James
@jamesdraney.bsky.social
VAP in the Writing Program at Haverford College. Working on a book about the novel, interiority, and big data. https://tinyurl.com/yc6jdn9z
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James
@jamesdraney.bsky.social
· Feb 22
Here to discover, share, read, and think.
Die My Love is iffy for several reasons, but its depiction of postpartum psychosis (running in the forest and drinking loads) is downright wholesome compared to how most people actually experience loneliness and manic desolation today (sitting in bed and scrolling for 8+ consecutive hours).
November 10, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Die My Love is iffy for several reasons, but its depiction of postpartum psychosis (running in the forest and drinking loads) is downright wholesome compared to how most people actually experience loneliness and manic desolation today (sitting in bed and scrolling for 8+ consecutive hours).
Reposted by James
A quarter of a century deep and the PS2 is still a beast of a console
November 9, 2025 at 12:45 PM
A quarter of a century deep and the PS2 is still a beast of a console
Da: "...the difference between good-enough inference and actually-good inference, a distinction long avoided in literary criticism, has now come to a head."
Nan Z. Da, Literary Criticism in the Age of AI, NLR 155, September–October 2025
Critical analyses of AI usually adopt a stance of defensive humanism. Instead, Nan Da interrogates its mode of reasoning. How do LLMs make the step from data to inference—and what does it mean when th...
newleftreview.org
November 9, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Da: "...the difference between good-enough inference and actually-good inference, a distinction long avoided in literary criticism, has now come to a head."
Barthes, from The Preparation of the Novel: “I write, I 'finish' (the work), and I die; in so doing, something lives on: the Species, literature → Which is why the threat of decline or extinction that can weigh on literature tolls like an extermination of a species, a sort of spiritual genocide.”
November 7, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Barthes, from The Preparation of the Novel: “I write, I 'finish' (the work), and I die; in so doing, something lives on: the Species, literature → Which is why the threat of decline or extinction that can weigh on literature tolls like an extermination of a species, a sort of spiritual genocide.”
Just learned that Tom McCarthy has a new book on Ingeborg Bachmann published by Notting Hill Editions. Kinda flew under the radar. Had been wondering what he was up to. Looking forward to reading.
November 4, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Just learned that Tom McCarthy has a new book on Ingeborg Bachmann published by Notting Hill Editions. Kinda flew under the radar. Had been wondering what he was up to. Looking forward to reading.
Just learned about this and it seems like a great idea. Very glad it exists.
Matthew Strother Center for The Examined Life
Matthew Strother Center for The Examined Life is a non-profit, live-in study program located in a farm in Catskill NY, about 2 hours north of NYC.
www.matthewstrother.org
October 29, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Just learned about this and it seems like a great idea. Very glad it exists.
whoever composed the music for this video game should win the Nobel prize in literature
All Nintendo Music ~ Vol. 206 - Major League Baseball featuring Ken Griffey Jr. : 1 - Call Me Jr.
YouTube video by All Nintendo Music
www.youtube.com
October 29, 2025 at 2:22 AM
whoever composed the music for this video game should win the Nobel prize in literature
The big Other doesn't exi--
October 26, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The big Other doesn't exi--
Throwing this unsung classic into the canon of '90s films about Just Hanging Out
October 25, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Throwing this unsung classic into the canon of '90s films about Just Hanging Out
The second half of this (very good) conversation has me revisiting my long-held belief that the online left already has a parasocial online guru figure (i.e. a counterpart to Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson). His name is Adam Phillips.
I was delighted to speak to Alan Finlayson for the @lrb.co.uk's On Politics. We take on the digital right (and online left), the champions of inegalitarianism, print and social democracy, Farage as influencer and... whether the internet is just right-wing.
October 16, 2025 at 6:19 PM
The second half of this (very good) conversation has me revisiting my long-held belief that the online left already has a parasocial online guru figure (i.e. a counterpart to Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson). His name is Adam Phillips.
Reposted by James
(Showing you some annoying shit that sucks ass) and would you believe a computer made this all by itself?
October 14, 2025 at 4:11 PM
(Showing you some annoying shit that sucks ass) and would you believe a computer made this all by itself?
The 1990s were fun because every movie was about a prolonged postcollegiate Hang Out with your aimless friends
October 13, 2025 at 4:12 PM
The 1990s were fun because every movie was about a prolonged postcollegiate Hang Out with your aimless friends
Reposted by James
Every time someone says “antifa”
a woman is decorating a christmas tree with red and yellow ribbons
ALT: a woman is decorating a christmas tree with red and yellow ribbons
media.tenor.com
October 9, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Every time someone says “antifa”
Satantango has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2013 and I realize now that I have spent the past 13 years semi-consciously intuiting that This Moment was inevitable and would eventually provide the necessary justification for me to read it.
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Satantango has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2013 and I realize now that I have spent the past 13 years semi-consciously intuiting that This Moment was inevitable and would eventually provide the necessary justification for me to read it.
I will forever associate the sans-serif font Inter with exhaustion, hopelessness, and death
October 5, 2025 at 6:13 PM
I will forever associate the sans-serif font Inter with exhaustion, hopelessness, and death
Happy to have contributed some writing to this T Magazine piece on influential magazine covers. Long live print!
The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time
www.nytimes.com
October 2, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Happy to have contributed some writing to this T Magazine piece on influential magazine covers. Long live print!
One Battle After Another works because it doesn't feel like PTA is straining to have a Big Idea (his obsession with having a Thesis for every film is one of his only flaws imo)
September 30, 2025 at 1:47 PM
One Battle After Another works because it doesn't feel like PTA is straining to have a Big Idea (his obsession with having a Thesis for every film is one of his only flaws imo)
even the signage is suffering from imposter syndrome
September 25, 2025 at 4:35 PM
even the signage is suffering from imposter syndrome
Any theories floating around as to why 1999 was the Greatest Year in Cinema History?
September 23, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Any theories floating around as to why 1999 was the Greatest Year in Cinema History?
Looking forward to reading this
The Endless Week
Like Beckett’s novels or Kafka’s stranger tales, The Endless Week is a work outside of time, as if novels had never existed and Laura Vazquez has suddenly invented them. And yet it could not be more c...
www.nyrb.com
September 21, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Looking forward to reading this
Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington - 4-record set by Book-Of-The-Month Records. Recorded right before Ellington's death in the early '70s. There's an air of nostalgia in Hines's playing. One master honoring another.
September 14, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington - 4-record set by Book-Of-The-Month Records. Recorded right before Ellington's death in the early '70s. There's an air of nostalgia in Hines's playing. One master honoring another.
Jonathan Crary, from Scorched Earth
September 11, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Jonathan Crary, from Scorched Earth
Reposted by James
algorithmic recommendation tries to make it impossible for us to escape our own predictability; continued interaction with these sorts of surveillance systems changes our relationship to our own capability to want things—makes it alien, fully externalized www.theguardian.com/media/2025/a...
September 9, 2025 at 7:21 PM
algorithmic recommendation tries to make it impossible for us to escape our own predictability; continued interaction with these sorts of surveillance systems changes our relationship to our own capability to want things—makes it alien, fully externalized www.theguardian.com/media/2025/a...