of mountains and the arrows at the bottom right bringing sketched-­out directions to mind" harpers.org/archive/2026...
harpers.org
Sight and Sound, by Olivia Giovetti
The political possibilities of graphic notation
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Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 21/01/2026
TODAY: @annamerlan.bsky.social on an extraordinary 1939 guide to New York City. “Reading the guidebook now gives the sense, not of a past city, but a parallel one, an unseen but strangely familiar river flowing just over the horizon.” flaminghydra.com/new-york-for...
flaminghydra.com
New York, Forever Lost and Found
When I first moved to New York in 2009, the very first night I lay down to sleep in a coffin-narrow room in Harlem, I had a maddening sense of wonderful things happening just out of my reach: all the ...
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Resignation letters from UVA Rector and Vice Rector to Youngkin. Too long for full alts, but will post excerpts following.
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 08/01/2026
One of the things that genuinely shocked me as I read through surveillance logs for the police is how much of their energy and attention is dedicated to shutting down vigils and other ceremonies of remembrance.
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
new year, new personal website robarcand.info
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Sadie Couture @sadiecouture.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
I helped organize this memorial zine to my beloved doctoral advisor @jonathansterne.bsky.social. Thanks to all the contributors for their beautiful offerings. Sound ON for silly, apropos page turning sound effects. intercomzine.com
intercomzine.com
Intercom! Zine
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Future of Music Coalition @futureofmusic.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Warner is saying that any AI deals they'll agree to as a company will be opt-in only. That's consistent with the principles we all agreed to via Human Artistry Campaign. Even if you think gen AI music sucks, that's an important guardrail. www.wmg.com/news/growing...
wmg.com
Growing the Value of Music for Artists and Songwriters - Warner Music Group
AI is still in its early days. Investment is surging, talent is. . .
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
what would it take to reframe debates about streaming and cultural decline in marxist terms? for @nplusonemag.com i tried to think through the current crisis (AI! VC! A24!) and what a newly militant labor movement could mean for the culture industries www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
nplusonemag.com
The Same Stream Twice | Rob Arcand
Two recent books, Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine and Andrew deWaard’s Derivative Media, explore the consequences of these technological intermediaries for the music, film, and television industries. While P...
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
I skipped this article for a while because I figured I'd read enough about the NYT's Mamdani coverage. I don't want to say the headline does the article a disservice - it is also very much about that - but goes well beyond as well
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J Escobedo Shepherd @jawnita.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
MAMDANI CAME OUT TO JA RULE "NEW YORK" AND IMMEDIATELY QUOTED EUGENE DEBS
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
really great www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/sta...
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
"The digital image is dead, long live whatever fluid vessel has taken its place this week." @robarcand.bsky.social reviews Hito Steyerl’s new collection, "Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat." lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-netwo…
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
My friend @rorshock.bsky.social — CS undergrad, humanities PhD — has built a brilliant prgm @ The New School: “Code as a Liberal Art” nurtures “code + computational thinking as tools for critical + creative inquiry,” and as forces for 👍+👎 social change. His spring Software Engineering class looks 🌟
docs.google.com
Software Engineering Applications
Software Engineering Applications Spring 2026 Code as a Liberal Art, Eugene Lang College, The New School This course gives students the opportunity to experience and critically examine the software e...
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Andy K Stuhl @akstuhl.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Tomorrow I start as an Asst Prof in Communication, Media and Arts at Seton Hall. Last spring, news that this opportunity would pan out coincided very closely with the passing of my advisor, Jonathan Sterne. Some overdue reflections on that, mostly on Jonathan, here: akstuhl.net/blog/2025-08...
akstuhl.net
Jonathan Sterne; romantic pragmatism; job news
When my beloved PhD advisor, Jonathan Sterne, entered hospice care this past March, waves of appreciation and then mourning rippled out from the many communi...
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ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · 26/08/2025
i did literally nothing to bring this together except lend them an essay that i already wrote, but i'm totally geeking out about this zine. just go look at the collection of art in the first couple of pages, i'm so enthralled right now, i love it. i desperately want to buy a physical copy.
networkcultures.org
AI_Anxiety
AI_AnxietyProduced by Jordi Viader Guerrero, Dmitry Muravyov, Erica Gargaglione, Aarón Moreno Inglés, Mariana Fernández Mora, and Orestis KollyrisWith contributions by Dmitry Muravyov, Jord
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 27/07/2025
‘Weren’t all Black people owed something for the dispossession that accumulated over generations? Or was the university’s primary function only to pursue knowledge about the history that gave rise to these questions?’ Vincent Brown reviews ‘Yale and Slavery’: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Vincent Brown · What Universities Owe
When challenged to justify past investment in slavery – or current investments in, say, fossil fuel extraction or arms...
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Nina Metz @ninametz.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
“No Other Land” Co-Director Hamdan Ballal Freed, Says Yuval Abraham Via Deadline
deadline.com
‘No Other Land’ Co-Director Hamdan Ballal Freed, Says Yuval Abraham
The filmmaker had reportedly been attacked by settlers and detained by Israeli police, sparking international outcry.
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 24/03/2025
‘No populism, right or left, has so far produced a powerful remedy for the ills it denounces. Programmatically, the contemporary opponents of neoliberalism are still for the most part whistling in the dark.’ New: Perry Anderson on neoliberalism after the crash. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Perry Anderson · Regime Change in the West?
Where amid this turmoil does neoliberalism stand? In emergency conditions it has been forced to take measures –...
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Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · 21/03/2025
like this is how to study technology
Though Bourdieu does not focus on this technological dimension of habitus, his innovation of the concept makes it all the more useful for a social theory of technology. As I will argue, technologies are essentially subsets of habitus – they are organized forms of movement. In this way, technologies are theoretically unexceptional.They are very similar to other ways in which we organize social practice through the habitus.This alternative to approaches that exceptionalize technology allows us to do away with the yawning gap between ‘technology’ and ‘society’ that has animated so many social theories of technology.
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Ken Wissoker @kwissoker.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Here's a more fulsome post from the Press. So sad. Farewell to Jonathan Sterne dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/f...
dukeupress.wordpress.com
Farewell to Jonathan Sterne
We are very sad to learn of the death of communication scholar Jonathan Sterne, after a long battle with cancer. He was 54 years old. Sterne was James McGill Professor of Culture and Technology at …
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James A. Hodges @jameshodges.net · 17/03/2025
🗣️ Great news! The panel I co-organized with @robarcand.bsky.social, Marie Lecuyer, Owen Stewart-Robinson, and @hnnht.bsky.social has been accepted to 4S 2025 in Seattle 🥳 🗣️ Catch us this September, speaking on "Oceans of Data: Knowledge Production in Aquatic Environments" 🐬
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jonathan for the past 15 years or so, and I’ve admired + aimed to emulate his creativity, kindness, and generosity for my entire career. i was honored to be asked to extol his virtues in recommendation letters over the past several years. Jonathan deserves all the 🏆
Pennsylvania. Since my days as a junior faculty member, Jonathan Sterne has been widely known as both a scholarly giant and a mensch: for decades he's produced field-changing research; taught innovative, provocative classes and widely shared their syllabi; and mentored colleagues and students around the world through the professional development materials on his website. Our shared interests in sound and the materiality of media have given us many opportunities, particularly over the past decade, to engage with and support one another's work and to serve together on conference panels and advisory boards. I have benefitted, on numerous occasions, from his intellectual creativity and generosity - and I know countless others whose can say the same. Jonathan Sterne truly embodies the spirit of "fellowship," and I'm honored to offer my heartiest, most enthusiastic endorsement of his application.
Professor Sterne's The Audible Past: The Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (2003) "rescored" sound studies. It's tuned the way scholars and practitioners in media and communication studies, science and technology studies, musicology, art history, creative technology, and myriad other fields, think about and create sound. Translated into multiple languages and honored with the National Communication Association's Book of the Year Award, the book has resonated globally. His edited collection, The Sound Studies Reader, then pulled together a vibrant ensemble of scholars whose work builds upon the disciplinary foundations he helped to create. MP3: The Meaning of a Format (2012) proved similarly germinal in format studies - a field that again bridges multiple disciplines, from information science to engineering to literary studies - and was celebrated by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. His most recent Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment, winner of the Gertrude J.
Robinson Book Prize, integrates media studies and critical disability studies, the…practice. He's (co-)edited several collections that draw together the work of senior and junior scholars representing diverse identities and abilities. His current book project, which addresses pressing concerns regarding sound and artificial intelligence, and which will soon be under contract with Duke University Press, is co-authored with several advisees and students. He's organized conference panels that are similarly inclusive. He's co-authored countless articles with junior colleagues. And he's served on over 100 dissertation committees across the disciplines. Through his work as co-editor of Duke University Press's highly regarded Sign, Storage, Transmission book series, Professor Sterne has helped to shape several award-winning books and launched the careers of junior scholars. He's served on awards committees and program reviews, supporting colleagues and students at institutions far beyond his own. And for decades he's freely shared dozens of inventive syllabi on his website; these courses have certainly informed curriculum development in countless communication and media studies programs around the world - including my own.
Professor Sterne's mentorship and pedagogy have made invaluable contributions to communication studies, sound studies, science and technology studies, musicology, and to the range of additional disciplines his work engages. Yet Jonathan's contribution is more than intellectual and creative; it's also ethical. Jonathan has both formally and informally advised hundreds, if not thousands, of students and colleagues around the world. I offer myself as one example: when I, as a junior scholar who spent much of her early career carrying a heavy administrative load, enjoyed a research fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Jonathan and his partner, Professor Carrie Rentschler, invited me over for dinner on a few occasions and later attended my public lecture at the Centre.
These two senior scholars, who had no obligat…
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Earlier today, a group of students received word that Jonathan Sterne entered hospice care yesterday following his ongoing battle with cancer. I think there's a few of his colleagues and former students that follow me on here (he's also currently my phd advisor), more info will be coming soon
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
what began as essentially a hostile takeover in its most debased form is now deploying state power to ostensibly force advertisers to continue to pay, true sign of the times www.wsj.com/business/med...
wsj.com
Exclusive | X Hinted at Possible Deal Trouble in Talks With Ad Giant to Increase Spending
Interpublic Group recently signed an advertising agreement with the social-media platform; other agencies are also in negotiations.
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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · 13/04/2023
never a better time to reconnect with posting
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