iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

But but rendering Nietzsche inaccurately would be a service to humanity and in all likelihood to Nietzsche. Listen to some Nitzsche instead.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

Btw, Laufer's office's reply made clear that they thought I must be an independent journalist (many of whom they said they'd heard from), and I had to make clear in response that I amn't.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

OK, that's the most inappropriate invocation of a literary text I have ever seen, hands down. (Would have been much more decorous to cite the fully misleading Lizzy Borden rhyme.)

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

Highly recommended. I gave this to my spouse in 2021 and renew every year: always a big hit.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

The citrus solution at www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-t... seems promising, though I am disappointed that I misread what I thought at first said "Try Human Trapping" and looked to me like it was using golf balls as a lure.

tomsguide.com

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

That is just the kind of thing people expect English professors to do. Restrain yourself. (You might be muddling your memory of Back to School, but in that it's Rodney Dangerfield, not the English professor, who does the dives.)

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 2h

Yes, it is an expression of that idea, but it is also an attempt to erase the story Dr. El-Sayed told Ezra Klein about his grandmother, www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o... precisely a story of gratitude: 'Be seen and not heard, because we won't believe or even hear anything you say."

nytimes.com

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

As the cubs become more active, as they already have, this is going to get harder and harder not to watch constantly. Not clear to me what the consequences for the rest of my life will be.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Lit folks in the US: our students love Rooney, and fostering discussion, and encouraging purchase, of her work would be a kind of resistance to what the UK is doing.Might campus SJP be willing to host, especially if it is interested in a relatively uncontroversial event that might draw new students?

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I think everybody from centerforpolitics.org might be overbooked, but it can't hurt to ask, and if so www.coopercenter.org has smart people.

coopercenter.org

Homepage | Cooper Center

The UVA Weldon Cooper Center provides valuable data and services to communities, governments, and public sector leaders.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

The opening pages of Alistair Horne's _The Fall of Paris_ discuss the Exposition Universelle of 1867, and details from that (the French exposing their defenses to German visitors, the US presenting a stirring new invention, the rocking chair) have stuck with me for 40 years. Keep it up!

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

If Velasquez had only painted 1 Velasquez, any Velasquez (at least any of the ones I've seen), he'd still be worthy of massive attention. In Sarasota last wk I saw his remake of the Philip IV portrait +, even having seen the other, I found it shocking (a bit like that first Rites of Spring audience)

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I think the podcast is astonishingly good at communicating that thought: whatever I'd already felt of that baffling excess you've greatly increased. For Father's Day this year I asked my family to join me to hear the Arkestra in DC, eg: completely great and opened more vast vistas.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Delete your social media presence before you die. Unless, like, you’re having an AI thing with it, in which case you should have other priorities before you die.

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Reposted by Victor Luftig

Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Public executions were not abolished out of tenderness towards the criminal. They were abolished because of the effect on the people watching, and the dangers of making human death a source of commercial entertainment. Here's Charles Dickens in The Times, after witnessing an execution in 1849.

"I have seen, habitually, some of the worst sources of general contamination and corruption in this country, and I think there are not many phases of London life that could surprise me. I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits. I do not believe that any community can prosper where such a scene of horror and demoralization as was enacted this morning outside Horsemonger Lane Gaol is presented at the very doors of good citizens, and is passed by, unknown or forgotten. And when in our prayers and thanksgivings for the season we are humbly expressing before God our desire to remove the moral evils of the land, I would ask your readers to consider whether it is not a time to think of this one, and to root it out.

I am, Sir, your faithful Servant.
Charles Dickens".

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

No, look, you're supposed to be the bird not buy the bird. I can see why media dedicated to careful reading would take umbrage.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Bizarre to come up with this now when so much of the best writing celebrating the achievements of male athletes and other male heroes is by women. He reminds me of the benevolent members of the Joseph Conrad Society who acted as if teaching Conrad made them manly.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

For Indigenous Peoples Day, www.firstnations.org/books/ needs updating but lists foundational texts. birchbarkbooks.com/collections/... is an independent, Native-owned, Twin Cities shop. For folks in the Charlottesville area, www.minculturalfoundation.org/museum is great.

birchbarkbooks.com

Graphic Novels

Indigenous graphic novels and comics: history, superheroes, residential school stories, horror, and more, for young readers and adults.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It's splendid, brave work, and I learned a lot from it. My thanks to you.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Yes, + this should be buttressed by similar reading by their parents, neighbors,etc, eg worldcitiescultureforum.com/city-project... Libraries+ other public entities can foster (incl. subsidize) shared reading. Book groups are fine but don't create a reading commons. Schools can't be islanded in this

worldcitiescultureforum.com

One Dublin, One Book brings the city together through literature

Every April since 2005, Dublin’s One Dublin, One Book campaign has encouraged residents to read a shared local book. Now in its 20th year, the initiative continues to promote inclusive cultural partic...

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Einstein to Eddington: "I would feel sorry for the dear Lord, for the theory is correct!”

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

This seems to me a terrific article--moving, well made, and informative. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest movement is modeling how to respond to the steady erosion of democracy.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

"***SIGNED BY DESIGNER!!!***" And the designer turns out to have been very cool. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_...

en.wikipedia.org

Daniel Haberman - Wikipedia

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Well, that's just not fair. Nothing beats that. :)

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It occurred to me today that much as I enjoy hearing “my insides shake like a leaf on a tree,” it’s not a good simile. m.youtube.com/watch?v=EsHi... Otoh “the leaves fall one by one/And call the autumn time a fool” I think fabulous.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Some years ago I was asked to take over direction of two dissertations that had been started 30 and 35 years before, respectively. Each student finished and produced splendid work. I think your getting your degree will be a wonderful achievement, and I hope you trumpet it loudly and widely.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

YIL about 18 U.S. Code § 592, which makes any US military officer in charge of troops "at any place where a general...election is held" subject to fine or 5 years in prison: 5-year statute of limitations (so Dems could prosecute them if they're in control in 2029) www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

law.cornell.edu

18 U.S. Code § 592 - Troops at polls

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It's worth checking out the Poetry Ireland FB page for photos of Seamus Heaney's copies of Anne Carson books, including the novel in verse *Autobiography in Red.*

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

if HR really cared about my well-being they would be providing incentives for me to watch this a lot

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

These are not ICE (who mostly cover their faces), I think, but National Guard, right? Either way, capable of discouraging lots of kind of people, especially those many with past experience of being brutalized.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"Why would you need courage to speak the truth?" is an extraordinary question for her to have asked. The backlash against this will be disgusting but will underscore who among global 'leaders' and click-seekers despise the truth.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

But watching The Monkees is more pleasurable and can serve the same illustrative purpose. Someone's got to do a remake where the main character gets fired the first time he touches a student and his replacement has kids stand on their desks and recite Sappho and Allen Ginsberg.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

They always get people to stand behind them who look a) on narcotics, b) miserable, wretched, or c) both. It's like they're setting up the team photo for a last place 1990s baseball team, and the manager has decided to go off on the first place team from 3 seasons ago.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

And indeed the greatest delights. Yesterday I saw a young guy in camo taking his twin toddlers to the playground and looking blissful in a way I entirely recognized from times at the same playground.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yeah, and 25News is evidently one of those stations: "Some believe legendary film director Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landing." (Fox affiliation, owned by Cox, you know, "Some.")

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Sorry, I don't myself think it's OK to be drawing attention to yourself (albeit while making a v. helpful point) with someone else's work the citation for which you've buried at the bottom. (Look at the likes diff. between 1/1 and 1/4.) And the gender dynamics of it make it worse. Re-post, I'd say.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Very well worth saying, esp. to counter embrace of suggestions otherwise, eg, in response to Shakespeare's comedies (maybe not R and Juliet, though depends on the production) and films that have descended from them, that puts vulnerable people greatly at risk.

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Reposted by Victor Luftig

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Please watch this. Sex ed doesn't stop rapists, but it helps *everyone else* understand that they need to intervene, and how. Sex ed is crucial for ending rape culture and keeping more people safe. I'm a proud member of the @educateusaction.bsky.social advisory board for a reason.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Moving, humane, empathetic, compelling column. Thank you for it.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I would donate to the World if it would commit to that important cause.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The Library, in St. Pete, has fabulous food and is lovely to be at, but takes books as decorative to an extreme. (They are all blue, and they bring the check in one.)

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Hope you recover quickly and that the hospital has a good NFL package.

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Post-season baseball is different (especially indoors, especially when the Yankees are involved)

Pre-game ceremony at Tropicana Field tonight

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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Happy to document this if you wish.

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