Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
@brown-ramsey.bsky.social
PhD candidate at Boston College. Working on the c19 South’s cheap print. Marxist.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
me, my wife, my son and my dog all have our christmases on the exact same day of the year. the odds of this are approximately 1 in 48 million
December 25, 2025 at 4:00 PM
me, my wife, my son and my dog all have our christmases on the exact same day of the year. the odds of this are approximately 1 in 48 million
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Look….. I know I’m an adult so it’s different…… but I feel like this year’s Christmas is the least Christmas-y I’ve ever experienced.
Personally, because of all of the horror we’ve had this year. But also commercially, I feel like even companies are phoning it in or not even acknowledging it.
Personally, because of all of the horror we’ve had this year. But also commercially, I feel like even companies are phoning it in or not even acknowledging it.
December 24, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Look….. I know I’m an adult so it’s different…… but I feel like this year’s Christmas is the least Christmas-y I’ve ever experienced.
Personally, because of all of the horror we’ve had this year. But also commercially, I feel like even companies are phoning it in or not even acknowledging it.
Personally, because of all of the horror we’ve had this year. But also commercially, I feel like even companies are phoning it in or not even acknowledging it.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
for my PhD exams I spent months reading 300+ books in European intellectual history, modern European history, modern Jewish history, medieval Jewish history, and critical theory. There is a huge difference between the style of reading that accommodates this, and having a computer "summarize" books.
December 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM
for my PhD exams I spent months reading 300+ books in European intellectual history, modern European history, modern Jewish history, medieval Jewish history, and critical theory. There is a huge difference between the style of reading that accommodates this, and having a computer "summarize" books.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Betty Reid Soskin, the National Park Service’s oldest ranger, has died. She was 104.
Betty Reid Soskin, Oldest U.S. Park Ranger and Trailblazing Historian, Dies at 104 | KQED
Betty Reid Soskin, the nation’s oldest National Park Service ranger and a pioneering historian at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, devoted her life to preserving Black histo...
www.kqed.org
December 22, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Betty Reid Soskin, the National Park Service’s oldest ranger, has died. She was 104.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
I wrote about Bari Weiss, 60 Minutes, CBS News, and what all of this says about the state of mainstream media. www.readtpa.com/p/the-kill-s...
The Kill Switch
How Bari Weiss handed the Trump administration a veto over CBS News
www.readtpa.com
December 22, 2025 at 5:35 PM
I wrote about Bari Weiss, 60 Minutes, CBS News, and what all of this says about the state of mainstream media. www.readtpa.com/p/the-kill-s...
This is unsurprising, considering they brought her on for her defense and downplaying of Israel during the height of the genocide in Gaza. Her job is to keep viewers pliant and unfeeling.
So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.
December 22, 2025 at 1:09 PM
This is unsurprising, considering they brought her on for her defense and downplaying of Israel during the height of the genocide in Gaza. Her job is to keep viewers pliant and unfeeling.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
I really enjoyed this book. Congratulations to Justene Hill Edwards. macmillan.yale.edu/stories/yale...
Yale Announces 2025 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner
Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has announced the winner of the twenty-seventh annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
macmillan.yale.edu
December 16, 2025 at 8:38 PM
I really enjoyed this book. Congratulations to Justene Hill Edwards. macmillan.yale.edu/stories/yale...
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Today is the 252nd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Along with British East India Company Tea, the first edition of Poems on Various Subjects was among the cargo carried from London to Boston on The Dartmouth. Today, the Boston Tea Party museum displays WC #1234: www.wheatleycensus.org/wc/1234/
Wheatley Census
www.wheatleycensus.org
December 16, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
December 15, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
This column on Vox is the biggest pile of steaming AI crap I've seen this year. Human's aren't running out of ideas. Instead, those with power and money don't want to listen to ideas that threaten their power and money.
Ideas are plentiful. Putting those ideas into action is the hard part.
Ideas are plentiful. Putting those ideas into action is the hard part.
We’re running out of good ideas. AI might be how we find new ones.
What if the best use of AI is restarting the world’s idea machine?
www.vox.com
December 13, 2025 at 4:17 PM
This column on Vox is the biggest pile of steaming AI crap I've seen this year. Human's aren't running out of ideas. Instead, those with power and money don't want to listen to ideas that threaten their power and money.
Ideas are plentiful. Putting those ideas into action is the hard part.
Ideas are plentiful. Putting those ideas into action is the hard part.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Eric Foner, in Second Founding (2019), notes that the only exclusions discussed in the congressional debates on the 14th Amendment citizenship language were newborns in independent Indian nations and those of foreign diplomats, exactly consistent with the traditional understanding of the Amendment
December 13, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Eric Foner, in Second Founding (2019), notes that the only exclusions discussed in the congressional debates on the 14th Amendment citizenship language were newborns in independent Indian nations and those of foreign diplomats, exactly consistent with the traditional understanding of the Amendment
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
No one wants to watch their PhD program be eliminated. It’s nearly the same story when it’s “innovated” away.
Me & @seeshespeak.bsky.social in the Chronicle. Read it below ⬇️
www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...
Me & @seeshespeak.bsky.social in the Chronicle. Read it below ⬇️
www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...
Opinion | A Coup at Carnegie Mellon?
The university is replacing the humanities with more computers.
www.chronicle.com
December 12, 2025 at 6:44 PM
No one wants to watch their PhD program be eliminated. It’s nearly the same story when it’s “innovated” away.
Me & @seeshespeak.bsky.social in the Chronicle. Read it below ⬇️
www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...
Me & @seeshespeak.bsky.social in the Chronicle. Read it below ⬇️
www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
they’re doing Verso Closet now???
VIDEO: The team behind @proteanmag.com (@jakeromm.bsky.social, @multiwhirl.bsky.social, @stevanzetti.bsky.social, and @walletcheck.bsky.social) visits our offices in New York City and makes their way through the Verso Archive, sharing some of the titles that have influenced their work.
December 13, 2025 at 3:23 AM
they’re doing Verso Closet now???
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
December 12, 2025 at 6:23 PM
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
While Starbucks workers are on strike because they can't get a fair contract, the Bezos-owned Post is saying the CEO deserves the $96 million he got last year.
December 11, 2025 at 4:50 PM
While Starbucks workers are on strike because they can't get a fair contract, the Bezos-owned Post is saying the CEO deserves the $96 million he got last year.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
It finally happened. One of our fabulous @umdbooklab.bsky.social interns, @isabelleberube.bsky.social, printed (with movable type!) the entire first page of Benjamin’s WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION. That’s all handset type. They have ambitions to do more. 🤯
December 10, 2025 at 9:08 PM
It finally happened. One of our fabulous @umdbooklab.bsky.social interns, @isabelleberube.bsky.social, printed (with movable type!) the entire first page of Benjamin’s WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION. That’s all handset type. They have ambitions to do more. 🤯
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Portrait of Rev. Samson Occom (1723-1792). Occom was a Mohegan minister, a tireless advocate for Indigenous education, and a prolific writer and preacher. | 25 Days of Congregational history for Christmas 🎄
Explore our Image Catalog online anytime: https://ow.ly/ggXJ50XGP80
Explore our Image Catalog online anytime: https://ow.ly/ggXJ50XGP80
December 10, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Portrait of Rev. Samson Occom (1723-1792). Occom was a Mohegan minister, a tireless advocate for Indigenous education, and a prolific writer and preacher. | 25 Days of Congregational history for Christmas 🎄
Explore our Image Catalog online anytime: https://ow.ly/ggXJ50XGP80
Explore our Image Catalog online anytime: https://ow.ly/ggXJ50XGP80
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Something that boggles my mind a little is that in 1977 Fredric Jameson gave a series of lectures to 25 or so people in Minnesota & one of them had a cassette recorder. And this year we remastered those cassette tapes & around 14,000 people in 53 countries heard those lectures.
The Jameson Tapes, Side A
with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson
theamericanvandal.substack.com
December 10, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Something that boggles my mind a little is that in 1977 Fredric Jameson gave a series of lectures to 25 or so people in Minnesota & one of them had a cassette recorder. And this year we remastered those cassette tapes & around 14,000 people in 53 countries heard those lectures.
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
"...negotiations between Tufts University & labor unions have degraded. [The] unions described challenging & exhausting negotiations, citing uncooperativeness & staunch resistance to pay increases as driving forces behind the recent growth in collective action..." www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2025...
Tufts unions allege bad-faith bargaining by university - The Tufts Daily
Over the last decade, negotiations between Tufts University and labor unions have degraded. Multiple unions described challenging and exhausting negotiations, citing the university’s uncooperativeness...
www.tuftsdaily.com
December 10, 2025 at 12:16 AM
"...negotiations between Tufts University & labor unions have degraded. [The] unions described challenging & exhausting negotiations, citing uncooperativeness & staunch resistance to pay increases as driving forces behind the recent growth in collective action..." www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2025...
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
Great example of what’s at the heart of these AI projects. Has to have his own relationship to his child mediated by a glorified thieving chat bot. For his kid’s sake, I hope one of the queries was cribbing from someone who knows a thing or two about raising their kid without the computer…
Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?"
Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."
Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."
December 9, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Great example of what’s at the heart of these AI projects. Has to have his own relationship to his child mediated by a glorified thieving chat bot. For his kid’s sake, I hope one of the queries was cribbing from someone who knows a thing or two about raising their kid without the computer…
Reposted by Justin T. Brown-Ramsey
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
December 9, 2025 at 2:58 PM
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular.
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
That’s a nice idea and all, but what about the football and hockey teams?
Ready to start a movement that argues universities should spend money on their core functions, rather than flashy nonsense. Such as teaching and research for example.
December 8, 2025 at 1:20 PM
That’s a nice idea and all, but what about the football and hockey teams?