Michael Pittard
@michaelpittard.bsky.social
Researching the rhetorics of memory & nostalgia. Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominated poet. Warren Wilson College alum.
Reposted by Michael Pittard
32 years ago today, we first witnessed the wonder of the My Dinner with Andre video game. “Boy-Scoutz ‘n the Hood” premiered November 18, 1993.
November 18, 2025 at 9:44 PM
32 years ago today, we first witnessed the wonder of the My Dinner with Andre video game. “Boy-Scoutz ‘n the Hood” premiered November 18, 1993.
Reposted by Michael Pittard
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons and Dragons to Be Racist
The fantastical roots of “scientific racism”
www.theatlantic.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:42 PM
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Reposted by Michael Pittard
The purpose of AI is to destroy any consensus of history, example #4,528,926
AI Generated 'Boring History' Videos Are Flooding YouTube and Drowning Out Real History
"These AI videos are just repeating things that are on the internet, so you end up with a very simplified version of the past."
www.404media.co
September 3, 2025 at 3:53 PM
The purpose of AI is to destroy any consensus of history, example #4,528,926
Reposted by Michael Pittard
Griffin’s definition of fascism as palingenetic ultranationalism—specifically a reactionary nostalgia for a lost history of the nation that never existed—remains undefeated. A nostalgia for a type of bread that is ubiquitous, created in the 20th century, and rage towards bread as old as civilisation
August 31, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Griffin’s definition of fascism as palingenetic ultranationalism—specifically a reactionary nostalgia for a lost history of the nation that never existed—remains undefeated. A nostalgia for a type of bread that is ubiquitous, created in the 20th century, and rage towards bread as old as civilisation
Reposted by Michael Pittard
The same in the ‘we must retvrn’ and it’s an AI image of a nonexistent 80s bedroom full of video games, movies and comics. They’re wistful for manufactured memories of ephemera. You can eat your white bread, nobody took these things away from you, you yearn for your childhood, to be a child
August 31, 2025 at 11:03 AM
The same in the ‘we must retvrn’ and it’s an AI image of a nonexistent 80s bedroom full of video games, movies and comics. They’re wistful for manufactured memories of ephemera. You can eat your white bread, nobody took these things away from you, you yearn for your childhood, to be a child
Reposted by Michael Pittard
Walking through a second hand book store should feel like you’re flying through the trench run on the Death Star.
August 15, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Walking through a second hand book store should feel like you’re flying through the trench run on the Death Star.
Reposted by Michael Pittard
Just gonna point out how medievalism underpins this far right nostalgia #medievalsky
*bloody* hell, this entire story www.ft.com/content/0e24...
August 9, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Just gonna point out how medievalism underpins this far right nostalgia #medievalsky
“… we have the idea of imperial ‘golden ages’ … followed by a descent into ‘dark ages’ marked by violence, poverty and stagnation. Yet this is history through the eyes of elites.”
Much to like and much to dispute in this article, but I definitely agree with this claim.
aeon.co/essays/the-g...
Much to like and much to dispute in this article, but I definitely agree with this claim.
aeon.co/essays/the-g...
The great myth of empire collapse | Aeon Essays
Societal downfalls loom large in history and popular culture but, for the 99 per cent, collapse often had its upsides
aeon.co
August 6, 2025 at 5:10 PM
“… we have the idea of imperial ‘golden ages’ … followed by a descent into ‘dark ages’ marked by violence, poverty and stagnation. Yet this is history through the eyes of elites.”
Much to like and much to dispute in this article, but I definitely agree with this claim.
aeon.co/essays/the-g...
Much to like and much to dispute in this article, but I definitely agree with this claim.
aeon.co/essays/the-g...
Reupping this call for papers! Send us your work (or force your students to send us their work)!
I've recently become the faculty advisor for Y Ddraig Goch (YDG), the UNC-Greensboro interdisciplinary research journal! We're working on an AI-focused issue, & if you're an undergraduate or graduate student, please send us your paper by August 15! You don't need to attend UNCG to submit.
August 5, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reupping this call for papers! Send us your work (or force your students to send us their work)!
Reposted by Michael Pittard
For a medieval monastic chronicler, a headline to die for
August 2, 2025 at 7:19 PM
For a medieval monastic chronicler, a headline to die for
Reposted by Michael Pittard
“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...
www.mellon.org/voices/human...
Mellon Foundation
The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.
www.mellon.org
August 1, 2025 at 3:20 PM
“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...
www.mellon.org/voices/human...
Reposted by Michael Pittard
"Very frequently this counter-cultural disposition combines with a relentlessly indulgent capacity for self-pity and a sense of persecuted victimization. No one feels sorry for themselves quite like the contemporary far right." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-modern-f...
The Modern Far Right Canon
Modern far right thinkers style themselves as an insurgent movement against power, combining a self-pitying victimhood with exaggerated fantasies of rediscovered manliness.
www.liberalcurrents.com
July 30, 2025 at 12:50 PM
"Very frequently this counter-cultural disposition combines with a relentlessly indulgent capacity for self-pity and a sense of persecuted victimization. No one feels sorry for themselves quite like the contemporary far right." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-modern-f...
Reposted by Michael Pittard
“The logical conclusion of a technofeudal oligarchy combining forces with an authoritarian political movement is compulsory enrollment in the security state’s platform architecture of surveillance, indoctrination, and behavioral modification.”
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
theamericanvandal.substack.com
June 20, 2025 at 10:10 PM
“The logical conclusion of a technofeudal oligarchy combining forces with an authoritarian political movement is compulsory enrollment in the security state’s platform architecture of surveillance, indoctrination, and behavioral modification.”
Reposted by Michael Pittard
Reposted by Michael Pittard
in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the scene
July 1, 2025 at 12:47 PM
in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the scene
Reposted by Michael Pittard
for Bills Week I decided to read the new 1000 page Buckley biography
William F. Buckley's Bill Never Came Due | Defector
Perhaps the highest praise I can offer a book that took 27 years to complete and runs over 1,000 pages is that I can see why, and that it doesn’t feel like it. Sam Tanenhaus’s extremely long and anxio...
defector.com
July 18, 2025 at 7:32 PM
for Bills Week I decided to read the new 1000 page Buckley biography
Reposted by Michael Pittard
The stuff about liberal arts here is fine and good. But this feels most important as a story about the shocking, intentional disconnect between university boards of trustees and the actual students who learn at that university.
“It’s not that traditional liberal arts is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities values desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, an administrative class.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...
Opinion | Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much.
www.nytimes.com
July 17, 2025 at 12:07 PM
The stuff about liberal arts here is fine and good. But this feels most important as a story about the shocking, intentional disconnect between university boards of trustees and the actual students who learn at that university.
Reposted by Michael Pittard
“Noticing” is a rhetorical strategy akin to “just asking questions”—the idea is to lead your audience toward a socially controversial conclusion via a carefully selected trail of mostly errant data, while not actually making any controversial claims yourself, thus negating criticism.
There is a Nazi trope called "noticing."
Nazis will go, "I'm just NOTICING there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood."
"I'm just NOTICING the nose on [target with an aquiline nose]"
"I'm just NOTICING this picture of [elite] shaking hands with a rabbi"
Nazis will go, "I'm just NOTICING there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood."
"I'm just NOTICING the nose on [target with an aquiline nose]"
"I'm just NOTICING this picture of [elite] shaking hands with a rabbi"
July 16, 2025 at 2:39 PM
“Noticing” is a rhetorical strategy akin to “just asking questions”—the idea is to lead your audience toward a socially controversial conclusion via a carefully selected trail of mostly errant data, while not actually making any controversial claims yourself, thus negating criticism.
I've recently become the faculty advisor for Y Ddraig Goch (YDG), the UNC-Greensboro interdisciplinary research journal! We're working on an AI-focused issue, & if you're an undergraduate or graduate student, please send us your paper by August 15! You don't need to attend UNCG to submit.
July 14, 2025 at 3:47 PM
I've recently become the faculty advisor for Y Ddraig Goch (YDG), the UNC-Greensboro interdisciplinary research journal! We're working on an AI-focused issue, & if you're an undergraduate or graduate student, please send us your paper by August 15! You don't need to attend UNCG to submit.
Reposted by Michael Pittard
"The present frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence will not last forever. As the limitations of become clearer+ as the economic returns on massive corporate investments fail to materialize at the expected scale, the speculative bubble will inevitably burst."
www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/i...
www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/i...
Is the AI Bubble About to Burst?
In the years since Automation and the Future of Work first appeared, a new wave of technological enthusiasm has swept across the popular imagination. The catalyst this time has been the rapid advances...
www.versobooks.com
June 9, 2025 at 6:43 PM
"The present frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence will not last forever. As the limitations of become clearer+ as the economic returns on massive corporate investments fail to materialize at the expected scale, the speculative bubble will inevitably burst."
www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/i...
www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/i...
Reposted by Michael Pittard
“Humanities at Work brings together talented students with productive and transformative community partners and demonstrates to the world that pursuing a degree in humanities is a choice that students can and should make.” bit.ly/3ZkcWW9
Humanities at Work Preps Spartans for Real-World Applications of Their Majors | UNC Greensboro
UNCG’s Humanities at Work program celebrated its inaugural class at a showcase where students presented all they had learned.
bit.ly
June 6, 2025 at 7:32 PM
“Humanities at Work brings together talented students with productive and transformative community partners and demonstrates to the world that pursuing a degree in humanities is a choice that students can and should make.” bit.ly/3ZkcWW9
Reposted by Michael Pittard
NEW PIECE by me & @lollardfish.bsky.social on our (always free!) newsletter. We talk about the recent "we're living in a new dark ages/ feudalism" discourse.
"Svetlana Boym warned that “unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.” And Medieval 2025 is beginning to breed some monsters..."
"Svetlana Boym warned that “unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.” And Medieval 2025 is beginning to breed some monsters..."
"Medieval" as a Moral Argument
Some thoughts on recent comparisons of 2025 to the "Dark Ages" and a New "Feudalism"
buttondown.com
June 5, 2025 at 12:34 PM
NEW PIECE by me & @lollardfish.bsky.social on our (always free!) newsletter. We talk about the recent "we're living in a new dark ages/ feudalism" discourse.
"Svetlana Boym warned that “unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.” And Medieval 2025 is beginning to breed some monsters..."
"Svetlana Boym warned that “unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.” And Medieval 2025 is beginning to breed some monsters..."
Reposted by Michael Pittard
If you make me president of your university, I will find millions in cost savings by force-quitting shady EdTech contracts, & I will spend it all by giving faculty an annual budget to buy course books for their students.
June 4, 2025 at 10:54 AM
If you make me president of your university, I will find millions in cost savings by force-quitting shady EdTech contracts, & I will spend it all by giving faculty an annual budget to buy course books for their students.
Reposted by Michael Pittard
Great collection of authentic bigfoots, haters will say they're bears
is it time to bust out my "bigfoot is bears" photo collection again? if your mental image of a bear is a thick-furred, fat glossy male bear in autumn, you're probably not prepared for how weird their proportions can look in spring, or when walking upright, like they frequently do.
June 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Great collection of authentic bigfoots, haters will say they're bears
Reposted by Michael Pittard
Dressing like a guy in Andor now. My shirt collar is also part of my jacket somehow. My tie is some kind of strap. I have two capes on.
May 28, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Dressing like a guy in Andor now. My shirt collar is also part of my jacket somehow. My tie is some kind of strap. I have two capes on.