Brian Ruh
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brianruh.bsky.social
Brian Ruh
@brianruh.bsky.social
2.5K followers 3.2K following 3.3K posts
Independent scholar, PhD in communication and culture, occasional writer, always looking for a new project. I wrote a book on Mamoru Oshii’s films.
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Reposted by Brian Ruh
jeanneologist.bsky.social
So lemme tell you about @adapalmer.bsky.social's Inventing the Renaissance, which came out last year and absolutely blew me away.

I'd replace half the 1st-year curriculum with this book.

Reading it made me a better historian, and also the kind of person who underlines books.

Plus, it's hilarious.
Cover of "Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age" by Ada Palmer, which is bright orange with white text, and has a greyscale image of the statue of Perseus holding Medusa's head aloft, his sword passing through the letters of the word "the"
February 16, 2026 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
jayceb.bsky.social
I decided to forgo an Angel’s Egg rewatch screening and be comfy at home with a much later Oshii blindspot. As a work of glacial animated stillness, I doubt The Sky Crawlers (2008) has any equal. A world every bit as twisted and dark as Ghost in the Shell rendered in pure serenity. Stunning ennui.
A cute Bassett hound lounging on a sofa A military aircraft dogfight in the sky Car headlights nearing the wreckage of a downed aircraft A young man, maybe as young (physically) as a teenager, leaning out of a window and enjoying the breeze The Sky Crawlers (2008), Mamoru Oshii
February 17, 2026 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
nkalamb.bsky.social
A conscientious journalism grad withdraw from a job when she learned the Cleveland Plain Dealer uses AI to write its stories.

Now the editor is castigating her and journalism professors for not being “prepared for the workforce.”

You can’t make this shit up.

www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02...
By Chris Quinn, Editor, cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer A college student withdrew from consideration for a reporting role in our newsroom this week because of how we use artificial intelligence. It reminded me again how college journalism programs are failing to prepare students for the workforce. I mentioned this in a column before, and readers asked me to explain
February 16, 2026 at 12:16 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
I unironically love monorails.
February 15, 2026 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
ninametz.bsky.social
Inspired by a delightful back-and-forth on here recently between @robertloerzel.bsky.social & @ladytophamcatt.bsky.social sharing photos of the Chicago Municipal Device, I thought it’d be fun to write about what the hell it even is and why you can spot it all over town once you look for it

Gift 🔗
The Chicago Municipal Device is the city symbol few Chicagoans know about
The backstory of Chicago’s century-old symbol — a “Y” inside a circle — that can be found dotted throughout the city.
www.chicagotribune.com
February 11, 2026 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
philthebrit.bsky.social
But you have to listen to contemporary pop music in its original Klingon.
a man in red pants is playing a guitar
ALT: a man in red pants is playing a guitar
media.tenor.com
February 15, 2026 at 5:11 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
Watching the most recent Starfleet Academy episode
Hank from King of the Hill with the text “DANG IT B'AVI”
February 15, 2026 at 5:12 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
If there’s one thing I really dislike about recent Star Trek, it’s the use of contemporary pop music.
February 15, 2026 at 3:26 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
“Palestinian poets see their work fuel debate when used in Japan school exam” mainichi.jp/english/arti...
Palestinian poets see their work fuel debate when used in Japan school exam - The Mainichi
NEW YORK (Kyodo) -- During an entrance exam for a top middle school in Japan in January, students were asked to read two poems depicting life in Pales
mainichi.jp
February 15, 2026 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
universitypress.cambridge.org
Watch as illustrator Katie Idle recreates her cover design for 'Athena’s Sisters' @cambridgebookshop.bsky.social 🎨🤩

Katherine Backler's new book transforms our understanding of Classical Athenian culture and society by approaching it from women's perspectives.

Read more 🔗 https://cup.org/3MwAzY5
February 15, 2026 at 2:09 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
This evening we went to eat at an American Irish pub and then saw a performance of a play called “The Revolutionists” at the local civic theater.
February 15, 2026 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
maxdubler.com
So much of our present crisis is coddled, ignorant, and short sighted people tearing down the institutions that protect them because they don’t understand that bad things can happen.
That old saw about how "good times make weak men" is true in the sense that stable times with material abundance create reactionaries who want to destroy the systems that protect them because they're too sheltered and stupid to understand that things can get meaningfully worse. Jason CO @jasonc_nc. 2/8/25 I don't think a lot of people appreciate how much of their overall lifestyle and relative certainty is backstopped by a steady, boring stability of systems they don't understand or even realize exist. • 24 L7 1.8K 15K Ill 399K ... Max Dubler @maxdubler True decadence looks like people who are three generations removed from the cultural memory of polio refusing to vaccinate their children against deadly communicable diseases because they don't like needles and don't think there will be any consequences, not queer
February 14, 2026 at 8:37 PM
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pinballwitch.bsky.social
happy v day
juri from revolutionary girl utena with the text "roses are red, violets are blue, zettai unmei mokushiroku"
February 14, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
komdehagens.bsky.social
A little leftover video from last year: My review of Yoji Yamada's lovely Tokyo Taxi (with Chieko Baishō and Takuya Kimura):
youtu.be/vgHxSBDrypQ
Yoji Yamada takes us on one more round through Tokyo in his: Tokyo Taxi (2025, TOKYOタクシー)
YouTube video by Compendium of Discomfort
youtu.be
February 5, 2026 at 10:26 PM
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metalclassicist.bsky.social
Have some Emperor Julian Valentines today for some hot & heavy Hellenism.
Let's be more than Platonic. Let's be Neoplatonic. Do you practice the hieratic arts of lamblichus? Because when you're with me l have theurge. Are you a Persian soldier? Because you've found your way to my heart. Are you a Persian soldier? Because you've found your way to my heart.
February 14, 2024 at 12:43 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
Mamoru Oshii: “I’m not that interested in cyberpunk, and I haven’t actually read many cyberpunk works, to be honest. I don’t care about it.”

I wish I’d had that quote when I was writing my entry on Oshii for “Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture”. I’d certainly have included it.
Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture
A collection of engaging essays on some of the most significant figures in cyberpunk culture, this outstanding guide charts the rich and varied landscape of cyberpunk from the 1970s to present day. T...
www.routledge.com
February 14, 2026 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
olivia.science
These people don't even understand the tech sector is meant to give — yes, give — money to academia (which is a different problem that leads to conflicts of interest)... not the other way round in order to steal data and intellectual labour
February 14, 2026 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
badideas.bsky.social
In regards to what’s going on at the Berlinale film festival, here is footage of Godard & Truffaut shutting down the 1968 Cannes Film Festival in solidarity with students workers & protestors getting brutalized by police in the streets, & probably Godard’s best line about film criticism ever
February 14, 2026 at 1:20 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
This really does sound like a horror. It’s a metaphor for itself, or something.
February 14, 2026 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
existentialcomics.com
The Invention of Anarchism -
existentialcomics.com/comic/637
The Invention of Anarachism
A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes
existentialcomics.com
January 12, 2026 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
existentialcomics.com
Hobbes vs Anarchism
existentialcomics.com/comic/640
Hobbes vs Anarchism
A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes
existentialcomics.com
February 2, 2026 at 5:26 PM
brianruh.bsky.social
I’ve been wondering this for a while now - could part of the animosity be based on NCAR’s architecture? I’m sure it doesn’t help.
cnn.com CNN @cnn.com · 3d
A leading American research lab is slated to lose its critical supercomputing facility, according to a letter released by the National Science Foundation.https://cnn.it/3MoF7zU
February 14, 2026 at 3:22 AM
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ruairidubh.bsky.social
#JamesConnolly #Belfast
February 14, 2026 at 3:10 AM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
philplait.bsky.social
Hey, if you want your mind absolutely crushed into dust today then read my article at Scientific American about how much energy is released when two supermassive black holes collide. To borrow from Douglas Adams, it's the best bang since the big one.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

🧪 🔭
How much energy is released when supermassive black holes collide?
The collision of supermassive black holes shakes the entire cosmos, hard
www.scientificamerican.com
February 13, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Brian Ruh
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
A genuinely alarming piece in the NYT about how the developers, scientists and assorted techbros behind "AI companions"/"synthetic care" do not even know or understand the potential harms of the tech they're developing but they're too greedy to stop themselves from developing it.
“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. Yet few people realize that some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools. “Zero percent of my emotional needs are met by A.I.,” an executive who ran a team mitigating safety risks at a top lab told me. “I’m in it up to my eyeballs at work, and I’m careful.” Many others said the same thing: Even as they build A.I. tools, they hope they never feel the need to turn to machines for emotional support. As a researcher who develops cutting-edge capabilities for artificial emotion put it, “that would be a dark day.” Developers I spoke to said the same incentives that make bots irresistible can stand in the way of reasonable safeguards, making outright abstention the only sure way to stay safe. Some described feeling stuck between protecting users and raising profits: They support guardrails in theory, but don’t want to compromise the product experience in practice. It’s little wonder the protections that do get built can seem largely symbolic — you have to squint to see the fine-print notice that “ChatGPT can make mistakes” or that Character.AI is “not a real person.” “I’ve seen the way people operate in this space,” said one engineer who worked at a number of tech companies. “They’re here to make money. It’s a business at the end of the day.” But even if companies can curb serious dependence on A.I. companions — an open question — many of the developers I spoke with were troubled by even moderate use of these apps. That’s because people who manage to resist full-blown digital companions can still find themselves hooked on A.I.-mediated love. When machines draft texts, craft vows and tell people how to process their own emotions, every relationship turns into “a throuple,” a founder of a conversational A.I. business said. “We’re all polyamorous now. It’s you, me and the A.I.”
February 13, 2026 at 2:58 PM