Ryan Cordell
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ryancordell.org
Ryan Cordell
@ryancordell.org
7.2K followers 1.3K following 19K posts
he/him—textual technologies enthusiast—Associate Professor at UIUC's School of Information Sciences & Department of English—co-director of the Viral Texts Project (viraltexts.org) & Director @skeuomorphpress.org —also https://theanxiousbench.bandcamp.com
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ryancordell.org
Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · Sep 5
Late this summer I got to go into the studio with @pablohutch.bsky.social & our buddy Tim to record some tunes—and our EP is up today on Bandcamp!

I feel a little weird as a middle-aged dude asking folks to listen to my band—but I'm pretty proud of these songs & would love if y’all gave em a listen
Exhalation EP, by The Anxious Bench
3 track album
theanxiousbench.bandcamp.com
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
literaturegeek.bsky.social
I got one of the wood lasercut blocks of @queermedieval.bsky.social's to print better: "We can be soft & brave / silly & right" and "hope comes from us" #DHmakes
Photo of a letterpress print on cream paper with bright green ink. It says "we can be / SOFT & BRAVE / SiLLY & RIGHT" over an image printed using a lasercut wood block made from @queermedieval.bsky.social's drawing of the Portland Frog standing up to evil government agents. Photo of a letterpress print on white paper with bright green ink. It says "HOPE comes from us." over an image printed using a lasercut wood block made from @queermedieval.bsky.social's drawing of the Portland Frog standing up to evil government agents. Photo of a letterpress press bed with a print at one end on white paper with bright green ink. It says "HOPE comes from us." over an image printed using a lasercut wood block made from @queermedieval.bsky.social's drawing of the Portland Frog standing up to evil government agents. At the other end of the press you can see the rollers and wood type that made the print inked in green. Closeup photo of a letterpress print on cream paper with bright green ink. It shows an image printed using a lasercut wood block made from @queermedieval.bsky.social's drawing of the Portland Frog standing up to evil government agents.
November 10, 2025 at 10:01 PM
ryancordell.org
I’ve been teaching awhile now & still get anxious about silly things

Like I know—I KNOW—BookLab is a popular class. It fills, quickly, every single spring

But I still worry every year—what if *this time* they don’t enroll? What if they don’t *like* it anymore?

<checks enrollment> oh no its fine
November 11, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
dorialexander.bsky.social
Actually if you're ever puzzled by the name, you can simply… ask the model.

(we did a relatively good job at personality tuning).
November 10, 2025 at 5:47 PM
ryancordell.org
Listen, the technology & alternative approach to LLM training is interesting & all, but can we focus on the most important detail, which is that the larger model is named "Baguettotron?"

It’s named Baguettotron, people.

BAGUETTOTRON.
dorialexander.bsky.social Alexander Doria @dorialexander.bsky.social · 23h
Breaking: we release a fully synthetic generalist dataset for pretraining, SYNTH and two new SOTA reasoning models exclusively trained on it. Despite having seen only 200 billion tokens, Baguettotron is currently best-in-class in its size range. pleias.fr/blog/blogsyn...
November 10, 2025 at 5:34 PM
ryancordell.org
As always seems to be true @skeuomorphpress.org, the most recent tech is hardest to maintain

We love this 90s-era Brother typewriter—it’s lightweight, super portable, clear impression—but its ink comes in proprietary cartridges that are just gone—ribbon is easy to find for our older machines
November 10, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
ryancordell.org
I know the past weeks have been extremely painful but don’t worry, we got absolutely nothing for it & it was completely useless
November 10, 2025 at 4:19 AM
ryancordell.org
If Democratic Senate leaders were coaching the Chargers in this game

“Welp looks like we’d better forfeit.“
November 10, 2025 at 4:11 AM
ryancordell.org
Everyone *feels* for Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls the football away. We understand that she’s at fault & he’s the victim. But that he keeps falling for it still calls his judgement into question. It probably would prevent me voting Charlie Brown into an important government position, for instance.
November 10, 2025 at 1:25 AM
ryancordell.org
My god but the Democrats will always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, won’t they?

Somehow @schumer.senate.gov & company saw America rally behind them a few days ago & decided “well we can’t have that can we?”
November 10, 2025 at 1:10 AM
ryancordell.org
This is the team nearest to my parents & we go to games all the time each summer. I don’t care whether there are yaks in Virginia I’ve always been sad about the lackluster “Red Sox” & am beyond excited to root for—& sport gear from—the Ridge Yaks
thetattooedprof.bsky.social Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 2d
Looks like Minor League rebranding season has begun. One or two teams either move and change names/identities (more common) or stay put but just totally rebrand like Salem (less common, but pumps up merchandise sales, which is not nothing). Anyway, the Salem Red Sox are now the...Ridge Yaks
The old Salem Red Sox logo, which is a red "S" styles in a similar way to the Boston Red Sox "B" logo. The new logo for the Salem minor league team. It's the "Ridge Yaks," with a mean-lpoking rat paddling a kayak towards you. No, I don't really understand either.
November 9, 2025 at 4:34 PM
ryancordell.org
Ok we had a super fun week with 5pm dressing up as 10pm I’m done with that now thank you
November 8, 2025 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
ryancordell.org
It’s very much a prototype but I have to share a preview of the interface @djevans.bsky.social is working on for our Viral Texts data—it maps reprinting data back onto the newspaper page, allowing users to browse what reprints appeared together on each page—with links back to full reprint clusters
November 7, 2025 at 4:49 PM
ryancordell.org
Back in the binding circle @skeuomorphpress.org finishing the Le Guin books. Will be finally mailing them next week!
A group of people sitting around a table with stacks of paper and various book binding supplies a table with stacks of paper and various book binding supplies. Hands are sewing sheets
November 7, 2025 at 10:25 PM
ryancordell.org
It’s very much a prototype but I have to share a preview of the interface @djevans.bsky.social is working on for our Viral Texts data—it maps reprinting data back onto the newspaper page, allowing users to browse what reprints appeared together on each page—with links back to full reprint clusters
November 7, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
ryancordell.org
Job alert!

@ischoolui.bsky.social is hiring in 4 areas this year

Early literacies: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information behavior/HCI/UX: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information, Culture & Society: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Open IS: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
November 6, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
literaturegeek.bsky.social
#DHmakes <3s sharing first tries at crafts, making, & art—and documenting your process so others can enjoy, understand, & maybe get inspired to try it too. @loreandordure.com on bookbinding:
loreandordure.com Kate Watson @loreandordure.com · 5d
This is the (for now) final post of a multi-day thread documenting my first try at bookbinding. Click and scroll up to see the whole story!
loreandordure.com Kate Watson @loreandordure.com · 5d
Just snuck a quick peek before tucking it back to press and… yeah, it’s a book!
November 6, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
quinnanya.me
For real, if you can knit, whip up a Portland Frog hat or similar. I wore this it out this morning and the looks of joy on the way, especially from one of the construction workers. It's a small thing to say someone's paying attention to what's going on. #DHmakes swatch.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...
Quinn wearing a Portland Frog hat, asymmetrical glasses, and a maroon sweater
November 6, 2025 at 4:22 PM
ryancordell.org
The gold lettering on the walls gives strong "AirBnB with 2.9 stars" energy
November 6, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
tedunderwood.com
Our School of Information Sciences is running four searches, and we can hire more than four candidates. Here’s the first link, for a job that might appeal to people working in history of information, history of science, or digital humanities. +
Assistant/Associate/Full Professor in Information, Culture & Society - School of Information Science
Duties & Responsibilities
illinois.csod.com
November 6, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
johnrogers.bsky.social
The truly maddening thing is that, unlike when I was a young man in science and the materials and engineering just weren’t there yet, the future is *right there.* The problem is *solved*. What’s holding us back is not just greed, but this bizarre nostalgia, an obsession with petro- masculinity.
marklemley.bsky.social Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 5d
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
electrek.co
November 6, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
glennf.com
I offer inscribed/signed and giftwrapped copies of my book Six Centuries of Type & Printing if you have a discriminating and hard-to-shop-for typophile or designer in your life! sixcent.info
Copy of Six Centuries of Type & Printing giftwrapped and regular: on top, giftwrapped copy in red paper with typographic artifacts printed in black; it rests askew on an unwrapped copy with its green cloth cover and the title and author stamped in foil slightly obscured.
October 29, 2025 at 5:58 PM
ryancordell.org
Job alert!

@ischoolui.bsky.social is hiring in 4 areas this year

Early literacies: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information behavior/HCI/UX: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information, Culture & Society: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Open IS: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
November 6, 2025 at 3:54 PM
ryancordell.org
Just learned that a local friend & occasional musical collaborator passed away suddenly earlier this week. She was a few years younger than me. She has little kids. We both loved sad Christmas songs & I was looking forward to singing some together next month—hard to imagine that won’t happen again
November 6, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Ryan Cordell
ryancordell.org
Increasingly the Venn diagram of my intellectual interests & commitments—digital humanities, book history/bibliography, book arts, critical making—perhaps meet in the region "Luddite Humanities"

Not technological rejection—but slower, deliberate, critical, historicized engagement with technology
November 6, 2025 at 2:50 AM