robert p. baird
@robertpbaird.com
Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. || I'm on a Bsky hiatus, but THE NIMBUS, my debut novel, is now available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. || robertpbaird.com
Pinned
robert p. baird
@robertpbaird.com
· Nov 20
Such a treat to find THE NIMBUS on WaPo’s list of the best fiction of the year! www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/1...
Reposted by robert p. baird
"A modern-day concentration camp ... People have been killed by the staff here." Irish citizen Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention since September, despite having a valid work permit and his own business in the US.
February 10, 2026 at 10:09 AM
"A modern-day concentration camp ... People have been killed by the staff here." Irish citizen Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention since September, despite having a valid work permit and his own business in the US.
Reposted by robert p. baird
For Backlisted to take an extended hiatus (at least) is almost too much to bear at this moment. The awfulness of the past 10 years can't be denied, and yet Backlisted has also existed during that time. A true boon and balm.
Tomorrow we release the final episode of Backlisted for the foreseeable future.* After ten years, it's a very odd feeling. I am looking forward to spending more time with my books and fewer times on social media.
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
At Last I Am Free
YouTube video by Robert Wyatt - Topic
www.youtube.com
February 10, 2026 at 4:22 PM
For Backlisted to take an extended hiatus (at least) is almost too much to bear at this moment. The awfulness of the past 10 years can't be denied, and yet Backlisted has also existed during that time. A true boon and balm.
I‘ve messed around with Claude enough to believe that in at least one specific way, LLMs are going to transform serious journalism & humanities research, similar to what they’re doing for coding: turning bounded but unstructured information (read: archives) into structured machine-analyzable data.
February 10, 2026 at 1:04 PM
I‘ve messed around with Claude enough to believe that in at least one specific way, LLMs are going to transform serious journalism & humanities research, similar to what they’re doing for coding: turning bounded but unstructured information (read: archives) into structured machine-analyzable data.
Reposted by robert p. baird
also true of the etruscan language
February 10, 2026 at 12:22 PM
also true of the etruscan language
Reposted by robert p. baird
CALL FOR PITCHES
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
February 9, 2026 at 1:56 PM
CALL FOR PITCHES
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
Noooool! Heartbreak. But congratulations on a fantastic run.
Tomorrow we release the final episode of Backlisted for the foreseeable future.* After ten years, it's a very odd feeling. I am looking forward to spending more time with my books and fewer times on social media.
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
At Last I Am Free
YouTube video by Robert Wyatt - Topic
www.youtube.com
February 9, 2026 at 11:38 AM
Noooool! Heartbreak. But congratulations on a fantastic run.
Reposted by robert p. baird
Tomorrow we release the final episode of Backlisted for the foreseeable future.* After ten years, it's a very odd feeling. I am looking forward to spending more time with my books and fewer times on social media.
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
At Last I Am Free
YouTube video by Robert Wyatt - Topic
www.youtube.com
February 9, 2026 at 8:31 AM
Tomorrow we release the final episode of Backlisted for the foreseeable future.* After ten years, it's a very odd feeling. I am looking forward to spending more time with my books and fewer times on social media.
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
* Boats against the current, we beat on via Patreon.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQK...
Prisencolinensinainciusol!
February 7, 2026 at 3:09 AM
Prisencolinensinainciusol!
Reposted by robert p. baird
Yesterday, alongside New York’s Cutest, I was proud to announce a major step forward for early childhood education in our city. We’re officially launching 2-K and expanding 3-K by opening a request for new providers ready to help deliver these essential services.
February 6, 2026 at 4:26 PM
Yesterday, alongside New York’s Cutest, I was proud to announce a major step forward for early childhood education in our city. We’re officially launching 2-K and expanding 3-K by opening a request for new providers ready to help deliver these essential services.
“We will stand with the stranger.” I’m sure he’ll break my heart at some point, but today is not that day.
Mamdani announces a new executive order protecting New Yorkers from "abusive immigration enforcement," including requiring ICE to have a judicial warrant to enter NYC property
February 6, 2026 at 4:31 PM
“We will stand with the stranger.” I’m sure he’ll break my heart at some point, but today is not that day.
Reposted by robert p. baird
Reposted by robert p. baird
Pour one out for every professional political pundit, writer, consultant whatever that has spent the last decade trying to pretend that the Trump phenomenon was about trade or opiates and not a big chunk of white america losing its mind over having a black president bsky.app/profile/kyle...
A screenshot from a video posted on Trump's Truth Social account: truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...
February 6, 2026 at 9:28 AM
Pour one out for every professional political pundit, writer, consultant whatever that has spent the last decade trying to pretend that the Trump phenomenon was about trade or opiates and not a big chunk of white america losing its mind over having a black president bsky.app/profile/kyle...
Reposted by robert p. baird
"Donald Trump--not having asked to be born, and who, in that sense, cannot be charged with the credits or demerits of the corporeal existence God has gifted or cursed him with--posted a racist video of Kamala Harris and Barack Obama as monkeys"
"it was far from clear if the mind truly commands the body, or if Trump was, in a distinctly non-cartesian sense, a passenger in the flow of reality and therefore not responsible for the wildly racist thing his physical manifestation posted"
"When he said those words, it is not clear whether his brain was aware of what he was doing or if his mind was far away in a starless lightless void of enlightenment"
February 6, 2026 at 2:18 PM
"Donald Trump--not having asked to be born, and who, in that sense, cannot be charged with the credits or demerits of the corporeal existence God has gifted or cursed him with--posted a racist video of Kamala Harris and Barack Obama as monkeys"
Reposted by robert p. baird
"When he said those words, it is not clear whether his brain was aware of what he was doing or if his mind was far away in a starless lightless void of enlightenment"
Have no fear, New York Times is ON IT.
February 6, 2026 at 1:54 PM
"When he said those words, it is not clear whether his brain was aware of what he was doing or if his mind was far away in a starless lightless void of enlightenment"
I know no one on here needs another reason to distrust the AI hype, but OpenAI deciding to sell ads is probably the biggest one yet. That might be something you do to make a lot of money. It's not something you do when you believe your product is going to fundamentally rewire the economy.
February 6, 2026 at 1:34 AM
I know no one on here needs another reason to distrust the AI hype, but OpenAI deciding to sell ads is probably the biggest one yet. That might be something you do to make a lot of money. It's not something you do when you believe your product is going to fundamentally rewire the economy.
Reposted by robert p. baird
I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.
February 4, 2026 at 7:41 PM
I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.
Much respect to John and his colleagues. They deserve so much better than this.
I'll say more before too long, but for now: Thanks to anyone who has ever read and supported the Post's books coverage.
February 4, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Much respect to John and his colleagues. They deserve so much better than this.
This is hard for me to admit, having spent my entire youth suffocating in the toxic miasma of Boomer 60’s nostalgia, but I’ll confess I’ve been thinking a lot about the late 50’s and early 60’s a lot recently. Not because I want an exact replay, but it was at least *a* model for a counterculture.
February 4, 2026 at 3:20 PM
This is hard for me to admit, having spent my entire youth suffocating in the toxic miasma of Boomer 60’s nostalgia, but I’ll confess I’ve been thinking a lot about the late 50’s and early 60’s a lot recently. Not because I want an exact replay, but it was at least *a* model for a counterculture.
Reposted by robert p. baird
later this month, I’m doing a small mid-Atlantic tour of events for Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century:
Weds, 2/18 at Princeton’s McGraw Center
Thursday, 2/19 at Rutgers NB’s English Dept
Friday, 2/20 at the CUNY Grad Center
If you are at any of these places, please come!
Weds, 2/18 at Princeton’s McGraw Center
Thursday, 2/19 at Rutgers NB’s English Dept
Friday, 2/20 at the CUNY Grad Center
If you are at any of these places, please come!
February 2, 2026 at 1:28 PM
later this month, I’m doing a small mid-Atlantic tour of events for Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century:
Weds, 2/18 at Princeton’s McGraw Center
Thursday, 2/19 at Rutgers NB’s English Dept
Friday, 2/20 at the CUNY Grad Center
If you are at any of these places, please come!
Weds, 2/18 at Princeton’s McGraw Center
Thursday, 2/19 at Rutgers NB’s English Dept
Friday, 2/20 at the CUNY Grad Center
If you are at any of these places, please come!
A good/bad day to remember when Mark Zuckerberg welched on a handshake deal with Don Graham in 2005. Graham, trying to be decent, didn’t push MZ, and WaPo lost out on billions of $$$. Instead of calling out Zuckerberg as a dishonorable shitheel, a media reporter mocked Graham as “Dudley Do-Right.”
February 4, 2026 at 3:06 PM
A good/bad day to remember when Mark Zuckerberg welched on a handshake deal with Don Graham in 2005. Graham, trying to be decent, didn’t push MZ, and WaPo lost out on billions of $$$. Instead of calling out Zuckerberg as a dishonorable shitheel, a media reporter mocked Graham as “Dudley Do-Right.”
Jeff Bezos, who made his fortune selling books, closes one of the last major book-review outlets. I would say the irony is rich, but events like this suggest that irony—like all the best literary values—is very poor indeed.
WaPo also closing Books section and downsizing International and Metro sections
February 4, 2026 at 2:24 PM
Jeff Bezos, who made his fortune selling books, closes one of the last major book-review outlets. I would say the irony is rich, but events like this suggest that irony—like all the best literary values—is very poor indeed.
Michael Hofmann, not mincing cognates (re César Vallejo Englishers, in the 12.4 LRB).
February 4, 2026 at 1:23 PM
Michael Hofmann, not mincing cognates (re César Vallejo Englishers, in the 12.4 LRB).
Reposted by robert p. baird
This cannot be something a civilian law enforcement agent is allowed to wear in the US — and an agency that has a culture that tolerates this cannot be saved.
Fucking surreal that people dressed like this and carrying assault rifles are permitted to kidnap people off our streets
February 4, 2026 at 12:53 AM
This cannot be something a civilian law enforcement agent is allowed to wear in the US — and an agency that has a culture that tolerates this cannot be saved.
Two things that have genuinely surprised me in recent years is just how pathetic our ultraelites sound when talking to one another, and how cheaply they can be bought. Not that I thought they were paragons of dignity, but it’s remarkable how petty (in multiple dimensions) they all seem in private.
Beautiful.
February 3, 2026 at 1:57 PM
Two things that have genuinely surprised me in recent years is just how pathetic our ultraelites sound when talking to one another, and how cheaply they can be bought. Not that I thought they were paragons of dignity, but it’s remarkable how petty (in multiple dimensions) they all seem in private.
Recent experiments with Claude Code have convinced me, contra the Bluesky consensus, that LLMs are good enough for coding that they can be used productively for specific software tasks.* But they’ve convinced me even more that no LLM should be used autonomously or trusted blindly for anything, ever.
February 2, 2026 at 2:23 PM
Recent experiments with Claude Code have convinced me, contra the Bluesky consensus, that LLMs are good enough for coding that they can be used productively for specific software tasks.* But they’ve convinced me even more that no LLM should be used autonomously or trusted blindly for anything, ever.