iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The comm prof is at least intrigued by the activation of non-digital display spaces for campus community messaging #USAO

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Stats I’d like to see: usage of copy/paste during the last four years compared to the previous four decades. #AI

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Reposted by Thomas Conner, PhD

Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

*whispers* you know we can do this cultural debate about art thing all the time, right? Websites and news organizations used to have culture critics on staff whose entire job was writing about books, movies, and TV. People read them and then discussed them. We have the technology to do this again.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I’ve been excited to begin reading ‘The News: A User’s Manual’ by Alain de Botton. But now that I am — and marveling at how oblivious he seems to the very existence of the field of media studies — I really need someone to tell him that he’s not the first person to critically analyze journalism.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Political yuks aside, the situation & presentation of this #hologram looks intriguing, esp. the window backgrounds, though Teddy's mouth looks like old anime. What's with the rippling wall?

thedailybeast.com

Trump, 80, Gets Roasted by a Hologram in Pep Talk Gone Wrong

The president’s visit with a long-dead predecessor was an odd choice given his progressive credentials.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Meaningful XR — very cool conference! Thanks for the opportunity to speak to such fascinating people (forward-thinking in such great ways!). Hope to see many of you again soon … @maxwellfoxman.bsky.social

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Reposted by Thomas Conner, PhD

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 07/05/2026

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

insidehighered.com

“PAY OR LEAK”: Hackers Target Big Higher Ed Vendor

The criminal extortion group ShinyHunters breached Instructure last week. The hackers, who have also attacked individual universities, demanded the ed-tech giant pay up or face a data leak.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Drink up! I'm a 2026 James Beard journalism finalist — for a story I wrote about Little Rock's annual eggnog contest. Read it in The New Territory (newterritorymag.com), a spiffy mag about middle America.

jamesbeard.org

The 2026 James Beard Media Award Nominees

Here are the nominees for the best books, broadcast media, and journalistic work shaping food culture today.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

How did I miss the Habermas obit? Here's to a line of genius thinking that I can use in just about any class with just about any students for great understanding & critique!

newstatesman.com

What Jürgen Habermas leaves behind

His legacy is the philosophical strength to see through our dark, illiberal age

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

“There’s no country on earth with more righteous and noble principles, and there’s never been a country where those principles have been abused as horribly.” — Elvis Costello, on America, back in ‘86

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

One of my primary to-do’s remaining in life is accomplish something so odd & arcane that Sandi Toksvig will summon the story and tell it on @qi.com

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

We talk & talk about the digital stuff in a #hologram experience, but this piece is a nice reminder of how important, challenging, and time-consuming the construction of the physical space is to their presentation. #ABBA

timeout.com

The ABBA hologram could be coming to NYC inside a newly built venue

The experience is expected to open in 2028

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

@tcmtv.bsky.social programmed ‘Gaslight’ last night during the blather. #wink

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Reposted by Thomas Conner, PhD

Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Any former protest-music students still follow me? Ever timely …

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Read the speech. "You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination." What I wouldn't give for someone in Congress to talk like this (with their snarling mouths, not their timid thumbs). #MarkCarney #Resist

weforum.org

Davos 2026: Special address by Mark Carney, PM of Canada

Canadian PM Mark Carney stressed the end of the rules-based international order and urged middle powers to act together to counter the great power rivalry.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." — FDR, today in 1937

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

"... it is becoming apparent that scientific endeavor for the betterment of humankind and preservation of life is unattainable under the current system."

scienceforthepeople.org

Solidarity with Venezuelan Science—SftP Statement – Science for the People

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

One of the more profound and inspiring comm/media/cultural studies lectures/sermons/rants I’ve heard in a while: youtu.be/EMWPs75q2_Q?... Students, get ready, this is a preface for next week! #keepitweird @hankgreen.bsky.social

youtu.be

Here's Why New Year's Eve is Bad Now

YouTube video by Hank Green

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Always a good writing day when I snatch the Heraclitus off the shelf

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

A smart manifesto about AI & education from unionized minds: www.aaup.org/reports-publ... "It is essential that higher education workers are in control of technological advancements affecting their employment."

aaup.org

Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions

Educational technology, or ed-tech, including artificial intelligence (AI), continues to become more integrated into teaching and research in higher education, with minimal oversight. The AAUP’s ad ho...

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Scurrying to drafting board to craft a syllabus called The Ideologies of Fonts. The conservatism of serifs! The liberalism of sans serifs! The ranting progressivism of italics! #Calibri

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Started 'Katabasis,' laughing thru the tears, feels like the most thorough parody of academia since 'Moo'! "Good jobs were vanishingly rare in academia. Alice very much wanted one. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself otherwise. She had trained her entire life to do this one thing ...” #preach

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Pondering the state of expertise and credentials vs. social impact and change through the lens of ‘The Lowdown’ and whatever the hell a “truthstorian” is: thepickup.com/whats-a-trut...

thepickup.com

What’s A Truthstorian, Anyway? - The Pickup

Lee Roy Chapman didn’t fit the typical mold of a historian or a journalist. Good.

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Such fun presenting today at the @hauntedfutures.bsky.social conference, hosted by the film & screen folks at U College Cork. Our panel explored liminal spaces, fictional architecture, and my own work on digital apparitions — oh my! Best to the whole haunted bunch!

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

I feel like baking them all a very gay cake

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Reposted by Thomas Conner, PhD

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

The New York Times quickly sending out Douthat to argue that Mamdani’s victory doesn’t really matter is so predictable it borders on self-parody. Remember, folks: Every time the Right wins an election, it’s an undeniable expression of the will of the people. If a lefty wins, it’s just a blip.

nytimes.com

Opinion | Mamdani’s Victory Is Less Significant Than You Think

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

ChatGPT's co-opting of my beloved em dash is really bothering me. "The dash is a time-honored and exceedingly normal tool for constructing sentences! ... we think and speak in thoughts, which interrupt and introduce and complicate one another in a neat little dance ..."

nytimes.com

With the Em Dash, A.I. Embraces a Fading Tradition

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Thomas Conner, PhD @thesonginmyhead.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

"But #GenXers face a long future of precarity, debt, and climate catastrophe, as millennials do; some of us just lived, for a while, in a mental atmosphere not yet shaped by this knowledge. This, perhaps, was a privilege, if only in the way that a fool’s paradise is better than none at all."

theoutline.com

Thank God Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh still gives a shit

The singer has loads of artistic integrity in a world that often doesn’t care.

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