Alexander R. Phillips
@arphillips.bsky.social
Assistant professor of English at Ashoka University, read: rogue Germanist in India. Author: "Ecology and German Realism." Literature, ecocriticism, environmental humanities, C19. I cycle, I make beer, I think about books for money.
Pinned
Before Environmentalism: Nature and Industry in German Literature
Alexander Philips explores how authors such as Raabe and Stifter grappled with the environmental changes that industrialization bought about.
boydellandbrewer.com
Please read my book, "Ecology and German Realism," out now with @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social. But if you're in a hurry, you can also read this.
#litwiss
boydellandbrewer.com/blog/german/...
#litwiss
boydellandbrewer.com/blog/german/...
2025 was a banner year for cycling. I did 12,007km, besting my previous record of 10,800 from 2021.
December 31, 2025 at 2:35 PM
2025 was a banner year for cycling. I did 12,007km, besting my previous record of 10,800 from 2021.
I did my longest cycle tour by far: #OttomanEmpireTour2025 took me from Germany to Turkey, 5,392km total. Highlights included pedalling past bears on Romania's Transfăgărășan and visiting some of the oldest known human structures at Göbeklitepe and Çatalhöyük.
December 30, 2025 at 1:23 PM
I did my longest cycle tour by far: #OttomanEmpireTour2025 took me from Germany to Turkey, 5,392km total. Highlights included pedalling past bears on Romania's Transfăgărășan and visiting some of the oldest known human structures at Göbeklitepe and Çatalhöyük.
I feel horribly guilty when I'm on a video call and the ratty catless cat tree is visible, fwiw.
I think it's really offensive when I am interviewing people on zoom and there's a cat tree in the background with no cats on it like come on, get your office decor together!!!
December 30, 2025 at 4:42 AM
I feel horribly guilty when I'm on a video call and the ratty catless cat tree is visible, fwiw.
A good polemic is something you love to hate, and that is a form of reverence.
Polemicist is the word we use to describe people we disagree with whose writing we envy.
December 30, 2025 at 4:21 AM
A good polemic is something you love to hate, and that is a form of reverence.
The last book I read was "Eichmann in Jerusalem." 😬
December 29, 2025 at 8:39 AM
The last book I read was "Eichmann in Jerusalem." 😬
I think about this phenomenon a lot since my acculturation in India has involved learning which names are associated with which castes.
I wrote about this last year. At one point Kevin became the top name in France, Germany and the Netherlands among others.
Also noted is the unfortunate "Brajan" spotted in Poland
We need to talk about Europe’s Kevins
www.economist.com/europe/2024/...
Also noted is the unfortunate "Brajan" spotted in Poland
We need to talk about Europe’s Kevins
www.economist.com/europe/2024/...
We need to talk about Europe’s Kevins
How an American name became a European diagnosis
www.economist.com
December 26, 2025 at 2:45 PM
I think about this phenomenon a lot since my acculturation in India has involved learning which names are associated with which castes.
Winter break book haul, clockwise from top: something someone recommended because I'm working on Marlen Haushofer, getting smart about fantasy not by Tolkien, finding out what the ecomarxists are saying these days, and two books I haven't looked at since adolescence.
December 25, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Winter break book haul, clockwise from top: something someone recommended because I'm working on Marlen Haushofer, getting smart about fantasy not by Tolkien, finding out what the ecomarxists are saying these days, and two books I haven't looked at since adolescence.
Is it retro, or just that people want to enjoy music at quality without being tracked? Sadly my CD collection didn't come when I emigrated. But I made good on my new year's resolution for 2025 to re-commit to physical media. Now saving for a vinyl player.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
CDs return to Christmas shopping lists as gen Z embrace ‘retro renaissance’
Demand for CD players rises 74% this year amid deluxe releases from artists such as Taylor Swift and Pink Floyd
www.theguardian.com
December 23, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Is it retro, or just that people want to enjoy music at quality without being tracked? Sadly my CD collection didn't come when I emigrated. But I made good on my new year's resolution for 2025 to re-commit to physical media. Now saving for a vinyl player.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Reposted by Alexander R. Phillips
Neither is herpes, but I’ll keep doing my work without either.
AI is not going to go away
December 21, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Neither is herpes, but I’ll keep doing my work without either.
Happy solstice, everybody.
December 21, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Happy solstice, everybody.
I too struggle to trust the sum of human knowledge produced prior to 2022.
I would struggle to trust an academic who doesn‘t know how to
use AI tools.
Which is not the same as not being critical.
use AI tools.
Which is not the same as not being critical.
December 21, 2025 at 3:42 AM
I too struggle to trust the sum of human knowledge produced prior to 2022.
Reposted by Alexander R. Phillips
It’s true if you don’t know how to use Gemini to turn your bar graphs into filthy but derivative anime porn, I won’t even read your paper.
I would struggle to trust an academic who doesn‘t know how to
use AI tools.
Which is not the same as not being critical.
use AI tools.
Which is not the same as not being critical.
December 20, 2025 at 10:02 PM
It’s true if you don’t know how to use Gemini to turn your bar graphs into filthy but derivative anime porn, I won’t even read your paper.
AQI 266: Cycled to the Delhi smog tower (cost $2.5 mil) finished 4 years ago, defunct for 2. Favorite thing is the clock clearly meant to aestheticize what looks like a prison guard tower. Nice try, but there was also a clock tower at Buchenwald.
December 20, 2025 at 2:58 PM
AQI 266: Cycled to the Delhi smog tower (cost $2.5 mil) finished 4 years ago, defunct for 2. Favorite thing is the clock clearly meant to aestheticize what looks like a prison guard tower. Nice try, but there was also a clock tower at Buchenwald.
India's stepwells are amazing, I will always go way out of my way to visit one.
edition.cnn.com/climate/indi...
edition.cnn.com/climate/indi...
He brought over 600 water bodies back to life. His next mission: saving India’s vanishing stepwells | CNN
Amid India’s growing water crisis, ancient subterranean stepwells are re-emerging as a way to help alleviate the situation. Environmentalist Arun Krishnamurthy, known for reviving the country’s freshw...
edition.cnn.com
December 19, 2025 at 6:15 PM
India's stepwells are amazing, I will always go way out of my way to visit one.
edition.cnn.com/climate/indi...
edition.cnn.com/climate/indi...
Reposted by Alexander R. Phillips
"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future."
- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit.
Incredible words.
Listen to all of it!
- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit.
Incredible words.
Listen to all of it!
December 19, 2025 at 12:24 PM
"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future."
- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit.
Incredible words.
Listen to all of it!
- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit.
Incredible words.
Listen to all of it!
#ShittyFuture: My school is forcing my to download an app to submit grades, send help.
December 19, 2025 at 2:20 PM
#ShittyFuture: My school is forcing my to download an app to submit grades, send help.
I first heard about the "demographic cliff" from a state university president who used it to justify aggressive casualization of faculty labor. Our part of said demographic was largely "non-traditional" and non-white, and the tuition they paid subsidized the system's more elite campuses.
I am so tired of people who I otherwise respect talking about the demographic cliff as though it is a natural phenomenon, rather than a political projection.
IF it happens (which I still doubt) it will be because a racist, anti-education coalition has been trying to make it real with policy.
IF it happens (which I still doubt) it will be because a racist, anti-education coalition has been trying to make it real with policy.
December 19, 2025 at 3:59 AM
I first heard about the "demographic cliff" from a state university president who used it to justify aggressive casualization of faculty labor. Our part of said demographic was largely "non-traditional" and non-white, and the tuition they paid subsidized the system's more elite campuses.
No other word could so neatly distill the year that was.
Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.
December 15, 2025 at 4:00 PM
No other word could so neatly distill the year that was.
Algorithmic social media is lost. The last ten years have shown this to be true. Such platforms are hives of lazy, sloppy, and radicalized thought because the companies behind them engineer them to be that way, and they do so for money. It's not just experience, but a documented reality.
People are losing their minds on Twitter and becoming more trick lazy, sloppy and radicalised because the libs are not there to argue against and challenge. Come back.
December 15, 2025 at 5:26 AM
Algorithmic social media is lost. The last ten years have shown this to be true. Such platforms are hives of lazy, sloppy, and radicalized thought because the companies behind them engineer them to be that way, and they do so for money. It's not just experience, but a documented reality.
Sounds like the real story is that edtech and right-wing agitation are the pincers watering down the literature curriculum. And if reading is about skimming the waters of genre and style without ideas, well then!
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...
Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class.
www.nytimes.com
December 13, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Sounds like the real story is that edtech and right-wing agitation are the pincers watering down the literature curriculum. And if reading is about skimming the waters of genre and style without ideas, well then!
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...
Bitter to even contemplate. And ten months later whatever crisis of legitimacy he faced would be wiped from public consciousness. A watershed moment in the history of American rot.
25 years ago today, SCOTUS elected George W Bush president of the United States by blocking completion of a voting canvass in Florida. A subsequent canvass by the Associated Press showed that Bush's rival, Al Gore, had won the race in Florida—and thus the contest for the presidency—by 700 votes.
December 12, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Bitter to even contemplate. And ten months later whatever crisis of legitimacy he faced would be wiped from public consciousness. A watershed moment in the history of American rot.
Also fitting that they occupy the place of the subjects in the source image, the real workers who actually built something.
I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork
December 12, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Also fitting that they occupy the place of the subjects in the source image, the real workers who actually built something.
Watched a film on a streaming platform for the first time in a while. When a list of "watch next" buttons flew into the dramatic final shot, I nearly flew out of my skin.
December 11, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Watched a film on a streaming platform for the first time in a while. When a list of "watch next" buttons flew into the dramatic final shot, I nearly flew out of my skin.
The conflation of art and content, and that began when music was a thing we downloaded, and that is why digital music is the original sin of the 21st century.
What do you think the first death knell of the modern media landscape was? When we started conflating art with content or when we stopped being able to tell the difference between audience and community?
December 11, 2025 at 5:23 AM
The conflation of art and content, and that began when music was a thing we downloaded, and that is why digital music is the original sin of the 21st century.