Hester Blum | Lightnews

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 19d

www.studlife.com/news/2025/10...

Arts & Sciences Dean says WashU will not sign Trump’s higher ed compact as-is - Student Life

Dean of WashU’s College of Arts & Sciences, Feng Sheng Hu, told faculty at a meeting on Tuesday that Chancellor Andrew D. Martin does not plan to sign the Trump administration’s compact for higher edu...

www.studlife.com

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 20d

Oooh I will!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 20d

WashU will NOT sign the compact, as the dean of arts and sciences announced just now to faculty – the dean was told by the chancellor that he could share that information (and that moment was the closest I’ve ever seen a college-wide faculty meeting come to a standing ovation).

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 23d

St Louis says NO KINGS in thunder (and lightning)

STL NO KINGS in front of the Gateway Arch

STL NO KINGS , Amphiba: amphibians against facism

Antifa cavalry riding a pink and blue hippo

DT as Marie Antoinette: “no health care for you but a ballroom for the queen”

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Oct 11

What Democratic candidates should be fighting for

Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · Oct 11

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · Oct 11

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Oct 8

Skrillex

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Sep 27

Yesssssss @sunsetandecho.bsky.social !!

Sarah Mesle’s brilliant new book Reasons & Feelings: writing for the humanities now, with a bright red-pink cover featuring a tattoo-style arrow, saying hello to my tattoo of a Temple toggle harpoon head

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Sep 14

A minor G on you

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Sep 14

The Penn State BoT is killing the public radio station. WPSU serves a half million rural Pennsylvanians, and it was cut at the same time the Board gave the PSU president--whose greatest hits include closing 7 (seven!) PSU campuses--a 1.1 million dollar raise. Please sign

www.change.org/p/save-wpsu

Sign the Petition

SAVE WPSU

www.change.org

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 25

Freakonomics just re-aired its three-part series on the history of whaling – it was a joy and an honor to be part of that conversation: freakonomics.com/podcast/what...

What Can Whales Teach Us About Clean Energy, Workplace Harmony, and Living the Good Life? (Update) - Freakonomics

freakonomics.com

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 21

If only the non-Lego Endurance were so well cradled

The fully-constructed Lego Endurance, elaborately packed by excellent movers and ungrammatically labeled

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 20

(the story of how I came to have Melville's commode: avidly.org/2021/12/05/h...)

Herman Melville’s Commode

I have recently become the reverential custodian of a commode that belonged to Herman Melville. I achieved this honor through an unlikely sequence of events that began with a Facebook post about a …

avidly.org

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 20

thank you, very excited!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 20

We are about to move, I finally opened the bottle of hard cider made from apples from Arrowhead, Melville's farm. It was dry and lovely and I drank it amid the packed-up broken pieces of marble that top Melville's commode, which I was even more wonderfully given a few years ago.

The wooden surface of a c19 commode, missing its marble topping, with joinery and screw visible.

yr correspondent with a glass of cider sitting on the floor of an old, garishly painted house surrounded by packed-up bits of art and broken marble and a leather couch not yet packed

My spouse pouring out a green bottle of cider made from Herman Melville's apple trees, with the cap labeled "A" for Arrowhead

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 19

Resharing my A.I. statement for the fall semester—I’ll be amending “hallucinatory” because hallucinations are actually interesting and original.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jan 9

My draft of a syllabus statement on a.i. for my writing class, for what it is worth:

A NOTE ON GENERATIVE AI

This class helps you to be a better writer and thinker. Generative AI (ChatGPT and other platforms) is neither writing nor thinking. Any use of AI in this class (whether to write, brainstorm, outline, or summarize) will be considered a violation of academic integrity. It undermines your intellectual development, for one: AI content is often inaccurate or hallucinatory and is always boring, banal, and average. This is by design, as generative AI works by predicting the most obvious or basic sequencing of words. Good writing—writing that is persuasive, powerful, lively, funny, surprising, rousing, insightful, transformative, provocative—requires human work. Human creativity is weird and variable and uneven, but it holds the capacity for growth, revelation, empathy, and brilliance. I urge you not to abandon the glorious experiential potential of human messiness and transformation for the tedium of robot sentences.

One further reason to abjure generative AI, especially in a class on environmental literature: in addition to its counterproductivity to your work as a writer and thinker, AI is enormously environmentally destructive.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 16

Excellent to see this resource, @annakornbluh.bsky.social—thank you. (I’ll be updating my syllabus statement from last spring: bsky.app/profile/hest...)

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 15

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 15

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 9

This is super excellent, Haaris!

Harris Feinsod @feinsod.bsky.social · Aug 8

We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/

Home | The Tidewater Initiative

We are a multidisciplinary research group devoted to study, stewardship, and stories of working waterfronts, coastal infrastructures, and oceans under conditions of globalization and environmental ins...

sites.krieger.jhu.edu

Harris Feinsod @feinsod.bsky.social · Aug 8

We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/

Home | The Tidewater Initiative

We are a multidisciplinary research group devoted to study, stewardship, and stories of working waterfronts, coastal infrastructures, and oceans under conditions of globalization and environmental ins...

sites.krieger.jhu.edu

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 1

self-hugged 🙋‍♀️

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Aug 1

Happy birthday HM

Bananas paragraph from Herman Melville's Mardi: "And here, in this impenetrable retreat, centrally slumbered the universe-rounded, zodiac-belted, horizon-zoned, sea-girt, reef-sashed, mountain-locked, arbor-nested, royalty-girdled, arm-clasped, self-hugged, indivisible Donjalolo, absolute monarch of Juam:—the husk-inhusked meat in a nut; the innermost spark in a ruby; the juice-nested seed in a goldenrinded orange; the red royal stone in an effeminate peach; the insphered sphere of spheres."

ProfKori @profkori.bsky.social · Jul 30

Look at what the fabulous Dr. Sarah Mesle and I are up to!!! We’re offering a seminar at C19's 2026 conference in Cincinnati, Ohio! Proposals aren't due until September 15th, so you've got plenty of time. Spread the word!

Details on how to apply, etc., at www.c19society.org/2026-confere...

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jul 25

Ooooh that looks excellent

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jul 25

Ephemera studies is the best

Allegra Rosenberg @tchotchke.bsky.social · Jul 25

let out a very happy sound at the sight of @hesterblum.bsky.social cited in this book about early 20th century female film fangirls ... MY INTERESTS !!!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jul 25

Oh wow, this makes me happy, thank you Allegra!! What is the book?

Allegra Rosenberg @tchotchke.bsky.social · Jul 25

let out a very happy sound at the sight of @hesterblum.bsky.social cited in this book about early 20th century female film fangirls ... MY INTERESTS !!!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jul 24

Meredith McGill‘s chapter in my edited collection Turns of Event addresses this beautifully! @mlmcgill.bsky.social

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jul 5

Well-governed angels the both of them

VictorianLondon @victorianlondon.bsky.social · Jul 5

The romantic fiction you didn't know you wanted to read.

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