"Font debate" is trending?! I love font debates! Marco Rubio . . . Times New Roman . . . oh, for fuck's sake . . .

I have been thinking a lot lately about the aging stockpile of XML tooling upon which our installed base of #TEI rests. I regard the situation as dire: lots of tools that were written in Java, haven't been meaningfully touched since the aughties, and which weren't designed for modern workflows. #DH

I had fun writing alt-text for this image of the cover of the new _Critical Infrastructure Studies & Digital Humanities book (in Debates in DH series) I co-edited. See alt-text of the image. (Book description & contents here: www.upress.umn.edu/978151791608...) @uminnpress.bsky.social.

I'm stunned by how weirdly close the Soul Document gets to the categorical imperative. What to conclude? One possibility is that Claude is *this close* to deducing one of the most shattering ethical insights of the last 400 years. Another is that the folks at Anthropic didn't take enough philosophy.

Tidal just gave me my 2025 music recap. Number 1? Burial. Number 2? Gracie Abrams. Since it's only the first week of December, I suppose it's not too late for me to move my musical profile away from brooding, tortured, British teen going through a hard breakup.

New blog post: "If You’re Going to Vibe Code, Why Not Do It in C?" stephenramsay.net/posts/vibe-c...

So many people in my feed are engaged in so many fascinating intellectual endeavors. I, on the other hand, learned today that 71% of the population of Iceland are members of Costco.

A colleague just told me that she once had a student cite their source as:

Jazeera, Al.

I am reading Donna Haraway’s *A Cyborg Manifesto* (1984) for maybe the first time in fifteen years for a grad seminar I’m teaching on theory of new media. I was worried it might seem too much like a period piece, but DAMN, it lands. Maybe harder than it did originally.

"Sarkozy told Le Figaro he would take three books for his first week behind bars, including Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" - the story of a man who is unjustly imprisoned and who plots his revenge against those who betrayed him." Wait! What are the other two?

I spent six days working with Claude to build a full-stack web app (check it out at AcadiMeet.org). The process was revelatory.

My conclusion: The old "hack vs. yack" binary in DH has collapsed.

Read my full reflection:

foundhistory.org/2025/10/meet...

#AI #DH #EdTech #HigherEd #Productivity

It's been a while, but I have exciting news! Our department is hiring a Digital Historian with a specialization in Early America. Help us spread the word by sharing this opportunity within your networks. #DigitalHistory #DH #HigherEdJobs

jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinna...

What can English professors due to stop the wholesale takeover of society by generative AI? Well, probably nothing. But we few, we happy few must march forth bravely with the idea that "compute" is a fucking verb and "inference" is a fucking noun. Who hath no stomach to this fight, let them depart.

I feel like I would never, ever, ever use AI to write a paper, lecture, letter, whatever. Is this because I am a strongly ethically-minded and possibly even virtuous individual, or is it because I'm like my dad who would do basically anything to avoid the indignity of calling a plumber?

I've been teaching a course on data in the humanities -- how to create it, manipulate, visualize it, etc. but *without* coding (or much coding). So: CSV, XML, JSON, SQL and all their ecosystems (plus a bit of UNIX). There are a few interesting things about this course, but I want to mention two:

Also, the thumbnail of my book shows part of the blurb describing it as "witty and incisive . . ." Couple of things: (1) I didn't write this and (2) I am *way* more witty than incisive.

Well, look at that! All my friends are here!

I have a new(-ish) book out: *On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations* from University of Minnesota Press.

www.upress.umn.edu/978151791501...