Joseph Howley
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Joseph Howley
@illdottore.bsky.social
“imagine a classics professor” – The New Yorker
Reposted by Joseph Howley
Delightful detail from the Roman “unswept floor” mosaic by Heraclitus, showing a mouse nibbling a walnut.

Superb use of darker tiles for subtle shadow effect!

2nd century AD. Vatican Museums www.museivaticani.va/content/muse...

#MosaicMonday
#Archaeology
November 10, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
As a graduate student from Gaza studying in Wyoming, I live in two dimensions: one where life moves peacefully forward, and another where everything I love is collapsing. I live in both worlds at once, holding grief and strength in the same breath. mondoweiss.net/2025/11/how-...
How it feels to live as an academic in exile while Gaza burns
As a graduate student from Gaza studying in Wyoming, I live in two dimensions: one where life moves peacefully forward, and another where everything I love is collapsing. I live in both worlds at once,...
mondoweiss.net
November 10, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Pluribus pairing well with my umpteenth reread of @annleckie.com’s Ancillary Justice
November 9, 2025 at 10:19 PM
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“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.”

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
November 9, 2025 at 5:26 PM
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Money quote from Gov-Elect Spanberger (now please just do it).
November 9, 2025 at 7:53 PM
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There is always money for the consultants. No matter how much “austerity.” Always always always.
November 9, 2025 at 5:58 PM
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"The administration ballooned, and inside the administration the financial technocrats took over. There was less and less sympathy with Columbia as a place of thought. It was more about Columbia as an enterprise..."

www.chronicle.com/article/mahm...
Mahmood Mamdani Doesn’t Want to Talk About Zohran
The Columbia scholar, and father of the mayor-elect, on politics, academe, and antisemitism.
www.chronicle.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:09 AM
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After lots of well-guided speculation, we now have proof that far-right propagandists in Portland have been directly coordinating—through at least text message—with ICE agents.

In this case, Chelly got permission from a "Travis D." inside to stand on a half-wall off limits to protesters.
Conservative livestreamer sued over blast of pepper spray at ICE protest in Portland
The lawsuit seeks $10,000 in damages from Chelly Bouferrache.
www.oregonlive.com
November 9, 2025 at 6:08 AM
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If you know anyone who works on medieval Judaism, please send them this! Binghamton is hiring a Talmud/Rabbinics assistant prof: half in Judaic Studies, half in the Med/Ren center. A killer R1 job for the right person, and not a ton of applicants so far....
binghamton.interviewexchange.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:44 AM
If there were a Doomsday Clock for the world envisioned in this joke, the email I just read from work would make it tick one minute closer to midnight
The year is 2035. The Civil Rights Act has been ruled unconstitutional. My university’s main source of external research funding is Silicon Valley. I am once again reported to the DEI office for hate speech after identifying LLM hallucination in a student paper.
November 8, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
I havent read such a banger of an essay in a very long time. This is so well-written!
Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani
It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
lithub.com
November 8, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
Aside from my "was this really written in 2025, not two years ago" snarky response, I couldn't help thinking throughout this entire blog post that a huge part of why so many libraries are STUCK on dealing with AI is because we literally don't have the staff time or funding to deal with it.
November 7, 2025 at 9:05 PM
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I got a call from their fundraising arm LAST WEEK as if they knew this was coming. Apologized to the student calling but told her even then that I wasn't going to donate because of how the school treated Momodou Taal.
Cornell student activist chooses to leave US after judge denies bid to immediately block deportation | CNN
A Cornell University student whose visa was revoked over his participation in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations has left the United States voluntarily after a judge declined to immediately block t...
www.cnn.com
November 7, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
UT Austin is discussing eliminating or consolidating our departments of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican/American and Latino/Latina Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Here is what AAADS alumni have to say. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
November 7, 2025 at 2:15 PM
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We need teachers, we need books, we need the money the billionaires took! Come out NYC!
November 7, 2025 at 4:14 PM
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“And then you have librarians who are experiencing a real existential crisis because they are getting asked by their jobs to promote [AI] tools that produce more misinformation. It's the most, like, emperor-has-no-clothes-type situation that I have ever witnessed.” - Alison Macrina
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 7, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
A thing about AI in higher ed right now is that half of us are scrambling to deal with the implosion of our information environment that broke reading/writing/source verification, while the other half is trying to achieve a massive institutional buy-in of the very thing that's causing the implosion
November 7, 2025 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
my latest: i spent weeks investigating how frustrations about data centers were about to swallow american politics…

…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.

read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!
The Data Center Backlash Is Swallowing American Politics
Activists on both the left and the right are pushing back against rampant AI development.
heatmap.news
November 6, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
Look, the real problem is not one of weaponry but Caesar letting both Antonius and Brutus assume that they were his Apprentice when of course he already had a secret Apprentice in the form of Gaius Octavius. Also, Ysalimiri had been banned in the Senate since Sulla.
November 6, 2025 at 1:15 PM
I'm frankly sick of this kind of ahistorical misinformation. Droidekas, while well-shielded against energy weapons, are notoriously vulnerable to melée weapons at close quarters. Actually Caesar should have used Ysalimiri to disable Brutus's and Cassius's force powers
The assassination of Julius Caesar might have gone very differently if he had a couple of droidekas to back him up
November 6, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
today, 11/06! Book launch at NYU *Decolonizing Afghanistan* (@dukepress.bsky.social, 2025 )with MATTHIEU AIKINS, WAZHMAH OSMAN, ZOHRA SAED, MORWARI ZAFAR! Come thru! docs.google.com/forms/d/19ZG...
November 6, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
we’re about to find out if loving SimCity makes you a better mayor

Mamdani was asked in 2002 by NY Mag what he wanted for Christmas and said SimCity 3000
June 25, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Joseph Howley
they know, they spent most of 2024 calling us kapos and trying to get us fired or worse
November 6, 2025 at 4:26 AM