Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Benjamin Tausig

@burrata.bsky.social

4.6K followers 1.6K following 4.5K posts

Associate professor of music and sound in Asia/anthropology. Crossword puzzle editor; TNG watcher.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · Jan 7

My new book, "Bangkok After Dark: Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, and the Making of Cold War Intimacies" is now available for pre-order!! It comes out in May.

You'll love reading it, I believe!

Use code E25TAUSG and it'll be about $21 + shipping.

www.dukeupress.edu/bangkok-afte...

www.dukeupress.edu

11 24 98

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1h

A “Music for 18 Musicians”-type piece, but made up of interlocking recordings of players in handshake lines saying “good game, good game, good game, good game…”

1 2 13

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 8h

Thanks for this!! Kinkos does still exist (as fedex I guess). I wonder if they would still take these orders at all, and if so what the cover price would look like for a course pack in 2025?

1 3

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 8h

When we used course packs in college, was Kinkos (or whatever local place) paying licensing fees? I don’t think I was aware of all the economics.

1 3

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 8h

Fair.

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 8h

And if there are challenges for us as instructors in going analog, I think they’re usually worth it — the potential risks of working within university surveillance systems are very real, for students above all. It’s just good practice.

1 2

Reposted by Benjamin Tausig

Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 8h

Does anyone still make coursepacks for students?

Super common when I was in college & grad school, but I imagine putting PDFs on the LMS has mostly (entirely?) replaced it. Anyone just printing out everything for them?

20 5 41

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 8h

Reverting to blue books for writing
assignments and paper for exams seemed hard, until it wasn’t. That’s been my new standard for a while.

I see no reason why course packs would be different. There are still places to print things, including on campus. Obv class size matters, but generally …

3 1 7

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 11h

Anyone who speaks favorably or even neutrally about the compact, should have to speak in the voice of the desperately greedy frog

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 12h

"Administration officials are weaponizing federal funding to make universities more congenial to Trumpism, saying that those who sign the compact will be at the front of the line for government money."

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

A still from the film "Spirited Away" in which a monster offers Chihiroa heaping handful of gold while the bathhouse workers all watch in greedy excitement. it turns out that the monster shrinks and runs away when people don't accept the gold (which, in any case, wasn't real gold anyway)

1 4

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

I also happen to know that, during that series, Wendy O. Williams was on Joan Rivers, and it fucking slays, and Rivers talks about one of the games during the banter. It’s on YouTube if you want a truly deep sense of the moment.

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Watching game 6 of the 1986 World Series with my son during this rain delay, and I can’t recommend it enough — the supple athlete bodies of a bygone age, breathless ads from Tandy for 286 computers, and much more. But nothing’s as glorious as seeing Roger Clemens really sad.

2 19

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

It’s breezy in the nicest way

Reposted by Benjamin Tausig

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Appreciating the lovely cool weather today in Queens

3 28 150

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Appreciating the lovely cool weather today in Queens

3 28 150

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

It feels weirdly like a crime now to enter a store, exchange money for a good, and leave without disclosing your name or contact information

Reposted by Benjamin Tausig

Polly Pallister-Wilkins @pollypw.bsky.social · 2d

Political violence is when people laugh at me

1 3 10

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 3d

But in the Canadian baseball system, you have to wait in line for runs

Reposted by Benjamin Tausig

👻 YSUBoOooOooOo 👻 @bassoonysu.bsky.social · 4d

Post on r/Cleveland about the student radio station at Cleveland State University getting shut down for being "too woke," with the shut down attended by a state senator.

From the Cleveland community on Reddit: And then they came for college radio DJs (WCSB 89.3FM)

Explore this post and more from the Cleveland community

www.reddit.com

3 5 15

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 5d

Teaching my children the fundaments of Showtime

Clowning on an empty subway car with my kids (I am a middle aged man in work clothes hanging upside down)

Reposted by Benjamin Tausig

Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 5d

it didn’t work as expected the last time so now every event is shoehorned into the “George Floyd of the Right” framework, cargo-cult-like, hoping that this time if the ritual speech acts are done correctly the spell of wokeness will be lifted and the masses will sleep and dream american dreams again

2 3 21

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 5d

I *want* to read students not just in their own words but in their own style. Give me the errors, the use of phrases that feel too informal, the pluralization for some reason of “vinyls.” The things that feel weird to me, but natural to young writers, are nothing but the birth of future style.

1 2 13

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 5d

Who wants to live in a world where everything that’s written is clear?

1 1 13

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 5d

One of my biggest beefs with AI writing is that basically all that’s good in prose, from the chaotic grammar of a dril post to the well-observed imperfection of C. McCarthy dialog to Dickinson’s ambiguous dashes, comes from idiosyncrasy if not error. Writing isnt bloodless communication, it’s style!

2 5 32

Reposted by Benjamin Tausig

Joseph M. Pierce @pepepierce.bsky.social · 7d

Friends and colleagues,

I will be speaking at MoMA next Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 6:30pm, alongside Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Candice Hopkins, on a panel called Imagining Indigenous Futures.The event description and registration can be found below

Hope you see you soon! www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

Imagining Indigenous Futures | MoMA

How do we relate to the world around us? How do we dream new worlds to life? How do we resist in times of upheaval? In his new book Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair, Joseph M. Pie...

www.moma.org

15 14

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 5d

Beautiful review of "Bangkok After Dark" by Anant Narkkong (in Thai). It means a lot that/when Thai readers have liked the book.

field-feel.com/bangkok-afte...

“กรุงเทพฯราตรี : มัวริซ รอคโค ชีวิตกลางคืนไร้พรมแดน และสงครามเย็นในร่างมนุษย์” เขียนโดย เบนจามิน เทาสิค ฉบับพิมพ์พ.ศ. 2568

Bangkok After Dark เป็นมากกว่าชีวประวัติของนักดนตรีคนหนึ่ง หากคือบทวิเคราะห์ทางชาติพันธุ์ดนตรีการเมือง เสียง พื้นที่ไนท์ไลฟ์ในฐานะสนามการเจรจาอำนาจของโลกยุคสงครามเย็น

field-feel.com