Erin K. Maher
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erinkmaher.bsky.social
Erin K. Maher
@erinkmaher.bsky.social
Academic copyeditor, line editor, and indexer in the arts and humanities. PhD in musicology, UNC Chapel Hill (2016). She/her/Dr. It's pronounced "mar."
No, PerfectIt, that's wrong. 😩
February 19, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
Buddy, I already do this and if you saw how little I make a year, you’d rend your garments.
1. Immediately yes
2. I would quit my job

#booksky
February 18, 2026 at 7:57 PM
This applies to academic books, which is fun because being afraid of your readers is the Grad School Experience.
If you want to write anything good, you cannot afford to be afraid of your reader.
February 18, 2026 at 11:43 AM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
stop making me look at those horrible men
February 17, 2026 at 11:56 PM
I cried watching this video on my phone in a grocery store parking lot. My faves from my early/mid-twenties are reuniting and WORKING ON NEW SONGS. 😭💗😭💗😭💗
How Did This Happen? (watch this video first) | Girlyman
Get more from Girlyman on Patreon
www.patreon.com
February 17, 2026 at 7:45 PM
I was driving to work one morning during the Kavanaugh hearings when Brandi Carlile's "The Joke" came up on my car playlist and triggered some unsafe Sobbing Driving in rush-hour traffic and fog. When I saw her last week (🤩), I was thinking about how long it's been since everyone's Trump 1 songs. 😩
Files show convicted sex abuser messaged with Ken Starr and others about Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford
Epstein sympathized with Kavanaugh during supreme court confirmation, emails show
www.theguardian.com
February 17, 2026 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
I have a surefire prescription to save these names and it’s for the United States as a whole to get way more cool about trans people
By the always excellent Erin Davis, a chart of the first names that have seen the greatest (estimated) drop in living Americans with that name. Much more here, including an interactive to look the trends for any first name: erdavis.com/2026/02/16/i...
February 17, 2026 at 4:25 AM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
Love this photo of Lili #Boulanger and friends at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1914. She was tall (5'9"/175 cm)
February 17, 2026 at 10:01 AM
I saw people on here supporting the Hilton boycott like "switch to Hyatt! it's owned by GOOD billionaires!"

great advice, thanks

(to be clear: I'm not saying don't boycott, I'm saying with major hotel chains it's gonna be "this one isn't doing [evil thing X]" rather than "this is the Good one")
Billionaire Hyatt Hotels chairman Thomas Pritzker announced he is retiring following emails showing his relationship with sex predator Jeffrey Epstein
Hyatt Chairman Pritzker leaves board over Epstein ties
The 75-year-old billionaire heir said he would not seek reelection to the board at the annual stockholder meeting.
www.cnbc.com
February 17, 2026 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
The difference between "full verbatim" and "clean verbatim" transcripts: Full verbatim captures spoken word exactly as stated, including filler words, stutters and false starts. Clean verbatim has words exactly as stated, but edits the filler words, repeated words and stutters.
February 16, 2026 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
I tell my journalism students specifically not to do this. It's a hack move to make people sound dumb. Everyone talks like this — with the exception of maybe Pete Buttigieg — and it's an editorial choice to leave the little filler words in there.
Have you ever once seen the New York Times quote Trump like this?
February 16, 2026 at 6:32 PM
Oooh, I don't think I can make it to this, but it sounds really helpful!
Tomorrow: walk through the challenges of descriptive alt-text with Allison Peacock. Her webinar will offer pointers on crafting alt-text for complex images, using examples of dance photos, as well as an opportunity for troubleshooting with attendees. Sign up: webinars.editors.ca/upcoming_web...
February 16, 2026 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
What a phrase to decide to live with: “by removing writing from reporters’ workloads”
Thinking about the many decisions that get made when you turn your notes into a draft and what that looks like when the bot is making all of those decisions, even if you get the "final say" after the decisions have been made. www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02...
February 16, 2026 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
Sometime last week, I mentioned having given a paper about tuning conspiracy theories and solfeggio tones at a conference. I spent some time turning it into a blog post, and you can read it here: www.williamohara.net/blog/2026/2/...
Solfeggio Tones: Digital Mythology and the History of Music Theory — William O'Hara
Solfeggio Tones: Digital Mythology and the History of Music Theory William O’Hara   I delivered this paper in May 2023 at the “Instruments, Interfaces, Infrastructures” conference, held in...
www.williamohara.net
February 15, 2026 at 7:20 PM
Shameless plug: I have a little ebook on writing effective (scripted, humanities-style) conference papers! It's aimed mainly at grad students, but of course there are some senior scholars who could learn from it....
February 16, 2026 at 12:57 AM
I visited my family for Easter in 2016 while deep in post-defense dissertation revision hell, and I left the room for a minute and came back to find my laptop unresponsive. I borrowed an old laptop from my sister, downloaded the files from my cloud backup, and got back to work. 😵‍💫
One of my PhD students ONLY had her doctoral dissertation in her laptop’s hard drive. Told her to email me the most recent version. She forgot. Her laptop was fried by the evening. She had to rewrite the entire thing.

Luckily I had some of the source/draft documents, which I sent her.
Losing our words is a writer’s worst nightmare. Don’t forget to backup your work.
#WriteSky #WritingCommunity #5amWritersClub
February 15, 2026 at 11:02 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
According to Julie K. Brown, who did such invaluable reporting on Jeffrey Epstein for the Miami Herald, the Bard College Board of Trustees is conducting an emergency meeting tomorrow. I hope they do the right thing. x.com/jkbjournalis...
February 15, 2026 at 6:51 PM
Age verification? My Tamagotchi died while I was seeing the Good Burger movie.
Age verification? My first political memory is my parents naming a cat after Michael Dukakis.
Age verification? My first website was built on GeoCities (for free).
February 15, 2026 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
I still think about this
I had a client a couple years ago who was like “I’ll just use ChatGPT to write the grant report!” and I was forced to explain, through clenched teeth, that a grant report literally means telling the funder what you did with their grant, information ChatGPT did not in fact have

she was like “…. oh”
February 15, 2026 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
Why is the harmonica considered wretched?
February 14, 2026 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
why are girls making this request
February 14, 2026 at 9:09 PM
what if Joanna Newsom comes back and we all miss the news because we have "Newsom" muted because of her second cousin twice removed
February 14, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
excuse me, this is a perfectly cromulent word
February 14, 2026 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Erin K. Maher
I think this ice rink is haunted
February 13, 2026 at 9:54 PM