Nicholas Birns
nicholasbirns.bsky.social
Nicholas Birns
@nicholasbirns.bsky.social

Academic, literary critic etc. teaching at NYU. Books from Cambridge UP, Bloomsbury, Broadview, Palgrave, U of South Carolina P, Sydney UP, Routledge. He/him

Nicholas Birns is a scholar of literature, including fantasy and Australian literature. As a Tolkien scholar he has written on a variety of topics including "The Scouring of the Shire" and Tolkien's biblical sources. His analysis of the writings of Anthony Powell and Roberto Bolaño has been admired by scholars. .. more

Art 28%
Political science 22%

Polish mountain dancing/singing

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

John Lancester's parenthetical about AI "hallucinations" is fascinating: "(That word, by the way, is another piece of disguised salesmanship. Talk of ‘hallucinations’ distracts us from the fact that AIs get things wrong all the time... 1/2
‘Our tech overlords like the idea of being Thomas Edison, genius inventor-businessman, but they often have more in common with P.T. Barnum, genius of marketing and hype. Altman could go toe-to-toe with Barnum, and I wouldn’t want to pick a winner.’

John Lanchester:

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
John Lanchester · King of Cannibal Island: Will the AI bubble burst?
Nvidia shares are the purest bet you can make on the impact of AI. The leading firms are lending money to one another in...
www.lrb.co.uk

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

‘Even the individuals closest to Suleyman had agendas that historians have taken decades to unpack and understand. The danger in sidestepping this work is being blinded by the sources.’

Helen Pfeifer on Christopher de Bellaigue’s account of Suleyman the Magnificent.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Helen Pfeifer · Turn around and run: Suleyman the Magnificent
The life of the tenth Ottoman sultan, Suleyman, known in Europe as the Magnificent and in Turkey as the Lawgiver, has...
www.lrb.co.uk
‘Our tech overlords like the idea of being Thomas Edison, genius inventor-businessman, but they often have more in common with P.T. Barnum, genius of marketing and hype. Altman could go toe-to-toe with Barnum, and I wouldn’t want to pick a winner.’

John Lanchester:

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
John Lanchester · King of Cannibal Island: Will the AI bubble burst?
Nvidia shares are the purest bet you can make on the impact of AI. The leading firms are lending money to one another in...
www.lrb.co.uk
A federal judge in Boston interrupted the administration’s efforts to force 15,000 people with legal status in the US to leave by revoking their parole just days before Christmas. Learn who these people are & ask yourself how this makes us any safer. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...
A Little Good News on a Saturday Night
Saturday night, a federal judge prevented the Trump administration from revoking “parole” as many as 15,000 people who don’t have legal immigration status but have been permitted to remain in the U.S.
open.substack.com

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

"The Last Living Atlanticist Widow Tells All" (forthcoming)

Talk I am giving February 26. Will post registration link when I have it..

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

If you want to understand the reality Ukrainian soldiers experience at the front watch 2000 Meters to Andriivka, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov.
2000 Meters to Andriivka (official trailer) | FRONTLINE
YouTube video by FRONTLINE PBS | Official
youtu.be

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

Thread! & check out my new column for some Commonsensical contexts:

www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/01/cons...
🚨 NEW VIDEO 👇🏽This puts an end to all the lies. Horrific.

They were having a calm exchange seconds before he murdered Renee Good, and she was barely moving and clearly avoiding him.

Stop the lies.

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

Found this in an old suit jacket, Momentos of my trip to Serbia in 2014..

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said an American takeover of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance. Her comments came in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed call for the mineral-rich Arctic island to come under U.S. control.
Danish prime minister says a US takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says an American takeover of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance.
bit.ly
kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

I tend to think I stay up to date on Warwick Anderson’s publications. But just came across his 2017 paper on ‘Coolie Therapeutics.’ A lovely short paper, one that touches on lots of themes from earlier publications while also exploring new terrain. Final para on Ackerknecht’s sig today is great.

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

Three more volumes from the Routledge sale that all landed separately. It’s very 18th century heavy… 📚 #histbookchat

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

This little indoor herb garden has really driven home why dill is called dillweed.
In a study following 23 million people age 18-59 (pretty young) for 4 years…despite the fact that the ones who got the COVID vaccine were overall older and sicker at baseline, they not only had 74% lower risk of dying from COVID than the unvaccinated but 25% lower risk of dying from any other cause!

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

Refreshingly clear-eyed editorial in the Globe and Mail: Venezuela's fate is a warning for Canada.

www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...
Globe editorial: The Sunday Editorial: Venezuela’s fate is a warning for Canada
U.S. military action to seize Nicolás Maduro marks the formal debut of an imperial America
www.theglobeandmail.com

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

My man looks like vandals covered a statue with lunch meat
In celebration of Mamdani's first day in office, the map from our 2016 NYC atlas celebrating Queens as the most linguistically diverse place on earth. (800 languages spoken in NYC, according to NY's Endangered Language Institute, which collaborated with us on this map.

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

It’s quite telling that so many right-wing dealers in nostalgia are embracing the aesthetics of modern AI-generated art. Can’t actually find real images of the imagined past to which you want us to return? No problem; just generate it with AI.

From Mimi Pond’s graphic biography of the Mitford sisters – the Communist Party of the United States in 1994 being a bit Trumpian.

Reposted by Nicholas Birns

Did a lot of teaching this year and not a lot of writing, but kept a newsletter stacked with author interviews and ran an essay on Denis Johnson to close out the year. open.substack.com/pub/kevinkoc...
The humanity of Denis Johnson
How the American author finds the best parts of us in his work
open.substack.com

Some grammar time
Don't need to imagine, Sinatra had something to say about multicultural liberal democracies 🧵

Biggest tree in town

Thanks to New York University by the way for supporting its faculty in publishing open access.